Vengeance of the Mountain Man Read online

  Lightning Jack chuckled. “I doubt that, boss. He’s goin’ into Jensen’s territory now, an’ I’ll bet a double-eagle he don’t come out.”

  A loud double explosion came from the forest, startling the outlaws’ mounts, causing one of the Mexicans to begin shooting wildly toward the noise while shouting curses in Spanish.

  The gang waited expectantly, every gun trained on the spot where Smoke and Cartwright entered a stand of dense trees. After a few moments the sound of a horse moving through brush could be heard.

  The men cocked pistols and rifles as a horse walked out of the trees onto the trail. In its saddle was the decapitated body of Curly Bill Cartwright. His head and upper shoulders had been blown off by a double load of ten-gauge buckshot. A tree branch had been stuck down the back of his shirt and his feet were tied together under the animal’s belly to keep him upright in his saddle.

  Lightning Jack spoke quietly. “You think maybe Jensen’s sending us a message, boss?”

  Sundance said, “Damn! I want to kill that bastard so bad I can taste it!”

  Perro Muerte walked his horse over to Sundance. “What now, jefe? We go into trees, or stay on trail?”

  Sundance said, “Stay on the trail. If we can locate his camp, we can keep him from gettin’ to his supplies and ammunition. Sooner or later he’ll run low, and then we can take him.” He pointed to Jeremiah Gray Wolf, “Take the point, Gray Wolf, and see if’n you can find some tracks or a sign showing which way his camp might be.”

  Moses Washburn spoke in a low voice to Bull, “I don’t like this, Bull. I don’t like it one bit.”

  Bull shook his head. “Me either, partner, me either.”

  Jeremiah Gray Wolf leaned over his saddle and began to walk his pony up the trail, followed twenty yards back by the rest of the group.

  After a quarter of a mile, he held up his hand and called over his shoulder, “I’ve found some tracks. Let’s go.”

  The Indian straightened in his saddle and spurred his mount into a trot, disappearing around a bend in the trail. The others drew weapons and followed him from a distance.

  Sundance rounded the bend and stopped short when he saw Gray Wolf’s pony standing riderless by the side of the trail, grazing on the short grass partially hidden by melting snow. “Crap,” he whispered under his breath. He hadn’t heard a sound, not even a call for help.

  When the rest of his men rode up to him, Sundance slowly urged his horse forward, scanning trees and brush on either side for a sign of Gray Wolf.

  From behind him, Sundance heard a sharp intake of breath, and the words “Madre de Dios,” spoken in a hoarse whisper. He turned to see Perro Muerte crossing himself and staring up at a nearby tree.

  He followed Perro Muerte’s gaze, and found Jeremiah Gray Wolf hanging from a limb, a rope around his neck, his legs still kicking, quivering in death throes. The Indian’s bowels had let loose and the stench was overpowering.

  Sundance held his bandanna across his nose and rode over to examine the area under the body. Horse tracks showed that Smoke had probably roped the man while hiding in the tree, then dropped to his horse, pulling Gray Wolf out of his saddle by a rope he’d looped over the branch.

  Bull said, “He never knew what hit him.”

  “Shut up!” yelled Sundance. “Come on, he can’t be more’n a few hundred feet away. Let’s go!”

  The group cocked their weapons and started to follow Sundance up a steep slope past the tree with the body hanging from it. It was a steep grade, covered with loose gravel and small stones, and they were only about halfway up the incline when a gunshot from above caught their attention.

  They looked up to see Smoke standing next to a large pile of boulders, grinning, holding something in one hand and a smoking cigar in the other. He cried, “Howdy, gents,” and put his cigar against the object in his other hand. As a fuse began to sputter and sparkle, he dropped the bundle among the rocks and ducked out of sight.

  “Holy shit, it’s dynamite,” yelled Moses Washburn, as he jerked his reins and tried to turn his horse around. The men all panicked and reined their horses to turn in different directions, running into each other, knocking men and animals to the ground.

  The explosion was strangely muffled, yet the pile of boulders shifted. Slowly at first, then with gathering speed, huge rocks rolled and tumbled, racing down the slope, bounding as they descended toward the trapped riders milling about on the trail.

  A huge dust cloud enveloped the area, covering screaming men and horses as rocks crushed bones and flattened bodies and ended life.

  When dust had settled, the only men left alive were Sundance, Lightning Jack, Bull, and Perro Muerte. The slide had killed four Texas gunfighters and Moses Washburn, who could only be identified by his hand showing from beneath a huge boulder.

  In the sudden quiet of dusk, the remaining men could hear the sounds of Jensen’s horse in the distance galloping up the mountain.

  “Moses,” Bull said through gritted teeth, “I’m gonna kill him for you.”

  Sundance took a deep breath, looking around at all that was left of his band. “Okay, boys. He’s headed straight up the mountain. There ain’t much cover up there, an’ there ain’t nowhere to run to once he gits to the top.”

  He pulled his pistol and checked his loads. “Let’s go git him!”

  * * *

  The moon had risen and in the cloudless sky made the area as bright as day. Smoke was hidden in his natural fortress leaning over the edge, peering below through his binoculars, waiting for Sundance and his men. It was time to end it, and he was ready.

  There was movement below, and Smoke could see Bull and Perro Muerte crawling on hands and knees off to his right. They were going to try to inch up the slope, using small logs and rocks on that side for cover. Smoke grinned, remembering tricks Cal had devised for just that eventuality.

  Smoke waited until they were halfway up the incline. Bull, panting heavily in the thin air, motioned for Perro Muerte to stop so he could catch his breath.

  Smoke worked the lever on his Henry and sighted down the barrel. “Hey Bull!” he cried.

  The big man squinted in semi-darkness. trying to see where Jensen’s voice was coming from, hoping to get off a lucky shot. “Yeah, whatta ya’ want, Jensen? You wanna know how I’m gonna kill you?”

  Smoke grinned. “No, I was just wondering if you’d noticed all those gourds and pumpkins down there.”

  Bull and Perro Muerte glanced around them and saw for the first time a number of small squash and pumpkins resting on the ground. Bull looked up the slope. “Yeah, what about it? You hungry?”

  Smoke laughed out loud, his voice echoing off surrounding ridges. “Did you ever wonder, you ignorant bastard, how gourds could grow on bare rock?”

  Bull’s eyes widened in horror and he opened his mouth to scream as he realized the trap they had fallen into.

  Smoke squeezed his trigger, firing into the pumpkin directly in front of them. Molten lead entered the gourd, igniting black powder. The object exploded, blasting hundreds of small stones hurtling outward. Bull’s and Perro Muerte’s bodies were riddled, shredded, blown to pieces. They died instantly.

  Below, Sundance sleeved sweat off his forehead and turned to Lightning Jack. “Maybe we oughta head down the mountain and come back later, with more men.”

  Lightning Jack looked at the gunfighter with disgust. “You coward. You got over thirty good men killed lookin’ fer your vengeance. You ain’t backin’ out now.”

  Sundance dropped his hand to his Colt, but froze when a voice behind them said, “Hold it right there, gents.”

  Lightning Jack and Sundance turned to see a small, wiry man in buckskins pointing a shotgun at their heads. “Ease them irons outta those holsters and grab some sky.”

  As they dropped their pistols to the ground, Puma called out, “Hey Smoke. I got me a couple of polecats in my sights. What do you want me to do with ’em?”

  “Bring ’em up here.”<
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  Puma pointed up the hill with his scattergun. “Git.”

  As the outlaws struggled uphill, the mountain man, more than twice their age, walked nimbly up the slope with never a misstep, nor was he breathing hard when they reached the top.

  Smoke stood there, hands on hips, shaking his head at Puma. “It’s easier to tree a grizzly than to keep you ornery old-timers out of a good fight.”

  Puma nodded. “Yeah, I’d rather bed down with a skunk than miss a good fracas.” He cut his eyes over at Smoke. “You want me to dust ’em now, or just stake ’em out over an anthill?”

  Sundance’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t do that ... would you, you son of a bitch?”

  Smoke pursed his lips, rubbing his chin. “Well, I’m feelin’ real generous tonight. How about you boys picking your own way to die? Guns, knives, fists, or boots, it makes no difference to me.”

  Lightning Jack grinned, flexing his muscles while clenching his fists. “You man enough to take me on hand to hand?” He inclined his head toward Puma. “Winner goes free?”

  Smoke removed belt and holsters and took a pair of padded black gloves out of his pants and began to pull them on. “Puma, if this loudmouth beats me, take his left ear as a souvenir and let him go.”

  Puma grunted and spat on the ground. “How ’bout I take his top-knot instead?”

  “Wait a minute . . .” began Lightning Jack, until Puma jacked back the hammers on his shotgun, shutting his mouth for the moment.

  Smoke stepped into the middle of a level area at the top of the plateau. He bowed slightly and said, “Let’s dance!”

  Lightning Jack worked his shoulders, loosening up. “Any rules?”

  Smoke grinned, but his eyes held no warmth. “Yeah, the man left alive at the end is the winner.”

  “Just the way I like it. Say good-bye to your friend, mountain man.”

  The two men circled slowly, bobbing and weaving and throwing an occasional feint to test their opponent’s reflexes. Lightning Jack suddenly rushed at Smoke, swinging roundhouse blows with both arms. Smoke ducked his chin into his chest, hunched his shoulders, and took two heavy blows on his arms. He grunted with pain, and thought, this man can hit like a mule! As Jack drew back to swing again, Smoke unloaded two short, sharp left jabs, both landing on Jack’s nose, flattening it, snapping his head back hard enough so that Puma could hear his neck crack.

  Jack shook his head, flinging blood and snot in the air, a dazed look on his face. Smoke stood, spread-eagled, his fists in front of him, waiting patiently.

  After a pause Jack sleeved blood off his lip and felt his flattened nose. He glared at Smoke, hate in his eyes. Growling like an animal, he advanced toward the mountain man, pumping his arms while swinging his fists.

  Smoke stepped lightly to one side and swung a left cross against Jack’s chin, stopping him in his tracks. Smoke followed with a straight right to the middle of his chest, knocking him backward, rocking him back on his heels. Another left jab to the forehead to straighten him up, and then a mighty uppercut to his solar plexus, just under his sternum, lifted him up on his toes before he fell to one knee. Jack remained there a few moments, catching his breath.

  He looked up at Smoke, blood pouring from his ruined nose. He grinned wickedly, then snatched a slender knife from his boot and rushed at Smoke with the blade extended.

  Smoke took the blade in the outer part of his left shoulder, bent to his right, and swung with all his might. His fist hit Jack in the throat, crushing his larynx with a sharp crunching sound. The knife slipped from Jack’s numb fingers and he fell to his knees, grabbing his neck with both hands. A loud whistling wheeze came from his mouth as he tried to pull air in through his broken trachea, and his eyes widened, bugging out like those of a frightened frog. His skin turned dusky blue, then black as he ran out of air. His eyes glazed over and he died, falling on his face in the dirt.

  Smoke took the knife handle in his right hand, closed his eyes and set his jaw, and yanked it free with a jerk. He staggered at the pain, then straightened, a steely glint in his eyes as blood seeped from the wound to stain his shirt.

  Puma started toward him, but Smoke waved him away. “Not yet, Puma. We got one more snake to stomp ’fore we’re through.”

  Sundance stuttered, “But, I’m not much good with my fists. I ain’t no prizefighter.”

  “You fancy yourself a gunfighter?”

  “Yeah, and I’m a hell of a lot better’n I was last time you bushwhacked me, Jensen. I been practicing for years.”

  Smoke, his left arm hanging limp at his side, bent down and picked up his belt and holsters. “Buckle this on for me, would you, Puma?”

  Puma placed the guns around Smoke’s waist and snapped the buckle shut, then tied the righthand holster down low on his thigh. Smoke slipped the hammer thongs off both guns using his right hand, stepping over to the center of the plateau. “Give the lowlife his pistol, Puma, then watch your back. Sundance is famous for shooting people from the north when they’re facing south.”

  Sundance put his hand on the handle of his Colt. “You’re gonna die for that, Jensen.”

  The two men squared off, thirty yards apart, hands hanging loose, fingers flexing in anticipation. “You called this play, Sundance. Now it’s time for you to pay the band. Fill your damn hand!”

  Sundance snarled and grabbed for his pistol, crouching and turning slightly sideways to give Smoke less of a target. Smoke waited a second, giving the gunfighter time to get his gun halfway out of his holster. In a move that was so fast Puma blinked and missed it, Smoke cleared leather and fired. His bullet took Sundance in the right wrist, snapping it, flinging his Colt into the dirt.

  Sundance howled, cradling his right hand with his left, hunched over, tears running down his cheeks. “Okay, you bastard. You win,” he sobbed.

  Smoke shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. You’ve got another gun and another hand. Use ’em.”

  Sundance looked up in astonishment. “My left hand against your right? That ain’t fair!”

  Smoke shook his head, twirled his righthand Colt once, and then he settled it in his holster. “I’ll cross-draw my left gun, if that’s more to your liking.”

  Sundance’s lips curled in a tight smile. The cross-draw wasn’t a speed draw. No one could beat him with a cross-draw, even lefthanded, he thought. “Okay. It’s your call, Jensen.”

  He stood up, threw his shoulders back, and went for his iron.

  Smoke’s right hand flashed across his belly, drawing and firing again before Sundance could fist his weapon. This time, Smoke’s slug took the outlaw in his left shoulder, shattering it while spinning him around to land facedown on the ground.

  Smoke looked at Puma. “Bring me a rope from that bag over yonder.”

  He took the rope from Puma, formed a large loop, and passed it over Sundance’s arms to tie it around his chest. He dragged the sobbing, sniffling gunman across the plateau to the edge of the cliff on the east side of the clearing.

  “Help me lower him down onto that ledge down there, Puma.”

  “What . . . what are you doing? No . . . no . . . please . . .”

  The two mountain men lowered the crying outlaw twenty feet down the side of the sheer cliff, letting him down gently on a three-foot ledge that stuck out over a drop of two hundred feet.

  Smoke leaned over the edge and called down, “I’m gonna do something for you that you never did for your victims, Sundance. I’m gonna give you a choice about the way you want to die. You can lay there on that ledge and slowly starve to death, or you can jump and fall two hundred feet so you’ll die quickly. It’s all up to you.”

  “Wait, you can’t do this to me. It ain’t right . . .”

  Smoke and Puma slowly walked away, ignoring cries from the coward below. Neither one much cared how he chose to die, just so long as he died, and that was a certainty.

  Turn the page for an exciting preview!

  THE SAGA OF SHAWN O’BRIEN, TOWN TAMER
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  From America’s bestselling Western authors

  comes this violent saga of the frontier legend

  known as the Town Tamer: the man who appears

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  FEED THE BEAST—OR DIE

  On the West Texas border a behemoth is bellowing

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  Now, a Mexican-born teenager has disappeared into this

  fortress factory, where men work and sweat as slaves.

  This boy’s sister wants to know her brother’s fate, and

  she just happens to know the Town Tamer Shawn

  O’Brien’s brother. With his gambling sidekick Hamp

  Sedley, Shawn rides from Denver to Texas to find the

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  spark a ferocious, bloody battle with the greatest evil the

  West ever known: masters of war who destroy anyone

  who defies them—until Shawn O’Brien raises his six-gun.

  USA TODAY AND NEW YORK TIMES

  BESTSELLING AUTHORS

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE, with J. A. Johnstone

  BETTER OFF DEAD

  A Shawn O’Brien Western

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  CHAPTER ONE

  “Mister, you were warned to mind your own business and stay away from the foundry and you ignored me,” the big man in the bowler hat said. “The gent you’re looking for isn’t here and it seems like we’ll need to beat that fact into you.”

  Shawn O’Brien pushed himself off the saloon bar and faced four toughs, each armed with a hickory pickax handle. All wore bowler hats with goggles parked above the brims. Everyone who had cause to enter the Abaddon Cannon Foundry wore goggles.