Battle of the Mountain Man Read online

  Smoke walked toward them, both hands dangling beside the brace of pistols he carried. “Get your hand off that gun or I’ll make good on my promise,” he said, approaching the cowboy whose hearing needed improvement.

  “To hell with you, mister!” the man snapped, closing his fingers unconsciously for a quick pull, a signal to a man like Smoke that the time for talking had ended.

  Smoke clawed one .44 free with the speed of a rat-der’s strike, thumbing back the hammer as he leveled it at the cowboy’s belly. He halted a few feet away with his feet spread slightly apart as the cowboy’s eyes became saucers, staring down the dark muzzle of Smoke’s Colt before he could clear leather. When Smoke spoke to him, it was in a hoarse voice.

  “My mama used to say that when somebody don’t listen, it can be on account of too much wax built up in their ears.” He took a step closer. “She told me the best way to clean out somebody’s ears is to jar some of that built-up wax loose.” With the same lightning speed, Smoke struck the cowboy with the back of his free hand, a blow so powerful it sent the man reeling backward until he stumbled into the shallow stream and fell down on his rump in a foot of icy snowmelt gurgling down from the mountain peaks still capped by last year’s snow.

  “Shit!” the cowboy exclaimed, shaking his head to clear it, scrambling back to his feet with his denims soaked. Only now he had his gun hand held to his face, where an angry red welt was forming, after Smoke had knocked him into the water. He rubbed his sore cheek a moment while his companion merely stood there near the mules holding the fence stave. “You had no call to do that to me!”

  “I never ask a man to do anything twice,” Smoke replied, his gun still aimed in front of him. “I saw you whippin’ these mules and it didn’t sit well with me. When a man’s dumber than the animal he’s tryin’ to use, giving it a blacksnake treatment it doesn’t understand, I’ve got plenty of reason to slap the hell out of that kind of fool. I’m gonna get your team across this creek as soon as my ranch hands come over that ridge behind me, and after that’s done, you can be on your way. But if I ever see you whip mules like that again, I’ll take that same black-snake and work your ass over with it, same as you done to those poor dumb animals.” The other cowboy spoke for the first time. He was glowering at Smoke, holding the fence stave like a club. “You wouldn’t be talkin’ so big if it wasn’t fer them guns, stranger.”

  “Is that so?” Smoke asked as he heard Pearlie and Cal in the buckboard rattle downslope toward him. “In that case, since you believe in what you say so strong, I’ll take ’em off and we can test your idea.” He examined the bearded gent with the club a little closer, making sure he wasn’t carrying a gun, finding him to be thick-muscled, big-handed, probably the sort who thought he was tough with his fists.

  Smoke turned to the cowboy standing shivering wet in the creek “Toss that pistol out with two fingers. Pitch it up here. Soon as my boys get here they’ll make sure nobody goes for a gun while me and your pardner settle this.”

  “You ain’t got the guts to fight Clyde bare-handed.”

  “We can fight with feather dusters or claw hammers, for all I care,” Smoke replied, watching the cowboy lift his gun out very carefully to throw it near Smoke’s feet. He picked it up, then bolstered his .44 and removed his gunbelts, placing them in the back of the wagon. He spoke over his shoulder just as Pearlie drove up. “Boys, make sure that other feller stays right where he is while I teach this big fool a lesson.”

  Pearlie drew his pistol. “I reckon you’ll explain after you’re done beatin’ this poor bastard half to death,” Pearlie said matter-of-factly, like the outcome was certain.

  Smoke turned to the man with the wood stave. “Not much to it, really,” he answered back. “What we’ve got here is two of the dumbest assholes who ever tried to drive a team of mules. I watched ’em use a whip on this team, and that toothpick the big one is carryin’ now. I can’t hardly stand to watch men hurt an animal like that. I asked ’em real nice to stop, only they was not of the same mind on it. I’m gonna teach this one how it feels to have the hell knocked out of him with that very same club.”

  Clyde answered in a snarl. “You gotta come git it first, you cocky son of a bitch. Ain’t gonna be easy.”

  It was Cal who said quietly, “I’m real sure you’re gonna regret callin’ Mr. Jensen a son of a bitch, mister, not to make mention of what you done to them mules.”

  “Are you Smoke Jensen?” the other cowboy asked, just as Smoke made a lunge toward Clyde before Clyde was ready for it. Swinging a powerful right hook at Clyde’s jaw, Smoke felt his knuckles crack when they landed hard against bone just as Clyde drew back with his fence stave.

  Clyde grunted when Smoke’s fist struck him, and it seemed a mighty gust of wind lifted him off his feet, snapping his head around so that all he could see was mountains on the far side of the stream. Clyde staggered a few wobbly steps and then he knelt down as if he meant to pray, dropping the club beside him, his arms hanging limply at his sides.

  Smoke walked up behind him and picked up the stave while Clyde blinked furiously, trying to clear his head. Smoke took a pair of short steps around the kneeling figure until he stood in front of him. “That’s what it’s like when a man hits another man in the head,” Smoke explained, sounding calm. “And now I’m gonna show you how those mules felt when you were whippin’ their asses with this stick.”

  He swung a vicious blow with the stave, striking Clyde across the left cheek of his buttocks with a resounding whack.

  “Yeeeow!” Clyde shrieked, tumbling forward until he landed on his chest with his palms covering the seat of his pants, his face twisted in agony.

  Smoke took a deep breath, tossing the stick aside. “Now you know what the mules wanted to say. Remember how it feels to have the wood laid to your own ass. Me an’ my cowboys will cross that team over the way it oughta be done. And I meant what I said. If I ever see or hear of either one of you whippin’ a mule again when it ain’t necessary, I’ll come lookin’ for you. Believe me, you don’t want that to happen.”

  Pearlie was already climbing down from the buck-board. “I’ll unharness the lop-eared mule an’ lead it across,” he said as if the remedy was all too clear. “Cal can drive the wagon across as soon as I git to the other side.”

  Smoke returned to buckle on his pistols as Pearlie went about the harness task, selecting what was obviously the gender mule to lead it across.

  Clyde came to his hands and knees shakily and shook his head again. “You broke one of my goddamn teeth when you slugged me,” he complained, running his tongue over a chipped tooth.

  Smoke almost ignored him, until he said, “Count yourself real lucky I’m not still breakin’ ’em out one at a time. After that wagon gets across, I want you boys harnessed and headed on your way, wherever that is. But don’t stay in this country too long or I might change my mind about leavin’ the teeth in both of your mouths.”

  “I’ve heard of you, Smoke Jensen,” the cowboy in wet pants said. “I reckon me an’ Clyde are real sorry we said what we did to you.”

  Smoke gave him a withering stare, “Save your goddamn apologies for those mules They’ve each got one coming after what you did to ’em with that club and whip.”

  He mounted Horse and watched Cal drive the loaded wagon easily across the shallow creek. Smoke waited until Cal and Pearlie waded back and climbed in the buckboard, then he glanced over to the men harnessing the mule.

  “Let’s head home, boys, so Sally won’t be wondering why we’re late.”

  Pearlie shook the reins over his buckboard team. He had a grin on his face. “I’ll swear we had a loose hub on this here buckboard, so she won’t have to be told the truth… that you killed two men early this mornin’ an’ just beat the hell out of two more over a pair of stubborn mules.”

  Smoke returned Pearlie’s grin as he swung Horse toward the ranch, “Won’t do any good to lie to Sally. It’d be a waste of good breath. She’ll know there was a li
ttle trouble when she looks me in the eye. Damnedest thing I ever saw, how she knows before I ever open my mouth.”

  Seven

  Jessie Evans, clear blue eyes shining below a mop of sandy hair under a flat brim hat, turned his stocky torso toward one of his men where they sat their horses hidden in a line of pinon pines above the Pecos River. Bill Pickett was watching a handful of John Chisum’s cowboys in the valley driving a herd of market-ready steers upriver, beeves for a government contract with the Apache reservation west of Ruidoso, New Mexico Territory.

  “This is gonna be too easy,” Jessie said, grinning, some of his front teeth yellowed by tobacco stains. “Ain’t but seven of them an’ they’re range cowboys who can’t shoot straight. Let’s make damn sure we kill ’em all so there won’t be no witnesses who can identify us.”

  “It don’t make a difference to me,” Pickett replied, eyelids gone narrow. Killing was a passion with him, Jessie knew, after years of rustling cattle together. Pickett was a raw-boned man who had a preference for shotguns at close range, once stating that he liked to see his victims’ faces when he blew them apart, the look of surprise they wore when shotgun pellets shredded their skin. He told Jessie he liked the smell of blood and gunpowder when it got mixed together.

  Jessie looked past Pickett to Roy Cooper. Cooper had a big jaw, always jutted angrily, even when he was happy, which was rare unless he was with a woman and a bottle of tequila. “Ready down there, Roy?”

  “Ready as I’m gonna be, boss,” he said, his deep voice like a rasp across cold iron. He drew a .44 caliber Winchester from a boot tied to his saddle and worked the lever, sending a cartridge into the firing chamber. “I can kill one or two of ’em from here soon as you give the word.”

  Beyond Cooper, Ignacio Valdez showed off a gold tooth in the front of his mouth “Ready, Serior Jessie,” he said, fisting a Mason Colt .44/.40 revolver. “I gon‘ shoot hell out plenty sons of bitches when you tell me is time.”

  Last in line was a reed-thin boy, Billy Barlow, a small-time rustler from the Texas panhandle. Jessie didn’t fully trust the Barlow kid yet. There was something about him, the way he didn’t look at you when you talked to him. But Jimmie Dolan said to hire shootists to get Chisum’s cattle so the Murphy Store would get the beef contracts away from Chisum and John Tunstall, and Jessie had put word out all the way to the Mexican border that he was hiring guns to fight a range war. More and more experienced men were showing up at Lincoln to inquire about the job, and before this winter was out, Jessie could easily have fifty hired guns on Dolan’s payroll by the time reservation contracts were up for renewal.

  “Let’s spill some blood,” Jessie said savagely, putting a spur to his horse’s ribs, freeing his Colt .44 from its holster in an iron grip. Jessie had long forgotten how many men he’d killed over the years, but it was something he knew he was good at. It had never mattered whether a man had his back turned or if he was facing him when he pulled a trigger. A killer for hire couldn’t wait all day long to earn his money.

  Five galloping horses charged down a rocky slope toward the Pecos, and toward a herd of eighty steers belonging to John Chisum, with seven cowboys pushing them toward Fort Sumner, and a butcher’s block. The thunder of pounding hooves ended a silence in the serenity of the lower Pecos region.

  Cooper was the first to fire, a booming shot from the back of a running horse that would be difficult for even the best of marksmen.

  At the river’s edge, a cowboy on a sorrel gelding yelled and barreled off the back of his horse, turning in midair, arms and legs askew, his cry of pain echoing off the bluffs that ran along both sides of the Pecos.

  Valdez fired, more to spook the cattle than with any hope of hitting what he aimed at.

  Longhorn steers began to run, a stampede that would only add to the confusion, charging along the grassy banks of the river at full tilt.

  Jessie aimed his .44 carefully, knowing full well the action of the horse between his knees would worsen his aim. He waited until his gunsights rested on the chest of a terrified cowboy on a prancing pinto.

  The pistol slammed into his palm, barking, spitting out a finger of orange flame. Jessie saw the cowhand jerk upright in his saddle. Runaway longhorns raced past the wounded man as he toppled to the ground, lost in a cloud of dust sent up by churning hooves boiling away from the stampede.

  Barlow’s rifle roared and a horse went down underneath a cowboy spurring frantically to cross the river. The chestnut collapsed, legs thrashing in shallow water, falling on the cowboy to pin him against a shoal of sand and rocks on the far side of the Pecos.

  Nice work, Jessie thought, spurring his horse for more speed as he and his men thundered down the embankment. Maybe he’d been wrong about Barlow.

  Pickett’s shotgun bellowed, rocking him back against the cantle of his saddle, blue smoke erupting from one barrel. A steer bawled and fell on its chest in front of a cowboy trying to escape the melee aboard a goose-rumped bay. When the steer went down in the pathway of the galloping horse, it tripped the mount and sent its rider flying, as though he’d sprouted wings, into the river.

  Valdez popped off three shots as quickly as he could pull the trigger, sweeping a hatless vaquero off the side of his running buckskin mare, sending him tumbling into tall prairie grasses near the riverbank.

  “Ayii!” Valdez cried, turning his pistol in another direction.

  Pickett’s shotgun roared again, this time at much closer range to a cowboy whipping his gray pony with the ends of his reins to escape the hail of flying lead.

  The man atop the gray did a curious thing… he turned to face the shotgun blast, and when he did his face seemed to come apart as pellets ripped away his cheeks. For a moment, there was no sound other than the banging of guns, until the cowboy slid off his charging horse into a stand of bulrushes growing along the edge of the water.

  Fear-stricken cattle bounded in every direction, making a noise like honking geese. The herd split into three groups when trees blocked the longhorns’ path. One bunch ran northeast, and a second charged across the Pecos, where a shallow spot kept them from having to swim. A third portion of the stampeding steers went straight ahead, crushing everything in its way.

  Jessie took careful aim and fired at a cowboy abandoning the herd on a piebald gelding, shooting him in the back between his shoulder blades, driving him out of his saddle with the force of a sledgehammer blow before his horse could cross the river.

  “Nice shot!” Cooper yelled, levering another round into his Winchester.

  Valdez fired just as Jessie was about to rein south after a lone cowboy making his escape back down the trail running beside the Pecos. The cowboy slumped in his saddle, yet he somehow held onto the saddle horn and continued to rake his spurs into a black gelding’s sides.

  Jessie swung his horse south… there could be no survivors to tell Sheriff Brady about what happened here, or identify any of the attackers.

  Behind him, he heard a gun crack. Pickett and Cooper would finish off any wounded men. Pickett would enjoy it. Of all the cold-blooded killers Jessie had known, Pickett had less feelings than any of them.

  The cowboy on the black rounded a turn in the trail and for a moment he was out of sight. Jessie spurred harder, asking his big yellow dun for everything it had. The rhythm of its pounding hooves filled his ears. He stood in the stirrups for a better view of what lay ahead. A grove of cottonwoods lining the river prevented him from seeing the fleeing cowhand for a few moments, until his dun carried him past the trees.

  A pistol barked suddenly. Jessie felt something tear the left sleeve of his shirt, followed by a burning sensation moving from his shoulder down his arm. In the same instant he saw the cowboy aboard the black horse sitting at the edge of the cottonwood grove.

  “You bushwhackin’ son of a bitch!” Jessie cried, aiming his pistol carefully before he triggered off a shot while bringing the dun to a bounding halt.

  The cowhand rolled out of his saddle… his ho
rse bolted away as he fell. He toppled to the ground clutching his belly with a groan.

  Jessie stepped off his horse, walking slowly, gun pointed in front of him, to the spot where the Chisum cowboy lay. Jessie gritted his teeth, for the moment ignoring the stinging pain in his left arm until he stood over the fallen man, casting his shadow over a face twisted in agony, the face of a young cowboy hardly old enough to shave.

  “You yellow bastard,” Jessie hissed, “layin’ for me behind those trees like that. You’re gunshot, an’ I oughta leave you here to die slow. But you pissed me off when you shot me in the arm, so I’m gonna do you a favor. I’m gonna scatter your brains all over this piece of ground. That way, when Big John Chisum or one of his boys finds you, he’ll know we ain’t just fuckin’ around over this beef contract business. It’ll be like a message to Chisum, only I ain’t gonna sign my name to it.”

  He aimed down, cocked his single-action Colt, and pulled the trigger, the bang of his .44 like a sudden bolt of lightning striking nearby.

  The young cowhand’s head was slammed to the ground, blood shooting from a hole in his right temple. A thumb-sized plug of brain tissue dangled from the exit wound, dribbling blood on the caliche hard-pan. A momentary twitching of the cowboy’s left boot rattled his spur rowel, until his death throes ended abruptly as blood poured from his open mouth.

  “I hope you get a good look at this, Chisum,” Jessie said tonelessly. “Maybe you won’t be so all-fired interested in the beef business.”

  He turned away to catch his horse, bolstering his gun, examining a slight tear in the skin atop his left shoulder, finding it to be little more than a scratch.

  He rode back to the scene of the attack just in time to see Bill Pickett standing over a motionless body, his shotgun pointed down. Pickett glanced over his shoulder when he heard Jessie ride up.