Quest of the Mountain Man Read online

  By the time the group reached the mountain area where Rattlesnake Bob Guthrie and Bobcat Bill Johnson had last been seen, they were tired, saddle-sore, and covered with bites from the thousands of black flies the spring had brought up into the mountains.

  Just after noon on the third day of their search, they made camp in a valley with plenty of grass for the horses to eat. The sun was out and the day was clear, the temperature climbing into the mid-fifties.

  Pearlie climbed stiffly down from his horse and rubbed his aching backside. “Damn, boys,” he said grumpily, “I think my butt’s done grown to this saddle.”

  The two mountain men, who were used to spending days at a time in the saddle, looked at him and grinned. “Pearlie, boy, I got just the thing for those blisters,” Bear Tooth said, pulling a dark brown bottle from his saddlebags.

  “What’s that?” Pearlie asked.

  “It’s a liniment I make from pine sap, whiskey, an’ bear fat,” Bear Tooth said, tossing the bottle to Pearlie.

  Pearlie pulled a cork from the bottle and sniffed it cautiously. “Whew,” he exclaimed, making a face and holding the bottle out away from his face. “That smells strong enough to peel paint off’n a barn.”

  “Don’t waste it,” Red Bingham said, laughing. “Bear Tooth’s been known to drink it when we run low on whiskey.”

  “Works pretty good to tan the hides of the skins we trap too,” Bear Tooth said. “It’s guaranteed to either kill ya or cure ya.”

  While the rest of the men set up camp and started a fire to cook lunch on, Pearlie moved off into some brush nearby, dropped his trousers, undid the flap on his long underwear, and gingerly rubbed some of the liniment onto his sore buttocks.

  Suddenly, his skin on fire, he came running out of the brush, his pants down around his knees, jumping and hollering and fanning his butt with his hands. “Good God Almighty!” he yelled. “Somebody help me!”

  Bear Tooth laughed as he stirred a pot of beans warming on the fire and winked at Smoke. “Told ya it’d make him forget all about how sore his ass was.”

  After a few minutes, Pearlie quit shouting and stopped jumping around. He stood there, his eyes wide as a smile slowly appeared on his face. “By gum,” he said, looking at the bottle he was still holding. “It does feel better now.”

  He pulled his pants up and walked over to the fire. “What’s for dinner?” he asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the coals.

  Red Bingham looked up at him from over the tin plate on his lap. “Fer the main course, we got beans an’ fatback, an’ fer dessert, we got more beans an’ more fatback.”

  “Yeah,” Cal said, scooping a spoonful of beans onto his plate, “you ate the last of the elk yesterday, Pearlie.”

  Smoke smiled at this, and then he froze, his hand going to the Colt on his hip as he raised his nose and sniffed the air. “Don’t look now, boys, but we got company,” he said in a low voice as he eased the Colt from his holster.

  A gravelly voice came from a copse of trees fifty yards away. “You plannin’ on shootin’ somebody with that hogleg, Smoke?”

  Smoke grinned and let the pistol fall back into its holster.

  Bear Tooth made a face and stood with his hands on his hips facing the trees where the voice came from. “Well, I’ll be damned. That sounds like a bobcat, boys.”

  Two scruffy, well-worn mountain men wearing buckskins so dirty they looked black eased their ponies out of the trees and walked them slowly towards the camp.

  Smoke got to his feet and waved. “Howdy, Bobcat, Rattlesnake,” he called.

  The two men nodded without speaking and rode on into camp. As they dismounted, Bobcat Bill Johnson, a short, wiry man with dark skin and sun-streaked blond hair and beard, sniffed loudly. “That coffee and beans sure do smell good,” he said.

  Bear Tooth sniffed loudly, his face screwed into an expression of distaste. “At least somthin’ smells good around here,” he said, staring at the two men as they approached the fire. “What happened?” he asked. “You men forgot to take your annual bathing this year?”

  Bobcat stared back at him. “Hell, Bear, it ain’t hardly spring yet. We usually wait till the snow’s all gone ’fore we take a bath.”

  “Set an’ take a load off,” Red said, smiling at the byplay. “You’re welcome to dig in, we got plenty.”

  Rattlesnake Bob Guthrie moved to the packhorse he was leading and took a slab of meat wrapped in burlap and waxed paper off the back of the animal. “You boys want some venison to go with them beans?” he asked.

  “Here, let me help you with that,” Pearlie said, jumping to his feet and taking the meat from Rattlesnake’s hands.

  Rattlesnake looked at Pearlie, sniffed a couple of times, and grinned. “Don’t tell me you let ol’ Bear Tooth talk you into usin’ that liniment he makes up.”

  Pearlie blushed as he cut steaks off the venison and put them in an iron skillet to cook. “He said it’d take the soreness outta my butt,” Pearlie said in a low voice.

  Rattlesnake laughed. “I let him put some on a pony of mine once that had some saddle sores on its back. The animal took off up the mountain and we didn’t find it for damn near a week. It’d run so long, it was two feet shorter an’ fifty pounds lighter when we finally found it.”

  “But them sores were healed, weren’t they?” Bear Tooth said haughtily.

  Smoke smiled. It was a mountain-man tale in the best traditions of the High Lonesome—outrageous, with just a touch of humor and truth in it.

  After introductions had been made all around, the men sat down to venison steaks, beans, and canned peaches that Van Horne had brought along on his packhorse.

  While they ate, Smoke outlined the job offer Van Horne was making to the mountain men, emphasizing the opportunity they would have to travel and explore land largely unseen by anyone before them.

  Rattlesnake put the last of his venison in his mouth, added a generous spoonful of beans, and chewed slowly, his eyes on the fire as he thought over the proposition. After a few minutes, he looked up at Smoke. He pointed to the pile of beaver, fox, and bear skins they had piled on one of their packhorses. “You see them skins there, Smoke?” he asked, a look of disgust on his face.

  Smoke glanced at the skins and nodded.

  “That’s ’bout half what we trapped last year by this time, an’ last year’s amount was less’n half what we got the year before.”

  Bobcat nodded, his eyes sad. “Yep, there’s just too blamed many folks up here trappin’ an’ huntin’ nowadays. Hell, it wasn’t more’n a month ago we seen some other men up on that peak over there,” he said, pointing off to the side at a mountainside ten miles away. “Used to be, we wouldn’t hardly ever see another white man in these parts the whole winter.

  “Damned place is getting so crowded a man might as well live in the city—can’t hardly turn around without bumpin’ into some other sumbitch trappin’ in our streams.”

  Van Horne leaned forward, setting his plate down on the ground. “Well, boys, you won’t see that where we’re going. To my knowledge, there’s only been a handful of men even try to cross the mountains we’re going over, an’ that was more than five years ago.”

  Rattlesnake dropped his plate next to the fire and picked up his tin coffee cup. After he took a big swallow, he said, “Well, me’n Bobcat ain’t much fer joinin’ up with other men when we go travelin’, but”—he cut his eyes at Smoke—“we might just make an exception seein’ as how we’d be explorin’ with the famous Smoke Jensen.”

  Bobcat smiled. “Yep, ol’ Preacher used to give us an earful ’bout how good a man you was to spend time with, Smoke, back when he was still around. Might be nice to give it a try an’ see if’n he was right or just pullin’ our legs.”

  “Preacher told me many times, men, that you were all good men to ride with, and even spend the winter with if it came to that,” Smoke said, looking at each of the mountain men in turn. “I’d be honored if you’d care to join
us on our expedition.”

  Rattlesnake looked up at the clear blue sky and down at the melting snow all around them. “Hell, trappin’s ’bout over fer this year anyhow,” he said. “It might be kind’a fun to go see what Canada’s like, see how it compares to the High Lonesome of Colorado.”

  “One thing they didn’t tell you, boys,” Bear Tooth said, a malicious gleam in his eyes.

  “What’s that, Bear?” Bobcat asked as he cut a slice off his plug of tobacco and stuffed it in his cheek.

  “We gonna have to ride the train to get to Canada ’fore next winter.”

  “A train?” Bobcat said, almost swallowing his chaw.

  “That’s right,” Red said, smiling at Bobcat’s discomfort.

  Bobcat stroked his chin thoughtfully and shook his head. “Well, now, I don’t know ’bout that, boys. I ain’t never been on one of those contraptions before.”

  “Well, if’n you’re too scared, Bobcat,” Bear Tooth said with a grin, “we’ll understand if you back out.”

  “Too scared?” Bobcat asked, his eyes wide. “Why, you young pup,” he said, “I ain’t scared of nothin’ nor nobody. If’n you’re willin’ to risk your life on one of them things, why, then, so am I.”

  Once they’d decided to go along, the men didn’t waste any time. They packed their horses, broke camp, and headed down the mountain in the direction of Pueblo, where Van Horne had a train waiting to take them north toward Canada.

  7

  The trip to Pueblo was uneventful, the mountain men keeping the group entertained with increasingly outrageous tales of life in the High Lonesome, and the group arrived just after noon on the third day of their journey. As they rode into town, Rattlesnake Bob pulled his pony up next to Smoke and glanced over his shoulder at Louis Longmont, who was riding in the rear.

  “Smoke,” he said, after leaning to the side and spitting a stream of brown tobacco juice at a mangy dog who was running alongside his pony, “I gotta ask ya’ somethin’.”

  “What is it, Rattlesnake?” Smoke answered.

  “What is the story on that Longmont feller? He looks awful soft to be comin’ on a trip like this.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I took notice of his hands. The feller don’t look like he’s ever done a lick of hard work in his life. His hands are soft an’ don’t hardly have no calluses on ’em at all.” He squinted his eyes in an expression of distaste. “Hell, even his fingernails ain’t go no dirt under ’em.”

  Smoke chuckled. He was used to men underestimating Louis’s toughness. His fine clothes and refined manner often made men make the mistake of thinking he was soft. “Don’t let his appearance fool you, Rattlesnake. Louis is tough as a boot under those fancy clothes, and in a pinch there is no man I’d rather have watching my back than him. He’s saved my life on more occasions than I like to think about.”

  Rattlesnake chewed in silence for a moment, and then he nodded, “I’ll have to take your word fer it, Smoke, ’cause I just don’t see him as the kind who’ll take to the High Lonesome well.”

  “Like I said, don’t underestimate Louis, Rattlesnake. He came out West when he was knee-high to a horse, and he came with nothing but the clothes on his back. He’s now one of the richest men I know, and he’s earned every cent of his money the hard way. He doesn’t have any back-down in him, and he’ll put his life on the line for any man he considers a friend.”

  “If’n you say so,” Rattlesnake said doubtfully, but it was clear he was reserving judgment on Louis until he proved himself to the mountain men in the only way that counted, by being as tough and as mean as they were.

  From a few places back, Van Horne called, “Hey, Smoke. Why don’t we grab some grub before we head over to the train station?”

  “I’ll second that,” Pearlie said with conviction. “My stomach is pushing up against my backbone I’m so hungry.”

  “I agree,” Louis said. “I find myself missing Andre more and more as time goes on.”

  Van Horne pulled the head of his Morgan toward a dining place with a sign over the door that said simply THE FEEDBAG, and the others followed, tying their mounts and packhorses to a hitching rail in front of the building.

  The Feedbag was set up similarly to Longmont’s saloon back in Big Rock. It consisted of a large room with eating tables on one side and a bar and smaller tables for the men who just wanted to drink their meals on the other side. It was about three quarters full. Most of the men wore the canvas trousers of miners, but there was a smattering of men dressed in chaps, flannel shirts, and leather vests who were obviously cowboys from nearby ranches.

  Van Horne pushed through the batwings and walked directly toward a large table in the front corner of the room, while Smoke, Pearlie, Cal, and Louis spread out just inside the door with their backs to the wall waiting for their eyes to adjust to the gloomy lighting. The mountain men stopped and eyed Smoke with raised eyebrows.

  “You expectin’ trouble, Smoke?” Rattlesnake Bob asked, his hand dropping to the old Walker Colt stuck in the waistband of his buckskins.

  Smoke smiled as his eyes searched the room for anyone who might be paying him special attention. “No, Rattlesnake, but I’ve found the best way to avoid trouble is to be ready for it when it appears.”

  When he saw no one was looking their way, Smoke walked on over to the table where Van Horne was already sitting down talking to a waiter, and took his usual seat with his back to the wall and his face to the rest of the room.

  As they all took their seats, Bill said, “I ordered us a couple of pitchers of beer to start with while we decide what food to order.”

  Bear Tooth smacked his lips. “That sounds mighty good, Bill. I ain’t had me no beer since last spring.”

  Before Bill could answer, a loud voice came from a group of men standing at the bar across the room. “God Almighty! What the hell is that smell?” a man called loudly, looking over at their table. “Did somebody drag a passel of skunks in here?”

  The young man, who appeared to be about twenty years old, was wearing a black shirt and vest with a silver lining, and had a brace of nickel-plated Colt Peacemakers tied down low on his hips. He had four other men standing next to him, all wearing their guns in a similar manner, and all were laughing like he’d just said something extremely funny.

  Rattlesnake Bob glanced at Bear Tooth and grimaced. “I hate it when that happens,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Now we’re gonna have to kill somebody ’fore we’ve even had our beer.”

  “Take it easy, Rattlesnake,” Smoke said. “He’s just some young tough who’s letting his whiskey do his thinking for him.”

  Rattlesnake eased back down in his chair. “You’re right, Smoke,” he said, smiling. “If’n ever man who was drunk-dumb got kilt, there wouldn’t hardly be none of us left.”

  Smoke continued to keep an eye on the man across the room as the bartender tried to get him to be quiet, without much success.

  When their waiter appeared with the beer and glasses, Smoke asked him, “Who’s the man with the big mouth over there at the bar?”

  The waiter glanced nervously over his shoulder, and then he whispered, “That’s Johnny MacDougal. His father owns the biggest ranch in these parts.”

  “Well, I don’t care if’n his daddy owns Colorado Territory,” Bear Tooth growled. “You go on over there an’ tell the little snot if’n he wants to see his next birthday he’d better keep his pie-hole shut.”

  The waiter’s face paled and he shook his head rapidly back and forth. “I couldn’t do that, sir,” he said.

  “Why not?” Rattlesnake asked.

  “Just last week Johnny shot a man for stepping on his boots.” The waiter hesitated, and then he added, “And the man wasn’t even armed at the time.”

  “How come he’s not in jail then?” Louis asked.

  “Uh, his father carries a lot of water in Pueblo,” the waiter said. “The sheriff came in and said it was in self-defense, though it was plain to e
veryone in the place that the man wasn’t wearing a gun.”

  “So that’s the lay of the land,” Van Horne said, pursing his lips.

  “Yes, sir,” the waiter said, and hurried off back to the kitchen before these tough-looking men could get him in trouble, or worse yet, get him shot.

  A few minutes later, after he’d downed another glass of whiskey, the young tough and his friends began to swagger across the room toward Smoke and his friends.

  Smoke and Louis both eased their chairs back, took the hammer thongs off their Colts, and waited expectantly for the trouble they knew was coming. Smoke eased his right leg out straight under the table so he’d have quicker access if he had to draw.

  MacDougal stopped a few feet behind Rattlesnake’s chair and made a show of holding his nose. “Whew, something’s awfully ripe in here,” he said loudly, looking around the room to make sure he had an appreciative audience. “I think something done crawled in here and died.”

  Rattlesnake eased his hand down to the butt of the big Walker Colt in his belt, and as quick as a snake striking, he whipped it out, stood up, and whirled around, slashing the young man viciously across the face with the barrel.

  MacDougal screamed and grabbed his face as blood spurted onto his vest. Before the other men could react, Rattlesnake grabbed MacDougal by the hair, jerked his head back, and jammed the barrel of the gun in his mouth, knocking out his two front teeth.

  As MacDougal’s eyes opened wide and he moaned in pain, Rattlesnake eared back the hammer and grinned, his face inches from the young tough’s. “Now, what was it you was sayin’, mister?” he growled. “Somethin’ ’bout somebody smelling overly ripe, I believe?”

  As one of MacDougal’s friends dropped his hand to his pistol, Bear Tooth stood up and had his skinning knife against the man’s throat before he could draw. “Do you really want some of this?” he asked, smiling wickedly at the man. “’Cause if’ n you do, you’ll have a smile that stretches from ear to ear ’fore I’m done with you.”

  “Uh, no, sir!” the man said, moving his hands quickly away from his pistol butt.