Justice of the Mountain Man Read online

  “What do you mean, Smoke?”

  He shook his head. “They didn’t sound quite right, and I think I know why.”

  “Didn’t sound right?” Pearlie asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t think the Kid was shot with a .44. The shots weren’t loud enough, and if it’d been a .44 from that short a distance, both bullets would’ve gone clear through him.”

  “So . . . what do you think he was shot with?”

  “I think it must’ve been a .36, probably a Colt Navy or possibly a Scofield.”

  “But, Smoke,” Pearlie said, “you carry a Colt .44 New Model Army.”

  Smoke grinned. “Exactly my point, Pearlie.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Go to the doctor and see if you can get him to dig that bullet out of the Kid. If it’s a .36 like I suspect, have him write a letter to that effect and bring it to Fort Smith.”

  “Why cain’t I just have the doc tell the marshals?”

  “Because we’re leaving for Fort Smith in about an hour. Tilghman and Thomas have three or four other men they’re taking back for trial and they seem to be anxious to get on the trail.”

  “I thought they was after some cattle rustlers.”

  Smoke shrugged. “Evidently, the man they were after was the Durango Kid, so they’ve kind’a lost interest in that case.”

  “But why don’t they go after the men with him?”

  “The man who did all the talking, the only one they had evidence against, was the Kid, according to Tilghman. The marshal said they’ve given a list of the stolen cattle to the local sheriff, and if they surface, he can make the arrest.”

  “But,” Pearlie protested, “what’s their hurry to get back to Fort Smith?”

  “It’s my guess Judge Parker’s running low on men to hang, and he wants to keep his reputation up.”

  “So, what else do you want me an’ Cal to do besides talk to the doc?”

  “See if you can get Gibbons to admit in front of witnesses that he lied about seeing me shoot the Kid.”

  “How can we do that?” Pearlie asked.

  Smoke grinned. “It’s been my experience that two things will loosen a man’s tongue faster than anything else.”

  “What two things?”

  “Whiskey, and a woman willing to listen to a man brag.”

  “The whiskey’s no problem, but where are we gonna get a woman willin’ to do that for us?”

  Smoke’s eyes narrowed. “You and Cal looked like you were getting pretty friendly with a couple of women from the Silver Dollar last night. Any chance of sweet-talking one of them into doing it for us?”

  Pearlie thought for a moment, then smiled. “I guess so, though our night with them was interrupted by the gunfight.”

  Smoke reached through the bars and patted his shoulder. “Then you and Cal will just have to get reacquainted with them tonight. And, Pearlie,” he added, “spare no expense.”

  “Where are we gonna git that kind’a money?” he asked.

  Smoke handed him a piece of paper with a handwritten note on it. “Have the telegraph office send this to Sally at the Sugarloaf. She can have all the money you need wired to the bank here in Fort Worth.”

  Pearlie nodded and took the note. He reached in to shake Smoke’s hand. “We won’t let you down, Smoke. Me an’ Cal’ll git the job done.”

  Smoke smiled. “I know you will, Pearlie. Just make sure you do it fast. From what I hear, Hangin’ Judge Isaac Parker doesn’t waste any time once he decides to stretch a man’s neck.”

  “You can count on us, Smoke. We’ll git what you need ’fore you even come to trial.”

  “I hope so, Pearlie. I don’t like to think of not seeing Sally and the Sugarloaf again.”

  9

  Tilghman walked into the back room of the jail and unlocked Smoke’s cell. He held in his hands a pair of manacles. “Hold your hands out, Jensen,” he said.

  Smoke stuck his hands out. “Do I have to wear those, Marshal? I’ll give you my word not to try and escape,” he said.

  Tilghman placed the cuffs on Smoke’s wrists and snapped them shut. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Jensen,” he said, an apologetic look on his face. “It’s just that it’s the rules. All prisoners have to wear these while bein’ transported.”

  Smoke shrugged. “Yeah, Marshal, we wouldn’t want to go breaking any rules, would we?”

  “Listen, Jensen,” Tilghman replied, his face hard. “We’ve had over a hundred marshals killed in the line of duty in Judge Parker’s jurisdiction, over a third of ’em while transportin’ prisoners. So, even if I don’t always agree with the rules, I do follow ’em.”

  He led Smoke out of the jail and helped him climb up into an enclosed wagon with bars on the sides instead of wood. Three other hard-looking men were already inside, manacled as Smoke was.

  As Tilghman started toward the front of the wagon, Smoke asked, “Isn’t Marshal Thomas coming along?”

  Tilghman glanced at him, as though considering whether the question deserved an answer. Finally, he said, “No. We decided he should stay and try to get a line on those cattle stolen from the Indian Territories after all.”

  Smoke snorted. “You can start with the men riding with the Durango Kid. He tried to sell me some beeves without papers the night he was killed.”

  Tilghman stopped and turned to look at Smoke. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “You didn’t ask, Marshal. You were too interested in trying to get me to admit to back-shooting the Kid.”

  “He tell you where they were keepin’ those beeves?”

  “He said something about a rented corral on the edge of town.”

  Tilghman nodded, scratching his beard. “That makes sense. They’d blend right in with all the other cattle waitin’ for the slaughterin’ yards to get to ’em.”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to find out which one he meant,” Smoke said, “if you ask around in the right places.”

  Tilghman nodded. “Thanks for the tip, Jensen. I’ll be sure an’ tell Judge Parker how you helped out.”

  Smoke laughed. “Yeah, maybe I’ll get a softer rope around my neck.”

  “Don’t say that, Jensen. Judge Parker is a fair man.”

  “Uh-huh, and how many men out of the last hundred he’s tried has he found not guilty?” Smoke asked.

  Tilghman’s face burned a fiery red. He mumbled something and turned to go.

  “I didn’t get that, Marshal,” Smoke called.

  “Three,” Tilghman repeated. “He found three not guilty.”

  “Sounds like my chances aren’t too good then,” Smoke said.

  “All I can promise you is you’ll get a chance to tell your side of it, Jensen. It’ll be up to you to convince Parker you’re tellin’ the truth.”

  “Fat chance,” Smoke answered.

  Tilghman shrugged. “Better than the chance you gave the Durango Kid.”

  “I told you it wasn’t me killed the Kid.”

  “You know, Jensen, I’ve been doin’ this job for a lot of years, an’ outta all the men I’ve caught and transported, ain’t none of ’em ever been guilty according to them. So you can keep on talkin’, but ain’t nobody gonna be listenin’ to you.”

  He turned to walk toward the sheriff’s office. “Now I gotta go tell Heck what you told me ’bout them beeves.”

  After he left, Pearlie and Cal walked up to the wagon. “Smoke, we got your message to Sally, an’ she’s gonna be wirin’ us the money soon’s the bank opens up in Big Rock,” Pearlie said.

  “She say anything else?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Cal said, “she said to tell you her and Monte and Louis would be in Fort Smith by the time you got there an’ not to worry. They weren’t about to let no judge hang you for something you couldn’t do.”

  Smoke smiled. It was just like Sally to take on the hanging judge, or anyone else who threatened her husband. It reminded him of the time the outlaw Lee Slat
er and his three hundred bounty hunters had him trapped up in the high lonesome and she came to the rescue, her guns blazing . . .

  * * *

  “Sally’s gone!” Bountiful yelled, bringing her buggy to a dusty, sliding halt.

  “What?” Sheriff Monte Carson jumped out of his chair. “What do the hands say?”

  “I finally got one of them to talk. He said he took her down to the road day before yesterday, and she hailed the stage there. He said she had packed some riding britches in her trunk, along with a rifle and a pistol. She was riding the stage down to the railroad and taking a train from there. Train runs all the way through to the county seat. Lord, Lord, Monte, she’s just about there by now. What are we going to do?”

  Monte led her into his office and sat her down. Bountiful fanned herself vigorously. He got her a drink of water and sat down at his desk. “Nothin’ we can do, Miss Bountiful. Sally’s gone to stand by her man. And them damn outlaws and manhunters down yonder think they got trouble with Smoke. I feel sorry for them if they tangle with Miss Sally. You know she can shoot just like a man and has done so plenty of times. She’s a crack shot with rifle and pistol. Smoke seen to that.”

  * * *

  Nearly everyone on Main Street had seen the elegantly dressed lady step off the train and stroll to the hotel, a porter carrying her trunk. As soon as the desk clerk saw her sign her name, he dispatched a boy to run fetch the sheriff.

  Sheriff Silva was standing in the lobby, talking to several men, and he nearly swallowed his chewing tobacco when Sally walked down the stairs.

  She was wearing cowboy boots and jeans—which she filled out to the point of causing the men’s eyeballs to bug out—a denim shirt, which fitted her quite nicely too, and was carrying a leather jacket. She had a bandanna tied around her throat, and a low-crowned, flat-brimmed hat on her head. She also wore a .44 belted around her waist and carried a short-barreled .44 carbine, a bandolier of ammo slung around one shoulder.

  “Jesus Christ, Missus Jensen!” Sheriff Silva hollered. “I mean, holy cow. What do you think you’re gonna do?”

  “Take a ride,” Sally told him, and walked out of the door.

  Silva ran to catch up with her. “Now you just wait a minute here, Missus Jensen. This ain’t no fittin’ country for a female to be a-traipsin’ around in. Will you please slow down?”

  Sally ignored that and kept right on walking at a rather brisk pace.

  She turned into the general store, and was uncommonly blunt with the man who owned the store. “I want provisions for five days, including food, coffee, pots and pans and eating utensils, blankets, ground sheets, and tent. And five boxes of .44’s too. Have them ready on a pack frame in fifteen minutes. Have them loaded out back, please.”

  “Now you just hold up on that order, Henry,” Sheriff Silva said.

  “You’d better not cross me, Henry,” Sally warned him, a wicked glint in her eyes. “My name is Mrs. Smoke Jensen, and I can shoot damn near as well as my husband.”

  “Yes’um,” Henry said. “I believe you, ma’am.”

  “And you”—Sally spun around to face the sheriff—” would be advised to keep your nose out of my business.”

  “Yes’um,” Silva said glumly, and followed her to the livery.

  Sally picked out a mean-eyed blue steel that bared its teeth when the man tried to put a rope around it. Sally walked out into the corral, talked to the big horse for a moment, and then led it back to the barn. She fed him a carrot and an apple she’d picked up at the store, and the horse was hers.

  “That there’s a stallion, ma’am!” Silva bellered. “He ain’t been cut. You can’t ride no stallion!”

  “Get out of my way,” she told him.

  “It ain’t decent, ma’am!”

  “Shut up and take that pack animal around to the back of the store.”

  “Yes’um,” Silva said. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  While Sally was saddling up, he turned to the hostler. “Send a boy with a fast horse to Rio. Tell them deputies of mine down there that Sally Jensen is pullin’ out within the hour and looks like she’s plannin’ on joinin’ up with her husband. Tell them to do something. Anything!”

  “Sheriff,” the hostler said, horror in his voice. “Don’t look. She’s a-fixin’ to ride that hoss astride!”

  “Lord, have mercy! What’s this world comin’ to?”

  * * *

  It was nearing dusk when Al Martine and his bunch spotted Smoke high up near the timberline in the Big Lonesome.

  “We got him, boys!” Al yelled, and put the spurs to his tired horse.

  A rifle bullet took Al’s hat off and sent it spinning away. The mountain winds caught it, and it was gone forever.

  “Goddamn!” Al yelled, just as another round kicked up dirt at his horse’s hooves, and the animal started bucking. It was all Al could do to stay in the saddle.

  A slug smacked Zack in the shoulder and nearly knocked him from the saddle. The second shot tore off the saddle horn and smashed into Zack’s upper thigh, bringing a scream of pain from the outlaw.

  “He’s got help!” Pedro yelled. “Let’s get gone from here.”

  The outlaws raced for cover, with Zack flopping around in the saddle.

  Smoke looked down the mountain. “Now who in the devil is that?” he muttered.

  Sally punched .44 rounds into her carbine and settled back into her well-hidden little camp in a narrow depression with the back and one side a solid rock wall.

  “Who you reckon that was a-shootin’ at us?” Tom Post yelled over the sounds of galloping horses.

  “I don’t know,” Crown answered, yelling. “But he’s hell with a rifle, whoever he is.”

  Using field glasses, Sally watched them beat a hasty retreat, and then laid out cloth and cup, plate and tableware, and napkin for her early supper. Just because one was in the wilderness, surrounded by godless heathens, was no reason to forgo small amenities.

  She opened a can of beans, set aside a can of peaches for dessert, and spread butter on a thick slice of bread. Before eating, she said a prayer for the continuing safety of her man.

  * * *

  “He’s up there,” Ace Reilly said, his eyes looking at the timberline in the good light of morning. The air was almost cold this high up.

  Big Bob Masters shifted his chew from one side of his mouth to the other and spat. “Solid rock to his back,” he observed. “And two hundred yards of open country ever’where else. It’d be suicide gettin’ up there.”

  Ace lifted his canteen to take a drink, and the canteen exploded in his hand, showering him with water, bits of metal, and numbing his hand. The second shot nicked Big Bob’s horse on the rump, and the animal went pitching and snorting and screaming down the slope, Big Bob yelling and hanging on and flopping in the saddle. The third shot took off part of Causey’s ear, and he left the saddle, crawling behind some rocks.

  “Jesus Christ!” Ace hollered, leaving the saddle and taking cover. “Where the hell’s that comin’ from?”

  Big Bob’s horse had come to a very sudden and unexpected halt, and Big Bob went flying ass over elbows out of the saddle to land against a tree. He staggered to his feet, looking wildly around him, and took a .44 slug in the belly. He sank to his knees, both hands holding his punctured belly, bellowing in pain.

  “He’s right on top of us,” Ace called to Nap. “Over there at the base of that rock face.”

  Smoke was hundreds of yards up the mountain, just at the timberline, looking and wondering who his new ally might be. He got his field glasses and began sweeping the area. A slow smile curved his lips.

  “I married a Valkyrie, for sure,” he muttered as the long lenses made out Sally’s face.

  He saw riders coming hard, a lot of riders. Smoke grabbed his .44-40 and began running down the mountain, keeping to the timber. The firing had increased as the riders dismounted and sought cover. Smoke stayed a good hundred yards above them, and so far he had not been sp
otted.

  “Causey!” Woody yelled. “Over yonder!” He pointed. “Get on his right flank—that’s exposed.”

  Causey jumped up, and Smoke drilled him through and through. Causey died sprawled on the rocks that were still damp from the misty morning in the ligh lonesome.

  “He’s up above us!” Ray yelled.

  “Who the hell is that over yonder?” Noah hollered just as Sally fired. The slug sent bits of rock into Noah’s face, and he screamed as he was momentarily blinded. He stood up, and Smoke nailed him through the neck. Smoke had been aiming for his chest, but shooting downhill is tricky, even for a marksman.

  Big Bob Masters was hollering and screaming, afraid to move, afraid his guts would fall out.

  Smoke began dusting the area where the outlaws and bounty hunters had left their horses. The whining slugs spooked them and off they ran, reins trailing, taking food, water, and extra ammo with them.

  “Goddamnit!” Woody yelled, running after them. He suddenly stopped, right out in the open, realizing what a stupid move that had been.

  Smoke and Sally fired at the same time. One slug struck Woody in the side; the .44-40 hit him in the chest. Woody had no further use for a horse.

  Smoke plugged Yancey in the shoulder, knocking the man down and putting him out of the fight. Yancey began crawling downhill toward the horses, staying to cover. He had but two thoughts in mind: getting in the saddle, and getting the hell gone from this place.

  “It’s no good!” Ace yelled. “They’ll pick us all off if we stay here. We got to get out of range. Start makin’ your way down the slope.”

  The outlaws and bounty hunters began crawling back, staying to cover. Smoke and Sally held their fire, neither of them having a clear target and not wanting to waste ammo. They took their time to take a drink of water, eat a biscuit, and wait.

  Haynes, Dale, and Yancey were the first to reach the horses, well out of range of the guns of Smoke and Sally.

  Haynes looked up, horror in his eyes. A man dressed all in black was standing by a tree, his hands filled with iron.

  “Hello, punk!” Louis Longmont said, and opened fire.6

  * * *

  Smoke’s eyes cleared and he came back to the present, resolving to leave his memories of Sally until he could see her again in person. It was too painful to think of her while locked away from her touch.