Savagery of The Mountain Man Page 6

  During the drive into town that afternoon, they talked about what would be required in order to convert the herd to all Herefords. One of the first things to do would be to sell off all the remaining longhorns.

  “If everyone else is selling off their longhorns at the same time, that’s going to have the effect of even further depressing the market for them,” Sally said.

  “I know.”

  “I mean, we just barely broke even with what we did sell. We’ll take a loss by selling all the rest of them.”

  “It could be worse,” Smoke said. “You do remember the big freeze out, don’t you? We lost thousands of cattle that year, with no compensation at all.”

  “Yes, I remember that,” Sally said. She shivered involuntarily as she recalled the brutal winter.*

  “You want to have dinner at Louie’s?” Smoke suggested.

  “Sure. Only, let’s stop by the post office first.”

  Chapter Five

  Louis Longmont ran a saloon, but as he insisted, “Longmont’s is not your run-of-the-mill warm-beer-and-bad-whiskey saloon. It is as proper a place for ladies as the finest restaurant.”

  The Frenchman was true to his word and, when they were in Big Rock, it was Smoke and Sally’s favorite place to relax. After picking up their mail at the post office, they stepped into Longmont’s.

  “Smoke, mon cher ami!” Longmont called as he saw the three sitting at the table. “How wonderful of you to grace my establishment with your beautiful young lady.”

  “Louis, you make me blush,” Sally said.

  “Blushing becomes you, my dear. Oh, whatever you have for dinner, you must save room for my tarte français de soie.”

  “Oh, it sounds lovely,” Sally said. “I shall look forward to it.”

  “What is, uh, whaever that is you said?” Cal asked.

  “It’s French silk pie,” Sally explained. “Don’t worry, knowing you, you will like it.”

  “I like any kind of pie,” Cal said with a broad smile.

  “Mon jeune ami, this isn’t just any kind of pie,” Longmont said resolutely.

  A few minutes later, Louis served them personally.

  “Rôti de boeuf avec les pommes de terre. Bon appétit,” he said as he set the steaming plates on the table before them.

  “That just looks like roast beef to me,” Cal said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it looks like good roast beef, but it don’t look like whatever that is you said it was.”

  Louis chuckled. “This is Hereford. I think you’ll find it a bit more tender than what you are used to.”

  “See what I’m talking about, Sally?” Smoke said with a resigned sigh. “Even Louis is switching over to Hereford.”

  After their meal, Smoke began looking through the mail they had picked up at the post office. He smiled as he held one of the letters up.

  “It is from Pearlie,” he said.

  “Read it aloud,” Sally said.

  Smoke opened the envelope, removed the letter, and began to read.

  Dear Smoke, Sally, and Cal,

  I take pen in hand to pass on to all of you my regards and to tell you that my thoughts are often of Sugarloaf and the many fine times we have had together.

  I am still in the New Mexico Territory where I have taken a job as shotgun guard for the Sunset Stage Coach Company. Five days a week we go from Los Brazos to Chama. The trip to Chama takes about three and a half hours. We stay there for one hour, then we come back to Los Brazos.

  There is much desert land here in New Mexico, and also mountains. The cactus flowers are very pretty, but I do not think New Mexico is as pretty as Colorado.

  I have thought much about Lucy, and I have wondered how it would be if she had not been killed. But it is not good to think much about such things. I am glad that you are a justice of the peace and that you were able to marry us. I know that our getting married made Lucy very happy, and when I think about it now, I am happy about it too.

  Tell Cal I am taking very good care of his silver hatband, and I promise that, one day soon, I will bring it back to him.

  Your friend,

  Pearlie

  “Did you hear that?” Cal asked happily. “He said one day soon, he would come back.”

  “He certainly did,” Sally agreed.

  “I wonder how soon is soon?”

  Half an hour later, after having eaten Louis Longmont’s French silk pie—Cal had two pieces—the three drove in the buckboard down to the depot that served the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. They reached the depot just as the train was pulling into the station.

  “Now I call that good timing,” Smoke said, hauling back on the reins as the train squealed, squeaked, rumbled, and rattled to a halt.

  “Smoke, I want you to promise me something,” Sally said as the two of them stepped down from the buckboard.

  “I’ll promise you anything, my love, you know that,” Smoke replied.

  “Let’s not go overboard when bidding for that bull. I think we should give ourselves a limit.”

  Smoke chuckled. “I’ve already taken care of that,” he said. “I’m only taking seven hundred fifty dollars. That’s as high as I will be able to go.”

  “Good,” Sally said. “If you think having a champion bull is important, I hope we can buy him. But if we can’t, then I’m sure we can find another bull who—how was it you put it? Has an eye for the ladies?”

  Smoke laughed, then reached back into the buckboard to pick up their luggage. “Cal, I’m counting on you to look out for things while I’m gone,” he said.

  “I will, Smoke,” Cal promised. “Don’t you worry none about that. I will. You two have a good time in Colorado Springs, and bring back that bull.”

  “I’ll bring him back.”

  “If he doesn’t cost too much,” Sally added.

  “If he doesn’t cost too much,” Smoke agreed.

  Smoke and Sally walked across the wooden depot platform, then stepped up into the train. Once in the car, they sat on the depot side of the train with Sally taking the window seat. As the train pulled out of the station, Sally waved at Cal, who sat in the buckboard, watching them leave. Smiling broadly, Cal waved back.

  “Bless his heart, he sure misses Pearlie,” Sally said as the train began gathering speed.

  “I know he does. We all do,” Smoke said. “But Pearlie being gone is good for Cal.”

  “How is it good for him?”

  “One of the things about growing up is learning how to adjust to changes,” Smoke said.

  “Smoke, Cal was orphaned when he was barely into his teens. It was a struggle just for him to stay alive. It isn’t as if he hasn’t had to deal with changes.”

  Smoke nodded. “I guess you are right at that,” he said. He leaned back in his seat, then pulled his hat down over his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Sally asked. “Smoke Jensen, are you just going to sit there like that for the whole trip?”

  “It’s going to be a long overnight trip,” Smoke said. “And I got up early this morning.”

  “You get up early every morning.”

  “Yeah, I do, don’t I?” Smoke made no effort to remove his hat.

  Sally looked at him for a moment, then reached up and took his hat off his head. Before he could say anything, she kissed him, then replaced his hat.

  “What was that all about?” Smoke asked

  “Don’t I always kiss you good night?” she asked with a little chuckle.

  As Smoke napped beside her, Sally turned in her seat to look at the countryside that was unrolling just outside the window. The scenery, now taking on the golden hue of sunset, was beautiful, and she thought again how lucky, and how unlikely, it was that she, a New England Yankee, would wind up here, married to this man who was already a legend in his own lifetime.

  Growing up in New Hampshire, Sally came from a family of great wealth. She could have stayed in New Hampshire and married “well,” meaning she could have married a blue blood from one of
New Hampshire’s old, established, and wealthy families. She would have hosted teas and garden parties, and grown old to become a New England matriarch.

  But while such a future promised a life of ease and tranquility, that wasn’t what Sally had in mind. She envisioned a much more active—some might suggest uncertain—future. Thus, she announced to one and all that she intended to leave New Hampshire.

  “You can’t be serious, Sally!” family and friends had said in utter shock when she informed them that she intended to see the American West. “Why, that place is positively wild with beasts and savages.”

  “And not all the savages are Indian, if you get my meaning,” Melinda Hobson said. Melinda Hobson was of “the” Hobsons, one of New Hampshire’s founding families.

  But Sally had a yen to see the American West, as well as a thirst for adventure, and that brought her to Bury, Idaho Territory, where she wound up teaching school.

  It was in Bury that she met a young gunman named Buck West. There was something about the young man that caught her attention right away. It wasn’t just the fact that he was ruggedly handsome, nor was it the fact that, despite his cool demeanor, he went out of his way to be respectful to her. That respect, Sally saw, applied to all women—including soiled doves—even though he was not a habitué of their services.

  But it was the intensity of the young man that appealed to Sally—a brooding essence that ran deep into his soul.

  Then, she learned that his name wasn’t even Buck West, it was Smoke Jensen. And the hurt he felt was the result of a personal tragedy of enormous magnitude. Smoke’s young wife, Nicole, had been raped, tortured, murdered, and scalped by men whose evil knew no bounds. They had also murdered Arthur, his infant son.

  Those same men owned ranches and mines around the town of Bury. In fact, one might say they owned Bury itself, including nearly every resident of the town. If ever there was a Sodom and Gomorrah in America, Sally thought, it was Bury, Idaho Territory.

  And, like the Biblical cities of sin, Bury was destroyed, not by God, but by Smoke Jensen, who, after allowing the women and children to leave, killed the murderers and the gunmen, and then put the town to the torch. When Smoke, with Sally now by his side, set out en route to the “High Lonesome,” there was nothing remaining of Bury but the smoldering rubble of a destroyed town and the dead killers Smoke left behind him.

  The rage that had burned in his soul was gone, and he had put Nicole and Arthur to rest in a private compartment of his heart. With the fire in his gut gone, Smoke was free to love once more, and to be loved, and Sally was there for him.

  Sally knew that Smoke would always love Nicole—in fact, Sally was sure that she loved him the more because of that loyalty. And though she had never met Nicole, Sally had come to love her as well, as a sister that she’d never met.

  The train rolled over a rough part of the track and the resultant jostling startled Smoke awake.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing, darling,” Sally said, taking his hand. “Go back to sleep.”

  Smoke squeezed her hand, and she responded. Her life may have taken some unusual twists, but had she planned every twist and turn, she could not have hoped for anything more than she had right now.

  For Sally Jensen, life could not be sweeter.

  Santa Clara

  The New York Saloon had nothing to do with either the city or the state of New York. Rodney Gibson, the owner, was not a native New Yorker, and had never even been in New York. But the name appealed to him, so when he built his saloon in Santa Clara, shortly after the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad ensured the survival of the struggling little town, he named his saloon after the city he had only read about.

  The saloon was well appointed, with two large, hanging chandeliers as well as light sconces all around the walls. The walls were covered with a rich red paper, which filled the space from baseboard to molding.

  The most talked about item of the saloon, however, was the exceptionally lifelike, as well as nearly life-size, painting behind the bar. The painting, titled Note From Cupid, was of a very beautiful nude woman lying on a couch of red and gilt in such a way that absolutely none of her charms were hidden from view. Hovering just over her was the artist’s concept of Cupid, looking down mischievously, as the nude woman read the note he had just delivered.

  It was just after seven P.M. and the saloon was at its busiest with cowboys, miners, freighters, store clerks, and the town’s few professionals filling the tables and lining the bar. At the back of the room the piano player, a young man who was barely out of his teens, was bent over the keyboard, playing music that could barely be heard over the laughter and conversation of the many patrons.

  “The hell I can’t do the fandango!” Billy Ray Quentin shouted, his voice clearly heard above both the piano and the ambient sound. Standing up, Billy Ray reached down to the table, picked up a bottle of whiskey, and turning it to his lips, drained the rest of it in Adam’s-apple-bobbing swallows. After he finished the bottle, he tossed it carelessly over his shoulder, causing the people at one of the other tables to have to dodge quickly to avoid being hit.

  “Billy Ray, you can’t no more do the fandango than I can,” one of the other three men at the table said. Billy Ray was the son of the most prominent rancher in Huereano County, and the men at the table with him were cowboys from the Tumbling Q which was Billy Ray’s father’s ranch.

  “I’ll just by damn show you I can do it,” Billy Ray said. “And I’m willin’ to put money on it, too.”

  “Hell, we ain’t got no money to bet, Billy Ray. You know that,” Jerry Kelly said. Kelly was not only the oldest of the three cowboys; he was also older than Billy Ray.

  “The three of you together can come up with a dollar, can’t you? I tell you what, if I can do it, you three owe me one dollar. If I can’t do it, I’ll give each of you a dollar apiece. How is that for a bet?”

  The three men looked at each other, then nodded.

  “Reeves, I’ll take the bet if you will,” Kelly said.

  “All right,” Reeves said. “Let’s do it. Let’s see ole Billy Ray here dance the fandango.”

  Billy Ray wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then looked around the saloon until he saw one of the bar girls leaning against the piano, talking to the piano player.

  “You!” he shouted, pointing toward the girl. “Come here. These here fellas have bet me that I can’t dance the fandango, and I need to prove to them that I can. But I can’t do it without a woman.”

  “Oh, Billy Ray, I don’t know anything about dancing the fandango,” the girl replied.

  “Hell, you don’t have to do anything more than just stand there, and sort of move back and forth,” Billy Ray said. “I’m the one that’s goin’ to be doin’ all the dancin’.”

  The girl looked over toward the saloon owner, who was now behind behind the bar, helping Lloyd Evans, the bartender.

  “What should I do, Mr. Gibson?” she asked.

  “Go ahead, Mary Lou,” Gibson replied. “If it will keep him quiet.”

  “All right, if you say so,” Mary Lou Culpepper replied nervously. She started toward Billy Ray.

  “Hey, you, piano player!” Billy Ray shouted.

  The piano player, who was in the middle of a rendition of “Buffalo Gals,” didn’t look around.

  “Lenny, I’m talkin’ to you,” Billy Ray shouted. He drew his pistol and aimed toward the piano. Before anyone could stop him, he pulled the trigger. The suddenness of the gunshot quieted the room as everyone looked over to see what was going on. The bullet Billy Ray fired hit the glass bowl that sat on top of the piano, smashing it, and scattering the coins that patrons had dropped in from time to time. The piano player dived off the bench to the floor.

  Billy, who was holding a smoking pistol, laughed.

  “Look at that,” he said. “Did you see the way Lenny jumped? Ain’t that about the funniest thing you ever seen?”

  “Billy
Ray!” Gibson shouted, and when Billy Ray looked toward the bar, he saw that the owner was aiming a double-barreled shotgun at him. “Put that pistol down. I ain’t goin’ to have you shootin’ up my place.”

  “Well, hell, Rodney, you don’t have to get your dander up over it,” Billy Ray said as he handed his pistol to Kelly. “I was just tryin’ to get the piano player’s attention, that’s all.”

  “You shouldn’t of done that,” Mary Lou said. “You could have killed Lenny.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t kill him, did I?” Billy Ray said. “Hey, you, Lenny. Play me a song I can do the fandango to.”

  “I’m—I’m not sure I even know such a song,” the young man replied.

  “Then make one up,” Billy Ray demanded. He reached out to take the bar girl’s hand. “Me’n the whore here is goin’ to dance the fandango.”

  Lenny began playing a Spanish piece with a strong rhythmic beat, which intensified as the song progressed.

  Billy Ray stepped out, whirled, stomped his feet, clapped his hands, then leaped up and tried to kick his heels together. When he did, he got his feet tangled up and he fell. He didn’t get up.

  Mary Lou let out a little cry of alarm.

  “Oh! Is he dead?” she asked.

  Kelly leaned over to look at him. “Nah,” he said. “He is either knocked out or passed out drunk, but he ain’t dead.”

  “That’s a shame,” the bartender said.

  As the patrons of the New York Saloon stood looking down at the prostrate form of Billy Ray Quentin, an older man, with a scraggly beard, a barrel chest, and a bulging eye that didn’t track with the other, stepped in to the saloon. He stopped just in front of the swinging batwing doors when he saw that everyone was quiet.

  “What’s goin’ on?” he asked.

  “Hello, Cole,” Kelly said.

  “Where’s Billy Ray?” Cole asked.

  Kelly pointed to the prostrate form on the floor.

  “Is he all right?” Cole asked.

  “Yeah, he’s all right. If you call passed out drunk all right,” Kelly said. “What you doin’ here? You ain’t a drinkin’ man.”

  “I came for Billy Ray,” Cole said. “His pa wants him to come home.”