Ordeal of the Mountain Man Read online

  Quint Cress used the last of his dying breath to ask his most pressing questions. “Wh-what are you, Jensen? Who are you?”

  A tiny mocking smile lifted the corners of Smoke Jensen’s mouth. “Some people have called me the gunfighters’ gunfighter.”

  And then, Quint Cress heard and saw only blackness.

  Early that same morning Reno Jim Yurian and three of his men sat astride their mounts overlooking a long, narrow depression in the prairie, too shallow to be called a valley. A wide, deep ravine defined the western margin, with a large, round knob bordering the east. In its center ran the trail north through the Bighorn Mountains, and on toward Buffalo, Wyoming. From there, it led north into Montana and the Crow Reservation. Reno Jim tilted back the brim of his black, flat-crown Stetson and waved a gloved hand at the peaceful spread of terrain.

  “There it is, boys. The perfect place to take that herd. I reckon it will be here in no more than a day, two at the most. Hub, I want you to set the boys up to preparing an ambush. Take your time and make it look natural. The last thing we want is them to get wise too soon. Also, make sure there’s enough mounted men on both sides, beyond the rise, to take quick control of the herd.

  “Right, boss. You gonna be here with us?”

  Reno Jim produced a thin-lipped smile. “I wouldn’t miss that for anything. For now, me and Smiling Dave are going to set up camp so you boys can have something hot to eat after you get done.”

  What he meant, of course, was that Smiling Dave Winters would do the work while he sat under a tree and practiced his card-dealing tricks. Naturally, no one mentioned it to Reno Jim. Under Hub Volker’s direction, the men spread out to locate a good spot to establish a roadblock-style ambush. It took only a short while to accomplish that.

  Garth Evans rode back from around a slight bend in the trail with a cheery smile. “Hey, Hub, I’ve got the ideal place. That bend there”—he pointed behind him—“will mask it, an’ there’s some cottonwoods to form a barricade.”

  “Good work, Garth.”

  At once, Hub put men on cutting down the trees. Using hand axes was a sure invitation to blisters and sore hands, yet the outlaws set at it with a will. The sound of their chopping rang across the prairie. One by one the thigh-thick cottonwood trees tottered and fell with a crash. Dragged into place by horses, the logs were trimmed and made ready. Sets of post augers appeared from a chuck wagon, and the outlaw rabble groaned.

  Hairy Joe cut his eyes to Prine Gephart as he plied a clamshell post-hole digger. “Doin’ that corral for the cattle was bad enough. Now we gotta build a damn fort wall.” He slammed the device into the hard ground again.

  Prine cranked the long handle on his screw-type digger. “It ain’t a fort, Joe. It’s a sorta fence, like we’re makin’ the whole valley into a corral.”

  Hairy Joe groaned. “This is gonna take a week to close across the whole valley. From what I hear, we ain’t got that much time.”

  “We’ll get it done,” Gephart assured him. “If Hub has to make us work all night.”

  “Oh, great. I can hardly wait.”

  Progress went quicker than Hairy Joe thought. By nightfall, all but a hundred yards at each side of the valley had been closed off. Tired far beyond their usual limits, they gathered quietly to eat plates of carne con chili Colorado, bowls of beans and corn bread with which to sop up both of them. Only four of them pulled bottles of whiskey from saddlebags to take long pulls before settling down like the rest into deep slumber.

  Meanwhile, Smoke Jensen set about a quick, harsh cleanup of Muddy Gap. He picked up the posters at ten-fifteen. After putting one on the bulletin board outside the general store, he gave half to Marshal Larsen, and they set about posting the entire town. Their actions generated immediate reaction. Several merchants came onto the boardwalk to voice protest. It never failed to draw a crowd.

  “Now, see here,” the butcher, Tiemeier, declared in a loud bray. “You can’t do this. I’ve got a right to carry a gun.”

  “You are not affected, Mr. Tiemeier,” Smoke explained patiently. “Read it carefully. Only nonresidents are required to surrender their arms.”

  “Even so, you have no right to do this on your own.”

  “I’m not. You can see the city marshal’s signature right there beside mine. And, this morning the mayor and city council met and passed the ordinance.”

  For half an hour, Smoke busied himself tacking up the edicts, ending with the two at the north end of town. He had finished the final nail when five specimens of range trash drifted up. Hats pulled down low on brows, they walked their mounts to the gate post where Smoke had affixed one of the flyers and read it with obvious difficulty. At last one of them turned to glower at Smoke.

  “Who are you to try to make us do that?”

  Smoke tapped the badge pinned to his vest with the hammer. “I’m the law.”

  Leaning forward, the mouthy one jabbed a thick forefinger at Smoke. “You’re a fool if you think we’re gonna give up our guns.”

  Smoke stepped closer to him. “You do or you don’t cross the town line.”

  This time the belligerent one reached even farther and poked Smoke in the chest and emphasized each insult with a thrust. “You’ll play hell stopping us, you two-bit, tin-star, yellowbelly—Yeeiii!”

  His scream came when Smoke dropped the hammer and reached up swiftly to snatch the offending finger and bend it backward until the bone snapped loudly. At once, Smoke let go and grabbed the front of the man’s shirt. With a solid yank, he jerked him clear of the saddle. Pivoting, Smoke slammed him to the ground hard enough to drive the air from his lungs.

  He dropped on one knee to the loudmouth’s belly and delivered a left-right-left combination to his face that left the man dizzy and gurgling. Immediately, the others went for their guns. Smoke came to his boots in an instant and hauled his Colt Peacemaker clear in a blur. The four thugs gaped at him.

  “Now put your guns on the gate over there or pick up your friend here and get the hell out of town.”

  Cutting their eyes from one to another, the four stared in wonder. Not a one had half-drawn his revolver. One of them looked at their companion groaning on the ground. “Just who the devil are you, mister?”

  “Smoke Jensen.”

  For all his misery, the one at Smoke’s feet got up quickly and mounted his horse. All of them tried not to meet the hot eyes of Smoke Jensen, which bored into them. With submissive touches of their hands to the brims of their hats, they turned their horses and rode away.

  Little Jimmy showed up at noon with a plate for Smoke from the Iron Kettle. It held fried chicken, gravy with boiled potatoes, and hominy. He also had an encouraging message.

  Freckled face writhing with the energy of his delivery, Jimmy informed Smoke, “Fred Chase, one of your deputies, is back in town. He says he’ll come out and relieve you after dinner,” he squeaked. “Said he should be here about one-fifteen this afternoon.”

  “Thank you, Jimmy.” Smoke dug in his pocket for a coin. Jimmy looked at him expectantly.

  “Can I stay here until you finish? I’ll take yer plate back. Okay?”

  “It’s may I, Jimmy,” Smoke corrected, the image of Sally hovering in his mind. “And, yes, you may. ”

  Jimmy’s eyes glowed. “Oh, boy, maybe I’ll get to see you wallop a few bad men.”

  Smoke frowned. “You had better hope you don’t. Which reminds me. If anything turns rough out here while you are around, duck. I mean, crawl underground.”

  “Yesss, sir,” the little lad replied in disappointment.

  When Fred showed up and introduced himself, Smoke explained what was expected of him and what to watch out for. Then he walked back into the center of town with Jimmy at his side. He gave the boy another dime and sent him off to the Iron Kettle with the empty plate. Then he started for the first of two saloons he had on his list to clean out this afternoon.

  When he shoved his way through the batwings, Smoke walked smack into a fi
st in the mouth.

  Seven

  Smoke Jensen rocked back on his boot heels, then lowered his head and drove into the man who had hit him. Off balance, the tough backpedaled until he struck a poker table and sprawled across it, scattering coins and chips.

  “Hey, get off the table,” one of the irate players complained.

  From the bar, another added, “Yeah, Red, I thought you were gonna really fix the new sheriff. Looks like he’s done fixed you.”

  Goaded by the taunt, Red Cramer sprang to his feat and made a dive for Smoke Jensen. Smoke waited for his charge. At the last second, he side-stepped and clipped Red behind the ear. Red flew sideways and crashed into yet another table. Beer gushed upward in amber geysers as schooners broke in showers of glass, and the table’s occupants sprawled in disarray. Red wound up face-first across the collapsed table. Slower this time, he came to his boots.

  Smoke stood there ready to meet him. Only this time, Red decided he had enough of bare-hand grappling. He dropped a hand to his holster and hauled on his hogleg. He should have known better.

  Although superior to most of the thugs Smoke had faced since coming to Muddy Gap, Red Cramer managed to bring only the muzzle of his Colt to the top of the pocket before Smoke shot him in the chest.

  Red’s expression of surprise spoke volumes. For a moment he could simply not believe that he had been beaten. Especially by some nobody from Colorado. Then came the rush of certain knowledge. How could this be happening to him? Red Cramer went limp, and his Colt thudded on the floor. His eyes rolled up, and he sighed as though in regret for his short life and many sins. Then he died.

  Smoke faced the remaining occupants of the Red Rooster saloon. “You men were already in town when I posted it. Though by this time, you have to have seen one or more notices on your way in here. So, I’ll give you exactly thirty seconds to rid yourselves of every firearm you are carrying, and any knife with more than a three-inch blade. There are no exceptions,” Smoke added as one of the toughs started to voice a protest. “Failure to comply will result in being escorted out of town, by way of a visit to the justice of the peace and a stay in jail.”

  A long, silent fifteen seconds clicked away on the octagonal face of the oak-cased Regulator wall clock above the piano. Then, grumbling lowly among one another, three of the riffraff began to deposit weapons on the bar. When the slender, black hand reached twenty seconds, four more began to divest themselves of six-guns and knives. The thirty-second deadline arrived in the Red Rooster, and Smoke Jensen cut his eyes from one to another of the three holdouts, then down at the corpse cooling on the floor.

  “If you don’t want to join him, I’d suggest you join your friends over there at the bar.”

  Two of them looked at Smoke as though he had spoken in tongues. The third scuttled to the bar and began to unburden his person of all arms. The pendulum of the Regulator ticked again, and the second hand advanced. One of the holdouts began to sweat profusely. His hand trembled visibly as he raised a finger to point at Smoke.

  “I’ve heard of you, Jensen. They say you’re fast.”

  Smoke nodded. “D’you reckon to be faster?”

  “N-no—ah—no.” His gaze fixed on his boot toes, his bravado deflated as he shuffled to join the others who had given up their weapons.

  With a flicker of a smile, Smoke addressed the thoroughly cowed brigands. “Thank you, boys. When you are ready to leave town, you can pick those up at the sheriffs office.” Then, to the bartender, “Herb, put the hardware behind the bar. Someone will be by to pick up all of it later.” With that, he turned on his heel and left.

  Shortly after noon, Smoke Jensen left the task of collecting firearms to his deputy, Fred Chase, and headed for the Sorry Place. There he ordered a schooner of beer and helped himself to the free lunch counter. He stood at the bar, munching on a sandwich he had made of ham, rare roast beef, and two cheeses, when four of the local merchants entered and walked purposefully toward him.

  “Sheriff, we have to talk,” Eb Harbinson, their spokesman, declared.

  Smoke laid down his sandwich, took a bite of hard boiled egg and faced them calmly. “What’s on your minds?”

  “This scheme of yours might work well for you, Sheriff, but we believe you have gone too far.”

  “How is that? There are less hard cases in town, isn’t that right?”

  Momentarily at a loss for words, Eb Harbinson watched as Smoke bit into a fat dill pickle and chewed thoughtfully. Eb took a deep breath and went on. “What you say is true. Only there may be too few of them around.”

  Smoke remained terse. “Meaning what?”

  Eb felt his surety draining from him. “Well, we’ve talked it over and we all agree. This posting has been bad for business. Sales are down all over town. You have to stop turning people away. ”

  Shaking his head, Smoke tried to reason with them. “I am not turning people away. They have a choice. Surrender their guns or they don’t come into town.”

  Eb looked pained. He started to speak, only to be interrupted by Tiemeier, the butcher. “The way we see this, it’s the same thing. A lot of local ranchers have heard about it, and they’re not coming in for their supplies. That hurts business all around.”

  Smoke looked hard at Tiemeier’s bloodstained, leather apron. “Don’t you think they butcher their own stock?”

  Red-faced, Tiemeier snapped back. “Of course they do. If I don’t sell them beef and pork, there’s still hams and bacon. Folks don’t build smokehouses around here, wrong kind of wood. Then, there’s my friends here, the other merchants in town. They are really suffering. You have to let people come into town.”

  Smoke studied the protesters awhile, noted the expressions of urgency they all wore, then tore off a mouthful of sandwich and munched it. A flash of anger crossed Tiemeier’s face at this. That was what Smoke had been waiting for. His eyes narrowed, and he swallowed to clear his mouth before speaking.

  “What you are asking is not possible. The mayor prevailed on me to help rid your town of the trash. I’m doing exactly that. I do not need the people I’m supposed to be protecting to come whining about slow business. The last time I looked, there is not a cradle-to-grave assurance of being taken care of in this country. A man’s got to carry his own weight here.

  “It’s not the job of government, whether city, territory or the stripe-pants boys in Washington, to guarantee you anything, let alone a right to success. That’s up to you to do the very best you can. If you don’t participate, and wait for someone else to do it all for you, you deserve to fail. I’d suggest you all give Eb here a little more business for that printing press. Do up some flyers of your own, explaining that not one local will be turned away, and you might even list a few specials in your shops. Then see that they are circulated among those living outside town. Now, I’d like to finish my—”

  Tiemeier interrupted him. “By God, man, you can’t be serious.”

  Smoke grew a scowl. “If you are going to bring God into this, Preacher always taught me that He helps those who help themselves. I’d suggest, gentlemen, that you abide by that rule.” Smoke started to add more advice, only to be interrupted by a loud disturbance out in the street.

  A pair of gunshots racketed off the building fronts. Glass tinkled in their wake. Raucous voices raised in curses mingled with laughter. Another window went in a shower of silver shards. A bullet cracked into the clapboard front of the Red Rooster saloon. The protesting merchants had grown quiet and now ducked with alacrity as another slug bit a gouge of splinters off the front of the liquor emporium.

  “Hey, Drew, that’s purty good shootin’. See if you can hit that lamp.”

  “Easy, Grant, Watch me.”

  Hot lead spanged off metal, followed by the tinkle of broken glass. The odor of kerosene reached Smoke Jensen’s nostrils. He looked around to find himself the only one standing. Quickly he strode out onto the boardwalk.

  Two gangling, young louts stood unsteadily in the stree
t, reeling from the effect of too much liquor. Their dirty-blond hair hung in long, greasy hanks that swayed with each drunken step they took. They could have been twins, except that one stood a good four inches shorter than the other and looked as though his face had yet to need a razor. The older wore a scraggly wisp of yellow hair on his chin. He also held Marshal Grover Larsen by the shirt collar. He spoke as Smoke came into the light.

  “You done that right nice, Drew. But you got a ways to go to be good as me. Watch me shoot the ‘o’ outta the word ‘Groceries’ on that winder.” Grant raised his six-gun and fired.

  To the right of the door to the general store, the window collapsed in a cascade of shards. From beyond his back, Smoke heard a groan. He shot a hard glance over his shoulder to Eb Harbinson.

  “Would you like to see your other window go? Or do you want me to do the job I was hired for?”

  “Go. Go on,” Eb moaned.

  Smoke Jensen stepped off the boardwalk and took a stance in the dirt street. “That’s enough, boys. Let Marshal Larsen go and give me those guns.”

  Grant Eckers and his younger brother Drew had ridden into Muddy Gap to get supplies for their father’s ranch. They also intended on having a few drinks and maybe sporting some with the girls in the Gold Boot. Although only sixteen, Drew had been assured by his older brother that he would have no trouble getting whiskey.

  “After all,” Grant had assured Drew, “Paw darn near owns this town. Ain’t nobody gonna refuse us.”

  They had ridden up to where Marshal Grover Larsen stood watch. Being locals, the lawman had passed them on through. Unfortunately for him, the brothers had been sucking on the dregs of a bottle supplied by Grant, and their liquor-fogged brains made them take exception to the prohibition signs. After reading the notice, Grant had grabbed the marshal by the scruff of his collar and forced him to run alongside the boy’s horse as they trotted into town.