Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man Read online

  “It looks quiet,” Garvey said.

  There was a click as the vault door came unlocked.

  “There, that’s more like it,” Payson said with a wide, evil grin. He pulled a sack from the pocket of his duster and handed it to the teller. “Now, fill it up.”

  The teller reached for the coin drawer.

  “To hell with them coins! I want greenbacks!” Payson ordered, waving his pistol toward the drawer that was full of banded stacks of bills.

  “Yes, sir,” the teller replied, and with trembling hands he began scooping up the bank-note packages and dropping them into the bag.

  “Hurry it up, hurry it up,” Payson demanded. “We ain’t got all day.”

  “Marshal, look!” one of the townsmen said, pointing toward the school.

  Through all their preparation, no one had thought to warn Miss Miller and her second-grade pupils. The games of recess continued without interruption.

  “Somebody needs to get them kids out of there!” another said.

  “All right, go down there and . . .” Marshal Cobb began, but before he could finish the sentence, the front door of the bank swung open and seven men dashed toward the horses that were tied at the hitching rail. “No, wait, it’s too late now,” the marshal said.

  Marshal Cobb raised up from his position and called out to the seven robbers.

  “You men hold it right there!” he shouted. “You ain’t a’goin’ nowhere!”

  At almost the same time Cobb shouted, he fired. His bullet went through Garvey’s hat, knocking it into the dirt.

  “What the hell?” Garvey shouted. “Payson, look out! It’s a trap!”

  “Poke, Syl, Clem, Bart, Pete, get mounted!” Payson shouted to the others. “Let’s get out of here! Let’s go, let’s go!”

  The other outlaws also began shooting as they started for their own mounts.

  From the front porch of Lambert’s Café, a citizen with food stains still on the front of his shirt appeared with a shotgun. He let go a blast, but the range was too great. His pellets peppered the outlaws without penetrating their skin. Another man fired a shotgun from a little closer range, and the front window of the bank came crashing down.

  Once the robbers were mounted, they started down the street at a full gallop, while two dozen armed townsmen fired at them from every possible position.

  “I’m hit, I’m hit!” one of the outlaws shouted.

  “Sonofabitch! They got Pete!” Poke yelled. He reached over to try and steady Pete on his horse, but the outlaw fell. “Payson, Pete’s down!”

  “Leave ’im!” Payson shouted back.

  Payson and his gang reached the end of the street, only to find the barricade that had been erected.

  “Damn! They got us blocked off! What’ll we do, Payson?” Syl shouted.

  “This way!” Payson answered, and leading the way, he started back through the town, riding back in the opposite direction. They were galloping hard when they came up on the barricade that had been erected at the other end of town. They had to pull up short. The horses, now as panic-stricken as the men, twisted around in nervous circles and reared up, anxious to run, but not sure where to go. It was all the riders could do to control them.

  “They got us blocked off at both ends!” Clem yelled.

  “There!” Bart shouted, pointing toward the school yard. “We can go through there!”

  Without answering, Payson veered off the street and headed straight for the school yard, where the kids, who were by now frightened by the exploding gunshots, had gathered around Miss Miller. The teacher was also rooted to the spot by her own terror.

  “Hold your fire, men! Hold your fire! We might hit one of the kids!” Marshal Cobb shouted.

  With the marshal’s order, the fire of the townspeople stopped, giving Payson and his men a chance to get away. When Payson reached the alley behind the school, he and the others turned and fired back though the playground at the townspeople. Then they galloped away, followed by the shouts of anger and frustration from the men of the town. Marshal Cobb led them through the school yard to the alley, where they formed a skirmish line of shooters, firing at the cloud of dust as the riders grew smaller and smaller in the distance.

  “Cease fire, cease fire!” the marshal shouted. “We’re just wastin’ ammunition now. They’re well out of range.”

  “Marshal, you ain’t gonna just let them get away, are you?”

  “Nothing I can do about it,” the marshal said. “They’re out of town now, I’ve got no jurisdiction.”

  Looking back, they saw one of the outlaws lying dead in the street.

  “At least we got one of them,” Marshal Cobb said.

  “Yeah,” one of the others said. “And they got two of us. Look over there.”

  “My God,” Marshal Cobb gasped when, for the first time, he saw that Miss Miller and a little girl were lying on the ground, victims of the outlaws’ last fusillade. The fallen figures were surrounded by the other children, who were looking down at their teacher and their friend in shocked silence.

  “Somebody get a doctor, quick!” Marshal Cobb called.

  “We won’t be needin’ a doctor, Marshal,” one of the men who had walked over to check them said. “What we need is an undertaker. They’re both dead.”

  By now the outlaws were in full gallop, running away from the town. They ran the horses for several minutes before Bart Ebersole called out.

  “Payson! If we don’t give these horses a blow, they’re goin’ to drop dead under us!”

  “Yeah, all right,” Payson answered. “Pull up.”

  The six outlaws stopped the gallop, then dismounted, walked their horses to let them regain their breath.

  “Anyone else hit?” Payson asked. “Garvey, Poke, Syl, Clem, Bart?”

  “Nah,” Garvey said. “Except for Pete, we come through fine.”

  Payson laughed. “Damn, boys, that was good. Jesse James don’t have a thing on us!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Matt was standing just outside Smoke’s cabin, throwing a knife at a target he had carved on a tree. The hunting knife, a gift from Smoke, was perfectly balanced for throwing, and whenever he had time during the long summer days, Matt would practice.

  “Matt,” Smoke called from the door of the cabin. “Let’s see how good you really are.”

  Smoke threw his knife, hitting the target dead center.

  Smiling, Matt threw his own knife at the target, hitting so close to the one Smoke had thrown that the blades were actually touching.

  “Whoa, you’ve gotten pretty good with that,” Smoke said.

  “Thanks,” Matt said, walking out to the tree and pulling both knives free.

  “You remember what I said about going into town when summer was over?” Smoke said.

  “I remember.”

  “Well, summer is over. Why don’t you go out to the corral and pick out your horse?”

  “My horse?”

  “Yeah, your horse. A man’s got to have a horse.”

  “Which horse is mine?” Matt asked.

  “Why don’t you take the best one?” Smoke replied. “Except for that one,” Smoke added, pointing to an Appaloosa over in one corner of the corral. “That one is mine.”

  “Which horse is the best?” Matt asked.

  “Uh-uh,” Smoke replied, shaking his head. “I’m willing to give you the best horse in my string, but as to which horse that is, well, you’re just going to have to figure that out for yourself.”

  Matt walked out to the small corral that Smoke had built and, leaning on the split-rail fence, looked at the string of seven horses from which he could choose.

  After looking them over very carefully, Matt smiled and nodded.

  “You’ve made your choice?” Smoke asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Which one?”

  “I want that one,” Matt said, pointing to a bay.

  “Why not the chestnut?” Smoke asked. “He looks stronger.”
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  “Look at the chestnut’s front feet,” Matt said. “They are splayed. The bay’s feet are just right.”

  “What about the black one over there?”

  “Uh-uh,” Matt said. “His back legs are set too far back. I want the bay.”

  Smoke reached out and ran his hand through Matt’s hair.

  “You’re learning, kid, you’re learning,” he said. “The bay is yours.”

  Matt’s grin spread from ear to ear. “I’ve never had a horse before,” he said. He jumped down from the rail fence and started toward the horse.

  “That’s all right, he’s never had a rider before,” Smoke said.

  “What?” Matt asked, jerking around in surprise as he stared at Smoke. “Did you say that he’s never been ridden?”

  “He’s as spirited as he was the day we brought him in.”

  “How’m I going to ride him if he has never been ridden?”

  “Well, I reckon you are just going to have to break him,” Smoke said, passing the words off as easily as if he had just suggested that Matt should wear a hat.

  “Break him? I can’t break a horse!”

  “Sure you can. It’ll be fun,” Smoke suggested.

  Smoke showed Matt how to saddle the horse, and gave him some pointers on riding it.

  “Now, you don’t want to break the horse’s spirit,” Smoke said. “What you want to do is make him your partner.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Walk him around for a bit so that he gets used to his saddle, and to you. Then get on.”

  “He won’t throw me then?”

  “Oh, he’ll still throw you a few times,” Smoke said with a little laugh. “But at least he’ll know how serious you are.”

  To Matt’s happy surprise, he wasn’t thrown even once. The horse did buck a few times, coming down on stiff legs, then sunfishing and, finally, galloping at full speed around the corral. But after a few minutes he stopped fighting, and Matt leaned over to pat him gently on the neck.

  “Good job, Matt,” Smoke said, clapping his hands quietly. “You’ve got a real touch with horses. You didn’t break him, you trained him, and that’s real good. He’s not mean, but he still has spirit.”

  “Smoke, can I name him?”

  “Sure, he’s your horse, you can name him anything you want.”

  Matt continued to pat the horse on the neck as he thought of a name.

  “That’s it,” he said, smiling broadly. “I’ve come up with a name.”

  “What are you going to call him?”

  “Spirit.”

  Smoke nodded. “Spirit. That’s a good name. The Indians will like that name.”

  “I wonder how long it will take him to learn his name,” Matt said.

  “Not too long,” Smoke replied. “What do you say we get started into town now?”

  “How far is town?” Matt asked.

  “About fifty miles north of here,” Smoke said. “We’ll spend tonight on the trail, and get there sometime tomorrow.”

  “Smoke, we’re not going to the town of Soda Creek, are we?” Matt asked.

  “Soda Creek? No. Why the concern? Is that where the orphanage was?”

  “Yes, and I don’t want to go back there. I don’t even want to go to the town.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Soda Creek is south, and we’re going north,” Smoke said. “Do you know how to find north?”

  “I know the sun rises in the east,” Matt said.

  “What if it’s nighttime, and you can’t see the sun?”

  “I know about the North Star.”

  “That’s good. Do you know how to find the North Star?”

  “The Big Dipper,” Matt said. “All you do is line up the two stars on the cup of the dipper, and you can find the North Star. Pa showed me how to do that when we were on the trail.”

  “Good for your pa,” Smoke said. “That’s a good thing to know. But what if you are in trees or something so that, for some reason, you can’t see the stars? Did you know that you can also find the north with the moon?”

  Matt shook his head. “No,” he said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “On a fairly full moon you can see a crescent of shadows. The finger in the crescent points to the north. When the moon is at a phase where you can see where the shadow starts, you can find north by making an imaginary line from the tip of the shadow to the north.”

  “That’s good to know,” Matt said.

  Smoke chuckled. “If you can keep a few things like that in mind, you might be able to locate yourself just a little closer than by saying you’re in Colorado.”

  Matt laughed, remembering that he had insisted to Smoke that he wasn’t lost because he knew he was in Colorado.

  The two men rode on through the afternoon; then Smoke held up his hand as a signal to stop.

  “We’ll camp here tonight,” he said, pointing. “There’s water, and it’s always good to camp by water, as long as you know the dangers.”

  “What’s dangerous about camping near water?” Matt asked.

  “All critters need water,” Smoke explained, “squirrels, rabbits, horses, men, dogs, and the like. But so do bears, and mountain lions, and wolves. And some of them are pretty possessive. If they see you around their water hole, they aren’t going to like it. So you’re going to have to stay alert the whole time you are by a water hole.”

  Matt remembered his encounter with the wolf when he was on the trail, running away from the Home. “I see,” he said.

  “Also, the water might be poison.”

  “Poison? How, why?”

  “Don’t always know why the water would be poison, but there is bad water out there and you’ll run across it from time to time.”

  “How do you tell if it’s poison? By taste?”

  Smoke shook his head. “No, that’s not good enough. Some bad water tastes pretty good, some good water tastes awfully bad. About the only way you can really tell is to take a look around it. If you see the bones of dead animals real close to a water hole, the chances are they died drinking the water. That’s a good sign for you to just keep moving on.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” Matt said.

  “You’ll try? I hope you remember everything I’m telling you,” Smoke said. “Otherwise, I’m just out here batting my gums for nothing.”

  “I will remember,” Matt promised.

  Mule Crossing, Colorado

  There was no town called Mule Crossing. It was a place about fifteen miles west of Meeker, where the White River could be forded. Here, a man named John Grant had built a saloon and general store.

  The man who came into Grant’s saloon stood at the door for just a minute, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He was about average size, with a drawn face, watery-blue eyes, a hooked nose, and a sweeping handle-bar mustache. He wore a low-crown black hat encircled with a silver hatband, from which protruded a small, red feather.

  “My name is Amos Bodine,” he announced. “And I’m lookin’ for a man by the name of Cleo Wright.”

  There were only six others in the saloon, and Bodine studied each one of them. All but one returned his gaze. The one who did not was making a point of staring at his drink.

  “You,” Bodine said to the one who hadn’t looked up. “What’s your name?”

  “Smith,” the man replied. “John Smith.”

  Another man came in behind Bodine then, and the fact that Bodine didn’t look around indicated that he knew who it was.

  “He’s lyin’, Amos,” the new man said. “I seen him at the trial before he broke jail. This here is Cleo Wright.”

  “Well, Mr. Cleo Wright,” Bodine said, a wicked smile spreading across his face. “There’s a reward out for you, did you know that?”

  With a sigh, and a set of his shoulders, Cleo Wright stepped away from the bar and faced Bodine. “Yeah,” he said. “I know that.”

  “Tell you what,” Bodine said. “You pay me the reward money, and I
’ll let you go.”

  “I don’t have any money,” Wright answered.

  “Then I guess I’m just going to have to take you in. Unless you can stop me.”

  “Stop you? How am I supposed to stop you?”

  “Well, you could draw against me,” Bodine said. “You might get lucky. Or you can just show everyone in here what a sniveling, low-assed coward you are, then get down on your belly and slither out to your horse.”

  “What?” Wright asked with a gasp. “What are you asking me to do?”

  “You heard me,” Wright said. “You can either draw against me, or get down on your belly and slither across the floor like the cowardly snake that you are.”

  “No way in hell am I going to do that, mister!” Cleo said.

  The smile had never left Bodine’s face. “Then you are going to have to draw against me,” he said in a sibilant tone.

  The expression on Cleo Wright’s face turned from one of anger to fear, then to resignation. With a shout of fury, Wright made a desperate grab for his gun.

  Bodine’s gun was out and firing before Wright was able to clear leather with his own pistol. Wright went down with a bullet in his heart.

  Meeker, Colorado

  Two men rode into town. One of the men was leading another horse, and draped across that horse was a body. As they rode down Main Street, several of the townspeople stopped what they were doing to watch, some coming out of the stores and buildings to stand on the side of the street.

  The horses’ hooves raised little clouds of dust and made hollow clopping sounds that echoed back from the buildings that lined the street.

  In Dunnigan’s Barber Shop, Ernie Peterson, who was waiting for a shave and a trim, happened to see the rider through the window.

  “I’ll be damn,” Peterson said.

  “What is it?” Dunnigan asked as he applied lather to the face of old Gil Tucker. Tucker was a veteran of the War of 1812.

  “It’s Amos Bodine,” Peterson said.

  “Bodine? The bounty hunter?”

  “That’s him all right,” Peterson said.

  Dunnigan left his customer and walked out onto the front porch, followed by Peterson and Gil Tucker. Tucker, whose face was half-lathered, was still wearing the barber apron Dunnigan had put around him.