Terror of the Mountain Man Read online

  “Well, since there is absolutely no skill involved in drawing for a high card, I have to confess that it was luck,” Pearlie replied, smiling as he reached for the money.

  Parker stuck his hand down into his pocket, then pulled out a pepperbox, a small, palm-sized pistol.

  “Mister, I ain’t givin’ up my money to a cheater,” Parker said. “I’ll thank you to slide that money back across the table.”

  “Mr. Parker, now you tell me just how you think he could have been cheating at high card?” Bridget asked.

  “I don’t know, I ain’t figured that out yet,” Parker said. “But it don’t matter none now, anyhow. I’m about to get my money back.”

  “That’s no way to get your money back,” Pearlie said.

  “Yeah? Well, it seems like a pretty good way to me, seein’ as I’m holdin’ a gun on you,” Parker said.

  “And I’m holdin’ one on you,” Cal said, stepping up to the table at that moment. He had his pistol out and was pointing it directly at Pearlie.

  “What? Who the hell are you? What business you got buttin’ in on this?”

  “You said you were about to shoot Pearlie.”

  “Who’s Pearlie?” Parker asked, confused by the comment.

  “That would be me,” Pearlie said.

  “Pearlie is my friend.”

  “Is he? Well, I’m tellin’ you right now, that your friend is about to get hisself kilt, if you don’t put that gun down,” Parker said.

  “If you shoot him, I’ll shoot you.”

  “Did you hear me?” Parker said. “Are you stupid? I said I’m going to shoot your friend if you don’t put that gun down.”

  “Go ahead,” Cal said.

  “What?”

  “I said go ahead. Pearlie ain’t my only friend. I’ve got other friends. On the other hand, you don’t have another life. Also, I notice that your gun isn’t cocked yet.” Cal cocked his own pistol, the hammer making a distinct sound in a saloon that had now gone so quiet that the loudest sound was the rhythmic tick of the clock standing against the back wall.

  “But as you can see, my gun is. And I see your thumb so much as quiver, I’ll shoot.”

  “You would risk your friend’s life like that?” Parker asked, incredulous at Cal’s words.

  “I’m riskin’ his life, not mine,” Cal said. He smiled. “It’s not like what you are doing. You are riskin’ your own life. But go ahead, Mr.—Parker, is it? Do whatever you think you have to do. Shoot Pearlie if you think that’s necessary. Then I’ll shoot you.”

  Parker stood there for a moment longer as it slowly dawned on him that he had the worst position in this triangle. Then, with a trembling hand, Parker put the pistol down on the table. Pearlie reached and picked it up, then handed it to Bridget. Bridget took it from Pearlie by using only her thumb and forefinger.

  “Break it open and empty the charges,” he said.

  Carefully, Bridget pushed the hinged barrel down, then shook out all the cartridges.

  “What do you mean, you have other friends?” Pearlie asked.

  “I do, Pearlie,” Cal said. “Hell, you know that. I have lots of other friends. I mean, look over at that table. There’s three of ’em sittin’ right there.”

  Bridget laughed.

  “Mr. Parker, was this twenty-six dollars really the last of your money?” Bridget asked.

  “Yes,” Parker said, quietly.

  “Shame on you, Mr. Parker,” Bridget said. “You would gamble away all of your money, when you’ve got a wife and kid at home?”

  “You’ve got a wife and kid?” Pearlie asked.

  Parker didn’t reply, but he looked down toward the floor in shame.

  Pearlie slid the twenty-six dollars back across the table. “I don’t want to take all your money, Parker. And I also don’t want to play cards with you anymore. Take your money, and go home.”

  Parker blinked a few times, bit his lower lip, then nodded.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled as he picked up the money. Turning, he left without another word being spoken.

  “Mr. Pearlie, that is about the most decent thing I’ve ever seen anyone do,” Bridget said, beaming at him. “You are welcome at my table anytime.”

  “Thanks,” Pearlie said. Glancing toward the clock, he saw that it was nearly ten. “But I guess it’s time for my friends and me to go now.”

  Nuevo Pacifico, Mexico

  Keno sat a table in the cantina, drinking tequila and watching one of the girls dance for him. She had been dancing for several minutes, and both she and the guitar player were getting tired, but Keno told them that he’d say when they could finish.

  Just when the musician and dancer were on the edge of total exhaustion, Vargas, one of Keno’s men, came in.

  “Coronel, I have news that you will like,” he said.

  Keno picked up his pistol and fired it straight up, punching a hole through the roof of the cantina. At the shot, the dancer screamed and fell to her knees, bending over and covering her face with her arms. The guitarist stopped in mid-chord.

  “That is enough,” Keno said. He tossed a hundred pesos onto the floor. “This is for you,” he said. “You see, when you are good to me, I can be very good to you.”

  “Gracias, señor,” both said, hurrying to scoop up the money.

  “Now, what news do you bring me?”

  “In the town of San Vicente, in Texas, there is a herd of two hundred horses. Only a few men are keeping watch on the horses.”

  “Why are the horses there?” Keno asked.

  “They are to be delivered to The Wide Loop, the rancho of Señor Tom Byrd. He is to use them as mounts for his vaqueros.”

  “If the herd is that large, the horses will not be broken,” Keno said.

  “But they will still be very valuable, will they not?”

  “Sí, but they will be more valuable when they are broken. We will keep our eyes on these horses, and after they are broken, we will take them,” Keno said. “Go and keep an eye on them. When all the horses are broke, come and tell me.”

  San Vicente

  It was only a mile outside of town before Pearlie, Cal, Walt, Don, and Vernon came across the herd of horses they had moved all the way from Colorado. For now, the horses were being watched over by only two men, Old Mo and Fred Stone. A campfire was burning low, and the blue metal coffeepot was suspended from an iron, overhead frame. The pot was pushed to one side so that it would keep the coffee warm, but not too hot.

  The five men dismounted, and Cal went straight to the chuck wagon to get a tin cup. Filling the cup with the hot, black brew, he had just taken his first sip when Old Mo rode up.

  “I was hopin’ someone would show up to spell us by midnight,” Old Mo said.

  “All quiet? Cal asked.

  “All quiet,” Old Mo replied.

  “Walt, you want to take the watch with me?” Cal asked.

  “For how long?”

  “Until dawn.”

  “Damn,” Walt said.

  “No need to go all the way till dawn. Vernon and I will relieve you at four,” Pearlie offered.

  “There’s a good friend for you,” Cal said.

  Pearlie looked at Cal. “Come to think of it I’m sure you can find someone else to do this for you,” he added with a smile. “I mean, seeing as you have so many friends and all.”

  “You ain’t goin’ to ever let go of that, are you?” Cal asked.

  Pearlie laughed out loud. “On the contrary, I think you were very smart. Parker wasn’t sure whether to call your bluff or not. I know you weren’t really goin’ to let him shoot me.”

  “Are you sure?” Cal asked with an enigmatic smile.

  Back in town, Smoke lay in bed, studying the moon pattern on the wall before him. Beside him, the rhythmic breathing of Sally told him that she was asleep.

  This was the end of the long drive. Tom Byrd’s ranch was only three miles from here. Tomorrow he would hire someone to ride out to the ranch to tell him that
he had arrived so he could make arrangements to deliver the horses.

  Smoke had come a long way since he left Missouri as a seventeen-year-old boy in 1865. No, he was seventeen all right, but he could hardly be called a boy. By that time he had already buried his mother, run the farm by himself, and gone to war with the Confederate guerrilla Asa Briggs. Since that time he had buried his first wife and child, taken revenge against the killers of his father and Nicole, his first wife, been mentored by an old mountain man named Preacher, and had mentored a young man who now called himself Matt Jensen. And of course he had also married Sally Reynolds, a schoolteacher from a wealthy Vermont family.

  Smoke was now a wealthy man, one of the wealthiest in all of Colorado, and he had done it all by himself, without one penny of the Reynolds family’s money.

  Over the years though, Smoke had developed another legacy, one that he would not have sought, but one that he could not walk away from. Smoke had a reputation as being one of—if not the—fastest and most skilled gunfighters in the entire West.

  Now he was about to reconnect with someone from his distant past. When he and Sally were in Missouri to rebury his parents, he had visited with Tom Byrd’s son, Sam, and Sam’s wife, Mollie. These were people he had known from his time before, but they had both been very young children when he left Missouri.

  Tom Byrd, on the other hand, was as old as Smoke’s father had been, and because the Byrd farm and the Jensen farm were adjacent, they visited, and worked together frequently. This would be his most direct connection with his past since he left home, and he was very much looking forward to it.

  Chapter Eleven

  When Pearlie came back into the camp from having taken the last relief of nighthawk, the sun was just rising. He walked over to the bedroll where Cal was sleeping and pushed his boot against Cal’s stocking-covered foot, just hard enough to wake him up.

  “What?” Cal asked. “What is it?”

  “Let’s go into town and get us a bath,” Pearlie suggested.

  “A bath? Are you serious? You woke me up for a bath?”

  “Not just any bath,” Pearlie said. “A hotel bath. You don’t have to stay there, they’ve got bathing rooms out behind the place where you can take a bath for half a dollar. Don’t you think a tub bath would be good, after bathin’ in nothing but creeks, rivers, and streams for more ’n a month?”

  “Yeah, I guess it would.”

  “And the hotel’s got a dining room too. The best breakfast you can buy in a town is always in a hotel dining room.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, think about it, Cal. Most of the people that eat in the hotel dining room are staying right there. You know that the hotel folks are going to want to feed those people a real good breakfast. If not, they’ll be right there where they can complain about it.”

  Cal laughed. “You know what, Pearlie, sometimes when you don’t make any sense at all, you make pretty good sense after all.”

  “What?” Pearlie asked, totally confused by Cal’s rather convoluted answer.

  “Never mind,” Cal said. “Let me get my boots on and pull out a clean change of clothes and I’ll be right with you.”

  Smoke and Sally were having breakfast in the hotel dining room when Pearlie and Cal came in later that same morning.

  “Do you mind if we join you?” Pearlie asked.

  “No, of course not,” Sally replied. “Oh, my, don’t you two boys look good. I see that you got all cleaned up,” she added with a smile.

  “I had to talk Cal into it. I swear, if I didn’t tell ’im to do it, I don’t think that boy would take a bath till we got back home.”

  “It ain’t been much more ’n a month since my last one,” Cal said

  Smoke laughed. “You remind me of Preacher.”

  “Smoke, is Old Mo like Preacher?”

  “I expect there’s a lot of similarity between the two,” Smoke agreed.

  “We’re near ’bout to the ranch where we’re a-takin’ the horses, ain’t we?” Cal asked, then seeing Sally’s frown, he corrected himself. “What I mean is, aren’t we?”

  “Thank you, Cal,” Sally said.

  “We’re not only close, we’re here,” Smoke said. “I thought that Sally and I would ride out to the ranch today to see Mr. Byrd.”

  “Would you mind if me ’n’ Pearlie . . . uh . . . if Pearlie and I went out there with you?”

  “Why, no, I wouldn’t mind at all. But why on earth would you want to go?” Smoke asked.

  “All Walt and the others want to do is get drunk, and take the women upstairs,” Cal said. Then, realizing he had spoken in front of Sally, he put his hand over his mouth and looked at her, embarrassment showing in his face.

  “Sorry, Miz Sally,” he said contritely.

  “No apology necessary, Cal. I’m proud of you for showing such forbearance.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cal said. “Anyway, me ’n’ Pearlie don’t want to do all that, which is why we went to take us a bath, then come over to see you.”

  “Because we figured if we did ride out to the ranch with you to meet such an important man, then we ought to at least be clean,” Pearlie added.

  “Good thought,” Smoke said. “Have you had your breakfast yet?”

  “Uh . . .” Cal started.

  Sally laughed. “Would you like to join us?”

  “Yes, ma’am, we’d like that just fine,” Pearlie replied.

  “We’ll go out to the ranch as soon as we eat.”

  Tom Byrd greeted Smoke effusively when he arrived. Though considerably older than he was the last time Smoke saw him, he would have recognized his former neighbor immediately.

  “Mr. Byrd, I’d like you to meet my wife, Sally, my foreman and assistant foreman, Pearlie and Cal.”

  “You called me Mr. Byrd when you were a boy, Kirby. You’re a grown man now. Why don’t you call me Tom?”

  “Tom,” Smoke said with a smile and a nod.

  “This is my wife, Hazel,” he said, indicating the smiling, gray-haired woman standing next to him. “And I’m sure you remember my daughter, Katrina,” he added, introducing the very pretty young woman who was standing between him and Mrs. Byrd.

  “I remember a little girl named Katrina,” Smoke said. “I don’t remember a beautiful young woman.”

  Katrina smiled shyly.

  “I’m Cal,” Cal said, looking directly at Katrina. “Smoke is right. You’re the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “Smoke?” Tom said. “Is that what he called you?”

  “Ever’one calls him Smoke,” Pearlie said. “Fact is, I’ve known him for a lot of years now, and I’ve never heard anyone call him Kirby.”

  “Are you the Smoke Jensen?” Katrina asked. “The one the books are about?”

  “What books?” Tom asked.

  “Adventure stories,” Katrina said. “All my boy students love to read them, and I encourage them, because I think reading anything at all, even adventure stories, is very good for them.”

  “That’s him all right,” Cal said. “Why, I reckon that, by now, nearly ever’one has heard of Smoke Jensen.”

  “My goodness,” Tom said. “Who would have ever thought that the boy I knew would grow up to be so famous.”

  “Believe me, Tom, fame, if that is what you can call it, some might call it infamy, can be quite a burden. I’d just as soon lay it down, if I could.”

  “I can understand that,” Tom said. “Fame lies uncomfortably on the shoulders of a good man. And if the man is anything like the boy I once knew, I would say that you are a good man.”

  “Mr. Byrd, he’s the best man I’ve ever known,” Cal said.

  “That’s good to hear, but it’s no surprise,” Tom said. “So, did all the horses get here all right?”

  “At last count, we had lost only twelve of them,” Smoke said. “Two dead, and ten must have drifted away from us. But I’ll be sending most of my wranglers back home by train, so I’ll be throwing i
n the remuda, which will bring the count back up to two hundred head.”

  “That’s good. Oh, the two that died, it was nothing that could spread to the rest of the horses, is it?”

  “Not unless lead poisoning can spread,” Cal said.

  “Lead poisoning?”

  “We ran into some rustlers up in New Mexico,” Smoke said. “There was some shooting, and two of the horses were hit.”

  “And three of the rustlers,” Pearlie said, quickly.

  “Their just reward, I’m sure,” Tom said. “Where are the horses now?”

  “We’re holding them just outside of town,” Smoke said.

  “If you want to, you can bring them on to The Wide Loop today. Once they are here, my men will be responsible for them.”

  “Thanks. By the way, Tom, I’m curious about the name of your ranch. The Wide Loop?” Smoke asked.

  Tom laughed. “Anytime someone gathers as large a herd as I have, inevitably, they are going to be accused of swinging a wide loop, so I just decided to name my ranch that.”

  “Part of the deal was to deliver you horses that are saddle-broken,” Smoke said. “Pearlie and Cal are two of the best, so I thought Sally, Pearlie, and Cal would hang around until the mounts are all broken. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind at all, and I appreciate the offer. I’ve got a pretty good man myself, so if you’d like, you can have him help with breaking the horses. Of course, Pearlie, you and Cal will be the lead broncobusters.”

  “That’ll be fine, Mr. Byrd, and we’ll welcome the help,” Pearlie said.

  “You will be staying for lunch, won’t you?” Hazel asked. “We have a large smoked ham, which is really good with butter beans, collard greens, and corn bread. I think I can even talk our cook into making us some fried peach pies.”

  “Yes, ma’am, we’ll stay!” Cal said enthusiastically, then when he realized he may have spoken out of turn he looked toward Smoke and Sally with an expression of embarrassment on his face.

  “Uh, I mean, uh, if Smoke says we will.”