Destiny Of The Mountain Man (22 page)

Read Destiny Of The Mountain Man Online

Authors: William W. Johnstone

Preston and Pettis were also dead, as were over thirty other men. They lay scattered all over the ground that had become the impromptu battlefield. Behind the dead, the little village of Concepcion—the earlier fires having been unchecked—was now totally invested. There was not one building that remained undamaged.
Cal came over to stand beside Smoke.
“What do we do now, Smoke?”
“Captain King won't have any trouble getting his herd to market now,” Smoke answered. “Our job is finished here. It's time we take Pearlie home.”
“What if . . . uh . . . what if Pearlie is dead?” Cal asked.
“We're taking him home,” Smoke answered. “Dead or alive, we are taking him home.”
Cal nodded his approval. “Yes,” he said. “If it was me lying back there, I would want you to take me home as well.”
 
 
Because of its soft spring ride, Captain King made his carriage available to Smoke so Pearlie would not be jostled about on the trip to the railroad depot in Corpus Christi.
Pearlie was still alive, and had shown a few moments of consciousness during the long, slow ride into town. But now, as they waited on the depot platform for the train, he was as uncommunicative as he had been at any time since he was shot.
“I know exactly where I want to bury him,” Sally said. “Out by . . .”
“That stand of aspens, the ones that turn gold in the fall,” Smoke said, completing her sentence.
“Yes. It is so beautiful there,” Sally said.
“He'll like it there,” Cal said as he wiped away a tear. “I've seen him standin' right there on that very spot many times.”
“I wonder if he's still . . .” Sally started, but she couldn't finish.
“I'll go check on him,” Cal said.
“I think I'll step into the depot to get a cup of coffee,” Smoke said. “Would you like a cup?”
“No, thank you,” Sally answered.
Smoke was just coming out of the depot carrying a cup of coffee in his right hand when he heard someone call out to him.
“Turn around, Smoke Jensen. I don't want it being said that Waco Jones shot you in the back.”
Smoke turned toward his challenger and saw Waco standing just off the edge of the loading dock. Waco wasn't holding a gun, but he did have his hand and fingers curled over the handle of his pistol.
Waco chuckled.
“You seem to be havin' yourself a little problem, don't you?” Waco said.
“What do you mean?” Smoke asked easily, taking a sip of his coffee.
Waco was used to seeing fear in the faces of those that he challenged. He did not see the slightest flicker of fear in Smoke's expression. On the contrary, Smoke was standing there as calmly as if they were discussing the weather.
“What I mean is, you are standin' there holding onto that coffee cup, when you should be holdin' onto a pistol.”
“Oh,” Smoke replied, holding the cup out. “Don't worry about that. If I need my pistol, I can get to it soon enough.”
“Why don't we just see?” Waco said.
Waco's hand dipped toward his pistol grip. It didn't have far to go; he already had it open just above the pistol handle. He felt the satisfaction of wrapping his fingers around the pistol grip, then felt the smooth, well-oiled extraction of the pistol from its holster. He was thumbing back the hammer as he raised his pistol.
Suddenly, the easy, confident smile that had been on Waco's face was gone. It was replaced by an expression of shock and fear.
The cup of coffee was now in Smoke's left hand, and his pistol was in his right! How the hell did he do that?
Waco tried to pull the trigger but he couldn't. Even as his brain was sending the signal to his trigger finger, he felt a blow to his chest, as if he had been kicked by a mule. He slumped forward, with his pistol dangling by its trigger guard from his finger.
He felt another blow to his right knee, and even before he could react to it, he was hit in the left knee. He went down then, and looking up, saw Smoke standing over him, pointing a smoking gun at his head.
Smoke cocked his pistol, and Waco waited for the final blow that would end his life.
Smoke stood there for a long moment, then, with a sigh of disgust, put his pistol back in his holster.
“Finish me off,” Waco said. “Please, finish me off. Don't let me lie here like this.”
“Nah,” Smoke said. “I have a feelin' they're serving supper in hell about now. If I let you hang around here for a little longer, you'll be late for it. And I want you to miss it.”
Smoke started back toward the depot, and had taken no more than three or four steps when he saw Sally raising her rifle and shooting. Spinning around, he saw that Waco had sat up and raised his pistol, intending to shoot Smoke in the back. He was now clutching a bullet wound in his neck. He fell back, with his gun hand flopped out by his side.
Sally's quick action had saved Smoke's life.
By now the crowd, which had scattered when the shooting started, began to reappear.
“Did you see that?” someone asked. “I mean the way he switched that cup of coffee from one hand to the other. Damn, I ain't never seen nothing like that!”
“What you just seen was the two fastest gunmen there is, goin' after one another,” one of the others said.
Cal came up then, just as the train whistle announced its arrival.
“Are you all right?” Cal asked.
“Yes, thanks to Sally,” Smoke said, reaching out to put his arm around her and pull her closer to him. “How is Pearlie?”
“I don't know,” Cal answered. “About the same, I guess.”
“Did he react any to the shooting?” Sally asked.
“No, ma'am, he didn't,” Cal answered. “Smoke, is Pearlie going to die?”
“I don't know, Cal,” Smoke said. “I don't reckon it's in our hands. All we can do now is get him on the train and take him home.”
Carefully, very carefully, they loaded Pearlie onto the parlor car, laying him gently on a bed in one of the bedrooms. Then, with all passengers loaded, the engineer gave two short blasts on the whistle and the train pulled out of the station.
Smoke settled in his seat and looked out at the rather barren West Texas land they were passing through. It would be good to get home.
A
FTERWORD
N
OTES FROM THE
O
LD
W
EST
In the small town where I grew up, there were two movie theaters. The Pavilion was one of those old-timey movie palaces, built in the heyday of Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin—the silent era of the 1920s. By the 1950s, when I was a kid, the Pavilion was a little worn around the edges, but it was still the premier theater in town. They played all those big Technicolor biblical Cecil B. DeMille epics and corny MGM musicals. In Cinemascope, of course.
On the other side of town was the Gem, a somewhat shabby and run-down grind house with sticky floors and torn seats. Admission was a quarter. The Gem booked low-budget “B” pictures (remember the Bowery Boys?), war movies, horror flicks, and Westerns. I liked the Westerns best. I could usually be found every Saturday at the Gem, along with my best friend, Newton Trout, watching Westerns from 10
A.M.
until my father came looking for me around suppertime. (Sometimes Newton's dad was dispatched to come fetch us.) One time, my dad came to get me right in the middle of
Abilene Trail
, which featured the now-forgotten Whip Wilson. My father became so engrossed in the action, he sat down and watched the rest of it with us. We didn't get home until after dark, and my mother's meat loaf was a pan of gray ashes by the time we did. Though my father and I were both in the doghouse the next day, this remains one of my fondest childhood memories. There was Wild Bill Elliot, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, and Tim Holt, and, a little later, Rod Cameron and Audie Murphy. Of these newcomers, I never missed an Audie Murphy Western, because Audie was sort of an antihero. Sure, he stood for law and order and was an honest man, but sometimes he had to go around the law to uphold it. If he didn't play fair, it was only because he felt hamstrung by the laws of the land. Whatever it took to get the bad guys, Audie did it. There were no finer points of law, no splitting of legal hairs. It was instant justice, devoid of long-winded lawyers, bored or biased jurors, or black-robed, often corrupt judges.
Steal a man's horse and you were the guest of honor at a necktie party.
Molest a good woman and you got a bullet in the heart or a rope around the gullet. Or at the very least, you got the crap beat out of you. Rob a bank and you faced a hail of bullets or the hangman's noose.
Saved a lot of time and money, did frontier justice.
That's all gone now, I'm sad to say. Now you hear, “Oh, but he had a bad childhood” or, “His mother didn't give him enough love” or, “The homecoming queen wouldn't give him a second look and he has an inferiority complex.” Or, “cultural rage,” as the politically correct bright boys refer to it. How many times have you heard some self-important defense attorney moan, “The poor kids were only venting their hostilities toward an uncaring society?”
Mule fritters, I say. Nowadays, you can't even call a punk a punk anymore. But don't get me started.
It was “Howdy, ma'am” time, too. The good guys, antihero or not, were always respectful to the ladies. They might shoot a bad guy five seconds after tipping their hat to a woman, but the code of the West demanded you be respectful to a lady.
Lots of things have changed since the heyday of the Wild West, haven't they? Some for the good, some for the bad.
I didn't have any idea at the time that I would someday write about the Old West. I just knew that I was captivated by the Old West.
When I first got the itch to write, back in the early 1970s, I didn't write Westerns. I started by writing horror and action adventure novels. After more than two dozen novels, I began thinking about developing a Western character. From those initial musings came the novel
The Last Mountain Man: Smoke Jensen
. That was followed by
Preacher: The First Mountain Man
. A few years later, I began developing the Last Gunfighter series. Frank Morgan is a legend in his own time, the fastest gun west of the Mississippi. . . a title and a reputation he never wanted, but can't get rid of.
The Gunfighter series is set in the waning days of the Wild West. Frank Morgan is out of time and place, but still, he is pursued by men who want to earn a reputation as the man who killed the legendary gunfighter. All Frank wants to do is live in peace. But he knows in his heart that dream will always be just that: a dream, fog and smoke and mirrors, something elusive that will never really come to fruition. He will be forced to wander the West, alone, until one day his luck runs out.
For me, and for thousands—probably millions—of other people (although many will never publicly admit it), the old Wild West will always be a magic, mysterious place: a place we love to visit through the pages of books; characters we would like to know . . . from a safe distance; events we would love to take part in—again, from a safe distance. For the old West was not a place for the faint of heart. It was a hard, tough, physically demanding time. There were no police to call if one faced adversity. One faced trouble alone, and handled it alone. It was rugged individualism: something that appeals to many of us.
I am certain that is something that appeals to most readers of Westerns.
I still do on-site research (whenever possible) before starting a Western novel. I have wandered over much of the West, prowling what is left of ghost towns. Stand in the midst of ruins of these old towns, use a little bit of imagination, and one can conjure up life as it used to be in the Wild West. The rowdy Saturday nights, the tinkling of a piano in a saloon, the laughter of cowboys and miners letting off steam after a week of hard work. Use a little more imagination and one can envision two men standing in the street, facing one another, seconds before the hook and draw of a gunfight. A moment later, one is dead and the other rides away.
The old, wild, untamed West.
There are still some ghost towns to visit, but they are rapidly vanishing as time and the elements take their toll. If you want to see them, make plans to do so as soon as possible, for in a few years, they will all be gone.
And so will we.
Stand in what is left of the Big Thicket country of eastern Texas and try to imagine how in the world the pioneers managed to get through that wild tangle. I have wondered that many times and marveled at the courage of the men and women who slowly pushed westward, facing dangers that we can only imagine.
Let me touch briefly on a subject that is very close to me: firearms. There are some so-called historians who are now claiming that firearms played only a very insignificant part in the settlers' lives. They claim that only a few were armed. What utter, stupid nonsense! What do these so-called historians think the pioneers did for food? Do they think the early settlers rode down to the nearest supermarket and bought their meat? Or maybe they think the settlers chased down deer or buffalo on foot and beat the animals to death with a club. I have a news flash for you so-called historians: The settlers used guns to shoot their game.They used guns to defend hearth and home against Indians on the warpath. They used guns to protect themselves from outlaws. Guns are a part of Americana. And always will be.
The mountains of the West and the remains of the ghost towns that dot those areas are some of my favorite subjects to write about. I have done extensive research on the various mountain ranges of the West and go back whenever time permits. I sometimes stand surrounded by the towering mountains and wonder how in the world the pioneers ever made it through. As hard as I try and as often as I try, I simply cannot imagine the hardships those men and women endured over the hard months of their incredible journey. None of us can. It is said that on the Oregon Trail alone, there are at least two bodies in lonely, unmarked graves for every mile of that journey. Some students of the West say the number of dead is at least twice that. And nobody knows the exact number of wagons that impatiently started out alone and simply vanished on the way, along with their occupants, never to be seen or heard from again.
Just vanished.
The one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old ruts of the wagon wheels can still be seen in various places along the Oregon Trail. But if you plan to visit those places, do so quickly, for they are slowly disappearing. And when they are gone, they will be lost forever, except in the words of Western writers.
As long as I can peck away at a keyboard and find a company to publish my work, I will not let the Old West die. That I promise you.
The West will live on as long as there are writers willing to write about it, and publishers willing to publish it. Writing about the West is wide open, just like the old Wild West. Characters abound, as plentiful as the wide-open spaces, as colorful as a sunset on the Painted Desert, as restless as the ever-sighing winds. All one has to do is use a bit of imagination. Take a stroll through the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona; read the inscriptions. Then walk the main street of that once-infamous town around midnight and you might catch a glimpse of the ghosts that still wander the town. They really do. Just ask anyone who lives there. But don't be afraid of the apparitions; they won't hurt you. They're just out for a quiet stroll.
The West lives on. And as long as I am alive, it always will.

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