Journey of the Mountain Man (13 page)

All was calm for several days. Smoke imagined that even in Dooley's half-crazed mind it had been a shock to lose so many gunslicks in the space of three minutes, and all that following the raid on Dooley's ranch. So much had happened in less than twenty-four hours that Dooley was being forced to think over very carefully whatever move he had planned next.

But all knew the war was nowhere near over. That this was quite probably the lull before the next bloody and violent storm.

“Dad Estes and his bunch just pulled in,” Cord told Smoke on the morning of the fourth day after the showdown in the saloon. “Hans sent word they came riding in late last night.”

“He'll be making a move soon then.”

“Smoke, do you realize that by my count, thirty-three men have been killed so far?”

“And about twenty wounded. Yes. I understand the undertaker is putting up a new building just to handle it all.”

“That is weighing on my mind. I've killed in my lifetime, Smoke. I've killed three white men in about twenty years, but they had stole from me and were shooting at me. I've hanged one rustler.” He paused.

“What are you trying to say, Cord?”

“We've got to end this. I'm getting where I can't sleep at night! That boy dying back yonder in the saloon got to me.”

“I'm certainly open to suggestions, Cord. Do you think it didn't bother me to write that boy's mother? I don't enjoy killing, Cord. I went for three years without ever pulling a gun in anger. I loved it. Then until I got Fae's letter, I hadn't even worn both guns. But you know as well as I do how this little war is going to be stopped.”

Cord leaned against the hitchrail and took off his hat, scratching his head. “We force the issue? Is that what you're saying?”

“Do you want peace, Cord?”

“More than anything. Perhaps we could ride over and talk to ... ?” He shook his head. “What am I saying? Time for that is over and past. All right, Smoke. All right. Let me hear your plan.”

“I don't have one. And it isn't as if I haven't been thinking hard on it. What happened to your sling?”

“I took it off. Damn thing worried me. No plan?”

“No. The ranch, this ranch, must be manned at all times. We agreed on that. If not, it'll end up like Fae's place. And if we keep meeting them like we did back in town, they're going to take us. We were awfully lucky back there, Cord.”

“I know. So ... ?”

“I'm blank. Empty. Except for hit and run night fighting. But we'll never get as lucky as we did the other night. Count on that. You can bet that Dooley has that place heavily guarded night and day.”

“Wait them out, then. I have the cash money to keep Gage and his boys on the payroll for a long time. But not enough to buy more gunslicks ... if I could find any we could trust, that is.”

“Doubtful. Must be half a hundred range wars going on out here, most of them little squabbles, but big enough to keep a lot of gunhawks working.”

“I've written the territorial governor, but no reply as yet.”

“I wouldn't count on one, either.” Smoke verbally tossed cold water on that. “He's fighting to make this territory a state; I doubt that he'd want a lot of publicity about a range war at this time.”

Cord nodded his agreement. “We'll wait a few more days; neither one of us is a hundred percent yet . . .” He paused as a rider came at a hard gallop from the west range.

The hand slid to a halt, out of the saddle and running to McCorkle. “Saddle me a horse!” he yelled to several punchers standing around the corral. “The boys is bringin' in Max, Mister Cord. Looks like Dooley done turned loose that back-shootin' Danny Rouge. Max took one in the back. He's still able to sit a saddle, but just barely. I'll ride into town and fetch Doc Adair.” He was gone in a bow-legged run toward the corral.

Cord's face had paled at the news of his oldest son being shot. “I'll have Alice get ready with hot water and bandages. She's a good nurse.” He ran up the steps to the house.

Smoke leaned against the hitchrail as his eyes picked up several riders coming in slow, one on either side helping to keep the middle rider in the saddle. Smoke knew, with this news, all of Cord's willingness to talk had gone right out the window. And if Max died . . .?

Smoke pushed away from the hitchrail and walked toward the bunkhouse. If Max died there would be open warfare; no more chance meetings between the factions involved. It would be bloody and cruel until one side killed off the other.

“Might as well get ready for it,” Smoke muttered.

 

 

“All we can do is wait,” Adair said. “I can't probe for the bullet 'cause I don't know where it is. It angled off from the entry point. It missed the kidney and there is no sign of excessive internal bleeding; so he's got a chance. But don't move him any more than you have to.”

Smoke and several others stood listening as Doc Adair spoke with Cord and Alice.

“His chances . . .?” Cord asked, his voice tired.

“Fifty-fifty.” Adair was blunt. “Maybe less than that. Don't get your hopes up too high, Cord. Have someone close by him around the clock. We'll know one way or the other in a few days.”

 

 

“Did you get him?” Dooley asked the rat-faced Danny Rouge.

“I got him.” Danny's voice was high-pitched, more like a woman's voice.

“Good!” Dooley took a long pull from his whiskey bottle, some of the booze dribbling down his unshaven chin. “One less of that bastard's whelps.”

He was still mumbling and scratching himself as Danny walked from the room and stepped outside. Dooley's sons were on the porch, sharing a bottle.

“Did he squall when you got him?” Sonny asked, his eyes bright from the cruelty within the young man.

“I 'magine he did,” Danny told him. “But I couldn't hear him; I was a good half mile away.” Danny stepped from the porch and walked toward the one bunkhouse that was still usable. With the coming in of Dad Estes and his bunch, tents had been thrown up all over the place, the ranch now resembling a guerrilla camp.

The other gunhawks avoided Danny. No one wanted anything to do with him, all feeling that there was something unclean about the young man, even though Danny was as fastidious as possible, considering the time and the place. He was considerate of his personal appearance, but his mind resembled anyone's concept of hell. Danny was a cold-blooded killer. He enjoyed killing, the killing act his substitute for a woman. He would kill anybody: man, woman, or child. It did not make one bit of difference to Danny. Just as long as the price was right.

He went to his bunk and carefully cleaned his rifle, returning it to the hard leather case. Then he stretched out on the bunk and closed his eyes. It had been a very pleasing day. He knew he'd gotten a good clean hit by the way the man had jerked and then slumped in the saddle, slowly tumbling to the ground, hitting the ground like a rag doll.

It was a good feeling knowing he had earned his pay. A day's work for a day's pay. Made a man feel needed. Yes, indeed.

 

 

At the Circle Double C, the men sat, mostly in small groups, and mostly in silence, cleaning weapons. The hands, not gunfighters, but just hard-working cowboys, were digging in warbags and taking out that extra holster and pistol, filling the loops of a spare bandoleer. They rode for the brand, and if a fight was what Dooley Hanks wanted, a fight would be what he would get.

The hands who had come over to Cord's side from the D-H did not have mixed feeling about it. They had been shoved aside in favor of gunhawks; they had seen Dooley and his ignorant sons go from bad to savage. There was not one ounce of loyalty left among them toward Dooley. They knew now that this was a fight to the finish. OK. Let's do it.

Just before dusk, Cord walked out to the bunkhouse, a grim expression on his face. “I sent Willie in for the doctor. Max is coughin' up blood. It don't look good. I can't stand to sit in here and look at my wife tryin' to be brave about the whole damn thing when I know that what she really wants to do is bust out bawlin'. And the same goes for me.”

Then he started cussing. He strung together some mighty hard words as he stomped around the big room, kicking at this and that; about every fourth and fifth word was Dooley Hanks. He traced the man's ancestry back to before Adam and Eve, directly linking Dooley to the snake in the Garden.

He finally sat down on a bunk and put his face in his hands. Smoke motioned the men outside and gently closed the door, leaving Cord with his grief and the right for a man to cry in private.

“It's gonna be Katy-bar-the-door if that boy dies,” Hardrock said. “We just think we've seen a little shootin' up to now.”

“I'm ready,” Del said. “I'm ready to get this damn thing over with and get back to punchin' cows.”

“It's gonna be a while fore any of us gets back to doin' that,” Les said, one of the men who had come from the D-H.

“And some of us won't,” Fitz spoke softly.

Someone had a bottle and that got passed around. Beans pulled out a sack of tobacco and that went the way of the bottle. The men drank and smoked in silence until the bottle was empty and the tobacco sack flat as a tortilla left out in the sun.

“Wonder how Dooley's ass is?” Gage asked, and the men chuckled softly.

“I hope it's healed,” Del said. “'Cause it's shore about to get kicked hard.”

The men all agreed on that.

Cord came out of the bunkhouse and walked to the house, passing the knot of men without speaking. His face bore the brunt of his inner grief.

Holman got up from his squat and said, “I think I'm gonna go write my momma a letter. She's gettin' on in years and I ain't wrote none in near'bouts a year.”

“That's a good idea,” Bernie said. “If I tell you what to put on paper to my momma, would you write it down for me?”

“Shore. Come on. I print passable well.”

They were happy-go-lucky young cowboys a few weeks ago, Smoke thought. Now they are writing their mothers with death on their minds.

That ghostly rider would be saddling up his fire-snorting stallion, Smoke mused. Ready for more lost souls.

“What are you thinking, amigo?” Lujan asked him.

Smoke told him.

“You are philosophical this evening. I had always heard that you were a man who possessed deep thoughts.”

Smoke grunted. “My daddy used to say that we came from Wales—years back. Jensen wasn't our real name. I don't know what it was. But Daddy used to say that the Celts were mysterious people. I don't know.”

“I know that there is the smell of death in the air,” the Mexican said. “Listen. No birds singing. Nothing seems to be moving.”

The primal call of a wolf cut the night air, its shivering howl touching them all.

“Folks cut them wolves down,” Del spoke out of the darkness. “And I've shot my share of them when they was after beeves. But I ain't got nothing really agin them. They're just doing what God intended them to do. They ain't like we're supposed to be. They can't think like nothin except what they is. And you can't fault them for that. Take a human person now, that's a different story. Dooley and them others, and I know that Dooley's done lost his mind, but I think his greed brung that on. His jealousy and so forth. But them gunning over yonder. They coulda been anything but what they is. They turned to the outlaw trail ‘cause they wanted to. What am I tryin' to say anyways?”

Silver Jim stood up and stretched. “It means we can go in smokin' and not have no guilty conscience when we leave them bassards dead where we find them.”

Lujan smiled. “Not as eloquently put as might have been, but it certainly summed it up well.”

Cord stepped out on the porch just as Doc Adair's buggy pulled up. The men could hear his words plain. “Max just died.”

Max McCorkle, the oldest son of Cord and Alice, and brother to Rock, Troy, and Sandi, was buried the next day. He was twenty-five years old. He was buried in the cemetery on the ridge overlooking the ranch house. Half a dozen crosses were in the cemetery, crosses of men who had worked for the Circle Double C and who had died while in the employment of the spread.

Sandi stood leaning against Beans, softly weeping. Del stood with Fae. Ring stood with Hilda and Hans and Olga. Gage with Liz. Cord stood stony-faced with his wife, a black veil over her face. Parnell stood with Smoke and the other hands and gunfighters. And Smoke had noticed something: the schoolteacher had strapped on a gun.

The final words were spoken over Max, and the family left while the hands shoveled the dirt over the young man's final resting place on this earth.

Parnell walked up to Smoke. “I would like for you to teach me the nomenclature of this weapon and the proper way to fire it.”

A small smile touched Smoke's lips, so faint he doubted Parnell even noticed it. “You plannin' on ridin' with us, Cousin?”

The man shook his head. “Regretfully, no. I am not that good a horseman. I would only be in the way. But someone needs to be here at the ranch with the women. I can serve in that manner.”

Smoke stuck out his hand and the schoolteacher, with a surprised look on his face, took it. “Glad to have you with us, Parnell.”

“Pleased to be here, Cousin.”

“We'll start later on this afternoon. Right now, let's wander on down to the house. Mrs. McCorkle and the others have been cookin' all morning. Big crowd here. I 'spect the neighbors will be visitin' and such all afternoon.”

“Funerals are barbaric. Nothing more than a throwback to primitive and pagan rites.”

“Is that right?

“Yes. And dreadfully hard on the family.”

Weddings and funerals were social events in the West, often drawing crowds from fifty to seventy-five miles away. It was a chance to catch up on the latest gossip, eat a lot of good food—everybody brought a covered dish—and see old friends. “We got the same thing goin' on up on the Missouri,” Smoke heard one man tell Cord. “Damn nesters are tryin' to grab our land. Some of the ranchers have brung in some gunfighters. I don't hold with that myself, but it may come to it. I writ the territorial governor, but he ain't seen fit to reply as yet. Probably never even got the letter.”

Smoke moved around the lower part of the ranch house and listened. Few knew who he was, and that was just fine with him.

“Maybe we could get Dooley put in the crazy house,” a man suggested. “He's sure enough nuts. All we got to do is find someone to sign the papers.”

“No,” another said. “There's one more thing: findin' someone stupid enough to serve the papers when Dooley's got hisself surrounded by fifty or sixty gunslicks.”

“I wish I could help Cord out, but I'm shorthanded as it is. The damn Army ought to come in. That's what I think.”

Smoke heard the words “vigilante” and “regulators” several times. But they were not spoken with very much enthusiasm.

Smoke ate, but with little appetite. Cord was holding up well, but his two remaining sons, Rock and Troy, were geared up for trouble, and unless he could head them off, they would be riding into disaster. He moved to the boys' side, where they stood backed up against a wall, keeping as far away from the crowd as possible.

“You boys best just snuff out your powder fuse,” Smoke told them. “Dooley and his bunch will get their due, but for right now, think about your mother. She's got enough grief on her shoulders without you two adding to it. Just settle down.”

The boys didn't like it, but Smoke could tell by the looks on their faces his words about their mother had hit home. He felt they would check-rein their emotions for a time. For how long was another matter.

Having never liked the feel of large crowds, Smoke stayed a reasonable time, paid his respects to Cord and Alice, and took his leave, walking back to the bunkhouse to join the other hands.

“When do we ride?” Fitz asked as soon as Smoke had walked in.

“Don't know. Just get that burr out from under your blanket and settle down. You can bet that Dooley is ready and waiting for us right this minute. Let's don't go riding into a trap. We'll wait a few days and let the pot cool its boil. Then we'll come up with something.”

Fine words, but Smoke didn't have any plan at all.

 

 

They all worked cattle for a few days, riding loose but ready. In the afternoons, Smoke spent several hours each day with Parnell and his pistol. Parnell was very fast, but he couldn't hit anything but air. On the third day, Smoke concluded that the man never would be able to hit the side of a barn, even if he was standing inside the barn. Since they had plenty of rifles, Smoke decided to try the man with a Winchester. To his surprise, Parnell turned out to be a good shot with a carbine.

“You can tote that pistol around if you want to, Parnell,” Smoke told him. “But you just remember this: out here, if a man straps on a gun, he best be ready and able to use it. Don't go off the ranch grounds packing a short gun, 'cause somebody's damn sure going to call your hand with it. Stick with the rifle. You're a pretty good shot with it. We got plenty of rifles, so keep half a dozen of them loaded up full at all times.”

“I need to go in and get some books and papers from the school.”

“I wouldn't advise it, Cousin. You'd just be askin' for trouble. Tell me what you need, and I'll fetch it for you.”

“Perhaps,” the schoolteacher said mysteriously, and walked away.

Smoke had a feeling that, despite his words, the man was going into town anyway. He'd have to keep an eye on him. He knew Parnell was feeding on his newly found oats, so to speak, and felt he didn't need a baby-sitter. But Smoke had a hunch that Parnell really didn't know or understand the caliber of men who might jump him, prod him into doing something that would end up getting the schoolteacher hurt, or dead.

Smoke spread the word among the men to keep an eye on Parnell.

“Seems to me that Rita's been lookin' all wall-eyed at him the last couple of days,” Pistol said. “Shore is a bunch of spoonin' goin' on around here. Makes a man plumb nervous.”

“Wal, you can re-lax, Pistol,” Hardrock told him. “No woman in her right mind would throw her loop for the likes of you. You too damn old and too damn ugly.”

“Huh!” the old gunfighter grunted. “You a fine one to be talkin'. You could hire that face of yours out to scare little children.”

Smoke left the two old friends insulting each other and walked to the house to speak with Cord sitting on the front porch, drinking coffee.

Cord waved him up and Smoke took a seat.

“I'm surprised Dooley hasn't made a move,” the rancher said. “But the men say the range has been clear. Maybe he's counting on that Danny Rouge to pick us off one at a time.”

“I doubt that Dooley even knows what's in his mind,” Smoke replied. “I've been thinking, Cord. If we could get a judge to him, the judge would declare him insane and stick him in an institution.”

“Umm. Might be worth a shot. I can send a rider up to Helena with a letter. I know Judge Ford. Damn! Why didn't I think of that?”

“Maybe he'd like to come down for a visit?” Smoke suggested. “Has he been here before?”

“Several times. Good idea. I'll spell it all out in a letter and get a man riding within the hour. I'll ask him if he can bring a deputy U.S. marshal down with him.”

“We just might be able to end this mess,” Smoke said, a hopeful note in his voice. “With Dooley out of the picture, Liz could take over the running of the ranch, with Gage to help her, and she could fire the gunslicks.”

“It sounds so simple.”

“All we can do is try. Have you seen Parnell and Rita?”

“Yeah. They went for a walk. Can't get used to the idea of that schoolteacher packin' iron. It looks funny.”

“I warned him about totin' that gun in town.”

“And I told Rita not to go into town. However, since I'm not her father, it probably went in one ear and out the other. Dooley and me told those girls fifteen years ago not to see one another. Did a hell of a lot of good, didn't it? Both those girls are stubborn as mules. Did Parnell get his back up when you warned him?”

“I . . . think perhaps he did. I tell you, Cord, he can get that six-shooter out of leather damn quick. He just can't hit anything with it.”

The men chatted for a time, then Smoke left the rancher composing the letter he was sending to Judge Ford. The rider would leave that afternoon. Smoke saddled up and rode out to check on Fae's cattle. As soon as he pulled out, Parnell and Rita left in the buggy, heading for town.

 

 

“I shan't be a moment, Rita,” Parnell said as they neared Gibson. “I only need to gather up a few articles from the school.”

Rita put a hand on Parnell's leg and almost curled his toenails. “Take as long as you like. I'll be waiting for you . . . darling.”

Parnell's collar suddenly became very tight.

He gathered up his articles from the school and hurried back to the buggy.

“Would you mind terribly taking me over to Mrs. Jefferson's house, Parnell? I have a dress over there I need to pick up.”

“Not at all . . . darling.”

Rita giggled and Parnell blushed. He clucked the horse into movement and they went chatting up the main street of Gibson. They did not go unnoticed by a group of D-H gunslicks loafing in front of the Hangout, the busted window now boarded up awaiting the next shipment of glass.

“Yonder goes Miss Sweety-Baby and Sissy-Pants,” Golden said, sucking on a toothpick.

“Let's us have some fun when they come back through,” Eddie Hart said with a wicked grin.

“What'd you have in mind?”

“We'll drag Sissy-Britches out of that there buggy and strip him nekkid right in the middle of the street; right in front of Pretty-Baby.”

They all thought that would be loads of fun.

Golden looked at an old rummy sitting on the steps, mumbling to himself. “What the hell are you mumbling about, old man?”

“I knowed I seed that schoolteacher afore. Now it comes to me.”

“What are you talkin' about, you old rum-dum?”

“‘Bout fifteen year ago, I reckon it was. Back when Reno was just a sandy collection of saloons and hurdy-gurdy parlors. They was a humdinger of a shootin' one afternoon. This kid come riding in and some hombres decided they'd have some fun with him. In ‘bout the time hit'd take you to blink your eyes four times, they was four men in the street, dead or dyin'. The kid was snake quick and on the mark. He disappeared shortly after that.” The old man pointed toward the dust trail of the buggy. “That there, boys, is the Reno Kid!”