Rage of the Mountain Man (27 page)

In the middle of their fear-numbed debate, Smoke Jensen and three men took to their saddles again and rode off, bold as brass, taunting Phineas Lathrop to come to some solid decision. Deep in his heart, Lathrop had to admit to being as demoralized as his followers. He felt helpless, out of his element, and unable to direct the conditions of battle to his liking. He also knew Wade Tanner to be frontier-wise and capable.

Regretfully, he directed a turnabout and started away from the Sugarloaf. Once beyond the ridge, safely out of range and sight of the dead shots they had faced, Lathrop halted his mob. He directed his first remarks to them, in order to keep them from turning it into a total rout.

“We’re pulling back for the time being. There’s too many of them. I want Eamon Finnegan and two men to keep a watch on this approach. I wasn’t even aware of it, I’ll admit. Now we know, and we’ll find a way to take advantage of it. Now, Wade, I want you to take six men and go after Smoke Jensen. If he’s taken out of the action permanently, those gunmen he’s hired won’t have any reason to stay here and protect the ranch. Who’ll pay them?”

Wade Tanner produced a tight grin and a slight nod. Out here, he knew, men who had signed on to ride for the brand stood by it, many times even after the owner had been killed. Range wars had taught him that. Also that fighting to protect a man’s holdings, often won by long, hard battles against Indians, weather, and other land-hungry men, was a lot different from squabbles over defending this neighborhood or that back East.

Yet he found himself in the same situation. Wade Tanner had signed on to back Phineas Lathrop and his partners. Grudgingly he saw the necessity of his answer.

“Right away. Boss.” He named off those he wanted to accompany him and rode out.

After Tanner’s departure, Lathrop revealed his next stratagem to his uneasy men. “For the time being, I want you to break up into groups of eight or nine and go out and terrorize this whole countryside. We can draw Smoke Jensen out that way, get him where we can kill him. And . . . we have another advantage in such a tactic. With a little help from a friendly newspaper editor in Denver, the blame for your rampage will fall on Smoke Jensen.”

Over the next few days, the Sugarloaf knew relative peace. Not so the surrounding countryside. Smoke Jensen soon found himself busy protecting his neighbors from Phineas Lathrop’s predators. Since by the time news could be relayed to the Sugarloaf it would be too late, watching over the beleaguered ranchers of the northwestern corner of Colorado kept Smoke constantly in the saddle. Half a dozen of his hands rode his circuit counterclockwise to his schedule. It kept everyone busy trying to counteract the outrages directed by Phineas Lathrop. Like the situation Smoke Jensen had stumbled into only a minute ago some twenty-five miles west of the Sugarloaf.

Smoke had come upon trail sign of eight horses, each with a moderate burden, ridden fast toward the location of a ranch owned by Cyrus Hammer. Cyrus and Smoke had been friends for years. The portly, gray-haired Hammer had been in the High Lonesome nearly as long as Smoke. Now it looked like Cyrus Hammer had become the next target of Lathrop’s terror. Although saddle-weary, Smoke picked up Dandy’s pace.

He was still half a mile off when he heard the first flat reports of gunshots and saw the initial white puff of smoke rise. In these thick stands of resinous pines and firs, any fire could quickly get out of hand. Smoke eased Dandy into a rolling gallop.

Smoke burst into the clearing with a sixgun in each hand, his reins looped around the saddlehorn. Two hard cases had Cyrus’s foreman on the ground, savagely beating him. One of them looked up in time to die with the terrible knowledge that Smoke Jensen had found them. His partner soon joined him. Smoke pivoted from the hips and lined up his .45 Colt on yet another of the hoodlums.

Not surprising to Smoke, the New Yorker threw up his hands and ran. Smoke hastened him along with a bullet that clipped cloth from the shoulder of a linen duster. The other five outlaws had spread out behind any sort of cover they could find and exchanged shots with Cyrus Hammer and his wife. Smoke’s sudden arrival instantly disrupted their strategy.

Two of them made the mistake of turning to confront this threat. Smoke Jensen put a slug through the fleshy part of one man’s thigh. Howling, the former Boston longshoreman dropped his weight on his right knee and gamely tried to bring the .45 Colt into line with Smoke’s chest. He found the weapon unwieldy at the best of times. Yet he managed to get off a round that cut a path uncomfortably close to Smoke Jensen’s right side.

Smoke righted the situation with a shot that shattered the gunsel’s breastbone and showered his lungs with bone fragments. Dandy flashed past the dying man, guided by the knees of Smoke Jensen. Dandy’s broad chest smashed into the head and shoulders of the amateur gunman as Smoke rode him down.

A rifle roared in a shuttered window and another of the outlaws flopped face-first in the barnyard. Smoke Jensen turned his attention to the others, who remained out of the line of sight of Cyrus Hammer. It appeared that they had had all they wanted of this encounter. Dragging their wounded friends with them, they scurried for their horses, tied off to a corral post.

Smoke Jensen sped them on their way with a few close rounds to remind them of their desire to leave. Then he holstered his off-hand sixgun and set to reload the other Peacemaker. While he did, he reflected on what a fitting name the Colt people had come up with. Things were definitely a lot more peaceful around the Hammer ranch after the proper application of the big .45.

Cyrus Hammer came from the house as Smoke started to fill the chambers of his other revolver. “You got here just in time. Of all the things, those son of bitches set fire to the
outhouse
. A couple of my hands got it out before any more harm was done. Light a spell, Smoke Jensen, looks like you could use an hour or two’s rest and a good meal.”

“I’m obliged.”

“No, sir, it’s us who’s obliged. You know, Maw an’ me was positive it couldn’t be you attackin’ the ranches hereabout.”

“What are you talking about, Cyrus?”

“You ain’t read the Denver papers, Smoke?”

“Not lately. I’ve—ah—had my hands full.”

Cyrus chuckled at Smoke’s dry humor, then explained. “The paper’s been full of stories claimin’ that you’re behind these burnin’s and such. Says you want to take over every inch of ground for the Sugarloaf.” Cyrus paused and thought a moment. “Never can believe what they put in some of them papers.”

“I’m glad to have you on my side, Cyrus. I only hope there’s more with the good sense to see that. If not,” Smoke summed up, “I could be in for some real hard times.”

Over those past few days, Wade Tanner and his six men had been following Smoke Jensen by a distance of half a day. Try as he might, Tanner could not close the gap. At least, not until Smoke accepted the hospitality of the Hammers.

From the far side of the cleared meadow where the Hammer ranch headquarters had been established, Wade Tanner watched Smoke Jensen’s broad back blend in with the dark forest of pines. Quickly he sorted out what should be done.

“This ranch is on Mr. Lathrop’s list of those to be raided. Looks like Smoke Jensen runned off the boys that was supposed to do it. That was him, over on the far side.”

Tanner’s eyes narrowed. “I’m gonna fix his wagon this time for sure. Rucker, I want you to come with me. The rest of you boys, wait here until we come back. Then we’ll take care of this place, too.”

In order to avoid detection, Tanner and Rucker skirted around the ranch, screened by the trees. Back on the trail, they rode hard to make up for lost time. Even so, they blundered upon Smoke quite unexpectedly.

Late evening put Smoke Jensen in a solitary camp under a large rock overhang that provided shelter from the elements. Clouds had gathered during the afternoon and a light rain began to fall around 4:30. The storm backed up against the higher peaks of the Rockies and stalled out. Drizzle plagued Smoke as he continued on his rounds. At last, soaked to the skin, he had spied the cavelike rock formation and rode off the trace to inspect it.

He found it had been used for a shelter before. A stack of small, dry limbs rested against the back wall of the granite lean-to, and near it, a fire pit. Smoke removed the saddle and wiped down Dandy, then started a fire. When it blazed to his satisfaction, he stripped bare and arranged his sodden clothing to dry. Smoke stood on the back side of the fire, buck naked, to dry his body.

He had only begun to dress in clean, dry clothes when he heard the clop of approaching hooves and the low grumbling of two voices. Tense and suspicious, Smoke left off putting on a shirt and instead strapped on his cartridge belt. His use-worn weapons settled comfortably into place. Quickly he shielded the low blaze with a ground cloth. But his action had not come quickly enough.

“Wade! Up there!” a voice called out down the trail.

“Wha—?”

Silence followed. Slowly, Smoke Jensen regained his night vision. Although sundown remained a good hour off, heavy clouds had blackened the sky, making it seem like midnight. Smoke strained his hearing to detect the least sound from the darkness beyond his shelter. When it came, it bore with it almost fatal results for Smoke Jensen.

A darker shape on the trail directly below the overhang resolved itself into the form of a man. The figure had arms upraised as though holding a rifle. The moment he saw the yellow-orange muzzle bloom. Smoke dropped to the pine needle-strewn floor of the shelter. A slug cracked through the space formerly occupied by his chest and'shattered into a hundred fragments against the back wall.

Smoke Jensen immediately rolled to his right and unshucked his righthand .45 Colt. He sighted in on the unseen killer and waited. When another muzzle blast illuminated the shoulders and head of the assassin, Smoke triggered a round. A pain-filled wail choked off abruptly after the bullet had ripped through the side of the assailant’s throat. Sudden light flooded the platform on which he lay.

Already rolling away from his own muzzle bloom. Smoke Jensen continued to spin on the ground, eyes closed, until he reached the outer darkness. The dying man’s slug had cut the rope on one side of the shielding ground cloth and let free the brightness of Smoke’s fire. Stupid to have built it, he thought now, although he had been convinced he was alone on this mountainside.

“Smoke Jensen,” came a voice out of the down-trail darkness. “You ain’t goin’ anywhere from here, Jensen. You done kilt my partner. That was sneaky. But . . . you ain’t got a chance of gettin’ away. So why don’t you come out of there and face me like a man?”

Smoke reckoned he might be a little thick about some things, but he sure wasn’t stupid. Go out there? Without knowing how many waited for him? He wisely kept silent and cautiously eased himself downward, over the rain-wet pine needles. Again the voice taunted him.

“C’mon, Jensen. Be a man. I got it. I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll come up into the edge of that firelight. I know enough about you to know you’ll not shoot me if I don’t have an iron in my hands. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll leave my rifle behind, an’ come forward with my sixgun in leather. No tricks, I promise.”

Smoke held his silence while the seconds ticked off. Then,

slowly, he made out the figure of a big man, wearing a tall-crowned Montana Peak Stetson. When the stranger entered the reflected glow of Smoke’s fire, the seasoned gun-fighter saw his features more clearly.

An angular face with a large nose, rabbity teeth, and slicked-back black hair seemed to ripple from the effect of flickering flames. It made him look like a rodent. Thin whisps of mustache twitched in a ratlike manner. Dark eyes that could be ebony in color cut from side to side, measuring his surroundings.

“What say, Jensen? Ain’t you man enough to face me?” Tanner turned one way, then the next. “You tryin’ to sneak away in the dark? This storm’s gettin’ over with. I reckon I’ll have th’ best part of an hour to track you down if you rabbit on me.”

Cursing himself for a fool for allowing this bigmouth to goad him into showing himself, yet unwilling to gun down a man with empty hands, Smoke Jensen inched the last few feet down onto the trail, then came to his boots. When he walked into the light, it startled Wade Tanner, who jerked as though he had touched a hot stove.,

What Tanner saw was enough to shake any man. Scars. From the round, puckered pink spots of gunshot wounds to the thin white lines of knife slashes, stab wounds, and tomahawk gouges, Smoke Jensen’s bare torso was a terrain map of aged damage. Wade Tanner swallowed hard and lost the initiative of speaking first.

“What’s your name?” Smoke asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I sometimes like to know the names of the men I kill.”

That didn’t set well at all. “I—I’m Wade Tanner. And, I’m about to become the man who gunned down Smoke Jensen.”

“There’s a lot of others who have said the same thing. Only you can’t hear it from them anymore.”

Tanner raised his left hand, pointed to Smoke’s bare chest. “You’ve got pine needles on yer chest.”

Far too wise to fall for that stunt and glance down,

Smoke kept his eyes fixed on Tanner’s gunhand. “You want to open the dance?”

“
Goddamn, I do!
” Tanner’s voice cracked with tension and fear.

For all of the outlaw gang leader’s prowess, his squinty eyes widened in alarm and terrible comprehension when he saw the blur of movement made by Smoke Jensen. His righthand Smith American .44 had barely begun to move up and out of his holster when Smoke’s .45 Peacemaker slid clear of leather and leveled on Tanner’s middle. Tanner’s mouth formed an “oh” of surprise as fire and smoke spat from the nearly half-inch muzzle pointed at his gut.

An invisible fist smacked hotly into Wade Tanner’s middle. It doubled him over as he discharged his first round, still in the pocket, which ripped down his thigh and calf, a quarter-inch under the skin. Suddenly nerveless fingers released the heavy Smith & Wesson, which thudded to the ground.