Absaroka Ambush

19

“We’re short one hand,” Jud reported to Clint. “He should have been in a long time ago. And that ain’t all. Fatso rode out to the boys’ camp this afternoon to see if they needed anything, what with them hidin’ out after the jailbreak. The camp was deserted, except for Morris’s dead body.”

Clint came out of the chair. “What?”

“That’s right. He was shot right through the heart.” He held out the brass. “Forty-four-forty at close range. Didn’t none of those boys carry a forty-four-forty.”

“Jensen?”

“Has to be. Camp wasn’t churned up with boot prints. Just the prints of the boys and one set of moccasin tracks. And one hell of a big man wearin’ ’em.”

“He is actually on my range, attacking my people?” That anyone would be so bold as to openly declare war on Clint Black was astonishing to the man. “Well…I won’t have that. I will not tolerate it.”

“Boss, don’t order the boys out at night. That’s what Jensen wants.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’ll attack the house if you pull the men away.”

“One man will attack this house? Jud, you’re turning into an old woman. Jensen isn’t a fool. He’s just stupid. He’s up in the high country. Miles from here.”

Actually, Smoke was standing by the front porch, listening to every word. Since Clint hated dogs, and shot everyone he saw, there were no dogs around to sound the warning. The corral was too far away for the horses to act as sentries. Smoke had been busy around the Circle 45 headquarters, having more fun than a half a dozen schoolboys. And more fun should start at any moment.

A scream came from one of the outhouses behind the bunkhouse. Smoke smiled, thinking: let the fun begin.

“What the hell’s the matter over there?” Jud hollered.

“They’s a goddamn rattlesnake in the shifter!” a hand bellered.

“Well, shoot the damn thing,” Jud yelled. “Jesus! Act like a bunch of women sometimes.”

Jud stalked off the porch and stepped on a rake that had just been placed on the path, placed in a manner that was tantamount to sabotage.

The handle flew up and smacked the foreman right in the face, almost knocking him down. Clint ran off the porch to see about his friend and foreman. “You all right, Jud? Jesus, your nose is busted. Come on back to the porch. I’ll get a wet cloth.” He started hollering for the cook.

Smoke ran around to the back of the house where he had placed a jug of kerosene he’d swiped from Clint’s storeroom. He poured the kerosene all over the back porch and waited until it soaked into the dry boards.

A Circle 45 hand started hollering for someone to let him out of the outhouse, the door was jammed. It sure was. Just as soon as the hand had stepped inside and closed the door, Smoke had wedged a stick in tight.

Before leaving the house, Smoke had found a long string of old firecrackers someone had left behind. He had taken them along. He lit a match, started the porch burning from underneath and slipped to the bunkhouse. He lit the fuse to the firecrackers and tossed them through an open window. Then he decided he’d better get the hell gone from that immediate area.

“Let me out of this damn crapper!” the hired gun hollered.

“Fire!” another yelled.

The fuse burned down to the firecrackers and pandemonium took over as what appeared to be an attack on the bunkhouse opened up. The hand trapped in the outhouse was rocking the entire structure back and forth in his frantic attempts to get out. He turned it over. Backwards.

The hands in the bunkhouse began shooting all over the place at imaginary foes.

When the other hands reached the water barrels, they were all empty. Smoke had cut holes in them with his knife. Everybody began using blankets and coats and brooms to beat out the fire which by now was threatening the wooden part of the house.

Smoke was still laughing when he reached his well-chosen and hidden little camp.

“The sorry son actually was here!” Clint exclaimed. Come the dawning, he had looked at the few firecrackers that had not exploded in the bunkhouse, and at the bullet holes caused by nervous hired guns. Stared at the wedge in the door of the outhouse—the hand had finally succeeded in kicking out the bottom of the crapper. Clint had found the jug of kerosene, and looked at the cause of the water barrels being empty. “He violated my property, almost burned down my house, and sabotaged the water barrels. I can’t believe it.”

“It’s almost like he was playin’ a joke,” Fatso Ross said. “Like he was havin’ fun with us.” Fatso looked at Jud’s swollen face where the rake handle had popped him. “But I don’t ’magine it was much of a joke, right, Jud?”

“I get that bastard in gunsights, the joke’ll be on him,” the foreman said.

For once it was Clint who had the level head. “We don’t strike at the Double D. Not yet. We don’t cause any trouble in town. Not yet. I want five men around the house at all times, the rest of you fan out, during the daylight hours only, and start searching my spread. Ride in pairs. No lone-wolfing it. The man is too dangerous for that. Take off. The offer still stands: five thousand dollars to the man who kills Smoke Jensen.”

Smoke had risen before dawn and rode back to Double D range. He stripped the saddle from his horse and hid it, then wrote a short note to Sally, tying it in the mane. He slapped the horse on the rump, knowing it would head straight for the corral. He took his sack of food and his other gear, including the ropes, and headed back to his little camp, deep in Circle 45 territory.

Longman and Steve Tucker were riding together. Wyoming could not have produced any sorrier pair than these two. Both were wanted in at least five states and two territories. And both of them were thinking about that five thousand dollar bounty that Clint had placed on the head of Smoke Jensen. And they were not watching their backtrail.

Two seconds after they had passed along the narrow trail, Smoke stepped out and fireballed a fist-sized rock, then ducked back into the brush and slipped up the side of the trail. The stone hit Longman on the back of the head and knocked him slap out of the saddle and unconscious on the rocky ground. If he had not been wearing a hat, the blow might have killed him, which was what Smoke had in mind.

“What the hell…?” Steve said, turning in the saddle at the sound of his buddy hitting the ground. There had been no shot and the rock lay among other stones on the trail. Steve couldn’t figure out what had happened. He swung down from the saddle and knelt by his friend. Steve felt a blinding flash of pain and then he was stretched out beside his friend.

Smoke peeled them both down to their long-handles and took their clothing, boots, guns, and horses. They were a good ten miles from the bunkhouse and barefooted. It was going to be a long and painful hike back. Smoke threw the clothing away several miles from the still-unconscious men and unsaddled the horses, turning them loose.

He slipped back into the timber and brush.

The men of the Circle 45 hunted all that day for Smoke. The more fortunate of the hunters could not find a trace of him. Longman and Tucker staggered into the bunkhouse late that afternoon, their feet badly bruised and bleeding. Longman was seeing double and very nearly unable to speak. Bankston, Nelson, and Clements had not shown up by late afternoon.

“You better find them men ’fore dark,” Bronco Ford told Clint. The gunman was not afraid of Smoke, but he did have a lot of respect for him. “You send search parties out after dark and none of ’em will come back. Smoke Jensen’s like a puma in the woods.”

“If I want your opinion,” Clint told the man, “I’ll ask for it.”

Bronco shrugged his shoulders and walked off.

Bankston had become separated from his riding partner and was now tied to a tree, his own rope wound around him from ankles to neck and pulled tight. He was to spend a very uncomfortable night. Nelson and Clements were tied in the saddle, their hands behind their back, their horses wandering in a roundabout way back to the ranch. Smoke had gagged the men before tying them.

“There they are!” Grub Carson shouted, as the horses came ambling into the area. The gunslicks were untied and lowered to the ground. Neither man could feel anything in his hands.

The gags out of their mouths, Nelson croaked, “Man’s like a damn ghost. He come out of nowhere. There wasn’t no brush where we was. No place for him to hide. He’s worser than a damn Apache.”

“Nelson’s right about that,” Clements said. “Jensen was a-layin’ right on the ground, right there in full open. And we didn’t see him. You boys be careful. We’re dealin’ with an Injun here.”

Clint was outwardly calm. Inside he was seething. He managed to ask, “Either of you men see Bankston?”

“No, sir,” Nelson said. “But we seen his horse grazin’, saddle and bridle was gone.”

Clint turned to walk back to his house and his hat was blown off his head by a .44-40 slug. The man hit the ground belly down and got a mouth full of dirt.

Smoke had carried five Winchester .44 rifles to his position on a ridge near the big house—rifles taken from Circle 45 hands. They were loaded up full, giving him awesome firepower before he had to think about reloading. He laid down his .44-40 and picked up one of the .44s and began spraying the area below him with lead. He sent Circle 45 hands and hired gunslicks scrambling in all directions in the fading light of early evening. Smoke put ninety-five rounds of .44s into the house, the bunkhouses, and the outhouses before it was all over.

He put lead so close to sprawled Circle 45 men they could feel the heat of the bullets. He could have killed a dozen men that day, but chose not to kill or really injure anyone. But he made life miserable for those below the ridge.

He knocked out windows in the house and the bunkhouse. He perforated doors and stove pipes and punched holes in the roofs of buildings. His bullets smashed water buckets and the fancy chandelier that hung in the dining room of Clint Black’s big house. The lead from his rifles clanged into cook pots, off of the stove, and into the outbuildings of the Circle 45. He poured lead into the gate posts of the corral and knocked the gate loose, stampeding the horses. Several of the panicked horses ran over men sprawled in the dirt, putting them out of action for days.

When darkness covered the land, Smoke left the empty rifles on the ridge and in a distance-covering run, vanished into the night. Clint Black rose wearily from the ground and walked to his house. He sank down to the steps and sat there, looking at the hole in his expensive hat.

A gunfighter called L. J. McBride picked himself up from the floor of the bunkhouse and began gathering his possibles, stuffing them into a bag.

“You leavin’?” another gunny asked.

“You better believe it,” L. J. said. “I read Jensen’s message loud and clear.”

“What message?” Cleon asked.

“Man, he could have killed twelve or fifteen men from up there on that ridge. But he didn’t. He tellin’ us if we wanna live, we better fly. I’m flyin’.”

“You just hold on and I’ll ride with you,” another hired gun said. “Smoke Jensen is a one-man war party. And this is one party that I’m skippin’.”

“You gonna turn your backs on that five thousand dollars?”

“Five thousand won’t help you if you’re in a grave, partner. I ain’t never seen no armored bank wagon followin’ a hearse.”

Sheriff Harris Black and one of his deputies made the Double D in time for breakfast the next morning…just the way they’d planned it.

Over coffee, Harris said, “Talked to three gunnies last night. They stopped in town for a drink before riding on. Seems that some unknown rifleman’s been doing all sorts of mischief out at the Circle 45.” The sheriff had to smile. Then the smile changed to a chuckle. “Seems this feller burned down the back porch, tossed firecrackers into the bunkhouse, shot up some outhouses, and in general made life pretty mean for my brother and his hired guns. Is your husband around, Mrs. Jensen?”

“Why, no, Sheriff. He isn’t. He’s off on a business trip.”

“Looks like it’s a successful one,” Harris replied. “Ammunition factories are going to be operating around the clock if this keeps up.”

“Supply and demand, Sheriff,” Sally said with a smile. “That’s what keeps the economy strong.”

Just as she was saying that, a horrified Bankston, still tied to the tree, watched as a passing parade of skunks paused a few feet from him, turned their backs to him, and lifted their tails.

“Oh, no!” the hired gun said, just as the skunks fired.