Ambush of the Mountain Man

TWELVE

After Angus straightened him out on the real reason he was sending him to Big Rock, Cletus, picked ten of the toughest, meanest men they had working for them on the ranch. More than a few of them had once ridden the owlhoot trail and knew their ways around firearms. A couple had even spent time in the territorial prison for murder and mayhem.

As the gang of men sat on their horses in front of his house, Angus addressed them from the front porch. “Each of you men will receive a healthy bonus for this work. In fact, I’ll pay you two months’ wages for what should only be a couple of weeks of easy work.”

Jason Biggs, one of the men who’d done time in prison and had no compunctions about killing, called out, “What if this man Jensen should give us some trouble or try to escape?” He grinned, revealing brown cigarette-stained teeth. “You want us to shoot him if’n that happens?”

Angus stared at Biggs through flat, hard eyes, noting that unlike most cowhands, Biggs wore his six-shooter down low on his hip. Angus shook his head. Back in the old days, punks like this would’ve been run out of town on a rail by the citizens. “Should any of you take it upon himself to kill this man and deprive me of the pleasure of getting my hands on him, I will personally see that you experience what one of our bulls does when it is gelded. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Biggs?”

“But what if—”

“No buts, Biggs,” Angus interrupted. “There are eleven of you and you’re meeting up with three more, including my daughter, Sarah. That should be more than enough to keep Mr. Jensen under control.” He shook his head. “And if it’s not, then God help you when I get through with you.”

Biggs clamped his jaws shut and busied himself with building a cigarette.

Later, on the trail, Biggs rode up next to Cletus, who was leading the group of men.

“Clete,” Biggs said.

“Yeah?”

“Did the boss tell you anything about this Jensen feller ’fore he told you to go down to Big Rock and pick him up?”

Cletus shook his head, not looking at Biggs directly. He didn’t like the man and never had. If it weren’t so hard to find hands to stay at work through the brutal winters of Pueblo, then he’d never have been hired. “No, Jason, he didn’t.” Now he turned and glanced at the man riding next to him. “Why? Do you know something?”

Biggs nodded. “Yeah, I heard of this Smoke Jensen when I was in the territorial prison a while back.”

Cletus continued to stare at Biggs, wondering just what the man had on his mind. Cletus didn’t trust Biggs and never had, but surprisingly, he’d been a steady worker, even if he did tend to get into fights with the other hands. Luckily for him, he’d never gone so far as to pull his weapon, or he would’ve found out just how hard a boss Cletus could be.

“What’d you hear, Jason?” Cletus asked. He was curious about the man who’d shot Johnny. He’d heard the usual, that Jensen was pretty famous with a gun and that he’d once had some posters out on him, but that was about all he knew. He didn’t get to town to listen to local gossip too often, being much too busy trying to keep the ranch going.

Biggs let his reins drop while he used both hands to build himself a cigarette. Once he’d gotten it going, he screwed it in the corner of his mouth and let it dangle there while he talked. “Well, first off, I heard he’s rattlesnake-quick with a short gun.”

Cletus shrugged. “That don’t surprise me none, since he somehow managed to shoot down Johnny and some of his friends, an’ Johnny was no slouch with a handgun either.” Smelling the smoke coming from Biggs made him want a cigarette too, so he commenced to make himself one. “Besides, there’s plenty of men who’re quick with a gun out here, Jason. This territory just seems to be a magnet for men who think they can make a living off their six-shooters.”

Jason smirked, realizing this was directed against him, since he’d been one of those men until he’d gotten caught and sent to prison. He continued. “I also heard he’s mean as a two-peckered Billy goat if you cross him or any of his friends.” He inhaled and let smoke drift from his nostrils. “I shared a cell with a man who’d tried to brace Jensen once in a saloon.”

Cletus laughed sourly. “If this Jensen is so fast and so mean as you say, how come the man braced him and lived to tell about it?”

Biggs smiled back. “’Cause Jensen didn’t need to kill him. When my mate went for his gun, Jensen used his fists instead. He beat this guy so bad, he’s gonna be eating through a straw for the rest of his life. He not only knocked all of his teeth out, he broke his jaw so bad his gums don’t even come together right.” Biggs laughed. “Poor sumbitch is skinny as a rail, and he used to weigh over two hundred pounds, an’ he has this kind’a funny whistle when he tries to talk.”

Cletus eyed Biggs. He’d never before seen Biggs give anyone the least amount of respect. “You sound like you’re halfway a’feared of this man, Jason.”

Biggs’s face flushed scarlet and he sat up straighter in his saddle, trying to look tough. “I ain’t a’scared of no man, Clete!”

Cletus wasn’t fooled. He could see it in the man’s eyes, lurking deep in them, like a sore that won’t heal. “Well, then, why’re you tellin’ me all this? We’re being well paid to take this little trip.”

Biggs cleared his throat. “A couple of months’ pay ain’t so much when you’re dealin’ with a man like Jensen,” he said, rubbing his chin with his hand.

“Well, like the boss says, fourteen of us ought’a be able to handle one man, Jason,” Cletus said, trying to keep the scorn out of his voice. “But if you’re so worried, then maybe you ought’a turn your mount around and head on back to the ranch where it’s safe.”

Biggs snorted through his nose. “Thirteen men, Clete, and the boss’s little bitch, who looks plenty good to play in the hayloft with, but who ain’t near as tough as the old man seems to think.”

Before Biggs could blink, Cletus backhanded him with a fist the size of a ham, knocking him backward off his horse to land sprawling in the dirt.

When Biggs jumped to his feet and grabbed for his gun, he found himself looking down the barrel of Cletus’s big Walker Colt. Cletus wasn’t known as a fast draw, but he’d been handling men like Biggs for more years than he cared to think about, and he knew most of them were cowards when they didn’t have an edge.

“You shouldn’t ought’a talk about Miss Sarah like that, Biggs,” Cletus said, his voice soft but all traces of friendliness gone from his manner. “I don’t much like it, an’ I hate to think of what the boss would do if’n he happened to hear about it.”

Biggs relaxed and let his hand move away from his pistol. He tried a grin, but there was little humor in it and his eyes blazed with hate and humiliation. He wiped the blood off his lip with the back of his hand. “Aw, I was just funnin’ with you, Clete. I know you got a soft spot for the girl. I didn’t mean nothin’ by what I said.”

“It ain’t that way, Biggs. I knowed her since she was born, so watch you mouth when you’re around me, you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” Biggs said, throwing an insolent half-salute.

“I mean it, Jason,” Cletus added, “or your friend from jail won’t be the only one eating his meals through a straw.”

“Is it all right if I get back on my hoss?” Biggs asked, his face flaming scarlet.

Cletus holstered his gun and leaned over in the saddle until his face was close to Biggs’s. “Sure. Just don’t go getting any ideas about putting a lead pill in my back, Biggs, ‘cause I’m gonna tell the other men if that happens to string you up to the nearest tree. You get my drift?”

“Come on, Clete,” Biggs said with a sickly smile as he climbed into the saddle. “You know we’ve always been friends, even if I do let my mouth override my ass ever’ once in a while.”

Cletus smiled back, his face equally devoid of humor. “No harm then, long as you keep your thoughts about Miss Sarah to yourself.”

He jerked his horse’s head around and proceeded on up the trail, whistling softly to himself while the other members of the group looked from him to Biggs, unsure of how to take this altercation.

Behind him, Biggs rode along, keeping his face bland, but his teeth were so tightly clenched together it made his jaws creak. If Cletus could have read his mind, he would not have been so cavalier about turning his back on the ex-prisoner and murderer.

Just outside the city limits of Big Rock, on the trail to Pueblo and points north, Carl Jacoby and Daniel Macklin were having some trouble. The late fall temperatures had begun to drop, and there was even the smell of snow in the air, though it was early in the year for that.

They’d stopped at the general store and bought provisions for their camp , while Sarah pretended not to know them as she waited on them with Peg Jackson working nearby. Along with foodstuffs, they’d bought a couple of small one-man tents that would keep the worst of the weather off them, though the thin oilcloth of the tents’ walls would do little to keep them warm in the dropping temperatures.

Working as ranch hands and cowboys for many years, they were both experienced in camping out under the stars, but neither particularly enjoyed it, having become accustomed to the niceties of bunkhouse living over the past few years working for Angus MacDougal.

They’d also become quite accustomed to having a camp cook make their meals for them, so neither was particularly looking forward to doing their own cooking.

Jacoby gathered some hat-sized stones and made a small circle in the middle of their camp, which they’d placed on a hill overlooking the trail a quarter of a mile below them. There were some maple and oak trees in a small copse nearby that would help keep the worst of the wind off them, but it was clear that it was going to be a cold night nevertheless.

Macklin dumped an armful of deadwood he’d picked up under the trees into the campfire area, and squatted next to the stones as Jacoby put a match to some moss and dry leaves to get it going. He reached into his pocket and took out his makin’s, and proceeded to build himself a cigarette as he waited for the coffeepot on the edge of the fire to begin to boil.

“How long you reckon ‘fore the men from the ranch get here?” he asked.

Jacoby shrugged. “Who knows? If’n they left the same day Angus sent the wire, they could be here as early as tomorrow mornin’, but that’s unlikely. They’d have to get provisioned up and all, so I don’t really ‘spect them for another couple of days.”

Macklin shivered as a cold wind blew up inside his jacket, and he reached for the coffeepot, which was beginning to put out some steam. “Damn,” he said as he poured them both mugs of dark, strong coffee. “That means we’re gonna sit out here freezin’ our balls off for two or three more days.”

Jacoby blew on his coffee to cool it. He glanced up at lowering, dark clouds overhead that were scurrying across the sky under heavy winds. “That’s about the size of it.”

Macklin shook his head, letting cigarette smoke trail from his nostrils. “I should’a taken my chances with Jensen and drawn down on him when I had the chance.”

Jacoby smiled over the rim of his mug. “Then you wouldn’t be out here freezing your balls off, Mac. You’d be planted forked-end-up in boot hill being food for the worms.”

“Hell, maybe not. Maybe I could’ve taken him,” Macklin argued, though it was clear from the way his face paled at the thought of bracing Jensen that he didn’t believe a word of it.

“Yeah,” Jacoby snorted, “an’ maybe pigs can fly too.”

Macklin took the cigarette out of his mouth and stared into the red-hot end for a moment. “Carl, why do you think a man like Jensen would trouble himself with a nobody like Johnny MacDougal?” He cut his eyes at Jacoby as he stuck the butt back into his mouth. “Hell, it ain’t like he was gonna get more famous for killin’ him.”

Jacoby sipped his coffee, turning it over in his mind. “You ever think maybe Jensen didn’t have no choice in the matter, Mac, that just maybe Johnny pushed the man too far and had to pay the price for it?”

“Whatta you mean?”

“Just that the men with Jensen claimed they acted in self-defense, that Johnny got pissed when one of Jensen’s party beat the shit out of him, and that he drew down and fired on them first without givin’ them no warning.”

Macklin pursed his lips as he thought about this. “I can see it happenin’, if Johnny had a snootful of liquor an’ was actin’ the big man like he usually did when he was drunk an’ showing off in front of the boys.”

He hesitated, and then he looked at Carl. “You try tellin’ that little story to his sister, Sarah?”

Jacoby shook his head. “No, she wouldn’t listen to anything bad about Johnny. Her and the old man both always turned a blind eye to his shortcomin’s, though he certainly had plenty of ‘em.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s dead,” Macklin said, flipping his butt into the coals of the fire. “If Angus would’ve kicked his ass a few times when he was growin’ up, ‘stead’ve lettin’ him get away with being a horse’s ass, maybe he’d of learned to keep his mouth shut.”

Jacoby stared at Macklin. “I thought you was his best friend.”

Macklin shrugged. “I was, but that don’t mean I didn’t see how dumb he could be sometimes. Hell, my old pappy used to take a razor strop to me if’n I got outta line, an’ I soon learned to keep my mouth shut if’n I didn’t have something worthwhile to say.”

He yawned and got to his feet. “I’m gonna get those tents ready. Why don’t you fry us up some fatback and beans so’s we can eat ‘fore it gets too late?”

Jacoby grinned. “I want to know who elected me the cook of this little expedition.”

Macklin looked back over his shoulder as he began to unload their tents off their packhorse. “Hey, it don’t make no never mind to me. You can set up the tents an’ I’ll cook if’n you want.”

Jacoby thought about this for a moment. At least he’d be near the warm campfire if he was cooking.

“No, that’s all right. You do the tents, I’ll do the cooking.”