Ambush of the Mountain Man

FIFTEEN

Sarah sat there, staring into the campfire over the rim of her cup, with an occasional sideways glance at Smoke. He lay still, his chest barely rising and falling, his skin as pale as the moon on a summer night. He could hardly have looked any more lifeless if he were dead.

How dare that man denigrate the memory of her brother, a man he’d callously shot down in the streets of his own town? Why, just because Johnny was a little spoiled and liked to drink and throw his weight around a little too much, that didn’t mean he was a bad man. And as for that man he’d shot and killed the week before he died, her father had told her the man had a gun and that Johnny hadn’t had any choice but to shoot him in self-defense.

Jensen was lying about him being unarmed; he must be, she thought as she swallowed the last of her coffee. Otherwise, the sheriff would surely have arrested Johnny. “Cletus, come here a minute, will you?” she asked as she got to her feet and moved away from the fire and the other men from the ranch.

Cletus followed her over into the darkness at the edge of camp. “Yes?”

“What Jensen said about that man Johnny shot being unarmed, that was a lie, wasn’t it?” she asked, hating the whining, hopeful tone in her voice, as if she didn’t really believe it herself.

Cletus pursed his lips and avoided her gaze, staring up at the stars while debating within himself how to answer her question. On the one hand, he wanted to tell her the truth, but on the other, Angus had sworn him to secrecy.

Sarah was no fool. She heard him hesitate and saw the pain in his eyes when he turned them back to her. “Oh, Clete,” she said before he could answer. “Why didn’t Daddy tell me the truth?”

He shrugged, glad he hadn’t had to lie to her after all. “I don’t know, Missy,” he said, using the pet name he’d given her when she was just a toddler. “I suppose he felt it was best that you didn’t know.”

She looked over her shoulder at Jensen, who still hadn’t moved. “Then he was right about Johnny, wasn’t he?” she asked, her voice low and sad.

Cletus put his hand on her shoulder. “Now, Missy, just because Johnny was a little rough around the edges sometimes didn’t give anyone the right to shoot him down in cold blood, no matter how drunk he was or what he may have said to them.”

Sarah nodded distractedly, but she was thinking, What if Johnny did more than just shoot his mouth off? What if he’d drawn on Jensen and his men as Jensen maintained he did? What would she do then? Could she stand to take this man to her father where he would be killed if he were in fact innocent of any wrongdoing?

She moved over closer to the fire, chilled by more than the freezing air around her. She had some tough decisions to make, and for once, she wouldn’t have her father to guide her in the making of them. Somehow, before they arrived back at the ranch, she would have to decide just who was telling the truth about what had happened last year in the streets of Pueblo.

She turned to Cletus. “We’d better get a move on, Clete,” she said. “Jensen’s wife is going to wake up before too long, and then we’re going to have a posse to deal with if we’re not a lot of miles away from here.”

Cletus looked over at Jensen, whose chest was rising and falling rapidly with shallow breaths. “I don’t know, Missy. If we move him now, he’s liable to start to bleedin’ inside his head or something.” He turned back to her. “Angus ain’t gonna like it if’n we bring him back a corpse.”

She turned to face him, putting her hands on her hips and looking him right in the eye. “He also won’t like it much if his only daughter is arrested and hung for kidnapping, Clete. Now, either we get a move on and Jensen takes his chances, or we shoot him here and leave him for the buzzards to find.”

Cletus shook his head and spit out, “Damn, but you’re just like your old man—headstrong and stubborn as a mule!”

Sarah smiled and reached up to pat Cletus’s cheek, something a man would have gotten shot trying. “I take that as a compliment, Clete. Now, get a move on . . . Please.”

Three hours later, just as the sun was edging over mountain peaks to the east, Smoke rolled over in the back of the buckboard and got up on his hands and knees. His head hung down, and he vomited until he thought he was going to bring up his toes.

Cletus, who was riding on the hurricane deck, looked back over his shoulder and grimaced at the nasty sight. “Shit,” he said, “now you’re gonna have to ride in that the rest of the way home.”

Smoke glared up at him, his face pasty and pale, his eyes sunken and surrounded by black. Suddenly, his lips curled in a smile that made the hair on the back of Cletus’s neck stand up. He’d never seen anything as dangerous in his life.

“What’re you grinnin’ at, Jensen?” Cletus asked. “It ‘pears to me like you got precious little to smile at.”

“Mister,” Smoke croaked through dry and cracked lips, “I was just thinking about how good it is gonna feel when I make all of you pay for this.” He coughed and leaned his head to the side as he spit out a clot of old blood. “Ordinarily, I get no pleasure from killing men, but for this group, I’m gonna have to make an exception.”

“Only one’s gonna get kilt around here is you, Jensen,” Cletus said before he turned back around to face the horses before Jensen could see the fear in his eyes—eyes that had never been made to show fear before.

“Better men than you and these mangy coyotes riding with you have tried to plant me forked-end-up, mister,” Smoke said as he struggled to get turned around so he could put his back to the sideboard of the wagon. After a moment, he succeeded, and he leaned there with his elbows on his knees. “And I’m still kicking,” Smoke added after a moment spent getting his breath from the exertion his moving had caused.

Sarah gently spurred Cletus’s horse she was riding, and pulled the animal up next to the bed of the wagon where Smoke sat with his back to her.

Neither Cletus nor Smoke could see her as Cletus called back over his shoulder, “Yeah, but you ain’t never killed no MacDougal before neither, Jensen.”

Smoke snorted. “If you’re talking about that man named Johnny I shot in Pueblo last year, the only thing special about him was his capacity to drink enough liquor to make him both stupid and dangerous.”

Cletus nodded, his attention on the horses in front of him. “Yeah, Johnny could put the tonsil paint away, all right. But that didn’t give you no right to beat him near half to death an’ then shoot him full’a lead.”

Smoke sighed. “What’s wrong with you people?” he asked, his voice low as if he were talking to himself, exasperated at their unwillingness to learn the truth. “Didn’t anybody ask the sheriff what had happened? There were plenty of witnesses to the whole thing.”

“All we heard was that Johnny got pistol-whipped and all his teeth were knocked out, and then he and his friends got shot down without being able to get off any shots themselves.” Cletus looked back over his shoulder again. “That don’t exactly sound like no fair fight to me, Jensen.”

Smoke held his head. All this talking was making his head feel as if it was going to explode. What was it about self-defense that these people didn’t understand? Surely they must have known what kind of a man Johnny was.

“I’ll try one more time, then I’m done talking,” Smoke said. “Johnny had a snootful of liquor and came over to our table and braced the men I was with, saying they stunk like skunks and garbage. Well, it’s no surprise that one of the mountain men I was with took offense at his remarks and proceeded to beat the shit out of him, which he no doubt deserved. After Johnny got knocked flat on his back, his friends came over and carried him outside. Later, after we’d finished our supper, we walked out the door. Johnny and all his friends were standing there in the street with their hands filled with iron—we had no choice but to shoot.”

Cletus turned his head. “You that good, Jensen, you can draw and kill a man who’s already got his pistol out?”

Smoke chuckled. “Why don’t you try me, mister, and find out for yourself, or do you let a mob do your fighting for you? You got the balls for it, give me a gun and we’ll see if I’m fast enough to take the lot of you.”

Cletus gritted his teeth and looked ahead. A lot of what the man said made sense. He’d loved Johnny like his own son, but that didn’t mean the little bastard wasn’t mad-dog mean when he’d been drinking. He shook his head. It could well have gone down just like Jensen said, but if it did, why didn’t Sheriff Tupper tell it that way to Angus?

Sarah, who was wondering the same thing, flicked her riding crop at Smoke and got his attention. When he turned his head to look at her riding alongside the wagon, she said, “That isn’t exactly the way the sheriff tells it, Mr. Jensen, and why would he lie about it?”

Smoke smirked and turned back around, speaking over his shoulder. “Your father has a reputation of not listening to people who tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, Sarah. My guess is, the sheriff was too scared to tell him his little boy got killed because he got drunk and let his mouth override his butt. Truth be told, Johnny wasn’t near as tough or as fast with a gun as the liquor made him think he was, and he seemed too busy showing off for all of his friends to think straight about it.”

Sarah swiped at the back of Smoke’s head with her crop. “You bastard!” she yelled, and spurred her horse into a full gallop, riding off in a cloud of dust.

Cletus shook his head as he watched Sarah gallop off up ahead of the column of men. “Boy, you sure know how to end a conversation.”

“I guess her father’s not the only one doesn’t like to be told the truth, especially when her mind’s already made up on the subject.”