Ambush of the Mountain Man

SEVENTEEN

As they rode down the trail toward Pueblo and home, Sarah MacDougal struggled with her conscience. The more she was around Smoke Jensen, the less he seemed like a crazed gunfighter out to kill anyone who got in his way and the more he seemed like an honest, decent human being.

She thought back to when Sheriff Tupper had come to give her and her father the news of Johnny’s death. As she went over what he’d said on that visit, she realized that she and her father hadn’t really heard what he was trying to say.

He’d tried to tell them, in his own mealymouthed way, that it was Johnny’s fault he’d been shot. Of course, neither she nor her father had been willing to listen to that explanation, not when their kin was lying dead in the back of Tupper’s wagon, his teeth knocked out and his body full of a stranger’s lead.

“Missy,” Cletus called from the seat of the buckboard alongside her.

“Yes?”

“I think it’s time we took a noonin’ an’ rested our mounts. We keep goin’ at this pace, we’re gonna lose a couple of ‘em ‘fore too long.” He grinned. “An’ I don’t hanker to carry none of these boys on my back.”

“All right,” she agreed, pointing to a copse of trees off to the right about a hundred yards ahead. “Pull over there and we’ll fix up some grub for the men and give the horses some grain and water.”

She glanced down sideways at Smoke, who was riding in the back of the wagon. “Jensen, don’t you go getting any ideas about trying to make a break for it. My father wants you brought back alive, but he won’t quibble if you’re killed trying to escape.”

Smoke shrugged. “This is your party, Sarah. I’m just along for the ride.” He gingerly felt the large knot on the back of his head. “Besides, if I tried to run right now, I think my head would fall off.”

“You keep thinking like that and you may just survive this trip,” she said, blushing a little at his mention of the damage she’d done to his head.

He glanced up at her and smiled, no fear at all evident in his eyes. “What about the homecoming?” he asked. “Will I survive that too?”

Sarah’s face flushed even more, and she spurred her horse on up ahead to tell the men to ready the camp without trying to give him an answer.

While Cletus oversaw the cooking of fatback and beans and the heating of coffee, Sarah walked over to stand next to Smoke, who was sitting with his back to a tree while two men held pistols on him from a short distance away.

“You understand why I’m doing this, don’t you, Mr. Jensen?” she asked.

He glanced up at her. “Of course I do, Sarah. You’ve lost a brother, and your father has lost a son. Neither one of you wants to admit to yourselves that it might have been your fault for not making him grow up better, so you’re planning on taking it out on me.” He smiled, though there was no mockery in his expression. “It’s simple when you think about it. I’m to be a scapegoat for your dad’s failure as a parent and your failure as a sister.”

She flushed, angered by the way he was continually turning things around and trying to shift the blame to anyone but himself. “That’s not true. I’m taking you back because you must be punished for what you did.”

“Punished for defending myself?” he asked, the grin still on his face. “For doing what the law should have done a long time ago when your brother killed his first man?”

“Oh, you’re just impossible,” Sarah said, stamping her foot and walking quickly over to stand next to Cletus at the campfire.

“It’s not easy being judge, jury, and executioner, Sarah,” Smoke called to her back. “I don’t think you’re going to like the job much.”

Cletus glanced up at her as he poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her, noticing the redness of her eyes and her hunched-over shoulders and stiff neck. “He getting your goat, Missy?” he asked gently.

“Yes,” she said, taking the cup and blowing on it to cool it down enough to drink. “He twists everything around so you’d think he should get a medal for shooting Johnny, instead of . . . ” She paused, not wanting to put into words what was waiting for Smoke at her father’s ranch.

“Instead of being killed in cold blood by your daddy or you?” Cletus asked, getting to his feet.

“I didn’t say that!”

He shook his head. “No, but you know that’s what’s gonna happen, don’t you?” he asked. “You’re not fooling yourself into thinking anything different, are you?”

She hung her head. “I . . . I guess I know what’s going to happen,” she finally answered, her voice low.

“Good,” he said. “’Cause if you’re gonna do this, you better be able to live with it, or it’ll eat you alive. You’d better figure you’re right and it needs doin’. Otherwise, well, otherwise maybe you ought to ride on ahead and let me take him the rest of the way.”

“Don’t treat me like a baby, Clete.”

“I’m not, Missy. But I can see by lookin’ in your eyes you got some doubts ‘bout all this.” He sighed as he drank his coffee. “I’ve known men out on the trail did something that got one of their friends killed. Most of ‘em knew it comes with the job of cowboying, but a few never got over it. Their lives were plumb ruined by one little mistake that could’ve happened to anybody.” He stared hard at her. “I don’t want that to happen to you, Missy.”

“Yes, I do have some doubts, Clete,” she admitted. “What if what he says happened is the true story? What if he had no choice but to shoot Johnny in self-defense?”

Cletus shrugged. “What really happened don’t make no never mind to me,” he said. “I take my orders from your daddy, an’ he said to bring this man to him. Far as what happens then, it ain’t no concern of mine.”

“So, you won’t feel responsible when Daddy shoots this man you’re taking to him?”

Cletus looked surprised. “Responsible? Hell, no, not unless I pull the trigger myself.”

“And would you do that, if my father told you to?” she asked, peering at him over the rim of her mug as she drank.

He looked down at his feet. “I don’t know, Missy, I just don’t know.”

“I’m ashamed of us both, Clete. You for not being man enough to take responsibility for what you’re doing, and me for not finding out the truth about what happened before taking Jensen prisoner.”

After they’d eaten and fed the horses, Cletus called three men over to him. “Bob, you and Billy and Juan head on back down our back trail. Take your rifles and plenty of ammunition along with you. Anybody comes up the trail looks like they following us, you slow ‘em down.”

“What if’n it’s a big posse, Clete?” Bob Bartlett asked.

Cletus looked around at the rising ground on either side of the trail. “There’s plenty of places along here where you boys can get the high ground, Bob. You do that and you ought’a be able to hold the trail against a dozen men or more if’n you have to.”

“You want we should kill them, Jefe?” Juan Gomez asked, grinning like that was something he wouldn’t mind doing at all.

Cletus shook his head. “Not unless you absolutely have to, boys. Just shoot close enough to make them think twice about following us. I don’t want to start a war here by killin’ some lawmen and deputies, not unless there’s no other way.”

“But Boss,” Billy Free said, “if there is no other way, then what should we do?”

Cletus shrugged. “Try for the horses first, the men last, but keep them off our backs until we get to the ranch. Understand?”

Several hours later, longer than the “couple of hours” Monte had promised, Jimmy from the telegraph office came running into Longmont’s, where the group was gathered impatiently waiting for word from the blacksmith.

They’d all drunk so much coffee they felt as if they were floating, and even Andre’s sumptuous breakfasts hadn’t done much to cheer them up.

Jimmy handed the wire to the sheriff, who thanked him and slowly unfolded the yellow foolscap paper. He snorted when he read it, and got to his feet.

“Damn, I should’a knowed as much,” he said, a wry look on his face.

“What does it say, Monte?” Sally asked, also getting to her feet.

“Jed says the only new rim he’s put on in the last month was for the livery rental wagon.”

Louis snapped his fingers. “Of course. We should have known that Pearlie was right and that no one who lived around here would be a party to any action against Smoke. It had to be an outsider.”

“But Monte,” Sally asked, a puzzled look on her face. “Why would someone be so dumb as to come into town and rent a wagon to kidnap someone as well known as Smoke is?” She shook her head. “That would leave a trail pointing straight back to them as soon as we talked to the livery agent.”

“Sally,” Monte said, “when you’ve been a sheriff as long as I have, you’ll soon learn that most men who ride the owlhoot trail are as dumb as a post.” He chuckled as he settled his hat on his head. “Hell, if’n they was smart, they’d get a job as sheriff like me an’ get rich.”

They all laughed nervously as they hurried down the street toward the livery stable.

Fred Morgan shook his head when they asked him who had recently rented his wagon with the new iron rim on the wheels. “Can’t rightly say, Sheriff,” he drawled in his backwoods accent, a long piece of straw hanging from the corner of his mouth that bobbed up and down as he chewed the wad of tobacco stuck in his cheek.

Monte sighed. Sometimes, talking to Fred was like pulling teeth. It took a lot of effort, and the results were usually less than satisfying. “Why not, Fred?” he asked, trying to be patient.

Fred shrugged. “Why, ’cause nobody rented the buckboard, Sheriff. They stole it night ’fore last.”

Monte cocked his head and put his hands on his hips. “You mean someone took the wagon without paying you for it?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, why in hell didn’t you report it to me?” Monte asked, getting red in the face.

Morgan held up his hands to calm the sheriff. “’Cause it happens all the time, Sheriff. Lots of times folks will find they need a wagon in the middle of the night ’cause theirs broke down, so instead of waking me up, they just take one of mine. Heck-fire, they always bring ’em back in a day or two.”

Monte smirked. “I think this time your wagon is gone for good, Fred.”

“But who round here’d do something mean like that?” Fred asked in a whining voice.

“They probably weren’t from around here, Mr. Morgan,” Sally said, her voice sad.

As they walked slowly back to Longmont’s, she asked, “Monte, what do you think we ought to do now? That wagon with the new rim was our only clue as to who may have taken Smoke.”

Monte pursed his lips. “Well, there’s only four ways they could have gone, so I guess the best thing to do is send riders out along each of the trails leading from town. Sooner or later, they’ve got to come across those wagon tracks.”

“And until they do?” Sally asked.

“I’d suggest you go on back to the Sugarloaf and get packed up for a trip,” Monte said. “Soon as the men find out which way they’ve gone, we’ll get a posse together and go after them.”

Sally thought about this for a moment, and then she shook her head. “No, Monte, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“And why not, Sally?”

“A large posse would be too easy to spot, and it would move too slow. I think just five or six men should be enough.” She glanced around at Louis, who smiled and nodded his head. “I think Cal and Pearlie, Louis and you, and of course me will be more than enough.”

“But Sally,” Monte argued. “We don’t even know how many men we’ll be going up against nor which way they went.”

She smiled. “Monte, outside of Smoke himself, you four men are the best men I know to have on my side in a fight. No matter what the odds are, I think the five of us will be able to handle it, and from what I hear, Pearlie can track a mouse in a blizzard. We should be all right.”

Monte nodded, his lips tight. “I hope you’re right, Sally.”