Ambush of the Mountain Man

TWENTY

Smoke moved through the night as fast as he could, considering the snowstorm made the darkness almost absolute and he was running through snow that was getting deeper by the minute. It was only his excellent night vision that kept him from breaking an ankle or impaling himself on a tree limb or other natural obstruction in the heavy forest he was traversing.

Knowing the storm, like most early fall storms, was coming almost directly out of the north, he realized all he had to do to keep on track was to keep the wind directly in his face. That way he avoided traveling in circles as most inexperienced men did when moving in unfamiliar territory.

Smoke knew the mountain ranges all around them were closest directly to the north, and getting up into the High Lonesome was his only chance to avoid the men who would surely be on his trail no later than daybreak.

He knew from earlier in the day that the closest mountain was about seven miles away and that he had absolutely no chance to make it before daylight, not on foot traveling through darkness in snow that was rapidly getting up to his mid-calves. The only good thing about his rapid advance was that the exertion was keeping his body temperature high enough to avoid frostbite due to exposure to the extreme cold.

The bad news was that his only weapon was a five-inch clasp knife and he was completely without any other supplies or food. He laughed out loud into the freezing north wind. Only a mountain man, and a crazy one at that, would think that he had any chance at all against more than a dozen well-armed men on horseback on his trail under these conditions.

Well, this crazy old mountain man still had a few tricks up his sleeve, and if he could keep from freezing to death long enough, he’d show them a thing or two.

The wind was howling and the snow was blowing almost horizontally when the camp began to wake up the next morning. Dawn was evident only through a general lightening up of the snow since there was no morning sun to be seen.

Cletus, as usual, was the first to arise, and he piled fresh wood onto the smoldering coals of last night’s campfire. He filled pots with water and heaping handfuls of coffee in preparation for an early breakfast. He knew from his observation the night before that Smoke Jensen had escaped his bounds, but he pretended not to notice the empty space where Smoke had lain the previous night as he busied himself around the fire.

As men slowly gathered around the fire, holding out hands to get them warm and gratefully accepting mugs of steaming coffee, he told Jimmy Corbett to get started cooking some fatback and beans in the large skillets they’d brought along.

“Don’t worry with trying to make biscuits in this storm,” he said. “We’ve still got some left from last night’s dinner that ought’a do.”

“Gonna have to dip them sinkers in coffee to get ‘em soft enough to chew,” Jason Biggs said, grinning. “Otherwise you’re liable to break a tooth on ‘em.”

Cletus was about to reply when Wally Stevens hollered from over near the tree Smoke had been under, “Hey, ever’body, Jenson’s gone!”

Cletus forced a surprised look on his face and ran over to where Smoke was supposed to be lying. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he exclaimed, straightening up and looking around with his hands on his hips. “The bastard’s not here.”

“I don’t see no ropes,” Stevens said, looking around on the ground and pushing mounds of snow aside, “so maybe he couldn’t get them loose and his hands are still tied.”

“What’s going on here?” Sarah asked as she appeared out of the blowing snow.

“Looks like Jensen has somehow managed to escape from the camp,” Cletus said, trying to appear disgusted with the turn of events.

“Escaped?” Sarah asked, her voice astounded. “How in the world was he able to do that?”

“I don’t know, Miss MacDougal,” Biggs said, “but he can’t have gotten far in this storm, not on foot.”

“How do you know he didn’t take one of the horses?” she asked, causing everyone to make a mad dash off to the side where the horses were all tired to a tether rope.

After a quick count, Cletus assured everyone that Smoke hadn’t in fact taken any of the mounts.

The men went back to the camp and began to make a circle around the periphery, trying to locate any tracks Smoke might have left.

After an hour of searching, they all decided the storm had covered any traces he might have made.

They gathered around the fire to get warm again and to discuss what they ought to do. “You got any bright ideas, Clete?” Biggs asked. “’Cause I surely don’t relish going back to the ranch and having Mr. MacDougal chew my ears off for letting Jensen get away from us.”

Cletus thought for a moment as he finished off his mug of coffee. Finally, he looked around. “All right, here is what I think. Jensen could have gone in only two directions, north or south.”

“Why do you say that?” Stevens asked.

“’Cause if he headed either east or west, all he’s gonna find is a big prairie with almost no cover to speak of. Jensen’s too smart to put himself in that position, ‘cause in this weather, no cover means he’d freeze to death. Now, if he heads south back towards his home, we got three men behind us guarding the trail. If, on the other hand, he heads north towards the nearest mountain range, then he’s got a good chance of hiding out from us if he makes it.”

“So,” Sarah said, “you think he’s probably gone north toward the mountains?”

Cletus shrugged. “It’s what I’d do in his place.” He made a grimace of disgust. “’Course, we’re gonna have to cover all the directions, just in case he tried to fool us by going someplace we wouldn’t think he’d try.”

“That’s gonna split us up pretty good,” Stevens said.

“Not really,” Sarah said. “Remember, Jensen’s on foot and doesn’t have any weapons. We can send one man east and one man west. If he’s out there in the open, they should be able to run him down before nightfall and take him prisoner again.”

“What about south?” Cletus asked.

“I think one man should be able to get back down the trail and warn Bartlett and Gomez and Free to be on the lookout for him,” she said. “That should leave us plenty of men to undertake a campaign to catch him before he can get too far into the mountains if he headed north.”

Cletus shook his head in admiration. “Missy, I wish I’d had you running my outfit during the war. You plumb got a mind for tactics.”

“Well, I’d suggest we get a move on,” she said. “Clete, you pick the men to go east and west and south, and I’ll see to getting their canteens filled with hot coffee to keep them from freezing to death on the way.”

“We got time to eat first, Miss MacDougal?” Stevens asked, his face hopeful.

“Certainly. We can’t go out into this storm on a manhunt with our bellies empty, now can we, men?”

Cletus laughed. “Jimmy, get those beans to cookin’, boy, we got a man to catch.”

“Yes, sir,” Corbett answered, using a long stick to stir the coals under the trestle that contained the pot of beans and fatback.

As Sarah began to fill canteens with hot coffee, Cletus looked at her and shook his head. He’d never seen a better performance. No one would ever suspect that she’d let Jensen go herself, and he damn sure wasn’t going to enlighten anyone.

He stepped over to the edge of the fire and stood looking into the north wind, in the direction Jensen must have gone if he was to have any chance to avoid capture.

What would it take for a man to have the courage to take off on foot into a blizzard like this with no weapons and no warm clothes to speak of? he wondered.

He chuckled to himself, knowing full well the answer to that question. A man would have to be completely without hope of survival otherwise to take a chance like that, and Jensen certainly knew that for him to stay in camp would mean certain death.

As Sarah called to him that the beans and fatback were ready, he turned and shook his head. The man didn’t stand a chance in this weather, he thought, but at least freezing to death was probably less painful that a bullet.