Butchery of the Mountain Man

CHAPTER SEVEN

Stopping in a copse of trees a short distance from the ranch house, Smoke studied it for a moment or two. The house was built of logs and had a sod roof. If it came to it, it would burn easily.

“Casey!” Smoke called. “Casey, come out!”

“Who’s callin’?” a voice shouted from within the house.

“Jensen.”

“Jensen? I thought we killed you.”

“That was my pa. And my brother,” Smoke said.

“What do you want?”

“I’m here to settle up.”

There was a rifle shot from the house, and though it missed, the bullet came close enough for Smoke to hear it whine.

Smoke took his horse into a ravine that circled the house. Fifty yards behind the house he dismounted, snaked his rifle from the saddle sheath, then lay against the bank of the arroyo. Inside, he saw an arm on the windowsill. He shattered the arm with one shot from his new Henry. A moment later he saw someone’s outline through one of the other windows and he shot him, hearing a scream of pain.

“You boys in there,” Smoke called. “You want to die for Casey, do you? I’ve already killed two of you back on the road.”

“Your Daddy ride with Mosby?” someone called from inside.

“That’s right.”

“You had a brother named Luke?”

“I did.”

“Yeah, well, he was shot in the back and the gold he was guardin’ was stole. Casey done it, not me! You got no call to come after me.”

Smoke fired several more rounds into the house.

“Jensen! The name is Barry! I come from Nevada. Din’t have nothin’ to do with no war, never been east. They’s another fella in here just like me. We herd cattle for wages; we ain’t got no stake in this fight.”

“Come on out and ride away then,” Smoke called. “I won’t shoot you.”

The cabin door opened and two men came out with their hands up.

“We’re just goin’ to get our horses,” one of them shouted.

“Go ahead.”

The two men were moving toward the barn when a couple of shots rang out. Both were shot in the back by someone from within the house.

“What’d you do that for, Casey?” Smoke shouted. “They weren’t part of this.”

“When I pay men to work for me, I expect loyalty,” Casey called back.

Smoke didn’t answer. He was quiet for several moments, trying to decide what he should do.

“Jensen? Jensen, you still out there?” Casey called.

Casey’s voice was getting nervous.

“Jensen? Come on down. Come out in the open so I can see you and we can talk.”

Smoke still didn’t answer.

“Jensen, you there?”

“I think he’s gone,” another voice said.

“That’s what he wants us to think, you fool,” Casey’s voice replied.

Smoke followed the arroyo on around to the bunkhouse. In a pile behind the bunkhouse he found a bunch of rags, and in the bunkhouse, ajar of coal oil. He stuck the rags down into the mouth of the coal-oil jar, lit it, then threw it at the ranch house. The jar broke and the fire erupted almost immediately. As the logs burned they began filling the house with smoke and fumes.

From inside the house Smoke heard coughing. Then one man broke from the cabin and started running. Smoke cut him down with his rifle. A second began running and Smoke pulled the trigger on the rifle, only to hear the hammer fall on an empty chamber. He pulled his pistol and shot the man once, watching him double over with a slug in his gut.

Casey waited until the last minute before he stumbled out into the yard, his eyes blinded from the smoke and fumes. He fired wildly as he stumbled around, finally pulling the trigger repeatedly on an empty gun.

Smoke walked calmly up to him, even as Casey was trying to reload, and knocked him out.

Just outside the little town of Prosperity, Smoke dumped a bound and gagged Casey onto the ground. Curious about what was going on, several townspeople came forth to watch as Smoke took a rope from the saddle of Casey’s horse and began making a noose.

“What do you think you are going to do here?” Marshal Crowell asked.

“Obvious, isn’t it?” Smoke replied. “I’m going to hang the son of a bitch who killed my brother and my pa.”

“I am an officer of the law. What if I ordered you to stop?” Crowell asked.

“Then I’d just kill you and hang him,” Smoke answered.

“But you can’t do this,” Crowell insisted. “He hasn’t been found guilty.”

“Yeah, he has. He’s already admitted it to me,” Smoke said. “I also watched him kill two of his own men. He shot them in the back.”

“That doesn’t make what you are doing right,” Crowell said.

“It’s right in my book,” Smoke said. He put the noose around Casey’s neck, then threw the other end of the rope over a tree limb. “Get up on your horse,” he ordered.

“You go to hell,” Casey said, spitting at him.

“Have it your way,” Smoke said. He tied the end of the rope to the saddle horn, and started to slap the horse on the rump.

“No, wait!” Casey shouted. “Not that way.” Casey’s hands were tied in front of him, but he put them on the pommel, then swung himself into the saddle.

“You got anything to say before I send you to hell?” Smoke asked.

“Yeah. I already sent your brother and your pa there, and when I get there I’m going to kick them both in the ass. Now, do your damndest, you son of a bitch.”

Smoke slapped Casey’s horse on the rump. With a protesting whinny it leaped forward and Casey, dying quickly from a broken neck, swung back and forth, the only sound being the creaking of the rope and the cawing of a distant crow.

“I’ll be notifying the governor about this,” Crowell said.

“You do what you think you need to do,” Smoke said. Without looking back, Smoke walked over to his horse, swung into the saddle, and rode way.

“Son of a bitch,” someone said, almost reverently. “That’s the damndest thing I done ever seen.”

[This was but the first of what would become Smoke Jensen’s legacy, one of “making things right.” Smoke Jensen was uncommonly fast with a gun, and could shoot with unerring accuracy.

Because much of the law, in Smoke’s time, was ineffective, Smoke often took the law into his own hands. For many, this power could have been abused for personal enrichment.

This wasn’t the case for Smoke, though, because he considered himself a knight, bound by rules of right and chivalry.

The number of men who fell before Smoke Jensen’s gun has never been made known, but what is known, and has been recognized by every local, county, state, and federal law enforcement agency is that Smoke never misused his power. He was an invaluable asset as an unpaid deputy to Sheriff Monte Carson of Big Rock. Carson’s autobiographical book, Both Sides of the Badge, states, clearly, that Smoke Jensen had some sort of internal compass that always pointed to what was right. Therefore, according to Sheriff Carson, every killing was justifiable.—ED.]

Old Main Building

“How much longer after you avenged your father and brother, before you met John Jackson for the first time? Did he come to Colorado right away after he got back to the United States?” Professor Armbruster asked.

“Pretty soon after he got back,” Smoke said. “The first thing he did when he returned was go to Philadelphia to see Lucinda Manning. He was going to tell her that he had changed, and he was ready to settle down and become a useful citizen.”

“But she didn’t believe him?”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference whether she believed him or not,” Smoke said easily. “Lucinda had gotten married to a member of the Pennsylvania state legislature. He was just the kind of man her father wanted her to marry.”

“I see,” Professor Armbruster said. “What did John do next?”

“He went to a high-priced Philadelphia lawyer. He wanted to know if he was in trouble for deserting the French Foreign Legion.”

Philadelphia—February 1869

“I have done some research,” the lawyer, Robert Dempster, said. “It seems that desertion is higher in the French Foreign Legion than it is in any other military unit in the entire world. And, because desertion is so high, and because they have few records of the actual identity of the men who serve with them, they rarely make any attempt to look for those who have deserted. Apparently, they never do so for Americans. So I would say that you are safe.”

“Good, thank you.”

“But tell me, Mr. Jackson, is the training and service really as difficult as they say?”

“Yes, especially the training to be hungry,” John replied.

“I beg your pardon? Training to be hungry?”

“The legion embraces the philosophy that if you want soldiers to fight hungry, you train them hungry. Breakfast might be watery coffee and a baguette, lunch a few pieces of ravioli and a pear.”

“I see. But somehow I get the idea that it wasn’t the rigorous training that caused you to desert. It couldn’t have been. They don’t award medals to those who aren’t up to the rigors of training,” Dempster said.

“No, it wasn’t the training that drove me away. It was the killing.”

“The killing? But, Mr. Jackson, you recently came through the Civil War. Surely there wasn’t killing on such a scale among the Foreign Legion?”

“It isn’t the number of people killed,” John replied. “It is the reason they are killed. In the Civil War both of the competing armies had honor on their side. The men of the North and the men of the South thought they were fighting for the survival of their nation.

“France has no such honorable motive. France is fighting wars, not of liberation, or of survival. France is fighting wars of aggression . . . killing innocents so that the country may add to its empire. I saw that when I was in Indochina, and I have neither desire, nor intention to kill those who are defending their own homes and their own culture, merely to add to the glory of France.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not sure you do,” John said. “Had I not been there, to see for myself what was going on, I wouldn’t understand.”

“What are you going to do now?” the lawyer asked.

“I’m going west.”

“Texas? California?”

“No. To the mountains.”

“You have to have more in mind than simply going to the mountains, Mr. Jackson. You have to have some idea of how you are going to support yourself.”

“I’m going to become a fur trapper.”

“Surely, sir, you jest. Have you ever read about such men?”

“I have.”

“And that appeals to you?”

“It does.”

Dempster shook his head. “Mr. Jackson, I wish you luck. Because I am absolutely certain that you are going to need it.”

[The Rocky Mountain fur trade is the catalyst for one of the most interesting and influential periods of America’s movement west. The fur trade as well as the mountaineers who conducted it have caught the American fancy. This subject has probably received more attention, scholarly and popular, than any other phenomenon of the history of the previous century, with the obvious exception of the Civil War. The literature dealing with the mountain men is voluminous and detailed. They are unique in our history: pathfinders and trailblazers, not by design, but simply because they had a need to go from one place to another. They were men who were possessed of common sense, bravery, and coolness under trying conditions. They were noted for the ability to shoot straight, ride hard, fight ferociously, to withstand numbing cold and blistering heat. They were blissfully unaware of their unique qualities, considering them simply a matter of survival.—ED.]