Butchery of the Mountain Man

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Irwin, Colorado—1872

Smoke had come for Preacher, issuing him a personal invitation to come visit him so he could see the new house he had built for Sally at the ranch he was calling Sugarloaf. They were at least a day’s ride away from Sugarloaf, and so stopped for the night in Irwin.

“Here’s your food, gentleman,” one of the bar girls said a moment later, carrying the two plates to the table.

“Thanks,” Smoke said. He handed the young woman a quarter.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, smiling broadly.

“How’s your new ranch comin’ along?” Preacher asked.

“It’s coming along real good,” Smoke said. “I’ve hired me a few hands to help out around the place.”

“You goin’ to raise cattle or horses?”

“Well, I tried raising horses when I was married to Nicole. They can be plumb ornery critters, there’s no getting around that. I may raise some horses, but most likely it’ll be cattle.”

“I expect that’s the best way to go,” Preacher said.

Preacher’s buckskins were nearly black, his long white hair and beard were matted and, no doubt, Smoke thought, filled with critters, and there was a leatherlike patina to his skin that Smoke knew was an accumulation of dirt. For himself, Preacher’s appearance wasn’t a problem. Smoke had lived with him for a long time and he knew there were many times when he looked just like Preacher did now.

But, he was taking Preacher home with him to see Sally. And Sally, coming from the East, and not only from the East, but from a fine family, was used to being around people who paid a little more attention to their personal appearance. Smoke himself had developed a habit of good hygiene, at least when he could satisfy that habit. And he knew that he had to do something about Preacher’s appearance before they reached Sugarloaf.

“Preacher, what do you say we get us a hotel room and take us a bath after we eat?”

“I had me a bath,” Preacher said.

“What? Just when did you have a bath?”

“I don’t know . . . three, maybe four months ago.”

Smoke laughed. “Four months ago?”

“All right, maybe it was six months ago, what difference does it make? I mean, just how many baths does a feller need in one year, anyhow?”

“I tell you the truth, Preacher, your stink don’t bother me none at all. But Sally can be just real particular about things like being clean ’n smelling good, and all that. And she’d probably like it better if you took a bath, and got cleaned up some before we get there.”

“Hrummph,” Preacher grunted. “If I had known you was goin’ to turn into such a fancy Dan about bathin’ ’n all, I woulda never took you in to raise.”

“Yeah, you would’ve,” Smoke said. “You liked havin’ someone to train and boss around.”

“Boss around? When did you ever do anything I asked you to do?”

Leaving the café, the two men went into the hotel and walked up to the counter.

“Yes, sir, can I help you gentlemen?”

“We’d like a couple of rooms. And a bath,” Smoke said.

The clerk looked at Preacher with an obvious sense of displeasure in what he was seeing. “Both of you will be wanting a bath, I take it?”

Before Smoke could answer, Preacher spoke up. “Yeah, both of us will be wantin’ to take a bath. What do you think, that we’re some kind of heathens what don’t never bathe?”

“Very good, sir. That will be three dollars. A dollar apiece for the rooms, and half a dollar apiece for the baths.”

Smoke lifted a small buckskin pouch to the counter, then poured out a pile of gold and silver coins. He moved the coins, many of them twenty-dollar gold pieces, around with his finger until he found three silver dollars.

“Here you are,” he said.

Sitting in the lobby of the hotel was a man named Angus Flatt. When he saw the sack of gold coins emptied on the check-in desk, he took in a deep breath. There had to be several hundred dollars there.

He left the lobby, then hurried down to the Hog’s Breath Saloon, where he found Moe James, playing solitaire.

“Hey, Moe, how much money you got?” Angus asked.

“I ain’t got no money a-tall, so don’t be askin’ me to lend you any.”

“I ain’t askin’ to borrow any money,” Angus said. “What I’m askin’ for is, I just seen me away to make two or three hunnert dollars real easy. And I was wonderin’ if you wanted in on it?”

“If it’s all that easy, why are you offerin’ me a chance at it?” Moe replied.

“On account of because it would be a lot easier for the two of us to do it. And I’m tellin’ you, there’s enough money we could divide up, ’n still have more money than either one of us have had for a whole year.”

“Where is this easy money?”

“Some man come into the hotel a little while ago, and when he paid for it, why, you shoulda seen all the gold coins that poured out of his bag. I’ll bet there’s three or four, or maybe even five hunnert dollars there.”

“So we’re just goin’ to ask him to give the money to us?”

“Yeah,” Angus said, as a big smile spread across his face. “We’re goin’ to ask him while he’s takin’ hisself a bath.”

The hotel had a bathing room, complete with a large bathtub as well as a water-holding tank and a small wood-burning stove by which to heat the water. Smoke started the fire, then went back to his room to wait for the water to heat. He walked over to the window and stood there, just looking out over the town, watching the commerce for a few minutes. Leaving the window, he lay down on his bed for about fifteen minutes, until he was sure that the water would be warm enough for a bath. Then, taking a change of clothes, a bar of soap, and a towel with him, he started down the hall toward the bathing room.

Just before Smoke opened the door, he stopped. He had the soap and the water was hot. There was no excuse Preacher could come up with for not taking a bath now, so he was going to let Preacher go first. He walked back down the hall, then knocked on Preacher’s door. “Preacher?”

The door opened. “Yeah?”

“I’ve filled the tub with hot water for you. Here’s your soap and towel.”

“What’d you do that for?”

“Let’s just say I respect my elders,” Smoke said.

“Do you now?”

“And I respect them more when they’re clean,” Smoke added with a chuckle.

“All right, all right, you don’t have to hit me on the head with it,” Preacher grumbled. “Your woman wants me clean, so I’ll clean up. But it ain’t for you, you understand. It’s for your woman.”

“I understand,” Smoke said with a smile.

Preacher reached down to pick up his Sharps .50 caliber.

“You need a rifle in the bathing room, do you?” Smoke teased.

“I don’t go nowhere without I have this with me. You know that.”

Smoke held up his hands. “Take it. You never can tell but what you might run into a grizzly in there.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I seen a grizzly while I was bathin’,” Preacher said.

Smoke chuckled. “Considering where you do your bathing—that is, when you do bathe—that’s not particularly surprising.”

Angus and Moe were in the lobby of the hotel.

“I seen him headed toward the bathing room just a couple of minutes ago,” Angus said. “By now he’s prob’ly in the tub, and, more ’n likely, he took his money in there with ’im.”

“How do you know he took his money with ’im?”

“You don’t think he’d just leave it in his room, do you?”

“No, more ’n likely he wouldn’t.”

“That’s why, it won’t be nothin’ to take it from ’im.”

“You know he ain’t goin’ to just be quiet about it,” Moe said.

“They’s two of us, only one of him. He’ll be nekkid in the tub. All we got to do is hold his head under water till he stops movin’. Folks don’t make a lot of noise while they’re drownin’. And once he’s drowned, why we’ll get his money and slip out just real quiet-like.”

Angus and Moe looked over toward the check-in clerk, and when they saw him step away and walk into a room just behind the desk, they moved quickly to the steps and hurried up to the second floor.

The bathing room was at the back end of the corridor and Angus and Moe walked quickly down the carpeted hallway until they reached the door. They stood there for just a moment, listening.

“Yeah, he’s in the tub, all right. I can hear the splashin’,” Angus said. “Let’s go in.”

Angus tried the doorknob, found that it wasn’t locked, then pushed it open and stepped inside.

“This ain’t the one,” Angus said when he saw the old, white-haired and white-bearded man sitting in the tub.

Smoke stepped out of his room just in time to see two men going toward the bathing room. He didn’t know who they were, or what they wanted, but he was absolutely certain that Preacher wouldn’t welcome their presence. And, because it was hard enough to get Preacher to take a bath anyway, he figured he had better see what’s going on.

Smoke started toward them, and saw them open the door then step inside. He figured he would hear Preacher’s bellow any moment now. And he wasn’t disappointed.

“Get the hell out of here! Can’t you see that I’m takin’ a bath?” The words were loud and angry.

The two men who had stepped into the bathing room had their pistols in their hands, pointing them at Preacher.

“Where’s the young one? The one with the gold?” one of the two men asked.

“That would be me,” Smoke said from behind them.

Spinning around, they saw Smoke. They also saw that he wasn’t wearing a gun.

One of the two men smiled. “Well now, Angus, look at this. Looks like these two men have got their selves into a situation. One of ’em is nekkid, ’n the other ’n ain’t got hisself a gun.”

“Tell you what, Moe. You go with this feller to get the money. I’ll stay here and keep a gun on the old man,” Angus said. “If you ain’t back with the money in one minute, I’ll shoot the old man.”

“Yeah,” Moe said. “Good . . .”

Whatever Moe was about to say was cut short by Preacher. While Angus’s and Moe’s backs were turned, Preacher had picked his rifle up from the floor, stood up quietly, then drove the butt of the rifle into Moe’s back, between his shoulder blades.

The commotion distracted Angus and when he looked toward Moe, that gave Smoke all the opening he needed. He brought down the would-be thief with a hammerlike right cross.

“What do we do with ’em now?” Preacher asked.

Smoke took the pistols away from the two men and handed them to Preacher.

“When they come to, keep them covered until I get back. I’m going to get the marshal.”

Sugarloaf Ranch

Unlike the cabin he had personally built for Nicole, Sally had wanted a house, and Smoke bought the material and hired two carpenters to build it for him. The main house, or “big house” as the cowboys called it, was a rather large, two-story Victorian edifice, white, with red shutters and a gray-painted porch that ran across the front and wrapped around to one side. The bunkhouse, which was also white with red shutters, sat halfway between the big house and the barn. The house was so new that it still had the smell of fresh-cut wood about it, though for the moment, the most predominate aroma was that of Sally’s cooking.

“My, Preacher, I don’t believe I have ever seen you looking so handsome,” Sally said, greeting the two when they arrived.

“Hrrmph,” Preacher said. “It ain’t natural being all spiffed up like this.”

“Oh, pooh,” Sally said, kissing him on the cheek.

“’Course now, if I’m goin’ to get a kiss from a pretty woman, and get fed to boot, why, it’s worth gettin’ unnatural ever’ now ’n then,” Preacher said. “Could that be apple pie I’m smellin’?”

“It could be,” Sally said.

“I don’t rightly recollect the last time I had me an apple pie. I hope you made one for you ’n Smoke too. I’d sure hate to be eatin’ in front of you without you two didn’t have no pie of your own.”

Sally laughed. “Don’t worry, I made more than one. How long will you be staying with us?”

“I don’t know. Three, maybe four days. But if that’s too long, why you can kick me out anytime you want . . . after the pie is all gone.”