Return of the Mountain Man

21

“If you’re cowboys, turn those ponies’ noses west and ride out. If you’re gunhands, make your play,” Smoke said.

The three riders on the Crooked Snake range slowly turned their horses, being very careful to keep their hands away from sixguns. They sat and stared at the mountain men and at Smoke.

“We’re drawin’ thirty a month and found,” one said. “That ain’t exactly fightin’ pay.”

“You got anything back at the bunkhouse worth dyin’ over?”

“Not a thing.”

“You boys ride out. If you’ve a mind to, come back in three-four days. They’ll be a lot of cattle wandering around with no owners. You might want to start up some small spreads in this area.”

“You be the outlaw, Smoke Jensen?” a cowboy asked.

“I’m Jensen. But I’m no outlaw.”

“Mister, if you say you’re an African go-riller, you ain’t gonna git no argument from me,” another cowboy said.

“Fine. You boys head on toward the Salmon. Drift back in three-four days. We’ll be gone, and so will the ranches. The homesteaders will still be here, though. Unless you want to see me again, leave them be. Understand?”

“Mr. Jensen, I’ll even help ’em plow!”

Smoke smiled. “Take off.”

The punchers took off.

“Five, maybe six gunnies at the ranch,” Beartooth said, riding up.

Smoke looked at Powder Pete. “Got some dynamite with you?”

“You don’t have to say no more.” Powder Pete wheeled his mustang and took off for the ranch, Smoke and Sam and the mountain men hard after him.

“How do you boys want it?” Smoke called to the deserted-appearing ranch.

A rifle shot was the only reply.

“Hold your fire,” Smoke told his people. Raising his voice, he shouted, “Your boss payin’ you so much money you’d die for him?”

“Hell with you, Jensen!” the shout drifted to Smoke. “Come git us if you got the sand to do it.”

Smoke looked at Powder Pete. “Blow ’em out!”

The old mountain man grinned and slipped silently away. About five minutes later, the bunkhouse exploded, the roof blowing off. A dynamite charge blew the porch off the main house, collapsing one side of the house. Smoke and the mountain men poured a full minute of lead into the house.

“I’m done with it!” a man shouted from the dynamite-ruined and bullet-pocked house. “Lemme ride out and I’m gone.”

“Take what’s on your back and clear out!” Smoke yelled. “How ’bout you other men?”

“There ain’t no other men,” the man shouted, a bitter edge to his voice. “Two was in the bunkhouse. Rafter got another in here. Lead took the others. I’m it!”

“Clear out and don’t come back.”

“You just watch my dust, Jensen.”

They watched it fade out, the gunhand riding toward the west. He did not look back.

“Check the house for wounded, then burn it all,” Smoke said.

“You got a mean streak in you,” Preacher said. “Shore didn’t git it from me.”

Smoke grinned at the man who had helped raise him. Preacher was as mean and vindictive as a wounded grizzly.

“I allow as to how we ain’t gonna bury them gunhawks in the house,” Preacher said, not putting it in question form.

“Somewhere, sometime, they had a ma,” Smoke said. “She’d wanna know her boy was buried proper.”

“I’d afraid you say that,” Preacher bitched. “I ain’t never found no shovel to fit my hand.”

“There goes my ranch,” Marshall said, looking west into the sky. There was no bitterness in his voice, only a grudging admiration.

The hundred-odd men sat their saddles and stared at the black smoke pluming into the sky.

“We can still save the cattle,” one of his men said.

“You want them, you save them,” Marshall replied. “I’m headin’ out.”

“Where the hell you think you goin’?” Lansing asked.

“I’m pullin’ out. You boys got any smarts, you’ll do the same. I just realized that we ain’t gonna stop this Jensen. If’n a man’s right, and he jist keeps on comin’, ain’t nothing or nobody gonna stop him. And you know what, boys? Jensen’s right.”

“Right?” Potter squalled. “He comes in here and ruins everything we worked to build and you sit there and say the man’s right?”

Marshall chuckled grimly. “That’s it, boys. Everything we got we built on stole money and the blood of others. Hell with it. I’m pullin’ out.” He wheeled his horse and turned his back to the others.

Josh Richards jerked up his rifle and shot the man in the back. Marshall fell from the saddle, his spine severed. He lay on the ground, looking at the men through pain-filled eyes. “Should have known one of you would do that,” he gasped.

Stratton shot the man between the eyes.

Potter looked at what remained of Marshall’s men. “Stay with us. All his cattle, his mine holdings—everything is yours if we win this fight.”

“We’ll stay,” one hard-faced Crooked Snake gunnie said. “I never liked Marshall no how.”

“Let’s ride.”

“What do we do with the cattle?” Audie asked.

“Leave them for those cowboys,” Smoke said. “They seemed like pretty decent boys to me.”

“The cattle on Richards’s place?” Tenneysee asked.

“That’s another story. We’ll give them to the nesters and the miners.”

“Seems fair enough,” Lobo said. “I damned shore don’t want ’um.”

“Someone has to meet the stage and turn it around,” Smoke said. “Any volunteers?”

“MacGregor said he’d do it,” Sam spoke. “But I don’t like the idee of one man waitin’ out there all alone with a hundred or so gunhands on the prowl.”

“You go back and meet the stage with him,” Audie suggested. “I should imagine you and your ladyfriend will be settling in this area. So the less you have to do with this matter, the better. Agreed, Smoke?”

“Good idea. Take off, Sam. I’ll see you when this is over.”

Reluctantly, Sam agreed and rode out, back to Becky’s cabin.

“Lansing’s Triangle is almost due north from here,” Matt said. “We hit there next?”

“That’s what they would expect us to do, isn’t it?” Smoke asked, a hard grin on his lips.

“Oh, you sneaky, boy!” Preacher said. “You as sneaky as a rattler.”

“Whut you two jawin’ about?” Phew asked.

“We head straight east,” Smoke explained. “For Brown’s Double Bar B. I’m betting Richards and all the rest are high-tailing right now to set up an ambush around Lansing’s spread.”

“At’s rat good thankin’, boy,” Beartooth said. “I can tell Preacher hepped raise you.”

Preacher stuck out his skinny chest. “Done a damn good job of ’er, too.”

“Don’t start braggin’,” Greybull said. “I been listenin’ to you bump them gums of yourn for fifty years. Sickenin’.”

“Hush up, you mule-ridin’ giant!” Preacher told him.

The other mountain men joined in.

They were still grousing and bitching and hurling insults at one another as they rode off.

“We’re spread thin,” Brown said to Richards. “Real thin.”

“But when they come,” Stratton said, “we’ll have them in a circle. All we have to do is close up the bottom of the pinchers and trap them.”

“If they come,” Lansing said. “I don’t trust that damned Jensen. He’s a devil.”

“He’s just a man,” Sheriff Reese said sourly.

“A hell of a man,” Richards said. “Janey’s brother.”

“What!” Potter shouted.

“Janey told me before I left the ranch. She knew all along that she’d seen him somewhere, but she didn’t put it together until a few days ago.”

“What’d she say do with him?” Stratton asked.

Richards shrugged. “Kill him.”

Dawn broke hot and red over the valley that Brown called his Double Bar B spread. During the night, Dupre and Deadlead had slipped into the ranch area and found it deserted except for the cook. They had put him on the road after he told them that all the men drawing fighting pay were out with the boss. Just punchers riding herd on the cattle. Give them a chance, and they’d haul their ashes quick.

That was what Smoke was now doing. Alone.

The punchers looked up as the midnight-black stallion with the tall rider approached their meager camp. They all knew, without being told, who they were facing.

“We’re cowboys, not gunhawks,” one puncher said. “We ain’t lookin’ for no trouble.”

“Then you won’t have any,” Smoke told him. “Get your gear, pack it up, and ride out.” He made them the same offer he had made the Crooked Snake cowboys.

“Sounds good to me,” a puncher said. “We gone, Mister Jensen.”

Smoke watched them ride out, leaving the herd without a backward glance.

He waved the mountain men in. Lobo inspected the main house.

“Place is a damned pigsty,” he reported back.

“Well, let’s roast some pigs,” Smoke said.

“That son of a bitch!” Brown shouted, jumping up, his eyes to the east. “He’s fired my ranch.”

Richards looked at the smoke pouring into the sky. There was a look of grudging admiration on the man’s cruel face.

“I’ve had it!” Morgan said. “Me and Burton and Hallen and some of the others been talkin’. We’re pullin’ out, headin’ west.”

The others looked at the rifles in the men’s hands. Potter stepped in before gunfire could start.

“All right!” he shouted. “How many of you are leaving?”

Nearly all the men from town were leaving, with the exception of Sheriff Reese and his so-called deputies.

“I gather you’re going to join your families?” Richards said with a smile on his face.

“That’s crap!” Reverend Necker said. “I don’t care if I ever see that old bat again.”

“Don’t any of you ever set a boot in this part of the country again,” Stratton warned.

“Don’t you worry,” Burton said.

The townspeople rode out without looking back.

Looking around them, the ranchers and gunhands could see where others had deserted them during the night. Quietly slipped away into the darkness. What remained were the hardcases.

“They wasn’t much help anyways,” a gunnie from the Crooked Snake said. “I never did trust none of them.”

“Rider comin’ hard,” another gunslick said, looking toward the southeast.

Simpson reined up, his horse blowing hard. “Miners quit!” he said. “All of ’em. Said they ain’t workin’ for none of you no more.”

Stratton started cursing. Potter and Richards let him curse until he ran down.

“Where’s all them townies goin’?” Simpson asked.

“Turned yeller and run,” Long told him.

“Let ’em go. They’s only in the way.” He looked at Richards. “That smoke back yonderways—that the Double Bar B?”

“Yeah.” He twisted in the saddle, the leather creaking. He looked at the men gathered around him. “Any the rest of you boys want to turn tail and run?”

That question was met by silence and hard eyes.

“We gonna make them mountain men and Mister Jensen come to us,” Richards declared. “Where’s the nearest nester spread from here?” He tossed the question to anyone.

“’Bout ten miles,” a gunslick said. “Next one is about four miles from that one.”

“Dent,” Richards looked at a mean-eyed rider. “Take a couple of boys and go burn them out. Black, you take a couple men and burn out the next pig farmer’s family. That ought to bring Mister High-And-Mighty Jensen on the run.” Richards started laughing. “And while you’re doing that, the rest of us will be setting up an ambush.”

“What about the wimmin and kids?” a gunhawk named Cross asked.

“What about them?” Potter asked.

“I thought we agree on that?” Stratton said.

“They have to die,” Richards said. “All of them.”