Return of the Mountain Man

22

The homesteader’s cabin appeared deserted when Dent and the others galloped into the front yard, the horses’ hooves trampling over a flower bed and a newly planted garden. Normally, that action alone would bring the wife on a run, squalling and flapping her apron. It was a game the punchers liked to play with nesters, for few cowboys liked nesters, with their gardens and fences.

This time their destructive actions were met with silence.

Inside the cabin, the man lifted a finger to his lips, telling his wife and kids to be still. The wife nodded and moved to a gun slit in the logs, a .30-30 in her hands. Her husband held a double-barreled shotgun, the express gun loaded with buckshot. That painted lady from town had ridden by the day before, warning them to be on guard. All them ladies from the Pink House was riding around, warning the other homesteaders what was happening. First time he’d ever met a…a…one of them ladies. Nice looking woman.

He eased the hammers back on the shotgun.

“Set the damned place on fire!” Dent yelled. “Burn ’em out.”

Those were the last words Dent would speak in his life. The homesteader’s shotgun roared, the buckshot from both barrels catching Dent in the chest and face. The charge lifted the gunhand from the saddle, tearing off most of his face and flinging him several yards away from his horse.

The homesteader’s wife shot the second rider in the chest with her .30-30 just as the oldest boy fired from the hog pen. Three riderless horses stood in the front yard.

The homesteader and his family moved cautiously out of hiding. “Take their guns and stable their horses,” the man said. “Mother, you get the Bible. Son, you get a couple shovels. We’ll give them a Christian burial.”

Black lifted himself up to one elbow. The pain in his chest was fierce. He coughed up blood, pink and frothy. Lung-shot, he thought.

Black looked around him. Douglas and Cross were lying in the front yard of the pig farmer’s cabin. They looked dead. Hell, they were dead!

Who’d have thought it of a damned nester?

Black looked up at the damned homesteader in those stupid-looking overalls. Man had a Colt in each hand. Damn sure knew how to use them, too.

“Never thought a stinkin’ pig farmer would be the one to do me in,” Black gasped the words.

“I was a captain in the War Between the States,” the man spoke calmly. “First Alabama Cavalry.”

“Well, I’ll just be damned!” Black said.

“Yes,” the farmer agreed. “You probably will.”

Black closed his eyes and died.

“No smoke,” Lansing observed.

“Thought I heard gunfire, though,” Potter said.

“Yeah,” Stratton said. “But who is shootin’ who?”

Richards’s stomach felt sour, like he’d drank a glass of clabbered milk. Sour. Yeah, that was the word for it. Sour. Whole damned business was going sour. And all because of one man. He looked around him. Something was out of whack. Then it came to him. About ten or so men were gone, had slipped quietly away. Hell with them. They still had fifty-sixty hardcases. More than enough to do the job.

Or was it?

He shook that thought away. Can’t even think about that. He wondered what that damned Smoke was doing right now.

Janey had never seen a more disreputable-looking bunch of men in all her life. God! They looked older than death.

Except for her brother.

Janey looked at the dead gunhands lying in the front yard. The gunhands Josh had left behind to protect her. That was a joke. But there wasn’t anything funny about it.

“Hello, brother,” she said.

“Sis,” Smoke returned the greeting.

“Well, now what?” Her voice was sharp.

“How much money you have in the house, sis?”

“You going to rob me?”

“No.”

She shrugged. “Quite a bit, I guess, brother. Yeah. Lots of money in the house.”

“Can you ride astride?”

“Kid,” she laughed, “I’ve ridden more things astride than I care to think about.”

Smoke knew what his sister meant. He ignored it. “Change your clothes, get what money you can carry, and clear out. I don’t care where you go, just go. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Her laugh was bitter. “You always could screw up every plan I ever made.”

“Don’t you care what Richards did to your pa and brother?” he asked.

“Hell, no!”

He remembered his pa’s letter. “I guess Pa was right, Janey. He said you were trash.”

“Rich trash, baby brother. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Money rich, sis. That’s all.”

“And you don’t think that’s sufficient?”

“If you do, I feel sorry for you.”

“Then that makes you a fool, Kirby!”

He shrugged. “One hour, Janey. That’s all the time I’m giving you. Pack up and clear out.”

She nodded and turned her back to him. She stopped and turned around. She gave him an obscene gesture, spat on the porch, and walked into the house.

“You rat sure there wasn’t some mixup in babies when she were birthed?” Preacher asked. “You sure she’s your sis?”

“I’m sure.”

Janey left riding like a man and holding the rope of the pack animal.

“Aren’t you the least bit worried about your man?” Smoke had asked her.

“Shoot the son of a bitch as far as I’m concerned,” had been her reply. She had spurred her horse and ridden off without looking back.

“What a delightful young woman,” Audie said, the crust about an inch thick in his voice.

Smoke watched his only living relative—that he knew of—ride away. He knew he should feel something—but he didn’t.

Yes, he did, he corrected.

Relief in the fact that he had found her alive and had offered her a chance to live and she had taken it.

He shook his head.

So he still felt something for her.

But damn little.

“Burn the house to the ground,” he said. He looked around him. Deadlead and Matt were gone. His eyes met Preacher’s gaze.

“They gone to buy us some time,” the mountain man said. “They won’t be back.”

Smoke nodded his head.

“I tole ’em not to kill Stratton, Potter, or Richards,” Preacher said. “You wanted them yourself.”

“I do. Thanks.”

“Think nuttin’ of it. I give ’em to you fer your birthday. Rest of us be takin’ off shortly. You know what I mean.”

Smoke knew.

Two riders left their saddles before the sounds of the rifle fire reached the column of outlaws. The two men were dead before they hit the ground.

“What the hell?” Reese yelled.

“Ambush!” Stratton screamed.

Two more men were flung backward and to the ground, dead and dying.

“There they are!” Rogers hollered, pointing to a ridge. “Come on, let’s get ’em!”

A dozen riders looked at each other, nodded minutely, and slowly wheeled their horses, riding in the opposite direction.

“Come back here, you cowards!” Potter screamed.

“Let them go,” Richards said calmly. “Nobody fire at them.”

His partners looked at him strangely.

“It’s over,” Richards said. “We’re walking-around dead men and don’t even know it.”

“What do you mean?” Stratton’s scream was tinted with hysteria.

“Look,” Richards said, pointing toward his ranch house.

A huge cloud of black smoke was filling the air.

“The PSR house!” Reese yelled.

“Yeah,” Richards said. He smiled. “And you can bet my darling Janey has taken all the cash in the house—which was considerable; she’d need a pack animal to carry it off—and is gone. Her brother wouldn’t kill her.”

“Well, you’re taking it damned calm,” Potter said.

“No reason to get upset. What is done is done.”

One of the dying gunhawks on the ground moaned.

“Hosses comin’ at us,” a gunnie said. “Holy crap!” he yelled. “We’re being charged!”

Deadlead and Matt were in the middle of the riders before the gunhands could really believe it was all taking place. With the reins in their teeth and their fists wrapped about the butts of .44s and .45s, the old mountain men emptied their pistols and had shucked their rifles before anyone else could fire a shot. Richards had trotted his horse off a few hundred yards and was sitting quietly, watching it all, Potter and Stratton with him. Stratton’s face was ashen, his hands trembled, his once fine clothes were torn and dirty.

Eight more riders had joined the four on the ground before the mountain men were blasted from their saddles. Matt rose to his boots, roaring as his blood poured from his wounds.

“Somebody kill that damned nigger!” a gunslick yelled.

Matt shot the man between the eyes with a pistol he’d grabbed from off the ground.

Deadlead jerked a gunhawk off his horse and snapped his neck as easily as wringing the neck of a chicken.

Twenty guns roared. The riddled bodies of the mountain men fell to the already-blood-soaked dust.

Deadlead lifted his bloody head and looked at Sheriff Dan Reese. “Thank you, boys.” He fell to the ground, dead, beside his lifelong friend.

“He thanked me!” Reese said, horror in his voice. “Thanked me? For what?” he screamed.

“If you don’t understand,” Richards said, “there is no point in my trying to explain it to you.” He looked around him. “Long! Take a couple of boys. Get over to that woman’s cabin Sam is sweet on. Kill her and them snot-nosed brats.”

“With pleasure,” the short, stocky gunhand said with a grin. “I just might get me a taste of that gal ’fore I do.”

“Your option,” Richards said.

Long took Deputy Weathers and rode toward the nester cabin. They were, despite all that had happened, in high spirits. Becky was a one fine-lookin’ piece of woman. They rode arrogantly into the front yard, scattering chickens and trampling the flower garden.

“You in the house!” Long called. “Get your tail out here, woman.”

The door opened and Nighthawk stepped out, his big hands wrapped around .44s. He blew Long and Weathers clean out of their saddles. He tied the dead men to the saddles and slapped the horses on the rump, sending them home.

“Those two won’t bother me again,” Becky said.

“Ummm,” Nighthawk replied.