Return of the Mountain Man

23

The ever-shrinking band of outlaws and gunhands looked toward the west. Another cloud of black smoke filled the air.

Lansing began cursing. “How in the hell are them old men doin’ it?” he yelled. “We’re fightin’ a damned bunch of ghosts.”

“Are you stayin’ or leavin’?” Stratton asked.

“Might as well see it through,” the man said bitterly. Those were the last words he would speak on this earth. A Sharps barked, the big slug taking the rancher in the center of his chest, knocking him spinning from his saddle.

“I’ve had it!” a gunhand said. He spun his horse and rode away. A dozen followed him. No one tried to stop them.

“Look all around us,” Brown said.

The men looked. A mile away, in a semicircle, ten mountain men sat their ponies. As if on signal, the old mountain men lifted their rifles high above their heads.

Turkel, one of the most feared gunhawks in the territory, looked the situation over through field glasses. “That there’s Preacher,” he said, pointing. “That’un over yonder is the Frenchman, Dupre. That one ridin’ a mule is Greybull. That little bitty shithead is the midget, Audie. Boys, I don’t want no truck with them old men. I’m tellin’ you all flat-out.”

The old men began waving with their rifles.

“What are they tryin’ to tell us?” Reese asked.

“That Smoke is waiting in the direction they’re pointing,” Richards said. “They’re telling us to tangle with him—if we’ve got the sand in us to do so.”

Potter did some fast counting. Out of what was once a hundred and fifty men, only nineteen remained, including himself. “Hell, boys! He’s only one man. There’s nineteen of us!”

“There was about this many over at that minin’ camp, too,” Britt said. “They couldn’t stop him.”

“Well,” Kelly said. “Way I see it is this: we either fight ten of them ringtailed-tooters, or we fight Smoke.”

“I’ll take Smoke,” Howard said. But he wasn’t all that thrilled with the choices offered him.

The mountain men began moving, closing the circle. The gunhands turned their horses and moved out, allowing themselves to be pushed toward the west.

“They’re pushing us toward Slate,” Williams said. “The ghost town.”

Richards smiled at Smoke’s choice of a showdown spot.

As the old ghost town appeared on the horizon, located on the flats between the Lemhi River and the Beaverhead Range, Turkel’s buddy, Harris, reined up and pointed. “Goddamn place is full of people!”

“Miners,” Brown said. “They come to see the show. Drinking and betting. Them old mountain men spread the word.”

“Just like it was at the camp on the Uncompahgre,” Richards said with a grunt.* “Check your weapons. Stuff your pockets full of extra shells. I’m going back to talk with Preacher. I want to see how this deal is going down.”

Richards rode back to the mountain men, riding with one hand in the air.

“That there’s far enuff,” Lobo said. “Speak your piece.”

“We win this fight, do we have to fight you men too?”

“No,” Preacher said quickly. “My boy Smoke done laid down the rules.”

His boy! Richards thought. Jesus God. “We win, do we get to stay in this part of the country?”

“If’n you win,” Preacher said, “you leave with what you got on your backs. If’n you win, we pass the word, and here ’tis: if’n you or any of your people ever come west of Kansas, you dead meat. That clear?”

“You’re a hard old man, Preacher.”

“You wanna see jist how hard?” Preacher challenged.

“No,” Richards said, shaking his head. “We’ll take our chances with Smoke.”

“You would be better off taking your chances with us,” Audie suggested.

Richards looked at Nighthawk. “What do you have to say about it?”

“Ummm.”

Richards looked pained.

“That means haul your ass back to your friends,” Phew said.

Richards trotted his horse back to what was left of his band. He told them the rules.

Britt looked up the hill toward an old falling-down store. “There he is.”

Smoke stood alone on the old curled-up and rotted boardwalk. The men could see his twin .44s belted around his waist. He held a Henry repeating rifle in his right hand, a double-barreled express gun in his left hand. Smoke ducked into the building, leaving only a slight bit of dust to signal where he once stood.

“Two groups of six,” Richards said, “one group of three, one group of four. Britt, take your group in from the rear. Turkel, take your boys in from the east. Reese, take your people in from the west. I’ll take my people in from this direction. Move out.”

Smoke had removed his spurs, hanging them on the saddlehorn of Drifter. As soon as he ducked out of sight, he had run from the store down the hill, staying in the alley. He stashed the express gun on one side of the street in an old store, his rifle across the street. He met Skinny Davis first, in the gloom of what had once been a saloon.

“Draw!” Davis hissed.

Smoke put two holes in his chest before Davis could cock his .44s.

“In Pat’s Saloon!” someone shouted.

Williams jumped through an open glassless window of the saloon. Just as his boots hit the old warped floor, Smoke shot him, the .44 slug knocking the gunslick back out the window to the boardwalk. Williams was hurt, but not out of it yet. He crawled along the side of the building, one arm broken and dangling, useless.

“Smoke Jensen!” Cross called. “You ain’t got the sand to face me!”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Smoke muttered, taking careful aim and shooting the outlaw. The lead struck him in the stomach, doubling him over and dropping him to the weed-grown and dusty street.

The miners had hightailed it to the ridges surrounding the town. There they sat, drinking and betting and cheering. The mountain men stood and squatted and sat on the opposite ridge, watching.

A bullet dug a trench along the wood, sending splinters flying, a few of them striking Smoke’s face, stinging and bringing a few drops of blood.

He ran out the back of the saloon and came face to face with Simpson, the gunhawk having both hands filled with a .44.

Smoke pulled the trigger on his own .44s, the double hammer-blows of lead taking Simpson in the lower chest, slamming him to the ground, dying.

Quickly reloading, Smoke grabbed up Simpson’s guns and tucked them behind his gunbelt. He ran down the alley. The last of Richards’s gunslicks stepped out of a gaping doorway just as Smoke cut to his right, jumping through an open window. A bullet burned Smoke’s shoulder. Spinning, he fired both Colts, one bullet striking Martin in the throat, the second taking the gunnie just above the nose, almost tearing off the upper part of the man’s face.

Smoke caught a glimpse of someone running. He dropped to one knee and fired. His slug shattered the hip of Rogers, sending the big man sprawling in the dirt, howling and cursing. Reese spurred his horse and charged the building where Smoke was crouched. He smashed his horse’s shoulder against the old door and thundered in. The horse, wild-eyed and scared witless, lost its footing and fell, pinning Reese to the floor, crushing the man’s stomach and chest. Reese howled in agony as blood filled his mouth and darkness clouded his eyes.

Smoke left the dying man and ran out the side door.

“Get him, Turkel!” Brown screamed.

Smoke glanced up. Turkel was on the roof of an old building, a rifle in his hand. Smoke flattened against a building as Turkel pulled the trigger, the slug plowing up dirt at Smoke’s feet. Smoke snapped off a shot, getting lucky as the bullet hit the gunhand in the chest. Turkel dropped the rifle and fell to the street, crashing through an awning. He did not move.

A bullet removed a small part of Smoke’s right upper ear; blood poured down the side of his face. He ran to where he had hid the shotgun, grabbing it up and cocking it, leveling it just as the doorway filled with men.

Firing both barrels, Smoke cleared the doorway of all living things, including Britt, Harris, and Smith, the buckshot knocking the men clear off the rotting boardwalk, dead and dying in the street.

“Goddamn you, Jensen!” Brown screamed in rage, stepping out into the street.

Smoke dropped the shotgun and picked up a bloody rifle from the doorway. He shot Brown in the stomach. Brown howled and dropped to the street, both hands holding his stomach.

Rogers leveled a pistol and fired, the bullet ricocheting off a support post, part of the lead striking Smoke’s left leg, dropping him to the boardwalk. Smoke ended Rogers’s career with a single shot to the head.

White-hot pain lanced through Smoke’s side as Williams shot him from behind. Smoke fell off the boardwalk, turning as he fell. He fired twice, the lead taking Williams in the neck, almost tearing the man’s head off.

Ducking back inside, grabbing up a fallen shotgun with blood on the barrel, Smoke checked the shotgun, then checked his wounds. Bleeding, but not serious. Williams’s slug had gone through the fleshy part of the side. Using the point of his knife, Smoke picked out the tiny piece of lead from Rogers’s gun and tied a bandana around the slight wound. He slipped further into the darkness of the building as spurs jingled in the alley to the rear of the old store. Smoke jacked back both hammers on the coach gun. He waited.

The spurs jingled once more. Smoke followed the sound with the twin barrels of the express gun. Carefully, silently, he slipped across the rat-droppings-littered floor to the wall that fronted the alley. He could hear breathing directly in front of him.

He pulled both triggers, the charge blowing a bucket-sized hole in the old pine wall.

The gunslick was blown clear across the alley, hurled against an outhouse. The outhouse collapsed, the gunhand falling into the shit-pit.

Silently, Smoke reloaded the shotgun, then reloaded his own .44s and the ones taken from the dead gunnie. He listened as Fenerty called for his buddies.

There was no reply.

Fenerty was the last gunhawk left.

Smoke located the voice. Just across the street in a falling-down old building. Laying aside the shotgun, he picked up a rifle and emptied the magazine into the storefront. Fenerty came staggering out, shot in the chest and belly. He died face down in the littered street.

“All right, you bastards!” Smoke yelled to Richards, Potter, and Stratton. “Holster your guns and step out into the street. Face me, if you’ve got the nerve.”

The sharp odor of sweat mingled with blood and gunsmoke filled the still summer air as four men stepped out into the bloody, dusty street.

Richards, Potter, and Stratton stood at one end of the block. A tall, bloody figure stood at the other. All their guns were in leather.

“You son of a bitch!” Stratton screamed, his voice as high-pitched as a woman. “You ruined it all.” He clawed at his .44.

Smoke drew and fired before Stratton’s pistol could clear leather. Potter grabbed for his pistol. Smoke shot him dead, then holstered his gun, waiting.

Richards had not moved. He stood with a faint smile on his lips, staring at Smoke.

“You ready to die?” Smoke asked the man.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose,” Richards replied. There was no fear in his voice. His hands appeared steady. “Janey gone?”

“Took your money and pulled out.”

“Been a long run, hasn’t it, Jensen?”

“It’s just about over.”

“What happens to all our holdings?”

“I don’t care what happens to the mines. The miners can have them. I’m giving all your stock to decent, honest punchers and homesteaders.”

A puzzled look spread over Richards’ face. “I don’t understand. You did…all this!” he waved his hand—“for nothing?”

Someone moaned, the sound painfully inching up the street.

“I did it for my pa, my brother, my wife, and my baby son.”

“But it won’t bring them back!”

“I know.”

“I wish I had never heard the name Jensen.”

“You’ll never hear it again after this day, Richards.”

“One way to find out,” Richards said with a smile. He drew his Colt and fired. He was snake-quick, but hurried his shot, the lead digging up dirt at Smoke’s feet.

Smoke shot him in the right shoulder, spinning the man around. Richards grabbed for his left-hand gun and Smoke fired again, the slug striking the man in the left side of his chest. He struggled to bring up his Colt. He managed to cock it before Smoke’s third shot struck him in the belly. Richards sat down hard in the bloody, dusty street.

He opened his mouth to speak. He tasted blood on his tongue. The light began to fade around him. “You’ll…meet…”

Smoke never found out who he was supposed to meet. Richards toppled over on his side and died.

Smoke looked up at the ridge where the mountain men had gathered.

They were gone, leaving as silently as the wind.