Shootout of the Mountain Man

Chapter Ten

Dodd, Conklin, and Stillwater rode hard for several minutes until the train was far behind them. Finally, Dodd held up his hand, calling them all to a halt.

“Hold it up here. We’ll give the horses a blow,” Dodd said.

The horses whickered and panted from their recent effort.

“What happened?” Conklin asked. “I thought we had ever’thing set up? Was there law on the train?”

“I only seen one man,” Stillwater said.

“You mean one man kilt three of us?”

“We don’t know that Morris, Phillips, and Garrison are dead,” Dodd said.

“Morris is dead. Did you see the way he fell? He hit his head on the track and it didn’t even bother him. He’s dead,” Stillwater said.

“They was a couple of shots inside the train before that fella stuck his head out,” Stillwater said. “So I figure Phillips and Garrison is probably dead too.”

“So what if they are?” Dodd replied. “Turns out they wasn’t worth much anyway.”

“What do we do now? “ Conklin asked.

“We’re goin’ back to Desolation,” Dodd said.

“They’s only three of us left,” Stillwater said. “We’re goin’ to have to get some new folks to ride with us afore we try this again.”

“You let me worry about that,” Dodd said. His horse whickered, and Dodd reached down to pat it on the neck. “The mounts has caught their breath. Let’s get out of here.”

Austin was a silver-mining town, the county seat of Lander County, and with almost ten thousand people, the second largest town in Nevada. The train was no more than an hour late when it rolled into Austin, but because of the attempted train robbery, the sheriff interviewed the train crew and the passengers, so they were delayed in Austin a few hours.

Sheriff Jacobs invited Smoke, who was again wearing his pistol, to his house for breakfast. Breakfast was pancakes, eggs, ham, biscuits, and fried potatoes. Smoke chuckled as he saw all the food being put out on the table.

“Mrs. Jacobs, I do believe that you and my wife, Sally, went to the same school of cooking,” he said. “And the first lesson must have been, ‘Do not allow a guest to leave the table hungry.'”

“I do like to see a man with a healthy appetite,” Mrs. Jacobs replied. The fact that both she and the sheriff were considerably overweight showed that they had healthy appetites.

“The engineer and the firemen said that they recognized Frank Dodd,” Sheriff Jacobs said. “They’ve mostly stayed down in Nye County. I must say I’m a little surprised to see them up here in Lander County.”

“Did you find out the names of the ones I killed?”

The sheriff nodded. “I know two of them. The one with the beard was Cory Garrison, the one with red hair was Jake Phillips. I’ve had both of them in my jail more than once. I’ve always thought they were sort of minor crooks, never did anything very big that I know of. I must say, I’m surprised that they were riding with Frank Dodd. I still don’t know who the third one is.”

“Let me know if you find out who it was,” Smoke said. “I’ve had to kill enough men as it is—I don’t ever want to get to the point to where they are just nameless bodies.”

“I’m told that you took the two who came into your car out with a derringer. Is that true? “ Sheriff Jacobs asked as he spooned a very healthy helping of fried potatoes onto his plate.

“I used a derringer, yes.”

“Most people couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a derringer, and I hear you did it from at least thirty feet away. That is some shooting for a derringer.”

Smoke took a swallow of coffee, primarily to keep from having to respond to the compliment.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories about you, Smoke Jensen, but I have never heard that you used a derringer.”

“The derringer is a backup gun only,” Smoke said. “And I had to use it this time because the conductor insisted that I not board the train wearing this.” He patted the pistol at his side.

“Ha! I never thought Smoke Jensen would give up his pistol so easily.”

“I need to go to Cloverdale and the Nevada Central is the only train that goes where I want to go, so I decided not to make an issue of it.”

“Yes, well, I always knew that Barney Polosi was a pain in the ass. But I never knew he was such a weak sister,” the sheriff said. “Why are you going to Cloverdale?”

“To see a friend,” Smoke replied without specifics.

“Do you know the sheriff there?” Sheriff Jacobs asked.

“No. Do you?”

“His name is Wallace. Herman Wallace. I know him, but I don’t trust him.”

“Why not?”

“I told you that Frank Dodd and his men work mostly in Nye County?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think that is mere coincidence.”

“You think Sheriff Wallace is mixed up with Frank Dodd?” Smoke asked.

“I don’t have any real reason to think that, so I’m not sayin’ it. At least, not officially,” Sheriff Jacobs said. “But if I were you, I would sort of watch out for him.”

“Sheriff, if you would do me a favor?”

“Sure, just ask.”

“Don’t put out the word that I had anything to do with foiling the train holdup.”

“I’ll have to do that if you want to claim the reward,” Sheriff Wallace said. “I think there’s at least a hundred dollars reward apiece on Phillips and Garrison. And we don’t know who the other’n is yet, but once we find out, I wouldn’t be surprised but what the reward on him is even bigger. ”

“Give the reward to the volunteer firemen’s fund or something,” Smoke said.

“Really? Damn, that’s right decent of you, Smoke.”

The conversation continued through breakfast. Then, excusing himself, Smoke stood up.

“I’d better get going. I don’t want to miss the train.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you ain’t goin’ to miss it.” Sheriff Jacobs stood up, opened a biscuit, and slid in a piece of ham. “I gave strict orders that the train was not to leave until I got there.” He pointed to the pistol that Smoke was now wearing. “And you won’t have a problem hanging onto your gun for the rest of the trip either. I’ve already had a talk with Jenkins, the new conductor. Come on, I’ll walk down to the depot with you.”

The sheriff took a bite of his biscuit sandwich as he started toward the door.

When they approached the depot, they saw an open coffin standing up against one of the support posts on the roofed depot platform. Inside the coffin was the body of the third train robber. The undertaker had cleaned up his head wound, and crossed his arms across his chest. He was holding a pistol in his right hand. His eyes were open and glazed. On the top of the coffin was a sign that read:

DOES ANYONE KNOW THIS MAN?

At the bottom of the coffin was another sign.

WARNING TO TRAIN ROBBERS THIS COULD BE YOU

Sheriff Jacobs walked with Smoke to the train, then shook his hand just before he boarded.

“Come back any time, Mr. Jensen,” he said. “You will always be welcome.”

“Thanks,” Smoke said.

The train whistle blew and with a final wave, Smoke stepped up into the car.

As Emmett Clark drew closer to Desolation, he passed through a canyon, on the left side of which rose a high bluff. After passing the bluff, he looked back, and about halfway up the side of the canyon wall, a column could be seen jutting out in front of the bluff, crowned with what looked like the feathers of a war bonnet. This gave the canyon its name, War Bonnet.

Clark was coming to Desolation because he had overheard some saloon conversation back in Geneva that Desolation was not a place anyone would want to visit because of its lack of law.

“I reckon you could find just about any outlaw in Nevada there if you cared to go look for him,” one of the speakers suggested.

“If that’s so, why don’t the law ever go there to catch ‘em?” another asked.

“Ha! They ain’t no law ever goes there but what they don’t wind up getting themselves kilt,” the first one answered. “They got themselves a boot hill there that ain’t for nothin’ but law what’s come after one or another of them.”

Clark wasn’t the law per se, but then his occupation of hunting down wanted men and turning them in for the reward wouldn’t likely be one that would be welcomed either. He decided, therefore, to pass himself off as someone who was on the dodge from the law.

Black thunderclouds rumbled ominously in the northwest, but held off long enough for Clark to reach the little town of Desolation.

Desolation was laid out along one long street. In the middle of the street on the west side was a railroad depot, complete with a small white sign with the name of the town, and the altitude neatly painted in black letters:

Desolation

ELEVATION: 4,135 FT.

Clark found the presence of a railroad depot to be rather unusual, since there was obviously no railroad. Railroad Avenue continued on as a wagon trail running north and south out of town.

He saw at least two dozen people in town, mostly in little clusters of two or three men. He saw no women and no children, which he took as a good indication that this was the kind of town that had been described to him—an outlaw town.

At intervals all up and down Railroad Avenue, there were boards stretched across the dirt streets to allow people to cross when the roads were full of mud. There were obviously no street cleaners nor any kind of city sanitation workers for, unlike those towns where the horse droppings were picked up on a regular basis, this street was covered with manure and the stench was almost unbearable.

Clark stopped in front of a saloon that, in keeping with the theme of the town, was called the Railroad Saloon. Dismounting, he tied off his horse, then went inside.

There were several people inside the saloon and here, for the first time, Clark saw women. They were all wearing brightly colored ruffled skirts that came no lower than their knees. Under the bell-shaped skirts could be seen colorfully hued petticoats that barely reached their kid boots, which were adorned with tassels. Their arms and shoulders were bare, their bodices cut low over their bosoms, and their dresses decorated with sequins and fringe. One of them, seeing Clark come in, smiled and came toward him.

“My, what a handsome young man you are,” she said flirtatiously. “You don’t look anything at all like an outlaw.”

“Outlaw?” Clark replied.

For a moment the smile left the woman’s face. “Honey, you are an outlaw, aren’t you? Because if you aren’t, I would advise you to just keep on goin'.”

“How did you know I was an outlaw? Does it show in my face?” Clark asked.

The woman laughed at Clark’s question.

“Oh, honey, didn’t you know? Everybody in Desolation is an outlaw,” she said.

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Hey, you, Cindy,” a man called from a table near the back of the saloon. “Get the hell away from him. You are my woman!”

“I ain’t nobody’s woman, Jules Stillwater,” Cindy replied.

“You’re my woman until I tell you you ain’t my woman no more,” Stillwater called back. “Now, get me and my friends a drink.”

There were two other men sitting at the table with the one Cindy had called Stillwater.

One of the men sitting with him was a fairly large man with broad shoulders, but what stood out most about him was the disfiguring scar on his face. Half of one eyelid was missing, and part of his lip was cut away so that he couldn’t completely close his mouth. This fit exactly the description Clark had heard of Frank Dodd.

“Is that Frank Dodd?” Clark asked.

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to meet him.”

“Honey, believe me, you don’t want anything to do with him. If you think Stillwater is trouble, you ain’t seen nothin’ till you cross Frank Dodd.”

Clark smiled. “Well, I’ll just have to see to it that I don’t cross him, won’t I?”