Triumph of the Mountain Man

20

Smoke Jensen chose to leave town by way of the road controlled by the vaqueros from Rancho de la Gloria. The ranch hand on watch gave him a silent salute as he crossed the bridge on foot. Thick coatings of burlap muffled the hooves of his stallion, Cougar. They would remain on until Smoke slipped past the pickets of the outlaw army. So skilled was the last mountain man that when the vaquero lookout who watched him depart blinked, Smoke had completely disappeared.

It did not take long after that for Smoke to find targets for his night’s mischief. Silently he wormed his way in among the outlaws at one camp fire. One look at his gunfighter rig and they accepted him as one of their own. He was offered coffee, which Smoke accepted.

“Thanks, I needed that. Maybe it’ll settle my nerves.”

“What are you gittin’ at—er . . . ?”

Smoke dropped into the loose grammar and dialect of his mentor, the old mountain man called Preacher. “They call me Jagger. An’ what I’m gettin’ at is that there’s Injuns in among the folks in town.”

“Naw,” another hard case disputed. “They’re Mezkins, Jagger. You’ve jist caught a case of the spooks.”

Smoke played the trump in his rumor hand. “Mezkins wearin’ moccasins, loincloths and floppy shirts? Hair down to their shoulders? Believe it. I’ve seen ’em myself. They’re all sharpenin’ scalpin’ knives.”

A shiver passed over his audience. Smoke added more to their unease. “There must be as many fightin’ men in thar as out here.”

The doubtful one again challenged his statement. “Not accordin’ to Whitewater Paddy.”

Smoke cracked a grin. “Mr. Quinn don’t know ever’thing. I’ve seed ’em. There’s Injuns, an’ Mezkin cowboys, and a whole lot of townies.”

Smoke answered a string of troubled questions with inventions calculated to fan the blaze of fear he had introduced. After ten minutes of yarn spinning, Smoke drank off his coffee, came to his boots and drifted on.

* * *

“I’m makin’ the rounds, checkin’ if anyone needs anything,” Smoke explained at the next fire. Using the names he had acquired at the first gathering, he deepened his cover. “Are you Zeke? Well, Rupe told me to tell you howdy for him. He’s holdin’ his own. ’Cept for what he found out about the Injuns in Taos.”

Zeke eyed Smoke. “What’s this about Injuns?”

Smoke launched into his tall tale about scalping. Then he added another log to the overloaded wagon. “That’s not all. A feller who’s been in close to town tells me that this Smoke Jensen has put up a hundred-dollar bounty on every one of us who gets killed.”

Zeke denied that at once. “I don’t believe it. Nobody, especially a rovin’ gunfighter, has that kind of money.”

Smoke ignored him. “Somethin’ more about those Injuns. Jensen’s armed them with rifles and shotguns.”

“No!” Agitated, Zeke came to his boots. “Ain’t no way them townies would stand for that. It’s fools’ work givin’ guns to Injuns.”

“Makes no never-mind. That’s what I saw with my own eyes. Injuns runnin’ around with Winchesters. An’ that’s not all of it. Not by half.” Smoke went on to add yet another burden to the worried outlaws. Then he quietly left the uneasy souls to these imaginings.

* * *

After three more such visits, Smoke decided that his rumors would take sprout and grow with satisfactory speed. Crouched low, he worked his way in among the horses of those who ringed the town between roads. With a cautious hand, he reached for the cinch ring of one animal. He kept the other on the nose of the animal to calm it.

Ever so slowly, Smoke eased the leather end free of the ring and loosened the cinch. Next time the owner tried to straddle his mount, he would wind up with a lap full of saddle. Smiling to himself, Smoke completed the task and moved on to another critter to do the same. He repeated the loosening of cinch straps a dozen times, then switched tactics.

Along the west side, he fitted front hooves into black leather hobbles on ten other horses. He started to come upright from the last one when a voice challenged him from the darkness. “What are you doin’ here?”

Smoke had a ready explanation. “Cleanin’ the frog on the right forehoof of my horse. On the way out here he come up lame. Figgered it wouldn’t do for us to jump up a fight and me unable to ride.”

“Good thinking.” The speaker moved closer. “Say, I don’t think I—”

Prepared for that, Smoke had already slid his left-hand Colt from its pocket and gripped it tightly around the cylinder with his left hand. He swung the weapon now and connected the butt with the outlaw’s temple. The alert section leader went down without a sound. Smoke bent and checked him, then tied the man’s wrists and ankles and dragged him off toward the rear. His night vision in perfect condition, Smoke sought a place to stash his burden.

He found it in the form of a small ravine. He lined up the bandit parallel to the gully and rolled him down, out of sight. During his brief search, Smoke had come upon a secondary ring of camp fires. These had not as yet been ignited. He carefully marked their location for later attention. For now, he moved on to find more who had straggled away from the picket line.

* * *

Nate Carver had his mind on a glass of whiskey, a hand of winning cards, and a pretty bit of fluff to sit on his lap. He eased his cartridge belt upward and unbuttoned his fly in order to relieve himself. While he fumbled with one stubborn button, visions of the sort of celebration he would have once this was over danced behind his eyes.

That whiskey would sure taste good. His mouth watered at the thought of it. And a nice big steak, well done, the way he had learned to eat it in Texas. And four of the stupidest fellers to ever hold pasteboards in a poker game to play against. Yeah. And then that tingling feeling that came every time a feller walked up them stairs with a floozy on his arm. The small room, the soft bed, the tender flesh. His self-distraction prevented him from sighting the ghostly movement against the lighter darkness of a star-lit horizon. All too late, he sensed another presence an instant before Smoke Jensen smacked him on the side of the head.

Nate would have rather died than be found by his friends in the condition that resulted from sudden unconsciousness and a full bladder. Smoke Jensen trussed him up and set him in the center of a collection of large, fat, barrel cactus. There were bound to be more, Smoke told himself.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Smoke found the reason for the second ring of fire pits. An outlaw wearing a cook’s apron gathered dry mesquite branches and stacked them beside a chuck wagon. Well beyond rifle range, this would provide a safe place for breakfast. Smoke quickly thought out a way to spoil the meal for them. Ghosting in on moccasined feet, he closed with the belly robber. Smoke’s lips thinned to a grim line of disapproval when he saw the curly gray hair on the head he intended to thump. A feller his age should know better than to run with outlaws.

Smoke’s regret was not tempered by mercy. He eased up behind the unsuspecting rascal and put him to sleep with a solid blow from his Colt. Quickly he grabbed the man and eased him to the ground. He pulled another prepared strip of latigo leather from a pocket and bound the bean burner’s wrists. Then he pulled off the man’s boots and removed a sock. After binding the ankles, he stuffed the dirty, smelly wool stocking into an open mouth, careful to remove a poorly fitted set of dentures first, and used another pigging string to secure it in place.

“Time to get to work,” Smoke muttered to himself.

He went directly to the rear of the chuck wagon, where the oversized tailgate/worktable had been lowered into place. He opened the drawer that contained about five pounds of salt. This he poured into a bowl for the time being and refilled the receptacle from the sugar bin. The salt then went in to replace the sugar. A quick search under a rising moon located an ant hill. Using a tin plate, Smoke scooped up a generous number of the busybody insects and delivered them to the flour barrel.

Half a dozen road apples, from the team of mules that pulled the wagon, completed his sabotage when he dropped them into the liquid that covered the corned pork. Then he hoisted the supine cook over one shoulder and carried him off a goodly distance to where he would not be found for some time. Someone else would be fixing breakfast for the Quinn gang. Someone Smoke felt confident would not have the skill to recognize the change in the ingredients. That attended to, he began a round of the prelaid fires.

Into each of ten, he inserted a capped and fused stick of dynamite. Being careful to cover them well with dirt, he replaced the kindling and larger wood, then faded off into the night. He reflected on what he had done and counted it a good night’s work.

* * *

Clifton Satterlee fumed over the delay. A wheel had broken on his surrey not thirty miles north of Santa Fe. Fortunately there had been a posada close by. One that did not have vermin swarming in the mattresses and climbing the walls of the kitchen, he noted grudgingly. The food had been good, for a change. Not the excellent meals his cook prepared, yet flavorful and generous in quantity. Much against his best instincts, Brice Noble had come with him. They sat now at a small table in the alcovelike cantina off the lobby of the inn. Noble poured for both of them from a green glass bottle of Domeq Don Pedro brandy. Not so good as his preferred cognac, but it would do, Satterlee considered.

Taking a sip, he spoke to Brice Noble. “This delay is inexcusable. A spare wheel should be brought along at all times.”

“It’s your carriage, Cliff” Noble did not mention that the damage had been done as a result of Satterlee’s insistence that they travel at the fastest possible speed.

Satterlee cued on his partner’s tone. “Meaning?”

“You are the one who has to order a spare being lashed on the surrey.”

With a snort, Satterlee took a long pull on the amber liquid. “I hate people who ooze practicality.” Abruptly he changed the subject. “We may have some difficulty with some of the people in Taos. They are a stubborn lot. But our time is running out. Quinn has assured me he has rounded up enough gunfighters and rough types to overcome any objections. We’ll have about two hundred men.”

Noble winced. “That’s going to cost a lot of money.”

“Yes, but necessary. We may have to take the town by force.” He paused, sighed heavily. “Although I would prefer not to resort to that. It might affect our credibility when it comes to filing for new deeds. No matter what, we will have Taos, and we will log that Indian land. That is all vital to our project. I think I’ve had enough of this.” He nodded to a quartet of mariachis playing to a Mexican couple at a corner table. “I’m going to retire. Hastings has assured me that they will have the wheel fitted by morning. Good night, Brice.”

* * *

Smoke Jensen returned to Taos, linking up with the route he had used to depart only at the last moment. His keen night vision, augmented now by a hazy full moon, allowed him to pick out the significant differences from when he had left town. Seven darker lumps stood out against a background of twinkling pinpoints of light in a black velvet sky. Slowly they resolved into human figures. All faced inward toward the community they invested. Smoke had already dismounted. Now he clapped a hand over Cougar’s muzzle and eased the big Palouse off the roadway. He ground reined his horse and slid off into the night once again.

One of those who attempted to reestablish the roadblock under cover of night had taken a position some fifty feet from the verge of the road. He had hunkered down, the stock of his rifle used as a prop. He constantly cut his eyes from side to side and up and down to enable him to better see what lay across the deep gully and its creek that divided him from the outermost houses. He had no way of knowing that Alvarado’s vaqueros knew to do the same and had picked out his position to within an inch. Had he known so, it would not have done him any good. He lost consciousness before they could do anything about his presence.

Smoke Jensen eased up behind the gunman and slammed the butt of a Colt Peacemaker into the side of his head. With a soft grunt, the outlaw fell over onto the sandy red soil. Smoke quickly tied him and moved on.

Another of Quinn’s ragtag army sat cross-legged with his back against a low palo verde. Smoke Jensen found him and decided upon a little trickery. “Hey,” he whispered harshly. “Over here. We’ve got a problem.”

Almost dozed off, the response sounded quarrelsome. “What’s the matter. Ground too hard?”

“Come here. An’ be quiet.”

Roused from his near snooze, the outlaw came to his boots and duck-walked over. “Now, what’s this problem?”

“I am,” Smoke told him before he clouted him on the temple with the barrel of one .45. The thug went rigid and then dropped face first to the ground.

Smoke moved on in an instant. He suddenly realized that he had allowed himself to grow overconfident when a voice growled at him from the side. “Hold it right there.”

Moving slowly, so as not to startle the speaker into shooting, Smoke faced his challenger. “What do you mean? I was only goin’ down to bum a smoke offa Hank.”

Suspicion thickened in the outlaw’s voice. “There ain’t no Hank with this outfit, an’ I ain’t seen you before.” He beckoned with the muzzle of his rifle. “Come over here an’ let me get a look at you.”

Smoke complied, easing his left hand around out of sight. When he got within a long arm’s reach, he stopped. The distrustful hard case peered closely at Smoke’s face. “Nope. Never saw you with the gang before. Who are you?”

Smoke came out with his Greenriver sheath knife in his left hand and, with a short lunge, drove it horizontally through the costal region between the fifth and sixth ribs on the left side. The pointed tip penetrated the heart and sank the blade deep into the pulsing organ. Then Smoke jerked the haft to rip sideways. The man died without a sound. Smoke maneuvered to hold the dead man between him and any outlaw bullets and called out loudly to the defenders across the way.

“¡Oigan, vaqueros de la Gloria! Ayudenme!”

He got his help right away as the Mexican cowboys opened fire on the hard cases they had previously located. Smoke gave a shrill whistle, and Cougar trotted toward him. Quickly he flung the body away from him and swung into the saddle. With heels drumming into his sides, Cougar jumped to a fast canter and sprinted across the bridge and into the shelter of the buildings on the outskirts of Taos.

* * *

Smoke had thoughts only for sleep. But he found a delegation waiting for him at the sheriff’s office. The mayor, Fidel Arianas, and Dr. Walters occupied chairs, along with Santan Tossa and Ed Hubbard. All except Tossa wore worried expressions.

Arianas opened the session. “How long do we have to hold them off?”

Smoke studied on that. “Three or four days, however long it takes for the militia to get here.”

Arianas turned pale. “¡Chingada! There’s not maybe fifty hombres in the militia. And that’s on a good day. This ladrón has four times that many.”

“Not anymore. I took care of a few. And tomorrow’s sure to do in more.”

Dr. Walters addressed a more serious problem. “We cannot hold out for more than four days. There is not enough food. There are too many mouths to feed.”

Smoke frowned. “Make sure the vittles at the town hall get served only to the fighting men. The townspeople will have to fend for themselves.”

Horrified at that prospect, the mayor thought first of votes. “The people will not stand for that. They’ll blame me.”

Smoke Jensen cut hot, angry eyes to the politician. “They’ll have to live with it, if they don’t want Paddy Quinn campin’ on their doorstep.” He had not the slightest concern over the mayor’s reelection possibilities.

Dr. Walters had another idea. “What about the water supply? If they poison the creek we have only a few cisterns, fewer wells.”

Smoke looked to Tossa for a solution. “Can you have some of your warriors slip out of town and make sure Quinn’s men do not put anything in the water?”

Santan Tossa smiled. “That will be easy. They will never be seen.”

“Then that’s settled. Reduce rations all around and guard the water that is in town. No matter how this goes, we’ll all have to tighten our belts to survive. And . . . you can expect another attack in the morning. I reckon those scum will be spoilin’ for a fight.”