Triumph of the Mountain Man

23

“They’re comin’ back!”

Early the next morning the shouts of the lookouts roused the wearied protectors of Taos from uneasy sleep. Too many of the townspeople moved with a lethargy that they would soon regret. Caught between their homes and fighting stations, most looked on in numbed horror as the outlaws easily penetrated the thin defenses and streamed into town.

“We ain’t got a chance this time,” one less courageous townie wailed.

“We’re gonners for sure,” the faint-hearted barber took up the cry.

Smoke Jensen would hear none of it. He seemed to be everywhere at once as he worked to rally the resistance of the battle-tired people. “Quit your whining,” he growled at the timid souls. “Take your weapons and form up in the streets. We can stop them easier when they don’t have room to maneuver.”

“Say, that’s right,” one of the more imaginative townies declared. “We can trap them between the buildings. It’ll be like shootin’ fish in a water trough.”

Smoke moved on, praising the idea over his shoulder. “That’s the idea. Get to it.” Smoke’s confidence rose more when he came upon the more reliant among the defenders.

Those Tua warriors not on water watch were the first to respond. Santan Tossa stood on one side of the Plaza de Armas and directed his fighting men to vantage points on the roofs of buildings. Unaccustomed to the Spanish tile roofing material, one of the Tua men put a moccasin on a loose one and all but fell.

“Be careful,” Tossa cautioned. Then he produced a fleeting smile at that choice of words in the face of an all-out assault by men determined to kill them all.

On two sides of town, Don Diego’s vaqueros labored valiantly to keep more of the trash from entering Taos. The dapper senior Alvarado shouted encouragement to his cowboys. “Buena suerte, compañeros. Shoot their eyes out.”

Gradually, men caught by surprise on the west side of town began to calm and take better stock of their situation. Smoke Jensen quickly exhorted them. “This isn’t the end of it. Not unless you want to go belly-up. Get some backbone, dammit. All of you there, quit milling around and form up to drive and trap those who got past the barricades in the center of town.”

Slowly they began to respond. As the first remotivated men spread out, more joined them. Before long they had enough to ring the business district and began to close in. From the moment of the first encounter, the fighting grew more fierce with each passing minute.

* * *

Smoke Jensen soon saw that the outer defenses had been completely breached. The vaqueros fought valiantly as they retreated street by street from the pressure put on them by the Quinn gang. Here and there they managed to rally as those facing them turned out to be drifting bits of frontier trash with no deep-set loyalties. That sort crumbled rapidly, especially when confronted with a revival cry from the Mexican cowboys.

“Con nuestra Señora, Santa Maria de Guadalupe! Matenlos maten!”

Even Smoke Jensen developed chills down his spine the first time he heard it and translated the words. With our lady, Holy Mother of Guadalupe! Kill them, kill! He had to admit it had a galvanizing effect. The vaqueros swarmed back down the street, a wall of death with six-gun, rifle and knife. At one point, a saddle tramp who had become overwhelmed by their ferocity dropped to his knees and began to howl like a dog. It did him little good. He got his throat slit anyway.

On the next street over, the vaqueros put a full dozen to flight. Horses surged into one another and spilled two riders to face the advancing fury of the Mexican cowboys. They screamed a long time as they died.

* * *

Paddy Quinn shoved his way into a cantina to catch his breath and reload. He found Garth Thompson there ahead of him. Whitewater Paddy flashed a big grin. “We’re doin’ fine. Another half hour and the town will be ours.”

Thompson looked at him in consternation. “Are you kidding? We have men dying out there by the handful. It doesn’t make sense. These townies are fighting back like mad men.”

“Awh, Garth me bucko, yer not seein’ clear, yer not. Most of those who are being killed are not part of the gang. What that trash is here for is to soak up bullets for us, it is. Let’s go upstairs where we can better see what’s really happenin’. Ye’ll be surprised how good it’s goin’, ye will.”

* * *

Two blocks down, in a narrow alley, three of Quinn’s men found the situation more like Garth Thompson saw it than their boss. Seven Tua warriors rounded the corner and started toward them. Clearly they had heard the rumors started by Smoke Jensen. The trio cut their eyes to the Indians and began to run in the opposite direction. Not a one made an effort to fire a weapon.

“Lou, Lou, we gotta get out of here. They’re gonna scalp us.”

Lou looked ahead and paled. The rear of a building closed off their escape route from the narrow alley. “We’re trapped,” he wailed.

The others saw it, too. Unnerved by his belief in the scalping story, one of the outlaws turned his gun on himself. His body had hardly hit the ground when Santan Tossa and his brother Tuas opened fire. One of Quinn’s men jerked spastically, staggered two paces to his left and keeled over. The other got off a shot before Tossa put a bullet through his screaming mouth.

“They were cowards,” the Tua policeman pronounced over the cooling corpses.

* * *

Gradually the tide turned. The shock of their earlier failure began to wear off, and the men of Taos ceased in their headlong flight from the threat of the gunmen. They turned back in twos and threes in one place, half a dozen in two others. Instead of two men fighting a desperate rear guard, while the others fled, the mass of harried men turned about and lashed out at their enemy.

At first it did not look like much. Then an angry growl raced through the defenders, until it became one voice. Five of the gang rounded a corner, laughing and firing blindly. Halfway down the block a solid mass of growling, snarling men began to run toward them. A high, clear cry raised above the roar of their discontent.

“Fire! Open fire!”

A ragged volley crackled from the weapons in the hands of shop keepers and clerks, bank tellers, and wheelwrights. A stream of lead scythed into the startled outlaws and they began to die. Two of the gunhawks wisely opted to flee. One made it to the corner they had rounded half a minute before. The other one took two faltering steps along his escape route before he fell over dead.

Throughout town the spirit of defeat disappeared as he died. Shouting, the defenders charged in a massive counterattack. Determined men soon swept the byways of Taos of the dregs of humanity who had attacked them. The only resistance that remained centered around the saloon named Cantina del Sol. Smoke Jensen reached that strong point in the vanguard of the revived defenders.

* * *

Curly Lasher and eight relatively capable gunfighters had been stationed outside the cantina to protect their leaders. He and his underlings listened to the shift in mood among the defenders with growing apprehension. When four of them rounded the corner with a determined stride, the outlaws realized that the seeming ease of their capture of the town was an illusion. Weapons already in hand, the townsfolk had the advantage when the hard cases reached for their six-guns.

Curly had time to shout only brief advice. “Spread out!”

Gunfire roared in the confines between two-story buildings. Two of the outlaws went down. Curly Lasher took cover behind a watering trough and traded shots with the aroused residents of Taos. That lasted until Smoke Jensen and six vaqueros rounded the other corner and closed in on them.

“Make for the saloon,” Curly yelled to his surviving men.

Curly backed up the steps to the portico over the entrance to the cantina. A quick check showed that the others had preceded him. He had almost disappeared through the glassbead curtain that screened the doorway when Smoke Jensen stepped out into the center of the street and pointed his left index finger at the outlaw leader.

“Curly Lasher, you yellow-bellied piss ant, come out and face me like a man.”

* * *

Smoke Jensen had recognized Curly Lasher the moment the man came to his boots and started for the cantina. Although quite young, Lasher had a respectable reputation as a gunfighter. He was reputed to have killed ten men in face-downs in Texas and New Mexico. Rumor had it his total number of kills included three for-hire assassinations and a dozen ambush shootings. At the age of twenty-three, he was about as good as they came these days. But not in Smoke Jensen’s book.

The way Smoke saw it, it was time to cancel Curly’s pay book. After issuing his challenge, Smoke waited now, ignoring the random bullets, fired by Lasher’s henchmen, that cracked into the ground near him. A second stretched interminably long, then another. Smoke counted to five before Curly waved a grubby, rumpled bit of cloth out the opening to La Cantina del Sol.

“You make those others stop shootin’ at me an’ I’ll face you, Jensen. Hell, you’re an old man. You can’t be much good anymore.”

There it was again, old man. Smoke’s expression grew grim. “We’ll see, won’t we? And have those back-shooting gun trash with you holster their irons.”

Another second went by. “You heard him, boys. Put ’em up.” A nervous giggle escaped Curly. “This is between Smoke Jensen an’ me.”

With that, Curly Lasher stepped out into the street. He looked formidable enough, except for the muscle tic that twitched his left eye. Smoke Jensen side-stepped to line up with Curly Lasher. Curly’s hand hovered over the butt-grip of his Smith and Wesson .44 American. He nodded evenly to Smoke.

“Your play, Jensen.”

“No, you go first. I want this to be fair.”

Another giggle burst from Curly’s throat. “Fair? Hell, Jensen, you better be pickin’ out your coffin right now.”

“You reckon to jaw me to death? If so, it’ll be like ol’ Samson, eh? Killed with the jawbone of an ass.”

That tripped Curly’s hair-trigger temper. “Goddamn you, Smoke Jensen, kiss your tail goodbye.”

Curly Lasher drew then, confident that he had beaten Smoke Jensen by a good half second. Not until a stunning force slammed into his chest did he realize how terribly mistaken he had been. His lips formed a perfect O, and his legs went rubbery. Enormous pain spread through his body, followed instantly by a frightening numbness. Try as his brain might to send signals to his heart, they never arrived. A fat, 230 grain .45 slug had destroyed that vital organ.

His eyes rolled up in their sockets, Curly discharged a round into the street and fell in a crumpled heap. In the moment after he fired, Smoke Jensen moved. He waved at the astonished townies to follow him.

“Come on, let’s get in that saloon.”

“B’God, that was fast,” Warren Engals muttered. “I never seen his hand move.”

“Neither did that cocky gunhawk,” Buell Spencer snorted in satisfaction.

* * *

Mid-morning came and went. Still the fighting lingered, as Smoke Jensen and five of the men from town entered La Cantina del Sol. Theirs could hardly be called a conventional means of entry. Smoke sent four vaqueros around to the rear to make a show of breaking in through the service door. He gave them enough time to be convincing, then dived low through the front doorway. Smoke hit the floor and did a roll, to come up with his Colt blazing. He got immediate results.

One hard case slammed into the bar, his back arched to the point of breaking his spine. Smoke fired again and the bones cracked. The outlaw dropped to flop on the floor like a headless chicken. A townsman and one of Diego’s vaqueros entered behind the last mountain man. Flame gushed from the muzzles of their six-guns.

Another hard case died in their hail of lead. A third had dived for cover behind the bar when Smoke first entered. He popped up now and shot Ransom Clover between the eyes. The feed store proprietor died on his feet. But not before Smoke Jensen sent the killer off to eternity with a similar wound. Terrible discordance came from the upright piano in one corner as another thug hastily fired a bullet at Smoke’s back.

Smoke ducked and spun on one boot heel. The muzzle of his Peacemaker tracked with him, and he squeezed off a round the moment the back shooter came into view. Hot lead punched through thick leather and then did awful damage to the hip bone of the man. By then, Smoke had cocked his .45 and put a second slug into the chest of his assailant. Restricted by the muslin safeguards suspended below the ceiling, viscous layers of powder smoke undulated in the room, obscuring the whereabouts of other enemies.

Ears ringing from the enclosed gunfire, Smoke made for the stairway. There had to be some reason why a fairly reliable gunfighter like Curly Lasher and eight men had been guarding this place. He had reached the first riser with a boot toe when another of the gunmen appeared at the top of the stairs. Smoke acted at once.

So close to the wall, the force of his gun blast nearly ruptured Jensen’s eardrum. Yet he did not even flinch as he recocked his six-gun and sent another .45 round winging upward to seal the fate of the hard case who menaced him. Hit twice in less than half a minute, the outlaw staggered back and rammed slack shoulders into the wall of the upper hallway. Smoke paused at the landing and called back to the ground floor to one of the vaqueros.

“Juaquin, come up here with me.” When the slender, boyish-faced cowboy reached the top of the stairs, Smoke gave terse instructions. “Stay here. Watch my back.”

Smoke set off to search the rooms in the rear portion of the second floor. Someone of importance had to be up here, his gut feeling told him. He readied himself at the first door, cocked his leg and plated a boot beside the doorknob. A loud crack followed and the panel flew inward. Following his six-gun, Smoke entered the room in a crouch.

Empty. He turned on one heel and started for the next. His explosive entry caught two outlaws with their backs to him, taking shots at Taos residents in the street below. The slam of the door against the inner wall brought one around in a blur of movement. His eyes went wide as he gazed at Death with a outstretched hand. The six-gun in that hand fired a second later, and reflex drove the bandit backward to crash through the window, taking both sashes with him as he fell to the ground. The second hard case wisely released his revolver and threw up his hands. Smoke Jensen stepped up close and rapped him on the skull with the barrel of a Colt. That left three more rooms to check.

The next proved even more empty than the first. It did not even have furniture. Smoke moved on to the next in line.

His vicious kick surprised Garth Thompson and Paddy Quinn in the act of reloading. Thompson swung his six-gun up first and fired at Smoke. The man from the Sugarloaf had already fired a round which ripped into the body of Garth Thompson a fraction of an instant before the outlaw’s bullet punched a neat hole in the left side of Smoke Jensen’s waist. It burned like hell fire, but it did not even stagger him. Thompson tried to fire again, not realizing he looked at his target with a dead man’s eyes.

His bullet cut air beside Smoke Jensen’s left ear as the legs of Garth Thompson gave way. Smoke gave him a safety round and turned his attention to Paddy Quinn.

Stunned by the swiftness of action by Smoke Jensen, Paddy Quinn only belatedly closed the loading gate of his Colt Peacemaker. Instinctively, he knew he did not have time for a shot. Not if he wanted to continue living. Instead, he diverted his energy to his legs and sprinted past the wounded Jensen out into the hall. Smoke bit back the pain that burned in his side and turned in pursuit.

Out in the hall, Paddy Quinn raced toward the far end of the building. A window in the center of the corridor there bore a sign above it that read Escalera de Incendios. “Fire Escape” for those who could read Spanish. Smoke Jensen pounded down the bare board floor behind Quinn. The outlaw leader made better time.

Without a break in his stride, Paddy Quinn threw his arms up to cover his face and hurtled through the glass partition. Fragments of the sashes clung to him as he hit the small, square projection that served as a platform for a ladder. Legs still churning, Paddy cleared the railing in a single bound and dropped out of sight before Smoke reached the shattered window casement.

Quinn landed flat-footed and hard on the packed earth below. Pain shot up his leg from a broken heel bone. His horse, and those of Thompson and another hard case, had been tied off at the rear door earlier in the day. So unexpected and precipitous had been his arrival from above that the vaqueros sent to break in the rear stood in immobile surprise while Paddy limped to his mount, retrieved the reins and swung into the saddle.

Smoke Jensen sent a bullet after Paddy Quinn as the latter called out to his men. “Pull back. Get clear of town. We’ve lost it for now.”