War of the Mountain Man

17

The men took the leather thongs off their guns and stepped up onto the rough porch. With Smoke in the lead, they entered the dimly lit old trading post. The smell of twist tobacco all mixed in with that of candy, whiskey, beer, and ancient sweat odors that clung to the walls and ceiling hit them. They walked past bolts of brightly colored cloth, stacks of men’s britches and shirts, and a table piled high with boots of all sizes. They passed the notions counter, filled with elixirs and nostrums that were guaranteed to cure any and all illnesses. Most of them were based with alcohol or an opiate of some type, which killed the pain for a while.

Smoke and Jim stopped at the gun case to look at the new double-action revolvers.

“Pretty,” Jim said.

“I don’t like them,” Smoke said. “The trigger pull is so hard it throws your aim off. And if you have to cock it, what’s the point of having one of those things?”

“Good question,” his deputy agreed. “They look awkward to me.” Something on the nostrum table caught his eye and he picked up a bottle of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. He read the label, blushed, and put the bottle down. “The things they put on labels. I declare.”

“Sally swears by it. Says it works wonders.”

“You ever tasted it?”

“Hell, no! I did taste some Kickapoo Indian Sagwa a couple of years ago, back east.”

“Did it work?”

“It tasted so bad I forgot what I took it for.”

Smiling, the men stepped into the bar part of the trading post and walked up to the counter, in this case, several rough-hewn boards atop empty beer barrels.

Smith flicked his eyes to Jim and they narrowed in recognition. But he said only, “Howdy, boys. What might your poison be on this day?”

“Beer,” Smoke said. “For both of us.”

Both Smoke and Jim had quickly inspected the heavily armed men sitting at two pulled-together tables near a dirty window at the front of the barroom.

“Hadn’t been up here in a long time,”Jim said after taking a pull from his mug. “I’d forgot how purty this country is. And how chilly the nights get.”

“It do get airish at times,” Smith agreed. “I got fresh venison stew on the stove and my squaw just baked some bread.”

“Sounds good,” Smoke said. “Jim?”

“I could do with a taste. Them cold fish we had for breakfast didn’t nearabouts fill me up.”

Smoke and Jim took their beers to a table across the room from the arsonists and began whispering to each other, knowing that would arouse some suspicion from the men who had torched the farmhouses and barns.

It didn’t take long.

“What are you two a-whisperin’ about over there?” one burly man called across the room.

Smoke looked at him just as the stew and bread was being placed on the table. “None of your damn business.”

The man flushed and started to get up. One of his buddies pulled him back into the chair. “Let it alone, Sonny. They ain’t worth our time.”

“I ain’t so sure about that,” Sonny said, giving Smoke a good once-over. “I seen that face afore.”

“That’s Murtaugh talkin’,” Smith whispered. “Watch your step, Jim. They’re all bad ones.”

“Now the damn barkeep’s whisperin’!” Sonny yelled.

Smith turned and faced him. “It’s my goddamn store, lunkhead. I’ll whisper anytime I take a notion to.”

“Who you callin’ a lunkhead, you old goat?” Sonny hollered.

“You, you big-mouth ninny!” Smith fired back, moving toward the bar. There, he reached behind him and came around with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. He eared back both hammers and pointed it at Sonny. “Now, then, mule-mouth, you got anything else you’d like to say to me?”

Sonny’s complexion, not too good to begin with, lightened appreciably as he looked at the twin barrels of the express gun, pointing straight at him. Those around him took on the expression of a very sad basset hound, knowing that if Smith pulled the triggers, someone would be picking them up with a shovel and a spoon.

“I reckon not,” Sonny finally managed to say.

“Good.” Smith eased down the hammers and laid the shotgun on the bar. “That’s just dandy. Use your mouth to eat and drink, and stop flappin’ that thing at me.”

With a scowl on his ugly face, Sonny turned away, but not before giving Smoke another dirty look.

The stew smelled good and tasted even better. The bread was lavishly buttered, and Smoke and Jim fell to eating.

“Bring us some of that stew,” Murtaugh called.

“Dollar a bowl,” Smith told him.

“A dollar a bowl! Hell, man, that’s plumb unreasonable.”

“Then go hungry.”

“I’ll take another bowl,” Jim said. “That’s fine eatin’.”

“You better see the color of his money afore you dish up anymore grub to him,” Murtaugh said. “He don’t look like he’s very flush to me.”

“You worry about your own self,” Jim verbally fired across the room. “I got money, and I earned it decent.”

“What’d you mean by that?” the arsonist asked.

“Just what I said.”

“You sayin’ I ain’t decent?”

“You said that, not me. Now hush up. I’m tryin’to eat, not jaw with you.”

Murtaugh gave him a dirty look. “Maybe you think you’re hoss enough to shut me up?”

“Just as soon as I finish eatin’, mister.”

“Anybody busts up furniture, they pay for it,” Smith said.

“They started this war of words,” Smoke pointed out. “All we did was come in for a drink and some food.”

“That’s right,” Jim said, spooning stew into his mouth. “Sad state of affairs when a man can’t even eat without havin’ to listen to all sorts of jibber-jabber from lunkheads.”

“Now, I ain’t puttin’ up with no saddle-bum callin’ me a lunkhead!” Murtaugh stood up. He walked across the room. “I better hear some apologies comin’ out of that mouth of yourn, cowboy,” he said to Jim.

Jim grinned up at him. His right hand was holding a spoon, his left hand out of sight.

Jim belched loudly. “There’s your apology, big-mouth. Catch it and carry it back acrost the room with you.”

Murtaugh cursed and swung a big fist at Jim’s head. But Jim anticipated the punch and ducked it, coming out of the chair and driving his fist into the bigger man’s stomach. Murtaugh bent over, gagging. Jim grabbed the man by his hair and slammed his forehead onto the tabletop. Turning the stunned Murtaugh around, and grabbing him by the collar and the seat of his britches, Jim propelled him across the room, dumping him onto the table he had just exited.

“You boys best look after him,” Jim told Murtaugh’s buddies. “He can’t seem to take care of hisself atall.”

Sonny looked around him. Smith was holding the Greener, hammers back, pointed at him.

Jim walked bak to his table and looked at the spilled stew. “Get the money for this from Murtaugh,” he told Smith. “It was his head that spilt it.”

“I’ll be damned!” Murtaugh said, and charged across the room at Jim, both fists whipping the air.

Jim picked up a chair and hit the rampaging Murtaugh in the face with it. The firebug hit the floor, on his back, and did not move. His face was bloody and several teeth had departed his mouth to take up residence on the floor.

“That does it,” Sonny said, rising from his chair. He looked at Smith. “You gonna take a side in this?”

Smoke stood up, brushing back his coat, exposing his .44’s. “Stay out of it, Smith. We’re deputy sheriffs from down Barlow way. These men are wanted for arson and destruction of livestock. Any damage to your place will be taken care of.”

“That’s fair. I know Jim and you look familiar to me. Who you be, mister?”

“Smoke Jensen.”

Sonny suddenly looked sick. And so did the other four with him.

“Have mercy!” Smith said.

“We ain’t done nothin’ to nobody and we ain’t destroyed no livestock,” Sonny said.

Murtaugh groaned on the floor and sat up. He blinked a couple of times and wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his hand. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

“You’re under arrest,” Jim told him.

“Your aunt’s drawers, I am!” Murtaugh’s hand dropped to the butt of his gun at just about the same time Jim kicked him in the face. Murtaugh hit the floor again and this time he was out for the count.

Sonny grabbed for his gun and Smoke shot him in the belly. The outlaw stumbled backward and sat down hard on the floor, both hands holding his .44-caliber-punctured belly. He started hollering.

One of his buddies jerked iron and Jim took him out of the game with a slug to the shoulder.

The trading post erupted in gunsmoke and lead. The booming of .44’s and .45’s rattled the windows and shook the glasses behind the bar. Things really got lively when Smith leveled his Greener and blew one outlaw clear out of the barroom, the charge of rusty nails, ball bearings, tacks, and whatever else Smith could find to load his shells nearly tearing the man in two, picking him off his boots, and tossing him out a window.

One outlaw, gut-shot and screaming in pain, dropped his pistols and went staggering out into the other room. He died underneath the table holding five-cent bottles of Dr. Farrigut’s elixir for the remedying of paralysis, softening of the brain, and mental imbecility.

When the dust and bird-droppings from the ceiling and gunsmoke began to clear the room, three arsonists were dead, one was not long for this world, and Murtaugh was again trying to sit up, blood from his broken nose streaming down his chin. The punk Jim had shot through the shoulder was leaning up against a wall, moaning in pain.

“My, my,” Smith said, picking out the empties from his Greener and loading up. “I ain’t seen such a sight in two ... three years. Things was gettin’ plumb borin’ around here. Them no-goods really burn some folks out?”

“Five families,” Smoke told him, punching out his empty brass and reloading. “All good people. I suspect Big Max Huggins paid them to do it.”

“111 talk,” the shoulder-shot outlaw hollered. “It was Big Max who paid us to do it. III testify in court. I’ll tell ...”

Murtaugh palmed a hide-out gun and shot the man between the eyes, closing his mouth forever.

Smoke slammed the barrel of his .44 against Murtaugh’s head, and for the third time in about three minutes, the outlaw went to sleep on the floor.

“Gimme ten dollars for the winder and you give whatever else is in their pockets to them folks that was burnt out,” Smith said. “That fair?”

“Plenty fair,” Jim said. “The families will thank you.”

Smoke tied Murtaugh’s hands behind his back with rawhide and straightened up. “We’ll help you bury this trash, Smith. Then I’ll get a signed statement from you attesting to the fact that you heard that one”—he pointed to the man with a hole beween his eyes—“confessing as to who paid them. You won’t have to appear in court.”

“Good enough,” Smith said. “Shovel’s in the back. I’ll get my old woman to sing a death chant for them. She’s Flathead. Does a nice job of it, too. Right touchin’, some folks say.”

Smoke put all the guns in a sack and tied it to a saddle horn, while Jim readied the horses for travel back to Barlow. The guns and horses and saddles they would give to the farmers who were burned out. The men had about five hundred dollars between them. That would go a long way toward rebuilding the homes and barns and smokehouses.

Morning Dove was still chanting her death song as they rode away.