Cunning of the Mountain Man (15 page)

Chastened, Quint Stalker came to his boots, his head hung, and started for the door. “Yes, sir, if that’s what you want.” At the door he asked, “Does that mean you’re givin’ up the hunt for Smoke Jensen?”

“Oh, no, my dear boy. Not at all. We have some other plans for your Mr. Smoke Jensen. Plans I’m sure he will find most unpleasant.”

They had left the Tucker ranch after this admonition: “Jeff, I want you and Walt to ride into Socorro. Hang around the saloons, the barber shop, and livery. I’m sure you know why,” he added cutting his eyes to Jeff.

“Any lawman knows that’s where you hear all the gossip,” Jeff replied with a grin.

“Right. Go soak up all you can get on Quint Stalker, this Benton-Howell you mentioned in Show Low, and his partner, Selleres. Find out about the sheriff, too.”

Jeff and Walt reached town as the swampers were dumping their mop buckets and tossing out the dirty sawdust from the previous day. Jeff, who sported a cleanshaven face and fresh haircut, opted for the livery. Walt ambled his mount down the street to the barbershop.

He entered and settled himself in a chair. “Trim and shave. Trim the mustache, too.”

“Right away, sir,” a mousey, pigeon-breasted individual with a pince-nez squeaked.

“Hear there’s been some excitement in town since I left?” Walt probed gently.

“Oh, yes, yes indeed. Were you here when Mr. Lawrence Tucker was murdered?”

“Yep. Rode out the next day.”

“Well, then, you don’t know about the jailbreak!” “What jailbreak?”

“Three desperadoes broke that Smoke Jensen out of the jail.”

Walt noted that the barber—Tweedy was the name on the fancy diploma above the sideboard bevel-edged mirror—omitted to mention the lynch mob in his colorful rendition of Smoke’s escape. When he at last wound down, Walt remarked dryly, “That sounds like quite a tale, right enough. Are you sure those desperadoes weren’t part of the Stalker gang?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Mr. Stalker lent his foreman and some of his hands to the posse the sheriff took out. He’s got more out with him now.”

“Then . . . this Jensen is still on the loose?”

“From what we’ve heard. Hold still now, I have to shear over your ears.”

Scissorlike sounds came from the mechanical clippers in the hand of Tweedy He shaped and trimmed in silence for a while, then bent Walt’s head the other direction. “One more now, and we’re almost through.”

Two men entered and peered curiously at Walt. Under normal circumstances this constituted a serious insult to any man on the frontier. Well accustomed by his years on the dodge, Walt Reardon showed not a flicker of annoyance at the scrutiny As it continued though, another idea occurred to him.

“You—ah—lookin’ for somebody you know, Mister?” he gravel-voiced at the nearer of the pair.

“No—no, just thought I’d seen you around.”

“Maybe you have, but what business is it of yours?” Tweedy, a nervous, flighty type, dithered in agitation. “Now, now, gentlemen. I’m sure these fellows meant no disrespect, sir.”

“I ain’t heard from the other one yet,” Walt growled. A long second ticked by, then the smaller of the pair cut his eyes away from Walt Reardon’s riveting stare. “No offense, Mister. We was lookin’ for a friend.”

“That’s right,” the other one blurted hastily, suddenly nervously conscious of the miles-long, gunfighter stare of Walt Reardon. “We expected him to be here ahead of us.”

Walt sensed a pair of easy marks here, and produced a smile. “No offense taken, then. Tell you what. I’ll buy you a drink when we get through.”

“That’s mighty white of you, Mister—ah?”

“Walt—” He cut it off, well aware that the name Reardon still meant gunfighter to many. “Kruger.”

“I’m Sam Furgeson. This is Gus Ehrhardt. We’ll just take you up on that drink, Walt. Say at the Hang Dog?”

“I know where it is. I’ll be waitin’ for you there.” Hands still shaking, barber Tweedy knicked Walt’s left cheek with the straight razor. Wincing as though he had cut himself, the short, slender tonsorialist quickly dabbed with a towel and applied a piece of tissue paper to the tiny wound. “Sorry, there. Just a little slip.”

“Make certain you don’t slip like that when you get to my neck.”

“Oh, no! Why, I’d never—” Tweedy caught a glimpse of those gunfighter eyes in the mirror, and choked off his protest.

* * *

Three riders, looking the part of ranch hands, rode into the livery stable shortly after Jeff York arrived there. Jeff knew they were not wranglers when they turned their mounts into nearby stalls and called to the old codger who ran the place to take care of them, then walked down the alternating stretches of boardwalk and hard-pounded pathway into the center of town. A lifetime of observation had told Jeff York that real cowboys would never walk anywhere. They would straddle their horses to go from one saloon to another, even if only two doors apart.

Jeff stood in the shade of the big livery barn and watched them ankle down the street. He marked the saloon they entered then turned back to the liveryman. “They come in often?” he asked.

“Right as rain.” He added a wink, a nod and a sharp elbow in Jeff’s ribs. “Some of Quint Stalker’s randy crew. Real hard cases. Looks like they don’t bother you none.” “Oh, they do. It’s just I don’t show it all that much,” Jeff told him lightly.

“There’s some things a feller could say about them, sure enough. The breed if not them in partic’lar.” “Oh?” Jeff prompted gently.

“Them three do their best work on wimmin an’ kids, way I hear it. Right tough hombres, when it comes to scarin’ the bejazus outta some ten-year-old.”

“Sounds like you don’t hold them in great esteem?” “Nawsir. They’re lowlife trash, an’ that’s for sure.” Jeff gathered a few more tidbits and then made his way to the saloon the men had entered. The Blue Lantern

turned out to be a dive. Hardly more than a road ranch, Jeff York evaluated it, as he pushed through the hanging glass bead curtain that screened the interior from passersby. He had barely turned left toward the bar, when one of the trio spun around, his fingers closed on the butt of a big Colt in a left-hand holster.

“You followin’ us, Mister?” Apparently with odds of three to one, they had no qualms about bracing a full-grown man.

“No, not at all,” Jeff responded in his calming voice. “I only got in town a bit ahead of you.”

“An’ waited all this time to come in here, huh?” The taunting tone turned to vicious challenge. “I say you’re snoopin’ around where you don’t belong. You smell of lawdog to me. You want to prove otherwise, you’ll have to do it with an iron in your hand.”

Well, crap
, Jeff York thought. Not in town a quarter hour, and already he had a gunfight on his hands.

In the split second that passed after Jeff York’s recognition of the situation facing him, he made a quick decision to follow a maxim of Smoke Jensen. “Let speed work for you, but remain in control,” the savvy gun-fighter had advised Jeff during their sojourn in Mexico with Carbone and Martin. So, Jeff followed that suggestion now.

Jeff’s Colt appeared in his hand in a blur. The sound of the hammer ratcheting back made a loud metallic clatter. Jaws sagged on the three gunnies, which drew their mouths into gaping ovals. They had not even made a move. The one with his hand on the grip of his six-gun released his hold instantly, his arm rising up and away from his body.

“Did any of you ever see a lawdog haul iron that fast?” Jeff asked in a sneer.

All three shook their heads in a negative gesture. Then the mouthy one recovered enough aplomb to get in a word or two. “Well, there is Elfego Baca.”

“He don’t count,” one of his companions nervously blurted. “He’s over Texas way right now. Besides, Baca’s about half-outlaw anyway.”

“Right. An’ Sheriff Reno runned him out of town after that dustup with McCarty an’ his crew down in Frisco,” the third hard case added.

“So what will it be, fellers?” Jeff demanded.

“Awh, hell, we was just a little proddy. We been out chasin’ some jackass who killed a rancher here-about.”

Jeff recalled that Stalker’s men were serving with the posse. If he could completely defuse this situation, he might learn something useful, he surmised. “All right by me. I’m just gonna ease this hammer back down, and then I’ll join you for a drink.”

“Shore enough, Mister. Say, you got a name?”

“It’s Jeff.”

“Good enough for me.” He made the introductions of his companions and the palpable tension in the room bled off in a relieved sigh from the bartender.

Walt Reardon had gone on ahead to the Hang Dog Saloon, where the two rough-edged ranglers from the barbershop joined him half an hour later. A short while before they arrived, a conversation at the bar drew his interest.

“Say, I sure wouldn’t mind workin’ for the B-Bar-H right about now,” one obvious cowhand advised his friends.

“Why’s that?” one of the latter asked.

“Ain’t you heard, Yancy? That English feller that owns the place is fixin’ to throw a real fiesta. Gonna be the get-together of the season, from what some of his hands have been sayin’.”

“What’s the occasion? He gettin’ hitched?” another one asked.

“Maybe he found a place to sell beeves for more than twenty dollars a head,” suggested a third with a snorting laugh.

“Way I got it, this here Benton-Howell is doin’ it to honor some big shot politicians from Washington.” Mighty interesting, Walt thought to himself as he took another swig of beer. Might be we’ll hear more about that, he speculated hopefully. The gossipy one continued.

“Gonna be in three days. Even the hands is invited. At least after the high mucky-mucks git their fill of vittles. They’re roastin’ a whole steer, doin’ some cabrito, too. There’ll be likker and music and dancing. Those are lucky boys to be workin’ for that English dude.”

Yancy had another question. “What’s these politicians done to be honored for, Hank?”

Hank smirked. “Don’t mean they done anything . . . yet. The way it is, politicians are always lookin’ for a little somethin’ extra, if you get my drift. So, it don’t harm nothin’ to have ’em in yer pocket, before you want a favor done.”

Walt’s new, slightly nervous friends banged through the door at that point, and the interesting revelations got tuned out.

Smoke Jensen spent the day in a fruitless search for any sign that could lead him to the men who had been pestering the Tucker family. From the confession he had gotten out of the wounded rustler, he knew that Quint Stalker and his gang were involved in that job. Could he be responsible for all the other harassment?

More than likely, Smoke considered as he headed his big roan back to the ranch headquarters. Ty Hardy cut his trail some ten minutes later.

“What did you find?” Hardy asked Smoke.

“From the look on your face, the same as you.” Hardy grunted. “A whole lot of nothin’.”

“Too much time has gone by. We can’t sift any strange tracks from those of the hands. I’ve been hearin’ about a lot of little incidents around the valley from Mar— ah—Miz-Tucker. One of them is a trading post owner who got himself killed back a couple of weeks. From what I figure, it happened the same day I got away from that lynch mob. I know this might be just chasin’ another whirlwind, but I’d like you to ride over that way and find out what you can.”

The younger man nodded. “I can do that, Smoke. What was the man’s name, and where do I find this trading post?”

“Ezekial Dillon. He ran his outpost at the far side of the valley, north and east of Socorro.”

“I’ll set off first thing in the morning.”

When they returned to the barnyard, Jimmy Tucker met them with an enthusiastic welcome. “Mom says we got fried chicken, smashed taters an’ gravy, an’ cole slaw for supper. An’ a pie. She also said that if it holds off hot like this after, Tommy an’ me can go down to the crick for a swim. You want to come along?”

Grinning in recollection of his own sons’ boyish exuberance, Smoke Jensen declined. Still close enough in age to be vulnerable to the call of such youthful enticements, Ty Hardy agreed to accompany the boys.

After a sumptuous spread of savory food, Smoke Jensen took his last cup of coffee out onto the porch and lit up a cigar. Pale, blue-white spirals rose from the glowing tip. The rich tobacco perfumed the air. Sniffing appreciatively, Martha Tucker joined him a short while later.

“My father smoked cigars. I always liked the aroma. I suppose that’s one reason I married a cigar smoker,” she informed Smoke in an unexpected burst of candor. “Have you been married long, Mr. Jensen?”

Smoke flushed slightly. “Many years,” he answered. “How’d you reckon I was a married man?”

Martha did not need to think about her answer. “The way you are with the children; affectionate, but not overbearing. Also, I might add, the remarkable restraint you show in my presence.” She blushed furiously.

Half-amused, and uncomfortably aware of her alluring presence, Smoke answered with some evasion. “Not long ago you believed I had murdered your husband. But, I’ll thank you for considering a more noble motive. Yes, Sally has been my treasure for most of my grown life. We have a daughter of marrying age and three younger.”

“You must miss them?”

“I do. This is a far piece from the High Lonesome,” Smoke admitted.

“The High—? Oh, I understand,” Martha went on quickly. “Your hands said your ranch was in the heart of the Rockies. It must be beautiful. So much variety, compared to the desert sameness everywhere one looks around here.”

“You’re right about that.” Smoke took a long draw on the dark brown tobacco roll.

For all her determination, and her grief, Martha could not help herself, she realized. She found herself strongly attracted to the big, handsome, soft-spoken man from the mountains. He’s as closedmouthed as he is strong, she mused then put her thoughts to words.

“You’re not very talkative, Mr. Jensen. Don’t take that as a criticism. What I mean is, that you may not say a lot, but your words are filled with meaning. It takes a wise man to conduct himself like that.”

“I’m flattered,” Smoke said, finishing his coffee. He came to his boots. “I’ll be headin’ to the bunkhouse now. Ty’s headin’ out early in the morning, and I want a few words with him before he turns in. Provided, of course, your boys don’t drown him down there at the creek.”