Cunning of the Mountain Man (17 page)

“What time does this shindig start tomorrow?” “When the heat breaks over. About four o’clock, I would imagine,” Jeff’s host responded genially. Then he changed the subject. “Are you ready to buy Expositor right now?”

“He’s a handsome critter, I’ll allow. A lot bigger than I’d expected from the breed. I’d like to think on it awhile.” Benton-Howell clapped a hard hand on Jeff’s firm shoulder. “Sleep on it, if you want. Enjoy what the ranch has for diversions tomorrow, and then give me your answer at the fiesta.”

* * *

A festive atmosphere prevailed over the ranch headquarters the next morning from early on. Two huge, stone-lined pits had been stoked with wood long before dawn. With the contents reduced to glowing coals, half a steer turned slowly over each of them. Whole goats revolved on smaller spits on fires of their own. Ranch hands worked clumsily at unfamiliar tasks, erecting striped canvas awnings to provide shade and a pretense of coolness, setting up tables under them and laying out tableware and napkins. More guests began arriving shortly after an early breakfast. Jeff York took careful note of the occupants of each buggy, and consigned to memory the name and position of each visitor.

“And this is Senator Claypoole,” Benton-Howell introduced yet another to York. “He’s on the committee for Indian Affairs. Steven York from Arizona,” he concluded.

Claypoole had a politician’s, glad-hander shake, pale blue eyes dancing with merriment. “A pleasure, sir. Are you a cattle breeder, too?”

“No. I raise cattle for market.”

“I see.” The good senator cooled off, wondering why a common rancher had been invited. “Sparse vegetation over Arizona way, I’m told. How many hundred head can you feed?”

“Not hundreds,” Jeff exaggerated wildly, “thousands. I run five thousand head this time of year. And I hold most of the mountain pasture from Flagstaff to Globe in the Tonto Range.”

Claypoole warmed immediately. This was a big rancher. “I—ah—stand corrected. How do you manage such a vast area? Aren’t the Indians a constant threat?”

Jeff gave him a warm smile. “Not really. If all the Indians killed in the dime novels had been for real, there wouldn’t be an Apache left alive. I’ve found that the Eastern journalists tend to embellish the truth.”

Another carriage, a mud-wagon stage coach hired for the occasion, rumbled in with more politicians. That ended the exchange between Jeff York and Senator Claypoole, much to Jeff’s relief. Benton-Howell took him in tow and made him acquainted with the newcomers. From the corner of one eye, Jeff noted that Claypoole made directly for the heavily laden liquor table.

The heavy drinking began around ten-thirty. Jeff held onto a single tumbler of whiskey and took sparing sips from it. He began to wonder what Smoke Jensen had in mind for this gala party. Knowing the gunfighter as he did, Jeff could not see Smoke passing up such an opportunity.

Noontime came, and still no sign of the fine hand of Smoke Jensen. Many of the ranch hands drifted in during the next hour. They all had the look of second-rate gun-hawks to Jeff. The rich aromas of cooking meat and pots of beans, field corn, and other delights filled the air. Jeff had emptied his glass and had turned back to the beverage table, when he found himself face-to-face with a man he knew only too well.

“What the hell you doin’ here, Ranger?” Concho Jim Packard growled in a low, menacing voice.

“Excuse me? You’ve got me mixed up with someone else,” Jeff tried hard to misdirect the desperado.

“Not a chance. No gawdamned Arizona Ranger kills three of my best friends and I don’t remember him.” Packard turned to search the crowd for his employer. “Hey, Boss,” he shouted over the buzz of conversation. “You done brought a rattlesnake into your nest.”

Geoffrey Benton-Howell came over at once. “What are you talking about?”

“This one,” Concho Jim snarled, pointing at Jeff. “Why, Mr. York’s my guest. He’s come to buy Expositor,” Benton-Howell spluttered.

“He has like hell! His name’s York, right enough, but it’s Jeff York, Arizona Ranger,” Concho Jim grated out.

Strong hands closed on Jeff York’s arms before he could react or try to make a break. Benton-Howell gave him a disbelieving look, then cut his eyes to Concho Jim. “You’re sure of this?”

“Damn right I am. He got me locked up in the territorial prison for six years, killed three of my partners, too.” Unseen, but witnessing it all, Walt Reardon made a quick evaluation of the situation. Two guns against all those present made for poor odds. Better that he get away from here and find Smoke Jensen. He edged his way out of the crowd and made for the livery barn and his horse.

Frowning, Benton-Howell lowered his voice and addressed the gunhands holding Jeff. “Let’s not make a spectacle of this. Take him away quietly. Lock him in the tool shed. We’ll deal with our spy later, after our distinguished guests have eaten and drunk enough to forget about it.”

Careful to create the least disturbance possible, the hard cases lifted Jeff York clear of the ground and carried him to a shed out of the direct sight of the partying politicians. There they disarmed him and threw him inside. A drop bar slammed down, and Jeff heard the snick of a padlock.

By three o’clock that afternoon, most of the guests of Geoffrey Benton-Howell had forgotten the small disturbance in the side yard of the ranch house. Great mounds of barbecued beef and goat (cabrito) filled the serving tables, where a splendid buffet had been laid out. Laughing and talking familiarly, as colleagues do, they lined up to pile Benton-Howell’s largess on their plates. Some tapped a toe to unfamiliar strains of music.

Mariachi musicians played their bass, tenor, and alto guitars, Jaliscan harp, and trumpets with gusto. Songs such as La Golandrina, Jalisco, Cielo de Sonora, and El Nino Perdido, won applause and praise from the visitors from Washington. Three white-aproned cooks toiled over the pots of beans, bowls of salsa, skillets of rice, platters of corn boiled in its shucks, and, of course, the savory meat, as they ladled and served the festive crowd. Beer, whiskey, and brandy had flowed freely since mid-morning. It kept everyone in a jolly mood.

Yes, his fiesta was going exceedingly well, Geoffrey Benton-Howell thought to himself as he gazed on this industrious activity. It continued to go well until a whole watermelon, taken from among half a dozen of its twins in a tub of icy deep well water, exploded with a wild crack, and showered everyone in the vicinity with sticky, red pulp.

* * *

Smoke Jensen shifted his point of aim and destroyed a line of liquor-filled decanters in a shower of crystal shards that cut and stung the now terrified guests. He levered another .45-70-500 round into the chamber, and blasted a round into a large terracotta bowl of beans, showering more of the politicians with scalding
frijoles
. That made it time to move on to the next position.

Two hours earlier Smoke had met with Walt Reardon. The ex-gunfighter had come upon Smoke with the news of Jeff York’s unmasking and capture. Quickly he panted out his account of events. He concluded with, “They put him in a little shed out of the way of the party.”

“With the right distraction, do you think you could get in there and get Jeff out?”

Walt grinned. He had a fair idea of what Smoke Jensen considered the “right distraction.”

“Damn right.”

“Then, let’s ride.”

They made it back unseen to the ridge overlooking the B-Bar-H headquarters. Walt ambled his mount down a covered route back to the party. He soon found he had not been missed. No one, in fact, paid him the least attention. He took up a position close to the tool shed and waited for Smoke to join the dance.

Smoke Jensen had a clear field of fire over the whole ranch yard. He used it to good advantage, firing four more rounds, then reloading the Express rifle on the move to another choice location. Two of Benton-Howell’s hard cases had more of their wits about them than the others. They grabbed up rifles and began firing back.

Their spent rounds kicked up turf a good two hundred yards short of Smoke’s last position. Smoke knelt and shouldered the .45-70-500 Express, and squeezed off another shot. The bullet made a meaty smack when it plowed into the chest of one rifleman. The dead man’s Winchester went flying, as he catapulted backward and flopped and twitched on the ground. His cohort made a hasty retreat. Then Smoke went to work on the nearest buffet table.

A stack of china plates became a mound of shards as Smoke’s rifle spoke again. A short, stout congressman from Maine yelped, and popped up from the far side of the table like a jack-in-the-box. He lost his expensive bowler hat to Smoke’s next round. With a banshee wail, the portly politician ran blindly away from the killing ground.

He crashed headlong into a Territorial Federal judge. They rebounded off one another, and the little man wound up on his butt. “I say, Judge, someone is trying to kill us,” he bleated.

“Congressman Ives, you are an ass,” the judge thundered. “If whoever is out there wanted to kill us, we’d be dead. Like that outlaw thug who returned fire. Now, get ahold of yourself, man, before someone thinks you’re a coward.”

When another watermelon showered those nearby with wet shrapnel, Walt Reardon considered the confusion to be at maximum. Lips set in a thin, grim line, he made his move. He approached the shed from the rear. Rounding one side Walt placed himself behind a guard posted by Benton-Howell. With a swift, sure move, Walt drew his six-gun and screwed the muzzle into the sentry’s right ear.

“I’ll have the key to that lock, if you don’t mind,” Walt growled.

“What the hell—!”

“Do it now, or I’ll put your brains all on one side of your head.”

“You son of a bitch, you don’t have a chance,” the gunhawk displayed the last of his rapidly waning bravado.

“I’m talking the outside,” Walt snarled, and gave his Colt a nudge.

It took less than a second for the thoroughly cowed hard case to fish a brass key from his vest pocket. His hand trembled, when he raised it above his shoulder. Walt Reardon snatched the key with his left hand.

“Thanks, buddy,” he told his prisoner a moment before he clubbed him senseless with the barrel of the Peacemaker.

Walt bent to the lock on the door of the shed, as Smoke shifted his aim to the house. Smoke had already scattered the striped-pants politicians in utter panic. Some had fled to the carriages that had brought them, and driven off in reckless abandon. Others dived into corrals, Smoke noted with amusement, where fresh, still-warm cow pies awaited them.

Now the last mountain man listened to the satisfying tinkle of glass, as he shot out windows and trashed the interior of one room after another. A sudden gout of black soot from a chimney told Smoke a ricochet had hit a stove pipe. Half a dozen females—painted ladies provided by Benton-Howell to entertain the politicians— came shrieking out every door visible from Smoke’s position.

While he kept up this long-range destruction, Smoke kept an eye on an unpainted shed, its boards faded gray by the intense New Mexico sun and desiccating effects of the desert. It was there, Walt Reardon had told him, that Geoffrey Benton-Howell had confined Jeff York. Smoke saw the guard stiffen, and a hand appear with a six-gun poked in the hapless fellow’s ear. Good work, Smoke mentally complimented Walt. Now it’s time to make a stir down there.

When Walt opened the door and Jeff came stumbling out into the light, Smoke shifted his aim once more. Two of the outlaw trash Benton-Howell hired walked rapidly toward Walt, each with a hand on a gun. The third mother of pearl button on one hard case centered on the top of the front post of Smoke’s Express rifle. The weapon slammed reassuringly into his shoulder, and a cloud of powder smoke obscured the view. A stiff northwesterly breeze cleared it away in time for Smoke Jensen to see the impact.

Shirt fabric, blood, and tissue flew from the front of the gunhawk’s chest in a crimson cloud. It slammed him off his boots, and he hit the ground first with the back of his head. No headache for him, Smoke thought. He shifted his sights to the second saddle tramp in time to see him jackknife over his cartridge belt and pitch headlong into hell. Smoke cut his eyes to where he had last seen Jeff and Walt.

A thread of blue-white smoke streamed from the muzzle of Walt’s six-gun. He and Jeff advanced on their challengers, and Jeff stooped to retrieve both of their weapons. Smoke took advantage of the lull to shove more fat rounds in the loading gate of the Winchester Express. Time to move, he decided.

From his fourth location, Smoke had a clear view of the other side of the headquarters house. The windows quickly disappeared in a series of tinkling, sun ray-sparkling showers. Faintly, Smoke Jensen made out the rage-ragged bellow of Benton-Howell.

“Goddamn you, Smoke Jensen!”

At least he knew who had paid him a visit, Smoke allowed with a smile. From his final position, where he had left his roan stallion tied off to a ground anchor, Smoke Jensen gave covering fire, while Walt Reardon and Jeff York burned ground out of the B-Bar-H compound. Smoke chuckled as he mounted and set off obliquely to join them, well out of range and sight of the terrorized mass of milling men below.

“Smoke Jensen?” The name echoed through the raddled politicos after Geoffrey Benton-Howell’s furious bellow

Livid with outrage, their host stomped around the flagstone veranda of his house, looking bleakly at the broken windows, shredded curtains, the bullet holes in the interior walls. He cursed blackly and balled his fists in impotent wrath.

“Everything is under control, gentlemen. Don’t let this act of a mad man interrupt our celebration today. Come, fill your plates, get something to drink. You there, strike up the music.” Then Benton-Howell turned away and hid his bitter anger from the still-shaken politicians. “I know it was him,” he shouted to the skies as though challenging the Almighty. “It was Smoke Jensen. Somehow . . . he’s . . . found . . . out.”

Most of those present had no idea of what he meant. Miguel Selleres, who had taken a slight nick in the left shoulder, knew only too well. He hastened to the side of his co-conspirator. “Softly, amigo, softly! It would not do to bring up such unpleasant matters in the presence of our guests. You have suffered enough loss today.”