Cunning of the Mountain Man (9 page)

“Jeremy, you don’t have the sense God gave a goose.” The loud voice drew Smoke’s attention to the entrance.

“There you go again, Zack, bad-mouthin’ me. I tell you, that feller made it sound so downright good, I jist had to trade horses with him.”

“Only it done turned out that he had two gray horses, the other one all swaybacked and spavined. Which he hung around your dumb neck.”

“Awh, Zack, tain’t fair you go bully-raggin’ me about that all the time. Hell, cousin, it happened a month ago! That’s old news.”

“It’s an old bunko game, too,” Zack replied dryly. Smoke Jensen marked them to be local range riders. But with a few differences, that could make them dangerous. For instance, the way they wore their six-guns, slung low on their legs, holsters tied down with a leather thong. The safety loops had been slipped free of the hammers. The weapons were clean and lightly oiled all the cartridges in their loops shiny bright. No doubt, they fancied themselves good with their guns, Smoke surmised. They had silver conchos around the sweat bands of their hats, sewn on their vests, and down the outside seam of their left trouser legs.

A regretful sigh broke from Smoke’s lips. Almost a uniform in the Southwest for young, tough-guy punks. Smoke faced the bar, head lowered, and tried not to draw their attention. The one called Zack looked hard at the big-shouldered man at the bar and turned away. Smoke finished his beer, the taste nowhere near as pleasant as it had been, and pushed off from the bar.

Outside, he headed toward an eatery he had seen earlier. He had noticed a sign, hand-lettered on a chalkboard, that advertised HOY CARNITAS. His limited Spanish told him that meant they were serving carnitas today. He had become acquainted with the savory dish while in Mexico to help two of his old gunfighter friends, Miguel Martine and Esteban Carbone. Thought of the succulent cubes of pork shoulder, deep fried over an open, smokey fire, brightened Smoke’s outlook considerably.

He had finished off a huge platter of the “little meats,” with plenty of tortillas and condiments, and another beer, when he looked up from wiping the grease from his face and saw the same pair of salty young studs again. They stood in the middle of the street, hands on the butts of their six-guns, eyes fixed on the doorway of the bean emporium.

At first, Smoke didn’t know if they had gotten so drunk that they couldn’t figure how to get in the eatery. But when he rose from his table, paid the tab, and stepped out under the palm frond
palapa
that shaded the front, he soon learned that not to be the case.

“B’god yer right, Zack. It’s him, all right.”

“Yeah, Smoke Jensen,” Zack sighed out. “An’ we’ve got us a tidy little re-ward cornin’, Jeremy.”

Seems these boys had read the same newspaper he had seen, Smoke surmised. The reward was something new. Too bad about that. He spoke to them through a sigh.

“Don’t believe everything you read, fellers.”

“We believe this right enough. You’re Smoke Jensen, and they’s a thousand dollars on yer head.”

“Not by the law. So there’s no guarantee you’d get the reward if you lived to collect it.”

“What you mean by that?”

Smoke sighed again. “If I
am
Smoke Jensen, there’s not the likes of you two who can take me. Not in a face-on fight.”

“I ain’t no back-shooter, an’ I think we can,” Zack blurted.

Smoke let Zack and Jeremy get their hands on their irons, before he hauled his .44 clear of leather. Jeremy’s eyes widened; it caused him to falter, and he didn’t have his weapon leveled when he pulled the trigger.

A spout of muddy street fountained up a yard in front of Jeremy’s boot toe. Although a hard violent man when he need be, Smoke Jensen took pity on the young gunny. He shot him in the hip. Jeremy went down with a yowl, the streamlined Merwin and Hulbert flew from his hand, and he clutched his wound with desperation. Smoke shifted his attention to Zack.

Zack’s jaw sagged in disbelief. He hadn’t even seen Jensen draw, and already the gunfighter had let ’er bang. Shot Jeremy, too, and he was rattlesnake fast. His consternation held Zack for a fraction of a second during which he saw eternity beckoning to him from the black muzzle of Smoke Jensen’s Colt.

“Nooooo!” he wailed and tried feverishly to trigger a round.

For this one, Smoke Jensen had no mercy. He had taken note earlier of the notches carved in the walnut grip of Zack’s six-gun. That told a lot about Zack. No real gunhawk notched his grips to keep score. Killing men was not a game. They didn’t give prizes for the one with the most chips whittled out. The only thing that came from winning was the chance to live a little longer. Smoke Jensen knew that well. He’d been taught by an expert. So, he let fly with a .44 slug that punched a new belly button in Zack’s vulnerable flesh.

Shock, and the impact, knocked Zack off his boots. He hit hard on his butt in the middle of the street. He had somehow managed to hold onto his Smith American, and let roar a .44 round that cracked past the left shoulder of Smoke Jensen. New pain exploded in the right side of Zack’s shoulder, as Smoke answered in kind with his Peacemaker.

“Damn you to hell, Smoke Jensen.” Bitter pain tears welled up in Zack’s eyes and Smoke Jensen seemed to waver before him like a cattail in a stiff breeze. Supported on one elbow, he tried again to raise his weapon into position. His hand would not obey. It drooped at the wrist, the barrel of the Smith and Wesson canted toward the ground.

“Y-you done killt me, Jensen,” he gasped past the agony that broiled his body.

“It was your choice, Zack.”

“I—I know.” Zack sucked in a deep breath and new energy surged through him.

His gun hand responded this time, and he willed his finger to squeeze the trigger. The loud bang that followed came before his hammer had fallen. Zack couldn’t figure that one out. He understood better an instant later, when incredible anguish blossomed in his chest and a huge, black cavern opened up to engulf him.

“You di’n’t have to kill him,” Jeremy sobbed from his place on the ground.

“The way I see it, he pushed, I pushed back.” Smoke made a tight-lipped answer.

Despite his misery, Jeremy had managed to work free his sheath knife. He held it now by the blade. A quick flick of his right arm as Smoke Jensen turned in his direction, and the wicked blade sped on its way. It caught Smoke low. The tip slid through the thick leather of his cartridge belt and penetrated a stinging inch into meat. Smoke’s .44 blasted reflexively.

From less than three feet away, hot lead punched a thumb-sized hole between Jeremy’s eyebrows, mushroomed, and blew off the back of his head. Smoke eased up, let his shoulders sag. A sudden voice from behind him charged Smoke with new energy.

“
¡
Tien cuidado
,
Señor
! They have a frien’.” Black pencil line of mustache writhing on his brown upper lip, the owner and cook of the cafe where Smoke had eaten, stood in the doorway. He pointed a trembling finger toward the balcony of the saloon across the street. Smoke followed the gesture and saw a man kneeling behind the big wooden sign, a rifle to his shoulder.

Fool, Smoke thought. If he thinks that sign will stop a bullet, he’s in for a surprise. The Winchester cracked once, and cut the hat from Smoke’s head as he returned the favor. Two fast shots from the pistol in the hand of Smoke Jensen put a small figure-eight hole in the sign and the chest of the sniper. With a clatter, the hidden assassin sprawled backward on the floor planks of the balcony.

In the silence that followed Smoke Jensen surveyed the carnage he had created. Damnit, he didn’t need to be caught knee-deep in corpses. This spelled more complications than he wanted to think about. He reloaded swiftly.

“No question of it, I’m in more trouble than before,” he muttered to himself To the Mexican cook, he added “The law will be coming soon. Tell them the man who did this is long gone.”

The smiling man shrugged. “There is very little law in this town,
Señor
. Only the
alcalde
—the mayor—who is also the
jefe
—the marshal, an’ also the
juez ... el magistrado, 
¿
comprende?
”

“I reckon I do. You’re saying you have a one-man city administration?”

“
Seguro, si
.” In his excitement over the confrontation in the street, the man had forgotten most of his English. “Where do I find this feller?”

A broad warm smile bloomed on the man’s face. He tapped his chest with a brown, chili-stained finger. “It is I,
Señor
.”

That made matters considerably less complicated for Smoke Jensen. Smoke recounted where he had first seen the would-be hard cases, and gave his opinion of what had sparked the attempt on his life. The mayor-police-chief-judge, his name turned out to be Raphael Figuroa, didn’t even ask if they had the right man. He looked at the human garbage in the street and shrugged.

“They are no loss. This is not the first time they have provoked trouble. Usually with tragic consequences for the other party. This is the first time they have been on the receiving end. You are free to go, or stay as long as you wish,
Señor
.”

“I’m fixin’ to pull out tomorrow morning,” Smoke informed him. He did not give a destination.

Forty-six miles into Arizona, Smoke Jensen discovered why he had not been joined by his companions. Walt and Ty waited for him in Show Low, along with Jeff York. Smoke and the Arizona Ranger had a rousing, back-pounding reunion, and the four men retired to the saloon made famous by the poker game that had given the new name to what had once been Copper Gulch.

A drifter had played cards all through one night with the local gambler and owner of the town. His luck had run well and, on the turn of a card in a game of Low Ball, he had won title to Copper Gulch, which he promptly renamed Show Low in honor of his accomplishment. Or so the story goes.

“What’s this about you being wanted for killing a man, Smoke?” Jeff inquired, his pale bluish gray eyes alight with interest. “Don’t sound like the Smoke Jensen I know.”

“It’s a long story, Jeff. Just yesterday, I found out there’s a price on my head. A big one.” Smoke went on to explain what he faced. He concluded with, “So with a reward out, I had to figure that sheriff would be out hunting me again, and decided Arizona would be a safer place to stay while I worked it all out.”

Jeff York sat in silence a moment before responding to all Smoke had told him. “I’ll cover for you here in Arizona, of course. And I’d like to help. As much as I can.”

“How’s that? The governor got his hand cinched up to your belt?”

“Not so’s it chafes. I was up this way to check out something when Walt and Ty came along. So far it’s only rumors. Still an’ all, the ones puttin’ them around are considered reliable men. ’Pears there’s some scallywags that have their eyes on a land grab on the White Mountain Apache reservation.”

“Do tell,” Smoke prompted.

“The word is that some high-rollers are fixin’ to bring a number of the big tickets in Washington out to be wined and dined—and bribed—to get them to cut a big chunk out of the res for the benefit of those same local money men.”

“Why in the world would anyone want to move in next door to the Apaches?”

Jeff gave Smoke a bleak smile. “Perhaps it’s because Chief Cuchillo Negro and some of his braves have found gold on that land. And, of course, it might be that these good ol’ boys has gotten a serious dose of religion, and only want to make better the lot of their less fortunate red brothers.”

“I’ll believe that when pigs fly,” Smoke grunted.

Smoke Jensen had fought and killed any number of Indians over the years, and he was not considered one to stomp lace-edged hankies into the mud over the wretched plight of the Noble Red Men. Yet, he respected them as brave men and fierce fighters. The Apaches most of all. He acknowledged the Indians’ right to a place in this world. After all, it was Indian land before the white man came to take it away from them. Indians and the white men had different ways, neither one better than the other, to Smoke’s way of seeing things. Truth to tell, he sometimes thought the Indian way came out a bit on top. They sure had more respect for nature and the land. And they used to live in harmony with all its creatures.

It wasn’t the coming of the white man that spoiled all that, Smoke acknowledged. It was too many of them coming, too fast and too soon. Set in their own ways, and pig-head stubborn against change, they never considered the differences beyond the Big Muddy. Civilization ended at the Mississippi, and white folks stupidly refused to admit that.

Sharing that all too human trait, most of the Indians would not make any effort to accommodate to white ways. They preferred to fight a losing battle to preserve their way of life. Those tribes lost, too. Now only the Apaches and a passel of Sioux and Cheyenne remained any sort of threat to the tens of thousands of white men overwhelming the vast frontier. Smoke Jensen shook his head, saddened by his sour reflections. “There’s six more Rangers headed this way. I’m supposed to direct it all, and also get a man inside this consortium,” Jeff went on.

“You wouldn’t be electin’ me to that position, would you, Jeff?”

“No,” Jeff York shrugged. As tall as Smoke and nearly as broad, that gesture moved a lot of hard-muscled flesh. His big hands spread on the table, and thick fingers reached for a fish-eye whiskey glass. “I reckoned to do that myself.”

“I recall the last time I knew you went under cover.” York smiled at Smoke’s remark. “We sure shot hell out of Rex Davidson’s Dead River, didn’t we.”

“And you damned near got yourself killed, before you could get to the doin’,” Smoke reminded him.

“Water under the bridge. We’re still here, both of us. Now, maybe I had oughtta make myself useful,” York changed the subject. “First off, I’ll fill you in on who is who around Socorro.”

“You Rangers keep an eye on folks from another territory?” Smoke asked.

“Good practice to know the influential folks. Also the bad hombres and riffraff—all part of the job.”

“Then tell me about them,” Smoke prompted.