Rage of the Mountain Man (14 page)

“The honoraria won’t be that large,” John Reynolds offered.

“Damn it, John, that’s all the more reason I’d look foolish accepting them,” Smoke growled.

“You could donate them to charity,” Sally suggested through a smile. “Like the Boston Shelter for Orphans. Think what that would do for your desperado image. ‘Notorious Gunman Contributes Lecture Fees to Provide a Dry Roof and Full Bellies for Poor Children,’ ” she quoted an imaginary headline.

Smoke Jensen cut his eyes to his wife, his face wrapped in disbelief. “You’re in favor of this, Sal?”

Sally entered the room, small fists on hips. “As a matter of fact, yes, I am. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for you. Please, tell Father that you will at least think about it.” Rarely able to deny Sally anything, Smoke Jensen drew a deep breath and turned away from her cool, level blue gaze. “All right, John. I’ll give it some consideration. How soon will I have to be ready for the first one?”

Sensing victory, although with less satisfaction than he might expect, John Reynolds smiled winningly and patted Smoke Jensen on one shoulder. “Fine, fine. The first appearance is right here in Keene, on the evening of the eleventh.”

“That’s . . . only three days,” Smoke said miserably.

Later, when they were at last alone, Sally came to Smoke, where he stood gazing out over the back lawn of the Reynolds home. She lightly touched fingers to his cheek and gently pressed her full, still firm, bosom against his arm.

“Seriously, dear, it could do you a world of good, this lecture tour Father has designed.”

Horseshit!
Smoke thought angrily, then cut off his hot flow of negatives. “I can’t see it worth a damn, Sal,” he stated calmly.

“Think about it, dear. I can see it now. What a deliciously funny joke it will be on these stuffy easterners when the notorious gunfighter Smoke Jensen appears in front of them, dressed in white tie and tails, sixguns slung around his waist. The women will swoon and the men will get apoplexy.”

“And I’ll tell them about wrestlin’ a bear and havin’ the critter insist on best two falls out of three? Maybe mention the time I outran a whole band of Arapaho warriors, barefoot and buck naked?”

“When did you do that, dear?” Sally asked, familiar with nearly all of his past adventures.

“I didn’t,” Smoke informed her with a smirk, as he got into her mood. “They were the ones without moccasins and clothes. I stole them all and burned them.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t relate that one. The good people of Keene would be scandalized,” Sally suggested seriously. “Honestly, I think you should try it. At least here in Keene.”

For all her ability to tame him, Smoke Jensen wasn’t yet ready for bridle and bit. “The big-city newspapers would get ahold of it and make me into some kind of circus performer.”

“Ooh?” Sally drawled. “Since when has your dignity been so important?”

“It’s not that. Only that ... I’d feel I was being used.”

“What’s wrong with that ... if it’s for a good cause? I meant what I said about giving what you earn to charity. You never know when you might be in need of a little goodwill.”

Smoke grimaced. “From easterners? Fat chance of that.”

Sally stood her ground. “Father’s taken a lot on himself for this,” she began, to be cut off by Smoke.

“Funny, but I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of sympathy for him. He could have at least consulted me first.” 

“To be told no at the outset?” Sally demanded, a nascent sob lurking at the back of her voice.

Smoke Jensen read it correctly. As usual, his beloved Sally had cooled his anger and replaced it with a humorous view of the affair. He could not bear hurting her. He turned her to him with big hands and brushed lightly across her long, dark tresses.

“Does it mean so much to you, Sal?” Her tiny nod tugged at his heart. He caressed her long, graceful neck and down her arched back. Sighing, he relented. “All right. I’ll do it. Mind, I’m only agreeing to do it one damned time, to see what it’s like. And for you.”

Wise in the ways of her man, Sally Jensen decided she would have to be satisfied with that ... for now.

“. . . Now, if you want to talk about the true philosopher of the Rockies, there’s only one name to turn to,” Smoke Jensen said to his rapt audience about midway through his first stumbling attempt at public speaking.

“I’m talking about the kindest, smartest, wisest two-legged critter that ever forked a horse or trapped a beaver. He was also the meanest, most ornery, toughest, wildest, most downright livingest man in the High Lonesome.” “How could he be the kindest and the meanest, the wisest and the wildest?” a voice shouted from the back of the hall. “Well, now, I was fixiri’ to tell you that.”

Smoke had surprised himself at how easily he had slipped back into the patois of the mountain men. He had started with a straight delivery, to be answered by a barrage of foot-shuffling, coughing, program-rattling, and whispering. When he let the round tones of his polished delivery slide into the crusty-edged twang of those redoubtable pioneers of the fur trade, utter silence descended on the town hall in Keene, New Hampshire.

Here, as Smoke had predicted, was what they’d come for. From that moment, Smoke held his audience in the palm of his hand. Now came the time to squeeze a little. “His name was Preacher. He had a first handle, Arthur, and one of my sons is named after him. But ev’ryone called him Preacher. He raised me from about the age of fourteen. Taught me how to hunt and trap, how to skin and cure beaver, deer, and elk hides, make a buffalo robe, or trade for one with the Indians and keep the edge.

“Preacher was also one of the founders of the University of the Shining Mountains—what you folks call the University of the Rockies. He made me read Milton, and Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, even Pliny and Plato.”

“Oh, sure,” another heckler chimed in. “If you know Shakespeare, how did General Canidius describe Cleopatra to the other Roman officers in
Anthony and Cleopatra?
” 

Smoke thought a moment. “ ‘Age cannot wither, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, whilst she makes hungry where most she satisfies.’ Will that do?” he ended, with a growl of challenge in his voice. “Now, Preacher was a real learned man . . .” And so it went on.

Following the questioning period, John Reynolds led his family back to the house, where the servants had laid out a late-night supper of cold cuts, cold fried chicken, cheeses, and champagne. John declared the lecture an overwhelming success. Over the rim of his hoisted glass, he cut his eyes to Smoke Jensen.

“You were marvelous. I’ve never seen so many gaping mouths in one place at the same time. You have to go on, do more, do them all.”

“I’m not so sure, John. I don’t know how to handle those big mouths, run by small minds, except with my fists or a sixgun.”

Portly John Reynolds considered that for a moment.

“Well, now, we can’t have that—not on stage, at least. Your next appearance is for this Saturday, in Concord.”

Smoke produced a fleeting smile. “There’s a town not far from here called Lynchville. I’m glad it isn’t scheduled for there,” he quipped.

“Then you’ll do it?” Sally asked from his side.

“Don’t appear I have a hell of a lot of choice. Not with my wife and my father-in-law conspiring against me.”

Smoke Jensen knew Concord would be a disaster from the moment he peeked through a spy-hole in the asbestos main curtain and got a look at the audience. Just behind the rows of seats that John Reynolds told him were properly called the orchestra, occupied by the state capital’s prominent citizens, came three files of rough, hard-faced men with mean eyes and smoldering temperaments. He knew damn well they had come to poke fun. Half of them looked piss-pants drunk, or well on the way to being there.

After the scrawny, overdressed twit who was host sponsor in Concord made the introduction, and Smoke walked out on stage to a podium arranged in the center with a pitcher and glass of water at the ready, he heard the titter of youthful laughter. Belatedly a spatter of applause broke out. Hell of a way to start out, he grumbled silently.

Kerosene footlights flickered in front of the rostrum, and washed the faces of those beyond into an amorphous mass. Sally, whose education had included several courses in public speaking, had impressed upon her husband that he should find several people in the audience and make eye contact alternately with them, so that each individual felt he spoke directly to them.

How in hell was he supposed to do that? Smoke fumed, under his breath. Smoke raised one arm to signal silence and launched into his prepared portion of the program.

“Thank you for your warm reception. You came tonight to hear from the Mountain Man Philosopher of the Rockies. Actually, what I’m going to do is tell you about the man who deserves that title. His name was Preacher. He was, to quote Shakespeare, ‘made of sterner stuff.’ Preacher never remembered how old he was when he went to the Shining Mountains. He did recall that he celebrated what he thought was his twelfth birthday in the camp of Beau Jacques and Curly Parnell, washing down half-raw elk steaks and cold biscuit with the most poisonous home-made whiskey that ever crossed his lips.

“You have all heard the expression ‘a man among men.’ Preacher was
the
man among men. Was he a failed man of the cloth, as some have claimed? No, but he was on the closest, most intimate terms with the Almighty. Was he a renegade schoolmaster?” Smoke produced a rueful look. “Not likely. Although he taught me every thing I knew until long after I’d reached my majority. And that was a lot.” Smoke went on to list the subjects and authors he had mastered under the rough tutelage of Preacher. He spoke of the Indian troubles in the sixties, and how Preacher had maintained a tenuous peace among the tribes of northern Colorado and the white Indian haters of Chivington’s ilk. In glowing terms, he brought his listeners along to the point where Preacher came into his life. In conclusion, he touched on the subject of the handbill that had been circulated.

“Preacher helped create what this broadside calls the University of the Rockies.” Smoke paused and tried to peer through the brightness at the audience. “To those who made use of it, it was called the University of the Shining Mountains. By the time I came into the High Lonesome, it had already been disbanded, along with the fur trade, for some thirty years. But its spirit remained; and its goal of enlightenment among the wanderers of that far place had been kept alive.”

“What about those twenty-eight men you killed on the way here?” one of the bully-boys in the center of the auditorium demanded.

“It wasn’t twenty-eight, it was more like seventeen. And the conductor on the train accounted for some six of those.” Gasps of shock and surprise flitted through the crowd.

“Men who deserved a fair trial and a chance to rehabilitate themselves,” came the challenge.

“Nope. They were murderers and thieves, bent on killing anyone who got in their way and determined to rob even children and have their way with the women passengers. They got what they had coming to them.”

A distraught mutter rippled through the audience. Smoke gauged it and cut off the protests short of a roar of outrage. “I’ve nothing more to say on that. If it offends any of you, then I suggest you’re in the wrong place. Instead, let me tell you what it’s like wakin’ up in the mornin’ in the High Lonesome. The rich, bitey scent of pine makes your nose tingle. Then there’s the powerful aroma of coffee brewin’ on a wood fire. Fatback never smelt better sizzlin’ in a pan, than out there . . .” He had them again. At the end of the lecture, enthusiastic applause almost turned into pandemonium.

Smoke, Sally, and her parents were leaving the building by a side entrance when a scuffle broke out in the aisle above them. Three men burst through the ushers and two policemen who tried to contain them and rushed directly at Smoke Jensen. Faces flaming, they mouthed obscenities and threats. The blade of a knife glinted in the yellow lamplight.

A pig-faced lout in the lead cursed foully as he neared and swung his knife, only to arrest his action abruptly when he found himself sucking on the muzzle end of the barrel of Smoke Jensen’s .45 Colt. Sweat broke out in large beads on his forehead, and blood from a broken-off tooth trickled from the corner of his mouth. His bushy brows waggled in agitation at his precarious position.

Smoke’s other hand plucked the thin-bladed filleting knife from paralyzed fingers and he snapped it against the nearest marble column. His icy gray gaze swept over the trio. “Fun’s fun, boys, but I don’t think you want to wear your friend’s brains home to show to your wives. Join the others who are leaving and we’ll forget all about this.” They beat a hasty retreat. At John Reynolds’ direction, the knife-wielder was taken off to jail by the police. Outside in the carriage, Stewart Buffington, the host, broke a tight silence.

“A lamentable incident.”

“It won’t happen again, I assure you,” John Reynolds quickly added.

“What now?” Sally Jensen asked, concerned for her husband and wondering what he must be thinking.

Smoke Jensen still retained the buzz of excitement that had come from feeling a tooth break as he jammed the muzzle of his sixgun in the thug’s mouth. “It’s on to Boston, I’d say. I’m beginning to enjoy this,” he answered them, to their mutual consternation.

“He’s on his way to Boston,” Sean O’Boyle stated tightly when he arrived in Phineas Lathrop’s New York office.

“Boston? Why is he on his way to Boston? Smoke Jensen was supposed to be dead by now, not on his way to Boston.”

Sean O’Boyle had long ago noted that when his boss got excited about something, he tended to repeat himself a lot. He tried to direct that agitation elsewhere by giving a rough shove forward to the man he had in tow. “Better ask him, Mr. Lathrop. He’s the one was supposed to knife Jensen.” Lathrop turned his malevolent gaze on the hapless man with the puffed, bruised lips. “I never saw anyone move so fast,” the Boston longshoreman lisped. “I’d just got my knife out an’ he shoved the barrel of his shootin’ iron in my mouth. Broke off a tooth, too.”