Rage of the Mountain Man (22 page)

One in particular eyed Smoke closely. After their party had passed, that one spoke up, confirming Smoke’s suspicion that trouble was about to catch up to him again. “That’s him, I tell you. Seed it in the paper this mornin’.” 

“Naw,” another rejected the idea. “He wouldn’t be walkin’ around like that.”

“I’ll prove it to you,” the young man pressed, as he came up from the bench on which he had been slouched. “Hey, you, mister. Smoke Jensen.” he called after the three strollers.

“Ollie, take Sally across the street and go on to the depot.”

“There’s five of them, Smoke,” Oliver protested.

“I know. That’s why I want Sally safely out of the way. Now, go on.” He turned to face the challenger. “You got that one right. I’m Smoke Jensen. Do I know you?”

“No. But the whole country’s soon gonna know me as the man who shot Smoke Jensen.”

“There’s no call for that. Back off while you still can.” “Can’t do that,” said the youth. “Y’see, we’re fixin’ to earn us a free ride out to where the big action is. Word has it a ramrodder named Wade Tanner’s hirin’ all the guns he can get. There’s a special bonus for whoever spots and guns down Smoke Jensen. That’s the free ride I tole you about.” While the young prodder had run his mouth, Smoke had let his right hand lower to his holster and slide the safety thong off the hammer of his .45 Colt. Now he shook his head, almost sadly.

“You’re not good enough to even come close. Give it up, boy, before you get yourself and your friends hurt.”

At Smoke’s pronouncement, the five spread out across the sidewalk and into the street. Smoke didn't like any part of this. They were so young, and calling him out like this was so senseless. One of the youths dropped into an exaggerated crouch and continued to walk, crablike, further into the street. Smoke could almost laugh at the image it created. Obviously all these boys had ever learned about gunfighting had come from, the pages of dime novels.

“I’ll ask you nicely one last time. Forget about this and walk away. That way none of you will get hurt.”

“You’re the one’s gonna be hurt, gunfighter,” the aggressive one snarled.

Then he made a terrible mistake. He went for his gun. Smoke Jensen’s Peacemaker cleared leather before the youth had his fingers closed around the butt-grip of an old .44 Colt Frontier model. Smoke aimed to disable the revolver. His slug entered the young man’s thigh at the midpoint and deflected to exit on the right side, smashing itself against the holster. The kid cried out and fell to his left knee. Fearful of the speed they had just witnessed, yet goaded by their friend’s shout of pain, the other four went for their guns.

“Aw, shit!” one groaned, as he realized he had not slipped the safety thong off his iron. He tugged uselessly at it while he watched the black hole in the muzzle of Smoke Jensen’s .45 center on his belly. Suddenly he wanted no part of this. He raised both hands in surrender and stepped off in a direction away from the developing fight.

Smoke let him go. The other three had unlimbered their weapons and now fired wildly, their bullets cracking through air to both sides of Smoke Jensen. Smoke put a hot round in the shoulder of the nearest shooter, who tried inexpertly to do a border shift. Pain caused him to jerk uncontrollably and he missed his catch. His revolver fell solidly on the hard-packed dirt street and discharged. The bullet cracked and whined off the marble facing of a bank across the street where Smoke stood.

That left two, Smoke kept mental score. One of them had presence of mind to extend his gunhand to arm’s length and try to take aim. His had shook so badly he could not line up on Smoke’s chest. Smoke ignored him momentarily to take care of the other would-be gunfighter.

Still in his crab-walk crouch, the snarling youth fired with his right shoulder sloped downward, which placed him off balance. The slug cut high, past the front brim of Smoke’s hat. It broke a window on the second floor of the bank and a woman’s scream of alarm came a second later. Eyes wide, the shooter indexed the cylinder again.

No time for fancy work, Smoke admitted to himself. He brought the Colt to bear and loosed a .45 lead pellet that took his assailant in the gut, a fist’s depth below the sternum. Eyes bugged, the youthful thug did a pratfall and tried feebly to raise his suddenly heavy sixgun.

A soft sigh left his lips and he toppled over his gunhand as shock brought on unconsciousness. By that time, the mouthy one had revived enough to retrieve his .44 Frontier and make use of it lefthanded. He got a .45 caliber hole in his shoulder for his troubles. The shaky one recovered enough to be a threat. Instead of gunning him down without pity, Smoke Jensen stepped in on the scared youth and knocked the menacing gunhand away, then brought the barrel of his Peacemaker down on the center line of the kid’s forehead.

His eyes crossed and he fell with a soft groan. “God damn you, Smoke Jensen!” the instigator shouted, white froth spraying from thin lips.

“You’ve got two holes in you, boy, and one of your friends is dead. Back down or I put the next bullet between your runnin’ lights.”

Tears filled the pale blue eyes and the young gunhand sat sobbing in a spreading pool of his own blood. By then, two guards from the bank and a policeman had reached the scene. The encounter with the police ended abruptly when Smoke showed his badge and explained that the five had jumped him, and that he had a train to catch.

“You can reach me through the sheriff’s office in Big Rock, Colorado. Monte Carson is the sheriff.” With that final advice, Smoke Jensen walked away from the gapemouthed policeman, on the final leg of his search for Phineas Lathrop.

“I’m tellin’ ye, Mr. Lathrop, sure an’ we’re goin’ crazy out here, we are,” Sean O’Boyle complained to Phineas Lathrop on the third night stop on the trail from Dodge City to Denver. “It’s too quiet. Nothin’ but birds singin’, it is, an’ bugs buzzin’ around. An’ at night, saints preserve us, it’s them spooky wolves howlin’.”

“They’re coyotes,” Phineas Lathrop snapped.

“Whatever. It’s got us all wore thin. We need somethin’ to do.”

“Such as what?” Lathrop asked coldly.

“Well, me an’ some of the boys have been thinkin’ on that. We saw that stagecoach yesterday. And we read about stage holdups in them books about the West. Connor O’Fallon an’ I sort of thought it might be something’ to while away our time, we did, if we was to rob one of those coaches.”

Lathrop didn’t like that in the least. “Just the two of you?”

“No, sir. We’re not daft, man. Paedrik Boyne an’ Seamas Quern have a hankerin’ to join in. Sure four of us could take one man with a little bitty shotgun.”

“Don’t be too sure.” Something troubled him about this, yet Lathrop found himself hard put to express his discomfort. “Those shotgun guards are tough men. Wells-Fargo doesn’t hire eastern dandies to protect their strongboxes.”

O’Boyle’s black Irish temper flared. “Are ye callin’ us boys ‘dandies,’ Mr. Lathrop?”

“Oh, no—no, of course not.”

“I should think not, now you got us decked out all a-bris-tle with firearms. When the stage folk get a look at that, they’ll see reason, right enough, they will.”

“I could order you not to.” Then Lathrop saw their side of it. The prairie could be mighty lonesome for someone not used to it, the mountains more so. Perhaps it would be good to get some of the men blooded to how things are done out here. “But this time I won’t. Take the men you’ve picked, and go rob your stage. There will be one coming back around ten o’clock in the morning. Mr. Finnegan and I will continue on with the others. You can catch up at night camp.”

Force of habit directed the tug at his forelock that O’Boyle gave to Lathrop. “Thank ye, sir. An’ we’ll be sharin’ fair as fair.”

Rattling along on the high driver’s seat of the Concorde coach, behind a matched team of powerful-rumped bays, Walt Tilton could sense through the reins that the off-wheeler had started to slacken, let the others pull the load. The gelding ran just fast enough to keep up, but not put strain on the harness.

“C’mon, you lazy sod. Jaspar, put your shoulders into it,” he shouted over the grind of the steel-tired wheels. A quick touch of churning hindquarter with the whip brought the animal into tandem effort with its partner.

“How’d you always know?” Slim Granger, the express guard, asked.

“I’ve been driving these rigs for nigh onto twenty years now,” Walt informed him. “After a while you get a feel for what the teams are doin’. It’s sort of like you knowin’ when to put hands on that scatter-gun of yourn.”

Slim shook his head. “That’s plain instinct. It’s like I can sense trouble before it happens.” Slim’s hands found the barrel of the L. C. Smith 10-gauge as he spoke and raised the weapon to the ready, thumb on the righthand hammer. “Like right now.”

“You funnin’ me?” Walt asked.

“Nope.” Slim had gone white around his full lips. His mustache wriggled like a live thing. He nodded ahead along the highroad.

Four men in long white linen dusters appeared suddenly from behind tall brush. Each held a weapon in an awkward fashion, as though ill trained in its use. The one to left center rose in his stirrups and pointed the muzzle of his sixgun skyward.

“Stand and deliver!” he shouted, after the shot barked from his Colt.

Walt Tilton didn’t even slow the stage. As the other highwaymen brought their guns into ready positions from beside Walt, Slim let go one barrel of the ten-gauge. The double-aught buckshot column quickly flashed across space to turn the face of Paedrik Boyne into a wet, red smear. His arms flew into the air and he flopped off his horse into the dust stirred by the nervous animal’s hooves.

Three .33-caliber pellets from the second barrel punched painfully into the left shoulder of Connor O’Fallon. Howling a pain-filled curse, O’Fallon awkwardly turned his mount away and put spurs to the flanks. At once the horse dug in and set off at a pounding sprint. O’Fallon bounded and swayed in the saddle like a bag of flour. Smoke still poured from the muzzles of the double-barrel when Slim opened the latch and fished out two long brass cartridges.

Fresh ones quickly took their place and Slim bit at his lip as the speed at which the attack had come on them forced him to snap shut the action. The big ten-gauge roared again and another of the highwaymen spurred away, shrieking in pain and outrage. Only one unharmed man stood in the way of the careening coach.

“God damn it, you said this would be easy,” Seamas Quern screamed over his shoulder as he made hasty retreat.

Sean O’Boyle glowered after him and then turned back to fire on the driver, heedless of the danger that created. The .38 S & W bullet from his long-barreled Ivor Johnson tilt-top revolver splintered wood from the seat between the legs of Walt Tilton. Both hands tending the reins, Tilton could not return fire. He relied on Slim for that.

With the range closed to only a few feet, Slim believed he could not miss. To his utter surprise, he did. Beside him, Walt began to haul on the reins and slow the coach. “That’s the last one. Let’s get him and take him on to Dodge.”

Alone now, Sean O’Boyle decided against a final attempt to rob the stage. As the vehicle slowed, he made a fast move in the opposite direction. Once well out of range; he slowed and looked back while the guard and driver picked up the dead Paedrik Boyne and an unhorsed Seamas Quern.

“Somehow, bucko, I’ve a feelin’ Mr. Lathrop is not going to be pleased with this, he’s not,” O’Boyle said aloud, as he raced in the wake of Connor O’Fallon.

When the Denver-bound train carrying Smoke and Sally Jensen arrived in Ellsworth, the town was abuzz with the latest novelty in outlawry. The Dodge City newspaper carried a detailed account. Smoke read it carefully, but did not display the amusement it generated in others.

“I’ll give you one guess as to who these ‘funny-talking dudes’ are who tried to rob the stage and got caught,” Smoke remarked to Oliver.

Oliver Johnson nodded agreement. “Some of Lathrop’s New York or Boston thugs. What do you suppose went wrong?”

“I don’t know, but it’s worth finding out.”

“We’re going to Dodge City, Smoke?” Sally asked. 

“You're
going on to Denver, where I want you to take a room at the Brown Palace. Oliver will go with you. I’m thinking of a short detour through Dodge City.”

Eastern cynicism colored Oliver’s words. “Do you think you’ll learn anything worth the time to go there?”

“Considering that they hang a man for just about any offense out here, yes, I expect some cooperation.”

Subdued, Oliver nodded thoughtfully. “Our eastern gangs have a strong bond of loyalty.”

Smoke cocked an eyebrow, cut his eyes to Oliver’s deadpan expression. “You sound almost proud. The way I see it, the sight of some new three-quarter-inch hemp rope, with thirteen wraps to the knot, will loosen the most loyal tongue.”

Sally came to him in the wing chair of the parlor section of the private car. She put a hand on Smoke’s arm. “Smoke does real well in getting information from people who don’t want to talk.”

“Then you’re going to Dodge City.” Oliver made it a statement.

“Right,” Smoke closed the topic.

Ford County Sheriff Pat McRaney greeted Smoke Jensen with a firm handshake. “A bit far from your bailiwick, Marshal.”

“I am. But we have reason to believe these men were headed for Denver.”

“Are they wanted for anything else?”

“I’m not sure, Pat. How many were there on the holdup?” “Four. One’s dead, two are wounded, one of them in jail, two got away.”

“Only four? There should have been a lot more than that.”

“Oh, they came through here, a whole lot of them. Got off a train from back East and took horses out of town, headed west. All of them talked peculiar. The first batch seemed to talk through their noses.”

“First batch?”

“Oh, yes. They had an overnight for the City of Denver. Kept to themselves, didn’t get into any trouble. A rough-lookin’ lot, though.”

Smoke thought about that. “What about the gang your prisoner came in with?”

Pat McRaney scratched his balding head. “Most sounded Irish. There were some who talked real flat. You know what I mean? Sort of, ‘fawht in a cawdbwaad cawton.’ Ever hear of anything like that?”