Rage of the Mountain Man (32 page)

Togwotee Pass, at over 9,000 feet, was one of the highest so far opened through the Rockies by man. From the summit, Phineas Lathrop studied the horizon in both directions. He nodded in apparent approval of his thoughts and summoned Sean O’Boyle with a crook of one finger.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Lathrop. An’ what would it be ye’d be wantin’ o’ me and me boys?”

“I want you to select twelve of your best.” Well aware of their abilities in this wild country, Lathrop could not keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “You are to stay here, erect a roadblock, and hold off Smoke Jensen.”

“It’s sure he’s comin’, then, is it?”

“You can count on it, Mr. O’Boyle. Not to worry, though. Given the narrowness of this pass, and a well-made barricade, I have every confidence that a baker’s dozen of you can withstand any attack by one gunfighter, a broken-down old sheriff, and a green kid reporter.”

“An’ when would ye be expectin’ this attack to happen?” Shrewdness glowed in O’Boyle’s black eyes.

“Within a day, two at the most. So you had better get busy. And—ah—good luck.”

O’Boyle’s black glower told what he thought of that wish. He turned, nevertheless, and began to pick the men he wanted with him. He regretted he could not choose Eamon Finnegan. Eamon was the only one who could keep the rest in line. He settled for Connor O’Fallon, James Finnegan, Liam O’Tolle, Bryan Gallagher, and Henny Duggan among the first six he named off. He called them together and began to explain their assignment as the rest of the severely reduced column rode off to the west, toward Jackson’s Hole.

Shortly after sundown, L’Lupe and three men of equal age glided silently up to the camp made by Smoke Jensen. From thirty feet out, the wily old mountain man called out to make their presence known.

“Hello, the camp.”

“Hello, yourself,” Smoke responded. “Come on in, Reynard.”

“How’d you know it was me?” L’Lupe asked, when he hunkered down beside Smoke Jensen and poured a cup of coffee.

“I heard you stumbling around out there.”

“
Sacre bleu!
You lie; L’Lupe does not stumble around in the woods.” They laughed together and then Douchant turned to the trio squatting across the fire. “Some friends from old times. They had nothing to do with their days, so I brought them along.”

Smoke knew them and greeted all warmly. “Greener Jack, High Pockets, Lonesome Brown. Good of you to come.”

“Hell, didn’t take much thinking on,” Lonesome Brown allowed. “ ’Pears to me to be the only fight around.”

“Who is this Lathrop that L’Lupe was tellin’ us about?” Greener Jack asked.

“He’s from the East,” Smoke began his explanation, to be interrupted by High Pockets, “It figgers.” Smoke went on to detail what he knew of Lathrop’s grandiose scheme, omitting the personal side to their conflict. When he concluded, the three reinforcements offered their allegiance in their own ways.

“Time’s a-wastin’, ’f you ask me,” Greener Jack advised.

“They’ll be gettin’ close to Jackson’s Hole. Lor’ we had some high good times there a couple of years,” Lonesome Brown recalled.

“Any idea where these bad hombres is headed?” High Pockets asked.

Smoke’s high, smooth brow furrowed. “Now, that’s been naggin’ at me for some time. If I thought they knew anything about this country, I’d swear that Lathrop is trying to reach Yellowstone.”

“The river, or that wild country with the water spouts they made into a Na-tion-al Park?” Lonesome Brown asked.

“Either . . . both. Thing is, I don’t know if Lathrop knows about that country at all. Well, sunup comes early,” Smoke concluded, as he poured the dregs of his coffee on the cook-fire and rose to head for his bedroll. “I want us to be on the trail an hour before sunup.”

Smoke’s keen eyes were first to spot a dark, irregular smudge across the trail. He pointed it out to L’Lupe.

Douchant studied it a moment and spat on the ground. “I do not believe the Blackfeet, they came back to life just for us.”

“Nor do I. Reckon the best idea is to ride on down like we don’t suspect anything.”

For once, Smoke Jensen didn’t have all that good an idea. He and L’Lupe found that out some three minutes later when a rifle bullet cracked past between them and a spurt of powder smoke rose from the log barricade.

“We’ll be comin’ up on Togwotee Pass in an hour,” L’Lupe Douchant informed Smoke Jensen shortly after nine o’clock the next morning. “ ’Member that time them Blackfoot braves ambushed a company of fur trappers?”

That caused Smoke to reevaluate his estimate of L’Lupe’s age. He had to be more than eighty. Which made him not an unusual man, but a remarkable one.

“Preacher told me about it. I wasn’t even born then.”

Each knew the incident L’Lupe had brought up and needed no discussion. With a wordless command, Smoke sent Greener Jack off with his two companions to approach the pass from a slightly different angle. No sense in taking unnecessary risks.

When their mounts leaned into the grade, Smoke grew even more cautious. He cut his eyes from side to side, took in every rock and bush, and the distant black smudge that marked stately firs. Supple aspen whispered to them as the steady breeze agitated their heart-shaped leaves.

L’Lupe’s mule was blowing hard when they topped the crest and ambled down toward the summit of the pass. It lay in the bottom of a bowl-like basin, surrounded by steep, sharp peaks, much like the caldera of an ancient volcano.

“B’God, there he comes, bold as brass,” Sean O’Boyle declared, as he studied the approaching riders. “Those of you who ain’t seen him before, that’s Smoke Jensen.”

“Who’s the old fart with him?” James Finnegan asked.

“Don’t matter, it don’t.” A second later, O’Boyle let fly the first round in their encounter.

“Aw, you can’t hit shit,” Brian Gallagher derided Sean O’Boyle, when the bullet missed.

“Shut your mouth an’ take yer best shot, wiseass.” Sean continued to pout while he cycled the action of the unfamiliar Winchester.

“Don’t look like we’re searin’ ’em off any, it don’t,” Connor O’Fallon observed.

Half a dozen rifles barked in time. None of the eastern greenhorns hit what they’d aimed at. By then, Smoke Jensen had closed the range to under a hundred yards. Bent low over the neck of his stallion, Dandy, Smoke sighted along the barrel of his .45 Peacemaker and let fly a round. A risky shot at best, he knew, especially from the back of a cantering horse.

An instant later he turned his head to flash a smile of triumph to L’Lupe when a cry of pain rewarded his efforts.

*  *  *

Sean O’Boyle stared open-mouthed at the wounded man beside him. “Mary an’ all the saints, that man can shoot, he can.”

“Better than any of us,” Connor O’Fallon informed his boss.

“Aim more careful, damn it!”

Young James Finnegan stared at Sean O’Boyle. “They’re gettin’ too close for rifles, anyway.”

“Then stand up. Use yer sixguns.”

Reluctant to leave the security of the logs, they did so slowly. When the volume of fire increased to ten revolvers, it did cause Smoke and L’Lupe to swerve to one side. It also did another thing. It provided excellent targets for Greener Jack, High Pockets, and Lonesome Brown.

From a notch between two of the surrounding peaks, they each downed one of the eastern thugs. That sent those at the barricade in desperate dives to avoid a similar fate. It also allowed Smoke and L’Lupe to draw clear of the withering fire.

“
Certainement
they are not the Blackfeet,” said L’Lupe dryly. “They were not stupid enough to tie themselves down behind
le retranchement sans valeur
. ”

“That’s more of a barricade than an entrenchment, worthless or otherwise, but I follow what you mean.” Smoke changed the subject, “I wonder how long it will take them to realize we didn’t fire those shots.”

“I would say two or three times more should do it.”

“You don’t think too highly of these fellers,” Smoke prompted.

“
Au contraire
. It is only that they are such terrible shots. Unreasonably terrible.”

Smoke joined his laughter. “Shall we make another run at them?”

“
Apres vous
. ” So saying, L’Lupe took the lead instead of Smoke.

*  *  *

“Far the love o’ Jaazus, they’re comin’ back!” a young dockyard punk from Boston wailed, as Smoke Jensen and L’Lupe Douchant appeared over a swell in the basin.

Sean O’Boyle looked up from reloading his revolver to see the flared nostrils of a horse less than twenty feet away. He swiftly raised his .45 Colt and yanked on the hammer. All it got him was a sore thumb. The rear of a fresh cartridge protruded onto the loading gate ramp, which he had failed to close. Then pain and blackness exploded inside his head and he fell away.

“
Hokka hey!”
L’Lupe shouted exuberantly, as he recovered from the vicious butt-stroke he had given the burly, black-haired Irishman.

Smoke Jensen shook his head in exasperation. Instead of killing the hoodlum, L’Lupe had counted coup. Smoke made up for the lapse by downing two in rapid succession. Long-range fire from the other mountain men began to rip into those manning the barrier.

It took little of this to break the spirit of two thugs. Sticking a cargo hook in the chest of a drunk sailor took little courage. A pitched battle against superlative shots was a far different thing. Especially ones who couldn’t be seen. Where were these other bullets coming from?

The ex-longshoremen cut their eyes to each other, then to the menacing unknown beyond the barricade. “This ain’t our kind o’ fight, Paddy, it ain’t,” one spoke the thoughts of both.

“Aye, that’s the right of it, it is.”

“Then what are we doin’ here?”

“I’m thinkin’ the same thing, I am, Ryan.”

“Then, Paddy, let’s be far gettin’ outta here an’ visitin’ our sainted mithers.”

They broke and ran together. Paddy made it only ten yards when a fat slug from Greener Jack’s .56 Sharps cut him down. Ryan sped on to where the horses had been tethered. The pound of his horse’s hooves proved contagious to the others in the uneven fight. Several threw down their weapons and ran in panic to their mounts. Smoke Jensen fired two more shots, L’Lupe one, and the battle ended.

Inspecting the scene of carnage, Smoke Jensen gave little thought to the corpses. He called in the long-range shooters and soon they joined L’Lupe and himself. Smoke waved a hand at the fallen bodies.

“Look them over. See if there’s any papers, something to indicate the leader, also where they’re headed.”

Smoke’s huge frame swam fuzzily in the blurred eyesight of Sean O’Boyle. He had fortuitously regained consciousness without the usual moans, groans, or shiftings of his body that generally accompanied that condition. Now he fought to piece together just what in hell was going on.

Was he in hell?
The thought seared through O’Boyle’s brain as he stared upward through slitted lids at the indistinct shape of the giant who towered over him. Sure an’ the man had to be head an’ shoulders above his own five-foot-seven, he did.
Could it be Old Nick himself?
Slowly, reality sifted out from confused myth. The giant had a name. Smoke Jensen.

And Sean O’Boyle shuddered at the recognition. Grounded on what was, he gradually devised a plan. He recalled that he had been using a rifle when the world had turned upside down on him. His head had exploded in a shower of bright light and intense pain, then blackness. Now it throbbed and he felt a wet, stickiness oozing down from the crown. If he had used his rifle, that meant he still had a sixgun in its holster, and the small hideout pistol at the small of his back.

“Be clever now, Sean, boyo,” he barely breathed out.

All he had to do was avoid the attention of the men searching the bodies of his fallen friends. He’d have to move slowly, ever so slowly. An inch at a time. Get to that heavy, awkward .45 at his hip and slide it free. Then, all unsuspecting, the end would come for Smoke Jensen.

Smoke Jensen had his back turned to Sean O’Boyle, whom he had belatedly recognized, believing the man still unconscious. When he heard the telltale clicks of a Colt, he quickly revised that assumption. Smoke had made a quarter-turn, and his .45 Peacemaker had already cleared leather, when a hot trail cut across his back, upward from near his left hip to his shoulder blade.

Good thing he had turned, Smoke Jensen thought giddily, or that slug would have got him in a kidney. Which would have ended an otherwise good life. He continued to pivot on one bootheel until he faced his assailant. Sean O’Boyle’s eyes widened when he saw that his shot had not had the desired effect.

Desperately he tried to cock the hammer once more. Two bullets, in rapid order, destroyed his right shoulder joint and brought on more excruciating pain. Sean O’Boyle howled in release of his discomfort and dropped backward onto the ground. His blood stained the yellow earth a deep magenta. Smoke Jensen stepped closer as the others gathered around.

“Even a rattlesnake gives warning, O’Boyle,” Smoke told him coldly.

“Ye know me, then?”

“Yes. From the lecture hall, and later, that warehouse in Boston. Ollie Johnson pointed you out to me in Central Park.”

“Damned snoop reporters,” growled O'Boyle. A new idea occurred to him. “Then ye’ll be knowin’ that I’m of some importance to Mr. Lathrop, an’ ’twould be to yer advantage to keep me alive, it would.”

While he spoke, Sean O’Boyle worked his undamaged left arm under his back. He fixed small, close-set, black eyes on Smoke’s slate orbs and suppressed a shudder at the awful fate he saw reflected there. It took every ounce of his will to force Sean to continue with his intentions.

“The only advantage I see is to force you to talk, then finish you off,” Smoke told him flatly.

“Ah, now, there’s where yer wrong, ye are. Don't I jist know where it is the fancy Mr. Phineas Lathrop is headed? All the torture in the world won’t get that from me lips. But ... if I was to be treated for me wounds, all nice an’ proper, then allowed to go me way in peace . . . well, bucko, that’s a whole different proposition.”

“Suppose I were to agree?”