Journey of the Mountain Man (3 page)

Smoke sat down on the edge of the boardwalk and tried to catch his breath.

The boardwalk gradually filled with people, all of them staring in awe at Smoke. One man said, “Mister, I don't know who you are, but I'd have bet my spread that you wouldn't have lasted a minute against old Ring, let alone whip him.”

Smoke rubbed his aching leg. “I'd hate to have to do it again.”

Beans squatted down beside Smoke. When he spoke his voice was low. “Kirby, I don't know who you really are, but I shore don't never want to make you mad.”

Smoke looked at him. “Hell, I'm not angry!” He pointed to the man called Ring. “He's the one who wanted to fight, not ” me.

“Lord, have mercy!” Beans said. “All this and you wasn't even mad.”

Ring groaned and heaved himself out of the horse trough.

Smoke picked up a broken two-by-four and walked over to where Ring lay on the soaked ground. “Mister Ring, I want your attention for a moment. If you have any thoughts at all about getting up off that ground and having a go at me, I'm going to bust your head wide open with this two-by-four. You understand all that?”

Ring rolled over onto his back and grinned up at Smoke. One eye was swollen shut and his nose and lips were a mess. He held up a hand. “Hows ‘bout you and me bein' friends. I shore don't want you for an enemy!”

The three of them pulled out the next morning, Ring riding the biggest mule Smoke had ever seen.

“Satan's his name,” Ring explained. “Man was going to kill him till I come along. I swapped him a good horse and a gun for him. One thing, boys: don't never get behind him if you've got a hostile thought. He'll sense it and kick you clear into Canada.”

There was no turning Ring back. He had found someone to look up to in Smoke. And Smoke had found a friend for life.

“I just can't handle whiskey,” Ring said. “I can drink beer all day long and get mellow. One drink of whiskey and I'll turn mean as a snake.”

“I figured you were just another bully,” Beans said.

“Oh, no! I love everybody till I get to drinkin' whiskey. Then I don't even like myself.”

“No more whiskey for you, Ring,” Smoke told him.

“Yes, sir, Mister Kirby. Whatever you say is fine with me.”

They were getting too far east, so when they left Buffalo, they cut west and crossed the Bighorn Mountains, skirting north of Cloud Peak, the thirteen-thousand-foot mountain rearing up majestically, snow-capped year round. Cutting south at Granite Pass, the men turned north, pointing their horses' noses toward Montana Territory.

“Mister Kirby?” Ring asked.

“Just Kirby, Ring. Please. Just Kirby.”

“OK ... Kirby. Why is it we're going to Montana?”

“Seeing the sights, Ring.”

“OK. Whatever you say. I ain't got nothin' but time.”

“We might find us a job punchin' cows,” Beans said.

“I don't know nothin' about cows,” Ring admitted. “But I can make a nine-pound hammer sing all day long. I can work the mines or dig a ditch. There ain't a team of horses or mules that I can't handle. But I don't know nothin' about cows.”

“You ever done any smithing?” Smoke asked.

“Oh, sure. I'm good with animals. I like animals. I love puppy dogs and kitty cats. I don't like to see people mistreat animals. Makes me mad. And when I get mad, I hurt people. I seen a man beatin' a poor little dog one time back in Kansas when I was passin' through drivin freight. That man killed that little dog. And for no good reason.”

“What'd you do?” Smoke asked him.

“Got down off that wagon and broke his back. Left him there and drove on. After I buried the little dog.”

Beans shuddered.

“Dogs and cats and the like can't help bein' what they are. God made them that way. If God had wanted them different, He'd have made 'em different. Men can think. I don't know about women, but men can think. Man shouldn't be cruel to animals. It ain't right and I don't like it.”

“I have never been mean to a dog in my life,” Beans quickly pointed out.

“Good. Then you're a nice person. You show me a man who is mean to animals, and I'll show you a low-down person at heart.”

Smoke agreed with that. “You born out here, Ring?”

“No. Born in Pennsylvania. I killed a man there and done time. He was a no-good man. Mean-hearted man. He cheated my mother out of her farm through some legal shenanigans. Put her on the road with nothin' but the clothes on her back. I come home from the mines to visit and found my mother in the poor farm, dying. After the funeral, I looked that man up and beat him to death. The judge gimme life in prison.”

“You get pardoned?” Beans asked.

“No. I got tired of it and jerked the bars out of the bricks, tied the guard up, climbed over the walls and walked away one night.”

“Your secret is safe with us,” Smoke assured him.

“I figured it would be.”

They forded the Yellowstone and were in Montana Territory, but still had a mighty long way to go before they reached Gibson.

Smoke and Beans had both figured out that Ring was no great shakes when it came to thinking, but he was an incredibly gentle man—as long as you kept him away from the whiskey. Birds would come to him when he held out his arms. Squirrels would scamper up and take food from his fingers. And he almost cried one day when he shot a deer for food. He left the entrails for the wolves and the coyotes and spent the rest of the journey working on the hide, making them all moccasins and gloves.

Ring was truly one of a kind.

He stood six feet six inches and weighed three hundred pounds, very little of it fat. He could read and write only a little, but he said it didn't matter. He didn't have anyone to write to noways, and nobody ever wrote to him.

At a small village on the Boulder, Smoke resupplied and they all had a hot bath. Ring was so big he made the wooden tub look like a bucket.

But Smoke had a bad feeling about the village; not about the village itself, but at what might be coming at them if they stayed. Smoke had played on his hunches before; they had kept him alive more than once. And this one kept nagging at him.

After carefully shaving, leaving his mustache intact, he went to his pack horse and took out his .44's, belting them around his lean hips, tying down the right hand gun. He carefully checked them, wiping them clean with a cloth and checking the loads. He usually kept the chamber under the hammer empty; this time he loaded them both up full. He stepped out from behind the wooden partition by the wooden tubs and walked into the rear of the store, conscious of the eyes of Beans and Ring on him; they had never seen him wear a short gun, much less two of them, one butt forward for a cross draw.

“Five boxes of .44's,” Smoke told the clerk.

“You plannin' on startin' a war?” the clerk said, sticking his mouth into something that didn't concern him.

Smoke's only reply was to fix his cold brown eyes on the man and stare at him. The clerk got the message and turned away, a flush on his face.

He placed the ammunition on the counter and asked no more questions. Smoke bought three cans of peaches and paid for his purchases. He walked out onto the shaded porch, Ring and Beans right behind him. The three of them sat down and opened the peaches with their knives, enjoying a midmorning sweet-syruped snack.

“Don't see too many people wearin' twin guns thataway,” Beans observed, looking at Smoke's rig.

“Not too many,” Smoke agreed, and ate a peach.

“Riders coming,” Ring said quietly. “From the south.”

The men sat on the porch, eating peaches, and watching the riders come closer.

“You recognize any of them?” Smoke tossed the question out.

Beans took it. “Nope. You?”

“That one on the right is Park. Gunfighter from over in the Dakotas. Man next to him is Tabor. Gunhawk from Oklahoma. I don't know the others.”

“They know you?” Ring asked.

“They know of me.” Smoke's words were softly spoken.

“By the name of Kirby?”

“No.”

The five dusty gunhands reined up and dismounted. A ferret-faced young man ducked under the hitchrail and paused by the porch, staring at Smoke. His eyes drifted to Smoke's twin guns.

The other gunhawks were older, wiser, and could read sign. They were not being paid to cause trouble in this tiny village, therefore they would avoid trouble if at all possible.

The kid with the acne-pocked face and the big Colts slung around his hips was not nearly so wise. He deliberately stepped on Smoke's boot as he walked past.

Smoke said nothing. The four older men stood to one side, watching, keeping their hands away from the butts of their guns.

Ferret-face laughed and looked at his friends, jerking a thumb toward Smoke. “There ain't much to him.”

“I wouldn't bet my life on it,” Park said softly. To Smoke, “Don't I know you?”

Smoke stood up. At the approach of the men, he had slipped the leather hammer-thongs from his guns. “We've crossed rails a time or two. If this punk kid's a friend of yours, you might better put a stopper on his mouth before I'm forced to change his diapers.”

The kid flushed at the insult. He backed up a few yards, his hands hovering over the butts of his fancy guns. “They call me Larado. Maybe you've heard of me?”

“Can't say as I have,” Smoke spoke easily. “But I'm glad to know you have a name. That's something that everybody should have.”

“You're makin' fun of me!”

“Am I? Maybe so.”

“I think I'll just carve another notch on my guns,” Larado hissed.

“Yeah? I had you pegged right then. A tinhorn.”

“Draw, damn you!”

But Smoke just stood, smiling at the young man.

Two little boys took that time to walk by the store; perhaps they were planning on spending a penny for some candy. One of them looked at Smoke, jerked a dime novel out of the back of his overalls, and stared at the cover. He mentally shaved off Smoke's mustache. His mouth dropped open.

“It's really him! That's Smoke Jensen!”

All the steam went out of Larado. His sigh was audible. He lifted his hands and carefully folded them across his chest, keeping his hands on the outside of his arms.

Beans and Ring sat in their chairs and stared at their friend.

“You some distance from Colorado, Smoke,” Tabor said.

“And you're a long way from Oklahoma,” Smoke countered.

“For a fact. You headin' north or south?”

“North.”

“I never knowed you to hire your guns out.”

“I never have. It isn't for sale this trip, either.”

“But you do have a reputation for buttin' in where you ain't wanted,” Park added his opinion.

“I got a personal invitation to this party, Park. But if you feel like payin' the fiddler, you can write your name on my dance card right now.”

“I ain't got nothin' agin you, Smoke. Not until I find out which side you buckin' leastways. McCorkle or Hanks?”

“Neither one.”

The gunslicks exchanged glances. “That don't make no sense,” one of the men that Smoke didn't know said.

“You got a name?”

“Dunlap.”

“Yeah, I heard of you. You killed a couple of Mexican sheepherders and shot one drunk in the back down in Arizona. But I'm not a sheepherder and I'm not drunk.”

Dunlap didn't like that. But he had enough sense not to pull iron with Smoke Jensen.

“You was plannin' on riding in with nobody knowin' who you were, wasn't you?” Tabor asked.

“Yes.”

“Next question is why?”

“I guess that's my business.”

“You right. I reckon we'll find out when west to Gibson.”

“Perhaps.” He turned to Beans and Ring. “Let's ride.”

After the three men had ridden away, toward the north, one of the two gunhands who had not spoken broke his silence.

“I'm fixin' to have me a drink and then I'm ridin' over to Idaho. It's right purty this time of year.”

Larado, now that Smoke was a good mile away, had reclaimed his nerve. “You act like you re yeller!” he sneered.

But the man just chuckled. “Boy, I was over at what they's now callin' Telluride some years back, when a young man name of Smoke Jensen come ridin' in. He braced fifteen of the saltiest ol' boys there was at that time. Les' see, that was back in, oh, '72, I reckon.” He looked directly at Larado. “And you bear in mind, young feller, that he kilt about ten or so gettin' to that silver camp. He kilt all fifteen of them so-called fancy gunhandlers. Yeah, kid, he's
that
Smoke Jensen. The last mountain man. Since he kilt his first Injun when he was about fifteen years old, over in Kansas, he's probably kilt a hundred or more white men—and that's probably figurin' low. There ain't nobody ever been as fast as he is, there ain't never gonna be nobody as fast as he is.

“And I know you couldn't hep notice that bear of a man with him? That there is Ring. Ring ain't never followed no man in his life afore today. And that tells me this: Smoke has done whipped him fair and square with his fists. And if I ain't mistaken, that young feller with Smoke and Ring is the one from over in Utah, round Moab. Goes by a half a dozen different names, but one he favors is Beans.

“Now, boys, I'm a fixin' to have me a drink and light a shuck. 'Cause wherever Smoke goes, they's soon a half a dozen or more of the randiest ol' boys this side of hell. Smoke draws 'em like a magnet does steel shavin's. I had my say. We partin' company. Like as of right now!”

Down in Cheyenne, two old friends came face-to-face in a dingy side-street barroom. The men whoopped and hollered and insulted each other for about five minutes before settling down to have a drink and talk about old times.