Rage of the Mountain Man (11 page)

“Amen to that,” Walter added. “Even though you stood side-by-side with him against those ruffians who invaded Keene, I know your heart wasn’t in it.”

John Reynolds gave his son an odd expression. “To say it like Smoke put it, I wouldn't be alive now if my heart wasn’t in it. I actually enjoyed my short opportunity to employ western justice.”

“Oh, dear,” Chris let slip out. “What—what did the firm say?”    

John Reynolds grinned broadly. “Don’t you remember? Old Hargroves called me a barbarian. The younger partners actually envied me. Hargroves came around, though, about a year ago, just before he died. Said he’d begun to think lately that we could use some of that Western—ah—‘creative law enforcement’ back here. Particularly down in Boston and New York.” He snorted. “Enough of that. I want you two to go down to the newspaper office and see that the first of those flyers are put up here in Keene before the ink is dry.”

After the younger men had departed, Abigale Reynolds joined her husband. Her cultured voice remained soft as she gently probed John about his plans for the lectures. When he admitted to her that Smoke knew nothing about the proposed grand tour of New England, her words took on a more chiding tone.

“Perhaps Smoke Jensen will not be too happy about this when he does learn?” she suggested.

“Well, now, Abigale,” John huffed, “he’ll simply have to accommodate himself to it. After all, he’s a man of the world, traveled, and well educated, albeit not in formal institutions. Why, he himself informed me of that ‘University of the Rockies’ that the mountain men had for themselves. That’s what gave me the idea. And it will do Smoke some good. Get some exposure to the people who have been reading those dreadful dime novels about him.

“This way he can dispel some of those myths that have grown up,” John concluded. “Besides, the grandchildren will be coming home from Europe this summer, and they won’t want to be trailed about by the wild tales of their father.”

Abigale’s lips compressed. “Louis Arthur is too much like his father already,” she spoke her harshest criticism of one of her beloved Sally’s children.

“At least he doesn’t go around wearing a brace of pistols,” John defended his favorite grandson.

“No,” Abigale agreed. “Not around here, or in London. And certainly not two of them. But I’ve heard stories of what goes on when he visits that ranch of theirs. Absolutely bloodcurdling.”

“No doubt,” John said shortly, anxious to get off this subject. "It's hard to realize Sally will be here in only three more days.”

“Yes. I can hardly wait. I do hope I’ll be strong enough to cook all her favorite dishes.”

“You’ll do fine. Mother. Only, don’t overdo,” John cautioned.

“I sincerely pray that Smoke does not,” an uneasy Abigale Reynolds replied to her husband, the last bullet-riddled visit still fresh in her mind after so many years.

West of Chicago, the Santa Fe KC Limited train, to which the private car had been attached, took Smoke and Sally Jensen into a dark and stormy night. With a suddeness rarely seen outside the High Lonesome, huge billows of black clouds roiled up and snuffed out the stars. For a while the still full moon tried valiantly to pierce the stygian cloak, a pale nimbus in the thinner portions of the gathering storm.

When a chill wind whipped around the corner of the observation platform, Sally shivered and drew a shawl close to her shoulders. “Why don’t we go in?” Smoke suggested.

“There’s certainly no more moonlight to make us romantic,” Sally agreed. “I smell rain in the air.”

“You’re more western every day, Sal,” Smoke said with a chuckle. “I think Jenkins left out that custard pie from supper,” he hinted.

Sally had never seen her caged lion husband so relaxed. There had always been a tenseness about him, as though the next turn in the road, or the next tree, might reveal someone waiting to menace him. Tonight he seemed almost like her father.

A graduate of the law school at Harvard, John Reynolds had married early in his career. Sally remembered him always as a kindly, easygoing man who literally worshipped the canon of law and the image of blind justice. He had raised his children that way as well. Her experiences in the West had long since disabused her of her father's naivete, yet she cherished his sweet, self-imposed blindness to the real evil in the world.

Not even when the brute violence of reality invaded his home in the form of Rex Davidson, Bothwell, Raycroft, and Brute Pitman did it remain in his consciousness for long. He had simply become another man for a while, a western man, with a gun in his hand, and later he admitted to enjoying immensely the long, bloody hours of fighting that followed. It made him “feel really alive,” as he put it. Smiling to herself, she followed Smoke inside.

Poking in the icebox, Smoke found the pie and cut himself a large slab. A quick glance at Sally put him to carving 3. second, smaller piece. They stood in the narrow, cramped kitchen, eating their pilfered desert in grinning silence, enjoying the closeness of the moment. Without warning, a flash of actinic light washed through the darkened room.

Ear-splitting thunder came right on top. Smoke Jensen had a retinal imprint of a telegraph pole wreathed in flames. A sudden drumming on the metal roof above them announced the rain. Streaks of wetness blurred the view out the window. More lightning crackled and flickered, though not so close. Through it all, Smoke Jensen leaned calmly on the small-scale butcher’s block and contentedly munched bites of the custard pie. At last, Sally could bear it no longer.

“I know that after all these years I shouldn’t feel this way. But those damned storms terrify me.”

“Long as you are not out in it, there’s no way it can harm you,” Smoke told her levelly.

“What if lightning strikes this car?” Sally asked, her unease mounting.

“If you’re holdin’ onto something metal that’s attached to the car, you’d get fried like a thin-cut steak.”

Sally made a ghastly expression. “My dear, you certainly have a colorful way of putting things.”

“Thank you,” Smoke answered dryly.

Without warning, the brakes slammed on suddenly. By the time the effect reached the private car, it propelled the remaining half of Smoke’s pie off the plate to splatter on the wall next to Sally’s head. The blob of custard on the tip of her nose did nothing to heighten her allure. Smoke followed his pie a split second later. He dropped the plate, which shattered into a hundred pieces, and caught himself with both hands.

Sally rebounded off the cook stove and rubbed at the painful line across her abdomen made by the retaining rail, much like those used on shipboard. Her eyes went wide. “What is it?”

“I’ll go see,” Smoke told her. “I doubt it is another robbery.”

“I should hope not,” Sally sent after him, as he left the kitchen and started to the door to the vestibule.

Paul Drummond, the conductor on the Santa Fe KC Limited, peered forward in the poorly illuminated gloom to what had caused the engineer to throw on the brakes. Water ran at an undetermined depth over the bridge ahead. Slashing sheets of drops caused the light from the headlamp to waver and give off untrustworthy images. Drummond held a hand over the bill of his cap to shield his eyes from the horizontally driven rain. The wind that whipped them kept him from hearing the approach of the big man from the private car until he was right upon the conductor.

“What is it?” Smoke Jensen asked above the howl of the storm.

“Illinois River’s out of its banks and over the bridge,” Drummond answered.

“Can we cross it?”

“I doubt it.” Paul Drummond looked up at the cab where Casey O’Banyon, the engineer, and his fireman were sheltered from the tempest. “Ho! Casey! Can we get over that?”

“I don’t know, Paul. We’ll have to have trackwalkers go out ahead and see,” came the reply. Steam hissed noisily from the relief valves on the huge cylinders.

“I’ll get them on it right away. We’ve got a schedule to keep, and we sure don’t want to have a cornfield meet with ol’ Number Nine.”

Smoke Jensen had been around railroad men long enough to know that a “cornfield meet” meant a head-on between two locomotives on the main line. He touched Drummond lightly on one shoulder. “Can you telegraph ahead to hold the other train at the next station?”

Drummond looked at the broad shoulders, recalled the powerful muscles bulging in the arms of the man. He occupied the private car of the president of the D & R G, so no doubt he knew something about railroading. “We can try. Line’s out to the west. Lightning took out a couple of poles. I’ve got my portable key.” Then curiosity pushed him to ask the question he had wanted to ask since the private car had been put on his train. "Are you an official with the D & R G?”

“No. Used to work for them. I'm ranching now. Horses,” Smoke told him.

Drummond absorbed that, not entirely satisfied, and noted the streams of rainwater coursing down the big man’s slicker. We’re not doing ourselves any good standing here getting wet. I’ll get a couple of brakemen on walking the trestle.”

“Fine. I’ll go back and reassure my wife.” Smoke Jensen turned and walked away along the train.

Sally wanted to accompany him. It took a while before he convinced her to stay dry in the comfortable coach. Jenkins, Smoke noted, had awakened Lee Fong, who had started to prepare a huge pot of coffee. That would be for the crew
⁷
, Smoke knew. Colonel Drew made a practice of looking out for the men loyal to him and his line.

When Smoke reached the front of the locomotive again, the engineer had dismounted from his cab and stood alongside Paul Drummond. Two half-inch ropes extended from the cowcatcher into the tunnel of light from the headlamp. At the far end, a pair of crewmen sloshed along in the swiftly moving chocolate water of the flooded river.

It was obvious to Smoke that the storm had not come upon them; rather, they had run into a huge weather front that had stalled out and continued to dump inches of rain on already sodden ground. The resultant runoff had created flash floods, not only here, but no doubt in many other places. With luck, the bridges would hold up. One of the brakemen turned and waved a lantern, signaling that the track was clear to that point.

He took another step and was suddenly swept off his feet. His partner did a crazy dance in an attempt to remain on the unstable platform of a railroad tie and reach for the other. The lantern winked out as the swift current rolled the fallen man over a second time. A wild yell, barely heard above the tumult of the storm, came from the upright crewman a moment before he lost his tenuous hold and the raging stream claimed him.

He rolled and thrashed in the water as it swept him toward the edge of the trestle. Thoroughly sodden, his partner lay against an upright of the siderail. In mounting panic, the newly doused man made frantic grabs for the crossbar of the safety barrier as he neared it. Their mistake, Smoke grasped instantly, had been in not securing themselves to the ropes they payed out as they advanced. Several of the remaining crew gathered beside Smoke Jensen. One pointed and spoke excitedly.

“Look, Luke and Barney can barely hold on. That water’s fierce.”

“Which ones of you will go out and bring them back?” Drummond asked.

No one answered. Uncomfortable glances passed among the train crew. Smoke Jensen made a quick assessment of the situation. If someone didn’t act fast, both men would be swept down the raging river.

“I’ll go, if you can get me another rope,” he volunteered.

Drummond gave him an odd look. “It ain’t your problem, Mr. Jensen,” he informed Smoke.

“I don’t see it that way,” Smoke snapped. “If you want a reason, say I don’t want to stay out here all night in that flood water. Who knows how high it will get?”

Drummond nodded. “You’ve got a point.” Quickly he issued orders.

Once he had the rope secured to the cowcatcher, Smoke fastened the other end around his waist. Without a backward glance, he waded out into the swirling water. Ahead of him he saw the dark outline of a small tree trunk racing along the frothy surface. Smaller flotsam spun in eddies, some of which collected against the straining bodies of the half-drowned crewmen.

Water surged around Smoke’s waist when he felt the footing under him change from ballast gravel to the wooden beams of the trestle platform. A strong undertow tugged at his boots. About a third of the way out onto the bridge, the first of the brakemen. Barney, clung frantically to the side-rail. Smoke plunged through the torrent toward him.

Slippery footing made for slow going. Smoke had to accurately gauge the distance from one tie to the other. Even with perfect pacing, each step proved hazardous. The current provided one benefit, he noted: with each advance, the pushing, sucking water forced him closer to the edge and the man he sought to rescue.

If only he could time it so that the sideward movement matched the forward and eased him in position where he wanted to be. He took another carefully calculated step and peered into the fuzzy gloom at the extreme edge of the headlamp beam.

White-faced, Barney clung to the railing and glanced anxiously toward the approaching figure. He broke off repeatedly to try to see into the dark upstream and judge his chances. A sudden bellow of pain came when a submerged hunk of waterlogged tree limb slammed into his ribs. Then, to his overwhelming relief, the rescuer towered over him.

“I brought your rope. Hold on while I tie it around you,” Smoke Jensen told him.

With that accomplished. Smoke started out for the other man. some thirty feet beyond. Startled that the man who had come to save him now abandoned him, the first brake-man yelled after him, “What are you doing? Come back and get me out of this.”

Smoke held up the loose end of the second rope. “I have to tie this around your partner, then I’ll be back.”

“A lot could happen in that time, mister.” Sudden horror enveloped the battered, weary Barney. “For God’s sake, don’t leave me behind!”

Tension had drained Smoke of any patience. “Stop the damned whimpering and get ahold of yourself, man.” His hot retort served well to spur the sodden man to renewed effort at survival.