Rage of the Mountain Man (15 page)

Contempt blazed in the burnished walnut eyes of Phineas Lathrop. “I’ve heard it all now. Smoke Jensen is the most notorious gunfighter in all the West, and you go after him with a knife. It’s a wonder he didn’t blow what little brains you have out the back of your head.” He rounded his anger on O’Boyle again. “Is this the best you have? Is this the result I can expect when next you go after Jensen on your home ground?”

“Oh, no, sir. We’ll get him, right enough. He’ll not leave Boston alive.”

Fleshy lips twisted in a sneer, Phineas Lathrop responded hotly. “I certainly hope so. For your sake, Mr. O’Boyle. We have only three weeks to tie up the land we want, and Smoke Jensen is not going to stand in the way. He must be eliminated,” Lathrop continued, “or everything is lost. How do you think this is going to look to my New York associates in the boardroom over there?”

“They’ll not be likin’ it, I’m thinkin’,” O’Boyle answered with low-toned sullenness.

“You’re damned right on that. You are to take your men to Boston at once. There is a new plan to implement at once. Arnold Cabbott will fill you in. Oh, and take this bumbling incompetent out somewhere and finish what Smoke Jensen failed to accomplish.”

O’Boyle’s man paled and began to tremble. “You can’t do that. Please, Mr. Lathrop—I ain’t done anything that deserves bein’ killed for.”

Lathrop eyed him like some form of vermin. “You failed Mr. O’Boyle and you failed me. That’s more than enough, I’d say. I expect to hear of results on Jensen within two days,” he shot at O’Boyle as the pair exited.

Phineas Lathrop took a deep breath and ran long, soft, spatulate fingers across his high brow in an effort to steady himself and rid his mind of the encounter just completed. After another deep inhalation, he walked toward the tall double doors to the boardroom. When he opened them and stepped quietly inside, Lathrop interrupted a trio of hushed conversations.

“Gentlemen, I must report a slight setback in clearing the way to obtain the land in Colorado. As we speak, it is being taken care of. Nothing to concern yourselves about.” Simon Asher looked up, his moon face flushed slightly, and peered at Lathrop through wire-rimmed half-glasses. “Then the payment of our share of this enterprise will be set back accordingly.”

“Come now, Abe, there’s no call for that,” Lathrop all but begged.

“We believe there is. No sense in throwing good money after bad.” Asher quoted the old saw in a tone of virtuousness.

“No, there isn’t,” Lathrop put iron back in his words. “There is also no reason for further delay. We need that money in place now. All of the others have committed right on schedule. Only you six gentlemen are holding back. Perhaps you could not raise the sum agreed upon? Your assets are not liquid enough to take out such an amount?”

“Certainly not,” Asher blustered. “Any one of us could write a bank draft for the entire figure right now.”

Lathrop’s eyes glittered with determination. “Then I suggest one of you do so. You are either in or you are out, all the way out.”

“You were going to take care of the major obstacle,” Victor Middleton reminded Lathrop of his failures so far.

“It is being taken care of. Smoke Jensen will not leave Boston as owner of the Sugarloaf, or he won’t leave there alive.”

Reluctantly, Abe Asher reached for his checkbook. The others did the same.

More preperformance noise came from this audience than from previous ones. Their low chatter ran in waves across the auditorium, every third one a bit louder than the other two. All except for a section occupied by some thirty tough-looking dock wallopers, dressed quite unsuitably in formal attire. They remained motionless, glowering at the main curtain, lips in grim, straight lines. Smoke Jensen studied them from a peephole in the stiff material and didn’t like what he saw.

“This was a fool’s errand from the start,” he muttered to Sally, who stood at his side, prior to retiring to her seat in the audience.

“Now, dear, Bostonians can’t be any harder an audience than you’ve encountered before.”

“Take a look at those thugs in the monkey suits. I’ve a hundred dollars says they aren’t here for cultural enlightenment.”

“We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?” Sally returned sweetly, as she saw the master of ceremonies headed their way. “Give them hell, dear,” she added, as she started off.

The introduction went without incident and Smoke Jensen walked out onto the stage to a polite scatter of applause. Contrary to Sally’s description of Smoke in white tie and tails, he had chosen for this appearance to wear a more conservatively cut western-style suit, with a low-crown fawn Stetson. The long, tasseled leather pull-straps of his boots slapped rhythmically with his steps. He paused at the lectern and cleared his throat.

Immediately a raucous call came from the midst of the thirty-some longshoremen. “Where’s yer greasy, smoked leather britches?”

“Yeah. You ain’t no mountain man. You look like a sissy-boy from New York City.”

Smoke cleared his throat again and tried to fix a smile on his lips. “Funny you should mention New York City. I’ve only been there once before. I’ll be ending my tour there, in a week,” he addressed the ruffians. Then he launched into his prepared lecture, to which he added a prickly barb. “Unlike some I could mention, the mountain men were not ignorant louts, bent on the butchery of beaver and Indians alike. Many were well-educated men. One of those was the legendary Preacher.”

“Weren’t no Bible-thumpers trappin’ fur and killin’ Cheyenne and Arapaho,” one heckler retorted.

Smoke fought back his rising temper. “Quite right. You know, you are a lot more perceptive than I thought you might be. Let me tell you about the man who taught me everything I know about the High Lonesome part of the Shining Mountains. Preacher was everything to me. He had a way . . .” Once launched, Smoke’s informative talk flowed around and over a steady stream of heckling.

He hadn’t time for their nonsense and he made it known from the outset. Near the end, the insults grew more pointed and personal. Smoke bit back the urge to climb down off the stage and deliver a set of lumps to each of the burly men who had interrupted his talk. When he wound down to his conclusion. Smoke added a new summation.

“So, if I rate as a mountain man philosopher, then I play a poor second-place Plato to Preacher’s excellent Socrates.”

“Who’re them fellers? Never heard of them before,” one out-of-place stevedore bellowed through a guffaw.

“I don’t imagine you have,” Smoke said in an aside.

“They come from your Shinin’ Mountains?” the heckler pressed.

“No. They were from Greece, and they died more than two thousand years ago.”

Laughter showed Smoke he had most of the audience with him. Warmed by it, he ignored the distractions. “This is the open-forum portion of the program. Does anyone have a question?”

Smoke pointedly overlooked the noisy gathering directly in front of him and took questions for half an hour. At a quarter to ten that evening, he thanked his audience and left the stage. In the tiny dressing room allotted to him, Smoke changed into clothes he found more comfortable than the high, stiff collar and stifling cravat his stage appearances demanded. With his brace of sixguns securely belted into place, he left to meet Sally and her parents, who would be waiting in a coach at the stage door.

Instead of his inlaws and his wife, Smoke Jensen opened the metal-strapped door to find an angry throng of some fifteen of his detractors from inside. Not the least pleased with this turn of events. Smoke quickly sought to identify the leader of this impromptu mob. He had little trouble doing so.

A cocky bantam rooster of a man stepped out from the front rank, his swagger accented by his small size. He pointed an accusing finger at Smoke Jensen and spoke with a voice laden with the lilt of the Emerald Isle.

“Ye’re a fraud. Ye’re nah mar a mountain man than me Aunt Nettie.”

“Who are you?” Smoke demanded, making no effort to hide his contempt.

“Seamas Quern, that’s who. These friends o’ mine have come to watch me give ye a right proper whippin’, bucko. So make yerself ready.”

To Quern’s consternation, Smoke Jensen laughed at him. A deep, full, uproarious peal of mirth filled the narrow alleyway. Smoke controlled it after a moment and pointed a big, thick finger at Quern.

“Did you bring only your fists to a gunfight?” Smoke asked incredulously. “Another fool tried that a few nights ago, with a knife. He wound up sucking on the muzzle of my Peacemaker. He and his friends departed right fast. And not a shot was fired.”

“Yer a gawdamned coward to hide behind your guns, I say. If you’d but take ’em off and fight like a man, we’d soon see who was the better.”

Smoke slowly sized up the runty agitator and produced a wan smile. “Where I come from, we don’t allow anyone to pile shit that high. Even if we did, it couldn’t get that job done,” he added, as he reached for the buckle of his cartridge belt.

“B’God, yer all wind, Smoke Jensen,” Seamas Quern bellowed, and launched himself at him.

Smoke stood his ground, his cartridge belt in his left hand, and batted Quern aside with his right arm. Then, cat quick, he swiftly rapped the hard knuckles of his right fist into the foreheads of two longshoremen who circled to move in on his blind side. One howled in rage and pain and the other did an abrupt pratfall in the litter of the alley. Smoke had time to sling his holstered sixguns over the wrought-iron railing of the short flight of steps to the stage door before Seamas came at him again.

He was joined by another pair of bully-boys. The trio closed on Smoke and Quern sent a blur of lefts and rights in the direction of Smoke’s head. Smoke parried them with only stinging damage to his thick forearms. Quern worked himself too far inside and Smoke belted him with a roundhouse left that staggered the little man.

A dark object made blurred motion in the dimly lighted passageway and Smoke made out the fat end of a cudgel. His attacker swung again, aiming to break Smoke’s left forearm. Smoke took a step back and when the stevedore made his follow-through and opened himself, Smoke kicked him in the balls.

A thin, shrill, porcine squeal came from the twisted lips of the injured man. He staggered knock-kneed to one side, the club still in his hands. Smoke pressed his advantage by a step inward and a solid smack to the jaw of the no longer dangerous man. The breathy squeak ended, the eyes of the club’s owner rolled upward, displaying a lot of white, and he sank to his knees.

An instant later, while Smoke lined up a coup de grace on the downed bully. Quern grabbed at the back of Smoke’s shirt and yanked him away. Smoke pivoted on one bootheel and planted the other-solidly on Quern’s kneecap. A howl of anguish rose to echo off the tall brick buildings. Another of O’Boyle’s union thugs moved in on Smoke at an oblique angle.

He dived forward to wrap his arms around Smoke’s middle. Off balance, Smoke tottered sideways into a whistling fist from out of the shadows. Callused knuckles of a longshoreman ripped skin below Smoke’s left eye and bright lights went off in his head.

“Get ’im, boys!” Seamas Quern shouted through his fog of pain. “Make him pay.”

Smoke set himself for yet another attack. It didn’t take long to get there. Two men, swinging soft leather pouches above their heads, charged him. One of the birdshot-filled coshes whistled past his ear and slammed painfully on the top of his right shoulder. Smoke grabbed the wrist of his assailant and ducked low, pivoting out from under, and yanked downward. His knee came up at the same time and a loud, dry-stick snap sounded when he broke the man’s arm.

Screaming, the assailant staggered blindly away down the alley. Well accustomed to brawls, the others didn’t slacken their attack on Smoke Jensen. Smoke met them readily, one and sometimes two at a time. His big fists smeared a nose across the fat face of an enemy nearly as big as himself. Smoke caught another with a hard right to the heart that dropped the dock worker to his knees where a pistonlike drive of Smoke’s left leg took him out of the action for good.

“Shoot him!” Seamas Quern shouted. “For God’s sake, shoot.”

A burly longshoreman came up with a revolver that looked ridiculously small in his huge, hairy fist. He swung the muzzle in Smoke’s direction, then froze at the loud clicks of a hammer being drawn back. From beyond his intended victim came a voice hard and deadly, yet touched with a cultured tone.

“Drop it, or I’ll send you to hell.”

John Reynolds’ timely intervention bought Smoke Jensen the time he needed to reach his own pair of heavy Colt revolvers. “What kept you?” Smoke said over his shoulder, as he unlimbered a much-used .45 Peacemaker.

“Some of these wharf rats had the entrance to the alley blocked. I—ah—convinced them to let me through.” Smoke quickly and roughly searched those street thugs still on their feet and disarmed them. “I didn’t know you carried a gun, John,” Smoke remarked, while he went about his task.

“I haven’t, not since Rex Davidson paid a call on Keene. Though after what has been going on, I decided it might be advisable here in Boston.”

“Good thinking. I owe you one, John.”

“Think nothing of it. Do you have any idea why these louts attacked you?”

Smoke didn’t answer at once. Instead, he addressed a harsh command to the battered longshoremen. “Those of you who can, gather up your friends and get the hell out of here.” As they grumblingly complied, Smoke spoke to his father-in-law. “I figure it was a bit too much whiskey. Friend Barleycorn tends to give some men an exaggerated sense of their own strength.”

“We’ll turn them over to the police?” John Reynolds asked.

Smoke studied the bruised faces, bloody noses, and split lips, and answered quietly, “No. I think they’ve learned a damned important lesson. Besides, the police ask too many questions and that tussle whipped up my appetite. I’m hungry enough to eat the back half of a skunk.”

Smoke Jensen breakfasted with Sally early the next morning. Well accustomed to the ways of the West, Sally put away a substantial portion of ham, fried potatoes, and three eggs, along with biscuits and jam. She gently patted the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin, then rose from the table in a sunny alcove of their hotel suite.