Rage of the Mountain Man (2 page)

To Smoke Jensen’s perception, the decaying shelf of snow-pack remained in its place on the mountainside one second, and the next it smacked him in the back and drove him down the short tunnel into the engulfed bunkhouse. A cloud of crystals hung in the air as the rumble of the secondary avalanche died out. Smoke worked his hands under his chest and levered his torso upward. He shed snow in a shower. He found himself face-to-face with an anxious Bobby Harris.

“Smoke, are you all right?” the small lad asked.

“I’m fine. How about you?”

“We got bounced around some.” Bobby indicated the half dozen ranch hands still inside.

“Likely we’ll get some more if we don’t dig our way out of here fast,” Smoke advised.

Two of the wranglers began to pull heavy slabs of compressed snow off Smoke’s legs. When most of the pressure eased. Smoke made a powerful thrust and broke free. He made a quick study of the shambles inside the bunkhouse.

“Can you get the door open?” he asked.

“Naw, boss. It swings out, remember?”

Smoke examined the hinge pins. “One of you take a knife and slip these pins. We’ll pull the door down. It’ll make a bigger tunnel to get us out.”

Surprisingly, the potbellied stove had not been overturned. It sat skewed on its box of sand, emitting a cherry glow in the darkened room. The stovepipe had been scattered in sections on the floor, and a thick haze of smoke clung to the roofing above the rafters. Smoke realized they could suffocate if they didn’t escape soon.

He searched the floor for what he wanted and came up with a tin dinner plate. “Once that door is out of the way, use your plates to dig in the snow,” he instructed. “Move fast, but be sure to pack the upper surface as you go.”

To set the example, Smoke Jensen was first to hack away at the white wall outside the bunkhouse. He hurled the snow behind him into the room and burrowed at an upward angle. Space factors limited the tunnelers to three, one crouched below Smoke and Sam Walker. At first they made good progress.

“Dang it,” Sam exclaimed, after they had dug some three feet outside the door. “I’ve hit a big hunk of ice.”

“Same here,” Smoke advised. “We’ll have to try to dig around it.”

Tense minutes went past with little progress being made. To deviate would be to dig forever without a reference point. Or to tunnel beyond their source of air. When Smoke and his wranglers began to sweat, Smoke called for a change. Three others took their places at the barrier of white.

Smoke used some of the accumulated snow to douse the fire. One of the Sugarloaf hands made a grumbled protest. Smoke said nothing, only pointed at the thickening cloud over their heads. Looking chagrined, the wrangler said no more. He turned away to work at the window where the first escape had been made.

It looked mighty bleak, Smoke had to admit. Despite the hopelessness of their task, Smoke never lost his fierce determination to bring them all out of there alive. He joined the complainer at the window.

“You’re right. This is the shortest way. Or at least, it was,” Smoke told him.

“Do you think we’ve got a chance, Mr. Jensen?” His worried expression matched his words.

“Yes, if we keep at it.”

“Can I help?” Bobby asked eagerly.

Smoke considered it. “I suppose so. When we break through, you’re the smallest, so I want you to wriggle up to the surface and call for help.”

“Will—will there be anybody out there?” Bobby asked.

“There had better be,” Smoke stated flatly.

After twenty minutes more, with the breathable air supply dangerously short, Smoke Jensen began to hear muffled spurts of voices. Then came a scraping sound. He dug harder. A small, black hole appeared in the white screen before his eyes. Swiftly it grew larger. He could hear the hands talking clearly now. With a final jab of his tin plate, Smoke broke through into the open.

“There! There’s somebody’s hand,” Smoke heard the shout.

He slid back and' wrapped big, square hands around Bobby’s waist. He hoisted the boy up over the windowsill. “Crawl on out of there, Bobby,” he instructed.

A shower of icy flakes descended from Bobby Harris’s boots into the face of Smoke Jensen. A ragged cheer came from the throats of the rescuers outside. Smoke relaxed for the first time since the avalanche had struck. It wouldn't be long now.

An alarmed yelp and muffled boom turned Smoke around. A thick, moving shaft of snow propelled the wranglers back inside the bunkhouse, partly burying them. The primary tunnel had collapsed.

With three quick strides, Smoke Jensen reached the nearest of the snow-interred hands. He made big, scooping motions with his arms until he could grab both ankles and drag the unfortunate man out of his frigid tomb. Spluttering, the wrangler sat upright and pointed to the mound of crystalized flakes.

“Zeke an’ Harb are still under there,” he gasped.

“Go to the window and crawl out if you can,” Smoke ordered.

He went to work at once, helped by Sam Waters. They found Harbinson Yates quickly and yanked him free. Zeke Tucker had been driven back against the far wall. He sat in a semi-erect position, the huge slab of ice held in his lap. Smoke and Sam strained to remove the heavy object and it thudded loudly on the plank floor when released.

Zeke’s color returned and he spoke through heavy panting. “I . . . think . . . the way is open. Th—this was . . . was the . . . cork in the . . . bottle.”

“Glad you can take it so lightly,” Smoke said dryly.

Yellow light from a kerosene lantern spilled down through the doorway into the bunkhouse. “You all right down there?”

“Nothing that warm, dry clothes and a couple of shots of whiskey couldn’t cure,” Smoke replied. Then he recalled the fragmentary report he had been given before the second snow slide. “Have those who were injured been taken care of?”

“Oh, yeah, boss. If none of you is hurt, we’ll get you out in a minute.”

“Hey, what about me?” Zeke protested. “I got the livin’ hell squeezed out of me.”

“So that’s why your eyes are bugged out, Zeke,” Smoke observed through a chuckle. Then, suddenly, everyone began to laugh, as the tension drained away with the danger.

From the ten-foot-high, nearly floor-to-ceiling, windows of the Cafe London, located on the top floor of the Windsor Hotel in Denver, one could not tell that the High Lonesome still languished in the final throes of the most severe winter on record. Golden sunlight slanted warmly into the room, while below, on the street, children ran noisily home from school, protected by only the lightest of jackets.

Mid-afternoon traffic flowed with its usual jumble past the five-story edifice, designed like Windsor Castle in England. A favorite, “must do” stop for Europeans visiting the West, the Windsor also catered to the discriminating tastes of the wealthier, more traveled easterners. At two o’clock the noon crowd had dwindled in the fashionable pub-style eatery. White-jacketed waiters mutedly took orders from the few late arrivals, and walked across the thick carpets soundlessly, as though on a cloud. Not even the rattle and clatter of the dishwashers and other kitchen help intruded on the two men seated at a table in a corner turret window.

Phineas Lathrop had a striking appearance. He was in his early fifties, and the widow’s peak of his lush hair had not the slightest sprinkling of gray. What accentuated his remarkable good looks were two large streaks of white hair at his temples, shaped like the wings of a bird. He peered at his associate down a long, aquiline nose, through a pince-nez perched near the slightly bulbous tip.

“Well, Arnold, this is a far cry from Boston, I daresay,” Lathrop declared, in jovial spirits.

“Yes, it certainly is that,” Arnold Langford Cabbott returned; his words coated in the syrupy drawl of a New Englander.

A bit of a dandy, Arnold Cabbott wore the latest fashion, his vest as bright as the plumage of a scarlet tanager. A large, puffy silk cravat peeked from the V neckline, set off by a sea of snowy-white boiled and starched shirt. Junior to Lathrop by some seven years, he was the youngest of the five-man consortium established to engender Phineas Lathrop’s grand project.

Lathrop leaned forward slightly, his deep-set eyes burning as usual with a fixed, glassy walnut stare. “What was so urgent that it brought you so far away from your bully-boys down on the docks?”

Such colorful reference to the men of his Brotherhood of Longshoremen caused Arnold Cabbott to wince. He reached soft, pallid fingers to the arched flow of his walrus mustache and stroked it absently. While he toyed with the silken light brown strands, Arnold considered how to break his news to Phineas. At last he sighed as their waiter approached with the old-fashioneds both had ordered.

Once the drinks had been put in place and the waiter had departed, Arnold leaned across the table and spoke softly. “There’s a problem with our associates in New York. They are reluctant to commit the money. At least until our—ah— difficulties are resolved with that uncooth lout to the north of here.”

“Ah! I see. Having the available funds is always a problem. However, we should be hearing about that other matter any day now. I dispatched my most trustworthy subordinate to deal with it.” Phineas Lathrop paused and sipped from his drink. “Excellent,” he pronounced it. “They are so much better with good Monongahela rye. Out here you have to specify or you get rough-edged bourbon.”

Arnold sent the nervous glance of his watery blue eyes around the dining area. “What do you mean, ‘deal with?’ ”

“You’ll know when Wade Tanner returns from the high mountains,” Phineas said, evading the issue. “I left word at the desk that we would be here in the event he gets back today.” He broke off as the waiter approached again, order pad in hand. “Ah, yes,” Phineas Lathrop sighed, his eyes giving a quick, final appraisal of the menu. “I’ll have the medallions of beef in burgundy mushroom sauce. A side of potatoes Henri, some creamed leeks, and a salad of tossed greens.”

“For today, we have a combination of chicory, dandelion, and lettuce from our kitchen garden, sir. Will that be satisfactory?”

“Certainly, certainly. Does that come with a dressing?”

“Yes, sir. Chef Henri’s own rose-petal mayonnaise.”

Phineas Lathrop all but clapped his hands in delight. “Splendid.”

Arnold Cabbott ordered mountain oysters and observed to Phineas Lathrop that it was remarkable that shellfish lived at such high altitude and in such icy waters. Lathrop, who had been in Denver for more than two months and had learned the ropes, hadn’t the heart to advise his associate of the true nature of the entree.

To the waiter, he did add, “We’ll have a bottle of your best white wine with the salads, and a bottle of claret with the entrees.”

Left to await the wine, Arnold Cabbott leaned across the table again and spoke with greater force. “Our friends in New York insist on immediate action. They will not release a penny until they know the obstacle keeping us from our achieving our goal has been removed.”

Lathrop screwed the fleshy lips of his large mouth into a moue of distaste. “You’re talking like a bloody accountant, Arnold.
I
am in charge in the West, and I’ll decide when funds are to be released for the progress of the enterprise. If those penurious bastards in New York don’t like that, they can be cut out altogether.”

“We need their money, Phineas. Desperately. That’s why I came here to appeal to you to return with me and convince them yourself. You convinced them once, I know you can talk open their pocketbooks now that we’re in the clutch.” Lathrop’s heavy black brows shot upward. “Aha! So that’s what this excursion into the Rockies is all about. Are things really so desperate?”

“Yes, they are! You should know. That walkout on the docks is sucking us dry. We have to pay Sean O’Boyle and his longshoremen their pittance every week in order to keep them out. We can break the backs of the shipping companies and then move in and take over. But we must have the cash to do it, all of it! No bank would lend the money to buy a shipping company plagued by a wildcat walkout.” Conscious of how unfashionable his ardor appeared, Cabbott caught himself, paused, then spoke through an indulgent chuckle. “And we can hardly confide in the bankers that we’re responsible for the strike.

“So, to cover all of that, and continue to finance your acquisitions out here, we need the New York people,” Arnold pressed his point. “You, more than anyone else, has the power to persuade them.”

Phineas Lathrop sighed heavily and made to respond in agreement. Then he brightened as he caught sight of the head waiter striding in their direction. Behind that worthy came the most unlikely patron for the establishment. The sour expression on Reynard’s face advertised his agreement with that evaluation.

Dressed in dust- and sweat-stained range clothes, his scuffed boots clumping noisily on runover heels, a man in his early forties followed the fastidious maitre d’ to the corner table. He had cold, riveting black eyes that could be clearly seen from the distance, in an angular face topped by thick, slicked-back black hair, on which perched a coal-colored derby hat.

“Mr. Lathrop,” Reynard spoke deferentially. “This— ah—
gentleman
claims to have an appointment with you.” “That’s correct, Reynard. Thank you,” Lathrop dismissed. To the newcomer, “Sit down, Wade.”

“Always a pleasure to see you, Mr. Lathrop. And you, sir?” he asked in a cultured, courteous tone that belied his scruffy appearance and the menace of a brace of Smith and Wesson American .44s slung low on his hips.

“Forgive my manners. This is an associate from back East, Arnold Cabbott. Wade Tanner, my—ah—chief enforcer, shall we say. You have good news for me, Wade?

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cabbott. Yes, Mr. Lathrop. That dynamite worked splendidly. You should have no difficulty obtaining the desired property now, and the others, without a rallying figure, should capitulate readily.”

Arnold Cabbott blinked at this cultured speech pouring from under the large, wide nose, past rabbity teeth that heightened a certain rodentlike appearance. Tanner looked the part of the lowliest of common gunmen, yet talked like a gentlemen. If only his boastful preamble proved true, their troubles would be over.