Rage of the Mountain Man (21 page)

“My name is Smoke Jensen.”

She paled. She had seen the name recently in the newspapers. Some sort of notorious shootist from out West. She had also heard mention of Smoke Jensen, though not the context, in conversations in Mr. Middleton’s private office. Could it be he might have some connection to the western enterprise of Mr. Middleton and Lathrop?

“Mr. Lathrop, Mr. Cabbott, and Mr. Middleton are taking the train to Denver, that’s in Colorado.”

“Yes, I know,” Smoke responded, with a twitch of amusement.

“They are taking along some thirty of, if I must say so, the most disreputable gentlemen from here in New York that I have ever seen. Another twenty like individuals, from Boston, I believe, are to learn to ride and follow on tomorrow’s train.”

“Thank you, you’ve been most helpful,” Smoke turned on the charm. Outside in the hall, he smacked a hard fist into an open palm. “Damn it! Sally said they had their sights on the Sugarloaf. Looks like she was right; they want to grab all of the High Lonesome. I have to get back there. But first, I need to let Sally know what is happening. I’d also like to know who else Lathrop is partnered with and dry up any help they might send.”

“That last part is easy,” Oliver Johnson assured him: “You take care of letting your wife know. I’ll go at it through some newspaper friends. The best way, I think, is to ask about Middleton’s connections.” their masthead and screaming headlines, the back covered by advertising. They hadn’t even gotten the facts correct. They identified Smoke Jensen as “a Mr. Smoking Johnson, most likely a gentlemen from the colored section of town,” and stated that a dozen innocent bystanders had been trampled by horses.

Smoke Jensen purchased a copy from a tough-faced ten-year-old who hawked the scandal sheet on a street corner. The purple prose and alarmist tone of the article left him unimpressed with the quality of journalism in the big city, and slightly uneasy over the “lock-your-windows-and-bar-ricade-the-doors” advice to readers. Out West, Smoke knew, the editorial slant would be more likely “If the sheriff can’t do anything about it, then maybe a vigilance committee is in order.” Smoke wasn’t certain which treatment bothered him more.

After an interesting hour with the police, from which he had extricated himself and Oliver Johnson by showing the precinct captain his U.S. Marshal’s badge, Smoke and the journalist paid their call on Lathrop’s office, and then Smoke wired Sally regarding the need for a speedy return to the High Lonesome. Again he urged her to remain with her parents.

An efficient and well-maintained telegraph system brought Sally’s reply by early evening. She and the D & R G private car would arrive late the next day at Grand Central Station. She spent the extra money to add her clincher to the argument she anticipated from Smoke. There was no reason, she said, for him to suffer in an uncomfortable chair car or Pullman that would get him there no sooner. Which left Smoke Jensen with nothing to do but wait, and fume at his wife’s stubbornness.

Over breakfast, Smoke Jensen glowered at the bold, black headlines of the New York Sun. “
CRAZED FRONTIERSMAN LOOSE IN CENTRAL PARK
,” it declared.

At least the Sun had done some research and had his name right. The article went on to decry how “the notorious Smoke Jensen, gunfighter and mountain man, went on a rampage in Boston, ruthlessly murdering innocent dock workers and leaving a trail of widows and orphans behind. Only yesterday,” it continued, “Smoke Jensen raised havoc in Central Park. Two men were left dead, and four more seriously injured. What the Sun does not understand is why the police questioned and then released this dangerous hired killer.”

“What a lot of crap,” Smoke snorted, as he laid down the paper. His full lips curled with contempt. “Typical yellow journalism.”

“Hey!” Oliver Johnson erupted. “I thought it was a well-written article. By far it’s the best of the lot.”

“Present company excepted, Ollie,” Smoke advised with a shrug. He reflected once more on how much he had come to like this brash young reporter. “You’ve proved your worth more than once.”

Oliver Johnson tilted his head to one side, a forkful of ham and fried potatoes halfway to his mouth. “You’re too kind, Smoke.” He continued by explaining, “I don’t mean that to sound sarcastic. I’m serious. You’ve opened some doors for me. So, what I’m wondering is, what do we do now?”

“I haven’t any choice but to wait for Sally. I don’t see there’s much for you to do.”

“Of course there is. I could use some help looking into the background on Middleton, Asher, and company. Then, I suppose I should pick up a few things for the trip.”

“What trip?” Smoke asked, certain he knew the answer. “Out west, naturally.” Oliver raised a hand to forestall the flood of objection he anticipated from Smoke. “I’m sitting on the story of the decade, if not the century, and there’s no way I’m going to be kept out of it.”

Smoke’s slate-gray eyes darkened. “Ollie, you said yourself that Middleton and Asher are the key to this. You can handle that better from right here. No need running off to the Colorado mountains.”

“No, the story is
you
, Smoke. Where you go, I go. At least, until I have the whole account of this. Think of it, ‘Conquest in the Name of a Criminal Empire,’ or make that; ‘Smoke Jensen Conquers Criminal Empire, Ends Reign of Terror in Far West.’ How about that?”

“Too long, Ollie.” Smoke wanted nothing to do with it, especially getting his name attached to such folderol.

“Then how about, ‘Smoke Jensen Ends Reign of Terror in Rockies,’ you like that?”

Smoke shook his head, partly in exasperation, and responded in a low, steady voice. “First, there has to be a reign of terror in the mountains, and second, I have to end it. You’re getting ahead of yourself, Ollie.”

“Maybe so, but there is a story here, and I want to be the one to write it. And I promise, no yellow journalism. Deal?” Smoke studied him a long while, then sighed. “These men we heard about are dangerous. Being out of their element could likely make them more so.”

“You know I can shoot, take care of myself, right? Well, then, I rest my case.”

This fiery young newspaper man had a point, Smoke had to admit. It might not be a bad idea to have along someone

who knew the facts from the start. At least, as much as he knew about it himself. “All right. You’re coming along.” 

“I thought so.”

A telegram arrived late that morning on the desk of Thad-deus Foley, City Editor of the New York
Eagle
. It lay there until Foley returned from a liquid lunch at O’Dwyer’s on Lexington Avenue. Foley slit the yellow envelope with a slim silver letter opener. Inside the standard form bore the date and time of the transmission, the source and address of the recipient. Below it was a terse message:
“CONGRATULATIONS X DOING A FINE JOB X KEEP UP THE PRESSURE ON JENSEN X”
and signed,
“LATHROP.”
Foley smiled whitely and thought again of the fat sheaf of hundred-dollar notes he had received early that morning by messenger and put away in his private, personal safe. So long as that kept coming, he would see that Smoke Jensen remained the most hated man in New York.

For all the inevitability of it, Smoke Jensen remained grumpy about Sally accompanying himself and Ollie Johnson up until the time Colonel Drew’s private car was attached to the rear of the New York Central’s Daylight Express. Then, with Sally in his arms, he lost all attempts at gruffness.

“I missed you,” Sally informed her husband.

“I—ah—felt empty without you,” Smoke confirmed his own displeasure at their being apart.

Half an hour later, packed to overflowing in all but the last car, the train pulled out. There would be stops only at Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and finally Chicago. They would arrive in the Windy City shortly after dawn the next day. That would put them three days behind Lathrop and his New York City hoodlums, and two days behind O’Boyle and his union gangsters from Boston. Not the hottest of trails he had followed; Smoke allowed. But, with the information they had squeezed out of Victor Middleton’s office manager, he had the destination of the enemy, which would save a passel of time.

“You have some interesting and impressive friends, Smoke,” Ollie Johnson interrupted Smoke’s reflections.

“Yes, well, it goes with the trail you ride,” Smoke said, presenting Ollie with one of those “mysteries” of western speech.

“What do we do when we reach Chicago?”

Smoke looked hard at Ollie, recalling again that the young man had never been east of Worcester or south of New York City. “We change to the Santa Fe and make the run to Denver.”

“And after that?”

Smoke smiled, a wide, white band in sun-browned cheeks. “I hope you’ve taken a liking to horseback riding. We’ll be doing a lot of it.”

Wade Tanner sat his horse in the dooryard of the headquarters of Rancho Puesta del Sol. He and ten others held smoking sixguns on the surviving ten vaqueros and the owner, Ramon Sandoval.

There had been Sandovals in Colorado since the coming of the Spanish. Ramon shook with outrage at the humiliation handed him by these
cabrones
in their flour-sack hoods and bedsheets. If they had not run out of ammunition, they would have made these
bastardos
suffer. These
gringos
would have learned what it meant to make war on a descendant of the
conquistadores
.

“Waall, what do we do with these greasers, Wade?” Wade Tanner studied on it a moment. “Same’s we did with them white folks a ways back. Th’ man said, ‘If they don’t sell, deal with the widows.’ ”

Five Colts barked and as many Mexican ranch hands fell without a sound. Three of them twitched for a while, then went still. The survivors made the sign of the cross with solemn movements. Two knelt.

"Santa Maria, madre de Dios, orar por nostros pecadores. . ."

A harsh roar of sixguns drowned out their prayer. 

“That takes care of all but Sane—yore Sandoval,” Wade observed with a chuckle. “Got any prayin’ to do, best get to it. Or . . . you can still sell this place to Mr. Early.” 

“Vaya al infierno, pinche ladron!”

Tanner’s face turned stony under his hood. “I know what them words mean. It ain’t gonna be me goes to hell.” The heavy .45 Colt bucked in his hand.

A hot slug smacked into Ramon Sandoval and spun him sideways, so that Tanner’s second round took him in the temple. The already dead rancher dropped in a heap and quivered as his wounds pumped out his life’s blood.

“An’ I’ll have you know I ain’t no
little thief
, ” Tanner growled, as he turned away and led his men toward the next ranch to be visited.

Flames crackled in the barn. Long, orange columns of sparks shot from the open door to the haymow. Damn it, Buford Early thought, that will lower the property value. And if those sparks set something else off, it will be even worse. Stray bullets had shattered a kerosene lantern and set the place ablaze.

“You men, watch those other buildings. Don’t let the lire spread.” To his satisfaction, Early saw that his order had been obeyed without question.

It had not always been that way. Until a short time ago, when Buford Early had shot a ranch hand and saved the life of Wade Tanner, he had been viewed with contempt by the hard-faced killers who followed the man Phineas Lathrop had put in charge. Tonight they had come closer to Smoke Jensen’s Sugarloaf ranch than ever before. Too bad about the barn, Early mused, as he watched the hooded raiders spread out with wet blankets and buckets of water to extinguish any sparks that lighted on the bunkhouse and tool sheds. Still others hunted around the barnyard for stray

hands who had not as yet been run off. Early sighed with satisfaction.

“Mr. Tanner, it appears we have added another jewel to Mr. Lathrop’s crown.” Remembering his earlier humiliation at Smoke Jensen’s ranch, he added, “I can’t wait until we take over the Sugarloaf.”

Considerable complaining had gone on all the way from New York City to Dodge City, Kansas. None of the former longshoremen in the O’Boyle gang liked the idea of Dodge being the end of the line for them. When Phineas Lathrop appeared on the loading platform, he soon heard about it from Sean O’Boyle and Eamon Finnegan.

“Sure an’ the train would get us to Denver a lot faster,” Eamon Finnegan protested.

Lathrop had forgotten how big Finnegan was. His broad, thick shoulders bulged the cloth coat he wore over a flannel shirt. A shock of black hair hung over his brow. Finnegan had one flaw, which Lathrop had taken note of at their first meeting. The black Irish bruiser had the florid complexion and ruddy, broken-vesseled nose of a heavy drinker. Only in his late twenties and already caught up in the “Irish disease,” Lathrop thought uneasily. Such a man could quickly go unstable.

“Your introduction to horseback riding in Central Park was entirely too short,” Lathrop snapped at the two leaders of the Boston gang.

“Half me boys is still saddle-sore from that encounter, Mr. Lathrop,” Sean O’Boyle complained. “It’s sheer foolishness makin’ a man ride astride a horse when there’s this perfectly good train to take us on, it is.”

“Nonsense. Riding to Denver will toughen you up for what is ahead.” Accustomed to having his way, Phineas Lathrop made it clear he brooked no differences of opinion among his underlings.

O’Boyle looked again at the line of heavy western saddles, the leather pouches behind the cantle bulging with camp gear and boxes of ammunition. “We’ll be hampered with such overloads, we will,” he objected.

Lathrop’s chin rose pugnaciously. “You won’t be carrying the load, Mr. O’Boyle, the horses will. Now, get your men organized and take these saddles to the livery down the street. Your mounts have been selected.”

Chafed by long hours of inactivity, Smoke Jensen opted to walk the three blocks from the New York Central station in Chicago to that of the A T & S F. Their private car would be shifted through the common railyard. A block down the street, he, Sally, and Oliver came upon five loungers who looked every bit the part of saddle tramps, to Smoke’s practiced eyes.