The Family Jensen (7 page)
Authors: William W. Johnstone,J. A. Johnstone
Tags: #Western stories, #Westerns, #Fiction - Western, #General, #American Western Fiction, #Westerns - General, #Fiction
“I reckon that’s just what they’ve done, for the most part,” Preacher said in the heat of the little cabin where he was holed up with Smoke and Matt. “Had a little trouble from time to time, the way most folks do, but they’re still together all these years later.”
“That’s right,” Smoke said. “I can vouch for that.”
“So can I,” Matt added.
Smoke watched the trees in front of the cabin. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Bannerman’s hired guns were going to try something again. Waiting for nightfall made more sense, but while he was shooting it out with them during the last attack, Smoke had caught a glimpse of a man he recognized. Lew Torrance was a top man with a gun, one of the best on the frontier. He had been pointed out to Smoke once in a saloon in Santa Fe, though they hadn’t met. Smoke wasn’t surprised that Bannerman had hired a cold-blooded, efficient killer like Torrance.
Torrance had a flaw, though: he was impatient. When he took on the job of killing someone, he wanted to get it done as quickly as possible. That impatience had come close to getting Torrance killed a time or two. Smoke didn’t believe that the man would be content to wait for the sun to go down.
That last attack should have taught the gunmen they couldn’t charge the cabin in the open and expect to win. The first attempt had cost them some lives. The same thing would happen if they tried again.
Movement in the trees caught Smoke’s eye. He knew whatever they were up to wasn’t anything good.
“Those varmints are stirring around again,” he told Preacher and Matt.
“They ain’t nothin’ goin’ on back here,” the old mountain man reported.
“It’s quiet on this side, too,” Matt said.
Smoke’s eyes narrowed. He muttered, “What the hell…?” Something big loomed in the trees. It came into view through a gap in the growth and looked so odd for a second Smoke couldn’t figure out what he was looking at.
Then he recognized it as a flatbed wagon that probably had been fetched from Reece Bannerman’s ranch. Someone had built a wall on the front that rose a good six feet straight up behind the driver’s seat and extended from one side of the wagon to the other. Rifle barrels protruded from three holes that had been cut in the wall.
The wagon didn’t have a team hitched to it. The tongue had been lifted and tied to the wagon it wouldn’t gouge into the ground in front of the vehicle. It began to move, which meant men were behind it, pushing it slowly but steadily toward the cabin. Powder smoke spurted from the rifles as the gunmen concealed behind the wall opened fire.
“What’s goin’ on?” Preacher asked as the shots began to ring out and bullets thudded into the cabin’s thick walls.
“The damnedest thing you’ve ever seen,” Smoke replied. “They’re bringing their own cover with them. They’ve made a rolling wall out of a wagon.”
He cranked off several rounds from his Winchester. Splinters flew from the places where the slugs struck the boards, but he doubted if any of them penetrated. He figured that wall was several layers thick.
Matt went to one of the loopholes in the front wall and took a look for himself. “Holy cow!” he exclaimed. “How in blazes are we going to stop a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” Smoke said. Between his pa Emmett and Preacher, he’d been raised to never give up, never back down. But it seemed likely that at least one man with a torch would be riding on that fortified wagon. Once it was pushed close enough, they’d be able to throw the torch over the wall and onto the top of the cabin. They could finish off Smoke, Matt, and Preacher at almost point-blank range when the resulting fire forced them out.
The wagon was sort of like an old medieval siege engine, Smoke thought, recalling the history books he had read that described such things being used to breach the walls of castles. Immediately something else occurred to him.
“Preacher, get out of the line of fire of the door!” he called to the old-timer. “Matt, cover me! That blasted thing can’t move without somebody pushing it!”
“You got it, Smoke!” Matt said, his keen mind instantly grasping what his adopted brother had in mind. Together, they grabbed the bar holding the door closed and tossed it aside. Smoke went low, throwing himself onto his belly at the threshold, while Matt fired around the edge of the door, pouring lead at the hidden riflemen to keep them distracted.
From that angle, Smoke could look
under
the wagon and see all the way to the legs of the men who were pushing it. He snugged the rifle’s stock against his shoulder and began firing from his prone position. Men yelled in pain as his accurate bullets smashed ankles, shattered shins, and tore through calves. Smoke’s shots knocked their legs right out from under them, and the wagon lurched to a halt. It had covered only half the cleared distance between the trees and the cabin.
As busted legs spilled the men behind the buckboard onto the ground, Smoke had even better targets. He kept firing. His bullets drove into the bodies of the fallen men, killing some of them instantly and wounding others. One of them shouted to his companions, “We can’t walk! Get us out of here, damn it!”
Men rushed from the trees to come to their aid, but Matt’s rifle fire drove them back. The wounded men began shooting back with handguns, but the range was too great for much accuracy. Smoke’s jaw tightened as he drilled another gunman through the head while the hombre tried to drag himself to safely on his bullet-riddled legs. Killing men like that was pretty cold-blooded, but they had called the tune, he thought. They could damned well dance to it.
Or rather they couldn’t, he reminded himself with a faint, grim smile, because he had shot their legs out from under them.
But any man he spared might be the one who killed him or Matt or Preacher later on. Even worse, the hired guns might launch another attack on Crazy Bear’s village and murder more women and kids. Smoke wasn’t going to lose any sleep over killing snakes like that.
The four men who’d been standing in the wagon bed gave up the fight. They leaped from the vehicle and made a dash for the timber. Matt winged one of them, shattering his elbow from the looks of the way the man’s arm jerked and flopped, but they all made it into the cover of the trees. That left the wagon sitting there empty, with the four men who’d been pushing it sprawled behind it, dead.
Smoke rolled out of the doorway and into the cabin as bullets from the trees began to kick up dirt not far in front of his face. Matt slammed the door and dropped the bar back into place.
“Well, that didn’t work out too well for ’em,” Preacher said with a dry chuckle. “That was mighty fast thinkin’ on your part, Smoke, firin’ under the wagon like that.”
“It was the only way to get at any of them,” Smoke said as he got to his feet. He took a handful of .44-40 cartridges from a pocket and began thumbing them through the Winchester’s loading gate.
“What do you reckon they’ll do next?” Matt asked.
Smoke shook his head. “There’s not much telling. We’ve managed to whittle down the odds considerable. They’ll be a little more careful from here on out, even with Lew Torrance egging them on.”
“Torrance?” Matt repeated. “I’ve heard of him. He’s supposed to be a really bad hombre.”
“He is. I don’t know if Bannerman has him bossing that bunch, but it’s possible. Or maybe Torrance is just one more gun-wolf. Bannerman seems to have plenty of ’em.”
Preacher snorted in disgust. “Varmints like that put me in mind of flies buzzin’ around a big steamin’ pile o’ buffalo dung. There’s always more where they came from.”
“Which would make Reece Bannerman that pile of buffalo dung, I suppose,” Matt said with a grin.
“You said it, youngster, not me.” Preacher spat on the hard-packed dirt floor of the cabin. “Hard to fool a fly, though.”
Smoke ran his tongue over dry lips. None of them had mentioned how thirsty they were, nor would they. Their canteens were on their saddles, their horses somewhere in the vicinity. Before taking shelter in the cabin they had turned the animals loose, swatting their rumps and yelling so the mounts would gallop off, out of the line of fire. Smoke knew that he, Matt, and Preacher wouldn’t have any trouble finding them later.
All they had to do was get out past the guns of those hardened killers first.
To get his mind off how cotton-mouthed he was, Smoke said, “I recall the first time I met Crazy Bear. You had told me about him, Preacher, but just hearing about him doesn’t really prepare anybody for meeting him in the flesh.”
Preacher chuckled again. “Ain’t that the truth. But you run into his boy first, didn’t you?”
“That’s right,” Smoke said with a nod. “Not far from here, in fact, over in Buffalo Flat. That’s where I met Sandor. It was years ago, a mighty bad time in my life…”
OOK
T
WO
(Note: The events in this section take place between the novels
The Last Mountain Man
and
Return of the Mountain Man
)
Hatred filled the heart of the young man who rode a big Appaloosa into the settlement of Buffalo Flat, Wyoming Territory, at the southern end of its main street. Sometimes that hatred burned so hot, it seemed on the verge of erupting, like flames from his brown eyes. At other times it was a cold hate, like ice had coated the expressionless face and it would never thaw again.
The important thing about that hatred was it didn’t leave room inside him for the pain he would otherwise feel.
Richards…Potter…Stratton. Those were the names of the men Smoke Jensen intended to kill. The men who had taken away everything that meant anything to him. The men responsible for the deaths of Smoke’s wife Nicole and their son Arthur, as well as the baby’s namesake, the old mountain man called Preacher. They had taken it all from him, and he would take everything from them. His only regret was that the worst he could do was kill them.
Smoke rode straight in the saddle like a cavalryman. His brown, broad-brimmed Stetson was pulled low over his face. Ash-blond stubble sprouted on his jaw. He had already cropped his hair close to his skull, and was thinking about growing a beard to change his appearance even more. After all, he was a wanted man. There was a $10,000 reward on his head because those lying bastards had made
him
out to be an outlaw and killer when in reality they were the ones who were evil.
Bounty hunters were already after him, and they didn’t care whether they brought him in dead or alive. In fact, most of them would probably prefer to kill him. It was easier to handle a dead body than a live prisoner, especially one as dangerous as Smoke Jensen.
So, as he slowly, methodically, made his way through Wyoming toward Idaho and the town of Bury, where he knew he would find the men he was looking for, he considered the best way to stay alive would be to leave his true identity behind. He needed new clothes instead of the fringed buckskins he wore. As much as he loved the Appaloosa he called Seven, the horse was mighty distinctive. He might have to change mounts. Hell, Smoke had thought a few days earlier, it might even be a good idea if he started calling himself by another name, although he was damned if he could think what it would be. He had been Kirby Jensen, then Preacher had given him the nickname Smoke. Those were the only names he had ever known.
Those were things he mulled over, but he wasn’t in any hurry. He had all the time in the world. His hate for Richards, Potter, and Stratton would always be there.
In the meantime, he could use some supplies, and might pick up some new duds while he was in Buffalo Flat. He reined Seven toward a hitch rail in front of a big, false-fronted building with a sign that read
HAMMOND’S EMPORIUM
.
Before he could get there, the door opened suddenly and a man burst out, running onto the high porch that also served as a loading platform. Smoke realized an instant later the man was being
forced
to run. Right behind him, gripping the back of his belt and his coat collar another man was shoving him forward.
When they reached the edge of the porch, the man doing the pushing stopped short and gave his hapless victim an extra shove. The fellow’s mouth opened in an alarmed yell as he flew off the porch with his arms and legs windmilling frantically, which didn’t do him a bit of good.
He crashed into the street, splattering a pile of horse apples underneath him. His face drove into the dirt with stunning force. His fingers scrabbled at the ground, he drew a leg up, and dug the toe of his shoe into the street as he tried to lift himself onto his hands and knees. He didn’t have the strength and after struggling for a moment, he let out a groan and slumped back down on his belly, grinding the horseshit into his coat even more.
Smoke had reined Seven to a halt when he saw what was happening, to prevent the horse from stepping on the man who’d been thrown out of the general store. He sat there impassively as two more men emerged from the building and joined the one who’d done the throwing.
“Funniest thing I ever saw, Mitch!” one of them whooped as he smacked the palm of his hand against the black chaps on his thigh. “I swear, that Injun looked like he was tryin’ to fly, the way he was flappin’ his arms around!”
“Didn’t do him no good did it?” his thickset companion added, also with great amusement. “He still done belly-flopped right in that pile o’ horseshit!”
A short, slender middle-aged man with a massive mustache drooping over his mouth edged out of the open door onto the porch and said in a tentative voice, “Uh, he hadn’t quite got around to payin’ me for that new suit yet, boys, and I reckon it’s ruined now.”
The two spectators instantly lost their air of joviality and turned to the store’s proprietor. “What’re you botherin’ us about, Hammond?” demanded the stocky one in the steeple-crowned white hat.
The man who wore a black leather vest over a red shirt and a black hat to go with his black chaps, crowded the aproned storekeeper and poked him in the chest with a rigid forefinger. “Yeah, you best run on back into your hole like the little rat you are!” he scolded.
Smoke’s eyes took in the fact that all but the shopkeeper wore low-slung guns. He had seen the likes of them many times since coming west with his pa. They were hardcases who considered themselves badmen. Maybe they really were tough…but chances were, they weren’t nearly as tough as they thought they were.
The first man, who was tall, lean, and hatchet-faced, carried himself with the air of a leader. He turned, took a bill from the pocket of his whipcord trousers, stepped past his companions, and tucked the money into the top of the storekeeper’s apron.
“There,” he said in chilly tones. “There’s your payment for the damned suit, Hammond. Mr. Garrard always pays his bills, and so do the men who work for him.” The man spat near Hammond’s feet. “It’s more than you deserve for letting a filthy redskin shop in your store.”
“He…he’s got just as much right to come in here as anybody else,” Hammond said, surprising Smoke by his willingness to speak up when he was surrounded by three gun-hung gents who were also considerably bigger than he was.
The hatched-faced man smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. “He’s got a right to come in, and we’ve got a right to throw him out on his ass.”
“I say we throw ol’ Hammond here on his ass, too,” the man in the black chaps suggested. “Throw him right down there in the shit next to that redskin.”
Smoke glanced around the settlement. Quite a few people had stopped on the boardwalks or come out of the buildings onto the porches to watch what was going on, but nobody had made a move to step in. His instincts told him that nobody would. He didn’t particularly care what happened to the storekeeper or the young man who’d gotten thrown in the street, but he had things to do and this business was holding him up. He was getting a mite impatient.
Quietly, he said, “I’d be obliged if you’d leave that man alone.”
His voice was deep and powerful and carried well despite the fact that he hadn’t raised it. The three hardcases turned to look at him with surprise on their faces. Obviously, they weren’t used to anyone interfering with whatever they wanted to do.
“What the hell did you say, mister?” asked the man in the big white hat.
“Said I’d be obliged if you’d leave him alone,” Smoke drawled. “He looks like he runs the store, and I need to buy some supplies.”
The hatchet-faced man eyed Smoke’s well-worn buckskins and said, “What hole in the woods did you crawl out of?”
Smoke ignored the question. He lifted the reins in his left hand and nudged Seven closer to the hitch rail. When he got there, he turned the Appaloosa alongside the rail so that Seven was between him and the men on the porch while he swung down from the saddle. No use in giving them too tempting a target. Smoke stepped up to the horse’s head, whipped the reins around the wooden rail, then moved out into the open. Every nerve, every muscle, was ready for blinding action if any of the men tried to hook and draw.
The hatchet-faced man suddenly smiled. “Stranger’s got a point, boys,” he said.
“What?” the man in the black chaps asked. “You gonna let him get away with talkin’ to us like that, Mitch?”
“Can’t interfere with the workings of commerce,” Mitch said. “That wouldn’t be right at all. Come on. Let’s go up the street to the Birdcage. I’m buying.”
His two companions didn’t like it, but a free drink was a free drink, and not something to be refused. They cast dark, murderous glares at Smoke, then went to the end of the porch, down the steps, and started along the boardwalk toward the saloon. The hatchet-faced man ambled after them, keeping an eye on Smoke as he did so and never quite turning his back until he was well away from the store. The last Smoke saw of his face, he was still wearing that smirk.
Smoke knew what had happened. Mitch had recognized the stance and attitude of a fellow gunfighter and wasn’t ready to challenge him…yet. But it might well come to that unless Smoke mounted up and rode out of Buffalo Flat
pronto.
He wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t in the habit of running from trouble and sure as hell wasn’t going to start.
Hammond came to the edge of the high porch. With his Adam’s apple bobbing in his stringy neck, he asked, “You don’t know who those fellas are, do you, mister?”
“No, and they don’t know who I am, either,” Smoke said, “so I reckon we’re even.”
Another groan came from the man who’d been tossed out of the store. Smoke had gotten a pretty good look at him while the man was flying through the air, even though the glimpse had been a brief one. The man was young, probably no more than twenty, and even if the hardcases hadn’t mentioned him being an Indian, Smoke would have known it from the black hair and eyes, the high cheekbones, and the coppery skin.
Since it wasn’t common to find an Indian wearing a town suit, a white shirt with a stiff collar and a tie, and store-bought shoes. Smoke felt curiosity stirring inside him. He stepped over to the young man’s side and reached down to take hold of his arm.
“Let me give you a hand, friend.”
Smoke’s broad shoulders in the buckskin shirt were a good indication of how strong he was. He lifted the young man to his feet without much effort. The youngster was unsteady and would have fallen if not for Smoke’s hand on his arm.
Smoke wrinkled his nose. “You’re gonna need a change of clothes, because that suit may have to be burned.” He looked up at Hammond. “You have another one like it?”
The storekeeper nodded. “Yeah.”
“Bring it out the back. You probably don’t want this fella going through the store the way he is now.”
Hammond rubbed his jaw in thought and then nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. But I got to get paid this time.”
“You got paid for this suit,” Smoke pointed out. “I saw that hombre called Mitch give you the money. This fella must have the cost of a suit with him, or he wouldn’t have been buyin’ one in the first place, now would he?”
“No, I reckon not. What you say makes sense, young fella. I’ll meet you around back in a few minutes if you’ll help Little Bear back there.”
Smoke nodded. “Come on,” he told the Indian.
They went along the alley beside the store, the young man still stumbling some. He muttered under his breath.
Smoke either didn’t quite catch the words, or else the man was speaking some strange language that Smoke had never heard before, because he didn’t understand a thing the fellow was saying.
When they reached the back of the store, Smoke saw several empty crates on the ground. He upended one and told his companion, “Here, sit down before you fall down. Are you hurt? The way you keep stumbling around, maybe you busted something when you landed in the street.”
“I—I’m all right,” the young man replied in a trembling voice. “I just…just…” He pawed at damp eyes with the back of a hand. Smoke realized those weren’t tears of pain. The youngster was crying because he was so mad. It was fury that caused him to shake.
“Better take it easy,” Smoke advised. “Hammond called you Little Bear. Is that your name?”
Before the young man could answer, heavy footsteps sounded in the alley and a harsh voice said, “Hey!”
Smoke turned in that direction. A barrel-chested man strode toward him, glowering angrily. A lawman’s badge glittered where it was pinned to his vest.