Ambush of the Mountain Man

Book 31: Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

USA Today best-selling author William W. Johnstone is one of the most popular Western writers in the world, with over 10 million copies of his books in print. Ambush of the Mountain Man is an action-packed Old West adventure story. Mountain man Smoke Jensen never wanted to kill, but circumstance has plunged him into bloodbaths time and time again. Now Angus McDougal, the father of one of Smoke’s victims, wants revenge. Tracked into the wintry wilderness of Colorado, Smoke must summon all of his survival skills to evade his enemy.

Release date: May 26, 2011

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

Smoke Jensen and his friends, Cal, Pearlie, and Louis Longmont, turned their horses’ heads south and rode out of the town of Noyes, Minnesota. They rode slumped in their saddles, dog-tired after the months they’d spent in Canada working for William Cornelius Van Horne.

Cal, still excited about the adventures they’d had and the unforgettable scenery of the northern Rocky Mountains, jabbered on and on about how he wished he’d been born in the days of the mountain men.

Louis and Smoke just looked at each other and smiled, for they knew those days hadn’t been nearly as romantic as they’d sounded in the stories Cal had heard around the campfire from Bear Tooth and Red Bingham and Bobcat Bill.

Of course, they weren’t about to tell the young’un that and ruin his ideas about the “good old days.”

They rode on for about two miles, until they came to the railroad station that was their goal.

As they reined in their mounts in front of the stationmaster’s office, Louis stretched and observed, “That was very nice of Bill Van Horne to arrange for us to ride all the way back to Big Rock on the train instead of on horseback.”

“Yeah, it’ll sure save some wear an’ tear on my backside,” Pearlie agreed as he stepped down out of his stirrups. “The way I feel now, if’n I never see another saddle as long as I live it’ll be all right with me,” he added, rubbing his butt with both hands.

Smoke laughed. “Not only that, but Bill said we could ride in James Hill’s own private car on our trip south.”

“Hill?” Cal asked. “Ain’t he the man Bill said bought up all the railroads in this part of the country?”

Smoke nodded. “That’s right, Cal. Hill owns just about every inch of railroad track between here and home.”

“Jiminy, then his own private car ought’a be somethin’ to see.”

“I would imagine it will be rather lavish,” Louis said as he got down off his horse.

“I don’t know what lavish means,” Pearlie said, “but I hope it means it’s stocked right well with food, ‘cause I’m hungry enough to eat a bear.”

“Well, now, that’s a surprise,” Cal said sarcastically to his friend. “From the way you was talkin’, I figured you’d be too tired to eat an’ you’d just go right to sleep once we got to the train.”

Pearlie looked at the young man as if he’d uttered a blasphemy. “What? Go to sleep without eating? What kind of man would do that?”

After Smoke spoke to the stationmaster, and their horses and gear were stowed in the cattle car, the man showed them into James Hill’s private car. As they entered, he told them to just pull the bell rope next to the door if they needed anything and a steward would take care of it.

Just before he left, he stopped in the door and looked around the car, shaking his head. “You boys must be powerful friends of Mr. Hill’s,” he said, “’cause this is the first time I’ve ever seen him loan his car out to anyone.” He paused and grinned. “Hell, when the President came out here last year on a tour, Mr. Hill gave him another car. Said this one was too good for politicians to use.”

“Thanks for all your help,” Smoke said, smiling and shutting the door behind the man.

As the stationmaster stepped down out of the car, a man moved out of the shadows next to the station building and stood there staring at the train.

When the stationmaster approached him, the man ducked his head and put a lucifer to the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He looked up, tipping smoke from his nostrils, and gave the stationmaster a lopsided grin. “Howdy,” he said in a friendly tone of voice.

“Hello,” the stationmaster answered. “If you’re here to buy a ticket on this train, you need to see the man in the ticket booth inside the building.”

“Thanks,” the stranger answered. “I might just do that.” He turned toward the building, hesitated, and then he looked back over his shoulder at the stationmaster.

“Uh, by the way, was that man I just saw getting on the train named Smoke Jensen?”

The stationmaster nodded absentmindedly, already thinking about the dozens of things he had to see to before the train could leave the station.

The stranger cut his eyes back at the train before he went into the station to buy a ticket His eyes were filled with hate.

When he got to the ticket booth, he pulled a wad of cash from his vest pocket and placed it on the counter.

“Can I help you sir?” the ticket man asked.

“Yeah. Can you tell me how far Smoke Jensen and his friends are going?”

The ticket salesman looked down at an open book in front of him and pursed his lips for a moment. “I believe they’re ticketed all the way through to Big Rock, Colorado,” he said, glancing back up at the man standing in front of his window.

“Then give me a ticket to the same place,” the man said, pushing his money under the gated window.

“Yes, sir.”

“And I need to know if I have time to send a wire before the train leaves.”

The ticket man pulled a watch from his vest pocket and shook his head as he looked at it. “No, sir, I don’t believe you do.”

“Damn,” he muttered.

“But I’d be happy to send one for you after the train leaves if you wish.”

When the man nodded, looking relieved, the ticket man pushed a piece of paper and a pencil under the window gate. “Just write out who you want me to send it to and what you want to say and I’ll get it on over to the telegraph office just as soon as the train leaves the station.”

“Uh,” the man stammered, his face burning scarlet. “I can’t write too good.”

The ticket man pulled the paper back and smiled. “Then just tell me what you want to say in your message and I’ll write it for you.”

“It’s to Angus MacDougal in Pueblo, Colorado.” The man thought for a moment and then he said, “Just say our friend is headed for home . . . should be there in ten days.”

“Will there be anything else, sir?” the ticket man asked as he folded up the paper.

The man grinned through thin lips. “No, I think that ought’a ‘bout do it.”

After Smoke closed the door and turned around, he saw Louis pouring himself a glass of brandy into a bell-shaped crystal goblet from Hill’s private bar in the corner. Louis swirled the amber liquid for a moment, and then he sniffed delicately of the aroma. His face relaxed and he smiled, as if he had died and gone to heaven.

Cal had taken his boots off and was lying back on the overstuffed sofa, poking the cushions with his hands, feeling how soft they were.

Pearlie was over in the opposite corner and he had his hands on the bell rope, about to pull it.

Smoke cleared his throat loudly. “Pearlie, what are you doing?”

Pearlie glanced over at him, his face blushing slightly and looking embarrassed. “Uh . . . I’m just ringing this here bell to see if the man who answers it can get us some food ‘fore I faint from hunger.”

Smoke shook his head, pointing to the corner of the car where a coffeepot was steaming on a fat-bellied stove. “Why don’t you have a cup of coffee to fill your gut until the train leaves the station? Then we can see about getting some grub.”

“Coffee?” Pearlie asked, as if he’d been offered something horrible to eat.

Louis looked up from where he stood at the bar. “And Pearlie, there’s a bowl of sugar and a pitcher of cream here on the bar to sweeten it up with.”

Pearlie grinned halfheartedly and moved toward the potbellied stove. “Well, now,” he said amiably. “I guess now that you mention it that coffee will do for a start.”

“Coffee does sound good,” Cal said, getting up from his perch on the couch. “But Louis, you’d better dole that sugar out to Pearlie a little at a time if’n you want any left for the rest of us to use,” he added as he followed Pearlie toward the stove.

“You sayin’ I’m a sugar hog, boy?” Pearlie asked, poking Cal in the shoulder with his fist.

“No, not exactly,” Cal answered, rubbing his shoulder and frowning. “It’s just that sometimes you like to put a little coffee in your sugar.”

Two hours later, the men had finished their meal and were sitting around a table in Hill’s private car getting a poker lesson from Louis. Luckily for Cal and Pearlie, they were playing for pennies instead of dollars, because Louis and Smoke were each winning just about every hand.

Just as Louis was leaning over to rake in another pot, the train suddenly slowed, its steel wheels screeching as the engineer applied the brakes with full force.

“What the . . . ” Louis began to say when the chips and cards all started to slide across the table from the sudden slowing of the train. Cal moved his head to the side toward the nearby window and called out, “Looky there!” and pointed off to the side of the train.

A group of men could be seen suddenly appearing from a copse of trees near the track, all riding bent down low over their saddle horns, guns in their hands and bandanna masks over their faces.

“Well, I’ll be hanged,” Smoke said, his lips curling into a slight grin of anticipation. “It looks like the train is going to be robbed.”

Louis unconsciously reached up and patted the wallet in his coat breast pocket, thick with the money Cornelius Van Horne had paid them for helping with the surveying for his Canadian Pacific Railroad the past six months. “I’ll be damned if any two-bit train robbers are going to take any of my money!” he exclaimed.

Smoke pulled a Colt pistol from his holster and flicked open the cylinder, checking to see that it was fully loaded. “No one’s gonna take any money from any of us, Louis,” he promised, the grin slowly fading from his face.

“I’ll get our rifles from our gear in the next car,” Pearlie said, referring to the sleeping car next door where they’d stored their valises and saddlebags.

“Bring some extra ammunition too,” Smoke said, glancing out of the window. “It looks like there’re fifteen or twenty riders out there we’re gonna have to contend with.”

He ducked down out of sight, motioning the others to do the same, as the train slowed and the group of riders drew abreast of the car they were in.

A gunshot rang out and the window next to Smoke’s head shattered, sending slivers of glass cascading down onto his back and causing a tiny, solitary drop of blood to appear on his neck. He reached up and wiped it with his finger. “First blood to them,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

The train continued its rapid deceleration. Probably because the robbers had dynamited or obstructed the tracks in some manner, Smoke thought as Pearlie came scuttling back into the car with his arms full of long guns. Smoke took the Henry repeating rifle from Pearlie, and watched as Louis took the ten-gauge sawed-off express gun and an extra box of shells from him.

“You’re gonna have to get awfully close for that to do much damage,” Smoke said.

Louis grinned. “I thought I’d wait until they came knocking on our door and then give them a rather loud greeting,” he said in a light tone of voice that was belied by the dark fury in his eyes.

Smoke nodded. “Good idea. I think I’ll take Cal and Pearlie and slip out the far side of the car when the train stops. When the bandits get off their horses to make their way through the cars, it’ll give us a chance to scatter their mounts.”

Pearlie nodded, grinning. “And then they’ll be trapped out here in the middle of nowhere with nothing to ride off on. Good idea, Smoke.”

When the train finally ground to a complete stop, Louis turned a big easy chair around until it was facing the door, and then took a seat, the express gun across his knees and his pistols on a small table next to the chair. He pulled a long black cigar out of his coat pocket and lit it, sending clouds of fragrant blue smoke into the air. He pulled his hat down tight on his head and leaned back, crossing his legs and smoking as if he were waiting for a friend to visit.

“Good hunting, gentlemen,” he called as he eared back the twin hammers on the shotgun.

“You be careful, you hear?” Smoke said, tipping his head at his friend.

“It is not I that should be careful, pal,” Louis replied, his voice turning hard. “It is those miscreants that are interrupting our trip who should be saying their prayers at this time.”

As Smoke and the boys slipped out of the car and moved slowly down the line of cars toward the front of the train, Cal asked in a low voice, “Smoke, what’s a miscreant?”

Smoke chuckled. “It’s someone without a shred of decency in their character, Cal.”

“Oh,” Cal said, glancing at Pearlie walking next to him. “You mean like someone who’d take the last spoonful of sugar in the bowl and not leave any for his friends?”

“Now Cal, boy,” Pearlie said in a soothing voice, “that there bowl wasn’t near half-full to begin with.”

As they neared the car just behind the engine that contained wood to be burned in the boiler, Smoke heard a harsh voice say, “Watch the hosses, Johnny. We’ll get the passengers’ money and be right back.”

Smoke gave the robbers time to climb aboard the train before he put the Henry in his left hand, sauntered out from between two cars, and walked slowly toward the outlaws’ horses, which were being tended by a large, fat man with a full beard and a ragged, sweat-stained hat set low on his head.

The outlaw’s eyes widened and his hand moved toward his belt as he said, “Who the hell . . . ?”

Smoke drew his Colt in one lightning fast motion and shot the man in the face, blowing him backward off his horse to land facedown in the dirt next to the track, his gun still in its leather.

The other horses jumped and crow-hopped at the sound of the pistol shot until Cal and Pearlie untied them from where they had been hitched to the rail on the railroad car and shooed them away by waving their arms and shouting.

Soon, only the dead outlaw was left next to the tracks, blood still oozing into a puddle under his head.

Smoke moved up to the engine and found the engineer lying on his side, holding his left arm, a bullet hole in his left shoulder.

Smoke knelt next to him. “Are you gonna be all right?”

The engineer nodded. “Yeah, but somebody needs to put some wood in the boiler or we’re gonna lose all our steam.”

Smoke glanced over his shoulder. “Cal, would you help this man and do what he says while Pearlie and I go after the robbers?”

“Aw shucks, Smoke,” Cal groused as he climbed up into the cab of the engine. “Pearlie gets to have all the fun.”

“We just don’t want you getting yourself shot again an’ bleedin’ all over Mr. Hill’s fine car,” Pearlie teased, “you bein’ such a magnet for lead an’ all.”

“Now Pearlie,” Cal argued, his face turning red. “I ain’t been shot in over three weeks now.”

Smoke laughed. “That might be because we haven’t been in any gunfights for three weeks, Cal.”

Cal bent and helped the engineer to his feet as Pearlie and Smoke jumped down out of the engine and headed back along the tracks toward the passenger cars.

They eased up into the first one, and Smoke was surprised when a female passenger threw up her hands and screamed, “Oh, no, they’ve come back to rape and kill us!”

Smoke smiled and motioned for her to put her hands down. “No, ma’am. We’re here after the robbers,” he explained as he and Pearlie moved down the aisle between the seats.

She took one look at Smoke’s handsome face and broad shoulders and her voice seemed a mite disappointed when she said, “Then you aren’t going to rob the men and rape the women?”

“Not this time,” Smoke called back over his shoulder with a grin.

Smoke and Pearlie moved through three more cars before catching up to the robbers in the car just before Hill’s private one that Louis was in.

Smoke motioned for Pearlie to kneel down in front of the door, and then stood over him as he jerked the door open.

The crowd of robbers in the aisle collecting passengers’ money and jewels glanced back over their shoulders in time to see Smoke and Pearlie open fire, Smoke working the lever of the Henry so fast his shots seemed to be one long explosion.

Six outlaws went down before the others could return fire, and then it was wild and poorly aimed as they shouted and screamed and backed through the far door of the car, which was so filled with gun-smoke they could barely be seen.

The bandits in the lead jerked the door to Hill’s car open and rushed inside, to be met by the thundering explosion of twin ten-gauge barrels hurling buckshot at them.

Four more men went down, shredded and almost cut in half by the horrendous power of the express gun.

The seven men remaining alive dove off the train out of the connecting door to the cars, and began running as fast as they could back up the tracks to where they thought their horses were tied.

They slowed and looked around with puzzled expressions when they came to Johnny’s dead body.

“Where the hell are the hosses?” one of the men hollered, whirling around and looking in all directions.

From thirty feet behind him, Smoke said, “They’re gone, you bastards!”

The robbers turned and saw Smoke and Pearlie and Louis standing there, side by side, their hands full of iron.

“There’s only three of them, boys, let’s take ‘em!” one of the men shouted.

“Uh-uh,” came a voice from behind the outlaws. Cal stood there just outside the engine, his Colt in his hand. “There’s four of us,” he said, a wide grin of fierce anticipation on his young face.

Nevertheless, the outlaws swung their pistols up and opened fire.

In less than fifteen seconds it was all over and every. . .