Assault of the Mountain Man

Book 39: Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

"The Mountain Man novels from William W.
Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone are fired with an incendiary intensity that thrills the series’ many fans. In Assault of the Mountain Man, Smoke Jensen’s wife Sally travels to Goth, Colorado, to open a restaurant. But there she’s caught in a bloody confrontation prompted by five merciless
bank robbers. With the town sheriff sent to the great beyond, and Sally clinging to life as a frontier surgeon tries frantically to save her, Smoke
is filled with an all-consuming rage—bad news indeed for anyone who opposes him."

Release date: May 26, 2011

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Sally Jensen had been back East for almost six weeks, during which time she had visited her family in Vermont, friends and relatives in Boston and New York, and as the last part of her trip, she was in Washington, D.C. At the moment, she was sitting in the reception room just outside the Presidential Office in the White House. As she waited to meet with the president, she was reading the novel, A Study in Scarlet, written by the English author, Arthur Conan Doyle, in which he introduced a new character, Sherlock Holmes. Sally enjoyed the intellect and deductive reasoning of the Sherlock Holmes character. So engrossed was she in the book that she did not notice Colonel Lamont, the appointments secretary, approaching her.

“Mrs. Jensen?” Colonel Lamont said.

Sally looked up from her book. It took her a second to come out of the story and realize exactly where she was.

“Yes?”

“The president will see you now.”

“Oh, thank you,” Sally answered with a broad smile. Slipping a book mark in between the pages, she stood, then followed the secretary into President Cleveland’s office.

The president was rather rotund, with a high forehead and a bushy moustache. He was wearing a suit, vest, and bowtie, and he was smiling as he walked around the desk with his hand extended. “Mrs. Jensen. How wonderful to see you.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. President,” Sally replied.

President Cleveland pointed to a sitting area over to the side. “Please, won’t you have a seat? And tell me all about your wonderful West.”

“As you say, Mr. President, it is wonderful. You really should take a trip out there sometime.”

“I agree, I must do that. And your husband, Smoke? He is doing well?”

“He is doing very well, thank you. Right now he and the others are involved in the spring roundup.”

“The spring roundup,” President Cleveland said. “What exciting images those words evoke.” The president glanced toward the door to make certain no one could overhear him. “Please don’t tease me about it, but from time to time I read novels of the West. I find them a wonderful escape from the tedium of reports, analysis, bills, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, ad naseum.”

Sally laughed.

“And how is your family?”

“They are doing well, thank you. It was my family who insisted that I call upon you before I return home,” Sally said.

“And rightly so,” President Cleveland replied. “When I was governor of the state of New York, I vetoed the bill that would have reduced the fare to five cents on the elevated trains in New York. That was an extremely unpopular veto, and your father’s support, even though he was not a resident of New York, helped convince several legislators to change their vote and support me when the legislature attempted to override the veto. Had I lost that veto, I believe my political career would have been finished. I do not think it would stretch credulity too far, to suggest that I am occupying the White House partly because of your father’s early, and important, support.”

Sally laughed. “It wasn’t all altruistic on my father’s part you understand, Mr. President. He had loaned Jay Gould the money to buy the railroad. He was merely looking out for his investment.”

“Oh!” President Cleveland said, clutching his heart with both hands, and laughing. “And here, I was certain your father’s support was because he thought me to be a brilliant politician and servant of the people.”

Sally and the president visited for a while longer, then she was invited to have lunch with Frances Cleveland, the president’s young wife. “Unfortunately I will not be able to attend, as I have a prior luncheon engagement with the caucus of Western Senators.”

“Well, if they are from the West, then by all means you should not break the appointment,” Sally suggested.

“But if it was a caucus of Eastern Senators?”

“Then I would fully expect you to join us,” Sally said, and the president laughed with her as he escorted her from the office.

“Colonel Lamont, would you please telephone my wife and tell her that she will have a guest for lunch,” President Cleveland asked of his private secretary.

“Mr. President, I have already done so,” Lamont replied. “Mrs. Cleveland is on her way here now.”

Grover Cleveland was twenty-seven years old when he met his future wife. She had just been born, the daughter of Oscar Folsom, a long time close friend of Cleveland’s. When her father died in a buggy accident in 1875 without having written a will, the court appointed Cleveland administrator of the estate. This brought Cleveland closer to Frances, who was eleven at the time.

She attended Central High School in Buffalo and went on to Wells College in Aurora, New York. Sometime while she was in college, Cleveland’s feelings for her took a romantic turn. He proposed in August 1885, soon after her graduation, and she accepted. Frances became the youngest first lady ever. Despite her age, her charm and natural intelligence made her a very successful hostess, a quality Sally was enjoying.

“Oh, Sally, have you seen Washington’s monument?” Frances asked during lunch.

“I saw it some time ago,” Sally said, “but it wasn’t completed then. It was sort of an ugly stob.”

“Oh you must see it now,” Frances said enthusiastically. “It is all finished, and it is beautiful. If you would like, we’ll drive out there after lunch.”

“I would love to,” Sally replied, her enthusiasm matching that of the first lady.

Even as Sally was touring Washington, D.C., with the first lady, Pearlie, the foreman of the ranch she and Smoke owned, was out on the range with three other cowboys, riding bog.

It was one of the less glamorous and more difficult jobs pertaining to getting ready for the roundup. While crowding around a small water hole, weaker animals were often knocked down by stronger ones, and they would get bogged down, unable to get up. Getting them out was called bogging.

It was easy to find them; the hapless creature would start bawling, not a normal call, but a high pitched, frightened, intense bawl.

“Pearlie!” one of the hands called. “Over here!”

Pearlie rode in the direction of the call, and saw a steer, belly deep in a pond that was mostly mud. One of the cowboys, a new hand, looped his rope around the steer’s neck.

“No!” Pearlie called. “Not the neck. Around his horns.”

It took the cowboy a moment of manipulating his rope until he managed to work it up onto the animal’s horns.

Pearlie dismounted, then got behind the steer and started pulling on the rope. The idea was to get the animal over on its back, then pull it backward—which was easier than trying to pull it out straight ahead, or sideways.

A couple of the other cowboys grabbed the rope with Pearlie and they pulled until the steer was free.

“You boys grab his tail and hold on until I get the rope off,” Pearlie said. “Then one of you run one way and the other run the other way, ’cause this critter is goin’ to turn around and charge. If you go in opposite directions, he might get confused and not chase either one of you.”

“You said he might get confused. What if he don’t get confused and he chases after me?” one of the cowboys said.

“In that case run like hell,” Pearlie said, and the others laughed.

Pearlie remounted, then rode around and took the rope off the steer’s horns.

“All right, let ’im go!” Pearlie shouted, and the two cowboys started running in opposite directions from each other. The steer took off after one of them, and Pearlie slapped his legs against the side of his horse, urging it into an immediate gallop. He closed on the running steer within a few seconds and forced the steer to turn aside, breaking up his charge.

The other cowboys were laughing hard as Toby, the cowboy who was being chased, stopped running and bent over, his hands on his knees, breathing hard from his exertion.

“Damn, Toby,” one said. “I sure didn’t know you could run that fast. Why, you should enter the race at the county fair this summer.”

Toby was still breathing hard. “Won’t do any good unless I’ve got a steer runnin’ after me,” he said, to the laughter of all.

“All right, you boys know what to do now, so keep it up, pull out all the cows you find bogged down. I’m going back to get cleaned up, then I’m going into town. Smoke wants me to pick up a few things.”

“If you want, Pearlie, I’ll go into town for you,” one of the cowboys said.

“Yeah, I’m sure you would,” Pearlie replied with a broad smile. “But like as not you would get drunk and forget what you went to town for.”

“Ha, Wade, you think Pearlie ain’t got you pegged?” Toby said with a laugh.

Pearlie took the buckboard into town. He stopped first at Cousins’ General Store to fill the list of food items needed for the chuck wagon while the roundup was ongoing.

“Hello, Pearlie,” Cousins said, greeting the young cowboy as he came into the store. “Come for your possibles, have you?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Cousins,” Pearlie replied. “We’ll need beans, flour, bacon, coffee, sugar, and some dried fruits. It’s all written out.”

“You got a buckboard outside?”

“I do.”

“I’ll fill your order and take it out to the buckboard for you. If you have anything else to do in town you can go ahead and take care of it.”

“Thank you. I’ll do that.”

Food wasn’t the only thing on Pearlie’s shopping list. From Cousins’ General Store he walked over to the gun shop where he bought several boxes of ammunition in various calibers. From there he went to the post office to pick up the mail. By the time he got back to the store, the food had been loaded onto the buckboard. He touched the brim of his hat, in a salute to Cousins, climbed into the seat, picked up the reins, and clucked to the team.

Back at the ranch, Smoke Jensen was standing in an open field by the barn. Twenty-five yards in front of him were three bottles inverted on sticks of varying heights, one as high as a man’s head, one about the height of an average man’s chest, while the third would align with a man’s belly. The sticks were ten feet apart.

Off to Smoke’s right, but clearly in his vision, Cal was holding his right hand out in front of him, palm down. There was an iron nut on the back of his hand, and beneath his hand, on the ground, was a tin pie plate.

The full-time hands, the ones who had stayed through the winter, as well as some of the new men, the temporary cowboys who were showing up for the spring roundup, were gathered around in a semicircle to watch the demonstration.

Cal turned his hand over, and the nut fell. The moment Smoke saw Cal turn his hand, he began his draw. He fired three quick shots, breaking all three bottles before the iron nut clanked against the tin pan.

The men cheered and clapped.

“Damndest thing I ever seen!” one of the cowboys said.

“How can anyone be that fast?”

“I’ve read books about him, but I always thought they was just made up,” another of the hands said. “I never know’d there could be anyone that could really shoot like that.”

“Yeah, but this is just trick shooting,” a new cowboy, one who had never worked at Sugarloaf before, said. “Seems to me folks who can do trick shootin’ ain’t always that good when it comes to the real thing.”

Cal, who was picking up the iron nut and the pie pan, overheard the last remark. “Trust me. When it comes to the real thing, he’s even better.”

“How would you know?”

“’Cause I’ve been right there beside him when the real thing happened,” Cal said.

He walked over to join Smoke, who had gone back up to the big house. Smoke was leaning against the porch, punching out the spent cartridges and replacing them with live bullets. “Better not let Sally know we used one of her pie pans for this.”

“Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot!” Cal said. He examined the pie pan carefully, then breathed a sigh of relief. “Ah, it doesn’t look like it was hurt any.”

At that moment Pearlie came driving back in the buckboard. He came all the way up to the porch, smiling as he was holding up a letter.

“Looks like you got a letter from Miss Sally,” Cal said.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” Smoke said.

“Reckon how long she’s going to be gone before she comes back?”

“Next week, I believe,” Smoke said as he reached for the letter. “Unless this letter says something different.”

“Yahoo, boys!” Smoke said. “She’ll be back home next Tuesday!”

“Reckon we’ll be through ridin’ bog by then?” Cal asked.

Pearlie chuckled. “You ain’t never really through ridin’ bog, Cal. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s generally worse right after winter is over,” Cal said. “Then it starts easin’ up some.”

Another necessary, but unpleasant job, would be cleaning out the water holes. It would require a team of horses and a scraper. Depending on the size of the hole, and how much weed, mud, and cow-dung there were in the water, it would sometimes take up to a week just to clean one hole.

Of course, even before the general roundup was done, there would be a roundup of all the newly born calves, so they could be branded. This was the kind of work that was keeping Smoke, Pearlie, Cal, and the other cowboys, those who had been present all winter, and those who were newly signed on for the spring roundup, busy.

When Sally Jensen stepped down from the train it was nearly midnight. Dark and cold, the little town of Big Rock was a windy emptiness under great blinking white stars. “What ever do you see in that wild and wooly West?” Molly Tremaine had asked, during Sally’s recent visit with her. Molly was an old schoolmate, now married to a Boston lawyer.

“It isn’t something that can be explained,” Sally replied. “It is something you have to experience. There is nothing more beautiful, nothing more vibrant, than to live in that wonderful country.”

Sally wished Molly could be here, right now, to get a sense of the magnificent wonder of the place—high and dry, with the stars so huge it was almost as if she could reach up and pluck one from the sky.

Sally had written to Smoke telling him she would arrive mid-morning Tuesday, but when she was in St. Louis she took advantage of a faster connection, which caused her to arrive in Big Rock almost twelve hours ahead of her schedule. At first she thought only of the time she would be saving, not realizing it meant she would arrive in the middle of the night. She was alone on the depot platform and there was no one to meet her.

Behind her the engineer blew his whistle twice, then opened his throttle to a thunderous expulsion of steam. The huge driver wheels spun on the track, sending out a shower of sparks until they gained traction. With a series of jerks as the slack was taken up between the cars, the engine got underway puffing loudly as it did so.

As the train pulled out of the station, Sally watched the cars pass her by. Most of the windows were dark because the passengers were trying to sleep. But the windows of the day cars were well lit, and she could see the tired faces of passengers who were either unable or unwilling to pay for more comfortable accommodations.

As the train left the station, she turned to walk toward the depot. Because there would be no more arrivals or departures until the next morning, the waiting room, which was dimly lit by the yellow light of an oil lantern, was empty. The ticket window was open, but there was no one behind the counter. She could hear a telegraph instrument clacking from the telegrapher’s office, so she assumed someone was there.

“Miss,” someone said from behind her.

Thinking she was totally alone, Sally was startled by the voice and she jumped at the sound.

“Sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to ... ,” the man started, then stopped in mid-sentence. “Why, Mrs. Jensen, what are you doin’ here at this hour of the night?”

“Hello, Mr. Anderson,” Sally said to the baggage and freight agent. “I wasn’t supposed to get here until tomorrow morning, but I took an earlier train out of St. Louis. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course there was no way of letting Smoke know in time to meet me, so I haven’t gained a thing. It would appear that I have been hoist by my own petard.”

“You been done what, ma’am?” Anderson asked.

Sally laughed. “I’m just commenting on how foolish I was to change trains, is all. Did my baggage get off?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve got it out on the platform right now.”

“Could you keep it until tomorrow morning for me? I’m going to have to get a hotel room, I’m afraid.”

“Yes ma’am. Well, if you’ll wait until I get your baggage put away, I’ll walk with you to the hotel. It’s not all that good for a lady to be out on the street in the middle of the night, alone.”

Sally started to tell him he needn’t bother. She could shoot a gun as well as any man, and better than most, having been taught by her husband, who was one of the most proficient men with a rifle or pistol in the whole country. But even as she harbored that thought, she was aware she was not armed. In fact, she was wearing a traveling dress. It was stylish enough to have drawn many an admiring eye—though her delicate features and svelte womanly figure would have drawn as many admiring glances no matter what she was wearing. She was not wearing the more practical clothes she wore at the ranch.

“I would be happy to have you accompany me, Mr. Anderson,” she said.

She waited a moment longer, then after closing and locking the door to the baggage and freight room, Anderson came back to join her.

As Sally walked down the street, escorted by Mr. Anderson, she pulled her shawl more tightly around her. The moisture clouds of her exhaled breath were almost luminescent in the dark night. From down the street a short way, she could hear the tinkling sound of an out of tune piano, loud male voices, and a woman’s high pitched laugh. The noises came from the Brown Dirt Cowboy Saloon, a business that had been established within the year, and already was the scene of at least three shootings. She knew Sheriff Carson was contemplating closing it, if there were too many more shooting incidents there.

They reached the McKinley Hotel, a three-story brick structure, one of the finest buildings in Big Rock, which had a very nice restaurant on its ground floor. Inside, a dozing clerk sat behind the desk in an empty lobby. In the middle of the lobby a wood burning stove roared, and glowed red as the fuel burned.

“I’ll leave you here, ma’am,” Anderson said when they stepped inside.

“Thank you.” Sally walked over to the desk and smiled as she saw the clerk, his head drooped forward, snoring rather loudly. She tapped the little bell, and the ding awakened him with a start. At first the clerk looked somewhat irritated that his nap had been interrupted, but he brightened considerably when he recognized her as the wife of one of the leading citizens in the county, if not in the state.

“Mrs. Jensen,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise. You will be taking a room with us?”

“Yes, I just arrived on the train, and Smoke. . .