Fury Of The Mountain Man

Book 12: Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

Six-Gun Justice . . .

Smoke Jensen was the last mountain man and the quickest draw in the West. But he was tired of fighting every punk who wanted to make a reputation for himself, so he hung up his .45s.

It Didn't Last Long . . .

Like Jensen, the two Mexican gunfighters known as Carbone and Martine had put away their six-guns, married and turned to ranching down in Durango. Then they came up against an army of outlaws under a warlord who called himself Carvajal. That was when they called on Smoke Jensen. Smoke didn't waste a minute. When your friends called, you came running. Carvajal laughed when he heard that Smoke Jensen was on the way. After all, what could one man do?

Contains mature themes.

Release date: October 1, 2014

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 276

Sample

He rode with accustomed ease on the big, spotted-rump appaloosa horse. The gray-and-black animal had an ebon muzzle and ear tips that gave it the appearance of a Siamese cat. Any illusion of cuteness ended there. Sidewinder was a killer horse. He had stomped an abusive former owner into a puddle of crimson mud. He had kicked the slats out of more than one stall and severely bitten all the way through the shoulder of another would-be owner. Sidewinder never made trouble for the man riding him now. A mountain-bred creature, he took to the High Lonesome every bit as much as Smoke Jensen. The two had a natural affinity. Off to Smoke’s right a catbird made its mimic cry from the branches of a tall pine.

Trees grew taller this far south, Smoke noted. Lower altitude and more sunlight in the broader valleys. Smoke’s ranch, the Sugarloaf, nestled between tall, steep walls of granite that provided a natural bastion against the inroads of civilization. They hadn’t kept out the telegraph, which reached Big Rock, Colorado, some eight years earlier. Nor the railroad. That was about all of civilization that Smoke Jensen wanted.

Raised from his early teens by the renowned old mountain man, Preacher, Smoke had cleaned his heels of civilization with a will. He gloried in the crisp, clean, sweet-smelling air of the High Lonesome. Cold water to bathe in bothered him not at all. And a splendid diet of succulent venison, beaver tail, hoe cakes and biscuits helped him grow tall, broad and strong. Life in those days—long after the fur trade had died out because of a trendy change in fashions—had been one long, glorious romp for Smoke Jensen. Not always, he reminded himself as Sidewinder picked his way along the rutted highroad outside of the thriving community of Pueblo.

Inevitably, the dark side of life intruded on the idyllic existence in the Shining Mountains. Smoke learned to shoot, not only to hunt for food, but to defend his life. He killed Indians and white men with equal and growing skill in his teen years. Always, though, the peace and tranquility of the sprawling Rocky Mountains soothed his soul. Now civilization had chosen to intrude once more.

This time it came in the form of a letter from an old friend. Carbone had written Smoke to inform him that he had hung up his guns. The notorious Mexican gunfighter had become a gentleman rancher, a haciendado as he put it. Also that Carbone’s ace boon running mate, Martine, had done the same. In the years since their last joint venture with Smoke Jensen, they had married and produced a flock of kids, according to the letter. And they had prospered.

Only now something threatened their new-found way of life. Smoke wondered what was going on down in Mexico that they should feel it necessary to send for him. Carbone’s missive had been less than fully informative. He’d mentioned bandits and an outlaw army, led by someone who called himself El Rey del Norte. Smoke’s Spanish was limited at best, and rusty from lack of recent use, but he knew that meant “The King of the North.” North of what? For all of Carbone’s vagueness and the oddity of that name, Smoke was on his way, and that spoke volumes.

Smoke Jensen was, in the original meaning, a man of his word. He never lied. Not to anyone, for any reason. Old Preacher had taught him the value of honesty, courage, determination and all the virtues that, to his consternation and sorrow, Smoke found dying out far too fast in his own country. Those lessons in basic morality had served him well over the years. Got him in and out of fights far better than sheer brute strength or viciousness alone. Fighting had been a large part of Smoke’s life. He recalled that barely a year ago he had been in a fight-to-the-finish against Major Cosgrove and Jack Biggers, with Pasco, the nephew of Carbone siding him.

That had been up in Red Light, Montana, where Smoke and his wife, Sally, had fought for the rights of Smoke’s niece, Jenny. Before that brouhaha ended, nearly half of the trash class of gunfighters west of St. Louis had been hustled off to meet their Maker, a town lay in ruins, and those behind the scheme to defraud Jenny had paid the ultimate price. Pasco had remained behind as a working hand on Jenny’s ranch, as had a number of others.

Once more taking in the splendor of his beloved mountains, Smoke Jensen wished them well. Jenny was a good girl and deserved the huge, valley-wide ranch she had acquired. There would be time, too, on his journey south, Smoke speculated, to figure out more of what plagued his old friends.

On the south slope of a long ridge, the three men sat their horses. With the animals shoulder-to-shoulder, they completely blocked the road. Hard-bitten men, their grim expressions reflected the purpose of their presence at this particular spot. Len Banks, on the right, and Lonny Banks, on the left, were brothers, and shirt-tail relatives of the man in the middle, Myron Forbes.

Neither of the Banks brothers particularly liked what Forbes had in mind. Yet, they felt compelled to see it through. It would take all three of them, they knew that much. One hell of a tall order to face down the man they sought.

“He has to come this way,” Myron Forbes said, desperate urgency crackling in his words. “From what we learned, he has to.”

“Could be he stayed over in Pueblo,” Len Banks suggested.

“Then we wait,” Forbes bit off.

They saw the hat first. A slowly growing silhouette against the cobalt blue of the Colorado sky. As it progressed over the top of the ridge, it increased in definition; a black, XXXX Stetson Cattleman. Then the face resolved itself; square, rockhard jaw; long, darkly tanned cheeks, with shadowed holes where the eyes would be; longish blond hair riding the slight breeze behind.

“Gawdamn, I think it’s him,” Lonny Banks blurted.

“If it is, today’s the day he dies,” Myron Forbes gritted.

Black-tipped appaloosa ears showed next, then the well-shaped head. The rider crested the ridge in a few strides and started down toward the trio of murderous intent. When he drew within twenty-five feet, he reined in.

“Howdy, boys,” Smoke Jensen offered politely.

“You Smoke Jensen?” Myron Forbes growled.

Smoke Jensen recognized the challenging tone and sighed sadly. He released his reins and used his bent left thumb to ease up the brim of his hat. “I might be. Why?”

“If you are, we came to kill you,” Forbes snarled.

“Do you mind telling me why, exactly, you intend to kill me?” Smoke asked in the reasonable tone he forced himself to use.

“You oughtta know. I’m Myron Forbes,” the big man snarled.

“I’m supposed to know you?”

“Know the name, for sure. You killed my baby brother. Shot him in the back.”

Smoke Jensen slowly shook his head, the sadness a heavy mantle around his shoulders. “I’ve never shot a man named Forbes so far as I know.”

“Gawdamn, Jensen, you killed enough you don’t know all their names?” Lonny Banks blurted.

Again Smoke sighed, his large, calloused right hand resting on his saddle-hardened thigh, close to the smooth butt of his long-used .44 Colt. “I regret to say that is true. Some Blackfeet, Arapaho, a punk or highwayman here and there. But I’ve never back-shot a man unless he turned at the last second, after my hammer fell. And I’ve never shot a man who wasn’t trying to kill me.”

“You seem mighty sure of that,” Len Banks challenged.

“I am,” Smoke told him, his level, gray gaze never leaving Myron.

“You’re lying, goddamnit!” Myron Forbes shouted, working himself up for what he’d come to do.

“I never lie,” Smoke said softly.

“Yes, you do,” Myron rushed to contradict. “With his dying breath, Bubba told me it was Smoke Jensen who shot him.”

“Someone claiming to be, maybe, but not me,” Smoke persisted.

Fury suffused the face of Myron Forbes. “You’re a coward as well as a liar!” he shouted. “Tryin’ to save yer miserable life by hiding behind still more lies. Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!”

With that, Myron Forbes went for his gun. Lonny Banks, beside him and not too bright, did the same. Smoke Jensen moved with a blur. Before the astonished Len Banks could blink, the big .44 came clear of age-worn, well-oiled leather and barked a final denial at Myron Forbes. Myron’s thick body absorbed the lead pellet and reacted with only a slight backward jolt. A soft grunt left his lips. Then he completed his draw and fired off a round that went wild, snapping over Smoke’s head. Lonny had his .45 Peacemaker in action now and developed a sudden surprised expression when his arm shrieked in pain and went as quickly numb.

His revolver flew from unclinched fingers, and Lonny half-turned toward Myron when the older man centered his muzzle on Smoke and screamed defiance. Smoke Jensen shot him again, this time between the eyes. Myron fell soundlessly from the saddle.

Len Banks already had his hands in the air. Lonny found it impossible to move his right shoulder and merely raised his left paw high over the crown of his hat.

“I’m sorry. I really am,” Smoke Jensen told the survivors. “You’ll have to get that wound tended soon,” he advised Lonny. “Are you related to Mr. Forbes?”

“Shirt-tail relatives is all,” Len Banks allowed. “Lord, I never saw nothin’ so fast, Mr. Jensen. Y’all know I never touched iron. Never even tried to draw.” Smoke nodded acknowledgement and Len went on, his tongue in high gear. “We didn’ have much truck with this crazy idea. I mean, who ever heard of Smoke Jensen in south Texas? The real Smoke Jensen, that is.”

“I’m headed south now,” Smoke observed, still a bit on the prod.

“Uh—yeah, but …”

Smoke nodded in the direction of the cooling corpse. “Bundle him up and see he gets a proper burial.”

“Yessir,” Len gulped. “A right proper Christian burial. ’T wern’t your fault, Mr. Jensen. Myron, he sorta pushed it. An’ he got my brother shot up in the bargain.”

“Not much of a bargain for Mr. Forbes, I’d say,” Smoke quipped dryly. “You fellows clean up the mess, then, and I’d say a quick trip back to south Texas would be in order after that.”

“Yessir, yessir, that’s exactly what I was thinkin’,” Len hastily agreed.

Smoke poked out the three expended cartridges and replaced them, then reholstered his .44. He lowered his hat a notch on his forehead and lifted Sidewinder’s reins. Without another word, he steered his way around the obstructing horses and continued on south toward Trinidad, Colorado.

A soft breeze whispered through the tall, stately ranks of pines that scaled the steep slopes forming the valley which housed the Sugarloaf Ranch. It set to trembling the serrated-edged leaves of the aspens. Already some had exchanged their usual silver-green for pale yellow and rich gold. It would be an early winter. The heady aroma of fresh-baked apple pie wafted out the open kitchen window of the tidy house that was home to Smoke and Sally Jensen.

Sally appeared in the doorway, a smudge of flour on her nose, hands on aproned hips. Crocker and the hands should be back soon and Smoke should be with them. She pushed the irritating thought away. They so frequently saw things alike that it was as though they thought with one mind. Friends were in trouble, and it was like Smoke to go at once to their aid. Hadn’t they come to help him often enough? Somehow the name, Mexico, seemed dark and mysterious. A distant, foreign land.

Yet, Smoke had said that he would be in the mountains there. And mountains were mountains, he always maintained. All a man had to do was get to know them a little and be right at home. At least a man raised by that old rapscallion, Preacher, would be, she amended. Oh, how she loved that big slab of a man, Smoke Jensen. And how she missed him already, with him gone only a week. He’d not taken the train, said Sidewinder might take exception to being in a rattling, swaying stock car, and it would be impossible for any stranger to take care of the appaloosa stallion. Smoke had not even taken supplies and a packhorse. Said Carbone would provide everything. The rumble of many hoofs sent her gaze to the broad basin at the upper end of the valley.

Five hands, led by Crocker, the foreman, came on at a fast run. The clear, sweet air of the High Lonesome fogged with dust from the pounding hoofs of nearly two dozen sleek, handsome horses they drove before them. Although Eastern born and bred, educated in the best schools and trained to the duties of a society lady, Sally Reynolds Jensen thrilled at the sight. She loved to ride, and astride, not on one of those silly sidesaddles.

She also loved her husband’s decision to reduce their prize herd of cattle to a few for personal meat and milk use and go into the horse business. The nation was growing rapidly, and expanding westward at an alarming pace. Yet that meant more demand for horses, lots of them, and prices had started to soar nearly two years ago. Not that they needed much in the way of money.

She was wealthy in her own right, and Smoke had put aside enough to live in comfort without turning a hand for the rest of his life. Sally waved to the foreman and her husband’s employees with the towel she intended to put over the pies while they cooled.

Burt Crocker halooed back with a vigorous wave of his stained and battered old Stetson. One hand sprinted forward and opened a corral gate. The running tide of horseflesh swerved at the prompting of the remaining handlers and surged into the circular enclosure of lodgepole pine rails. Burt trotted up to the house.

“Twenty-three prime two-year-olds, Miz Jensen. Smoke’ll be right proud. Suppose it’s none of my business, but when you expectin’ him back?”

“Not for some time, I’m afraid. He promised to telegraph me from El Paso. Might know more then.”

Burt Crocker flashed a white smile. “I’ll tell the boys. Say, is that apple pie I smell?”

“That it is. I baked four of them. There’s venison stew, the last of the garden greens and fresh bread as well. All of you get washed up and come to dinner. I imagine you’ll have an afternoon of it with those rough-run horses.”

“That we will. Sure wish Smoke was here to oversee the shoeing. It’s gonna be pure he—uh—hades, ma’am.”

“Pure hell, indeed,” Sally responded with a chuckle. “My ears aren’t made of velvet, nor rose petals for that matter. If you want, I’ll give you a hand.”

“Pardon, ma’am, but they ain’t saddle-broke as yet,” Crocker protested, hat in hand.

“You get the forge fired up, and I’ll show you I can fashion a mean shoe,” Sally responded. “In fact, I’m looking forward to it. Something to do besides cook and clean house.”

Exquisite taste and a sensitive understanding of the arts reflected in the large sala of the Hacienda La Fortuna, in the state of Durango, Mexico. The vaulted ceiling soared some fifteen feet above the meticulously fitted and immaculately scrubbed flagstones of the flooring. Although a warm day outside, a fire crackled in the walk-in fireplace, where a spit awaited a whole lamb or a haunch of beef to roast. The good taste, however, did not belong to the man sprawled in a throne-like chair at one end of the main hall.

Gustavo Angel Carvajal wore the uniform of a general in the Mexican Army. That he held no such rank, and never had, constituted no bar to his wearing it. The knee-high black boots were smeared with dust, mud and splatters of blood. The ease with which his men had taken the hacienda seemed to heighten his displeasure, rather than elate him. He had a brooding countenance as he listened to the reports of his three most trusted subordinates.

Small of stature, with bowed legs and a growing middle, Carvajal’s five and a half foot frame seemed constructed of spare parts. Close-set, ebon eyes were slightly crossed. The left one had a speck of nebulous gray-white that gave it an odd cast. His ill humor increased as he heard out the last man. When the recitation concluded, Carvajal sprang to his feet and began to pace, hands behind his back.

“Why is it we can take this place with only two losses, yet when I send my best soldiers, my Eagle Warriors and my Jaguar Warriors, to exact tribute from two stubborn haciendados, you return empty-handed?”

Embarrassed, and instantly alerted to the edge of madness in Carvajal’s tone, the trio of lieutenants pondered how to reply. His reference to the army of the Aztec emperor, Montezuma, revealed the possible onset of another of his flights of fancy, in which Carvajal insisted that he was the reincarnation of that selfsame emperor. At least, they thanked the God they weren’t entirely certain existed, he did not go so far in his other persona as to undertake the gruesome ritual of human sacrifice and cannibalism known to the Aztecs. Finally, the tallest, Humberto Regales, cleared his throat and hazarded an answer.

“Your pardon, your Excellency,” he began in the fawning tone so appreciated by Gustavo Carvajal, who called himself El Rey del Norte in his saner moments. “Both of the gentlemen in question are notorious as pistóleros. And apparently they have done the unthinkable. They have trained some of their peones in how to use firearms. A dangerous precedent if it were to become widespread. Armed men can determine their own destinies, and even who it is who rules them.”

“Yes—yes, I understand all of that,” Carvajal snapped. “So, what you are telling me is that they resisted, and did so successfully?”

“It is in our reports,” Regales said quietly.

“What I still can’t understand is why this unnatural quirk remains in my fate. In all of three states of Central Mexico, not a soul refuses to bow down or pay tribute to me, except for these two stubborn, stupid haciendados; Esteban Carbone y Ruis and Miguel Antonio Martine y Garcia. How can this be?”

All three dissembled. “We do not know, Jef—er—Excellency. We have already given Carbone what should have been a death blow. His villages are in ruins, the priest run off, what peones remain on the estancia are frightened and cowed. Yet he continues to resist,” Humberto Regales defended the 230 men of Carvajal’s bandit army.

“Only through the assistance and connivance of that cabrón, Martine,” Carvajal snapped. He reached unthinkingly to one side of the thin wisp of mustache that drooped down below his jawline. He tugged on it while he contemplated what his next order would be. With the wide empty space on his upper lip between the two sides of his mustache, and the equally spindly goatee that sprang from his lower lip, his face had a saturnine appearance.

Abruptly he stopped pacing and turned on his subordinates. “Well, then, we will move on Martine now and see if that doesn’t break the spirits of those two old comrades in arms. And end their willingness to resist.”

Pinpoints of starlight showed faintly, low in the eastern half of the sky’s dome. Thin slices of pink and blue, shot through with soft orange, still limned the western horizon, though not brightly enough to wash out the evening star. Venus, Smoke Jensen mused as he turned thick slices of bacon in the cast iron skillet. The goddess of love. He cut his eyes to the opposite direction. The moon wouldn’t rise until near midnight.

In his reflections, he pictured how the moonlight silvered the tall black pines that rose above his home. He could visualize yellow shafts of light spilling from the windows, a thread of smoke curling from the chimney. Sally would be finishing the details of a substantial and delicious supper. Six hands and Crocker to feed. It made for a lot of work. Sally was up to it, though.

A lot of time had passed since Smoke brought Sally to the Sugarloaf and they realized his dream of a large, comfortable house, its inside walls ringing with the shouts and laughter of happy, healthy children. It had all come with time. Those years had been kind to Sally. To Smoke she still looked the sweet young bride.

In the soft lamp glow of their bedroom, she showed none of the physical traces of bearing three children, two of them twins. They had all dearly loved the High Lonesome, with the same dedication as their father, those kids. And Billy, too, whom they had adopted before Sally’s first pregnancy. Their lovely daughter always cried when she had to leave the Sugarloaf for the outside world. All were gone now.

Billy was in the next to last year at the University of Paris. The twins had gone on to Europe, too. Although far from full-grown, the youngest, Kurt, attended school back East. Sally had insisted. They needed to know more than how to ride, rope, brand and shoot. Only spottily did the schoolhouse in Big Rock offer classes, and never beyond the eighth grade. The children of Smoke Jensen, Sally contended, would have need for more than doing their ciphers, reading and writing on an elementary level. And so, beguiled as always by Sally’s beauty, Smoke had given in on the point.

Smoke’s youngest son attended a preparatory school for “young gentlemen.” Smoke snorted at the thought of the term. Kurt Jensen, with his father’s broad shoulders, big hands, and, at 13, awkward feet, could hardly be confused with those wet-nosed, simpering, pale-faced sissies with whom he now associated.

From the ranch hands, Kurt had learned to cuss like a trooper from the age of eight. He sat a horse like he’d been born on it. All of the kids did. Lean, hard, deeply tanned, Kurt was a product of the High Lonesome and took to “gentling” with all the resistance of an unbroke mustang to a saddle.

Many had been the letters in the early days. Words of protest and outrage poured from the spirited nature of young Master Kurt Jensen. But never a word of his being vicious, brutal or malicious. After the outrage-venting first paragraphs, the letters always indicated that the boys, whose noses Kurt had bloodied, eyes he’d blackened, and lips he’d split, had all had it coming. No, Smoke conceded, it wasn’t the physical punishment meted out by his spirited son. To those docile and controlled Easterners, it was the very idea of anyone standing up for his rights that so outraged them.

To the north, in the gathering darkness, a wolf howled. That surprised Smoke Jensen. He wondered that any wolves remained in so populous an area. Man had always held hatred for the wolf. Perhaps it went back to when man and the wolf vied for possession of a particularly warm and comfortable cave on the edge of a world of ice. Whatever, the emnity, at least on man’s part, had remained to this day. For the wolf’s part, he simply didn’t care. The old timber prowler howled again.

To the south, the high, yapping cries of his lesser cousins, the coyotes, answered. “Hello, Brother Wolf,” Smoke Jensen greeted in a low voice. “Go in peace, if other men will let you.”

Suddenly, Smoke knew why it was he had turned his thoughts to the children. He did not disagree in the least with Sally’s insistence that they receive a quality, university education. Only that he had a deep, serious concern that exposure to Eastern culture might turn his brood into marshmallows.

“Wild and free, like Brother Wolf there, that’s what I want you to be,” Smoke breathed softly. And it was almost a prayer.

He saw the flurry of activity from a distance that prevented recognizing what was happening. Dust boiled up around the legs of a man who stood in a corral. He raised and flung down one arm as though driving stakes with a sledgehammer. Pitiful squawls and the shrill voice of a child reached Smoke Jensen’s ears.

South of Trinidad, Colorado, now, it had been two days since the evening he contemplated his children’s future in the socially correct East. The sounds of this almost human agony drew Smoke Jensen closer. What he saw brought a coldness to his heart that reflected in his icy gray eyes.

A man was beating a small pony with a piece of firewood as long and thick as an arm. To his side, a barefoot boy of about ten looked on in horror and begged the man to stop.

“Please, Paw. Don’t—don’t hurt Dollar no more. She’s bleedin’ ” the little lad shrieked hysterically. Tears ran down his face.

“You stop that bawlin’, hear? Or I’ll take this stick to you.”

“Oh, please—please, Paw. Take your mad out on me. Don’t beat poor Dollar no more.”

Swiftly the man rounded on the boy. “Gawdamn you, Bobby, I got a mind to do jist that.” He back-handed the child with enough force to split the youngster’s upper lip and send him staggering.

Hard, frigid anger burst inside Smoke Jensen. He could never abide anyone who beat women, children or helpless animals. He reined in Sidewinder and dismounted. In three fast strides he reached the corral. Both hands on the top rail, he vaulted over and approached the man.

“I think that’s about enough,” Smoke growled ominously.

The man rounded on him. “Keep yer nose out of this, butt-face,” the red-visaged brute snarled. “Or I’ll kick yer tail up twixt yer shoulderblades.”

“Start kicking, you worthless son.” Smoke’s words came heavy with menace as he pulled on a supple pair of thin leather gloves.

Advancing two steps, the man raised his cudgel as he spat words from froth-flecked lips. “No stranger’s comin’ betwixt a man an’ his kid, or his animals.”

“He ain’t my paw,” the boy shouted. “He’s my step-dad. An’—an’ I hate him.”

“Yer gettin’ ye. . .