Rage Of The Mt Man/Betrayal Of The Mt Man

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

Big As A Bear, Sly As A Cougar, Mean As A Rattlesnake... His Name Is Smoke Jensen: Mountain Man... Smoke Jensen is the most powerful man on the Sugarloaf frontier--and he's all that stands between a greedy group of Eastern slickers and their schemes for a criminal empire in the Rockies. When Smoke heads back to Boston with his wife, it gives his enemies the opening they'd been waiting for: to kill the mountain man and take over the West. But even on the unfamiliar turf of back alleys and teeming docks, Smoke is more than most men can handle...until his wife is kidnapped. Now Smoke is in a fury and in this fight all the way from Boston back to Dodge City and up to Yellowstone, where a brutal showdown with a gang of hired guns awaits...and where, in a blazing hail of bullets and blood, the legend of the big man is about to grow even bigger... There's Nothing A Man Won't Do To Clear His Name They called him fastest gun alive, but Smoke Jensen is determined to stay on the right side of the law. That is, until he's jumped by six low-life robbers who steal his shirt--and his identity. Smoke's tried for robbery and murder, and sentenced to hang in morning. Someone's out to frame the Mountain Man . . . someone who's made a big mistake. Justice--Mountain Man Style Barely managing to escape on the morning of his hanging, Smoke's going after the desperados who've set him up. The gang thinks they have nothing to fear; they've already divided up the loot and gone their separate ways. But Smoke's going to hunt them down one by one. Because nobody frames the Mountain Man. Nobody who plans on staying alive, that is...

Release date: April 19, 2010

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 467

Sample

Slanting sunbeams cast a pink glow on the higher snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains which surrounded the lush valley that housed Sugarloaf, the ranch of Smoke Jensen. Smoke and his wife, Sally, had lived here most of their adult lives. They shared a fondness for the quiet, serenity, and wealth of resources of the fruitful basin.

At least, most of the time Smoke loved it. He had a terrible case of cabin fever. It had been a long, hard winter in the High Lonesome. Eight feet of snow, on the level, still covered a large portion of the Sugarloaf. Yet spring had loudly announced its imminent arrival in the clear, strident call of male cardinals and the noisy splash of invigorated trout in the clear stream that ran near the stout, squarely built log house. Smoke had taken to muttering to himself of late about the long, gray months of enforced inactivity. He did so now as he slipped the cinch strap to free his handsome roan stallion from the saddle.

“Okay, Dandy,” Smoke said softly to the animal. “The nosebag comes next. One coffee box of oats.”

A single large brown eye turned to examine the tall, broad-chested man with the thick mane of black hair and steely gray eyes. To Smoke’s way of thinking, it held an accusing glint. Only one box of oats? it seemed to plead. Smoke’s smooth, square jaw shifted right-left-right and a small, amused smile split his sun-browned, weather-toughened face. A sudden patter of small boots drew his attention to the large, open barn door.

Bobby Harris appeared a moment later. Pug nose in active motion over a scattering of freckles, mop of straw-colored hair sprouting wildly on a head still damp from the first spring sweat, the slender boy paused with hands held out to illustrate his exciting news.

“Mr. Smoke. Linc let me brand two of the new calves this afternoon.”

“Well, now,” Smoke responded, gently teasing the orphaned boy he and Sally had taken in. “It looks like you’re about ready to draw a grown hand’s pay.”

“Aw, I ain’t that big yet.”

“Aren’t,” Smoke corrected.

“Yeah. I aren’t that big yet.” Bobby wrinkled his button nose. “That sounds funny.”

“That’s because it isn’t proper speech. ‘I am not that big yet’ is what you should say. Don’t they teach you anything in the school in Big Rock?”

Bobby looked sheepish. “They try. But it just goes over my head. I don’t understand what they’re talking about.”

“Then ask questions, boy,” Smoke raised his voice to say, putting a little heat in it. “You’ll never learn if you don’t have it made clear to you.”

“Who needs all that educatin’ stuff to work the Sugarloaf?” Bobby countered in childish defiance.

“You do. And you’ll not be on the Sugarloaf all your life. There’s a freight wagon full of opportunities outside this basin. Sally and I came here to find peace, and we did. But a young man needs his adventures before he turns to a more ordered way of life. Take my word for it.”

“Yes, sir,” Bobby chirped. “Like that time Sheriff Carson was tellin’ me about when you shot up all those folks around Bury, Idaho?” Impish delight danced in the boy’s big cobalt eyes.

Smoke Jensen did not have to fake the flash of irritation that warmed his insides. “What the hell is Monte doing, telling tales like that to a kid?” he snapped. “Well, no mind. The harm, if any, has already been done. I suppose you have a head full of wild tales about Smoke Jensen and old Preacher?”

Bobby looked solemn and nodded. “Yessir. But they just make me feel proud living here, being around you.” He produced his most engaging smile.

Smoke fought back the agitation borne of the long days of confinement during blizzards and in their aftermath. With effort he produced a more lighthearted mood. “Well, time for you to take a dip in the horse trough to float off some of today’s dust, then you had best change clothes. You’re eating at the main house tonight.”

Bobby brightened. “Am I? That’s swell. Did Miz Sally bake any pies today?”

Smoke smiled warmly. This was one place he and the boy shared common ground. They dearly loved his wife’s pies. “Yep. Apricot, I think. Made it from some of those we dried last summer.”

Bobby’s eleven-year-old eyes went big and round. “I love apricot.”

“Seems to me you love anything, so long as it is spelled p-i-e. Now, get along with you and wash up.”

Dinner had gone well. Linc Patterson, his vivacious wife, Cynthia, and their two young children had attended. Much to the delight of Bobby Harris and the Patterson youngsters, Sally Jensen had prepared two pies. Smoke was secretly pleased, too. There was nothing he enjoyed more than Sally’s pies and biscuits—crusty and brown on the outside, light, flaky, and soft inside—or just about anything she cooked, for that matter.

Long ago, when he was not much older than Bobby, Smoke had learned to cook from old Preacher, the legendary mountain man who had taken Smoke in and raised him to manhood. Preacher’s culinary accomplishments ran to the school of, “If it’s small enough to put in the pot, stew it. If it’s too big, or red meat, roast or broil it.” Smoke’s kitchen skills developed accordingly. To this day, he retained that first burst of gratitude and delight he’d experienced when he’d discovered that not only was Sally lovely to look at and saucy in temperament, but also a marvelous cook.

Not that Smoke Jensen doted on food like some eastern gourmand. Preacher had seen to the practicality of Smoke’s education. He had become a devotee of moderation. That fact notwithstanding, or perhaps because of it, Smoke believed that when the best could be had, make the most of it. Now, as he lowered the wick in the last lamp in their living room, his mind turned to means to escape the tedium the long winter had engendered.

It centered, as most of Smoke Jensen’s thinking did, on the things of nature. Perhaps a two- or three-day fishing expedition far up the valley, beyond the area developed for the ranch. Or a jaunt down to Denver. Just him and Sally, away and alone for a visit to the theater, visiting the livestock exchange and his old friend Silas Greene. Such things would have to wait, Smoke acknowledged, as he blew out the flickering yellow flame, until the calves and new foals had all been branded.

He had no way to know that Sally envisioned something entirely different for them. Despite the difficulty of traversing the miles to Big Rock, Sally had maintained relatively regular communications with her family back in Keene, New Hampshire. High on her list of concerns was the state of her mother’s health. Her father’s last letter had brought the welcome news of considerable improvement. It had also contained intelligence regarding the top priority for Sally Jensen.

She would have to broach the subject with Smoke at the earliest opportunity, in order to have any hope of success. That would come over breakfast the next morning, she decided, as she arranged herself in a suitably suggestive posture on the large, comfortable bed. Wavering yellow light announced the approach of her husband.

Smoke Jensen entered the room and peered beyond the saffron ball of candlelight. His lighthearted smile bloomed into a wide grin of anticipation when he saw his wife’s position. “I’ll undress and put out the light,” he offered.

“No, leave it burning,” Sally responded breathily. “I like to watch you make love to me.”

Smoke Jensen lay beside his Sally in a deep, restorative slumber. His keen senses were finely honed by Preacher’s constant advice and example, and he may well have noted the series of five soft crumps in the distance. A moment later, he definitely heard the sharp crack as a huge wall of snow and ice broke away from the mountain above their stout log house.

Smoke sat upright, fully alert, by the time the rumble of the avalanche reached his ears. Gently he shook Sally to rouse her. “Something’s wrong,” he whispered calmly.

“Wha—what?” Sally asked groggily.

By then, Smoke had analyzed the sounds that had reached him. “Something’s happened to break off the snow wall above here. There’s an avalanche. Put on shoes, wrap up in warm clothing. We have to get away from the house.”

Alarmed, Sally came upright, one hand going to her long, golden locks in an unconscious feminine gesture. “Will—will it hit the house?”

“We can’t take that chance,” Smoke declared from his side of the bed, where he worked to pull on his trousers.

His boots came next, while Sally rushed to a large, old armoire to find a robe and a heavy coat. From outside, the faint thunder of cascading snow grew steadily louder. Smoke slid into a sheepskin coat and helped Sally into hers. They made their way to the front door.

Outside, the stars still shone from above. Their glow turned the Colorado countryside to silver. Slowly, small puffs and swirls of wind-borne white began to obscure the sky. Smoke took Sally by one arm and directed her away at a right angle to the avalanche. Billowing ice crystals and fairy-lace snowflakes pulled a black cloud over the heavens.

The sound of the descending snow made it impossible to hear words shouted next to one’s ear.

Sally stumbled and Smoke gripped hard to steady her. He also chanced a quick glance to his left, toward the descending wall of snow. It rolled and tumbled, while great gouts shot into the air. The leading edge crashed into a sturdy old pine at the uphill end of a large boulder a hundred yards behind the house. Like the parting of the Red Sea, the tumbling snow and ice cleaved in twain around the huge stone obstruction.

It flowed unceasingly to either side, spread wider, and rushed toward the barns and bunkhouse to the right of the house. It sent small, rounded clumps skittering across the ground toward Smoke and Sally on the left. With a seething hiss, the avalanche passed some ten feet behind the Jensens. Slowly the ominous rumble stilled, saved only in the echoes from across the basin.

An even more alarming silence blanketed the Sugarloaf. Small streamers of still mobile snow made the sound of escaping steam as they poured on down over the white rubble that now covered the bunkhouse. Sally’s chest heaved in great gasps. Smoke stood for a stunned moment before the realization of what he saw registered.

Faintly, as though from a mile’s distance, he heard the thin, broken cries from the direction of the inundated bunkhouse. The sky lightened as the haze of particles thinned. Sally turned a stricken face toward Smoke.

“What happened to the bunkhouse? Where is it?” Smoke waved a hand in the proper direction. “It’s . . . under there.”

“The men—did they get out?” Sally asked, overcome with worry.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Then Smoke amended his statement when he saw movement within the snow and the dark silhouettes of heads and the upper torsos of men emerging from the deep bank of snow. “Wait a minute, some of them made it out.”

“We have to do something,” Sally urged. By some unusual quirk, their house had been spared, yet the hands remained in terrible danger.

Smoke nodded, thinking, devising a plan. “Go to the small toolshed. Bring shovels. I’m going to put these men to scooping out an escape route for the others.”

One of the ranch hands stumbled toward Smoke and Sally. Gasping, he stopped before his employer and gestured behind him at the deep pile. “Thank God, there ain’t many winders in that place. That snow slide knocked the building plumb off its foundation. If the walls had been weakened by a lot of winders, we’d all be goners.”

“How are the men?” Smoke asked anxiously.

“All right, considering. There’s bumps and bruises, a couple broken arms, one broken leg, but the whole crew rode it out. Believe me, it was worse ’n the hurricane deck of a mustang bronc. I cracked my head and wound up wedged under little Bobby’s bunk.”

Anxiety clutched at Sally Jensen. “What about the boy? Is he one of the hurt?”

“No, ma’am, just a few scrapes. He ought to be along in a minute or two. The boys are handin’out the ones hurt bad first.”

Another rumble sounded from above and everyone froze, expressions showing their alarm. Smoke Jensen began automatically to tick off the seconds. Another crackling groan from the deteriorating snow, longer and louder. Only seven seconds. It could let go at any time. He turned to Sally, kept his voice calm.

“Go for those shovels. Only stay in the shed. It’s good and strong. I’ll send men to get the tools.” Without waiting for a reply, he set off running toward the ruined bunkhouse.

“What about the livestock that was in the corral... that was over there?” the young wrangler ended wonderingly, eyes fixed on a ripple-surfaced bed of snow. Not even a fence post showed above it.

“We’ll put men on it as fast as possible,” Smoke Jensen directed.

Half a dozen men stood in dazed dejection outside the short tunnel through the rubble of the avalanche. Some shivered, and one stockman cradled a limp broken arm. Another head wormed up out of the icy tomb.

“Yer boy, Bobby, is comin’ up next, Mr. Jensen,” the next wrangler out of the hole announced.

“Good. Try to work faster here, and I want you boys to get started digging out the horses in that corral,” Smoke commanded. “Go to the tool shed for shovels. Be quick about it, but take it easy. Some of them may be down on all fours.”

With a strident crack and prolonged screech, another section of the snow overhang gave way and raced breathlessly down on the ranch headquarters. The men scattered—all except Smoke Jensen, who rushed to the opening in the mound to try to retrieve Bobby Harris.

To Smoke Jensen’s perception, the decaying shelf of snow-pack remained in its place on the mountainside one second, and the next it smacked him in the back and drove him down the short tunnel into the engulfed bunkhouse. A cloud of crystals hung in the air as the rumble of the secondary avalanche died out. Smoke worked his hands under his chest and levered his torso upward. He shed snow in a shower. He found himself face-to-face with an anxious Bobby Harris.

“Smoke, are you all right?” the small lad asked.

“I’m fine. How about you?”

“We got bounced around some.” Bobby indicated the half dozen ranch hands still inside.

“Likely we’ll get some more if we don’t dig our way out of here fast,” Smoke advised.

Two of the wranglers began to pull heavy slabs of compressed snow off Smoke’s legs. When most of the pressure eased, Smoke made a powerful thrust and broke free. He made a quick study of the shambles inside the bunkhouse.

“Can you get the door open?” he asked.

“Naw, boss. It swings out, remember?”

Smoke examined the hinge pins. “One of you take a knife and slip these pins. We’ll pull the door down. It’ll make a bigger tunnel to get us out.”

Surprisingly, the potbellied stove had not been overturned. It sat skewed on its box of sand, emitting a cherry glow in the darkened room. The stovepipe had been scattered in sections on the floor, and a thick haze of smoke clung to the roofing above the rafters. Smoke realized they could suffocate if they didn’t escape soon.

He searched the floor for what he wanted and came up with a tin dinner plate. “Once that door is out of the way, use your plates to dig in the snow,” he instructed. “Move fast, but be sure to pack the upper surface as you go.”

To set the example, Smoke Jensen was first to hack away at the white wall outside the bunkhouse. He hurled the snow behind him into the room and burrowed at an upward angle. Space factors limited the tunnelers to three, one crouched below Smoke and Sam Walker. At first they made good progress.

“Dang it,” Sam exclaimed, after they had dug some three feet outside the door. “I’ve hit a big hunk of ice.”

“Same here,” Smoke advised. “We’ll have to try to dig around it.”

Tense minutes went past with little progress being made. To deviate would be to dig forever without a reference point. Or to tunnel beyond their source of air. When Smoke and his wranglers began to sweat, Smoke called for a change. Three others took their places at the barrier of white.

Smoke used some of the accumulated snow to douse the fire. One of the Sugarloaf hands made a grumbled protest. Smoke said nothing, only pointed at the thickening cloud over their heads. Looking chagrined, the wrangler said no more. He turned away to work at the window where the first escape had been made.

It looked mighty bleak, Smoke had to admit. Despite the hopelessness of their task, Smoke never lost his fierce determination to bring them all out of there alive. He joined the complainer at the window.

“You’re right. This is the shortest way. Or at least, it was,” Smoke told him.

“Do you think we’ve got a chance, Mr. Jensen?” His worried expression matched his words.

“Yes, if we keep at it.”

“Can I help?” Bobby asked eagerly.

Smoke considered it. “I suppose so. When we break through, you’re the smallest, so I want you to wriggle up to the surface and call for help.”

“Will—will there be anybody out there?” Bobby asked.

“There had better be,” Smoke stated flatly.

After twenty minutes more, with the breathable air supply dangerously short, Smoke Jensen began to hear muffled spurts of voices. Then came a scraping sound. He dug harder. A small, black hole appeared in the white screen before his eyes. Swiftly it grew larger. He could hear the hands talking clearly now. With a final jab of his tin plate, Smoke broke through into the open.

“There! There’s somebody’s hand,” Smoke heard the shout.

He slid back and wrapped big, square hands around Bobby’s waist. He hoisted the boy up over the windowsill. “Crawl on out of there, Bobby,” he instructed.

A shower of icy flakes descended from Bobby Harris’s boots into the face of Smoke Jensen. A ragged cheer came from the throats of the rescuers outside. Smoke relaxed for the first time since the avalanche had struck. It wouldn’t be long now.

An alarmed yelp and muffled boom turned Smoke around. A thick, moving shaft of snow propelled the wranglers back inside the bunkhouse, partly burying them. The primary tunnel had collapsed.

With three quick strides, Smoke Jensen reached the nearest of the snow-interred hands. He made big, scooping motions with his arms until he could grab both ankles and drag the unfortunate man out of his frigid tomb. Spluttering, the wrangler sat upright and pointed to the mound of crystalized flakes.

“Zeke an’ Harb are still under there,” he gasped.

“Go to the window and crawl out if you can,” Smoke ordered.

He went to work at once, helped by Sam Waters. They found Harbinson Yates quickly and yanked him free. Zeke Tucker had been driven back against the far wall. He sat in a semi-erect position, the huge slab of ice held in his lap. Smoke and Sam strained to remove the heavy object and it thudded loudly on the plank floor when released.

Zeke’s color returned and he spoke through heavy panting. “I . . . think . . . the way is open. Th—this was . . . was the . . . cork in the . . . bottle.”

“Glad you can take it so lightly,” Smoke said dryly.

Yellow light from a kerosene lantern spilled down through the doorway into the bunkhouse. “You all right down there?”

“Nothing that warm, dry clothes and a couple of shots of whiskey couldn’t cure,” Smoke replied. Then he recalled the fragmentary report he had been given before the second snow slide. “Have those who were injured been taken care of?”

“Oh, yeah, boss. If none of you is hurt, we’ll get you out in a minute.”

“Hey, what about me?” Zeke protested. “I got the livin’ hell squeezed out of me.”

“So that’s why your eyes are bugged out, Zeke,” Smoke observed through a chuckle. Then, suddenly, everyone began to laugh, as the tension drained away with the danger.

From the ten-foot-high, nearly floor-to-ceiling, windows of the Café London, located on the top floor of the Windsor Hotel in Denver, one could not tell that the High Lonesome still languished in the final throes of the most severe winter on record. Golden sunlight slanted warmly into the room, while below, on the street, children ran noisily home from school, protected by only the lightest of jackets.

Mid-afternoon traffic flowed with its usual jumble past the five-story edifice, designed like Windsor Castle in England. A favorite, “must do” stop for Europeans visiting the West, the Windsor also catered to the discriminating tastes of the wealthier, more traveled easterners. At two o’clock the noon crowd had dwindled in the fashionable pub-style eatery. White-jacketed waiters mutedly took orders from the few late arrivals, and walked across the thick carpets soundlessly, as though on a cloud. Not even the rattle and clatter of the dishwashers and other kitchen help intruded on the two men seated at a table in a corner turret window.

Phineas Lathrop had a striking appearance. He was in his early fifties, and the widow’s peak of his lush hair had not the slightest sprinkling of gray. What accentuated his remarkable good looks were two large streaks of white hair at his temples, shaped like the wings of a bird. He peered at his associate down a long, aquiline nose, through a pince-nez perched near the slightly bulbous tip.

“Well, Arnold, this is a far cry from Boston, I daresay,” Lathrop declared, in jovial spirits.

“Yes, it certainly is that,” Arnold Langford Cabbott returned; his words coated in the syrupy drawl of a New Englander.

A bit of a dandy, Arnold Cabbott wore the latest fashion, his vest as bright as the plumage of a scarlet tanager. A large, puffy silk cravat peeked from the V neckline, set off by a sea of snowy-white boiled and starched shirt. Junior to Lathrop by some seven years, he was the youngest of the five-man consortium established to engender Phineas Lathrop’s grand project.

Lathrop leaned forward slightly, his deep-set eyes burning as usual with a fixed, glassy walnut stare. “What was so urgent that it brought you so far away from your bully-boys down on the docks?”

Such colorful reference to the men of his Brotherhood of Longshoremen caused Arnold Cabbott to wince. He reached soft, pallid fingers to the arched flow of his walrus mustache and stroked it absently. While he toyed with the silken light brown strands, Arnold considered how to break his news to Phineas. At last he sighed as their waiter approached with the old-fashioneds both had ordered.

Once the drinks had been put in place and the waiter had departed, Arnold leaned across the table and spoke softly. “There’s a problem with our associates in New York. They are reluctant to commit the money. At least until our—ah—difficulties are resolved with that uncooth lout to the north of here.”

“Ah! I see. Having the available funds is always a problem. However, we should be hearing about that other matter any day now. I dispatched my most trustworthy subordinate to deal with it.” Phineas Lathrop paused and sipped from his drink. “Excellent,” he pronounced it. “They are so much better with good Monongahela rye. Out here you have to specify or you get rough-edged bourbon.”

Arnold sent the nervous glance of his watery blue eyes around the dining area. “What do you mean, ‘deal with’?”

“You’ll know when Wade Tanner returns from the high mountains,” Phineas said, evading the issue. “I left word at the desk that we would be here in the event he gets back today.” He broke off as the waiter approached again, order pad in hand. “Ah, yes,” Phineas Lathrop sighed, his eyes giving a quick, final appraisal of the menu. “I’ll have the medallions of beef in burgundy mushroom sauce. A side of potatoes Henri, some creamed leeks, and a salad of tossed greens.”

“For today, we have a combination of chicory, dandelion, and lettuce from our kitchen garden, sir. Will that be satisfactory?”

“Certainly, certainly. Does that come with a dressing?”

“Yes, sir. Chef Henri’s own rose-petal mayonnaise.”

Phineas Lathrop all but clapped his hands in delight. “Splendid.”

Arnold Cabbott ordered mountain oysters and observed to Phineas Lathrop that it was remarkable that shellfish lived at such high altitude and in such icy waters. Lathrop, who had been in Denver for more than two months and had learned the ropes, hadn’t the heart to advise his associate of the true nature of the entree.

To the waiter, he did add, “We’ll have a bottle of your best white wine with the salads, and a bottle of claret with the entrees.”

Left to await the wine, Arnold Cabbott leaned across the table again and spoke with greater force. “Our friends in New York insist on immediate action. They will not release a penny until they know the obstacle keeping us from our achieving our goal has been removed.”

Lathrop screwed the fleshy lips of his large mouth into a moue of distaste. “You’re talking like a bloody accountant, Arnold. I am in charge in the West, and I’ll decide when funds are to be released for the progress of the enterprise. If those penurious bastards in New York don’t like that, they can be cut out altogether.”

“We need their money, Phineas. Desperately. That’s why I came here to appeal to you to return with me and convince them yourself. You convinced them once, I know you can talk open their pocketbooks now that we’re in the clutch.”

Lathrop’s heavy black brows shot upward. “Aha! So that’s what this excursion into the Rockies is all about. Are things really so desperate?”

“Yes, they are! You should know. That walkout on the docks is sucking us dry. We have to pay Sean O’Boyle and his longshoremen their pittance every week in order to keep them out. We can break the backs of the shipping companies and then move in and take over. But we must have the cash to do it, all of it! No bank would lend the money to buy a shipping company plagued by a wildcat walkout.” Conscious of how unfashionable his ardor appeared, Cabbott caught himself, paused, then spoke through an indulgent chuckle. “And we can hardly confide in the bankers that we’re responsible for the strike.

“So, to cover all of that, and continue to finance your acquisitions out here, we need the New York people,” Arnold pressed his point. “You, more than anyone else, has the power to persuade them.”

Phineas Lathrop sighed heavily and made to respond in agreement. Then he brightened as he caught sight of the head waiter striding in their direction. Behind that worthy came the most unlikely patron for the establishment. The sour expression on Reynard’s face advertised his agreement with that evaluation.

Dressed in dust and sweat-stained range clothes, his scuffed boots clumping noisily on runover heels, a man in his early forties followed the fastidious maître d’ to the corner table. He had cold, riveting black eyes that could be clearly seen from the distance, in an angular face topped by thick, slicked-back black hair, on which perched a coal-colored derby hat.

“Mr. Lathrop,” Reynard spoke deferentially. “This—ah—gentleman claims to have an appointment with you.”

“That’s correct, Reynard. Thank you,” Lathrop dismissed. To the newcomer, “Sit down, Wade.”

“Always a pleasure to see you, Mr. Lathrop. And you, sir?” he asked in a cultured, courteous tone that belied his scruffy appearance and the menace of a brace of Smith and Wesson American .44s slung low on his hips.

“Forgive my manners. This is an associate from back East, Arnold Cabbott. Wade Tanner, my—ah—chief enforcer, shall we say. You have good news for me, Wade?

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cabbott. Yes, Mr. Lathrop. That dynamite worked splendidly. You should have no difficulty obtaining the desired property now, and the others, without a rallying figure, should capitulate readily.”

Arnold Cabbott blinked at this cultured speech pouring from under the large, wide nose, past rabbity teeth that heightened a certain rodentlike appearance. Tanner looked the part of the lowliest of common gunmen, yet talked like a gentleman. If only his boastful preamble proved true, their troubles would be over.

“You are absolutely sure of that?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Smoke Jensen is now just a memory.”

For Sally Jensen, the avalanche was the final straw. She was not one to make issues out of frivolous discomforts, but the snow slide that had nearly claimed the life of her husband and many of his workers hardened Sally’s determination to escape the rigors of the past winter. Hands still worked to dig out the imprisoned livestock and their damaged bunkhouse. With the stove dislodged, no cooking could be done in the men’s quarters. Sally did double duty, helped by Cynthia Patterson, to serve hot, filling meals to the ranch employees.

She put down a skillet now to peer through the open rear door and up the face of the mountain that, to her way of thinking, had betrayed them. Was that a blackened smudge she saw against the sparkling white of the snow ledge? Her eyes watered at the brightness and strain. There appeared to be two—no, three—dark spots. Her vision was no longer as sharp as when their children had been the age of Bobby Harris. Smoke would be able to tell, Sally assured herself. But first she must make it clear to him how badly she needed to get away from the basin.

Turning from the stove, she s