Trek of the Mountain Man

Book 29: Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns; Romance

Synopsis

USA Today best-selling author William W. Johnstone delivers an exciting tale from his Mountain Man series. Smoke Jensen once sought revenge for the murder of his wife and child, but now he is a peaceful man. That won’t stop Bill Pike, Texas bounty hunter, from collecting a reward for an old claim on Smoke’s head. As for Smoke’s woman, Bill has plans for her that will ensnare Smoke and his mountain men in a deadly trap.

Release date: September 25, 2018

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

William Pike, known to one and all as Bill, stood up in his stirrups and stretched his neck and back, groaning with pleasure as the knots and kinks in his muscles relaxed. It had been a long ride from Corpus Christi, Texas, to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

He sat back against the cantle of his saddle and turned to look at the nine men riding with him. They were a disreputable and dangerous-looking lot. Most had beards, some grown to cover knife or bullet scars, others just worn because of the lack of hot water while riding the owlhoot trail.

Pike and his men thought of themselves as Regulators—a fancy term for bounty hunters that shot first and asked questions later. They were fresh from the infamous Nueces Strip, a corridor of land stretching from Corpus Christi down to the Mexican border. They’d made a good living there, killing or capturing the Mexican bandidos who came up from Mexico looking for easy pickings among the many settlers coming to the area from the East. That had all come to a grinding halt when the Texas Rangers sent in a man named McNally and a corps of other Rangers every bit as tough and ruthless as Pike and his Regulators. Suddenly, the pickings were as slim as the twelve-inch stiletto Pike carried in his boot. The bandidos began to shy away from the area, and the other robbers and rapists and footpads were of such a small danger they carried very low prices on their heads.

Looking for a new territory to ply their trade, Pike and his men had ridden to Utah, home of many outlaws trying to hide from John Law. There he’d come upon what he thought to be a golden opportunity—a wanted poster offering a king’s ransom for one man, a man who lived in Colorado.

Pike turned his glance from his men to stare down the ridge on which he’d stopped his mount.

“Hey, Bill,” Rufus Gordon called from the rear of the line of men.

“Yeah, Rufe, whatta ya want?” Pike answered without looking back.

“You said once we got to Colorado, you’d tell us why you brung us here. How about it?”

Pike nodded. He guessed it was about time to let the men in on it. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a yellowed, wrinkled paper. He unfolded it and held it up for the men to see. “This here wanted poster is gonna make us rich, boys,” he said, his grin exposing blackened, crooked teeth under his handlebar mustache.

“What’s it say, Bill?” Gordon asked. “I can’t read it from back here.”

Hank Snow, a stone killer who was himself wanted for murder and rape in three states, laughed out loud. “Hell, Rufe, you couldn’t read it if’n it were in your hands.”

He was referring to the fact that Rufus Gordon carried a sawed-off ten-gauge shotgun in a holster on his hip instead of a pistol because he was so nearsighted he couldn’t see anyone more than a few feet away from him.

“That’s a lie an’ you know it, Hank,” Gordon replied. “I can read as good as you any day.”

“That’s not sayin’ much,” Blackie Johnson sneered. “Hank never learned to read neither.”

Pike cleared his throat to get his men’s attention. “Well, here’s what this poster says, boys.” He read aloud:

“Ten thousand greenbacks, boys,” Pike continued. “That’s nothing to sneeze at.”

“Hell,” Gordon said, counting on his fingers, “that’s. . . uh . . . exactly how much is that for each of us, Bill?” “That is one thousand dollars apiece, gentlemen,” Bill answered.

Hank Snow shifted the chaw of tobacco from one cheek to the other, leaned over, and spat a stream of brown juice at a horned toad sitting on a rock watching the men. “That’s if none of us gets killed ’fore we collect it,” Snow said around the tobacco. “More if a couple of us catch a lead pill.”

“Hank, the poster’s fer one man, not a whole gang,” Gordon argued. “How’s one man gonna stand up to us, the meanest, baddest gents west of the Pecos?”

Snow looked at Gordon and spat again, his eyes as black as the beard on his cheeks. “Yore forgittin’ somethin’, Rufe,” he said in a low voice. “Ten grand on one man’s head must mean he ain’t no pilgrim hisself.” He turned his gaze to Pike. “What’d this hombre do to make hisself so valuable, Bill?”

“Yeah,” Gordon added, “what did the sheriff up there tell ya?”

“I didn’t exactly talk to the sheriff, boys,” Pike said. “I didn’t want nobody else to know we was after this Jensen feller. I got my information, along with this wanted poster, from a miner I met in a saloon up in Utah.”

“Well,” Snow said, “we’re waitin’.”

“This miner said he was in Bury, Idaho Territory, a few years back when some gents named Stratton, Potter, an’ Richards rode into town with a gang of outlaws. He said there were ’bout twenty or so of ’em all told. A little later, this Jensen, along with a bunch of old mountain men, surrounded the town and told all of the miners and townsfolk to get outta town. They’d come for the gang.”

“What’d the gang do to get Jensen an’ the mountain men all riled up?” Blackie asked.

Pike grinned. “Nothin’ much. Just killed Jensen’s wife an’ baby boy, an’ stole all the gold he’d spent a year minin’.”

“So Jensen an’ his gang rode into town an’ shot up the other feller’s gang?” Snow asked.

Pike shook his head. “Nope. The old miner said all of the folks in town gathered on the ridges overlooking Bury and sat an’ watched as Jensen rode into town alone to face down the gang.”

“You mean one man went up against over twenty outlaws by hisself?” Gordon asked.

Pike nodded. “Yep. The miner says it was like a war down there, an’ when it was over, Smoke Jensen was the last man standing.”1

“Jesus,” Gordon said. “I can see why he’s worth ten thousand dollars.”

Pike scowled. “I didn’t say it was gonna be easy, boys. But a thousand dollars apiece is more’n we made in a year down on the Nueces Strip.”

“You’re forgettin’ one thing, Bill,” Snow said. “How the hell are we gonna find one man in these mountains?”

Pike grinned and pointed over his shoulder down the ridge. “Easy. That there’s Smoke Jensen’s ranch, the Sugarloaf. I hear he’s given up his guns and turned into a peaceable gentleman rancher. I figger we’ll ride in and surround the place. Kill any son of a bitch that makes a move toward a gun. This poster says he’s wanted dead or alive, so it’s just as easy, maybe easier, to kill the bastard.”

Blackie Johnson cleared his throat. “Uh, Bill. That there wanted poster don’t say nothin’ ’bout no ranch hands being wanted dead or alive.”

Hank Snow laughed and slapped his thigh. “Hell, Blackie,” he called as he punched brass into his six-gun. “You weren’t so particular who you killed down Corpus way last year.”

“That was different,” Blackie growled back at Snow. “Them was Mexicans up from Mexico, an’ you know a Mexican’s just a little better’n an Injun.”

“Don’t worry about it, Blackie,” Bill Pike said. “We won’t kill nobody unless they draw down on us first.”

His men began loading their shotguns and rifles while they looked down on the Sugarloaf, thinking this was going to be the easiest money they’d ever earned.

“He’ll most likely have a woman with him, so we’ll take her too an’ have some fun with her tonight,” Pike said.

When Blackie started to speak, Pike held up his hand. “Now, go easy Blackie. We won’t kill her, just work her a little bit to have us some fun.”

Blackie scowled but held his tongue, not wanting to be labeled a sissy by these tough men. He remembered how Whitey Jenkins had been brutally beaten down near Harlingen when he’d objected to Hank raping a young girl in her teens who they’d come upon on the road back to Corpus Christi.

Hank had cut the girl up pretty bad, and then he’d beaten Jenkins within an inch of his life. None of the men had stood up for Jenkins, with most saying he’d deserved what he got for being such a sissy about what Hank had done. Blackie didn’t intend to make the same mistake.

Once the men were ready, Pike held up his hand and yelled, “Let’s ride, boys!”

The ten men, loaded for bear, spurred their mounts down the ridge toward Smoke Jensen’s ranch. As they rode, holding out six-shooters, rifles, and shotguns, Pike grinned as he thought about how they were going to kill Jensen and all his hands and take his woman for their pleasure....

“You cold-mouthed son of a flea-bag good-for-nothin’. . . !” Pearlie yelled, struggling to hold on as his horse bucked and tried to swallow his head in the chill morning air.

Cal looked up from the morning fire, staring through steam rising off his coffee, and laughed. “Hey, Pearlie. When are you gonna learn to walk that hoss of yours around a little bit ’fore you try and mount him?” he hollered.

Pearlie held on to the saddle horn with one hand and the reins with another as his horse crow-hopped and danced around the cowboys’ camp.

Smoke Jensen smiled as he screwed a cigarette into his face and bent over a match. He tipped smoke out of his nostrils, and watched as Pearlie finally regained some control over his mount and walked it toward the fire.

“Maybe he just needs a little coffee,” Smoke offered while he took the blackened coffeepot off the coals and poured a cupful for Pearlie.

Pearlie jumped down out of the saddle, gave his horse a baleful look, and flicked the reins over a limb of one of the numerous cottonwood trees that lined the stream where they’d camped the night before.

He was still muttering to himself when he gratefully accepted the cup of steaming brew from Smoke and took a deep draught.

Cal winked at Smoke and approached them. “Say, Pearlie,” he said, trying to suppress a grin. “I know a man who’s right handy with horses over at Big Rock. He could probably train that mount of your’n so he wouldn’t do that every morning when you get on him.”

Pearlie glared at Cal over the rim of his cup, his eyes flat and his expression black. “Cal, you know there ain’t nobody in Big Rock knows any more ’bout horseflesh than I do,” Pearlie said in an even voice.

Cal cut his eyes over at Cold, the name Pearlie had given his horse when it became evident he was extremely cold-mouthed in the morning and would buck for five to ten minutes the first time Pearlie got on him every day.

“Oh, yeah,” Cal replied, now openly grinning. “I can see how well-trained Cold is.”

Pearlie set his cup down and began to make himself a cigarette out of his fixin’s.

“Just because that broken-down old nag of yours doesn’t have enough spirit to buck, don’t mean he’s any better trained than Cold,” he said.

Cal looked at Smoke and rolled his eyes. Smoke was used to this byplay between Cal and Pearlie, and would’ve been worried if it ever stopped. He knew the two would each put their lives on the line for each other without a second thought.

Smoke took a final drag of his cigarette and threw the butt in the fire. “If you two children are through jawing at each other,” he said, “we’ve still got some beeves to move.”

“Yes, sir,” Cal said, dumping his coffee on the hot coals of the fire and beginning to put the dishes from their breakfast away. “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.” He looked over his shoulder and grinned. “After all, I don’t have to spend a lot of time gettin’ my mount ready to ride.”

They were moving a small herd of fifty or so heifers south from the Sugarloaf to a distant neighbor’s spread. The neighbor, a man by the name of Wiley, had made the mistake of buying some cattle from a seller who’d gotten them in south Texas the year before. Wiley’s herd had been almost completely wiped out by Mexican tick fever carried by the Texas cattle.

When Sally, Smoke’s wife, heard about the Wileys’ plight from the man’s wife one day in the general store in Big Rock, she’d immediately offered to stake them to a new starter herd.

“But Mrs. Jensen,” the woman had said with tears in her eyes, “we don’t have no money to buy a new herd with right now. In fact, Sam’s been talking about heading back East to try and get a stake to start over.”

“Don’t you worry about paying us for the herd, Mrs. Wiley,” Sally had said. “There’ll be plenty of time to talk about that after you’ve built the herd up enough to sell some to market.”

“But you don’t hardly know us at all,” Mrs. Wiley said.

“You’re our neighbors,” Sally answered. “That’s all I need to know.”

So now, in the final days of autumn before the winter snows would come to the Colorado high country, Smoke and the boys were making good on Sally’s promise and driving the young beeves to the Wiley ranch.

As they got mounted up, Pearlie held up a coin. “Call it, Cal,” he said.

“We ain’t flippin’ no coin for the drag position today, Pearlie. I rode it all day yesterday an’ my throat is plumb raw from all the dust I ate.”

The drag position on a trail drive, riding at the rear of the herd to round up stragglers, is the worst possible place to be. A moving herd of cattle throws up a lot of dust in the air, most of which is breathed in by the drag rider.

“Hey, Cal,” Pearlie argued. “As the youngest man on the team, you’re supposed to ride drag every day. I think I’m bein’ right nice to give you a chance to win the point position by flippin’ for it.”

“But I always lose!” Cal complained.

“It ain’t my fault you the unluckiest man in Colorado,” Pearlie countered.

“Oh, all right,” Cal said. “I call tails.”

Pearlie held out his left hand and flipped a coin. He caught it and turned it over onto the back of his right hand. “Heads,” he said shortly, and spurred his horse toward the front of the herd.

As Pearly rode past, Smoke said, “Don’t you ever feel guilty, cheating Cal like that?”

“Why?” Pearlie asked, his face a mask of innocence as he slowed his horse to a stop in front of Smoke. “What do you mean?”

Smoke shook his head. “I know all about those two coins you had made by the blacksmith in town. One with two heads and one with two tails.”

Pearlie looked over his shoulder to see if Cal had heard what Smoke said. The boy was already fifty yards away and fast disappearing in the dust cloud that rose behind the herd. “You gonna tell Cal, Smoke?”

“No. The boy is a grown man now, and he’s got to learn to find these things out for himself. It’s not up to me to teach him how not to be cheated . . . especially by his best friend.”

Pearlie got a pained expression on his face. “Aw, Smoke, I ain’t exactly cheatin’ Cal,” he said, though it was clear he wasn’t proud of what he’d done.

Smoke shrugged and smiled. “If it’s not cheating, what exactly would you call it, Pearlie?”

Pearlie opened his mouth to reply, stopped, and just hung his head as he rode off toward the rear of the herd to change places with Cal.

Smoke was proud of him. Both of the young men were far more to him than just hired hands. In fact, both he and Sally felt as if the two were members of their family, and treated them accordingly.

As one of the beeves bolted from the herd and ran past Smoke, he pulled his rope off his saddle horn, let out a four-foot section, and whirled it in a circle as he spurred his horse, Joker, after the errant animal. Time to quit daydreaming and get to work, he thought, exulting in being back on the trail after a summer of working around the ranch.

Smoke had come to the high country of Colorado almost twenty years before with his father from Missouri to make a new life for them. Here they’d met up with an old mountain man named Preacher, who took both the pilgrims, as he called them, under his wing and taught them the facts of life on the frontier.

After Smoke’s father was killed, Smoke rode with Preacher for many years, learning all the experienced mountain man could teach him about the mountains he so loved. It wasn’t long before Smoke himself became one of the region’s most famous mountain men, becoming a legend in his own time among that strange breed of men who had no use for civilization and its trappings.

After outlaws killed his wife and son, Smoke and Preacher tracked them down to Idaho and Smoke killed every one of the sons of bitches in face-to-face combat. This put him on the owlhoot trail for a time and he was a wanted man, until some federal marshals found out the truth and got him a pardon from the governor.

It was shortly after that when Smoke met up with a schoolteacher named Sally Reynolds and married her. They moved to the area where they lived now and founded their ranch, the Sugarloaf. Smoke had stayed on the right side of the law ever since.

Once the herd was bedded down for the night, Smoke and the boys made camp near a stream so they’d have water for cooking, though it was much too cold for bathing.

As they sat around the fire, eating beans and fatback bacon cooked in a skillet, Smoke reached in a paper sack and took out a handful of biscuits Sally had prepared for them before they left the Sugarloaf.

He pitched a couple to Cal and to Pearlie and kept some for himself.

Pearlie used the biscuit to sop up some of the juice from the bacon and popped it in his mouth. He closed his eyes and moaned at the excellent taste. “Boy, Smoke, these sinkers Miss Sally made are sure tasty,” he said.

Smoke nodded, too busy eating to reply.

Cal glanced over at Pearlie. “How would you know how good they taste, Pearlie? You’re such a chowhound you don’t even chew ’em ’fore you swallow ’em.”

Pearlie grinned back at Cal, bacon juice running down his chin. “You don’t have to chew these, Cal boy, they plumb melt in your mouth.”

He took a deep drink of his boiled coffee, glanced down at his empty plate, and then looked over at Smoke, a wistful look in his eyes.

“You don’t happen to have any of them bear sign Miss Sally made, do you?”

Sally Jensen was famous for miles around for the quality of the sweet doughnuts she baked that were called bear sign by mountain people. Pearlie was one of her most ardent admirers and had been known to eat an entire batch of bear sign on his own and then clamor for more.

Smoke looked in the paper sack. He reached in and pulled out two bear sign and held them up. “I see there’s two left,” he said, keeping his face serious.

He pitched one to. . .