Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) (21 page)

Without warning, the door to the room where Sally Jensen sat staring at her lamp-lit reflection in the window-panes made mirrors by the blackness outside. She tensed slightly, back unconsciously arching in preparation for a spring to flee or to attack. She was convinced that these rabble could sink to the lowest, vilest of crimes, given only the slightest provocation. Slowly, she turned her head to see who her faithful guard, Sam, had let enter.

It turned out to be Victor Spectre. In one hand he held a tray with covered dishes. “I thought I would bring you your dinner. I brought a plate for myself, as well.” He started for a small, sturdy, drop-leaf oak table.

“Thank you, but I am not hungry,” Sally replied absently.

Brushing aside her rejection, Spectre began laying out the plates. “You must eat to keep up your strength, my dear. It’s roast loin of pork, with potatoes and gravy, some garden greens, and even a slice of cherry pie. The cherries are locally grown and put up by my temporary host, the mayor’s cook. I’ve brought an appropriate bottle of wine, and there will be coffee after.”

Sally put ice into her voice.
“I said I am not hungry.”
A sharp pang in her stomach put the lie to that. Reluctantly, she had to admit the accuracy of his words. “Although I suppose you are right. I must maintain my strength in order to fight you vermin.”

She went to the chair he held out for her. After seating her, Victor Spectre fussed about the table like a prissy waiter in a French restaurant. At last, he took his place and raised knife and fork. Then he hesitated.

“Ah—perhaps you would prefer to give a blessing first?”

Sally Jensen pulled a wry face. “Considering the circumstances, I hardly think I can be thankful for this food.”

“Uh—yes, I follow you. Well and good, then. You might as well commence, we do not want it getting cold.”

Hesitantly, Sally began to eat. Throughout the meal, she noticed that Spectre seemed oddly fascinated with her. He eyed her askance for the most part, yet occasionally Sally would look up from cutting a piece of meat to find him staring. She held her peace through most of the meal, determined not to make this a pleasant occasion for her captor. His continued behavior finally broke her silence.

“Tell me, Mr. Spectre—”

“Victor. Please, call me Victor.”

“Very well, Victor. Tell me, has it been a while since you shared the company of a lady?”

Spectre’s school-boy fascination faded into a scowl. “Your husband saw to that. I have been forced into the close company of only men for the past five and a half years.”

“Didn’t your wife visit?”

Sadness replaced the bitterness. “My wife—my wife passed on the year our son was nine.” Suddenly the anger flared again, and Spectre let it all spill out. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why I am doing this. Smoke Jensen murdered Trenton. He killed my son.”

Sally could not hide her expression of shocked disbelief. “Surely that can’t be so. There has to be something you are not telling me, perhaps something you don’t even remember about the—incident?”

“No, nothing. I was there. I witnessed it. The boy was already wounded, could not offer further resistance. Then your husband turned on me. His shot went high….” Unconsciously, Victor Spectre raised fingers to the white streak in his hair. “I was knocked unconscious. When I awakened, days later, Trenton had already been buried.”

Sally touched her napkin to her lips, mind searching for something with which to mitigate the indictment against Smoke. “Couldn’t the shock of being shot, and knocked unconscious, have distorted your recollection of how events transpired?”

Oddly impacted by this unconventional suggestion, the turmoil it created could be clearly read on the face of Victor Spectre. He considered it a moment, then hardened his features again. “Not at all. I know what I saw. That is why I have shown such fascination with you. You are so refined, such a lady, that I wonder how you can live with so notorious a murderer as Smoke Jensen?”

Sally’s compassion for this tormented man vanished. Icily, she responded to him. “Smoke Jensen is not a murderer, and I do love and live with him quite nicely, thank you.”

“Sorry, you don’t understand. What I want to know is what Smoke Jensen is like as a husband?”

“Don’t be impertinent,” Sally snapped.

Spectre forced a grin. “It is not idle curiosity, and I did not intend it to intrude on a husband and wife’s conjugal privicy. Yet, the fact remains,” he went on to add sneeringly, “you will be a widow soon, and all you will have is memories of Smoke Jensen. When that is the case, you will find that you have certain needs that—yes—that I will be more than able to fulfill.”

Sally Jensen sprang to her feet and snatched up the tray and its unfinished meal, which she hurled at Victor Spectre. Then she slapped his face with a resounding smack.

Well satisfied with his survey of Dubois, Smoke Jensen returned to his temporary camp in a hidden canyon five miles from the town. To his surprise, he found fifteen Shoshoni warriors waiting there. Running Snake, their war leader, turned out to be a grandson to Chief Tom Brokenhorn and spoke English well.

“We have been watching the bad men who camp in the white village. When that happen, I send message to my grandfather to have warriors come if you need.”

Smoke found it hard to see Brokenhorn as a grandfather, yet he was already one as well. “I will probably need, right enough. When did you send for warriors?”

“On the day we see White Wolf sneak into town,” Running Snake said with a grin.

That meant Zeke and Ezra would run upon them on the trail, Smoke reasoned. The Shoshoni’s next words surprised him and brought to mind a question he had for a long while.

“I also have word that some worthless dogs of the Arapaho are a hand’s span of sun behind us. They will be here in the morning.”

Given that the two tribes had been traditional enemies for centuries, Smoke could never figure out why the government, in its infinite wisdom, had put them together on the same reservation. Maybe the land-greedy politicians hoped they would wipe out one another? He gave off worrying it to make his guests coffee, with lots of sugar, then put meat on the cookfire.

“We will have coffee and talk,” he told Running Snake in Shoshoni. “Then we eat.”

“It is good. When you last visited our camp, I was not yet born. There are many things I would like to know.”

Smoke Jensen cut his sharp gaze to Running Snake. “Like what got these fellers riled up at me enough to tear into that village?”

Running Snake nodded. “Yes, there is that…and other things.”

Morning brought the aroma of brewing coffee and frying bacon. It also brought twenty-eight Arapaho warriors, Zeke and Ezra along with them. That surprised Smoke, who made quick to ask about it. A grinning Zeke explained.

“We ran into these fellers just south of the pass. They tole us that they had been following a large party of Shoshoni and white men for two days. So Ez an’ me figgered ever’-body what was up for this tussel were already accounted for. We rode along.”

Ezra took up the tale. “Then, when we got to the pass, we cut sign of Injuns an’ whites ridin’ together. We left a stone cairn tellin’ them where to come. Should be here some time today.”

That gave him a larger force than Smoke had hoped for. Even so, he frowned. “I don’t have any more days to spare. Today’s the deadline. I have to show myself in Dubois or Sally will be killed tomorrow.”

Zeke questioned that. “You don’t really think that feller would make good on his threat, do you? Why, he’d lose his advantage.”

“You and I know that, and so does he. But, I’m afraid the one in charge is unable to think clearly right now. He might consider it just desserts for me, even though he would die in the process.”

Ezra spoke encouragingly. “I make it a good sixteen white men, and about thirty Shoshonis.”

Smoke sounded grim. “He’ll die then, no matter what happens to Sally.”

What jolted Smoke even more came when the mixed band arrived shortly after noon. Smoke almost blew the head off his foreman when Ike Mitchell and the Sugarloaf hands sprinted ahead of the approaching Shoshoni warriors into the box canyon. He received yet another surprise when he saw Monte Carson and Hank Evans along. He vigorously shook his old friend’s hand and led him to the cookfire.

“I have to leave soon, Monte, but there’s time for a cup of coffee.”

“Leave? For where?”

“Dubois. Victor Spectre has given me two days to turn myself in to save Sally’s life. This is the second day.”

Monte had heard about Sally’s kidnapping from Ike. He had cursed and kicked rocks and slammed a fist into a pine trunk at the time. Now he let go a low, rumbling swear word and fire lighted his eyes. “You’re not going alone?”

“That’s what he expects, but I don’t think so. This many people on hand calls for a change of plan.”

Monte and Ike looked wary. Ike was first to take up the burden. “There’s one person along you may want to cook up some special plans for, Smoke.”

“Who’s that?”

“Bobby.”

Smoke exploded upward to land hard on his boot soles. “What the bloody blue hell did you let him come along for?”

Ike gritted his teeth, knowing the ire of his boss to be justified. “I—ah—didn’t exactly ‘let’ him come along. He insisted. The kidnapping of Sally was sort of the last straw for him.”

Before Smoke could hunt down the boy and unload on him, Ike took him aside and told him of his conversation with Bobby. It cooled the anger Smoke had built. Carefully he thought over what he would say while he sought out the lad, who had wisely decided to avoid Smoke’s notice. Smoke found Bobby at the picket line, industriously brushing out his horse.

“Bobby, I am not happy with this. You can be sure of that. Although I think I understand why you came along.”

“Yes, sir. You’re going to send me back.”

Smoke softened his expression with a fleeting smile. “No. You may stay. But you’ll have to stay behind in this camp until the fighting’s over. Having Sally’s life in danger is enough, too much in fact. The risk of putting you in harm’s way is more than I could bear. I—well, at first I thought of you as a nuisance. Since then, I—I’ve come to love you every bit as much as my own natural sons.”
There, I’ve said it,
Smoke’s expression declared.

Bobby’s eyes went wide and round. “You do? You really do? I thought—I thought you looked at me as nothing but a little boy, someone to take fishing and teach about ranching.”

Impulsively, they found themselves in a tight embrace. Smoke seemed reluctant to end it, pride in Bobby’s indomitable spirit filling him. At last he let the boy go. “I have to do some planning with Monte, Ike, and the war chiefs.”

“Then what, Smoke?”

“I’m going to Dubois to get Sally.”

With Zeke’s admonition that Spectre would not be crazy enough to eliminate his one insurance policy by killing Sally the next day fresh in his mind, and in light of the large number of men on hand, Smoke made drastic changes in his plans. If he did not show up by the deadline, it would put them further off balance, he reasoned. Smoke figured that a little havoc in Dubois might also have a beneficial effect. Shortly before dusk, he and Zeke rode out of the canyon mouth and started for Dubois. Already confused by Smoke’s failure to appear in town, Spectre and his underlings would not be in good shape for a dawn attack after a sleepless night. They reached a spot from which they could observe everything going on along the main street. Patiently they waited out the long hours until alertness slackened.

Then they made their move. Smoke had earlier pointed out to Zeke several sentries who dozed off. Silently, moccasins replacing boots, Smoke and Zeke ghosted in on a pair of these. Solid blows, with the flat of tomahawk blades, quickly rendered the thugs unconscious. Smoke and Zeke each dragged their man off into the grass, to bind and gag them. Then they set off after another group of laggards.

“Over there,” Smoke whispered in Zeke’s ear. “There’s two of them.”

At a creeping pace, Smoke and Zeke closed in. When they came within ten yards, they could hear muffled conversation.

“By dang, I’m gettin’ sick and tired of this. Who’er we watchin’ out for?”

“Smoke Jensen, of course.”

“Would you know him to see him? I don’t blame him for not comin’ in today. A man’d have to be a fool to ride into a town bristlin’ with guns like this one.” He laughed softly. “I’d kinda like to come face-to-face with him. Shake his hand and tell him how smart I think he is for keepin’ outta Spectre’s clutches.”

A voice answered him from out of the darkness. “You kin, if you want to, Yonker. He’s standin’ right in front of you.” Zeke chuckled softly a moment before he clonked the other outlaw over the head with his tomahawk.

Galvanized by this disclosure the first gunhawk came to his boots. “You are? Smoke Jensen? Where are you?”

“Right here,” Smoke told him as he slapped the lout alongside the head with his ’hawk. Abruptly rubber-legged, the gunman went down in a heap.

Again, they dragged the senseless burdens out into the tall grass and tied them securely. Zeke edged over to Smoke. “I reckon that’s enough, don’t you?”

Smoke’s breathy chortle lightened his words. “Yeah. On this side. We need to take a few more.”

By two o’clock in the morning, they had taken out seven more lookouts. Then Smoke and Zeke split up and moved to positions on opposite sides of the town. Late hangers-on in the saloons soon found themselves listening to a timber wolf chorus. The eerie wails echoed off buildings and floated in the streets in such a way that no one could pinpoint their place of origin.

Judson Reese, deep in his cups, summed the experience up best. “They seem to come from everywhere at once, and entirely too close.”

None of the dolts, who had been reduced to blurry vision and stagger-legged stumbles, volunteered to go out and find the wolves. When one of the cries changed from wolf to the cough and yowl of a mountain lion, several tough hombres paled noticeably and slunk away to upstairs rooms in the saloon for the night. Suddenly a shout of alarm came from one of the still-conscious sentries outside.

“Fire! There’s a shed afire on the edge of the town.”

Tongue thick with whiskey, Farlee Huntoon voiced the question many wanted an answer for. “Gol-dang, what caused that?”

Nate Miller gave him a cold gaze. “Smoke Jensen. What else could it be?”

Guffawing at the quandary of the lawless trash, Smoke Jensen and Zeke Duncan pulled back into the darkness to get some sleep before the big attack. Behind them, the abandoned, tumble-down shack continued to burn until first light.

From her confinement in the hotel, Sally Jensen had heard the commotion outside. It cheered her more than anything had in a week. When the animal calls began, she rushed to the small barred window of the jail from the chair in which she had been sitting. She had been brought to the cell-block at sundown, when Smoke failed to appear. Now she knew why Smoke had not come in earlier.

Smoke was out there now. Sally knew that as certainly as she knew her heart still beat. He hadn’t given up, and he would not make some useless sacrifice of himself to save her. The time would come soon. She had to be ready to act. Yet, in the back of her head, she worried for Smoke’s safety.

Her worry increased when Victor Spectre burst into the marshal’s office and stormed into the cell-block. He ordered her cell unlocked and entered in a barely contained fury. Roughly he shot out an arm and grabbed her elbow in a steel grip.

“This is all your fault,” he accused irrationally. “Smoke Jensen is on a rampage out there and it is all because you are here.”

Sally glared at him stonily. “And who is it that had me brought here?”

Coldly, Victor Spectre ignored her. “Your husband is being a nuisance and has to be taught a lesson. It is a pity that you have to be a part of that lesson. I had decided to give him more time,” Spectre lied smoothly. “Now, that is not possible. Tomorrow morning, at eight o’clock precisely, you will be taken out on the balcony of the hotel and shot to death.”

Dawn’s light had not yet turned pink from gray when Smoke Jensen and his volunteers approached Dubois. At his suggestion, the Shoshonis and Arapahos kept well out of sight, spreading out on the north and south flanks of the town. From a distance, Smoke swept the streets with field glasses. He spotted a few sleepy hard cases on the streets. All drooped from lack of rest. All looked in a low state of readiness. Smoke made a quick decision to attack at once.

“We won’t have a better time,” he told Monte Carson. “Surprise is still ours. We’ll swing through this group of houses and take the main business section in a wide sweep. If it will make you feel better, Monte, we’ll call out to them to surrender. At the least sign of resistance, we kill them where they stand.”

“What about Sally?” Monte asked seriously.

“I’ll find her. As a matter of fact, I have the notion Spectre will bring her to me.”

Monte checked the face of his turnip watch. “Time to be doing it.”

“I agree. Hank knows what to do?”

Monte nodded. “He’ll attack from the far side when he hears the first shot.”

That first discharge did not take long. Three hard cases came on the run from houses along a neat, tree-lined street. One of them, who had seen Smoke before, yelled to the others.

“By God, that’s Smoke Jensen! Get him.”

In the lead, Smoke took a hurried shot. His slug went a bit wide, to punch through the shoulder of one outlaw before the gunman could clear leather. Another appeared to trip over an invisible rope and sprawl in the gravel of the road, blood spewing from a gaping wound in his back. The third brigand, the one who had given the alarm, hastily reholstered his six-gun and threw his hands in the air. Those in the lead went on by him. Someone at the rear would gather him in. From the far side of town, Smoke could hear gunfire.

Hank Evans and the remainder of the Sugarloaf hands would be streaming through to the business district. Another block and those on this side would join them. Then they would see. Smoke could only trust that it went the way he had planned it. Ahead he could see the balcony of the hotel. Three small figures stood on it. The one in the middle was that of a woman. Ice abruptly filled Smoke’s stomach.

Another half block and the features became identifiable. Much as he wished otherwise, the woman was Sally. Smoke recognized Victor Spectre to one side. He held the muzzle of a Smith and Wesson American to her temple. At once, Smoke gave the signal to halt.

“Take it easy, Spectre. I came to see my wife was safe.”

Spectre snickered. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

“You said that if I did not come in within two days, you would kill her the third.”

Feigning astonishment, Spectre spoke mockingly. “Why, I believe you are right. But, now you are here. If you are prepared to gave yourself up, we can discuss the release of your wife.”