Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) (9 page)

Back in the usually sane, silent, stable world of the bank proper, the gathering up had been completed. A hard hand touched his suit coat from behind. He shrank from it. With a push, Jaeger urged Walter Higgins toward his chair.

“Take yer seat, Mr. Higgins. We’ll be leaving now. Nobody poke a head out or make a sound for at least ten minutes. If you do, you’ll be hurt…and badly.”

After they left the bank, Walter Higgins folded his arms on his desk, lowered his head, and began to sob softly. Faintly, from the street, he heard the drum of many hooves. It did not make him feel any better.

Sheriff Atwater sipped coffee from a tin cup and leaned back on the back legs of his chair, tilted against the wall of his office. A growing commotion outside drew his attention. At last, Parker Evans, the bank guard, rushed through the doorway. Eyes wide, hair in disarray, Evans looked like he had seen the Devil himself.

Atwater, a calm easy-going man, did not even lower his chair front to the floor. He merely gestured with the half-f cup and spoke in a lazy drawl. “What’s got you all excited, Parker?”

“We’ve been robbed, Sheriff! The bank. Five men came in and took every last cent. They ordered us to stay inside, but the minute they rode off, I snuck out the side door and ran for here.”

Now the chair banged to the floor. “Five men, you say?”

“Yep. But from the sound of the hooves, I’d judge they were twice that number.”

“Go spread the word, Parker. I’ll be getting a posse ready. We’ll ride out at once with however many I can buttonhole. You follow with what more you find soon as you can. Oh, by the way, you’re deputized.”

Sheriff Atwater followed Evans out the door. He headed directly to the eatery on the corner where he knew his three duty deputies would be. He rounded them up, and seven others in for their dinner. They went next to the feed and grain store and acquired five more men. The last stop, at the livery stable, produced three more. A small boy with black hair, cornflower blue eyes, and a dusting of freckles ran up with a message from the bank guard.

“Mr. Evans says he has fifteen men rounded up and they will be ready in ten minutes. He says that the ones you’re after left town to the north.”

“Thank you, Tommy,” Atwater replied as he swung up to the saddle after swearing in the volunteers. “Well boys, we know where to go now.”

He turned the head of his horse and led the way out of town.

The only northern pass out of the Uinta Mountains narrowed some fifteen miles out of Dutch John to a steep-walled canyon. Three waterfalls, spaced from two to five miles apart, thundered in silver streams from high overhead, curtains of mist around their bases. Crystal clear water, icy cold to the touch, ran from these spectacular displays of nature. Aspen, cottonwood, hickory, and cedars put splashes of green in the crags of the ochre gorge.

In the midst of this spectacular scenery, Victor Spectre chose to set up his ambush. Out of sight around a curve, he put a team of outlaws to falling trees, while others dug out at the base of boulders, to roll them onto the trail. Satisfied when he saw that project showing progress, he turned to the inactive hard cases.

“Pick yourselves a good location on the slopes beyond the barricade. Dig yourselves in. Then fix a place for at least one other man who is working on the road. We have no way of knowing how many will be coming after us. This could be a desperate battle. One we cannot afford to lose. We must turn them back decisively. I have every confidence in you.”

“Sounds jist lak a gen’ral don’t he?” Farlee Huntoon said in a not-too-quiet aside to Dorcus Carpenter.

“You got any complaint with what money we’ve made so far?” Carpenter asked acidly.

Huntoon had to think about that a while. “No. Now you put it lak that, none at all, at all.”

Believing it important to appear entirely in control, Victor Spectre chose to ignore the babbling of the hillbilly. “They will be here before you know it, so you had better get started. Make sure you have plenty ammunition. Then, remember how hard those Mormons hit us outside Grand Canyon and hit this posse twice as hard.”

Thus inspired, the hard cases went to it with a will. They dug out shallow pits and tamped piles of dirt and rocks in front for a firing platform, then some of the more enterprising among the usually lazy criminals concealed their efforts with cut branches. From a distance of twenty yards the leaves nicely hid the raw earth.

An hour later, everything lay in readiness. A lookout posted back down the trail rounded the curve at a brisk canter. He had his hat in his hand, waving it above his head. “They’re comin’! They’re right behind me.”

He slowed and angled his mount beyond the barricade, then disappeared into the low-hanging branches of a big cedar. Moments later, the sound of drumming hoofbeats reached the ears of the waiting outlaws. In the blink of an eye, Sheriff Atwater and two others rounded the bend and rendezvoused with history.

Twenty-three rifles crashed, but only three slugs plucked at the loose woolen jacket worn by the lawman. Behind him, his deputies likewise went unscathed, with only damaged clothing. By then the rest of the posse crowded onto them from behind and the fight became a wild melee.

Sheriff Atwater looked on in helpless dismay while some members of his posse dismounted and sought shelter among the boulders and from behind the overhanging lip of the creek bank. At last he found voice for his worry.

“Don’t dismount! Stay on your horses, men. We’ve got to pull back.”

“They can’t shoot through rocks,” a haberdashery clerk shouted up from behind a huge granite mound.

“Why pull back?” another greenhorn at the lawman game asked. “We got ’em trapped.”

“It’s more like we’re the ones trapped,” Atwater muttered to himself.

At least, more slugs on both sides passed through air than flesh, he observed gratefully. That gave them an even chance, or would have if the suspected ten outlaws had not turned into a regular army of them. From the relative safety of halfway around the curve, he counted enemy muzzle flashes. Atwater came up with twenty-eight, which meant ten more shooters than he had. The way they all consumed ammunition, the sheriff reasoned, they would soon be down to knives and fists.

That speculation proved wasted effort five minutes later when the second half of the posse arrived in a cloud of dust. Townsmen and local ranchers shouted and milled in confusion until the presence of more men banished the fear in the timid and a decision was made to attack the hard cases behind the barricade. When they did, all hell broke loose.

Victor Spectre watched the arrival of the second posse with considerable apprehension. When their dash toward the barricade his men had erected turned to milling confusion, it raised his spirits a good deal. He clapped his partners, Ralph Tinsdale and Olin Buckner, on their shoulders and nodded toward the quandary below.

“Looks like they are doing our job for us,” he stated heartily.

Tinsdale studied the disorganization a moment. “Can’t we take advantage of this?”

Spectre thought about that. “Yes. Have the men slow their rate of fire and take careful aim. A few bodies falling off of horses should do wonders for that posse.”

His words went out quickly. The steady crackle of rifles and six-guns dwindled gradually, until individual shots could be counted. That’s when the bank guard, Parker Evans, decided to have his contingent charge.

“By God, they’re coming at us again,” Buckner blurted.

Spectre remained calm. “All the better, Olin. They have to slow down to get around the barrier. Our men can slaughter them.”

All three escaped convicts looked on in astonishment as six of the more adventurous among the possemen raced directly at the barricade, guns blazing, to jump the obstruction. They cleared it with hooves dragging, and surprisingly, shot their way clear of the gathered outlaws, to win safety on the far side. The rest of the posse stalled out against the mass of dirt, rocks, and tree trunks.

“I don’t believe that,” Ralph Tinsdale gasped. “How could anyone have missed them?”

Gus Jaeger joined the trio at their vantage point on a small knob. “Simple, we weren’t expecting it. We’ll be ready the next time.”

Having the charge broken finally allowed Sheriff Atwater to gain the attention of the entire posse. He stood on a rock partway up the slope of the canyon wall on the right-hand side and raised his arms over his head to signal for quiet.

“This isn’t over by a long way. We haven’t even hurt them, but they haven’t beaten us either. We’re going to have to do some thinking on this.”

“Wish I’d have brought some dynamite,” the owner of the General Mercantile grumbled.

Atwater looked at him with disdain. “What, and have us all deafened? No, boys, that’s not the way. What I want is for about ten of you to ride back to the nearest ford across this creek. Then walk your horses up this way under cover of the near bank. From what I’ve seen of it, the overhang will give you cover up past where those robbers are holed out. We’ve got six fellers over there already. When you get up with them, position yourselves so that any stray shots from us won’t hit you. Then fire a shot to signal us. We’ll attack them together.”

Several heads nodded in understanding and agreement. “That should work.” Parker Evans spoke for them all.

Not one for rousing speeches, Sheriff Atwater looked hard at the posse and gestured with one pointed finger to the downhill ford. “All right, then, let’s get to it.”

Parker Evans picked ten men who had come with him and set out for the water crossing. Sheriff Atwater watched them out of sight, and then muttered softly to himself, “I sure hope this works.”

Parker Evans and his picked crew found the bullet-riddled body of a stranger floating in the stream at the ford. At least one of the outlaws had been hit, he thought with grim satisfaction. Too bad it could not be more. He walked his horse into the shallow water and turned uphill. Silently, the others followed him.

A quarter of a mile from the ambush site, shelving sandbars formed a dry shelf on which to walk. It also ended the noisy splash of eleven horses walking. Cattails grew in profusion on the silt-covered higher portions of the sandbank. The sharp-edged leaves of the water plants cut at exposed hands and one slashed the cheek of Roger Latimer. He grunted and dabbed at the incision with one hand. When it came away covered in blood, he pulled a kerchief from his pocket and held it to the wound. Evans suddenly signaled for a halt.

The faint sound of voices rode the air above the gurgle of running water. Evans signed for the others to hold fast and eased forward. He rounded the bend where the barricade had been constructed and came face-to-face with one of Spectre’s hard cases. Fortunately for the volunteer deputy, he had his six-gun in one hand. Unfortunately for any hope of sneaking past the outlaws undetected, he fired it into the chest of the scruffy, long-haired thug.

“What’s going on?” a voice demanded. Three shots followed.

Parker Evans fired twice to cover his retreat, then turned tail. The rest of the crew wore expressions of disappointment when he rejoined them. Roger Latimer put their feelings into words. “What did you go an’ do that for?”

In his defense Evans spoke what he had been thinking. “I didn’t plan on it. I just came upon this feller with the robbers. They have men down here on this side of the roadblock.”

“They sneakin’ up on us, do you suppose?” asked one not-too-bright shop clerk.

“No, stupid, but it’s plain we can’t sneak by them now,” Latimer complained.

Evans shrugged. “Yeah, we might as well turn back.”

The pop-eyed, sandy-haired clerk belabored the obvious. “The sheriff ain’t gonna like this.”

Parker Evans had no intention of allowing that to be the last word. “Could be. But he’d like it even less if I got you all killed, don’t you think?” Then another thought struck him. “Nope. We’re not turning back. You,” he pointed to Latimer, “ride back alone and tell the sheriff that I suggest he get the posse ready to attack from the front again. When the shootin’ starts, we’ll come on ’em from the crick.”

“It’s better than goin’ back with our tails between our legs,” Latimer agreed.

Evans tried for enthusiasm in his words. “And it’ll work, too.”

Suddenly the air of the canyon turned into a hailstorm of hot lead. The posse came back at them with guns blasting into the positions prepared by the outlaws. At first, Victor Spectre could not believe it. When a twig snapped off the tree he sat under and dropped on his shoulder, he lost all doubt.

“Pour it on, men!” he shouted. “Give them a taste of hell.”

If they could turn them once more, really hurt them and break the charge again, then they stood a chance to bring an end to it. At least for now, Victor amended his thoughts. Pursuit would be inevitable. But it wasn’t too far to the territorial boundary. That was definitely in their favor. Firing began from the six lawmen behind them, adding to the confusion. He saw two men fly from their horses as though yanked by ropes. Another dropped his weapon and howled, though the voice could not be heard above the bedlam of the fighting. The charge faltered.

These weren’t professional lawmen, paid to risk their lives, Victor reasoned. Store keepers and clerks had too much else to worry about. Spectre brightened as the lead rank of the posse turned aside, to circle the upper end of the barrier. Another man took a bullet and turned away. Then, suddenly, a fresh salvo erupted from the creek bank. Men in overalls and business suits streamed upward, effectively flanking his forces, Victor Spectre saw. Their near-victory could become a terrible defeat.

Parker Evans surged upward over the lip of the creek bank. The front shoulders of his mount surged with power as they gained purchase on the more level ground above. To left and right he saw confused, frightened faces. Then the six men who had ridden beyond the gang charged downhill. Several outlaws actually broke and ran. This just might be it, he thought exaltedly.

Then a heavy .45 caliber slug ripped through his brain and ended the banking career of Parker Evans. Dead before he hit the ground, Evans lay atop one hard case he had killed only a second before.

When the townspeople with him saw Evans die their resolve disappeared in a whiff of powder smoke. Reining in sharply, they turned the heads of their horses toward the creek and dashed to safety. Suddenly without support, the six in the rear also swerved toward the shelter of the water. Half a hundred bullets followed them. One among the fleeing possemen uttered a piercing scream and did a back-roll off the rump of his mount.

Out in front of the wall of wood and dirt, the charge faltered, then reversed in a panicked scramble to the protection beyond the far side of the curve. Several of the less experienced among the gang raised a cheer. Pride even swelled in Victor Spectre for a moment, and prompted him to mount up and ride down among the entrenched gunmen.

“We did it, men. I told you we would.”

Even the most cynical among them looked upon Victor Spectre with renewed respect. Several among the outlaws rushed forward to urge immediate action.

“Let’s go after them,” one suggested.

“Right. Run them to ground and finish off the lot.”

“No.” Victor dashed their expectations after brief thought. “We’ll wait a while, see if they come back.”

“We could be well along the trail if we leave now,” Ralph Tinsdale implied.

Spectre considered that a moment. “Very well. We’ll wait fifteen minutes and then send someone forward to find out what they are doing.”

“That does it,” Sheriff Atwater spat, as he tasted the bitterness of defeat. “We’ll have to turn back.”

“But they’ve got our money,” Roger Latimer protested.

Sheriff Atwater had to answer that and fast. “We’ll get it back. Here’s how. We will pull back a ways from this bend. Regroup beyond the ford and find out what we have to work with. While we do, I’ll send two of you back to find the Militia and ask them to join in. I know,” he hastened to add to forestall the protest he knew would come. “Not all of us are Mormons, but they had money in that bank, too. They’ll come. When we have soldiers here, we can crush these vermin like stink bugs.”

“What if they don’t wait? What if they come after us, or pull out?”

“If they do, Roger, while the militia is on the way, we’ll fight them, give ground slowly. Or follow along if they run. One way or the other we have to finish this before they reach the border.”

Nate Miller and Fin Brock returned after an absence of only five minutes. “They ain’t there, Mr. Spectre,” Miller reported. “We looked as far as the last ford and there’s not a sign of them. Looks like they turned tail.”

“That’s fine, just fine,” Spectre beamed. He turned to the eager faces of the gang. “Well, men, I think we can leave all of this behind us. We haven’t far to go to be rid of the threat at any count. We will be in Wyoming within less than a day. Mount up and let’s go.”

Swollen with prideful success, the gang went to their horses. Encouraged by the high spirits of the men, Spectre allowed himself to expand a bit more on the theme as they walked their horses to the notch that led them to the high country of Bridger Basin.

“We’re headed for a town, men,” Spectre said loudly enough to let it echo back along the ranks. “And when we get there, we will send for Smoke Jensen.”

Always the malcontent, Farlee Huntoon asked, “Mr. Spectre, how can you be so sure he will come?”

Eyes sparkling, Victor Spectre produced a broad, knowing smile. So confident was he of success that he did not even bother to insult the lout from West Virginia. “Oh, I’ll think of something,” he answered archly.

Smoke Jensen had a definite location in mind. It had been some time since he had visited Jackson’s Hole. He reckoned that the high peaks around this spectacular basin would be ideal for him to work his way around whoever came along with Spectre, Tinsdale, and Buckner. He could clearly visualize a nice little cove in the Snake River where the sand washed almost snow white and the grass grew lush and thick. It smelled of sweet pine and wild daisies and the breeze blew softly with only a few days’ exception. He would settle in there and then scout out the country around the basin.

Surrounded as it was by 13-and 14,000-foot peaks, the small “hole” served as the southern gateway to the Yellowstone country, the “Land of Smokes,” as the Blackfeet, Crow, and Cheyenne called it. Beyond it, “civilization” had begun to encroach. Three towns now existed on land that had only a few years ago been covered red-black with the backs of millions of bison. Of all of these settlements, the only one Smoke considered deserving of existence was Dubois.

A quite, peaceful town, Dubois had an honest lawman, a church, and a school long before any such had existed anywhere else in Wyoming. They welcomed any among the law-abiding, with zero tolerance for beggars, criminals or trash. The reason? Smoke Jensen had helped make it that way. When Smoke’s time came at last to leave, the townspeople threw a three-day fandango. Colorful bunting and Chinese lanterns decorated the main intersection. There was feasting—trestle tables groaned under the weight of food, kegs of beer, and bottles of whiskey—dancing long into the night, and games for the children. Narry a feminine eye, from eight to eighty, was dry when Smoke finally rode out.

Maybe he would visit Dubois on this trip and let the word get out from there that he had come back to Jackson’s Hole. Then he would return to the Hole and begin to construct some unpleasant surprises for Spectre and the gang he would bring with him. It would be necessary, he knew, because the three of them would not come alone. Even together, they did not have the courage it would take to face him. Now, halfway across the Great Divide Basin, he called an early halt for the day.

He spent two hours of the remaining daylight to check his back-trail. Smoke found it reassuringly empty. Next he turned his attention to making camp. While he worked, his mind turned back to how he first encountered and dealt with Victor Spectre, Ralph Tinsdale, and Olin Buckner….

Olin Buckner had dreams of building an empire in central Montana. He and two like-minded associates had worked over a few years to acquire ownership of Twin Pines, a small settlement in a lush valley that contained only four ranches. Two of them belonged to the consortium of Buckner and his friends. One of these had actually been obtained through legal means. Not so the business establishments of Twin Pines. The three saloons, two eating establishments, the hotel, and the feed and grain outlet had been acquired by the simple means of brute force. Only one business, the general store, held out. It was there that Smoke Jensen learned of the methods employed by Buckner’s hired guns. Smoke had come in for supplies and had nearly completed his transaction when four of Buckner’s bully-boys swaggered into the mercantile.