War Of The Mountain Man

“They had it comin’ to them!” Vic shouted as the night began closing in. “All I wanted from them was what a woman was put on earth to give to a man.”

Smoke waited.

Vic began cursing, working his courage back up to a fever. “Drag iron, Jensen!” he screamed.

“After you, punk.”

Vic’s hand dropped to his gun. Smoke drew, cocked, and fired as fast as a striking rattler, shooting him in the belly, the slug striking the child molester and rapist two inches above his belt buckle. Vic stumbled and went down on one knee. He managed to drag his pistol from leather and cock it. Smoke shot him again, the slug taking him in the side and blowing out the other side. Vic Young fell backward, cursing as life left him.

Smoke stood over him. Vic said, “You’re dead, Jensen. Max has put money on your head. Big money. He ...”

Vic jerked on the cooling ground and died staring at whatever faced him beyond the dark river.

Smoke took the man’s gunbelt and tossed leather and pistol onto the porch. He fanned the man’s pockets, finding a very respectable wad of greenbacks and about a hundred dollars in gold coins. Martha would put the money to good use. He put the money on the kitchen table, along with Vic’s gun and gunbelt and the rifle taken from the saddle boot.

Smoke wrote a short note and left it on the table: HE WILL BOTHER YOU NO MORE.

He signed it Smoke.

He saddled up Star and rode around to the front of the house. Smoke tied Vic across the saddle of his suddenly skittish horse and locked up the house.

Leading the horse with its dead cargo, Smoke headed north, toward Big Max Huggins’s town of Hell’s Creek.

It was late when he arrived on the hill overlooking the bawdy town. Lights were blazing in nearly every building, wild laughter ripped the night, and rowdy songs could be heard coming from drunken throats.

Smoke slipped the lead rope and slapped the horse on the rump, sending it galloping into the town.

He sat his saddle and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long.

“Vic’s dead!” the faint shout came to him as the piano playing and singing and drunken laughter gradually fell away, leaving the town silent.

Smoke watched the shadowy figures untie the body of Vic Young and lower it to the ground. He couldn’t hear what the men were saying, but he could make a good guess.

Every rowdy and punk and gun-handler in the town would have known that V ic was seeing Widow Feckles. And everyone would know that she was being forced into acts of passion with Vic. And since none of the sodbusters would have the nerve to face Vic—so the gunhandlers thought; whether that was true or not, only time would tell—it had to have been the Widow Feckles who did Vic in.

Smoke kneed Star forward, moving closer to the town.

“Let’s burn her out!” the shout reached Smoke’s ears.

“Yeah,” another man yelled. “I’ll get the kerosene.”

Smoke swung onto the main street of Hell’s Creek and reined up. Staying in the shadows, he shucked his Winchester from the saddle boot and eared back the hammer. He called, “Martha Feckles had nothing to do with killing Vic. I killed him.”

“Well, who the hell are you?” came the shouted question.

“Smoke Jensen.”

“Jensen! Let’s get him, boys.”

They came at a rush and it was like shooting clay ducks in a shooting gallery. Smoke leveled the Winchester and emptied it into the knot of men. A dozen of them fell to one side, hard hit and screaming. Smoke spun Star around and headed for the high country, leaving a trail a drunken city slicker could follow.

About five miles outside of town, Smoke found what he was looking for and reined up. He loosened the cinch strap and let the big horse blow. He took a drink of water from his canteen and filled up his hat, letting Star have a drink.

Smoke had reloaded his rifle on the run, and he took it and his saddlebags down to the rocks just below where he had tucked Star safely away in a narrow draw. He eared back the hammer when he heard the pounding of hooves. The men of Hell’s Creek rounded a curve in the trail and Smoke knocked the first man out of the saddle. Shifting the muzzle, he got lead in two more before the scum started making a mad dash for safety.

Smoke deliberately held his fire, watching the men cautiously edge toward his position under a starry sky and moon-bright night. With a grin, he opened his saddlebags and took out a stick of dynamite. He had a dozen sticks in the bag. He capped the stick of giant powder and set a very short fuse. Striking a match, he lit the fuse and let it fly, sputtering and sparking through the air.

The dynamite blew and shook the ground as it exploded. Smoke saw one man blown away from behind a rock, half of an arm missing. Another man staggered to his boots and Smoke drilled him through the brisket. A third man tried to crawl away, dragging a broken leg. Smoke put him out of his misery.

Smoke put away the dynamite. Taking it along had been Sally’s idea, and it had been a good one.