War Of The Mountain Man

“Then shut up and drive this wagon.” Smoke slapped one horse on the butt and the team jumped forward, the doctor hanging onto the reins. “Go, Vicky!”Smoke shouted. “Stay on this road south. Don’t get off of it. I’ll catch up in about an hour. Move!”

Smoke jumped off Star and grabbed the outlaws’ rifles from the saddle boots. He jerked off their gunbelts and swiftly loaded the two Winchesters and the Henry up full.

“You gotta help me!” one gut-shot outlaw moaned. “I’m hard-hit.”

“That’s your problem,” Smoke told him. “You were going to kill me, remember?”

“You’re a heartless bastard, ain’t you, Jensen?”

“No,” Smoke replied, levering a round in each chamber of the rifles. “Just a realist, that’s all. Now either shut up or die; one or the other.”

He left the man moaning in the road and, leading Star, got himself into position in the rocks above the road, in the center of the curve, several sticks of capped and fused dynamite beside him. He made him a little smoldering pocket of punk to light the fuses and waited. He could hear the pounding of hooves, the riders coming hard.

He lit a fuse and judged his toss, placing the charge about fifty feet in front of the laboring horses. The dynamite blew and the horses panicked, throwing riders in all directions. Most of them landed, rolled, and came up on their boots, running for cover. Several lay still, badly hurt and unconscious.

Smoke worked the lever on the Henry as fast as he could and knocked down half-a-dozen riders. He grinned when he saw where many of the gunhands had taken shelter. He poured dirt over the smoldering punk to kill it and left his position, working his way back and then up to about a hundred yards above the road.

He lit another stick of dynamite and tossed it in the middle of a rock pile above the men, then another stick. The explosions jarred the rocks loose and sent them bouncing and crashing onto the men below.

Smoke ran for Star, jumped into the saddle, and was gone into the night. It would take the outlaws anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours to round up their horses.

When he caught up with Robert and Vicky, he halted the parade.

“What did you do back there?” Robert asked, his eyes wide. “We heard explosions and shots.”

“I showed them the error of their evil ways and put them on the path of righteousness.”

Vicky laughed out loud.

“In other words, you killed them?”

“Lord knows, I sure tried. We’ll go on for a few miles and then stop and make camp.”

“But those men of Hell’s Creek ... they’ll be after us, won’t they?”

“Not that bunch,” Smoke assured the doctor. “I took the guts right out of them back yonder.”

Five miles farther, off the road and camped in a little draw, Smoke drank his coffee and ate a cold sandwich. Lisa had tried to stay awake but finally closed her eyes and was sound asleep.

“Tell us the rest of the story,” Victoria urged.

“Where was I?” Smoke asked.

“Killing people,” Robert muttered.

Smoke suppressed a chuckle. He had a hunch the doctor was made of stronger stuff than he appeared. “Well, on the day in Bury that my real identity got known, I was trapped in the town. I’d just left the whorehouse talking with Sally and was coming up an alley when I was braced. That ol’ boy let it be known that he was gonna collect that thirty thousand dollars that Potter and Richards and Stratton had put on my head. After I shot that fella, I told him to be sure and tell Saint Peter that none of this was my idea.”

Robert was shaking his head but listening intently.

“Before I got out of that alley, another gunny braced me. I left him on the ground and got back to my horse. I put the reins in my teeth and charged the mob that was comin’ up the street, led by a crooked sheriff name of Reese.

“Drifter—that was my horse—killed one with his hooves and I shot another gunhand name of Jerry. Me and Drifter scattered gunhands all over the main street of Bury, left that town, and linked up with Preacher and a bunch of old mountain men that was camped up in the mountains outside of town. Let me see ... there was Preacher, Tennysee, Audie—he was a midget—Beartooth, Dupre, Greybull, Nighthawk—he was an Indian ... a Crow—Phew, Dead-lead, Powder Pete, Matt—he was a Negro. Matt was the youngest of the bunch and he was about seventy.

“We blew the roadbank in and trapped those in the town. Wasn’t but two ways in or out, and we closed them both. We gave the citizens a chance to leave and a lot of them did. In the days that followed, before I met a bunch in a ghost town, we got Sally and the wilted flowers out and then I went head-hunting.”

“How many men did you kill during those days?” Victoria asked.