War Of The Mountain Man

“You let me ride, you’ll never see me again, Smoke. As God is my witness, I promise you that.”

Smoke took the knife from the man’s throat and Nelson made a grab for his gun. Smoke jammed the big blade into the man’s back and ripped upward with it. Nelson Barrett fell face-first into the small fire.

Smoke wiped the blade clean on Nelson’s shirttail and poured himself a cup of coffee. He drank it slowly, then carefully put out the fire. He left Nelson where he lay and mounted up.

He crossed the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and rode into the area that would someday become the Glacier National Park. Smoke slipped into a jacket, for it had turned cold.

He plunged into a wild, beautiful wilderness. His thoughts turned to Preacher and how much the old man would have enjoyed the beauty of this rugged, lonesome country.

Then his thoughts lost all trace of beauty and turned savage and ugly as he followed the trail of Max Huggins and his dwindling gang of thugs and punks and human crap. He thought he heard a voice from out of the dark tangle of vegetation and pulled up, dismounting. He picketed Star and moved forward, both guns in his hands.

Al Martin, Dave Poe, and Ben Webster squatted around a campfire, boiling coffee and frying bacon.

“I cain’t understand why Big Max don’t go ahead and take the woman,” Al said. “I would have.”

“ ’Cause he’d have to knock her out cold to do it,” Ben replied. “And that ain’t no fun.”

“He ought to just go ’head and shoot her,” Dave opined. “She ain’t never gonna be what Max wants her to be.”

“I say we go on and kill Jensen, if that is him behind us, then kill Max, take his money, and have our pleasures with the woman,” Al said. “There ain’t nobody ever gonna find her body in this place.”

Smoke stepped out and ruined the men’s appetites. Both .44’s belched flame and death, destroying the tranquility of the lovely forest in the high-up country.

Smoke dragged their bodies away from the fire and dumped them down a ravine. He pulled the picket pins of their horses and set them free. Smoke got Star and unsaddled him, rubbing the animal down and allowing him to graze for a time.

By that time, the bacon was done and the coffee was ready. Smoke drank and ate, sopping out the grease in the frying pan with a hunk of stale bread.

Smoke rolled him a cigarette and leaned back, enjoying the warmth of the fire. He poured another cup of coffee. If his calculations were corret, all that remained were Max, Val Singer, and Alex Bell. He moved away from the fire, laid his head on his saddle, and went to sleep.

He slept for a couple of hours, then rose and began circling the camp. He found another stick message from Sally. Three sticks laid out side by side, with four sticks next to them, in the shape of a crude D. Triple Divide Peak. Had to be.

Ol’ Preacher had told him about this country, as had other old mountain men, and like most outdoorsmen, Smoke retained that knowledge in his head, a mental map.

He saddled up and took a chance, cutting straight east for a time, then turning north just west of what he felt was the Continental Divide. If he was right, and Max and what was left of his gang were not too far ahead of him—and he didn’t think they were—he would make Triple Divide Peak ahead of Max.

Smoke pushed Star that day, but it was nothing the big horse couldn’t take and still have more to give. Man and horse traveled through country that seemed as unchanged now as it was when God created the earth.

And Smoke could not understand why Max, with his love of cities and towns, hurdy-gurdy girls and parties, had chosen to come here, into this cold and vast wilderness.

He concluded that Max, like his brother Robert, had a streak of insanity running through him.

Smoke made camp that evening between Mt. Thompson and Triple Divide Peak. He loved this country, this high lonesome, where bighorn sheep played their perilous games on the face of seemingly untraversable mountains. Where cedars grew so tall they seemed to touch the sky. Where far below where he camped, heating his coffee over a hat-sized fire, he could see herds of buffalo roaming.

It all seemed just too peaceful a place for what Smoke had in mind.

But peaceful or not, he had come to find Sally, and get Sally he would. He rolled up in his blankets and went to sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a very busy day.

Smoke was up before dawn. He did not build a fire. He watered Star and left the big horse to graze. Below him, by one of the many small lakes that were scattered like jewels in this wilderness, he had spotted a campfire. Leaving his boots and spurs behind, Smoke slipped into his moccasins and picked up his rifle. He had it in his mind that he and Sally would be riding toward the Sugarloaf come noon.