Return Of The Mountain Man Part 16

"'Cause this is the last time you'll be able to see it."

"Are we pulling out?"

"No. Not yet."

"Then...?"

"I'm going to burn it to the ground." He checked both his Colts and picked up his Henry repeating rifle. He slowly walked down the hill, Matt, Preacher, Tenneysee, and Greybull following him.

Sally stood on the crest of the ridge, Audie by her side-standing on a large rock. Little Ben joined them, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"What are your feelings toward and for that young man?" Audie asked.

"I love him," Sally said quietly.

"It bloomed very quickly between you two. Are you certain of your feelings?"

"Yes."

"When this is over," Audie said, "I believe the burning hate within him will vanish. It's been an all-consuming thing with him for a long time. But hear me out, young woman. No matter where you two go..."

"Three," Sally said, putting her arm around Ben's shoulders.

Audie smiled. "No matter where the three of you go, Smoke's reputation will follow. No matter how hard he tries, he will never be able to completely shake it. This is wild and savage country, and it will be so for many years to come. If you settle somewhere to ranch, there will be outlaws who will try to take what is yours, and Smoke will stand up to them. Word will get around, and tinhorns and would-be gunhands will follow, the only thing in their minds being the desire to be the man who killed the fastest gun in the west. Then you will have to leave and settle elsewhere, for Smoke is not the type of man to back down. He desperately wants to settle down, live a so-called normal life, but it is going to be extremely difficult. You're going to have to be very strong."

"Yes," Sally said, not taking her eyes from her young man. And she knew he was hers. "I am aware of that. Mr. Audie..."

"Just Audie. My last name is no longer important."

"Audie. I am a woman of some means. I recently came into quite a large sum of money. Perhaps Smoke will consent to go back east and live."

Audie smiled. "What would he do, Sally? Can you imagine him in some office, with a tie and starched collar?"

She laughed softly. She could not imagine that.

"He is a man of the west, of the frontier. This is his land. He would not be happy anywhere else."

And I would not be happy anywhere without him, she thought. Odd that I have known him for so brief a time and yet am so certain of my feelings. But I am certain.

Only a few people remained in town, and those looked very suspiciously at Smoke and the mountain men. Their suspicion soon turned to hard reality.

"Pack up and clear out," Smoke informed them. "Get your gear together, and move out!"

"You can't just come in here and force us out!" a man protested.

Smoke looked at the man, open contempt in his eyes. "You did what before you came here?"

The man shuffled his feet and refused to reply. He dropped his eyes.

Smoke looked at the small group left behind in the town. "You all knew you were working for crud and c.r.a.p. And you didn't care. All you cared about was money. And it didn't make a d.a.m.n to any of you where that money came from, or how you earned it. I have no sympathy for any of you. Get your gear together and get out of here."

They got.

"Round up all the pack animals you can find," Smoke asked the mountain men. He waved all but four of the men down from the ridge, leaving those as guards. "We're gonna give some of these homesteaders in this area a second chance. Food, clothes, boots, guns, equipment. We'll pa.s.s it out later. Let's get to work."

What couldn't be packed out on horses and mules was pa.s.sed up the hill like a bucket brigade. Soon the stores were emptied. The town was strangely silent and ghostlike. Audie summed it up.

"This town had no heart," the little man said. "One cannot feel sorry for destroying something that never lived."

Smoke tossed the first torch into a building. The dry wood was soon blazing, spreading to the adjoining building. Black greasy smoke began pouring into the sky in spiraling waves. The dry pine began popping like sixguns. Soon the heat was so intense it forced the men back to the coolness of the ridge.

"Soon as them people see this smoke, they'll get the message," Preacher said.

"Those that are left alive," Smoke said softly.

20.

Levi Pa.s.s lay sullen under the heat of the sun. Bodies littered the pa.s.s; men and animals sprawled in soon-to-be bloated death. The first contingent of men, led by Deputy Payton, had been knocked from their saddles in a hard burst of rifle fire from the rocks above the pa.s.s. Among the first to die were Rosten, the stable manager; Simmons, who ran the general store; and Deputy Payton. A sheriff back in Iowa would never learn that he could destroy the murder warrant he held for Payton.

Among the gunhands in the rocks, McNeil and a rider from the Crooked Snake and Triangle lay dead. The moaning of the wounded, on both sides, softly drifted out of and above the dust and gunsmoke of the pa.s.s.

Then the men saw the smoke belching into the skies.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Wilson muttered from behind his shoulder on the ridge.

"That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Jensen has torched the town!" Potter said.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Stratton said, his face dusty and his elegant clothing torn and dirty. "All our records."

Wilson laughed. "Looks like your boy done turned on you!" he called down into the pa.s.s.

"Our boy!" Potter yelled. "He started out workin' for you."

"You lie!" Wilson yelled. "You brung him in!"

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" Stratton screamed.

Wilson's long-unused gray cells began working. "Now wait just a minute," he called. "You tryin' to claim you didn't hire Jensen?"

"Sure we did," Potter yelled. "But we hired him away from Richards. Last night. Richards brought him in to kill us."

"You're crazy!" Wilson yelled. "Just hold on a second. Everybody stop shootin'. We got to talk about this."

"I don't trust you!" Potter screamed. "You're up to something."

"I ain't up to nothin', you fat hog!" Wilson yelled. "You and Stratton was the ones who wanted it all. Ya'll caused all this trouble."

Wilson stood up from behind the boulder.

Sheriff Reese lifted his rifle and shot the man in the stomach. The .44 round knocked the gunhand backward. He died with a scream on his b.l.o.o.d.y tongue.

A Crooked Snake rider shot Cannon, the newspaper editor, in the center of his forehead. Cannon was dead before he hit the rocky ground of the pa.s.s road.

Levi Pa.s.s erupted and rocked with pistol and rifle fire. Britt, a rider for the Crooked Snake, crouched behind his cover and mulled matters over in his mind. He was getting the feeling that that d.a.m.ned Smoke Jensen had set them all up; made fools out of everybody; sitting back and laughing while they were shooting at each other.

He slipped from his cover and inched his way toward the timber, where the horses were tied. He spurred his mount, heading for the PSR spread. He wanted to tell his boss what he'd just heard.

Behind him, the savage gunfight continued, the air filled with shouts and curses and the screaming of the wounded and the silence of the dead.

"Now wait a minute!" Josh said. "Tell me again what you heard back at the pa.s.s."

Britt repeated what he'd heard between Wilson, Stratton, and Potter.

Lansing went to a window of the mansion and looked toward the town. Though miles away, he could clearly see the black smoke pouring into the sky. "Sh.o.r.e nuff on fire," he said.

"He played us against each other," Richards said. "And I played right into his hands. He set me up like a kid with a string toy. That d.a.m.n gunhawk knew what I'd do." He sat down heavily. "I don't like being made a fool of. I don't like it worth a d.a.m.n!"

"He sh.o.r.e done 'er though," Marshall rubbed it in a bit. Marshall and the other ranchers were every bit as tough as Richards, with no back-up in them. They were all thieves and murderers, their pasts as black as midnight.

Richards's gaze was bleak. "Gather up the men. We're ridin'."

"Richards is anything but a fool, Smoke," Sally told him. Standing beside her, Sam solemnly nodded his head. "If he puts all this together, then you've lost your element of surprise."

"I don't think either side wiped the other out in that pa.s.s," Preacher opined. "And we ain't heared no gunfire in more'un an hour. I think they got to talkin' and figured things out."

Smoke looked at Tenneysee. "The supplies hidden?"

"B'ar couldn't find 'em."

"We'll get the women over to Becky's place and leave them there. We'll head for the timber and make them come after us."

"The ranches lay in a half circle around Bury," Sam said. "Marshall, Lansing, and Brown will have most of their men out looking for you; only a handful will be at the ranches. The real cowhands and punchers will be with the herds. They're cowboys, not gunslicks."

"Then we'll leave them be," Smoke said. "When we get ready to scatter the herds, we'll tell the punchers to take off for new ground."

"They'll go," Sam said.

"Let's ride."

Leaving what was once the Idaho Territory town of Bury still smoking and burning behind them, the outnumbered band of ancient mountain men, gunhands, and ladies saddled up and drifted into the deep timber, with Sam leading the way. At Becky's small farm, Sam explained the situation to Becky and she agreed to help any way she could. Little Ben introduced the kids to the mountain men. Becky's kids had seen a lot during their time in the west, but absolutely nothing compared with the sight of the old mountain men, all dressed in buckskins and colorful sashes and armed to the teeth. And they certainly had never seen anything to match Audie. No taller than the children, the tiny mountain man captivated the kids. When he jumped up on a stump and began telling fairy tales, the kids sat around him listening, spellbound.

Sally and Smoke walked a short distance from the cabin. "Do we talk now, Smoke?" she asked.

"I reckon so." He waited for her to correct his grammar. She did not.

"Very well. I want to see the west, Smoke. And I want you to show it to me."

"Dangerous, Sally. And not very ladylike. You'd have to ride astride."

She hid her smile. Her father had paddled her behind several times as a child for doing just that. "I'm sure I could cope."

Buck let that alone. "What is it you want to see?"

"The high lonesome," she said without hesitation.

"It's all around you here."

"You know what I mean, Smoke. The real high lonesome. The one you and the other mountain men talk about. When you speak of that, your voice becomes soft and your eyes hold a certain light. That's the high lonesome I would like to see."

"You'll have to learn to shoot," Smoke said dubiously.

"Then I shall."

"Camp and live out in the wilderness."

"All right."

"It won't be easy. Your skin will be tanned and your hands will become hard with calluses."

"I expect that."

Smoke kept his face noncommittal. He had hoped Sally would want to see his world; the world that he knew was slowly vanis.h.i.+ng. There would be time.

He hoped.

"All right," he said.

She rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. "You come back to me," she said.

He did not reply. That was something he could not guarantee.

"Nothing left, Boss," Long reported back to Josh Richards. "Jensen burned the whole place to the ground."

Potter and Stratton were now once more joined with Richards. The opposing sides had ceased fighting in Levi Pa.s.s and begun talking. The men were chatting amicably when Richards, Marshall, Lansing, and Brown rode up with their men.

"Nothing?" Burton asked. "My apothecary shop is gone?"

"There ain't nothing left," Long said. "And Jensen and them old b.a.s.t.a.r.ds is gone. Took the women and left. I cut their sign but lost it in the rocks."

"Sam?" Richards asked.