Return of the Mountain Man

“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 crap. And you didn’t care. All you cared about was money. And it didn’t make a damn 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 pass it out later. Let’s get to work.”

What couldn’t be packed out on horses and mules was passed 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 Pass lay sullen under the heat of the sun. Bodies littered the pass; 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 pass. 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 pass.

Then the men saw the smoke belching into the skies.

“What the hell?” Wilson muttered from behind his shoulder on the ridge.

“That bastard Jensen has torched the town!” Potter said.

“Oh, my God!” 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 pass.

“Our boy!” Potter yelled. “He started out workin’ for you.”

“You lie!” Wilson yelled. “You brung him in!”

“What the hell 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?”