Return of the Mountain Man

“Yeah.” He twisted in the saddle, the leather creaking. He looked at the men gathered around him. “Any the rest of you boys want to turn tail and run?”

That question was met by silence and hard eyes.

“We gonna make them mountain men and Mister Jensen come to us,” Richards declared. “Where’s the nearest nester spread from here?” He tossed the question to anyone.

“’Bout ten miles,” a gunslick said. “Next one is about four miles from that one.”

“Dent,” Richards looked at a mean-eyed rider. “Take a couple of boys and go burn them out. Black, you take a couple men and burn out the next pig farmer’s family. That ought to bring Mister High-And-Mighty Jensen on the run.” Richards started laughing. “And while you’re doing that, the rest of us will be setting up an ambush.”

“What about the wimmin and kids?” a gunhawk named Cross asked.

“What about them?” Potter asked.

“I thought we agree on that?” Stratton said.

“They have to die,” Richards said. “All of them.”

22

The homesteader’s cabin appeared deserted when Dent and the others galloped into the front yard, the horses’ hooves trampling over a flower bed and a newly planted garden. Normally, that action alone would bring the wife on a run, squalling and flapping her apron. It was a game the punchers liked to play with nesters, for few cowboys liked nesters, with their gardens and fences.

This time their destructive actions were met with silence.

Inside the cabin, the man lifted a finger to his lips, telling his wife and kids to be still. The wife nodded and moved to a gun slit in the logs, a .30-30 in her hands. Her husband held a double-barreled shotgun, the express gun loaded with buckshot. That painted lady from town had ridden by the day before, warning them to be on guard. All them ladies from the Pink House was riding around, warning the other homesteaders what was happening. First time he’d ever met a…a…one of them ladies. Nice looking woman.

He eased the hammers back on the shotgun.

“Set the damned place on fire!” Dent yelled. “Burn ’em out.”

Those were the last words Dent would speak in his life. The homesteader’s shotgun roared, the buckshot from both barrels catching Dent in the chest and face. The charge lifted the gunhand from the saddle, tearing off most of his face and flinging him several yards away from his horse.

The homesteader’s wife shot the second rider in the chest with her .30-30 just as the oldest boy fired from the hog pen. Three riderless horses stood in the front yard.

The homesteader and his family moved cautiously out of hiding. “Take their guns and stable their horses,” the man said. “Mother, you get the Bible. Son, you get a couple shovels. We’ll give them a Christian burial.”

Black lifted himself up to one elbow. The pain in his chest was fierce. He coughed up blood, pink and frothy. Lung-shot, he thought.

Black looked around him. Douglas and Cross were lying in the front yard of the pig farmer’s cabin. They looked dead. Hell, they were dead!

Who’d have thought it of a damned nester?

Black looked up at the damned homesteader in those stupid-looking overalls. Man had a Colt in each hand. Damn sure knew how to use them, too.

“Never thought a stinkin’ pig farmer would be the one to do me in,” Black gasped the words.

“I was a captain in the War Between the States,” the man spoke calmly. “First Alabama Cavalry.”

“Well, I’ll just be damned!” Black said.

“Yes,” the farmer agreed. “You probably will.”

Black closed his eyes and died.

“No smoke,” Lansing observed.

“Thought I heard gunfire, though,” Potter said.

“Yeah,” Stratton said. “But who is shootin’ who?”

Richards’s stomach felt sour, like he’d drank a glass of clabbered milk. Sour. Yeah, that was the word for it. Sour. Whole damned business was going sour. And all because of one man. He looked around him. Something was out of whack. Then it came to him. About ten or so men were gone, had slipped quietly away. Hell with them. They still had fifty-sixty hardcases. More than enough to do the job.

Or was it?

He shook that thought away. Can’t even think about that. He wondered what that damned Smoke was doing right now.

Janey had never seen a more disreputable-looking bunch of men in all her life. God! They looked older than death.

Except for her brother.

Janey looked at the dead gunhands lying in the front yard. The gunhands Josh had left behind to protect her. That was a joke. But there wasn’t anything funny about it.

“Hello, brother,” she said.