Trail Of The Mountain Man/revenge Of The Mountain Man (The Last Mountain Man)

“Oh…” he managed to say over the pealing laughter. “I love it!”

17

Smoke sat with Sally, Pearlie, and Charlie. Charlie listened to what Smoke had on his mind and then leaned back in his chair, a broad smile on his face. He laughed and slapped his knee.

“Smoke, that’s the bes’ idee I’ve heard of in a long, long time. Cruel? No, sir. It ain’t cruel. What you’re talkin’ about is what they do bes’. You give me the wherewithal and I’ll have an even dozen here in a week, soon as I can get to a telegraph and get hold of them and get some money to them.”

“Name them, Charlie.”

“Oh…well, there’s Luke Nations, Pistol Le Roux, Bill Foley, Dan Greentree, Leo Wood, Cary Webb, Sunset Hatfield, Crooked John Simmons, Bull Flagler, Toot Tooner, Sutter Cordova, Red Shingletown…give me time and I’ll name some more.”

Pearlie said, “But all them old boys is dead!”

“No, they ain’t neither,” Charlie corrected. “They just retared is all.”

“Well…” Pearlie thought a moment. “Then they mus’ be a hundred years old!”

“Naw!” Charlie scoffed at that. “You jus’ a kid, is all. They all in their sixties.”

“I’ve met some of them. Charlie, I don’t want to be responsible for any of them going to their deaths.”

“Smoke…it’s the way they’d want it. If they all died, they’d go out thankin’ you for the opportunity to show the world they still had it in them. Let them go out in a blaze of glory, Smoke.”

Smoke thought about it. That was the way Preacher would have wanted to go. And those old Mountain Men three years back, that’s how they had wanted it. “All right, Charlie. We’ll give you the money and you can pull out at first light. Me and Pearlie will start adding on to the bunkhouse. How many do you think will be here?”

“When the word gets out, I’d look for about twenty-five or so.” Charlie said it with a smile. “You gonna have to hire you a cook to help Miss Sally. Or you’ll work her to a frazzle, Smoke.”

“All right. Do you know an old camp cook?”

“Shore do. Dad Weaver. He can cook and he can still pull a trigger too. One about as good as the other.”

“Hire him. Oh, ’fore I forget.” He looked at Sally. “I had a late breakfast with Louis Longmont. His chef fed me crap susies.”

“Fed you what?” Sally said.

“The chef set it on fire before he served me. I thought he’d lost his mind.”

“You didn’t eat it, did you?” Pearlie asked.

“Oh, yeah! It was pretty good. Real sweet.”

“Crepes suzette,” Sally said.

“That’s it,” Smoke said. “Say it again.”

“You pronounce it…krehp sue-zeht. You all try to say it.”

They all tried. It sounded like three monkeys trying to master French.

“I feel like a plumb idiot!” Charlie said.

“What’re those damned nesters up to?” Tilden Franklin asked his foreman.

“I can’t figure it,” Clint said. “They’ve all rode out and told the miners there wouldn’t be no trouble as long as the miners don’t spook their herds or trample their crops. They was firm, but in a nice way.”

“Damn!” Tilden said. “I thought Jensen would go in shooting.”

“So did I. You want us to maybe do a little night-ridin’?”

“No. I want this to be all the nesters’ doing. Wait a minute. Yeah, I do want some night-riding. Send some of the boys out to Peyton’s place. Rustle a couple head and leave thc butchered carcasses close to some miners’ camps. Peyton is hot-headed; he’ll go busting up in there and shoot or hang some of them. While we stand clear.”

Clint smiled. “Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

Sheriff Monte Carson and his so-called deputies kept only a loose hand on the rowdy doings in Fontana. They broke up fistfights whenever they could get to them in time, but rarely interfered in a stand-up, face-to-face shoot-out. Mostly they saw to it that all the businesses—with the exception of Louis Longmont, Ed Jackson, and Lawyer Hunt Brook—paid into the Tilden kitty…ten percent of the gross. And don’t hold none back. The deputies didn’t bother Doctor Colton Spalding either. They’d wisely decided that some of them just might need the Doc’s services sooner or later…probably sooner.

And, to make matters just a little worse, the town was attracting a small group of would-be gunslicks; young men who fancied themselves gunfighters and looked to make a reputation in Fontana. They strutted about with their pearl-handled Colts tied down low and their huge California spurs jangling. The young men usually dressed all in black, or in loudly colored silk shirts with pin-striped trousers tucked inside their polished boots. They bragged a lot about who they had faced down or shot, and did a lot of practicing outside the town limits. They were solid looking for trouble, and that trouble was waiting just around the corner for a lot of them.

The town of Fontana was still growing, both in businesses and population. It now could boast four hotels and half a dozen rooming houses. Cafes had sprung up almost as fast as the saloons and the hurdy-gurdy girls who made their dubious living in those saloons…and in the dirty cribs in the back rooms.

The mother lode of the vein had been located, and stages were rolling into town twice a day, to carry the gold from the assay offices and to drop off their load of passengers. Tilden Franklin had built a bank, The Bank of Fontana, and was doing a swift business. Supply wagons rolled and rattled and rumbled twenty-four hours a day, bringing in much-needed items to the various businesses.