Journey Of The Mountain Man

“Nice of you,” Pistol said. “Thankee kindly.”

The men turned, spurs jingling, and were gone.

The silver-haired man pulled off his boot and looked at the hole in the sole. He stuck some more paper down into the boot. “Hardrock, today is my birthday. I just remembered.”

“How old are you, about a hundred?”

“I think I’m sixty-seven. And I know you two year older than me.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thankee.”

“I ain’t got no present. Sorry.”

Silver Jim laughed. “Hardrock, between the two of us we might be able to come up with five dollars. Tell you what. Let’s drift up to Montana Territory. I got a friend up in the Little Belt Mountains. Got him a cabin and runs a few head of cattle. Least we can eat.”

“Silver Jim ... he died about three years ago.”

“Ummm ... that’s right. He did, didn t he. Well, the cabin’s still there, don’t you reckon?”

“Might be. I thought of Smoke this mornin’. Wonder how that youngster is?”

“Did you now? That’s odd. I did, too.”

“I thought about Montana, too.”

The two old gunfighters exchanged glances, Silver Jim saying, “I just remembered I had a couple of double eagles I was savin for hard times.”

“Is that right? Well ... me, too.”

“We could ride back to that little town we come through this morning and send a message through the wires to Big Rock.”

The old gunslingers waited around the wire office for several hours until they received a reply from Monte Carson in Big Rock.

“Let’s get the hell to Montanee!” Silver Jim said.

Four

“I thought you would be a much older man,” Ring remarked after they had made camp for the evening.

It was the first time Smoke’s real identity had been brought up since leaving the little village.

Smoke smiled and dumped the coffee into the boiling water. “I started young.”

“When was you gonna tell us?” Beans asked.

“The same time you told me that you was the Moab Gunfighter.”

Beans chuckled. “I wasn’t gonna get involved in this fight. But you headin’ that way... well, it sorta peaked my interest.”

“My cousin is in the middle of it. She wrote me at my ranch. You can’t turn your back on kin.”

“Y’all must be close.”

“I have never laid eyes on her in my life. I didn’t even know she existed until the letter came.” He told them about his conversations with Big Foot.

“This brother of hers sounds like a sissy to me,” Beans said.

“He does for a fact,” Smoke agreed. “But I’ve found out this much about sissies: they’ll take and take and take, until you push them to their limits, and then they’ll kill you.”

The three of them made camp about ten miles outside of Gibson, on the fringes of the Little Belt Mountains.

“There is no point in any of us trying to hide who we are,” Smoke told the others. “As soon as Park and the others get in town, it would be known. We’ll just ride in and look the place over first thing in the morning. I’m not going to take a stand in this matter unless the big ranchers involved try to run over Fae ... or unless I’m pushed to it.”

The three topped the hill and looked down at the town of Gibson. One long street, with vacant lots separating a few of the stores. A saloon, one general store, and the smithy was on one side of the street, the remainder of the businesses on the other side. Including a doctor’s office. The church stood at the far end of town.

“We’d better be careful which saloon—if any—we go into,” Beans warned. “For a fact, Hanks’s boys will gather in one and McCorkle’s boys in the other.”

“I don’t think I’ll go into either of them,” Ring said. “This is the longest I’ve been without a drink in some time. I like the feeling.”

“Looks like school is in session.” Smoke lifted the reins. “You boys hang around the smithy’s place while I go talk to Cousin Parnell. Let’s go.”

They entered the town at a slow walk, Ring and Beans flanking Smoke as they moved up the wide street. Although it was early in the day, both saloons were full, judging by the number of horses tied at the hitchrails. A half a dozen or more gunslicks were sitting under the awnings of both saloons. The men could feel the hard eyes on them as they rode slowly up the street. Appraising eyes. Violent eyes; eyes of death.

“Ring,” they heard one man say.

“That’s the Moab Kid,” another said. “But who is that in the middle?”

“I don’t know him.”