Journey Of The Mountain Man

The children looked at him, a passing glance, and resumed their playing. Smoke walked up the steps.

Smoke stood in the open doorway, the outside light making him almost impossible to view clearly from the inside. He felt a pang of ... some kind of emotion. He wasn’t sure. But there was no doubt: he was looking at family.

The schoolteacher looked up from his grading papers. “Yes?”

“Parnell Jensen?”

“Yes. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Smoke had to chew on that for a few seconds. “I reckon I’m your cousin, Parnell. I’m Smoke Jensen.”

Parnell gave Smoke directions to the ranch and said he would be out at three-thirty. And he would be prompt about it. “I am a very punctilious person,” Parnell added.

And a prissy sort too, Smoke thought. “Uh-huh. Right.” He’d have to remember to ask somebody what punch- till-eous meant.

He was walking up the boardwalk just as the thunder of hooves coming hard reached him. The hooves drummed across the bridge at the west end of town and didn’t slow up. A dozen hard-ridden horses can kick up a lot of dust.

Smoke had found out from Parnell that McCorkle’s spread was west and north of town, Hanks’s spread was east and north of town. Fae’s spread, and it was no little spread, ran on both sides of the Smith River; for about fifteen miles on either side of it. McCorkle hated Hanks, Hanks hated McCorkle, and both men had threatened to dam up the Smith and dry Fae out if she didn’t sell out to one of them.

“And then what are they going to do?” Smoke asked.

“Fight each other for control of the entire area between the Big Belt and the Little Belt Mountains. They’ve been fighting for twenty years. They came here together in ’62. Hated each other at first sight.” Parnell flopped his hand in disgust. “It’s just a dreadful situation. I wish we had never come to this barbaric land.”

“Why did you?”

“My sister wanted to farm and ranch. She’s always been a tomboy. The man who owned the ranch before us, hired me—I was teaching at a lovely private institution in Illinois, close to Chicago—and told Fae that he had no children and would give us the ranch upon his death. I think more to spite McCorkle and Hanks than out of any kindness of heart.”

Smoke leaned against a storefront and watched as King Cord McCorkle—as Parnell called him—and his crew came to a halt in a cloud of dust in front of the Pussycat. When the dust had settled, Jason Bright stepped off the boardwalk and walked to Cord’s side, speaking softly to him.

Parnell’s words returned: “I have always had to look after my sister. She is so flighty. I wish she would marry and then I could return to civilization. It’s so primitive out here!” He sighed. “But I fear that the man who gets my sister will have to beat her three times a day.”

Cord turned his big head and broad face toward Smoke and stared at him. Smoke pegged the man to be in his early forties; a bull of a man. Just about Smoke’s height, maybe twenty pounds heavier.

Cord blinked first, turning his head away with a curse that just reached Smoke. Smoke cut his eyes to the Hangout. Diego and Pablo Gomez and another man stood there. Smoke finally recognized the third man. Lujan, the Chihuahua gunfighter. Probably the fastest gun—that as yet had built a reputation—in all of Mexico. But not a cold- blooded killer like Diego and Pablo.

Lujan tipped his hat at Smoke and Smoke lifted a hand in acknowledgment and smiled. Lujan returned the smile, then turned and walked into the saloon.

Smoke again felt eyes on him. Cord was once more staring at him.

“You there! The man supposed to be Smoke Jensen. Git down here. I wanna talk to you.”

“You got two legs and a horse, mister!” Smoke called over the distance. “So you can either walk or ride up here.”

Pablo and Diego laughed at that.

“Damned greasers!” Cord spat the words.

The Mexicans stiffened, hands dropping to the butts of their guns.

A dozen gunhands in front of the Pussycat stood up.

A little boy, about four or five years old, accompanied by his dog, froze in the middle of the street, right in line of fire.

Lujan opened the batwings and stepped out. “We—all of us—have no right to bring bloodshed to the innocent people of this town.” His voice carried across the street. He stepped into the street and walked to the boy’s side. “You and your dog go home, muchacho. Quickly, now.”

Lujan stood alone in the street. “A man who would deliberately injure a child is not fit to live. So, McCorkle, it is a good day to die, is it not?”

Smoke walked out into the street to stand by Lujan’s side. A smile creased the Mexican’s lips. “You are taking a side, Smoke?”

“No. I just don’t like McCorkle, and I probably won’t like Hanks either.”

“So, McCorkle,” Lujan called. “You see before you two men who have not taken a side, but who are more than willing to open the baile. Are you ready?”

“Make that three people,” Beans’s voice rang out.

“Who the hell are you?” McCorkle shouted.

“Some people call me the Moab Kid.”

“Make that four people,” Ring said. He held his Winchester in his big hands.