Battle of the Mountain Man

He found good news when he climbed down from his saddle at the campfire. The wounded Hereford bull had stopped bleeding entirely, and now it was grazing along with the others, apparently suffering no real discomfort from its injury.

Smoke tied off his horse, carrying his bedroll.

“You gonna sleep or eat?” Pearlie asked good-naturedly.

“A little of both, I hope.”

Cletus picked up his rifle. “I already ate all I could stand of Pearlie’s beans, so I’ll take the first watch along with Gal. Cal’s young enough not to need as much sleep as the rest of us.”

Smoke tossed his bedroll over a stretch of soft grass before he came for a plate of beans. “Suits me, Cletus. I’ll relieve you before midnight. Ride as close to the herd as you can without spookin’ ’em. They’re still a little jittery after all that happened today.”

“So am I,” Cal said softly, leaving his beans mostly untouched to saddle the gray colt.

Pearlie straightened up from spooning more beans onto his plate. “Well I’ll be damned an’ hog-tied. We just witnessed a miracle, boys. That young ’un hardly touched his food tonight, an’ that’s like seein’ a man walk on water without gittin’ his feet wet.”Thirty-seven

North of the Haystack Mountain range, Jessie led his men to a fork in the Pecos River corning from the west, a shallow body of sluggish water only belly-deep on their horses. Pickett seemed to be interested in a spot north of the crossing, where big rocks and tall cottonwoods lined the river.

“This is it,” Pickett told Jessie, while Jose Vasquez and four of his remaining pistoleros made it across, followed by Billy Morton, Tom Hill, Pedro Lopez, and the two members of his gang left alive after the fight with Jensen. The last rider to cross was the Indian called Dreamer, who kept glancing backward as if he expected them to be followed.

“This is what?” Jessie asked, still brooding over their resounding defeat yesterday morning at the hands of Jensen.

“The perfect place,” Pickett replied, his voice turned to ice. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch while his horse is crossin’ this river. I can hide in them rocks yonder, an’ I’ll be close enough to use my scattergun. Betsy’ll cut him to pieces at this range. Probably kill his horse too.”

Jessie looked things over. “He may get suspicious when he comes to a spot like this where he can’t see if anybody’s hid on the other side. Might not work like you planned.”

“He has to cross here to make sure there ain’t no bogs or quicksand that’ll trap his cattle. He’s a rancher, an’ he’ll know the risks if he don’t test this crossing.”

“We can have the rest of the men spread out up and down this riverbank to cover you.”

Pickett wheeled on Jessie with fire in his eyes. “That’s what was wrong every goddamn time, Jessie. These idiots you hired don’t know the first thing ’bout killin’ a man out in the open. What you’ve got is a buncha saloon- raised gunmen who’ve got no experience bushwhackin’ a man who knows wild country. He’ll come real cautious down to this river, bein’ as careful as he knows how. That’s why I’m gonna do this my way, so none of the rest of these fools tip my hand on what I aim to do.”

“Suit yourself, Bill,” Jessie said. “The only thing I care about is findin’ Smoke Jensen dead.”

Pickett jutted his jaw. “You won’t find nothin’ but pieces of him. I give you my word on it. He’ll be twenty yards away when he’s in the middle of this river, an’ that’s close enough to shred every piece of meat on his body with a sawed-off shotgun like mine. You leave Jensen to me. The sumbitch is as good as dead right now if he crosses this river.”

Jessie wondered. However, Pickett’s reputation for killing his victims any way he could made him the perfect choice for this job. Jessie could never have admitted it to anyone, but after yesterday’s defeat and the incredible number of men Jensen had killed single-handed, he’d begun to experience twinges of doubt that he could do the job himself. Jensen apparently had some uncanny ability to move around without detection. How else could he have slipped up behind Little Horse and four more experienced Apache warriors, chopping their heads open with some kind of ax, not the sort of weapon the average man used in a war being fought with guns.

“I don’t give a damn how you do it, just make sure it don’t backfire,” Jessie said, as his grim-faced gunmen sat their horses around him, listening to his exchange with Pickett. Jessie knew the others feared Pickett, and rightfully so. Pickett was a madman, more than slightly out of kilter when it came to killing other men, even as they lay dying from other bullet wounds. Roy Cooper had been much the same in that regard. Only somehow, Jensen had been able to kill him along with all the others that night, and it still worried Jessie some.

Pickett turned back to Jessie. “Tell that Injun to ride back and see how far they are behind us. An’ tell the dumb son of a bitch not to let ’em see him. All Injuns are good at bein’ sneaky, so tell him to be careful.”

Dreamer apparently understood every word. At first he gave Pickett a chilly stare, then he swung his pony around and went back across the river, resting a very old Henry repeating rifle across his pony’s withers.

“Dreamer’s liable to double-cross us now, after what you just said about him,” Jessie remarked, watching the Apache ride out of sight around a bend in the trail.

Pickett made a face. “He won’t do it, because he’s after a payday. The rotten bastards will do damn near anything to get their hands on enough money to buy whiskey. Never saw an Injun who wasn’t drunk, or plannin’to get drunk. That’s why you can’t trust ’em.”

Jessie looked north, where the trail climbed to the top of a ridge between two low mountains. “We’ll ride on over that rise yonder an’ make camp wherever there’s water. Find a spring or somethin’, a feeder creek. We’ll be listenin’ real close for gunshots.”

“Won’t be but one,” Pickett said, “when little Miss Betsy gives Jensen her ten-gauge loads.” He drew his double-barrel Greener from a boot tied to the pommel of his saddle, and for a moment it seemed he almost caressed its dark walnut stock while his face visibly changed. He glanced over at Jessie and now a glint flickered in his pale eyes. “This here gun has ended a hell of a lot of men’s lives. Only this one’s gonna be special, because Jensen thinks he’s so goddamn tough an’ clever.”

“He is clever,” Jessie said. “But like you say, he’ll die the same as any other man if a load of double-size buckshot hits him in the right places.”