The ledge snaked around a bend. He had no idea what lay around that bend. He had no rope to aid in his climbing out. He had no idea how badly hurt he might be. He had no idea how far the ledge ran. If he stayed where he was, he would die. It was that simple. If he tried to climb out, the odds of his making it were slim to none.
But he damn sure was going to try.
Food. He had to eat. He fumbled around in his saddle bag and found some hard crackers. He ate them, drank a swallow of water left in his busted canteen, and felt better. If I felt any worse, he thought with dark humor, I’d be dead.
Smoke wriggled around on the ledge, being very careful not to get too close to the edge, for the rock looked very flaky and unstable there. On his belly, he checked his guns which had stayed in leather thanks to the hammer thongs. The guns were dirty, and he carefully cleaned them, working the action and reloading. He checked the knife on his belt and the shorter-bladed knife in his leggings. Both were still in place and both still sharp enough to shave with.
Smoke was tired, so very, very tired. He would have liked to just lay his head on his arm and go to sleep. Maybe just rest for a few moments. He shook himself like a big shaggy dog. No time for rest. He felt for his pocket watch and was not surprised to see it busted, the hands stopping at eleven—thirty—five. He judged the time to be close to four, maybe four-thirty. He didn’t have all that much daylight left him.
Taking a deep breath, he crawled forward.
Wouldn’t it be interesting, he thought, to come face to face with a mountain lion on this narrow trail with a five hundred foot drop below?
He decided it would not be interesting. Just deadly for one of them.
He crawled on, smiling at what faced him a few yards around the curve in the trail. The mountain pass ended, but it did not end sheer; it ended in an upside down V. Now, if there were just sufficient handholds or jutting rocks that were stable, he could climb out. It was only about twenty feet to the top, and he could hear no sounds above him except the sighing of the mountain winds. He reached the end of the narrow ledge and rested for a time. God, he was worn out.
Smoke crawled to his knees and put one foot on the other side of the narrow gorge. He willed himself not to look down. The slight protruding of rock felt secure under his foot, and he leaned forward, gripping two outcroppings, one in each hand. He lifted his left foot to a toehold about two feet off the trail, and now he was committed to the mountain.
It took him twenty minutes to climb about twenty feet, and using brute strength while dangling over a five hundred foot drop was not something he wished to repeat. Ever.
When he crawled over the top he was exhausted.
If he had not been wearing leather gloves, he probably would not have made it; the rocks would have cut his hands to bloody ribbons. He belly-crawled into a copse of timber and rolled up in his blankets. He had to rest.
“Can you believe this?” Mills almost shouted the words, as he waved a court Order that was hand-delivered to him that afternoon.
“Yeah, I can believe it,” Johnny said. The marshals and the deputies had returned to town after the court order had been delivered.
Judge Richards had obviously pre-signed pardons for all the outlaws in the Lee Slater gang The order had just been found and delivered.
“I turned all the jailed outlaws loose,” Earl said. “I thought Sheriff Silva was going to have a heart attack.”
It was midnight in Rio, and the town was sleeping. The outlaws were due to ride in the next day, as soon as the reward money was stagecoached in on the afternoon stage, to collect their blood money. And outlaws being what they are, they were also going to collect the reward money that had been on the heads of their now departed friends.
“The end of an era,” Larry said, soaking his feet in a bucket of lukewarm water. “I would have liked to have met Mr. Smoke Jensen, to shake his hand and tell him how wrong I was about him.”
“Don’t sell Smoke short,” Louis said. “I’ll not believe he’s dead until I see the body.”
“But he fell off a mountain!” Mills said. “Or rather down into a deep chasm.”
“Yes,” the gambler said. “And chasms and ravines have outcroppings that are not always visible from above. I don’t believe he’s dead.”
“Neither do I,” Johnny said. “Hurt, yes. Dead?” He shook his head. “No.”
“Sally?” Earl asked.
“I don’t think she believes it either.”
“I aim to be in the street when them outlaws ride in tomorrow,” Johnny said.
“Me, too,” Cotton said.
“I’ll be with you boys,” Earl made three. “I shall certainly be there,” Louis said, standing up.
“Count me in,” Larry surprised them all. “I owe this much to his memory. I certainly maligned the man while he was alive.”
Six U.S. Marshals’ badges hit the desk. “And we shall be standing with you,” Mills said.
“Gonna he a hell of a party,” Cotton summed it up with a wicked grin.
Smoke awakened at midnight. He was aching and sore, but feeling a lot better. His clothes were stiff with dried blood and mud and sweat, but his hands opened and closed easily. He rolled his blankets and started walking. Less than an hour later, he found a riderless horse, still saddled and bridled. Probably had belonged to one of the dead outlaws or bounty hunters. He stripped saddle and bridle from the animal and let it graze and roll while he went through the saddlebags and poke-sack and found food, coffee, frying pan, and coffee pot.
He checked out the rifle in the boot; it was loaded full with .44s. He led the horse back behind some boulders and picketed the animal. Then he built a fire and fried bacon and potatoes and made a pot of coffee. Being a coffee-loving man, he drank the coffee right out of the pot while his food was cooking, then he settled down and ate leisurely and drank more coffee out of a cup.
An hour later, he had carefully put out the fire and was in the saddle, riding for the pass. The pass was deserted when he rode through it. On the other side of the pass, however, he could see where it looked like hundreds of people had held a wild party. Empty beer kegs and empty whiskey bottles lay all over the place.
“I wonder if they were celebrating the news of my death?” he muttered, then rode on.
He came upon what appeared to be a dead man lying by the side of the road that led to Rio. He dismounted and knelt down beside him, rolling him over. Not dead, just dead drunk. Smoke slapped him awake.
The man opened his eyes and started to scream when he recognized the man standing over him. Smoke put a hand on the man’s mouth, shushing him.
“Don’t yell,” he told him. “You understand?”
“But you’re dead!” the man said, after Smoke removed his hand.
“I’m a long way from being dead,” Smoke corrected him. “Do I look dead to you?”
“No. But you shore look some terrible tore up.”
“Tell me what went on back by the pass.”
The man brought Smoke up to date, still convinced he was conversing with a ghost.
“I see,” Smoke said, when the man had finished. “You're going to freeze to death if you lay out here the rest of the night.”
“It don’t seem to have bothered you none! ’Sides, I got me a claim about a mile from here. I can make it, providin’ I don’t run into no more ghosts.”
Chuckling, Smoke left the man and rode on. Just about ten miles outside of town, Smoke found a good place to camp and bedded down for the rest of the night. He slept deeply and awakened well after dawn, feeling at least part of his enormous strength once more returning to him. He did a few exercises, copied after a great cat’s stretchings, to get the kinks out of his muscles, then cooked the last of the dead outlaw’s food and boiled the last of the coffee.
He pulled out his makin’s sack and rolled a cigarette, enjoying that with the last cup of coffee. He found a spare sixgun in the saddle bags and dug out the two extra he had in his pack. He checked them all out and loaded them up full, then checked the rifle again.
