William Johnstone: Code of the Mountain Man

Smoke shook his head. “Not me, Marshal. Somebody does me a hurt, I’ll hunt him down and settle it. Eyeball to eyeball. Man kills for no reason, or kills trying to take what isn’t his, hang him. ’Cause he’s no good. Now I read where the country is spending money building prisons.” He shook his head. “It’s a mistake, Marshal. A hundred years from now, people will see that it’s a mistake. But it’ll be too late then. A man who’ll lie and cheat and steal and hurt people and kill at fifteen will do the same damn thing when he’s fifty. I don’t care if this nation builds ten thousand prisons . . . it won’t matter. It won’t stop them. But a bullet will.”

Everybody in the restaurant had stopped eating and was listening to the most famous gunfighter in the world.

“I sass my daddy when I was a kid, he’d a-knocked me slap to the floor. Now we got so-called smart folks back East saying that you shouldn’t whip your children. If that silliness continues and catches hold, can you imagine what it’ll be like in the 1980s? There’ll be no discipline, no respect for law and order. I whip my children, then I hug them to show them I love them and I tell them why I just put a belt to their rears.

“I respect the laws of God, Marshal. I’m an Old Testament man. Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Hurt me or mine and I'm comin’ after you. And man’s laws be damned!”

The marshal sighed and ate his breakfast. “I hope to God I’m not the lawman who ever has to come after you, Smoke.”

“That day’s coming, Marshal,” Smoke admitted.

“ ’Cause I’ll never change. Someday, a posse will come after me, hunting me down like an old lobo wolf And when they do, the land’s going to run red with blood. Because I won’t go down easy.

“Marshal, if a man is hungry, can’t feed his family, just come to me and I’ll give them food. If they’re down on their luck and really want to work, I’ll give them a job, find one for them, or give them money to keep on hunting for work and eat while they’re doing it. But if I catch someone stealing from me, or hurting my family, or threatening me, he’s dead on the spot.

“It’s a funny thing about laws and lawyers, Marshal. You take a small town that just has one lawyer, he can make a living and that’s just about it. Let a second lawyer move in, and damned if they don’t both get rich.”

Smoke pulled out and rode past the graveyard, located on a barren hilltop just out of town. Three mounds of earth were waiting to be shoveled in the holes.

The marshal had told him some names of men who rode with Lee Slater: Curly Rogers, Dirty Jackson, Ed Malone, Boots Pierson . . . to name just a few. They were all trash and scum. Back shooters and torturers. He had asked if Smoke planned to take on the whole gang by himself?

“Just one gang, isn’t it?”

Smoke headed south, staying between the Cebolla and Cochetopa Rivers. Although the outlaws’ trail was days old, it was not that difficult to follow. Their campsites were trashy reminders of just how sorry a bunch of people he was tracking. Tin cans and bottles and bloody bandages and torn, wore—out clothing clearly marked each night’s site.

With San Luis Peak still to the south of him, Smoke came up on a woman sitting in front of a burned-out cabin. Only the chimney remained. He noticed several fresh—dug graves by the side of the charred ruins. The graves had not been filled in.

The woman’s face bore the results of a savage beating. She looked up at him through eyes that were swollen slits. “You be the law, mister?”

“No. As far as I know there is no law within a hundred miles of here.” He swung down from the saddle and walked to her. She had fixed her torn dress as best she could; but it was little more than rags. “You had anything to eat?”

“A biscuit I had in my pocket. The outlaws token everything else. Before they put the house to the torch. I ain’t able to move.”

Smoke took a packet of food from his saddlebags and gave it to her. “I’ll get you a dipper of water from the well.”

“I wouldn’t,” she told him. “They killed my kids’ dogs and dumped them in the well.”

“Then I’ll get you some water from the creek.”

“I’d appreciate it. I tried to get around, but I can’t. They kicked my ribs in. Left me for dead. I don’t think I got long ’fore I join my husband and girls. Ribs busted off and tore up a lung. Hurts.”

He found a jug and rinsed it out, filling it up with water from the creek. Looking at the woman, he could see that she was standing in death’s door. Sheer determination had kept her hanging on, waiting for help, or more probably, he guessed, someone to come along that would avenge this terrible act.

“Who dug the graves, ma’am?”

“I did. The outlaws made me. Then they used my husband for target practice. Made me and my girls watch. He suffered a long time. My girls was ten and twelve years old. They raped me and made them watch. Then they raped the girls and made me watch. Then they thought they had kicked me to death. I lay real still and fooled them. They done horrible things to me and the girls. Things I won’t talk about. Unnatural things. I been sittin’ here for three days, prayin’ and passin’ out from the pain, prayin’ and passin’ out. Wishin’ to God somebody would come along and hear my story.”

“I’m here, ma’am.”

She drifted off, not unconscious, but babbling. Some of her words made sense, most didn’t. Smoke bathed her face and waited. The woman’s face was hot to the touch, burning with fever. While she babbled, smoke unsaddled Buck and let him roll and water.

“Who you be?” she asked suddenly, snapping out of her delirium.

“Smoke Jensen."

“Praise God!” she said. “Thank you, God. You sent me a warrior. I thank you.”

“Lee Slater’s gang did this?”

“That’s him. I heard names. Harry Jennings, Blackjack Simpson, Thumbs Morton, Bell Harrison, Al Martine. They was a Pedro and a Lopez and a Tom Post.” She coughed up blood and slipped back into delirium.

Smoke took that time to walk to the graves and look at the shallow pits. His stomach did a slow roll-over. The man had been shot to ribbons. His wife had been right: he died hard over a long period of time. The naked bodies of the children would sicken a buzzard. The kids had been used badly and savagely. People who would do this deserved no pity, no mercy . . . and the only justice they were going to get from Smoke Jensen was a bullet.

He filled in the holes and took a small Bible from his saddlebags. He read from the Old Testament and then set about making some crosses. He made four, for he knew the woman wasn't going to last much longer.

“Them names was burned in my head,” the woman said. “I made myself memorize them. They was Crown and Zack. Reed and Dumas and Mac. They was a Ray and a Sandy and some young punks called themselves Pecos, Carson, and Hudson. Three more pimply faced punks hung with them three. They was all savages. Just as mean and vicious as any man amongst ’em. They was called Concho, Bull, and Jeff.”

Smoke rolled one of his rare cigarettes and waited, squatting down beside the dying woman.

“I recollect hearin’ a man they called Lake and another man they called Taylor. Dear God in Heaven it was a long two days they stayed here.” She looked at him. Her eyes were unusually bright and clear. “Did I dream it, or did you put dirt over my family?”

“I buried them and read words from the Bible.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember no more names of them outlaws.”

“I’ll find out who the rest of them were. Did they all . . . ah? . . .” He didn’t know quite how to say it. But the woman did.