William Johnstone - Code of the Mountain Man

I acknowledge the Furies, I believe in them, I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.

Theodore Dreiser

Chapter One

No one knew why the outlaws chose to attack the town of Big Rock. It was a very stupid thing for outlaws to attack any western town. For those who inhabited the towns of the West were veterans of the War Between the States, veterans of Indian wars, buffalo hunters—men who had lived with guns all their lives. But Big Rock, located in the high-up country of northern Colorado, was known to be off-limits to anyone who sought trouble.

And most trouble—hunters were as careful to avoid Big Rock as they were to keep from sticking their hands into a nest of rattlers.

Perhaps the outlaws who struck Big Rock that day hit it because the West was taming somewhat. The bad old days were not gone entirely, but they were calming down. Maybe the outlaws felt they could pull it off. They would have fared much better had they pulled off their boots and stuck their bare feet into a bucket filled with scorpions.

“Good morning, Abigal,” Sally Jensen spoke to the woman behind the counter.

“Good morning, Sally,” the shopkeeper’s wife said. “And how are things out at the Sugarloaf?”

The Sugarloaf was the name of their ranch. ‘They’ being Smoke and Sally Jensen.

Both women turned at the sounds of hooves pounding the earth. A lot of horses. Sounded like fifty or more.

“What on earth? . . .” Sally said.

A bullet busted a window of the store and tore through cans of peaches. A second bullet hit Sally on the arm and knocked her down. A child and her dog were trampled under the steel-shod hooves of the galloping horses.

It didn’t take the rampaging outlaws long to discover they’d struck the wrong town as men reached for their pistols and rifles and emptied a few saddles. They raced out of town, whooping and hollering and shooting. But the damage had been done.

“Four people dead,” judge Proctor said grimly. “Including a little girl. Half a dozen more wounded Couple of them seriously. Somebody ride for the Sugarloaf and fetch Smoke. Sally’s been hit.”

“Lord God Amighty!” a citizen breathed. “Them outlaws don’t know it, but they just opened the gates to Hell!”

He waited until he was absolutely certain that Sally was not seriously injured. A neighbor lady would stay with her, tending to her. The hands who worked the Sugarloaf range would make damn sure no one tried to attack the ranch.

“Now you be careful,” Sally told her husband. “And don’t you worry about me. I’m just fine.”

He bent down and kissed her lips. “I’ll see you when I get back.” He walked out of the house and stepped into the saddle.

Sally made no attempt to dissuade her husband. This was the West, and a man had to do what a man had to do. They were bound by unwritten yet strictly obeyed codes. Especially a man like Smoke Jensen.

He rode a big buckskin that he’d caught wild in the mountains and gentled. Because of the way he’d worked with the horse, and the bond that had been established between horse and rider, Smoke was the only human the buckskin would allow on its back.

Smoke was tall, with wide shoulders, heavily muscled arms, and lean hipped. His wrists were huge. And his big hands were as powerful as they could be gentle. His hair was ash-blond, cut short, and his eyes were a cold. unforgiving brown that rarely showed any emotion except when with his wife and children.

He wore two guns, the left-hand gun worn butt-forward, the right-hand gun low and tied down. He was just as fast with one gun as he was with the other. Some said he was the fastest man with a gun who ever lived, but he never sought out or bragged that he was a gunfighter. He was just a man one did not push. He carried a long-bladed knife that he usually shaved with on the trail. Or fought with, whichever was the most important at the time. He’d been raised among old mountain men and some called him the last mountain man. His clothing was earth-tones, his hat brown and flat-brimmed. A Winchester rifle was in the saddle boot.

Leadville was behind him and the Gunnison River just a few hours ahead. He would make the small town just about dark. There was a hotel there, and there he would bed down for the night.

He was in no hurry. He knew he would find the outlaws that had ridden into Big Rock and shot it up, killing and wounding innocent people. If their intentions had been to rob the bank, they had failed miserably. But they had left behind them a bloody main street and sorrow in the hearts of those who had to bury their dead and watch the suffering of those wounded by the indiscriminate bullets.

The sheriff of Big Rock, Monte Carson, had been wounded during the bloody battle, and could not lead the posse that went after the outlaws. Went after them, but finally had to return empty-handed.

The man on the mean-eyed buckskin didn’t need a posse. Didn’t want to be hampered by one. He knew the difference between right and wrong, and he sure as hell didn’t need some fancy-talking lawyer to explain it. As far as he was concerned, lawyers should stick to writing wills and drawing up deeds and such. Keep their noses out of a man’s private business. That was part of the problems facing the world today: too damn many lawyers.

He had kissed his wife goodbye, provisioned up, and ridden out from their ranch in the high lonesome of northern Colorado. Alone.

Nobody attacked Big Rock. Nobody. Not and got away with it. Smoke didn’t believe in cowboys hoorahing a town. People got hurt doing that. A gun was not a toy, and when a man grew up, he put boyhood behind him and accepted the responsibilities of being a man.

Smoke had helped found Big Rock; his blood and sweat and time and effort were ingrained in the streets and buildings. And those outlaws had shot his wife. Nobody shot his wife. Ever. Not and lived to brag about it.

One lawyer, straight from the East and new to Big Rock, had said the outlaws probably had a poor childhood, and that was what caused them to behave in such a barbarous manner. They really shouldn’t be blamed for their actions.

Smoke had slapped him down in the street, jerked him up by the seat of his britches and his shirt collar and dumped him in a horse trough.

Preacher Morrow had tried to talk him out of tracking the outlaws. So had Dr. Colton Spalding and some of the others in the town.

“It’s the 1880s, Smoke,” judge Proctor said. “You just can’t take the law into your own hands anymore.”

The big man who stood by the big buckskin looked at the judge. judge Proctor backed up, away from those terribly hard eyes.

“I’ll be back,” Smoke said, then swung into the saddle.

He swung down from the saddle in front of the livery stable in the small town by the Gunnison River and led the buckskin inside, stripping the saddle and bridle from him and stabling the animal.

“Feed him good,” he told the boy who had appeared out of the gloom of the cavernous building. “Rub him down. Give him a bag of grain.” He looked at the boy. “You sleep in this place?”

“Yes, sir. I got me a room back yonder.” He pointed. The man looked familiar, but the boy just couldn’t place him. He took the coin the man offered him. It was a silver dollar.

“Don’t you have a home, boy?”

“Yes, sir. But my ma lets me stay here during the night so’s I can earn extra money to help out.”

“I’ll leave my saddle here. You look after my gear.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Any strangers in town?”

“Three men rode in late this afternoon. They was too cheap to use the livery. They picketed their horses down by the river. They looked like hardcases. Guns tied down low. They just looked mean to me.”