Johnstone, W. - Last Mountain Man

In the largest building of the more than a dozen cabins, they found a rusting tin box and pried open the lid. They found rotting papers that crumbled at the touch.

Smoke took Nicole out into the sunlight. “I know what I’ll do,” he said.

He took a small hammer and a nail from the side pack of his packhorse, carried in case an animal threw a shoe. He built a fire and spent an hour heating and hammering the nail into a crude ring. When it cooled, he slipped it on her third finger, left hand.

“It’ll have to do,” he said. “Close as I can make us to being really married.”

She kissed him and said, “Let’s go home.”

Eleven

Preacher was sitting on the rough bench in front of the cabin when they rode into the yard. He was spitting tobacco juice and whittling on a piece of wood.

“Howdy,” he greeted them, as if he had been gone only a day instead of months. “Where you two younguns been?”

“We might ask you the same question,” Smoke replied.

“Ramblin’. Seein’ God’s country in all its glory.”

“We got married,” Nicole said proudly, showing him her nail ring.

“Right nice,” he acknowledged, looking first at the ring, then into her eyes. “You with child, girl?”

She blushed. “Yes, sir.”

“Figured ya’ll get into mischief while I’s gone. Tain’t no big deal; I helped birth dozens of papooses in my time. Woman does all the work; man just gets in the way. Who spoke the words?”

“Nobody,” Smoke said. “Couldn’t find a minister. Went all the way into Utah Territory looking.”

“Well … I always believed it was what was in your hearts that counted. Knowed you was in love when I seen you fall off your horse.”

“I didn’t fall off my horse!”

“Did, too.”

“Did not!”

“I’ll go fix supper,” Nicole said.

When she had closed the door to the cabin, Preacher said, “Good thing you didn’t ride east, boy — warrants out for you all over the place.”

They walked to the lean-to and stabled the horses, rubbing them down with burlap. Preacher gave Smoke the news.

“Got warrants for you with your pitcher on ’em at the Springs and at Walsenburg. Don’t ride no further east than the Los Pinos — you hear?”

Smoke looked at him, then opened his mouth to protest.

“You married now, son. You got ’sponsibilities to that there woman who’s a-carryin’ your child. And you got men huntin’ you. That there Potter and Richards … ’mong others. Price on your head, too. Big money. They some ’fraid of you, boy — or something like it.”

“It’s a mystery to me. What’d you hear about Potter and Stratton and Richards?”

“They all up in Ideeho Territory. Up in the wild country. All live in or around a town called Bury.”

“B-e-r-r-y?”

“No. Like you plant somebody in the ground. Way I got the story, Smoke, your Pa rode in that there town like a wild man, reins ’tween his teeth, both hands full of Colts. Kilt three or four, wounded two-three more, and took a right smart ’mount of gold them men took from the Rebs. Way I heared it, no one knowed him up there in Bury, so he hung around for a week or two ’fore he made his move, listenin’ till he learned where the gold was.”

“Wonder what he did with the gold?”

Old eyes studied the young man. “You interested in it?”

“Not in the least.”

“I hoped you’d say that.”

“If they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone.”

“It ain’t gonna work thataway, boy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You got bounty hunters sniffin’ your back trail. They’s at least three thousand dollars on your head, dead or alive. All of it put up by them three men up in the territory. That’s big money, boy — big money. That’s why I come back so soon. Got to have somebody watchin’ your back.”

“Don’t those bounty hunters know the truth about me? About what happened to Pa and Luke?”

“They don’t care, son. They after the money and to hell with how they earn it. Most bounty hunters is scum. I’d shoot a bounty hunter on sight — take his hair.”

“We’re going to raise horses here, Preacher. Run some cattle directly. You and me and Nicole. We’re going to raise a family, and our children will need a grandfather — that’s you, you old goat.”

“Thank you. Nicest thing you’ve said to me in months.”

“I haven’t seen you in months!”

“That’s right. You keep them guns of yourn loose. When the girl gonna birth?”

“November, she thinks.”

“Just like a woman. Don’t never know nothin’ for sure.”

The summer passed uneventfully, with Smoke tending to his huge gardens and looking after his growing herd of horses. Preacher hunted for game, curing some of the meat, making pemmican out of the rest.

In the first week of July, much to Preacher’s disgust, Nicole sent him off to the nearest town for some canning jars.

“What the hell is a cannin’ jug?”

“Jars,” she corrected. “They have screw-down, airtight lids. They keep food fresh and good-tasting for months.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Probably,” Smoke said, saddling Preacher’s pony.

“And don’t forget the lids,” Nicole reminded him. “And the vinegar. “And you come right back, now, Preacher. No dilly-dallying around, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said sourly. “And don’t fergit the lids!” he mimicked under his breath. “Shore hope none of my compadres see me doin’ this. Never live it down.”

He continued to mutter as he rode off. “I fit a grizzly bear and won one time,” he said. “Now I’m runnin’ errands to git jug lids. Ain’t nobody got no respect for an old man.”

If anyone else had called him an old man, Preacher would have dented his skull with the butt of his Henry.

The nearest town of any size — other than the Springs, and Preacher could not go there; too many people knew him and might try to track him back to Smoke — was Del Norte, located just a few miles south of the Rio Grande, on the eastern slopes of the San Juan Forest.

He knew of a town being built at the site of old Antoine Robidoux’s trading post, up close to the Gunnison, but he doubted they would have any canning jars and lids, so he pointed his pony’s nose east-northeast, to avoid settlements as much as possible. He rode through the western part of the San Juans, cross the Los Pinos, through the Weminuche, then followed the Rio Grande into Del Norte — a long bit of traveling through the wilderness. But Preacher knew all the shortcuts and places to avoid.

As Preacher rode into town, coming in from the opposite direction, deliberately, his eyes swept the street from side to side, settling on a group of men in front of a local saloon. Most were local men, but Preacher spotted two as gun-hands.

He knew one of them: Felter. An ex-army sergeant who had been publicly flogged and dishonorably discharged for desertion in the face of the enemy; the enemy being the Cheyenne up in the north part of the state. But Preacher knew the man was no coward — he just showed uncommon good sense in getting away from a bad situation. After his humiliation and discharge from the army, Felter had turned bounty hunter, selling his gun skills — which were considerable — to the highest bidder. He was an ugly brute of a man, who had killed, so it was said, more than twenty men. He was quick on the draw, but not as quick as Smoke, Preacher knew. Nobody he had ever seen or heard of was that quick. He cut his eyes once more to Felter. The man had been accused of rape — twice.

The other man standing beside Felter looked like Canning, the outlaw. But Preacher was not sure of that. If it was Canning, and he was riding with Felter, they were up to no good — and that was fact.