William Johnstone - Battle of the Mountain Man

Hoisting his buckets, Smoke thought about how different this was from his usual existence, or his more violent past. He gave a grin when he considered it, laughing at himself. His biggest worry now was chopping through ice, instead of chopping off the heads of his enemies. This was truly going to be a winter of contentment with Sally, not his usual fare of seemingly endless ranch work, always vigilant for the possibility of the return of old enemies, worrying about Sally while he was away.

When he entered the warm cabin, he found Sally building up a breakfast fire in the fireplace. Puma had installed two swinging iron cooking hooks, holding cast-iron cooking pots, that could be moved over the flames. A rusted iron frame for a skillet or a coffeepot sat to one side of the fire.

She smiled at him as he was closing the cabin door. “This is so nice,” she said, adding split wood to a pile of glowing coals. “I thought I might miss my wood-stove, but I was wrong.”

Smoke placed the buckets near the fireplace and took her in his arms. “The only thing I would have missed would’ve been you, if you hadn’t come with me,” he said gently.

“Nonsense,” she replied, pretending to sound serious. “You would have found Huggie and Del. The three of you would have been so busy swapping yarns you wouldn’t have noticed I wasn’t there. I know why you wanted to come up here this winter. You get this yearning look in your eye when you’ve been away from your mountain men friends too long.”

“That isn’t true,” he protested. “I’d much rather be with you.”

She rested her cheek against his chest “I believe that too, and I’ve never doubted you loved me, but it’s something else that brings you up here. You want to keep in touch with your past every now and then. I understand, darling. I know it’s not just Huggie and Del and some of the others. It’s this place, these mountains and valleys, the quiet, and the beauty of it drawing you back. It’s okay. I love this high country as much as you do, in my own way. You don’t have to make excuses.”

“It wasn’t an excuse,” he mumbled near her ear. “Seems we never get any time alone.”

“We’re making up for that now,” she whispered, tightening her embrace around his chest. “But I want you to know I will understand when you go off to look for your friends.”

Once again, Sally was reading him like a book. He’d been thinking about Del and Huggie for a couple of days without any mention of it. “Maybe after we get things squared away around here we’ll go looking for Del. He’ll get word to Huggie and a few of the others… like Grizzly Cole and ol’ Happy Jack Cobb, if any of them are still around, or still alive.”

Sally giggled, drawing away to look at him. “Who is Happy Jack Cobb? I’ve never heard you mention that name before. And why is he happy?”

“That’s just it,” Smoke told her. “Happy Jack would have to be close to sixty now, an’ nobody can recollect ever seeing him smile in the last forty-odd years. Puma named him that, best I remember. He said Jack Cobb wouldn’t crack a smile if he was to discover the mother lode up here some day. He wears this frown all the time, like he’s mad at somethin’, only he isn’t. It’s just his natural expression.”

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. “I’m happy,” she said while searching his face. “I hope you are too.”

He swallowed when a strange dryness occurred in his throat. “I’ve never been happier in my life, and that’s on account of you being with me.”

They were Shoshoni by the way they wore their hair and their dress, wrapped in buffalo robes, guiding half-starved ponies into the far end of the narrow valley, riding into the brunt of winds accompanying the snowstorm. He pointed them out to Sally as she was going inside with an armload of green limbs from a pine tree for smoking trout he’d caught just before noon. “Appears they’re Shoshoni and they’re way off their range, this far south. Fetch me my rifle, just in case these boys are renegades.” It had been hard to tell, due to increasing snowfall, until they came out of the trees, a good sign in Smoke’s experience.

Shoshoni warriors looking for a fight would have stayed hidden until they were very close to the cabin. “They smelled our smoke, being downwind.”

“I see six of them,” Sally said, her voice tight, changing pitch after she counted the warriors. “I thought all the Indian troubles were over up here.”

“The Utes are gone. Shoshoni range north of here by more’n a hundred miles in Wyoming Territory , This isn’t their usual hunting ground.”

“I’ll get your rifle. Maybe they’re only looking for food and a place to get out of this storm.”

“Maybe,” Smoke agreed, thinking otherwise. There was no sense in worrying Sally until he found out what the Indians were up to. He put down the snowshoe he was repairing, watching the Indians ride toward him, wondering why they were so far south of their ancestral homeland.

Sally came out with his .44 Winchester and a box of shells, like she too expected the worst. She gave him the rifle and cartridges, shading her eyes from the snowfall with her hand.

“Those calico ponies look mighty hungry,” he said, talking to himself more than for Sally’s benefit. “Could be times have been hard up north. Buffalo hunters have damn near wiped out the big herds.”

“Perhaps all they want is food. We have enough venison to give them—a hindquarter off that deer you shot. The meat’s still good. I can roast it, if that’s the reason they’re here. Or we can give them all of it. You can go hunting again when this storm breaks.”

“We’ll give ’em a chance to explain,” Smoke said, working a shell into the firing chamber, pocketing the extra shells. “You go back inside until I find out. It’s real clear they’re headed straight for the cabin.”

Sally backed away, turning for the door. “I hope it’s only food they want,” she said again, her voice almost lost on a gust of howling winter wind.

Six mounted warriors crossed the stream and now Smoke was certain they weren’t looking for trouble. Their bows and arrows and ancient muskets were tied to their ponies or balanced across their horses’ withers in a manner that was clearly not meant as a threat.

The leader halted his black and white pinto twenty yards from Smoke and gave the sign for peace, and true words, closing his fist over his heart. Smoke returned the sign, then he held one palm open, inviting the Shoshoni to speak.

The Indian began a guttural string of words, a language not much different than the Ute tongue, asking if Smoke understood him.

Smoke replied, “ Nie habbe ,” meaning he spoke their tongue and understood.

The Shoshoni began a lengthy explanation of a tragic tale, how his people were starving because of white buffalo hunters on the prairies, leaving meat to rot in the sun this summer, only killing buffalo for their hides. Shoshoni children and older members of the tribe were dying of starvation. A dry spring and summer left little grazing for deer, elk, and antelope, and most of the wild game had drifted south into lands once controlled by the Utes.

“We have deer meat we can give you,” Smoke told him in words he hadn’t used for years. “You are welcome to make camp here until the snow ends.”

“We would be grateful for the meat,” the Indian said, his head and face partially hidden by the hood of his buffalo robe. “We have very little gunpowder and shot. Our arrows have been cursed by the Great Spirit and they do not find their mark on this hunt.”

“I will have my wife cook the deer if you want.”

The warrior shook his head “We must take it back to our village for the hungry children.”