William Johnstone - Battle of the Mountain Man

“He wouldn’t, even if he was alive.”

“You knew him?”

“Ain’t none of your affair.”

Ned looked down at his boots, wondering who the man was in the white robe… He couldn’t see his face, “My last hope, if I can’t find this Preacher fellow, is a man named Smoke Jensen. I was told he used to be a mountain man before he took up ranching close to Big Rock, and that he knew Preacher better than any of the others.”

A silence followed, long enough to be meaningful, but what did it mean and how could he find out? “Would you care for a cup of coffee? I have some Arbuckles in my pack.”

“Nope. You ask too damn many questions to be good company over a cup of coffee.” Now the white-robed stranger stirred, swinging off the rock. He stood for a moment looking at Ned, even though Ned couldn’t see his eyes. He seemed bent as if with old age, stooped over, although it was hard to tell because his robe was bulky, touching the ground so even his feet and legs were hidden. “Boil your coffee an’ head back where you come from quick as you can, mister, afore somebody, or these mountains, up an’ kills you.”

Before Ned could ask for his name again, the man whirled and walked away into the darkness beneath the pine canopy shadowing both sides of the stream.

“Thanks again, mister!” he called out.

There was nothing but silence and the soft crackle of flames for an answer. Ned knew he would always wonder who the benevolent stranger in the albino buffalo robe was… He owed the man his life. Thirteen

Jessie Evans liked all six of the Mexican pistoleros : Pedro Lopez, Jorge Diaz, Carlos and Victor Bustamante, a half-breed by the name of Raul Jones, and a fat Yaqui Indian simply called Tomo. All six were experienced gunmen and Jessie needed every good gun he could hire, since word had come that Big John Chisum was looking for men who could handle themselves. What was being called the Lincoln County War was now shaping up to be a deadly fight, if things continued the way they were. Cattle were being stolen on both sides. Jessie was ready to teach a few more Chisum riders a permanent lesson, while the territorial governor turned his head at the request of Catron and Murphy. Dolan said they might even burn down John Tunstall’s store some night, to teach him to keep his nose out of the cattle contract business. Jimmy Dolan knew how to fight a war, how to win at any cost, and he had Murphy’s money behind him to get the job done.

Jessie turned to Bill Pickett as sundown came to their camp at Bosque Redondo. “Let’s test those new Mexican boys tonight. We’ll ride over to Chisum’s cow camp on the Ruidoso River. If we gather up about fifty head of steers, an’ kill a few cowboys while we’re at it, Dolan’s liable to give us all a pay raise. We’ll tell those pistoleros to shoot as many men as they can.”

“Sounds good to me,” Pickett replied, tipping a bottle of tequila into his mouth. “I was gettin’ bored, sittin’ ’round here, freezin’ our asses off, waitin’ fer somethin’ to happen. I say we make somethin’ happen ourselves. There’s another thing I been thinkin’ about. That goddamn high an’ mighty Englishman, John Tunstall, has been hirin’ more men. Mostly green kids, or so I hear tell. Wouldn’t be nothin’ wrong with shootin’ that Englishman, if you ask me. He ain’t connected to nobody important in this territory. Killin’ him oughta throw a scare into Chisum an’ everybody else in Lincoln County.”

“I’ll ask Dolan about it. All he said was, maybe we oughta burn down his store. Tell those Mexicans to saddle up. You an’ me an’ Cooper will ride with ’em.”

Pickett eased his weight off a bull hide stool on the front porch of the cow camp bunkhouse. “Suits the hell outa me. We ain’t spilled no blood since winter started. Time we turned some of this snow red. It gets tiresome, seem’ everything white all the damn time.”

The mighty roar of a shotgun from the darkness ended with a shrill scream. Loose horses and cattle bedded down for the night took off in every direction. A lantern brightened behind a cabin window as men in long Johns carrying rifles raced out the door in the pale moonlight, shouting to each other.

Another withering blast of shotgun fire erupted from a spot behind a split rail fence, lifting a hatless cowboy off his feet in mid run, bending him at the waist with the force of speeding lead pellets entering his chest and belly.

A rifle cracked from the corner of a hay shed, dropping a Chisum ranch hand in his tracks, groaning, landing in fresh snow with his feet thrashing as though he meant to keep running while he lay on his back.

More guns roared from a loose circle around the cabin, and more men fell in the snow, yelling, crying out for help or lying still, dead before they went down.

Jessie leaned against the fence in the dark without firing a shot, watching Pickett, Cooper, and his Mexican gunmen in action, keeping a quick tally of the bodies. Eight men, then a ninth, collapsed in a hail of bullets. Terrified longhorns broke out of one corral, snapping rails like kindling wood, bolting toward freedom and an escape from the banging of guns. As the last of the Chisum riders fell, Jessie turned away from the fence to get his horse.

All gunfire stopped abruptly. Somewhere near the cabin a cowboy moaned. Pickett or Cooper would take care of his suffering in short order, along with any others who might still be alive.

“Let’s round up those beeves,” he shouted. “We’ll gather as many as we can an’ clear out. Somebody across the river is liable to have heard the noise.”

He mounted a nervous sorrel gelding and held its reins in check until all his men were in their saddles… all but Pickett, his absence explained when a shotgun bellowed near one of the cowsheds.

Nine Dolan riders spread out to collect over a hundred head of longhorn steers. Jessie knew it was time to get the running irons hot again, changing brands before Sheriff William Brady went through the motions of investigating what would look like a massacre tomorrow morning. A serious escalation of the Lincoln County War had just taken place a few days before Christmas, a warning to John Chisum that the government beef contract business could be a little risky here in the southern part of New Mexico Territory. Fourteen

It was very close to the beginning of April when Sally took a look at the sky one morning, then across the snow-filled valley with a slight frown on her face. She turned to Smoke as he was using a whetstone on his Bowie knife blade.

“It’s time to go, my darling,” she said. “This has been one of the most wonderful times of my life, but we can’t hide up here forever. There’s work to be done at Sugarloaf. By now the snow is melting down there. You’ve got to hire some extra men to help bring catle up from New Mexico. Some of our neighbors who want Hereford bulls may ride along. I suppose I’m getting restless, but something tells me it’s time. You’ve seen your friends, and we’ve had all these months of peace and solitude. Our staples are running low. As much as I’d love to stay here with you for the rest of my life, we can’t. We have a ranch to run.”

For weeks he’d been experiencing the same strange sensation, that it was time to leave, almost like an itching feeling, only it occurred inside, somewhere in his chest or in the back of his brain. He hadn’t wanted to say anything to her. She seemed so happy here and happy with their closeness. “I agree.” he said, sheathing his heavy knife, “I’ve really been thinkin’ about the Herefords, and maybe finding a Morgan stud. We may still hit some bad weather if we start out early, but it’ll be slow movin’ those cattle so many miles. Some of that is still renegade Apache country, so we’ll have to watch our herd real close in a few spots.”