William Johnstone - Battle of the Mountain Man

“Maybeso Cooper go back to get him when he think we all go away,” Pedro suggested.

“I ain’t so damn sure,” Billy replied. “Maybe Mr. Roy Cooper ain’t as tough as we think he is. He lit out of there like his tailfeathers was afire.”

Pedro shrugged. “Who can say? I see Cooper shoot those cowboys in the night like he enjoy it.”

“Maybe he don’t enjoy it so much when somebody’s shootin’ back at him.”

“Senor Jessie be plenty mad when he hear this,” Pedro said, as though he was speaking to himself.

“Then let him face this crazy son of a bitch. We’ll tell him he’d better bring Pickett an’ every spare gun he’s got if he aims to kill that big bastard. I got a feelin’ this guy ain’t gonna be easy to kill.”

“Is the truth,” Pedro muttered, looking over his shoulder yet another time. “I don’t see Victor. Maybeso this hombre kill him too.”

“You’re right about one thing,” Billy added as he urged his horse to a lope. “Jessie sure as hell ain’t gonna like this when we give him the news.”

Roy Cooper lay on his belly in tall grass near the mouth of the valley, putting his rifle sights on the square-shouldered cowboy who came at them earlier. He was riding beside Chisum and his ranch hands like a man who didn’t have a care in the world. Roy knew the others were either dead or they’d deserted him, which was typical of Mexican gunmen—short on courage when things got tight.

The range for his Winchester .44 was still too great to be sure of the shot, and thus Roy waited, holding his rifle against his shoulder, doing his best to keep the barrel from catching sunlight that might warn the riders below of his presence. He was sure he could take down the newcomer when the distance was right.

The stranger’s head turned toward the grassy hilltop where Roy lay, but only for a moment. “He didn’t see me,” Roy whispered. Then the stranger did an odd thing… He got down off his horse and walked into a line of trees while the others halted to wait for him.

“He needed to piss,” Roy told himself. “He’s too bashful to pull his pecker out while everybody’s watchin’. Maybe I can get him when he walks out of them pines…”

Time seemed frozen, although it did seem to be taking the stranger a hell of a long time to let his water down. Roy was motionless, his rifle aimed for the spot where the stranger went into the trees, judging his chances of a quick kill with just one slug.

Minutes passed. “Maybe he’s takin’ a shit,” Roy wondered softly. The others, including Chisum, sat their horses in clear view as though nothing was wrong, never once looking up at Roy’s hiding place.

A sound behind him, something brushing against the grasses, made him turn. Then a towering figure blocked out the sun. The glint of a huge knife blade flashed.

“Son of a…”

A blinding pain entered Roy’s rib cage, along with a noise like snapping willow limbs. Cartilage was torn from his sternum by a single slash of a razor-sharp knifepoint. He heard himself scream, staring into a face twisted with hatred above him, and just as quickly, the scream died in his throat when a second swipe of the blade went across his windpipe, slicing through cords of muscle, ligaments, and skin.

“Die slow, you backshootin’ bastard,” a grating voice said quietly.

Roy ’s backbone arched, and he struggled to bring his gun up at the same time until a heavy boot landed on his wrist, knocking the rifle from his hand.

“You’ve got no balls, pilgrim. You’re just another yellow son of a bitch who can’t face the man he aims to kill. I’ve known half a hundred like you. I don’t know your name, but it don’t matter who you are. What you are is dead, only not yet, not till the ants feed on you for a spell, until your blood runs all over this hill.”

Pain shot through Roy’s body from head to toe and for a moment he was sure he would lose consciousness. He made a second attempt to sit up, choking on his own blood, strangling when it entered his windpipe.

“Wish you could live long enough to tell this Jessie Evans he’s messin’ with the wrong man. But you won’t. You’ll be dead in half an hour, maybe less.”

Roy saw winking stars before his eyes, but he could still see the twisted face looming over him.

“Bleedin’ to death is a helluva slow way to die, mister. I hope it don’t hurt too awful bad. But if it does, think about all the cows you stole that wasn’t yours, or the men you killed who never had a chance. Think about those things while you’re dyin’. You ain’t got long.”

Roy fell back on the grass, unable to breathe at all now.

“Adios, cowboy, whoever you are,” the same voice said as Roy slipped slowly into a black void.

Jessie watched two men ride in at a hard gallop with a vague sense of apprehension. He recognized Barlow and Lopez by their horses. “Somethin’s wrong,” he told Pickett.

Pickett came up from his bull hide chair, squinting in the sun’s glare, cradling a shotgun in the crook of his arm. “It’s that Barlow boy an’ Pedro Lopez. They’s after their horses with a spur mighty hard.”

“Wonder where Roy is?” Jessie asked. “It ain’t like Roy to let ’em split up… ’less there’s been trouble.”

Billy and Pedro galloped their winded mounts up to the cabin, and Barlow was the first to speak.

“We got real problems,” Barlow said, dropping to the ground in more of a hurry than Jessie felt was warranted. “This stranger showed up at Chisum’s, We had it all laid out to kill him, only he come at us like a nest of hornets. He rode right up the ridge where we was hidin’ an’ started shootin’ like a bullet was never gonna hit him. Roy Cooper took off in the other direction soon as it happened.”

“Is true, Serior Jessie,” Pedro agreed, climbing down from his lathered horse. “This stranger, he don’t be afraid of nothing. He ride his horse toward us while we be shooting, and he don’t act afraid.”

Jessie stood up. “Where the hell is Roy?” he asked with a note of impatience. Roy Cooper had never run away from any man that Jessie knew of.

“He run away, just like Billy say,” Pedro said. “He ride off like he be scared of this hombre.”

“Nonsense. Roy ain’t afraid of nobody.”

Billy shrugged. “Can’t explain what he did no other way, boss. He jumped on his horse an’ rode east as fast as that brown gelding could travel.”

“What happened to the others?” Jessie demanded.

“Maybeso all are dead,” Pedro answered. “This big hombre, he come up shooting with two pistolas , one in each hand. He no be afraid of our guns.”

Jessie’s attention was distracted by another rider coming in at Bosque Redondo, a man slumped over his saddle like he was in a great deal of pain.

“Who’s that?” Jessie asked.

Pedro looked over his shoulder. “It is Victor Bustamante, and there is blood on his shirt.”

“Ain’t nobody gonna convince me Roy Cooper took off when it was time for a killin’,” Jessie stated. “See what the hell that Mexican has to say…”

Victor Bustamante rode his grullo gelding up to the cabin with obvious pain twisting his face. He stopped his horse in front of the porch. Blood was leaking from a wound across his right side, covering his right pants leg.

“I have… this message for you… Serior Jessie,” he said in clipped, breathless words.

“What kind of goddamn message?” Jessie wanted to know, as he grew impatient with this latest bit of news.

“This hombre… he call himself Smoke Jensen. He say he gone kill you… He say he come looking for you if we don’t stop shoot at him.”

Jessie’s sun-etched face crinkled. “Who the hell is Smoke Jensen? I never heard of him.”