William Johnstone: Battle of the Mountain Man

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought the subject up,” Louis observed, lighting another cigar with a sputtering lucifer. “I didn’t mean to open pages in a closed book.”

Smoke shrugged. “The book on Preacher isn’t closed until I get word he’s gone, or find his bones on some high mountain ridge someplace. As far as I’m concerned, he’s still up there, having one hell of a good time living the way he wants.”

Pearlie walked over, having overheard part of their conversation. “Puma said he’d lay money Preacher was still alive, that night me an’ Cal got took to his cabin.”

Louis gave Pearlie a stare. “I think the subject ought to be dropped right now, Pearlie.” He looked toward a waiter with a tray laden with steaming plates. “Here comes your breakfast. If you want, I’ll have someone tell Cal his food is ready.”

“I don’t think the young ’un is up to it just yet.” Pearlie replied, “but I’ll walk outside an’ ask. The boy’s seen a right smart share of killin’ in his short years, but when he got a good look up close at some of them bullet holes, his belly went to doin’ a flip-flop, which ain’t the natural place to put no big passel of food. Like invitin’ a schoolmarm to ride a pitchin’ bronc.”

Louis laughed, casting a sideways glance in Smoke’s direction. “I know one schoolmarm who’s up to the task. Sally can ride a bucking horse as well as any cowboy in this country.”

Smoke’s thoughts went to Sally. He’d promised her only this morning that they’d winter up in an old cabin high above Sugarloaf for a spell, so they could spend some time alone and perhaps encounter a few of the wandering mountain men still living in the Rockies northwest of the ranch. “She’s a good hand with a horse,” Smoke agreed. “She’s a right decent hand when it comes to handling men, like her husband. I’ve never laid claim to being the smartest feller in Colorado Territory, but she can outsmart me damn near any time she takes the notion. When she’s after something she wants, she can-be deadlier than a two-headed rattler. Worst thing is, she lets me think I’m getting my way every time. A time or two I’ve actually believed it.”

Pearlie shook his head in agreement. “Miz Jensen knows how to handle a man, all right. She’ll come out the door smilin’, like all she wants is to say howdy-do, when what she’s really after is a cord of wood chopped or a load of hay pitchforked in the wagon fer the cows. Every time I see her smile at me I feel like I oughta take off runnin’, ’cause there’s sure as hell some work she wants done.” He grinned when his plate of steak and eggs was put before him. “That’s another thing ’bout Miz Jensen. She ain’t above workin’ a man to death with bribes. She’ll bake up a real sweet peach pie, or fix a batch of them bearclaws with brown sugar, an’ open every window in the house so a man goes plumb crazy over the smell. Sooner or later a hungry feller is jus’ naturally gonna be drawn to the house on account of them wonderful smells, an’ that’s when she springs her trap. She’ll git one of them pretty smiles on her face, and start tellin’ me ’bout them delicious pies or whatever she’s bakin’, an’ I know I’m caught, trapped like a bear in a shallow cave. Then she’ll up an’ invite me an’ Cal to have a little taste of what she’s been cookin’, right after we git a load of wood piled up next to the kitchen door. What’s a starvin’ man supposed to do?”

It was Smoke’s turn to chuckle over Pearlie’s recollections when it came to Sally, as his own plate was set on the table in front of him. “Pearlie’s right as rain. I’m married to a woman who knows how to get what she wants… one way or another.”

As he was about to knife into his steak, Caleb Walz came into the saloon. Walz was Big Rock’s part-time undertaker, when he wasn’t in the act of cutting hair at his barber shop. Caleb tipped his derby hat to everyone, glancing at the bodies, a hint of a grin raising the corners of his mouth. “Looks like somebody drummed up a little business for me real early,” he said in his perpetual monotone. “Whoever it was, I’m obliged.” Four

Ned Buntline had grown exceedingly frustrated over the past few weeks in his unsuccessful quest to interview some of the last of the old-time mountain men. Up on the Yellowstone he had finally been able to track down Major Frank North, leader of the famous Pawnee scouts. North had turned him down cold when he asked for an interview, stating flatly he believed dime novels were trash, a pack of lies, refusing to give Ned even a moment of his time other than to tell him to be on his way. A slap in the face, Ned thought, guiding his surefooted mule up a steep ridge roughly forty miles as the crow flies to the northwest of Big Rock in Colorado Territory. North had to know Ned had been responsible for Buffalo Bill Cody’s rise to fame, along with other Wild West characters he’d glorified in his books. It hadn’t been necessary for Major North to be so rude about it.

Now, in northwestern Colorado, Ned was trying to track down a few genuine mountain men for a series of stories that would set easterners on their ears. From a list given him by the old scout Alvah Dunning, Ned was searching for men with names like Puma Buck and Huggie Charles and Del Rovare, or the deadly gunfighter turned mountain man named Smoke Jensen. And there were others, a legendary figure known only as Preacher who many suspected to be dead of old age by now, one of the most elusive of all the early mountain pioneers, so that little was actually known about him or even what he looked like. Some claimed Preacher was only a figment of lesser men’s imaginations, that he never existed at all except in stories told around mountain campfires, a dark hero of sorts with a penchant for killing anyone who intruded into his high country domain unless they crossed these stretches of the Rockies in peace, without disturbing it. But when it came to mountain men with a penchant for killing, all his sources were in agreement. Smoke Jensen was said to be a killing machine in this part of the West, a man not to be trifled with. If just half the stories Ned had heard about Jensen were true, he could be the man eastern readers would devour. Finding him, Finding Jensen, was relatively easy, Ned was told. Jensen owned a high meadow ranch called Sugarloaf, having come down from the mountains a few, years back to marry a woman from back east and live a quieter life, although as the stories went his existence was anything but quiet. Getting Jensen to talk to him was going to be the trick, according to those who knew about him or had made his acquaintance in the past. Jensen was a man of few words, and words were what Ned needed from him. The proposition promised to be touchy. Difficult.

Following a map given to him by an elderly Indian scout at a settlement named Glenwood Springs, Ned rode his brown mule slowly into higher altitudes, where it was rumored Puma Buck, Huggie Charles, and Del Rovare hunted and trapped. Perhaps with some sort of personal introduction from one of them to Smoke Jensen, he might just get what he came to Colorado to find… true stories of the exploits of mountain men. He hoped he might even be able to find out if this fellow they called Preacher actually existed, if he might still be alive and willing to talk.

Still, Ned was haunted by something Major North had told him in those few brief minutes they talked. North had said, “A man’s got to earn his knowledge of the high lonesome, Mr. Buntline. No real mountain man is gonna hand it to you like a piece of cake. If you go lookin’ for a man who knows the mountains, and if you find one, he ain’t likely to tell you a damn thing.”

Ned wondered if this would turn out to be the truth, making his ride to Colorado Territory a waste of time.