William Johnstone - Battle of the Mountain Man

Smoke returned Pearlie’s grin as he swung Horse toward the ranch, “Won’t do any good to lie to Sally. It’d be a waste of good breath. She’ll know there was a little trouble when she looks me in the eye. Damnedest thing I ever saw, how she knows before I ever open my mouth.” Seven

Jessie Evans, clear blue eyes shining below a mop of sandy hair under a flat brim hat, turned his stocky torso toward one of his men where they sat their horses hidden in a line of pinon pines above the Pecos River. Bill Pickett was watching a handful of John Chisum’s cowboys in the valley driving a herd of market-ready steers upriver, beeves for a government contract with the Apache reservation west of Ruidoso, New Mexico Territory.

“This is gonna be too easy,” Jessie said, grinning, some of his front teeth yellowed by tobacco stains. “Ain’t but seven of them an’ they’re range cowboys who can’t shoot straight. Let’s make damn sure we kill ’em all so there won’t be no witnesses who can identify us.”

“It don’t make a difference to me,” Pickett replied, eyelids gone narrow. Killing was a passion with him, Jessie knew, after years of rustling cattle together. Pickett was a raw-boned man who had a preference for shotguns at close range, once stating that he liked to see his victims’ faces when he blew them apart, the look of surprise they wore when shotgun pellets shredded their skin. He told Jessie he liked the smell of blood and gunpowder when it got mixed together.

Jessie looked past Pickett to Roy Cooper. Cooper had a big jaw, always jutted angrily, even when he was happy, which was rare unless he was with a woman and a bottle of tequila. “Ready down there, Roy?”

“Ready as I’m gonna be, boss,” he said, his deep voice like a rasp across cold iron. He drew a .44 caliber Winchester from a boot tied to his saddle and worked the lever, sending a cartridge into the firing chamber. “I can kill one or two of ’em from here soon as you give the word.”

Beyond Cooper, Ignacio Valdez showed off a gold tooth in the front of his mouth “Ready, Serior Jessie,” he said, fisting a Mason Colt .44/.40 revolver. “I gon‘ shoot hell out plenty sons of bitches when you tell me is time.”

Last in line was a reed-thin boy, Billy Barlow, a small-time rustler from the Texas panhandle. Jessie didn’t fully trust the Barlow kid yet. There was something about him, the way he didn’t look at you when you talked to him. But Jimmie Dolan said to hire shootists to get Chisum’s cattle so the Murphy Store would get the beef contracts away from Chisum and John Tunstall, and Jessie had put word out all the way to the Mexican border that he was hiring guns to fight a range war. More and more experienced men were showing up at Lincoln to inquire about the job, and before this winter was out, Jessie could easily have fifty hired guns on Dolan’s payroll by the time reservation contracts were up for renewal.

“Let’s spill some blood,” Jessie said savagely, putting a spur to his horse’s ribs, freeing his Colt .44 from its holster in an iron grip. Jessie had long forgotten how many men he’d killed over the years, but it was something he knew he was good at. It had never mattered whether a man had his back turned or if he was facing him when he pulled a trigger. A killer for hire couldn’t wait all day long to earn his money.

Five galloping horses charged down a rocky slope toward the Pecos, and toward a herd of eighty steers belonging to John Chisum, with seven cowboys pushing them toward Fort Sumner, and a butcher’s block. The thunder of pounding hooves ended a silence in the serenity of the lower Pecos region.

Cooper was the first to fire, a booming shot from the back of a running horse that would be difficult for even the best of marksmen.

At the river’s edge, a cowboy on a sorrel gelding yelled and barreled off the back of his horse, turning in midair, arms and legs askew, his cry of pain echoing off the bluffs that ran along both sides of the Pecos.

Valdez fired, more to spook the cattle than with any hope of hitting what he aimed at.

Longhorn steers began to run, a stampede that would only add to the confusion, charging along the grassy banks of the river at full tilt.

Jessie aimed his .44 carefully, knowing full well the action of the horse between his knees would worsen his aim. He waited until his gunsights rested on the chest of a terrified cowboy on a prancing pinto.

The pistol slammed into his palm, barking, spitting out a finger of orange flame. Jessie saw the cowhand jerk upright in his saddle. Runaway longhorns raced past the wounded man as he toppled to the ground, lost in a cloud of dust sent up by churning hooves boiling away from the stampede.

Barlow’s rifle roared and a horse went down underneath a cowboy spurring frantically to cross the river. The chestnut collapsed, legs thrashing in shallow water, falling on the cowboy to pin him against a shoal of sand and rocks on the far side of the Pecos.

Nice work, Jessie thought, spurring his horse for more speed as he and his men thundered down the embankment. Maybe he’d been wrong about Barlow.

Pickett’s shotgun bellowed, rocking him back against the cantle of his saddle, blue smoke erupting from one barrel. A steer bawled and fell on its chest in front of a cowboy trying to escape the melee aboard a goose-rumped bay. When the steer went down in the pathway of the galloping horse, it tripped the mount and sent its rider flying, as though he’d sprouted wings, into the river.

Valdez popped off three shots as quickly as he could pull the trigger, sweeping a hatless vaquero off the side of his running buckskin mare, sending him tumbling into tall prairie grasses near the riverbank.

“Ayii!” Valdez cried, turning his pistol in another direction.

Pickett’s shotgun roared again, this time at much closer range to a cowboy whipping his gray pony with the ends of his reins to escape the hail of flying lead.

The man atop the gray did a curious thing… he turned to face the shotgun blast, and when he did his face seemed to come apart as pellets ripped away his cheeks. For a moment, there was no sound other than the banging of guns, until the cowboy slid off his charging horse into a stand of bulrushes growing along the edge of the water.

Fear-stricken cattle bounded in every direction, making a noise like honking geese. The herd split into three groups when trees blocked the longhorns’ path. One bunch ran northeast, and a second charged across the Pecos, where a shallow spot kept them from having to swim. A third portion of the stampeding steers went straight ahead, crushing everything in its way.

Jessie took careful aim and fired at a cowboy abandoning the herd on a piebald gelding, shooting him in the back between his shoulder blades, driving him out of his saddle with the force of a sledgehammer blow before his horse could cross the river.

“Nice shot!” Cooper yelled, levering another round into his Winchester.

Valdez fired just as Jessie was about to rein south after a lone cowboy making his escape back down the trail running beside the Pecos. The cowboy slumped in his saddle, yet he somehow held onto the saddle horn and continued to rake his spurs into a black gelding’s sides.

Jessie swung his horse south… there could be no survivors to tell Sheriff Brady about what happened here, or identify any of the attackers.

Behind him, he heard a gun crack. Pickett and Cooper would finish off any wounded men. Pickett would enjoy it. Of all the cold-blooded killers Jessie had known, Pickett had less feelings than any of them.

The cowboy on the black rounded a turn in the trail and for a moment he was out of sight. Jessie spurred harder, asking his big yellow dun for everything it had. The rhythm of its pounding hooves filled his ears. He stood in the stirrups for a better view of what lay ahead. A grove of cottonwoods lining the river prevented him from seeing the fleeing cowhand for a few moments, until his dun carried him past the trees.