William Johnstone - Triumph of the Mountain Man

Another second went by. “You heard him, boys. Put ’em up.” A nervous giggle escaped Curly. “This is between Smoke Jensen an’ me.”

With that, Curly Lasher stepped out into the street. He looked formidable enough, except for the muscle tic that twitched his left eye. Smoke Jensen side-stepped to line up with Curly Lasher. Curly’s hand hovered over the butt-grip of his Smith and Wesson .44 American. He nodded evenly to Smoke.

“Your play, Jensen.”

“No, you go first. I want this to be fair.”

Another giggle burst from Curly’s throat. “Fair? Hell, Jensen, you better be pickin’ out your coffin right now.”

“You reckon to jaw me to death? If so, it’ll be like ol’ Samson, eh? Killed with the jawbone of an ass.”

That tripped Curly’s hair-trigger temper. “Goddamn you, Smoke Jensen, kiss your tail goodbye.”

Curly Lasher drew then, confident that he had beaten Smoke Jensen by a good half second. Not until a stunning force slammed into his chest did he realize how terribly mistaken he had been. His lips formed a perfect O, and his legs went rubbery. Enormous pain spread through his body, followed instantly by a frightening numbness. Try as his brain might to send signals to his heart, they never arrived. A fat, 230 grain .45 slug had destroyed that vital organ.

His eyes rolled up in their sockets, Curly discharged a round into the street and fell in a crumpled heap. In the moment after he fired, Smoke Jensen moved. He waved at the astonished townies to follow him.

“Come on, let’s get in that saloon.”

“B’God, that was fast,” Warren Engals muttered. “I never seen his hand move.”

“Neither did that cocky gunhawk,” Buell Spencer snorted in satisfaction.

* * *

Mid-morning came and went. Still the fighting lingered, as Smoke Jensen and five of the men from town entered La Cantina del Sol. Theirs could hardly be called a conventional means of entry. Smoke sent four vaqueros around to the rear to make a show of breaking in through the service door. He gave them enough time to be convincing, then dived low through the front doorway. Smoke hit the floor and did a roll, to come up with his Colt blazing. He got immediate results.

One hard case slammed into the bar, his back arched to the point of breaking his spine. Smoke fired again and the bones cracked. The outlaw dropped to flop on the floor like a headless chicken. A townsman and one of Diego’s vaqueros entered behind the last mountain man. Flame gushed from the muzzles of their six-guns.

Another hard case died in their hail of lead. A third had dived for cover behind the bar when Smoke first entered. He popped up now and shot Ransom Clover between the eyes. The feed store proprietor died on his feet. But not before Smoke Jensen sent the killer off to eternity with a similar wound. Terrible discordance came from the upright piano in one corner as another thug hastily fired a bullet at Smoke’s back.

Smoke ducked and spun on one boot heel. The muzzle of his Peacemaker tracked with him, and he squeezed off a round the moment the back shooter came into view. Hot lead punched through thick leather and then did awful damage to the hip bone of the man. By then, Smoke had cocked his .45 and put a second slug into the chest of his assailant. Restricted by the muslin safeguards suspended below the ceiling, viscous layers of powder smoke undulated in the room, obscuring the whereabouts of other enemies.

Ears ringing from the enclosed gunfire, Smoke made for the stairway. There had to be some reason why a fairly reliable gunfighter like Curly Lasher and eight men had been guarding this place. He had reached the first riser with a boot toe when another of the gunmen appeared at the top of the stairs. Smoke acted at once.

So close to the wall, the force of his gun blast nearly ruptured Jensen’s eardrum. Yet he did not even flinch as he recocked his six-gun and sent another .45 round winging upward to seal the fate of the hard case who menaced him. Hit twice in less than half a minute, the outlaw staggered back and rammed slack shoulders into the wall of the upper hallway. Smoke paused at the landing and called back to the ground floor to one of the vaqueros.

“Juaquin, come up here with me.” When the slender, boyish-faced cowboy reached the top of the stairs, Smoke gave terse instructions. “Stay here. Watch my back.”

Smoke set off to search the rooms in the rear portion of the second floor. Someone of importance had to be up here, his gut feeling told him. He readied himself at the first door, cocked his leg and plated a boot beside the doorknob. A loud crack followed and the panel flew inward. Following his six-gun, Smoke entered the room in a crouch.

Empty. He turned on one heel and started for the next. His explosive entry caught two outlaws with their backs to him, taking shots at Taos residents in the street below. The slam of the door against the inner wall brought one around in a blur of movement. His eyes went wide as he gazed at Death with a outstretched hand. The six-gun in that hand fired a second later, and reflex drove the bandit backward to crash through the window, taking both sashes with him as he fell to the ground. The second hard case wisely released his revolver and threw up his hands. Smoke Jensen stepped up close and rapped him on the skull with the barrel of a Colt. That left three more rooms to check.

The next proved even more empty than the first. It did not even have furniture. Smoke moved on to the next in line.

His vicious kick surprised Garth Thompson and Paddy Quinn in the act of reloading. Thompson swung his six-gun up first and fired at Smoke. The man from the Sugarloaf had already fired a round which ripped into the body of Garth Thompson a fraction of an instant before the outlaw’s bullet punched a neat hole in the left side of Smoke Jensen’s waist. It burned like hell fire, but it did not even stagger him. Thompson tried to fire again, not realizing he looked at his target with a dead man’s eyes.

His bullet cut air beside Smoke Jensen’s left ear as the legs of Garth Thompson gave way. Smoke gave him a safety round and turned his attention to Paddy Quinn.

Stunned by the swiftness of action by Smoke Jensen, Paddy Quinn only belatedly closed the loading gate of his Colt Peacemaker. Instinctively, he knew he did not have time for a shot. Not if he wanted to continue living. Instead, he diverted his energy to his legs and sprinted past the wounded Jensen out into the hall. Smoke bit back the pain that burned in his side and turned in pursuit.

Out in the hall, Paddy Quinn raced toward the far end of the building. A window in the center of the corridor there bore a sign above it that read Escalera de Incendios. “Fire Escape” for those who could read Spanish. Smoke Jensen pounded down the bare board floor behind Quinn. The outlaw leader made better time.

Without a break in his stride, Paddy Quinn threw his arms up to cover his face and hurtled through the glass partition. Fragments of the sashes clung to him as he hit the small, square projection that served as a platform for a ladder. Legs still churning, Paddy cleared the railing in a single bound and dropped out of sight before Smoke reached the shattered window casement.

Quinn landed flat-footed and hard on the packed earth below. Pain shot up his leg from a broken heel bone. His horse, and those of Thompson and another hard case, had been tied off at the rear door earlier in the day. So unexpected and precipitous had been his arrival from above that the vaqueros sent to break in the rear stood in immobile surprise while Paddy limped to his mount, retrieved the reins and swung into the saddle.

Smoke Jensen sent a bullet after Paddy Quinn as the latter called out to his men. “Pull back. Get clear of town. We’ve lost it for now.”