William Johnstone - Butchery of the Mountain Man

That was all the invitation they needed, and they pushed their way through the batwing doors to step inside. It was so dark that they had to stand there for a moment or two until their eyes adjusted. The bar was made of burnished mahogany with a highly polished brass footrail. Crisp, clean white towels hung from hooks on the customers’ side of the bar, spaced every four feet. A mirror was behind the bar, flanked on each side by a small statue of a nude woman set back in a special niche. A row of whiskey bottles sat in front of the mirror, reflected in the glass so that the row of bottles seemed to be two deep. A bartender with pomaded black hair and a waxed handlebar mustache stood behind the bar, where he was industriously polishing glasses.

“Is the beer really cold, like the sign says?” Smoke asked.

The bartender looked up at him, but he didn’t stop polishing the glasses.

“Any colder and the glass would freeze to your lip,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Good. Two beers,” Smoke said.

“Just two? There are three of you. What does the other one want?”

“I reckon they’ll be orderin’ for themselves,” Smoke said. “The two beers are for me.”

“I’ll have two,” Preacher said. “How about you, John?”

“As I said earlier, it has been a month of Sundays since I had a beer, so I think two beers would go a long way toward alleviating that situation,” John said.

The bartender chuckled, filled six mugs of beer, and set them in front of the three men.

“If all my customers were like you boys, I could get rich real quick, close this place down, and go on to California,” a tall, well-dressed man said, from his table near the piano.

“The sign out front says Longmont’s Saloon. You would be Mr. Longmont, would you?” Smoke asked.

“I am, sir, Louis Longmont, proprietor of the finest wines, beers, and whiskeys, at your service. And you gentlemen would be?”

“I’m Smoke Jensen. This is John Jackson. And the old gentleman is Preacher.”

“Preacher?” Longmont smiled. “I do believe I’ve heard of you, Preacher. Folks say you were here as soon as Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, and Kit Carson.”

“Jedediah Smith welcomed me to these mountains. I welcomed Bridger and Carson,” Preacher said.

“What’s in California?” John asked.

“Beg your pardon?”

“You said if you got rich you would close this place and go to California. What’s out there?”

“I’m afraid I can’t actually tell you that,” Longmont said. “I started out for California, but I never quite made it. I stopped here for a while and I haven’t left. But I expect I’ll get there someday.”

“Why would anyone ever want to leave?” Preacher asked. “I’ve been to a lot of places, never found a place I like better ’n these mountains.”

“ Oui,” Longmont said. “I will confess that there’s something about the mountains that gets in a man’s blood.”

Smoke picked up the first beer and took a long drink before he turned to look around the place. A card game was going on in the corner and he watched it for a few minutes, drinking his beer while Preacher and John were carrying on a conversation behind him.

“Pilgrim, you’ll be in good hands with Smoke,” Preacher said. “I never knew anyone that learned as fast as he did.”

“I appreciate it,” John said.

“And here’s another thing. You make this boy your friend, and you’ll have a loyal friend for the rest of your life. And out here, one of the first things you learn is that the most valuable thing a man can have, is a loyal friend.”

The back door opened and a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a badge, stepped through the door. Smoke recognized Sheriff Monte Carson, and he started to speak to him, but saw that the sheriff’s attention was directed to a table in the corner of the room.

“Culpepper,” Sheriff Carson said. “I heard you were in town. I didn’t think you’d be dumb enough to come to my town. Not after killin’ those two men down in Pueblo.”

The man Carson was talking to, one of the cardplayers, stood up slowly, then turned to face the sheriff.

“What gives you the idea this is your town? And anyway, am I supposed to be afraid of some small-town sheriff like you?”

Because the situation had the look of an impending gunfight, the remaining cardplayers jumped up from the table and moved out of the way.

“You had to know that if you were going to come back to Big Rock, I was going to find out about it, and put you in jail.”

“You ain’t puttin’ me in no jail, Sheriff.”

“You’re either goin’ to jail, or you’re goin’ to die, right here, and right now,” Sheriff Carson said.

Culpepper smiled. “Sheriff, have you considered the possibility that you might be the one dyin’?”

Smoke was watching the drama play out before him, when he heard something, a soft squeaking sound as if weight were being put down on a loose board. Looking up toward the top of the stairs, he saw a man aiming a shotgun at Sheriff Carson. Carson didn’t see him, because the man was behind the sheriff.

“Sheriff, look out!” Smoke shouted. When he shouted the warning, Sheriff Carson turned quickly, drew, and fired. The man at the top of the stairs fired the shotgun wildly, and the heavy charge of buckshot tore a large hole in one of the tables. Sheriff Carson’s shot had been right on target, and the man with the shotgun dropped his weapon and slapped his hand over the wound in his chest. He stood there just for a second as blood spilled between his fingers. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell, belly down, headfirst, sliding down the stairs, following his clattering shotgun to the ground floor.

The sound of the two gunshots had riveted everyone’s attention to that exchange, including Sheriff Carson, and while his attention was diverted from him, Culpepper took the opportunity to go for his own gun.

“Don’t do it, Culpepper!” Smoke yelled, and Culpepper turned his gun toward Smoke. The saloon was filled with the roar of another gunshot as Smoke drew and fired at Culpepper, even though Culpepper already had his gun in his hand.

Smoke’s shot hit Culpepper between the eyes, and he fell back on the table that was still covered with cards and poker chips. He lay there, belly up with his head hanging down on the far side while blood dripped from the hole in his forehead to form a puddle below him. His gun fell from his lifeless hand and clattered to the floor.

“What’s goin’ on in here?” a new voice asked. “What’s all the shootin’?”

When Smoke turned toward the sound of the voice he saw a man standing just inside the open door. Because of the brightness of the light behind him, Smoke couldn’t see him clearly enough to identify him.

“Get out of the light,” Smoke ordered.

“You don’t tell me what to do, I . . .”

Smoke pulled the hammer back and his pistol made a deadly metallic click as the gear engaged the cylinder.

“I said get out of the light, or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

The figure moved out of the light. When he did, Smoke saw that he was wearing a badge. He put his pistol away.

“It’s all right, Emile,” Sheriff Carson said to his deputy. “Put your gun away. This man just saved my life.”

Emile Harris put the gun away, then advanced farther into the saloon. He looked first at the man lying at the foot of the stairs, then at the other man, spread out on the card table with his head dangling over the edge.

“Damn, what happened here?” he asked.

“What happened here is that these two men made the mistake of thinking they could run roughshod in our town,” Sheriff Carson said.

“And you killed both of ’em?”