William Johnstone - Butchery of the Mountain Man

“The world is a better place without this son of a bitch,” he said. “All I need to know is, was it a fair fight?”

“Fair fight? Marshal, Colby had his gun out and was fixin’ to shoot before the young feller there even drawed his gun!” the bartender said.

“Then I see no reason to get the judge to come here and hold a hearing,” the marshal said. “You the one that did it?” the marshal asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re a stranger here, ain’t you?”

“Yes, my friend and I are going up to Montana to trap beaver and marten.”

“Tell you what. I got no quarrel with you. Seein’ as ever’one in here says you was in the right. And, seein’ as Colby was one worthless son of a bitch. But it might be better if you moved on tonight.”

“Do you mind if we stay long enough to have our supper?” Smoke asked.

“Yeah, you can. Go on over to the café and order anything you want. I’ll even pay for it. For the both of you.”

“That’s very nice of you, Marshal.”

Finishing their beer, Smoke and John followed the marshal over to Waggy’s Café. They were met by a small, gray-haired man.

“Gentlemen, this is William Wagner, owner of Waggy’s Café. And you’ll not find a better café in town.”

“Well, now, James, I’d just feel real complimented, if I wasn’t the only café in town,” Wagner said.

“Waggy, I want you to give these two men anything they want, and bill the city.”

“All right, Marshal,” Waggy replied. “Have a seat, gentlemen.”

John started to sit at a table in the middle of the room, but Smoke shook his head no.

“We’ll sit back there in the corner,” he said. “That way we’ll both have our backs against the wall.”

“You really think that’s necessary?”

“Yeah, I do,” Smoke said. “It’s hard to imagine someone like Colby with friends, but if he does have any, I wouldn’t want them coming toward us without our seeing them.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean,” John said. John smiled. “I have to tell you, I’m really looking forward to this meal.”

“Now I’m hurt,” Smoke teased. “Why, that sounds like you aren’t all that pleased with my cooking.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased, all right. But it’s been a month of Sundays since I’ve had fried chicken, and I see that they have that here. I intend to enjoy myself.”

“Yeah, me too,” Smoke admitted.

The men ordered, and the waiter began bringing food to the table. Between them they ate an entire chicken, a dozen biscuits, mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans. They finished the meal off with two slices each of black and blue pie, made with a combination of black- and blueberries. Their eating was of such a prodigious nature that it drew the attention of everyone else in the café.

“I’ll tell you two boys the truth,” Waggy said. “If the city wasn’t payin’ for your meals, I’d just about let you eat for free. Seein’ you boys enjoyin’ your food that much is about as good a job of advertisin’ as I could hope for.”

“It’s not hard to appreciate good food, and we thank you,” John said.

Old Main Building

“I’ve read about that shooting in the Cattleman’s Saloon,” Professor Armbruster said. “The town of Theresa doesn’t even exist anymore, and when you look it up, turns out that the shooting you just described is one of the highlights of its entire history. The man you killed was Braxton Colby. He is said to have killed more than twenty men, and, after he was killed, turned out that he had murdered at least three women.”

“I gave him a chance to back out of it,” Smoke said.

“Yes, the way you just told the story squares with everything I’ve read about it. Did you have any repercussions from killing Colby?”

“Do you mean did anyone come after us for revenge?”

“Well, did they?”

“Yes, that very night,” Smoke said.

“I thought that might be the case, though I must confess that in the reports I have read the stories vary so that I’ve never been able to ascertain which one was true or even if it actually happened.”

“It happened,” Smoke said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Theresa

Smoke opened his eyes. Something had awakened him and he lay very still. The doorknob turned and he was up, reaching for the gun that lay on a table by his bed. He moved as quietly as a cat, stepping to the side of the door and cocking his Colt .44. His senses were alert, his body alive with readiness. Smoke could hear someone breathing on the other side of the door. A thin shaft of hall light shone underneath. Outside the hotel he heard a tinkling piano and a burst of laughter.

Smoke heard a rattling of the doorknob. He had locked the door but whoever was on the other side either had a key, or was very good at picking locks, because in less than a minute, the door opened, and an increasing wedge of light spilled into the room.

Was it John?

He didn’t think so. John wouldn’t have let himself into the room that way. He would have knocked.

Smoke watched as a hand stuck in through the opening. The hand was clutching a pistol, and the pistol was aimed toward the bed, exactly where Smoke had been but several seconds earlier.

Smoke watched the thumb pull the hammer back, but just before the intruder pulled the trigger, Smoke stuck a pencil just in front of the hammer so that when it fell, it made only a slight clicking sound.

“What the hell?” the intruder asked in surprise.

Smoke grabbed the gun arm and pulled the intruder on into the room. The intruder called out in surprise, and Smoke jerked his arm around behind his back, then twisted the arm up behind the intruder’s back.

“Who are you?” Smoke hissed.

“Emile Colby,” the intruder replied.

“What are you doing here, Colby?”

“I come to avenge my brother.”

“Yeah? Well, it isn’t goin’ to work out like that, is it?”

Smoke grabbed Emile Colby by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants, then rushed him out into the hallway.

“Hey! Leggo of me! Leggo of me!” Colby started shouting. His shouts and the loud disturbance caused half a dozen other doors to open onto the hall.

“Here, what’s goin’ on here?” someone shouted. “Nothing much,” Smoke replied. “I’m just taking out the trash.”

“You’ve got no right to . . .”

“To what?” Smoke said.

By now everyone was laughing at Colby.

When they reached the head of the stairs, Colby had pretty much quit his shouting, and was now quiet, the silence brought on by fear.

“What are you going to do?” Colby asked. “Where are you taking me?”

“You don’t understand,” Smoke replied. “I’m not taking you anywhere. This is as far as you go.”

Smoke bent Colby over, then gave him a kick in the rear. Colby tumbled down the stairs, screaming all the way.

[ In presenting to the public this story of Kirby Jensen and John “Liver-Eating” Jackson’s life and adventures, I was cautioned against embellishing any particular incident too highly, and to leave out of the book any element of fiction.

“I have observed,” Smoke Jensen said, “in reading much of work written about me and my contemporaries, that the tendency has been to exaggerate nearly everything. The effect of this has been to give the public a wrong idea of the character of the men who found their way into the young West in search of wealth and adventure. Please tell the story so that those who read it may draw from it correct conclusions as to the kind of lives we really lived, and avoid such coloring of the truth as might lead them to think I am boasting of my own prowess, or exaggerating my own importance.”