William Johnstone - Butchery of the Mountain Man

Smoke smiled. “I’m sure it will.”

Smoke picked up one of the pastries and took a bite.

“As I stated in the letter I sent you, I am currently doing a study on some of the old mountain men of the Rockies. A man called Preacher, for example. I think you knew him.”

“Yes, I knew him very well,” Smoke said. “I was already sixteen when I saw him first, but I figure you could say that he partly raised me.”

“Despite all the research I’ve done, I have never been able to ascertain his real name,” Professor Armbruster said. “Some sources say it was Pierre, some say it was Clyde, but most reports say it was Art. It is the last name that I’ve had the most trouble with. Bode? Barnes? Garneau?”

“Preacher was pretty guarded about his name, that’s for sure,” Smoke said. “I think that’s because he ran away from a slave owner, and until the day he died, he was worried about that.”

“He ran away from a slave owner? See here, was Preacher black? None of my research has indicated that.”

“No. But in those days, if a slave owner claimed you had a touch of the brush, and in that same claim said that he owned you, it was hard to prove otherwise if you were no more than a fourteen-year-old boy and had no kin anywhere about to vouch for you. That’s what happened to Preacher.”

“I never knew that.”

“Bet you never knew that Preacher was in love once, either, did you? Her name was Jenny, and she was a slave. She was mostly Creole, but her grandma was black, and that was all that was needed then. He said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.”

“Why didn’t he marry her?”

“She got killed. Preacher killed the ones who killed her.”

“I imagine he would.”

“Gregory,” Smoke said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Gregory. That was Preacher’s last name. Or at least that was the name he used. But to be honest about it, he once confided to me that he had just taken that name. I never did learn his birth name, and I figure I knew him better than any other human being ever knew him. He seldom even shared his taken name with anyone. Art Gregory. I don’t see any reason why the name has to be kept secret any longer. With Preacher dead, there’s nothing anyone can do to him now.”

Professor Armbruster chuckled. “No, I suppose not.”

“Mind if I have another one?” Smoke asked, reaching toward the plate of glazed pastries.

“No, of course not,” Professor Armbruster replied. “Speaking of names, let’s consider John Jackson. He is often referred to, and I’m sure you know this, as Liver-Eating Jackson. Though the concept of him eating the livers of the Indians he killed has never been verified.”

“Would you like me to verify it?” Smoke asked, as he bit into his second bear sign.

“You mean, you can verify it?” Professor Armbruster asked in surprise.

“Don’t tell my wife, but these bear claws are very nearly as good as hers.”

“You have actually seen John Jackson eat a liver. That’s what you are telling me.”

“The Crow had a belief that they couldn’t get into the Happy Hunting Grounds if they didn’t have the liver with them.” Smoke licked some of the frosting off the end of his finger.

Professor Armbruster chuckled and shook his head. “You will forgive me, Mr. Jensen, but how can you sit there calmly eating a bear claw while talking about having watched John Jackson eat a liver.”

“You are the one who brought it up, Professor. And there have been many times in my life when I’ve been in a position to where I had to eat things that would gag a maggot on the gut wagon.”

Professor Armbruster looked a little pale. “Yes, I . . . can imagine so,” he said.

“Now, Professor, what is it that you want with me?” Smoke asked, wiping his hands and fingers with a damp cloth that was on the table.

“I want you to come to the recording room with me. I intend to make a voice recording of our discussion. That is, if you don’t mind.”

Smoke smiled. “Well, I’ve been speaking into telephones for a lot of years now, but I’ve never spoken into a recording machine. How long after I speak into it will it be before it is developed and I can hear my voice played back?”

“Oh, it isn’t like photograph film,” the professor said with a laugh. “We can have an instantaneous playback if you wish.”

“I guess I would sort of like to hear my voice played back to me.”

“Then come with me, if you would, please.”

Smoke followed Professor Armbruster out of his office, down the hall, and into another room in the building. The walls of this room were lined with thick padding.

“This room is soundproofed, so that no outside sound will interfere. That way, the machine will only record our voices, and nothing else.”

There was a table in the room and on the table were two microphones. Smoke looked up at a big glass window and saw the same young man who had met him when he arrived. He was standing by some sort of shelf putting a black disc into position. Behind him there was a panel with dials.

Professor Armbruster indicated that Smoke should sit behind one of the microphones, then the professor sat behind the other one.

“Should I?” Smoke started, but the professor held his finger vertically across his lips, then looked through the glass at the young man on the other side.

The professor moved a toggle switch, and spoke into a little box. “Wes, are we about ready?” the professor asked.

“One moment, Professor,” Wes’s voice came back through the box. A moment later Wes held one finger up for a second as it appeared he was doing something with his other hand, then he brought the finger down and pointed directly at Professor Armbruster. The professor began talking into the microphone that was before him.

“I am sitting here with Mr. Kirby ‘Smoke’ Jensen, a genuine pioneer of the West, and particularly our state . . . that is, the state of Colorado. During my research on another fascinating figure from the West, John ‘Liver-Eating’ Jackson, I learned that the paths of these two men had crossed, many years ago. John Jackson is no longer with us, having died on the twenty-first of December, 1900, in a hospital in Pennsylvania. But Smoke Jensen is still with us, and today I consider interviewing him about John Jackson to be as close to the actual source as it is possible to get.

“Mr. Jensen, would you state in your own voice, your name, please?”

“My name is Kirby Jensen, although I have been called Smoke for most of my life.”

“I suppose we could start with how you came to get the name Smoke.”

“Preacher gave me that name, on the first day we ever met. I had just been firing a Henry .44, and there was a little wisp of smoke curling up from the end of the rifle barrel. I don’t know why Preacher made the connection, but he called me Smoke, and that’s how I’ve been known ever since.”

“You say you had just been firing your rifle. What were you shooting at?”

“Indians,” Smoke said calmly.

“Were you actually engaged in battle?”

“I suppose you could call it that,” Smoke said. “The Indians were trying to kill us, we were killing them. Yes, you could say that was battle.”

“When and how did you meet John Jackson?”

“Preacher and I happened to come across him one day. It was in the middle of summer in 1869, and I was eighteen years old. But that’s getting a little ahead of the story.”

“Ahead of the story? What do you mean?”

“First, you need to know a little about John Jackson’s background. I mean, before he came West.”

“All right, please, go on,” Professor Armbruster said. “I would love to hear about Mr. Jackson’s background.”