Bloodshed of the Mountain Man Read online

  “I’m sure you do. I’ll get some made,” Sally said.

  “Of course, that’s only if you want to do it, you understand.”

  “I understand,” Sally said.

  Sally looked at Julia and both of them laughed.

  “Come on into the parlor, make yourself comfortable, and we’ll talk. But first I want to check on Cal.”

  After showing Julia into the parlor, Sally went to the downstairs bedroom where she had told Pearlie to put Cal. She thought she would just check on him, thinking he would probably be asleep. But she saw that he was scratching at the wound on his shoulder.

  “Cal, don’t do that, you shouldn’t scratch at your wound like that.”

  Cal looked at Sally for a moment, and she saw the confusion in his eyes. “I’m in your house, ain’t . . . I mean, aren’t I?”

  “Indeed you are.”

  “Miz Sally, have I been shot?”

  “Cal, don’t you remember? Smoke told you all about it.”

  “No ma’am, I don’t remember it.”

  “Yes, you have been shot. What do you remember?”

  “I remember the angel.”

  Sally smiled. “Oh yes, the angel.”

  “Yes ma’am, I was lyin’ in bed, ’n the angel was lyin’ in bed with me.” Cal held up his hand. “Only, don’t get the wrong idea, ’cause we didn’t do anythin’ bad, what with her bein’ an angel ’n all. I mean, she was just lyin’ beside me in the bed, sort of makin’ me feel better, you know? I think it was an angel, ’cause I don’t have any other way of explainin’ it.”

  “Wait here for a moment,” Sally said.

  Sally went into the parlor and saw Julia just sitting there, as if not yet quite sure of her place.

  “He wants to see his angel,” Sally said.

  “Is he still calling me his angel?”

  Sally smiled and crooked her finger. “Come with me.”

  Julia followed her down the hall and into a bedroom, where she saw Cal lying on the bed.

  “I brought someone to see you,” Sally said.

  Cal looked over and, seeing Julia, he gasped. “It’s my angel!”

  “Yes, she is your angel,” Sally said. “Oh, maybe she doesn’t have wings and she doesn’t sing in a celestial choir, but she is your angel, and according to Dr. Urban, you would have died had it not been for her. Cal, this is Julia McKnight.”

  Cal tried to get up from the bed, and both Sally and Julia rushed over to him.

  “What in the world do you think you are doing?” Sally asked.

  “I just want to be polite.”

  “The way you can be polite for us, is to stay right there in your bed, unless we tell you otherwise.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But what if I have to . . . uh—”

  “Let one of us know, and we’ll get one of the cowboys to come in and help you,” Sally said.

  “Yes, ma’am, thank you.” Cal looked at Julia. “Uh, Miss Julia, did you get in bed with me?”

  Julia smiled. “I lay next to you on the mattress on the way back from Brown Spur,” she said.

  “I knew it!” Cal said with a broad smile.

  Ten Strike

  “How much did we get?” Rexwell asked.

  “Nine thousand six hundred and fifty dollars,” Hannibal replied, holding his hand over the green bills that lay in stacks on the table. “That is three hundred and eighty-six dollars for each of you. I think you will all agree with me, that’s pretty good money for half a day’s work.”

  “It sure as hell is!” Smith said, with a broad smile.

  Hannibal allocated the division of the money by assigning himself three shares and Rexwell two shares. And because he managed to maintain a good cash flow, none of the men complained about his three shares.

  When the Ghost Riders first arrived in Sorento, the residents of the town were told that some Eastern investors had reopened the mine. Everyone knew there was nothing to be recovered from the mine, but when the mine workers did come to town, they were generally well behaved, and they spent money. They spent a lot of money, and if a few of the local businessmen wondered how such men always seemed to have a lot of money, nobody wanted to question what was turning into a most profitable relationship.

  “Mr. Rexwell,” Hannibal said after the money had been divided. “I think the time has come to replace the losses our ranks have suffered. Do you suppose you can find eight suitable replacements?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m sure I can.”

  “Good. Then I charge you with undertaking the mission.”

  Sugarloaf Ranch

  “Ma! Ma!” Cal said.

  “Oh, Cal, you’re having another one of your dreams, aren’t you?” Julia said. “Only, I think this one is a nightmare.” She reached down to take his hand, and when she did, he squeezed her hand so hard that it hurt, but Julia didn’t take her hand away.

  “Ma!” Cal said. “Ma!”

  Cal opened his eyes and looked up at Julia. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m still here. You were dreaming again.”

  “Was I?”

  “You called out for your mother.”

  “Oh,” Cal said. “I’m sorry.”

  “What a strange thing for you to say.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  Cal turned his face away and stared through the window. Julia sensed that he didn’t want to talk now, but neither did he want to let go of her hand, so she let him hold it.

  He seemed so deep in thought. What was he thinking?

  Cal wasn’t thinking, exactly. What he was doing was remembering, only it was much stronger than a memory. He could almost feel as if he were actually reliving it.

  Cal was in the doctor’s office. His mother had left the line three years earlier, no longer young enough or desirable enough to interest any of the cowboys who frequented the Beer Barrel Saloon. To support herself and her son she began taking in laundry. To help out, Cal got a job mucking out stalls at Miller’s Stable. Between the two of them they managed, though barely, to make enough money to pay the rent and buy food.

  Then this morning Cal was unable to awaken her, and he ran to get the doctor.

  “Who’ll be paying my bill?” the doctor asked. “From what I hear, your ma isn’t working over at the Beer Barrel for Fitzgerald anymore. When one of his women gets sick, he generally pays the bill.”

  “Ma ’n I have enough to pay you,” Cal said. “Please, come make her well again.”

  “Hook up my buggy while I get the things I’ll be needing,” the doctor said.

  Cal hurried out to the barn and got the horse in harness as quickly as he could. Then the doctor came out and drove to the outer edge of town, to the one-room cabin where Cal and his mother lived. The drive, it seemed to Cal, was agonizingly slow. “Tie my horse off, I’ll go in and look at your ma.”

  Cal tied off the horse, then hurried inside. When he did he saw the doctor standing at the side of the bed, looking down at his mother. The doctor had his arms folded across his chest.

  “You could’ve saved yourself a trip, boy,” the doctor said. “You should have just gone straight to the undertaker.”

  “What?”

  “Your mother is dead. She more than likely died during the night, which is why you couldn’t wake her this morning.”

  The words weren’t sugarcoated, and the doctor made no attempt to break the news gently. “Do you have folks who will take you in?”

  Cal shook his head. “Ma had no relatives and I don’t know who my pa was.”

  “Yes, that’s the problem with women who make their living the way your mother did. They almost always have babies and they seldom, if ever, have any idea of who the father was.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cal said. “She wasn’t sick yesterday.”

  “It was probably her heart,” the doctor said. He shook his head. “We still don’t have any idea why it happens, but often a person who seems perfectly healthy will have a heart attack.
Do you have enough money to pay the undertaker?”

  “We keep money in the sugar bowl. I don’t know how much is there,” Cal said.

  “I think he charges twenty dollars to bury a person,” the doctor said. “If you don’t want her to wind up in potter’s field, you’ll need to come up with the money.”

  “Do I owe you anything?”

  “Well, I should charge you five dollars just for coming out here. But seeing as your mother is dead and there wasn’t anything I could do for her, I won’t charge you anything.”

  “Thanks,” Cal said.

  After the doctor left, Cal examined the sugar bowl, and found twenty-seven dollars. He took it to the undertaker.

  “When she was whorin’ she was called Belle. But her real name is Gertrude. Gertrude Wood, ’n that’s the name I want on her tombstone,” Cal told the undertaker.

  “What makes you think there will be a tombstone?” the undertaker asked.

  “You mean there won’t be?”

  “Yes, if you pay fifteen dollars more,” the undertaker said.

  “I thought one came with the twenty dollars.”

  “Well, you thought wrong. Do you want one for another fifteen dollars?”

  Cal shook his head, but he said nothing.

  It rained the next day, the day his mother was buried. Nobody was present for the burial except for Cal and the gravedigger. His mother’s coffin, a plain pine box, lay on the back of the wagon with rain drumming down and forming little pools on the wood. Cal stood there in the rain watching the gravedigger, who was a black man, open up the hole. His mother was being buried in the main cemetery, but it was separated from potter’s field only by a very narrow pathway. And as there was no tombstone, there was little difference between her grave and the ones on the other side of the path. Had she been buried ten feet father to the south, he could have saved twenty dollars.

  The gravedigger breathed hard as he worked, but said nothing until the hole was finished. Then he climbed out of it.

  “If you’ll get that end of the coffin, boy, we can let her down real gentle like,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll have to drop her into the hole one end at a time. Won’t hurt her none, of course, but sometimes it does bust open the coffin.”

  Cal took the head and the gravedigger took the foot of the coffin, and they let his mother down gently into the hole . . . which was already filling with water.

  “You got somethin’ you want to say?” the gravedigger asked.

  “Say?”

  “Most of the time there’s words spoke,” the gravedigger said. “But most of the time there’s lots of folks present for the buryin’. Bein’ as there’s just me ’n you, I reckon you don’t have to say nothin’, but if you want to, I’ll stand here real respectful.”

  “Thanks,” Cal said. He cleared his throat. “I know that you tried to be as good a ma to me as you could be, ’n I don’t hold nothin’ against you, you bein’ a whore ’n all, ’n I hope you’re in a better place now.” He was quiet then.

  “That was spoke just real nice,” the gravedigger said.

  “Thanks. You can cover her up now.”

  Cal looked over at the gravedigger. The raindrops running down his black face looked like tears.

  Cal hoped that his tears looked like raindrops.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Big Rock, Colorado

  Smoke was in Longmont’s Saloon playing cards with three of his friends: the owner, Louis Longmont; Tim Murchison, the owner of the Boot and Leather Store; and Ed Gillespie, owner of Ed’s Gunshop.

  “Pair of jacks,” Smoke said, turning up his hole card. His face-up cards had been a jack, queen, king, and ace.

  “Damn, I knew you were bluffing. I knew you didn’t have a straight,” Murchison said.

  “Then why didn’t you call?”

  “Well, you could have had that ten,” Murchison said, and the others around the table laughed.

  “Makes no difference, even a pair of jacks has me beat,” Gillespie said.

  “I didn’t know my three little old sevens would be so powerful,” Louis said, chuckling as he drew in the pot.

  “Damnit, Louis, I knew you were just sitting there holding back from us,” Smoke said with a laugh, tossing his cards into the middle of the table.

  “How is Cal getting along?” Murchison asked as Longmont raked in the pot.

  “He’s doing as well as can be expected,” Smoke said. “Doctor Urban says the thing we have to be most careful about is infection. But Sally and Julia are keeping a pretty close eye on that.”

  “Julia?” Murchison asked.

  “Julia McKnight. She’s a nurse, a real nurse, who once worked for her father, who was a doctor. She was in Brown Spur when Cal got shot, she helped me get him back home, and she’s been helping Sally look after him ever since.”

  “Well it’s good Cal has a nurse looking out for him,” Murchison said.

  Sheriff Carson came into the saloon then and stopped at the bar to get a mug of beer before he walked over to the table.

  “Hello, Monte,” Smoke said.

  Sheriff Carson was carrying a copy of the Big Rock Journal which he lay in front of Smoke.

  “Have you seen the paper today?”

  “No, I haven’t had a chance to look at it.”

  “You might want to read this story.” He pointed to a story on the front page. “Looks like you ran into a pretty evil bunch.”

  Smoke picked the paper up to read.

  CARNAGE IN LAURETTE

  Twenty-Three Killed, Seven Wounded

  Had Genghis Khan returned to life, it is doubtful his warriors would have shown more cruelty than the recent attack of a band of outlaws. On the 15th instant, a terrible gang of outlaws descended upon the tranquil town of Laurette while its citizens went about their peaceful morning pursuits.

  With all guns blazing, they cut a swath through the town, pausing only long enough to empty the bank vault before riding away, once more firing indiscriminately into business buildings and private homes.

  When all the smoke had cleared, twenty-three lay dead, including Sheriff Jarrod Holder; Deputy John Clinton; president of the bank, Eric Kerry; both tellers, Wes Reid and Harry Clark; and six other men, as well as the schoolteacher, Miss Valerie Rice. Five other women and three children, one a babe in arms, were also killed. Seven were wounded.

  Although the identity of the attackers hasn’t been validated, survivors have stated that the riders were wearing red armbands. That is known to be the identifying characteristic of a group of outlaws known as the Ghost Riders. Sometime past, the Ghost Riders were terrorizing the good people of Wyoming. Why they left Wyoming in order to ply their evil avocation here in Colorado is unknown. All that is known is that they are here now, and they are our problem.

  “This article just suggests that it might have been the Ghost Riders,” Smoke said, putting the paper back down. “But it was them; there is no doubt in my mind.”

  “Oh, it was them, all right, he admits it,” Monte said.

  “He admits it? What do you mean? Who admits it?” Murchison asked.

  “Let me guess,” Smoke said. “Another letter from Hannibal?”

  “Yes. It was addressed to the Commerce Commercial Press, but it was picked up by our paper and I expect dozens of other papers throughout the state as well.”

  Letter to the editor of the Commerce Commercial Press:

  Dear Editor:

  Once again the Ghost Riders have conducted a military operation that surpasses anything ever done during the recent Civil War. Neither Grant, nor Sherman, nor Sheridan, nor Lee, nor Longstreet, nor Stonewall Jackson could have conducted a military strike that was as brilliantly conceived or masterfully carried out as our strike against the town of Laurette.

  We attacked the town with the strategic maneuver of shock and intimidation, accomplished our task of relieving the local bank of all its funds, then withdrew with not one casualty.

  I am Hannibal,

/>   Commandant of the Ghost Riders.

  “This man, Hannibal, is one arrogant son of a bitch,” Smoke said after reading the letter. He put the paper back down.

  “He is actually bragging about killing women and children,” Monte said. “Not since the bloody raids of the Missouri Raiders like Quantrill and Anderson, has there been one group of people visit such cruelty upon another group.”

  “Not all of the Missouri guerrilla bands were like Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson,” Smoke said. “And Kansas had its own share of bloodthirsty raiders. James Henry Lane and Doc Gunnison for example.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Monte said. “I didn’t mean to deal an uneven hand there.” Monte was one of the few who were aware of Smoke’s Missouri background. During the Civil War, when he was only sixteen years old, Smoke had ridden with the guerrilla, Asa Briggs.

  “Why hasn’t this bloody bastard been stopped?” Smoke asked.

  “Who’s goin’ to stop him?” Monte replied. “Nobody knows where the gang hides out, and he makes his raids from county to county so he never stays in one jurisdiction for very long. And he has so many men that it is a virtual army. How could one sheriff deal with all that? For all his self-aggrandizement, we don’t even know whether Hannibal is his first or his last name.”

  “It is neither,” Louis Longmont said.

  “How do you know? Louis, do you know this man?” Smoke asked.

  “I don’t know who he is, but I know him,” Louis said.

  “What do you mean, you know him?” Monte asked.

  “Let’s say that I know his personality. He fancies himself a great military leader. That’s evident in all his letters to the editor. And his name, Hannibal? I’ve no doubt but that he has taken his name from Hannibal Barca, a Carthaginian military commander generally considered one of the greatest military commanders in history.”

  “Is that the fella that took the elephants over the mountains?” Smoke asked.