Bloodshed of the Mountain Man Read online

  “Good for you, my friend,” Louis said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t be. I would have never heard of him if it hadn’t been for Sally. She told me about him one day.”

  Tim Murchison laughed. “Wow, I would like to have been there for that conversation.” He went falsetto. “Honey, did you know that a man named Hannibal took some elephants over the mountains?”

  The others, including Smoke, laughed.

  “You know, Louis, you may be right. Our friend Hannibal might be a frustrated military commander,” Smoke said.

  “Or someone who wanted to be and failed,” Louis said.

  “Well whoever or whatever he is, he sure needs to be stopped,” Sheriff Carson said.

  “He could be stopped if the governor would give someone the same legal authority as the Colorado Rangers, but let him act independently of them.”

  “I don’t think he’ll do that,” Monte replied. “Anyway, what could one man do?”

  “Maybe I should go talk to the governor,” Smoke suggested.

  “Smoke, wait a minute. You aren’t planning on going after the Ghost Riders by yourself, are you? You read the paper . . . hell’s fire, you saw them at Brown Spur. This is an army we’re talking about.”

  “I admit, whether he is a failed army commander or not, he has put together quite a formidable gang,” Smoke said.

  “But you’re planning on going after him anyway, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Smoke, I’ve never known of anyone, nor have I ever heard of anyone, who is as good with a gun as you are, and I’ve never met a man with more courage. But think about it, my friend. I don’t think even you have ever tried to fight an entire army all by yourself.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t go after them all by myself.”

  “Thank God I’ve talked some sense into you,” Sheriff Carson said with a sigh of relief.

  “I’ll take Pearlie with me.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Monte said. “Even with Pearlie, and I admit, Pearlie is nearly as good with a gun as you are, there would still just be the two of you.”

  Smoke smiled. “Worried about us, are you, Monte?”

  “Damn right I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m worried about Cal,” Sally said when Smoke returned home.

  “Why? I thought he was doing well,” Smoke said, surprised and distressed at the news.

  “I thought he was as well, but he’s been running a temperature most of the day, and that’s not good. Julia said it could mean that infection is trying to set in.”

  “Is Julia with him?”

  “She won’t leave him,” Sally said. “Even when it was time for lunch, she ate in there with him.”

  “She can’t do anything for him by just being there, can she?”

  “She’s been bathing his forehead with cool water. She says that will help keep the temperature down.”

  “I’m going to step in to say hello to him.”

  Sally shook her head. “He won’t even know you are there, Smoke. But you can certainly say hello to Julia.”

  “Then I’ll do that,” Smoke said as, giving Sally a quick kiss, he walked down the hall to the bedroom where they had put Cal. The door to the room was ajar, and even though it was only midafternoon, the room was dark, the result of the shades being pulled down and the drapes closed.

  He could see Julia sitting on a chair pulled up beside the bed. On a nearby table, there was a basin of water with a wet washcloth draped over the edge of the basin.

  Julia was holding Cal’s hand in hers.

  It had been a fortunate turn of events that Julia had been working at Bagby’s at exactly the time he most needed her. What were the odds of finding a bar girl who not only had the compassion but the training and the skill needed to save Cal’s life? He knew that every bar girl had a story, but this was unique. He would love to know her story, but he would never pry.

  He stepped into the room

  “How is your patient doing?” Smoke asked.

  “Oh!” Julia replied, startled by Smoke’s unexpected intrusion. She started to stand up, but Smoke put his hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back down into the chair.

  “No need for that.”

  Julia lifted her hand, and in so doing, also lifted Cal’s hand.

  “He’s been in and out of consciousness all day,” Julia said. “But when he is conscious, I want him to be able to feel that I’m holding his hand. I don’t want him to think that he is all alone.”

  “Good,” Smoke said. He nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

  “Of course, I don’t know if he even feels it or not,” Julia said.

  “He feels it,” Smoke said.

  “Cal was calling for his mother, earlier.”

  “He was?” Smoke replied, made curious by the remark. In all the time Cal had been with them, he had never once spoken of his mother.

  “Yes, I thought he meant Sally, but when I asked her if she was his mother, her answer confused me. She said, ‘as far as I’m concerned, I am’.”

  “I’m sure she does feel that way,” Smoke said. “Sally adopted him when he was a boy of no more than sixteen. When I say adopted, I don’t mean that she had papers drawn up or anything like that. But we couldn’t set any more of a store by him if we really had adopted him.”

  “I thought it might be something like that,” Julia said.

  “I can’t come right now. Pearlie and I have to get the cows in from the west pasture. Smoke’s likely to be some upset if we don’t get it done.”

  Cal’s words, coming unexpectedly as they did, interrupted the conversation between Smoke and Julia.

  “That’s all right, Cal, you can leave them there,” Smoke said with a little laugh. “I won’t need them back for a while.”

  “Did ya’ hear that, Pearlie? We don’t need to bring ’em in yet. What do you say, we go into town ’n get us a beer?”

  “He’s been talking like that ever since his temperature went up,” Julia said. “Most of the time he’s saying things that make no sense at all.”

  “I expect they make sense to him,” Smoke said. “And that’s all that matters right now. Fever can give a man some very strange thoughts. I know because I’ve been there myself.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Are you getting enough rest?”

  “When I can. I want to be here if he wakes up and needs me for something.”

  “Julia, you aren’t going to do any good for anyone if you get sick yourself. I appreciate all you’re doing for Cal. But you have to think of yourself as well.”

  “I know,” Julia said. “I promise you, I won’t push myself until I get sick.”

  “You’ve been very good for Cal. You don’t know how much Sally and I appreciate you being here. I know your father would be very proud of you.”

  To Smoke’s surprise, Julia’s eyes welled with tears.

  “I have been nothing but a disappointment to my father, starting with the day I left home. And if he knew what . . . I had become.” She wiped the tears away. “You said that you and Sally appreciate me, you have no idea how much I appreciate the opportunity I have been given to do something worthwhile. I’m a long way from recovering my self-respect.”

  “Don’t put yourself down, Julia. I know people. I can read people better than just about anyone. And you have a good soul.”

  “I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Miller,” Cal said.

  “Who is Mr. Miller?” Julia asked.

  Smoke chuckled. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After he paid for his mother’s burying, Cal had just enough money to pay the month’s rent and buy some bacon and beans. He lived on bacon and beans for a whole month until he got paid for his job mucking out stalls at the livery stable.

  He quit school so he could work full time, and that increased
his pay from ten dollars a month to twenty dollars a month. Even though his pay was doubled, that still left him with barely enough to pay the rent and buy food. But he knew that a boy his age, and with his background—everyone in Eagle Tail knew his mother had been a prostitute—would be unable to get work anywhere else, so he stayed there. He worked for Elmer Miller for six more months and would’ve stayed there even longer, had it not been for Justin Teague. Teague, like Cal, worked at the stable . . . that is when he wasn’t in jail for drunkenness or getting into a fight or some other misdemeanor.

  “One of these days I’m going to just up and leave this place,” Teague said, more than once. Generally the threat to leave would come right after Teague had had a run-in with Miller. “Then where will Miller be? Stuck with a fifteen-year-old, snot-nosed, whore’s son, that’s where.”

  “I’m sixteen,” Cal said.

  “You just have to wonder what’s going on in his mind now,” Smoke said.

  Julia put her hand on his brow. “He’s burning up with fever,” she said. She picked up the wet cloth and laid it on his forehead.

  “Fifteen, sixteen, it don’t make no difference. If I left and you was the only one still a workin’ here, Miller would be in a fix, now, wouldn’t he? That’s all I’m sayin’.”

  “I don’t think he would like it much, if you was to leave,” Cal said. “I’m sorry, Miz Sally. What I meant to say was, if you were to leave.”

  Teague made no reaction to Cal’s grammatical correction, nor his mention of Miz Sally.

  One day Cal was getting ready to take the week’s receipts to the bank when Teague came into the office.

  “How much money you got there?” Teague asked.

  “One hundred and seven dollars.”

  “A hunnert and seven? This has been a good week.”

  “Yes, but don’t forget, we rented a wagon and team for three days to the lumber mill.”

  “Oh, yeah, I do remember that. Anyway, give the money to me.”

  “Give it to you? Why?”

  “Miller told me to make the deposit for him today,” Teague said.

  “I always make the deposit. Mr. Miller didn’t tell me he wanted you to make the deposit.”

  “Why should he tell you? Give me the money.”

  “No, sir. Mr. Miller told me to make the deposit, and unless he tells me himself that he wants you to do it, then I aim to do what he told me. Mr. Miller is just out back. If you want to go with me to see him, and if he says for you to make the deposit, then I’ll be glad to give you the money. But I’m not going to do that until he tells me.”

  Teague pulled his pistol from his holster. “Boy, if you don’t hand that money over to me now, I’m goin’ to shoot you dead ’n take it. Now, what’s it goin’ to be? You willin’ to get yourself kilt over this little difference of opinion we’re havin’?”

  “I told you, Mr. Miller is just out back,” Cal said. “Like I said, come with me, and we’ll go ask him what he wants me to do.”

  “We ain’t goin’ to ask him nothin’,” Teague said. “You’re goin’ to give me that money now.” Teague pulled the hammer back on the pistol he was holding.

  “All right,” Cal said, handing the money over to him.

  “Ha!” Teague said. “Thanks for the money, kid. Tell Miller I said good-bye.”

  “You mean you’re stealin’ the money?”

  “Yeah,” Teague said, with an evil laugh.

  Teague turned to leave, but Cal, knowing that Miller kept a gun in the middle desk drawer, opened the drawer and picked up the gun.

  “Mr. Teague,” he called. “Drop your gun and bring the money back.”

  Teague whirled around and pointed his pistol at Cal, but Cal shot before Teague could. The bullet hit Teague in the heart, and he went down.

  “Mr. Teague!” Cal shouted, moving to him quickly. He knelt beside him, the smoking gun still in his hand. “Mr. Teague!”

  Miller came into the office then and saw Cal kneeling beside Teague’s body, holding the gun in one hand and the money in the other.

  “Boy, what have you done?” Miller shouted.

  “He was trying to steal your money, Mr. Miller.”

  “I don’t think so. You’re the one holding the gun and the money. I think Teague caught you trying to steal the money, and you shot him.”

  “I shot him ’cause he was goin’ to shoot me.”

  “Teague is a troublemaker, I’ll admit. But he ain’t never done nothin’ to get him in real trouble. You stay right here, young man, until I come back with the sheriff. Maybe you can convince him.”

  “I didn’t have no choice!” Cal called after him. “He was fixin’ to shoot me!”

  “I told you to stay right there,” Miller called, holding his hand out as if by that action he could keep the boy in place.

  Cal didn’t know what to do. If Miller didn’t believe him, he was sure the sheriff wouldn’t. He waited only until Miller was out of sight, then he took the fastest horse in the stable and left.

  When he was ten miles out of town he let the horse go, knowing it would return to the stable. He needed to get out of Kansas, so he hopped a freight train going west.

  “As his body fights off the infection, he’s going to have bouts of high temperature,” Dr. Urban said as he removed a dressing on Cal’s abdomen, exposing an oozing wound. “Young lady, you’re going to have to keep this clean and change the dressings at least twice a day.”

  “I’m afraid of sepsis,” Julia said.

  “You are right to be afraid of it. I’m going to leave you some antiseptic. Has he been hallucinating?”

  “You could say that,” Smoke said. “He just told us he was sixteen.”

  “Running a fever like this, there will be periods of time when he is perfectly lucid, as well as times when he is hardly making any sense at all. But you are doing exactly the right thing by bathing him with cool water to keep the temperature down.”

  “We’ve been very lucky to have her,” Smoke said.

  “I would say that you are. I’ll leave you a little laudanum too, but only give it to him if he is in pain. And be very careful with it.”

  “Yes, sir, I will.”

  “Let me ask you this, Doctor. I need to go to Denver, but I don’t want to leave if, well, if—”

  Dr. Urban interrupted him. “Go ahead, Smoke. It will more than likely be several weeks before Cal is back on his feet. But I think I can assure you that there is no danger of any precipitous calamity.”

  Smoke nodded. “Thanks, Doc, I appreciate the reassurance.”

  Smoke followed Dr. Urban outside where Pearlie had brought the buggy around.

  “Don’t worry about Cal,” Dr. Urban said. “I think he’s going to pull through just fine, and that young lady you’ve got nursing him can do about as much for him as I can. She’s quite a find.”

  “Yes, we think so as well,” Smoke said.

  Smoke and Pearlie watched the doctor drive away.

  “Pearlie, I’m going to Denver tomorrow. I’m going after the people who did this to Cal, but I want to be legal, so I’m going to see the governor and have him give me an appointment as an officer of the law of the state.”

  “Take me with you.”

  “Not to Denver. But I promise that you will be with me when I go after Hannibal and his gang. I don’t think I would want to take them all on by myself.”

  “You’re sure you won’t go off without me?” Pearlie asked.

  Smoke smiled and put his hand on Pearlie’s shoulder. “I’m sure,” he said. “But now I need you to stay here and keep an eye on Cal. Knowing him, if he gets to feeling better, he’ll be going out to curry Prince Dandy or something, and break everything open again.”

  “He won’t get up,” Pearlie said. “I promise you that.”

  Smoke stepped back into Cal’s room. As she had been from the very beginning, Julia was sitting in a chair that was right next to his bed.

  Cal was awake, and he and Julia
were talking.

  “No kidding,” Cal said. “Pearlie ’n I once went to a rodeo ’n both of us won our events.”

  “I believe you, Cal. Why, I think you could probably do just about anything you wanted to do.”

  “I could. Before this,” Cal said. “I don’t know what’s goin’ to happen now.”

  “What’s going to happen now is you’re going to heal up and get back to work,” Smoke said. “I’m not paying you to just lie around with some pretty girl looking after you,” he teased.

  “She is pretty, isn’t she?” Cal said.

  “She sure is. Listen, I’m going to be gone for a while, so I don’t want you trying to do anything foolish, like showing off to Julia how good you are at busting broncos.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that, Mr. Jensen,” Julia said. “I won’t let him get up.”

  “You’re goin’ after them, aren’t you, Smoke?” Cal said. “You’re going after the men that shot me.”

  “What makes you think I’m doing that?”

  “Julia told me I wasn’t the only one shot. There were a lot more shot, even some women.”

  “I’m going to Denver,” Smoke said, without elaboration.

  Suttle, Colorado

  When Rexwell stepped into the sheriff’s office, the deputy had his chair leaning back against the wall and his feet propped up on the desk. He was sound asleep and snoring loudly. Rexwell looked around the inside of the jail. The room was dimly lit by a low-burning kerosene lantern. Wanted posters filled the bulletin board. A pot of aromatic coffee sat on a small, wood-burning stove. The regulator clock on the wall swept its pendulum back and forth in a measured ticktock, the hands on the face pointing to ten minutes after two. Moving quietly, Rexwell walked over to the stove to pour himself a cup of coffee; then he stepped over to the jail cell to look inside. The two men in the cell, Amos and Amon Scraggs, twins, were sound asleep. They had recently been convicted of murder and were waiting only for the gallows to be completed before they were to be hanged.