Blood of the Mountain Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

a corner table an ate supper while the men worked.
    “I’ll be back through here from time to time Smoke said, having no intention of ever returning to this town. “Chances are you won’t know I’r around, but I will be. If I hear of you or your me ever crowding another citizen or drifter, I’ll hunt you down and kill you, Red.”
    “This wasn’t none of your affair, Jensen,” Red said sullenly, pushing a broom across the floor.
    “Not until your men started crowding me. That made it personal.”
    “They was just havin’ fun.”
    “I didn’t see the humor in it.”
    Other area ranchers and farmers had drifted i and were enjoying the scene. The saloon was nearly full. Red and his men had been throwing the weight around for years, and payback time was Iong overdue and much appreciated.
    Smoke was under no illusions about what Re was going to do. Just as soon as Red got a chance he was going to try to kill him. Ned and Shell an Carl were cowboys, not fast guns. They rode for rough brand, but they were not killers.
    But Jim Sloane was another matter. Smoke felt he would side with his boss when it came down to the nut-cuttin’.
    Red finally threw down his broom and turned 1 face Smoke. “That’s it, Jensen. No more.”
    ‘Your choice,” Smoke told him, a fresh pot of coffee on the table before him.
    “You’d kill me over a bunch of people you never laid eyes on before today?”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “That don’t answer my question.”
    “You figure it out.”
    “I come in here first, Jensen. I fought . . .”
    “I don’t want to hear that crap!” Smoke said harshly. “I’m sick of hearing it from men like you. Yes, you fought Indians and outlaws. Yes, you settled this land. But it’s 1883 now. And time has passed you by. The old ways are all but gone. It won’t be long before this territory will become a state. With a state militia and maybe even a state police force. You think they’ll put up with the crap you’ve been pulling? The answer is no, they won’t. Look around you, Red.”
    Red did, and saw a half a dozen ranchers and their foremen, all armed, all staring back at him. Suddenly, all because of one man, Red knew his days of beings top dog were over. The people had become united against him. And he hated Smoke Jensen for that.
    “You still lookin’ for hands out at your spread, Mister Jackson?” Shell asked a rancher.
    “Still lookin’, Shell. You interested?”
    “I sure am.”
    “Me, too,” Ned said.
    “And me,” Carl was quick to add.
    “You’re all hired.”
    “You yellow bastards!” Red told his former riders. ‘You’d best watch your mouth, Mister Lee,” Shell told the man. ‘You can insult me all you like, but leave my family out of it.” He looked at his friends. “Let’s get our gear from the ranch. See you ’bout dark, Mister Jackson.”
    “The grub will be hot and waitin’ on you, boys.” The three punchers left the saloon . . . after nodding respectfully at Smoke.
    Red Lee cursed the men until they were out of sight. Smoke waited, well aware that the man was hovering near the breaking point.
    “Go home, Red,” another rancher told the man. “Go home and cool off.”
    “Don’t you tell me what to do, you goddamn raw-hider.”
    “We all were rawhiders when we first came here, Red,” another rancher said. “Even you. So you got no call to insult us.”
    “I’ll do just as I’ve always done,” the man popped back. “And that is whatever I damn well please.” “Them days is over, Red,” a farmer spoke up. ‘You’re the only rancher in the area that don’t buy my vegetables and bacon and hams, and whose men still ride roughshod over my place. It’ll not happen again. I tell you that face to face.”
    Red pointed a finger at the farmer, dressed in overalls and low-heeled boots. The finger was shaking and his voice was thick with barely controlled emotion. “You don’t talk to me like that, Jergenson. I don’t take lip from a