Cunning of the Mountain Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

the corner. After they left, Walt and the other two waited out ten long, tense minutes. Then Walt eased his six-gun from leather and put the hammer on half-cock. He rotated the cylinder to the empty chamber and inserted another cartridge. Then he closed the loading gate and returned his weapon to the holster.
    “Rip, you go fetch our gear, an’ go saddle up the horses.”
    Rip nodded and departed. Then Walt turned to Tyrell Hardy. “Ty, why don’t you slip out the back door and go to the hotel. Bring our long guns back with you.”
    “Sure, Walt, right away.” Ty Hardy was gone faster than his words.

    Smoke Jensen heard the ruckus coming from the saloons and correctly interpreted its meaning. He needed to find some way out of this, before they drank enough liquid courage to come and do what they wanted to do. He had to think. He had to find out what had happened after the middle of the previous afternoon, when he and his hands arrived in Socorro.
    “We checked into a hotel,” Smoke muttered softly to himself. “Got our gear settled in the rooms, then stopped off at a saloon for a drink before supper.” It felt like invisible hands were ringing his mind like a washcloth. “What did we eat? Where?”
    The silence of the jail and in his mind mocked him. Smoke came up on his boots and paced the small space allowed in his tiny cell. “Something Mexican,” he spoke to the wall. “Stringy beef, cooked in tomatoes, onions, and chili peppers. Bist é k ranchero , that’s it.”
    A loud shout interrupted his train of thought. One voice rose above the others, clear though distant; the cadence that of someone making a speech. It floated on the hot Socorro air through the small window high in his cell.
    “I knew Lawrence Tucker for fifteen years. From when he first moved to these parts. He was a good man. Tough as nails when he had to be, but a good father and husband. Know his wife, too. An’ those kids, why they’re the most polite, hard-working, reverent younguns you’d ever want to know.”
    “Yeah, that’s right,” another voice joined the first. “Larry smoked cigars, like y’all know. Right fancy ones, from a place called Havana. Now, I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy a box of those special cigars for the first man who fits a rope around the neck of Smoke Jensen!”
    Loud cheering rose like a tidal wave. Smoke Jensen stared unbelievingly at the stone wall and gritted his teeth. The testimonials went on, and Smoke could visualize the bottles being passed from hand to hand. In his mind he could see the faces, flushed with whiskey and blood-lust, growing shiny with sweat, as the crowd became a mob.
    “In the fifteen years Lawrence Tucker has been here,” the first orator went on, “he never done a mean or vicious thing. Oh, he shot him a few Apaches, and potted a couple of lobo wolves who wandered down from the San Cristobals, but he never traded shots with another man, white or Mezkin. Didn’t hardly ever even raise his voice. Yet, he was respected, and his hands obeyed him. If it wasn’t for havin’ to tend the stock and protect the ranch, they’d be here now, you can count on that. And they’d be shoutin’ loudest of any to hang that back-shooting sumbitch higher than Haymen.”
    More cheers. The whiskey, and the rhetoric, were doing their job.
    Smoke Jensen climbed on the edge of the bunk and stretched to see beyond the walls of his prison. It did him little good. He found that his cell fronted on the brick wall of a two-story bakery. It had been the source of the tormenting aromas since his awakening. So far he had received not one scrap of food—only that swill laughingly called coffee, shortly after first light.
    Never one to worship food, Smoke’s belly cramped constantly now at the yeasty scent of baking bread and sugary accompaniment of pies and cakes. No doubt, the sadistic Biggs had placed him in this cell deliberately, and denied him anything to eat. For a moment it had taken his mind off