Cunning of the Mountain Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

avalanche. A low, primal growl that swelled as it advanced metamorphosing into the roar of a tidal bore, bent on smashing up an estuary and inundating everything along the river. Although coming from a distance, the angry bellow echoed from the brick wall of the bakery. It made the hairs on the nape of Smoke Jensen’s neck rise and vibrate.
    They were coming.
    How many? Would they get in? Smoke Jensen had been scared in his life many times before. Yet nothing compared to what he experienced now—not the grizzly that had nearly taken off his face before he killed it with a Greenriver knife . . . not the dozen Blackfeet warriors who had surrounded him, alone in camp, with Preacher out running traps . . . not when he faced down a dozen hardened killers in the street of Banning. None of them compared. This absolutely paralyzed him for the moment. He was so helpless, vulnerable. Death rode the mob like a single steed, a hound out of Hell, and it made Smoke reexamine his own fragile mortality. How easily they could take him.
    NO! He could find a way to get out of this. Somehow, he could hold off the mob. Think, damnit!
    The rattle, squeak, and clang of the cellblock door interrupted Smoke Jensen’s fevered speculation as it slammed open. He left the window at once, pressed his cheek to the corridor bars, and looked along the narrow walkway. Waddling toward him, Smoke saw the fat figure of Ferdie Biggs. The keys jangled musically in one pudgy paw.
    “Turn around and back up against the bars, Jensen.” “You’re taking me out of here?”
    “Yep. Jist do as I say.”
    Smoke turned around and put his hands through the space between two bars. Biggs reached him a moment later, puffing and gasping. Cold bands of steel closed around the wrists of Smoke Jensen. A key turned in the small locks.
    “Now step back. All the way to the wall.”
    “Am I being taken to some safer place?” Smoke asked, his expectations rising.
    “Get back, I said.” Biggs snarled the words as he reached behind his back and drew a .44 Smith and Wesson from his waistband. He stepped to the door and turned a large key in the lockcase. The bar gave noisily, and the jailer swung the barrier wide. He motioned to Smoke with the muzzle of the Smith, and a nasty smirk spread on his moon face. “Naw. I’m gonna give you over to those good ol’ boys out there.”

Four
    Ferdie Biggs prodded Smoke Jensen ahead of him along the cellblock corridor. At the lattice-work door he passed on through without closing it. He had done the same with the cell, the keys hanging in the lock. The sudden rush of adrenaline had cleared the fuzziness from Smoke’s head. He realized that for all of Biggs’s slovenly appearance and illiterate speech, he was at least clever enough to lay the groundwork for it to appear the mob had overwhelmed him and broke into the jail.
    “You’re not smart enough to fake a forced entry, Ferdie,” Smoke taunted him. “You’re going to get caught.” Biggs gave him a rough shove that propelled Smoke across the room to the sheriff’s desk. The narrow edge of the top dug into his thighs. Bright pinpoints of pain further cleared Smoke’s thinking. He was ready, then, when Biggs barked his next command.
    “Turn around, I wanna have some fun, bust you up some, before I let the boys in.”
    Smoke turned and kept swinging his right leg. The toe of his boot connected with the hand that held the six-gun and knocked it flying. It discharged a round that cut a hot trail past Smoke’s rib cage, and smashed a blue granite coffeepot on a small, Acme two-burner wood stove in the comer. Biggs bellowed in pain and surprise, a moment before Smoke reversed the leg and planted his boot heel in the jailer’s doughy middle.
    Ferdie Biggs bent double, the air whooshing out from his lungs. Meanwhile Smoke Jensen recovered his balance and used his other foot to plant a solid kick to the side of Ferdie Biggs’s head. From where it made contact came a ripe melon