Pursuit Of The Mountain Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

Yes.”
    “So he can make a sport of tracking me down, hunting me, cornering me, and then killing me like some wild beast.”
    Smoke smiled, but the colonel noticed very quickly that it was not a pleasant curving of the lips. The colonel sat silently, waiting.
    “I’m going to give this baron or count or whatever he is a chance to break off this hunt, Colonel. I might even take a few shots in my direction-providing they don’t come too close. I’m going to do this because I’m tired of all the blood-letting. I’m going to let these people see some country, and some mighty rugged country too. But when I’ve had enough, I’ll stand and fight. And when I decide to do that, Colonel, I won’t be taking any prisoners for trial.”
    “You’re telling me that you are going to commit murder,” the colonel said stiffly.
    “Call it anything you like. I’m a man who set out to visit a friend and fellow rancher to buy some bulls. That’s all. Then I find myself being dogged by some European aristocrat and his friends who have hired about twenty-five of the most mangy bunch of men who ever sat a saddle. I am warned that this bunch plans to make a sport out of tracking and hunting and cornering and then killing me. I go to the army for help. The army tells me there is nothing that can be done because of some law that I never even heard of. Put yourself in my place, Colonel.”
    The army officer sat for a moment without speaking. He toyed with his coffee cup, then said, “Off the record, Smoke?”
    Smoke nodded.
    The colonel’s eyes were bleak as he said, “When it comes time for you to make your stand, don’t just wound anybody.”

4
     
    Smoke resupplied at the fort and pulled out early the next morning, telling the boys at the livery he was heading for a little town just north of the mouth of Hams Fork. He left the post and headed straight north, riding north until he came to Muddy Creek. He rode in the river bed for several miles, then left it and headed northwest, toward the Bear River Divide.
    This was a land not for the faint-hearted, even in the early 1880’s. Between Fort Bridger and north to Trapper’s Point, as the mountain men used to call it, there were no towns and few settlers. The northern branch of Muddy Creek forked almost in the center of Bear River Divide. When Smoke reached the southernmost branch of the fork, with Medicine Butte far to the south of him, he made a lonely camp, cooked his supper, then carefully hid all traces of his fire and rode north for several more miles before making his night camp amid a jumble of rocks that gave him a good lookout and a secure site.
    He was on the trail before dawn, picking his way north, utilizing all of his skills in making his way, leaving as few tracks as possible.
    He tried to put himself inside the head of von Hausen. What would he do in a situation like this? For one thing he would not accept that his prey had gone north toward Hams Creek as Smoke had told the boys at the stable; that would be a deliberate ruse. Von Hausen had some good trackers with him. The gunslingers might be no more than human trash, with little values and no morals, but some of them could track a snake across a rock. Von Hausen had enough salty ol’ boys with him to split his forces. Yeah. He’d do that. He’d send men racing toward the north, then start working them south, from the old stage road at Hams Fork over to the Utah line.
    “Good, Smoke,” he muttered. “Very good move on your part. Now you’ve got people coming at you from two directions. Preacher would not be happy with this move.”
    Then he chuckled and turned his horse’s head due east. When he came to the stagecoach road, he turned north and headed for what was called the Sublette Cutoff. The cutoff was developed as part of the Oregon Trail; a faster way to get to Oregon country.
    As Smoke approached the little town at the cutoff, he circled and came around from the east. He stabled his horses at the