9
Smoke Jensen quickly poked two fresh cartridges into chambers and positioned the cylinder. Before he raised the big .44 to fire at the new threat, he heard a loud, soulful groan from behind him and the splintering of wood. A quick over-shoulder glance showed a portion of the balcony rail hurtling though the air, followed by the body of a young hardcase. The corpse hit the floor with a muffled thud just as the batwings swung inward.
Through the slowly dissipating powder smoke, Smoke Jensen made out a huge Charro hat, bolero jacket and tight pants of a Mexican vaquero. “Ah, Señor Smoke, you must mind always to watch your back, ¿commo no?” Esteban Carbone said through a chuckle as he walked into the saloon.
“Carbone,” Smoke exclaimed in relief as he came to his boots. “You old hound, how’d you find me here?”
“And just in time, I suspect,” the Mexican gunfighter gibed. “I heard gunshots as I rode by and knew you had to be involved, amigo.” He nodded toward the three wide-eyed cowboys, still seated at the table, their hands in clear sight on the green baise. “What about these gatitos—these kittens?” he added in English.
“They’re out of it, Carbone,” Smoke informed him as he finished reloading. “I’m going to have to take to wearing two guns again; that’s twice I’ve been caught short in the past week.”
“Excuse me, Señor,” one of the cowboys said politely to Carbone. “When you came in, you called him Smoke. Smoke who?”
Carbone gave him one of his coldest, deadliest smiles. “Smoke Jensen.”
All at once, the trio developed a sickly pallor. Walsh worked his throat with evident difficulty and made an effort to form words. “Th-then Herbie must never backed you down nowhere, Mr. Jensen?”
“No. I tried to tell him that.”
“He—he was on the prod. Only this mornin’, he got fired for the third time this month. Don’t reckon you could have talked him out of nothin’.”
Adams nodded enthusiastic agreement. “We—ah—best be ridin’ out. Best get back to the ranch before we get sacked, too.”
“If it’s all right with you, Mr. Jensen?” the third youth spoke up.
“Might need you to tell the law what happened here,” Smoke suggested.
“Yessir,” Walsh agreed quickly. They all nodded accord. “We’ll sure stay long enough to do that.”
After the law had come, asked the usual questions, and departed, Smoke and Carbone moved on to an eatery next door to the saloon. Over roasted pork and parsnips, Carbone began the explanation of the troubles that had prompted Martine and himself to ask for help.
“A number of years ago, not long after we assisted you in that small affair up north, Martine and I decided to hang up our guns. We had both accumulated considerable wealth. So we bought land, and with it came all the villages, people, livestock and the large haciendas. We also took wives of good families. We are gentlemen now, caballeros, instead of pistoleros. We have lived the good life. At least, until this former hill bandit, Gustavo Carvajal, raised a small army of bandidos and began a program of conquest.
“Up until three years ago, this Gustavo Carvajal was a third-rate bandido. He commanded, perhaps, ten or a dozen men. Scavengers mostly,” Carbone elaborated on the content of his letter. “Half-starved much of the time, taking the leavings from larger bandit gangs. Then . . . something happened to change all of that. He may have gotten some bad tequila, or had a long bout with fever. Afterward, Carvajal claimed to be the reincarnation of the last Aztec emperor, Montezuma. He even dressed up in a feather cape and headdress when the spirit was on him and began calling his followers Jaguar Warriors or Eagle Warriors, after the divisions of the Aztec army.”
“Sounds like he’s not too tightly wrapped. I’d think what followers he had would desert wholesale from something that crazy,” Smoke injected.
“Ah, perhaps. I’m sure many did. It attracted a different type of men, though. Before long his gang grew to over two hundred. They became a small army. At present, he holds sway over three states in Central Mexico: Durango, Zacatecas, and Aguascalientes. Collects tribute from all of the hacendados, the villages, even some merchants in the larger cities.”
“Except for you and Martine,” Smoke provided.
“Exactly.”
“What about this King of the North you mentioned?”
Carbone patted at the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “That is what Carvajal calls himself when he is not being emperor of the Aztecs. When he is, shall we say, sane.”
“Can’t the army do anything?”
Carbone shrugged at Smoke’s question. “The Rurales are mostly untried amateurs. They are policemen basically. The army is busy with an Indian uprising in the south, and bandits in Sonora. Besides, they only defend the property of friends of El Presidente. We are not so big, and with our pasts, we are hardly counted among the close friends of Diaz.”
“So that leaves Carvajal to run free over as much territory as he can control with his two hundred plus,” Smoke summed up.
“There are only about a hundred and fifty left.”
“Left? How’s that?”
A sardonic smile creased full lips in the brown face. “These scum hit one of my villages, burned it down, then hit another. Oh, they took it and looted it. But sixty-seven of them were buried there. Now, I strongly suspect, and Miguel agrees, they will attack a village on the Martine y Garcia estancia. This is why we decided to ask you to come take a hand in the game.”
“Does Martine have a partner?”
“No. That is the way it is here. When one takes a wife, he also takes her family name. So we are Miguel Antonio Martine y Garcia and Esteban Carbone y Ruiz.”
“That’s what I call being really married,” Smoke quipped. Then he grew thoughtful. “Don’t laugh, but I never knew you two had first names, let alone this double last name thing.”
Another of those eloquent Latin shrugs. “It did not suit us to use our full names, amigo. And speaking of the double name, I suppose I am through with that,” he added with a deep sigh.
“Oh? Why is that?”
“I had meant to mention it earlier, but we got off on this cabrón, Carvajal. Not long before I left to come here, an assassin fired from long range at our hacienda. It was no doubt intended for me. My wife walked into the path of the bullet. She is dead, and our children are half orphans.”
Raw anger flushed through Smoke Jensen. He recalled the murder of his first wife and their son, Arthur. He thought also of the many close calls Sally had managed to survive. Silently, Smoke vowed to do everything in his power, and more if need be, to bring a world of hurt down on Gustavo Carvajal.
“That was Carvajal’s doing,” Smoke suggested.
“No doubt. I appealed to the local Rurale company. The captain in charge said too bad, but without seeing who did the shooting there was little he could do. I later learned that he was in the pay of Carvajal.”
“And it’s like that all around where we’re going?”
Carbone produced a somber expression, although his eyes twinkled. “When has the law being bought by your enemy ever bothered you, Smoke?”
Smoke’s voice took on a speculative tone. “A hundred fifty of these bandits and their suck-egg law dogs, you say?”
“Yes.” The beginnings of a smile added a white line to the twinkle in Carbone’s eyes.
“Against you, Martine and me? The odds seem about right, I reckon. Will the workers on your ranches fight?”
Carbone’s shrug could have toppled mountains. “Who knows? They are peons. Some will, a few will run and hide, others may even carry information to El Rey.”
“Then,” Smoke prompted, “we had better get started. First, though, I have some telegrams to send.”
Her dress, a creation in purple velvet, edged with delicate, lighter lavender lace, had come from Bancroft’s in New York. The matching hat, huge, feather bedecked, with flowing veil, from Robert’s of Paris. Fortunately the hem dropped modestly to an inch off the ground, which hid the utterly practical and utilitarian cowhide boots Sally Jensen wore under her fashionable ensemble. She stood in the shade of the overhanging cupola of the Big Rock Railroad Station of the D & RG.
Beside her, looking grumpy in white shirt, black trousers, cloth vest and tall Montana peak hat, stood Sheriff Monte Carson. Every few moments, he reached up to smooth one side or the other of his full walrus mustache. From far down the valley came the faint, shrill scream of a steam whistle.
Sally’s usual reserve faltered, and she asked concernedly, “Are you sure he will be on this train?” With a start, she realized she had asked the same question at least twice before. She was surprised at her nervousness and the unusual desire to please that she was experiencing.
Monte Carson suppressed a grin and spoke dryly. “Either Smoke told him to do it, or the little tyke’s got sense enough to have sent me a telegraph message from Denver verifying he’ll be on today’s train.”
“I’m relieved, Monte. I wonder what he’ll be like. I’ve wondered ever since Smoke’s first message.”
Monte’s tone became fatherly. “He’ll be just fine. If Smoke Jensen took a likin’ to the boy, he’ll be first class, you can be sure.”
Gradually the shrill blasts of the locomotive’s whistle, three longs, a short, and a long, grew closer and more frequent as it encountered more grade crossings. A white-skirted column of black smoke boiled up from the mushroom stack of the American Locomotive Works 4-6-0 Mountain. The ground began to tremble, and the air rumbled with the power of the huge steam loco. Heavier smoke belched from the stack when the engineer backed her down and slowed for the stop in Big Rock. Steam gushed from the fat pistons that worked the driver arms.
Majestically the engine and tender rolled past the platform, followed by a stock car, two baggage-freight cars, and a single passenger coach. The conductor swung down to the platform before the train came to a complete halt and set in place his small boarding step. A moment later, three persons got off the rear of the passenger car. All were adults.
“Monte, is there something wrong?” Sally asked uneasily.
“Why, I don’t know, Miz Sally.” He frowned, looked around. “Appears he’s still inside.”
“I’ll go see. He must be shy,” Sally suggested.
“No, you wait here, I’ll go.”
Sally laughed, a musical, pleasant sound. “With that outrageous hat, the badge, and your gun, if he’s shy, you’ll scare the pants off him.”
Monte hurrumphed and allowed as how she might be right. Sally stepped to the conductor. “Is there a small boy on board.”
“Oh, yes. He’s a live wire, I’ll say, ma’am. He has a pony in that stock car, too.”
“Oh, my. I hope it’s gelded,” Sally said, devoid of any sensitivity about such direct language.
“It’s a mare,” the conductor informed her.
“Dear me, Smoke won’t like that. Our stallions are all prize stock. Be such a waste. But where’s the boy? He didn’t get off with the others.”
She and the conductor looked around. Unexpectedly the steam whistle shrieked wildly, and a small hand waved from the cab of the locomotive. When the blast of sound stopped, a head topped by a mop of reddish-blond hair and a ridiculous little round hat popped out of the window. A piping voice called with all the stridence of the whistle.
“Are you Miz Smoke Jensen?”
Sally muttered a brief apology to the conductor and started forward. Monte Carson cut diagonally to reach the side of the locomotive first. The boy’s head disappeared inside, and a moment later, a beefy, beet-faced engineer handed him down to the sheriff.
“He’s a fine lad, he is. Regular chatterbox. Kept us entertained all the way from the water stop at Arapaho.” Behind him the fireman nodded grinning agreement.
“How did you get in the cab?” Sally and Monte asked at the same time.
“Well, it was a water stop,” Bobby Harris chirped. “So I got off the train to ...”
“That’s enough, boy,” Monte warned, pink filling his cheeks. “You’re in the presence of a lady.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Bobby offered softly and doffed his hat.
“Funniest thing. Here was this little pup wettin’ down the tra—ah—er.” The engineer’s words ground down at the black look Monte Carson cut his way. “Afterward, he asked if he could ride up front, and we saw no harm in it. Made the time go by quicker, if you know what I mean.”
“Thank you very much,” Sally Jensen frosted at him in her best Eastern hauteur. For once she was glad Smoke wasn’t with her. Like most frontier men, Smoke could not abide crude talk around a woman. There would be a fight for certain, and she was sure the railroad needed the engineer to take the train back to Denver.
To Bobby she said, “We’ll get your pony and her tack and start for the Sugarloaf.”
“Yes, ma’am,” a subdued Bobby responded. Then he brightened as they walked toward the stock car. “I learned some keen new words when the fireman banged his thumb on the boiler door.”
“I’ll bet you did,” Sally answered tightly, but she could not suppress the bubble of laughter that rose in her throat. Oh, Smoke, do you have any idea what you’ve gotten us in for?