Cruel Winter of the Mountain Man

As they walked up to Madigan, Smoke said, “I know somebody who’s not going to be happy with you, Jonas.”

Madigan glared and said, “I don’t have to sneak out of my own house, you old rapscallion.” He paused, then went on, “I just, uh, waited until Miriam had gone back to her house to get a few things. With the weather about to turn bad, she wanted to be able to stay over at my place for a few days without having to go back and forth. And don’t you dare say anything to sully that noble woman’s reputation—”

Windy held up both hands defensively. “I wasn’t about to say nothin’, Jonas. Shoot, as far as I’m concerned, the two o’ you might as well be married.”

“Well, we’re not,” Madigan snapped. “Although I’ve come around to thinkin’ that we ought to be. And once we get past this storm and deal with Snake Bishop’s gang, I’m gonna see if we can do something about that.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Smoke said. “As long as Mrs. Dollinger goes along with it.”

“I reckon she will, unless I miss my guess.” Madigan shared his shoulders. “But first we’ve got to deal with other things, and we might as well get in out of this damned cold wind while we do it, hadn’t we?”

“Sounds good to me.”

They went into the office. Earlier, Windy had started a fire in the pot-bellied stove to boil some coffee, but it had burned down to embers during the day. Still, a little bit of heat came from it, so it wasn’t quite as chilly in the office as it was outside. While Smoke went behind the desk, Windy put some more wood in the stove, added kindling, and snapped a lucifer to life to get a blaze going again.

Smoke reached for the badge pinned to his shirt and said, “Now that you’re back, Marshal, I reckon I should give this to you.”

“Wait just a blasted minute there,” Madigan said. “Just because I came to help doesn’t mean I’m takin’ over the marshal’s job again. That’s still yours for now, Smoke.”

“But by rights, the job’s more yours than mine,” Smoke objected. “I was just filling in.”

“And you still are.” Madigan heaved a sigh. “I can sit in an office, and if I have to, I reckon I can hold up a gun and pull the trigger, but to tell you the truth, son . . . just walkin’ the short distance here took a hell of a lot out of me. There’s no way I can be runnin’ around town directin’ the fight against Bishop’s gang if they hit us. That’s gonna be up to you.”

“Colonel Appleton and Sarge Shaw are in charge of our defense.”

Madigan snorted. “Apple Jack and Sarge were good men in their day. Still are good men, I expect. But they’re not Smoke Jensen. There’s only one of those. They broke the mold when they made you, Smoke, and you know it.”

Smoke wasn’t going to waste time arguing about that. He had never thought of himself as anything special, just a fella who used his God-given skills to try to do the right thing.

“Whether you want the badge back or not, Jonas, I’m mighty glad to have you here,” he said. With a smile, he added, “When this is all over, I’ll put in a good word for you with Mrs. Dollinger, if you think it’ll help.”

“I don’t know about that,” Madigan said, “but I reckon it couldn’t hurt.”

Windy had the fire going in the stove. He stood there for a moment with his hands extended toward it, warming them, then turned and put his backside to it to warm that.

“Smoke, you were sayin’ outside that there’s something you wanted to talk to me about . . .”

“That’s right.”

Smoke took off his hat and placed it on the desk as he sat down in the chair behind it. Jonas Madigan went over to sit on the old divan along the front wall, to the left of the door. That was the corner where the stove was, so he could soak up some of the warmth from it.

Smoke clasped his hands on the desk, looked at Windy, and asked, “How long ago was it that you rode with Snake Bishop and his gang?”

Windy’s eyes widened in shock. He swallowed hard. Madigan stared at Smoke and said, “Have you gone loco? Windy’s no owlhoot!”

“Not now, maybe,” Smoke said. He nodded toward the old-timer. “But he’s not denying it, is he?”

“I didn’t . . . I never . . .” Windy forced out. “What in tarnation, Smoke?”

“You didn’t just recognize Bart Rome from his picture on a wanted poster,” Smoke said calmly. “I think you knew him, and Atkins, too, from your time with the gang. You just thought up that story about knowing them from their wanted posters when we came in here and found reward dodgers scattered all over the desk and floor.

“Don’t get me wrong, it could have happened that way,” Smoke went on, “but that was the first thing that made me wonder. Ever since then, though, you’ve been saying that Bishop would do this or Bishop wouldn’t do that, and then as soon as the words were out of your mouth, you’d realize you’d said too much and make sure to add that you were just going by what you’ve read or heard about him. But the way you were so quick to throw in those excuses just made me wonder more about you, Windy.”

Windy’s normally affable face was set in cold, hard lines now as he looked across the room at Smoke. “You’re forgettin’ that we’ve fought side by side, ain’t you?” he asked. “Would I have blazed away at Rome and Atkins like that if they were my pards?”

“I never said they were your pards. But remember, when we were shooting at them, we didn’t know who they were. All we knew was that they gunned down Ted Cardwell and were trying to get away, and that was enough to tell us they had to be stopped. We didn’t see their faces until later.”

Madigan said, “Now, just hold on a minute. Windy’s been here in Salt Lick for two years or more. I can’t believe Bishop would’ve sent him here that long ago—”

“Bishop didn’t send him here,” Smoke broke in. “I never thought that. It wouldn’t have made any sense. But you don’t know what he was doing before he showed up in Salt Lick, do you, Jonas? He’s told a lot of stories about the places he’s been and the things he’s done—”

“And ever’ word of ’em was true, too!” Windy said indignantly. “Well, ’most ever’ word, anyway.”

“And I believe you,” Smoke assured him. “But that still doesn’t mean you couldn’t have spent some time riding with Bishop’s gang.”

The two of them locked eyes for a long, tense moment, before Windy finally broke off his stare and turned his head away.

“Damn it,” he said in a low, ragged voice.

“Windy . . . it’s true?” Madigan asked. He looked and sounded like he didn’t want to believe it.

“It’s true.” Windy grimaced and shook his head. “I rode with that bunch for six months or so, a while back. Long enough to figure out what sorry, lowdown polecats they all were.” He raked his fingers through his whiskers and turned to face Madigan. “You got to understand, Jonas. Most o’ my life, I’ve been on the right side of the law, I swear it. But there’s been some hard times, too. I, uh, might’ve helped myself to a few cows that didn’t belong to me, now and then—”

“You mean you were a rustler,” Madigan cut in.

“In the eyes of the law, I reckon I was. But I only wide-looped stock from the big spreads that could afford to lose a few head. I never went after any little greasy-sack outfits. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Rustlin’ is rustlin’,” Madigan said coldly. “Did you rob banks, too?”

“I never!” Windy made a face again. “Well, there was that time up in the Dakota Territory—”

Madigan held up a hand to stop him. “Never mind. Are you wanted in Texas?”

“No, sir!” Windy pounded a gnarled fist into the palm of the other hand. “Now that I can swear to, up one way and down t’other. There ain’t no paper out on me in Texas. That’s why I figured I could settle down here in Salt Lick and walk the straight and narrow from now on, like I’ve always tried to.”

Smoke asked, “How did you get mixed up with Snake Bishop?”

“I was up in Kansas, and I got a mite pie-eyed one night in a saloon and there was a fight. I got throwed in the local hoosegow with a fella name of Hackberry. Boo Hackberry, if you can believe that. We was charged with bein’ drunk and disorderly, and I reckon the judge would’ve just give us a fine and let us go the next mornin’, but Boo got spooked and didn’t want to take a chance on that because, as it turns out, he did have paper on him in Kansas and he was wanted for murder on account of a shootin’ over in Wichita where he killed a fella. Boo swore to me it was self-defense, that the other hombre reached first, but the judge was the dead fella’s second cousin or somethin’ like that, so he got sentenced to hang. Boo did, I mean, not the judge. But he busted out before they got around to stretchin’ his neck, and he didn’t want anybody in that little town where we was locked up to figure out who he really was. So I agreed to help him escape and pretended to be really sick so the deputy would come in to see what was wrong, and then Boo got his hands on the fella and knocked him out and took his keys and gun, and I figured he’d just steal a horse and get outta there, but before he left he took the deputy’s gun and stove in his head with it. Killed him just outta sheer meanness, I reckon. And then he said I had to come with him, ’cause if I didn’t, they’d blame me for the deputy gettin’ killed, too, and would string me up.” Windy nodded slowly. “At the time, it made a heap of sense.”

“I can figure out what happened after that,” Madigan said with a scowl. “This Boo Hackberry was part of Snake Bishop’s gang, and when he went back to them, he took you with him. And by the time you figured out what you’d got yourself into, it was too late to do anything about it. Bishop wouldn’t just let you ride off. He’d think you were too big a danger to the gang to let you do that.”

Windy nodded. “That’s sure the way it was, all right, Jonas. I strung along with ’em for a while, just waitin’ for a chance to light a shuck without gettin’ myself killed.” He sighed. “I saw Snake and the others do some mighty bad things, things that haunt my dreams to this day, but I finally saw my opportunity and got away from that bad bunch. Came down here to Texas and swore to myself I’d never break the law again.” He held up a hand, as if he were swearing an oath in court. “And I never did, so help me God. I even found myself workin’ for the law, helpin’ you out. I never gave you cause to regret that, now did I?”

“No, you didn’t,” Madigan admitted. “You were a good jailer. I told Ted he ought to ask you to be deputy, but he said the town wouldn’t pay for it. I don’t know if he was right about that, or if he just wanted to prove he could handle everything himself. Damned shame he never really got much chance to try.”

Smoke said, “So it’s just coincidence that Bishop showed up in these parts, where you’d settled down?”

“Plumb coincidence,” Windy declared. “I give you my word on that, Smoke. I’ll swear it on as many Bibles as you want to stack up, too.”

Smoke shook his head, smiled faintly, and said, “That’s not necessary, Windy. I believe you. About all of it.”

Windy looked a little surprised. “You do?”

“Like you said, we’ve fought side by side. Any man who’s done that, I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. I just wanted to get the truth out in the open, so that now I can trust you.”

“You can. I’ve seen what Snake Bishop can do. I want to stop him as much as anybody in town!”

“I believe that, too,” Smoke said.

Before any of them could say anything else, the office door opened, letting in a gust of frigid wind and an angry Miriam Dollinger, who was red-faced either from the wind, her emotional state, or both.

“I knew I would find you here, Jonas!”

He stood up quickly and held his hands out toward her. “Now, Miriam—”

“You shouldn’t even be out of bed, let alone wandering around in this terrible weather. I swear, the temperature’s dropped twenty degrees in the past hour!” She tightened the shawl she wore over a short jacket. “I wasn’t sure where you’d gone. I thought I might find you lying frozen in an alley somewhere.”

“You just said you figured you’d find me here.”

Smoke and Windy both winced. Pointing out the inconsistencies in the statements of a woman who was already mad at you wasn’t the smartest thing an hombre could do.

“I think you should come on back to the house with me.”

“Can’t do it,” Madigan replied with a shake of his head. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Miriam. Reckon I should’ve left you a note tellin’ you what I was doing. But the town needs me, and just because I’ve been feelin’ a mite puny doesn’t mean I can let folks down.”

“A mite puny?” she repeated. “Jonas, you know good and well, that what ails you is worse than feeling a mite puny! You’re . . . you’re . . .”

She couldn’t get the words out. Instead, she lifted her hands and covered her face. She didn’t start crying, but it was obvious how upset she was.

Madigan moved over in front of her, gently took hold of her wrists, and eased her hands down.

“I reckon we both know what ails me,” he said quietly, “and how much time I’ve got left. But that doesn’t matter. Salt Lick is my town. The folks who live here are my friends. If there’s something I can do to help them, then I got to, Miriam. I just got to. I know you can see that.”

“I . . . I can see it . . . but I don’t have to like it!”

“No, I reckon you don’t,” Madigan said as he put his arms around her and drew her closer to him. The two of them stood there holding each other.

Windy looked over at Smoke and said, “You reckon we ought to go take a turn around town so we can see how things are shapin’ up?”

“I think that would be a good idea,” Smoke said. He still had his sheepskin coat on, so all he had to do was put on his hat and button up the coat. He and Windy left Madigan and Miriam in the office and stepped out into what had turned into a bone-chilling wind.

Maybe while they were gone, Jonas would have the sense to go ahead and ask Miriam that question he needed to ask her, Smoke thought.

It would be nice to have something settled, while the fate of Salt Lick still loomed so uncertainly.

And the only one who truly had the answer to that question was somewhere out there in the gathering storm.