Free Cunning of the Mountain Man by Unknown Author Page A

oiled interiors of the holsters were free.
    York eased back the hammer on his Henry, and Smoke jacked back the hammers on the express gun.
    They stepped inside the noisy and beer-stinking saloon. The piano player noticed them first. He stopped playing and singing and stared at them, his face chalk-white. Then he scrambled under the lip of the piano.
    “Well, well!” an outlaw said, laughing. “Would you boys just take a look at Shirley. [Smoke had been using the outrageous moniker of Shirley DeBeers, a sissyfied portrait painter, for his penetration of the outlaw stronghold.] He’s done shaven offen his beard and taken to packin ’ iron. Boy, you bes’ git shut of them guns, fore you hurt yourself!’
    Gridley stood up from a table where he d been drinking and playing poker—and losing. “Or I decide to take ’em off you and shove ’em up your butt, lead and all, pretty-boy. Matter of fact, I think I’ll jist do that, right now.”
    “The name isn’t pretty-boy, Gridley,” Smoke informed him.
    “Oh, yeah? Well, may haps you right. I’ll jist call you shit! How about that?”
    “Why don’t you call him by his real name? ” York said, a smile on his lips.
    “And what might that be, punk?” Gridley sneered the question. “Alice?”
    “First off” York said, “I’ll tell you I’m an Arizona Ranger. Note the badges we’re wearing? And his name, you blow-holes, is Smoke Jensen! ”
    The name dropped like a bomb. The outlaws in the room sat stunned, their eyes finally observing the gold badges on the chests of the men.
    Smoke and York both knew one thing for an ironclad fact: The men in the room might all be scoundrels and thieves and murderers, and some might be bullies and cowards, but when it came down to it, they were going to fight.
    "Then draw, you son of a bitch!” Gridley hollered, his hands dropping to his guns.
    Smoke pulled the trigger on the express gun. From a distance of no more than twenty feet, the buckshot almost tore the outlaw in two.
    York leveled the Henry and dusted an outlaw from side to side. Dropping to one knee, he levered the empty out and a fresh round in, and shot a fat punk in the belly.
    Shifting the sawed-off shotgun, Smoke blew the head off another outlaw. The force of the buckshot lifted the headless outlaw out of one boot and flung him to the sawdust-covered floor.
    York and his Henry had put half a dozen outlaws on the floor, dead, dying, or badly hurt.
    The huge saloon was filled with gunsmoke, the crying and moaning of the wounded, and the stink of relaxed bladders from the dead. Dark gray smoke from the black powder cartridges stung the eyes and obscured the vision of all in the room . . .
    Oh, that had been a high old time all right, Smoke reflected. But it hadn’t ended there. Smoke had gone on back East to reclaim his beloved wife, Sally, who was busy being delivered of twins in the home of her parents in Keene, New Hampshire. Jeff York and Louis Longmont had accompanied him. And a good thing, too. Rex Davidson and his demented followers had carried the fight to Smoke. And it finally ended in the streets of Keene, with Rex Davidson’s guts spilled on the ground.
    The twins, Louis Arthur and Denise Nichole, were near to full grown now. They lived and studied in Europe. But that was another story, Smoke reminded himself as he gazed upon a smoky smudge on the horizon, far out on a wide mountain vale, vast enough to be called a plain.

    Smoke Jensen rode into Horse Springs quietly. He attracted little attention from the locals, mostly simple farmers of Mexican origin. Ollas de los Caballos , the place had been called before the white man came. Near the center of town was a rock basin, fed by cold, crystal-clear, deep mountain springs. This natural formation provided drinking water for everyone in town. Fortunately for the farmers, a wide, shallow stream also meandered through the valley and allowed for irrigation of crops of corn, beans, squash, chili peppers, and