There were mumbles of assent, but no one left and no one disputed his right of leadership. “Now, here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said, motioning the men to draw closer so they could hear his plans.
“First off, we’re gonna pair up. No one rides alone or gets out of sight of his partner. Secondly, we’re gonna ride with our weapons in our hands, loaded up six and six and the hammer cocked at all times. We’re not going to give Jensen a chance to take any more of us out without a fight.”
As the men nodded their agreement, he went on with his attack strategy. “Now that the storm has quit, he won’t be able to move around the mountain without leaving tracks, so we’ve got to be careful not to get crosswise with one another and spoil his trail. We’re gonna spread out, each pair staying in eye contact with another pair, and we’re gonna criss-cross those woods until we pick up his trail, and then we’re gonna dog him until we catch him.”
“And then we’re gonna blow his damn head off!” Billy Free shouted.
Cletus silenced him with a glare. “No, and then we’re going to try and capture him, if we can do it without losing any more men,” Cletus said. “Angus MacDougal is still paying for this trip and he wants Jensen alive, if at all possible. So, if we can, we’re going to try and take him back to the ranch in one piece.”
“What if he don’t agree to that proposition, Boss?” George Jones asked.
Cletus smiled grimly. “Then we’ll blow his ass to hell and back!”
When the men all laughed at this, Cletus said, “Now, let’s make a quick camp and get some hot coffee and some good grub into our bellies. It’s gonna get awful cold tonight, and I don’t want to give our position away by making any campfires. We’ll eat a hot meal now, and tonight we’ll try and have a cold camp.”
“And I want to add another hundred dollars to the man who gets the drop on Jensen so we can capture him,” Sarah said.
“What does a man get who puts lead in the son of a bitch?” Billy Free asked sarcastically.
Sarah stared at him. “I’ll let my daddy deal with that man,” she said, “but I don’t think he’ll appreciate what my daddy does.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Smoke had a problem. The storm had stopped and the day was clearing off, clouds disappearing as fast as they’d appeared days before. He knew that with no storm to cover his tracks, the deep snow would lead the gang that had taken him prisoner right to him. Also, his dark clothes were going to stand out against the white snow like a road sign. He was going to have to be very careful moving around to make sure he stayed under cover.
The good news was that he was a good mile and a half up the lower slope of the mountain he’d been heading for. Now the gang was going to have to come after him in his territory, where he was right at home and where they were interlopers.
As he rode, he checked his weapons. He had two pistols, each with six cartridges, and a rather old and beaten-up Winchester that looked as if its owner hadn’t cleaned it in years. He shook his head, knowing he wouldn’t be able to trust it for accuracy at much over a hundred yards.
He leaned forward, took the canteen off the saddle horn, and pulled its cork, taking a sniff of the contents. He wrinkled his nose. The man he’d killed had had his canteen filled with whiskey instead of water or coffee. That’s no good, he thought. His experience had taught him that men who drank whiskey when the weather was below freezing didn’t last too long. Instead of warming a body up, as many flatlanders thought, whiskey actually lowered the body’s resistance to freezing temperatures.
He guided the horse into the middle of a small copse of trees, so he’d be out of sight from the slopes below, and dismounted. He opened the saddlebags to see what else he’d inherited with the dead man’s horse.
Good news at last. The man had a large chunk of bacon wrapped in waxed paper in a sack along with several biscuits and a couple of pieces of jerky. There was also a small can of Arbuckle’s coffee, but no pot or skillet to use to cook either the bacon or the coffee in.
No matter, he thought. A good mountain man can always improvise.
In the other saddlebag was an old monocular scope, the kind you pulled out and looked through with one eye. It wasn’t as good as a decent pair of binoculars, but it would do. Nestled in the bag was a box of .44 cartridges for the rifle and for the pistols as well. That was an additional fifty rounds he had to add to what was already in the weapons.
In addition to the shells, there was a folded-up yellow rain cape and a small woven blanket and a box of lucifers. Along with the waterproof ground blanket folded behind the saddle, he would at least have some protection against the cold when night fell.
He nodded, grinning. All in all, not too bad, he thought. He had managed to escape and to acquire not only transportation, but also weapons and food and some shelter against the elements. He was ready now to go to war.
He took the telescope and moved to the edge of the copse of trees. He panned the scope all around the downslope area that he could see. There was no sign of any pursuit just yet, which meant he probably had enough time to fix a fire and to eat and make some coffee.
He took the reins of the horse and led it around and through the trees until he found some boulders sitting so there was a small protected space out of the chilly wind on the mountainside.
Using his boot, he scraped the snow down to where the horse could forage enough grass to fill its belly. Unfortunately, the man hadn’t carried any grain for his mount, but a few days on grass wouldn’t hurt the horse.
He took the saddle and blanket off, and used the reins to fashion a makeshift hobble for the animal, since he didn’t know if he could trust it to remain nearby if only ground-reined.
Once his horse was taken care of, he gathered up an armful of dead tree limbs and deadfall from around the boulders. He made a small pile between the boulders, with the smaller sticks on the bottom and the larger ones on top.
He opened the saddlebags and took out the woven blanket. Since the grass around was all covered with snow, it couldn’t be used to start the fire. It was too wet. So, he unraveled an inch or so of the blanket, wadded up the yarn, and stuck it under the kindling. When he lit it with a lucifer, it was only moments before he had a small fire going.
He’d picked up only long-dead wood, so there was very little smoke, though there was enough to spot if the men below were looking, and he knew he’d have to make this nooning fast.
He took out the bacon, sliced it with the skinning knife he’d taken from the man’s boot, and laid the strips out on a wide, flat rock. This he laid gently in the edge of the fire.
While the bacon was cooking, he poured the contents of the can of Arbuckle’s coffee into the sack the bacon and jerky and biscuits had been in, and then he filled the empty can with snow. He placed it near the fire so the snow would melt.
As the bacon cooked and the water began to boil, Smoke dumped a handful of coffee grounds into the water in the can. Using the skinning knife, he cut one of the biscuits open, and then speared the bacon and put it between the halves of the biscuit and began to eat.
The biscuit was very hard, but it softened a bit as the grease from the bacon soaked into it, and soon he could chew it without worrying about breaking a tooth off.
When the coffee was boiling, he wrapped the blanket around his hands and pulled the can away from the fire. He set it down and waited for it to cool down enough so he could drink it.
“All the comforts of home,” he mumbled to himself, happy to be free at last.
Thirty minutes later, he kicked snow into the fire to put it out and got back in the saddle. He’d dumped the whiskey out of the canteen after taking a sip or two, and replaced it with hot coffee. He’d also saved some of the biscuit and bacon sandwiches for an evening meal, since he doubted he’d be able to make a fire after darkness came.