Return of the Mountain Man Read Free Page B

natural causes?”
    â€œNot likely. You gonna talk all day or buy a drink of whiskey?”
    The buckskin-dressed old man tossed some change on the wide rough board that passed for a counter. “That buy a jug?”
    â€œAnd then some. No, sir. That Big Jack fancied hisself a gunhand, I guess.” He placed a dirty cup and a clay jug of rotgut on the counter. “But he done run up on a ringtailed-tooter this day. Feller by the name of Buck West. You heard of him?”
    â€œSeems I have, somewheres. Bounty hunter, I think. But he’s a bad man to mess with.”
    â€œTell me! Why, he drew so fast a feller couldn’t even see the blur! Big Jack’s hand could just touch the butt of his .36 when the lead hit him in the center of the chest. Dead ’fore he hit the ground.”
    The old man smiled. “That fast, hey?”
    â€œLord have mercy, yes!” He eyeballed the old man. “Ain’t I seen you afore? You a mountain man, ain’t you? Ain’t so many of you old boys left.”
    â€œNot me, podner. I’m retared from the east. Come out here to pass my golden years amid the peace and tranquility of the High Lonesome.”
    The bartender, no spring chicken himself, narrowed his eyes and said, “And you jist as full of shit now as you was forty year ago, you old goat!”
    The old man laughed. “Wal, you jist keep that information inside that head of yourn and off your tongue. You do that and I won’t tell nobody I know where Rowdy Jake Kelly was retared to. You still got money on your head, Rowdy.”
    â€œMan, I heard you got kilt! Shot all to hell and gone over to Needle Mountains.”
    â€œPart of it’s true. I got all dressed up in my finest buckskins, rode an old nag up into the hills, and laid me down to die. Lordy, but I was hurtin’ some. Longer I laid there the madder I got. I finally got up, said to hell with this, and rode off. Found me one of my Injun kids—or grandkids, I ain’t real sure which—and she took care of me. You keep hush about this, now, you hear?”
    â€œI never saw you afore this day,” Rowdy Jake Kelly said.
    The old man nodded, picked up his jug of whiskey, and rode off.
    Â 
    Buck had left the trading post and followed the Big Lost River north. He pushed his horses, rested them, then pushed them hard again, putting as many miles as possible between himself and the trading post. He had a hunch the men back at the trading post would be hell-bent for Bury. They were bounty hunters; he knew from the look. He smiled grimly at what they might think if they knew they had been within touching distance of the man called Smoke.
    Buck found himself a hidden vantage point where he could watch the trail, and settled in for the evening. He built a hand-sized fire and fixed bacon and beans and coffee. Using tinderdry wood, the fire was virtually smokeless. He kept his coffee warm over the coals.
    Just at dusk, he heard the sounds of riders. Three riders. He watched as they passed his hiding place at a slow canter, heading north, toward the trading post at Mackay. He watched and listened until the sounds of steel-shod hooves faded into the settling dusk. Using his saddle for a pillow, Buck went to sleep.
    Just as the first rays of dawn streaked the horizon, Buck was fording the Big Lost, heading for the eastern banks and the Lost River Range. He did not want to travel those flats that stretched for miles before reaching Challis, preferring to remain in the timber.
    He wanted to take his time getting to Bury for two reasons: One, he wanted the story of the shoot-out at the trading post to reach the right ears—namely, Potter, Stratton, and Richards. Men like that could always use another gun, and Buck intended to be that other gun. Two, he still had that nagging sensation of being followed. And it annoyed him. He knew, felt, someone was back there. He just didn’t know who.
    The eighty-mile ride