Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page B

sleeve garters to hold up the long sleeves of his light blue shirt with the white vertical pinstripes. Three cigars protruded from the upper pocket of his vest. A green eyeshade obscured his face. He looked up as Smoke approached the counter.
    “Afternoon, Mr. Jensen. What can I do for you?”
    “I’d like to send a telegraph message.”
    Rising from his chair, the telegrapher came to the counter. “Do you have it written out?”
    “No. I’ll do that now.”
    An octagonal-faced Regulator clock ticked out the seconds while Smoke wrote his query on the yellow form. It was clear, concise, and direct. He hoped the answer would be the same, and come quickly. When he finished, he handed the missive over to the telegraph operator, who glanced at it and raised an eyebrow.
    “You—ah—expecting company, Mr. Jensen?”
    He remembered when the famous Smoke Jensen and Monte Carson had stood back to back and battled a nest of outlaws in the streets of Big Rock. They had cut them down mercilessly and driven the remainder out of town. The village had been right tame since then.
    “I don’t think so. And, I’m going to do my best to see nothing unusual happens.”
    Relief flooded the face of the railroad employee. He counted the number of words. “That’ll be two and a quarter. I’ll get this out right away. If a reply comes in soon, where can I reach you?”
    “I’ll be over at Monte’s office.” Smoke paid him and left.
    Back astride Thunder, Smoke ambled along the main street to the low, stone building next to the town hall. He looped the reins over the tie-rail and gained the stoop. Inside the stout, thick door, Monte Carson sat at his desk, a report form from the night man in one hand, a steaming cup of coffee in the other. He glanced up as Smoke entered.
    “Didn’t take you long to decide to look into that a little more, did it?”
    “No, Monte. It just sat in my head and gnawed until I had to find out all I could.”
    “Pour yerself some java. Herkimer just got in some fresh beans over at the Mercantile.” Then he noticed the disarray of Smoke’s shirt. “What did you get into?”
    Smoke snorted and tugged at his shirttail. While he poured, he told Monte about the stranger and his mules. Monte listened, nodded at the proper spots, and then rendered his judgment. “It’s a wonder the feller didn’t get himself a sudden case of the deads.”
    “If he had pulled a gun, instead of that knife, he would have.”
    “That’s cold, Smoke, downright cold,” Monte said with a twinkle in his eyes.
    They drank coffee and talked about the latest goings on in Big Rock for a quarter past an hour. Monte was in mid-sentence, telling Smoke about how Bluenosed Bertha, one of the bar girls at the Follies Saloon, had gotten her finger caught in a mousetrap, when the door swung outward.
    “What’s this?” the lawman demanded.
    In the opening stood a boy of about eleven or twelve. Barefoot, he had a thick thatch of carroty hair above a balloon face of rusty-orange freckles. His unfastened trouser legs ended at mid-calf, which gave him the look of an urchin. “For Mr. Jensen, Sheriff. We got an answer back from the folks out in Arizona Territory.”
    Smoke took the folded, yellow form and handed the boy a dime. The lad’s eyes went wide. “Oh, boy! A whole dime. Thank you, Mr Jensen.”
    He scampered off down Central Street, no doubt to the general mercantile and those inviting glass jars of horehound drops and rock candy. Smoke opened the message and read from it. His eyebrows rose and he whistled softly at the conclusion. He gestured toward Monte Carson with the sheet of paper.
    “They’ve learned a bit more since that first telegram. The warden verified that they killed two guards and seriously injured another in their escape. The search has been fruitless in Mexico. But a hermit, by the name of Hiram Wells, who lived up-river from the prison was found murdered and his horses missing.”
    “That fits with what the