Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) by William W. Johnstone Page A

could be we should ride around the place like Injuns and look for a weak spot.”
    “Good thinking,” Spectre approved. “See to it. I’ll take five of the best sharpshooters and keep them busy over here.”
    Jaeger liked that. “Now you’re talkin’, Mr. Spectre.”
    He had it set up in two minutes. While Spectre and his two partners and the marksmen provided covering fire, Gus started off with the remaining twenty-three gunmen. Again the cannon opened up. This time, tiny plumes of dust spurted upward from the hard ground in the midst of the riders who fired at the walls as they angled across the defended portion of the wall. Grapeshot.
    Three horses went down shrieking, their riders and two other men wounded by the one inch balls. One of the outlaws sat slumped in his saddle and tried to put his mangled intestines back inside his body while he groaned horribly. While the attackers recovered from this new turn of events, the gate swung closed. Shouts came from inside and the crack of a whip. Slowly the black muzzle of the cannon appeared as it rolled up an incline and leveled on a rammed earth platform, the barrel protruding over the spiked tops of the barricade.
    In frustration, two of the sharpshooters fired on it. Their bullets rang on the cast barrel and flattened, to moan off harmlessly skyward. With only poor targets to choose from, the snipers had little effect. Victor Spectre watched the gang disappear out of sight around a corner of the stockade.
    At once a fusillade erupted as more rifles joined the defense. “Who are they?” Spectre asked rhetorically.
    Again the cannon spoke. The grapeshot crashed into the earth less than ten yards from where they had positioned themselves. It made Spectre’s skin crawl. He made a quick, disappointing estimate of their chances. He rose in his stirrups and called to the marksmen.
    “This will never do. We’re too far outnumbered. Ride clear of that place and then join the others. We’re breaking this off.” The cannon barked again to give his words emphasis.
    When the withdrawal began, the gate opened and armed, mounted men swarmed out. Considering himself fortunate to have escaped with such light casualties, Victor Spectre increased the gait to a gallop and streamed after his gang. The Mormons obliged him by doing the same.
    It became a horse race, rather than an assault. One that they barely managed to win. Victor Spectre was pleased to discover that Gus Jaeger had correctly anticipated him and led the gang away to the north. He and his partners streamed along in their wake. The crack shots along with them turned to fire at the angry Mormons.
    Gradually the distance closed between the leaders and the outlaws. When Spectre got within hailing distance, he shouted gustily, “Keep going. Take that notch ahead. I don’t think they will follow us beyond that point.”
    “You had better be right,” Gus Jaeger said through gritted teeth, softly enough not to be heard.
     
     
    A vast sea of tall, lush grass extended to the north, east, and west for as far as the eye could see from the last ridge that overlooked the Great Divide Basin. Smoke Jensen made camp in a small clearing in the midst of a large stand of lodgepole pine. To his northwest lay the small town of Wamsutter, Wyoming Territory. After hobbling Thunder and Debbie, he set about gathering windfall for a cook fire.
    Rabbits bounded away at his footsteps and a quail called his mate. A rookery of crows turned a gnarled old oak black with their bodies and the air blue with their grating complaints. The air smelled sweet and clean. To his satisfaction, Smoke did not detect a hint of wood smoke. No one else shared this empty place with him. He could do with it that way for quite a while.
    Smoke Jensen had always been a loner. At fourteen or so, Smoke Jensen had, in mountain man parlance, been to the mountain and seen the elephant.
    His early life had been hard. A hardscrabble farm that grew more rocks than crops,