Trail of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone Page B

smoking at his heels.
    Smoke looked toward the corral. Horse was watching him, his ears perked up.
    Smoke walked to the huge open doors and paused. He knew he would be blind for a few seconds upon entering the darkened stable. Out of habit, he rechecked the loads in the express gun and took a deep breath.
    He slipped the thongs back on the hammers of his Colts and jumped inside the stable, rolling to his right, into an open stall.
    Gunfire blasted the semi-darkness where Smoke had first hit the floor.
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    â€œRiders comin,’ Miss Sally!” Bob called from the barn loft.
    â€œHow far off, Bob?” She called from the house.
    â€œBout a mile, ma’am. I can’t make out no brand yet.”
    â€œIf they’re Circle TF, Bob,” she called, “we’ll blow them out of the saddle.”
    â€œYes, ma’am !”
    Woman and boy waited, gripping their rifles.
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    Pearlie found Lefty’s horse and gently approached the still-spooked animal. The horse shied away. Pearlie sat down on a large rock and waited, knowing that the horse would eventually come to him, desiring human company. In less than five minutes, while Pearlie hummed a low tune, the animal came to him and shoved at the puncher with its nose. Pearlie petted the animal, got the reins, and swung into the saddle. Lefty’s rifle was in the boot and Pearlie checked it. Full. Pearlie pointed the animal’s nose toward the ranch.
    â€œLet’s go boy,” Pearlie said, just as the sounds of gunfire reached him. “I wanna get in a shot or two myself.”
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    Sally’s opening shot knocked a TF rider out of the saddle. Bob squeezed off a round, the slug hitting a TF gunhawk in the center of his chest. The puncher was dead before he hit the ground. With only three gunslicks left out of the original half a dozen, those three spun their horses and lit a shuck out of that area.
    They ran right into Pearlie, coming at them at full gallop. With the reins in his teeth, his right hand full of Colt and his left hand full of Henry rifle, Pearlie emptied two saddles. The last TF rider left alive hunched low in the saddle and made it over a rise and out of range. He then headed for the ranch. They’d been told they were going up against Pearlie and one little lady. But it seemed that Pearlie was as hard to kill as a grizzly and that that little lady had turned into a bobcat.
    Meanwhile, Pearlie reined up in a cloud of dust and jumped out of the saddle. “You folks all right?” he yelled.
    â€œMy God, Pearlie!” Sally rushed out of the house. “What happened to you?”
    â€œThey roped and drug me,” Pearlie said. “Then shot me. But they made a bad mistake, ma’am.”
    She looked at him.
    â€œThey left me alive,” Pearlie said, his words flint hard.
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    Smoke darted into the darkness of the first stall just as the lead tore smoking holes where he’d first hit. Rolling to one side, Smoke lifted the sawed-off express gun and eared back both hammers and waited.
    â€œGot the punk!” someone hissed.
    â€œMaybe,” a calmer voice spoke from just above Smoke.
    Smoke lifted the sawed-off and pulled both triggers. The express gun roared and bucked, and ball-bearing loads tearing a great hole in the loft floor. The “maybe” man was flung out of the loft, both loads catching him directly in the crotch, almost tearing him in half. He lay on the stable floor, squalling as his blood stained the horse-shit-littered boards.
    Smoke rolled to the wall of the stall, reloaded the express gun, and jumped over the stall divider, into the next stall. His ears were still ringing from the tremendous booming of the sawed-off.
    Quietly, he removed his spurs and laid them to one side.
    He heard someone cursing, then someone else said, “Jensen shot him where he lived. That ain’t right.”
    The mangled man had ceased his howling, dying on the stable floor.
    Smoke