Code of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

he’s going to attack this town.”
    â€œOh? When did you change your mind?”
    â€œDuring the course of the day.”
    â€œAnd what do you think he’s going to do?”
    â€œI have an idea. But it’s just a thought. I’ll let you know when I have it all worked out. And I will let you in on it, Mills. You have my word.”
    â€œFair enough.”
    â€œAre some of you going to be in town tomorrow?”
    â€œYes. We’re waiting on word from the home office. We sent word where we’d be from that little settlement on the Rio Grande. The stage runs in a couple of days.”
    â€œI appreciate you staying close. I’ll pull out early in the morning to do some snooping. Be back late tomorrow night.”
    Smoke could tell the man had a dozen questions he would like to ask. But he held them in check. “I’ll see you then.”
    * * *
    Smoke pulled out several hours before dawn, pointing Buck’s nose toward the east, staying on the south side of the Alamosa River. Luttie’s Seven Slash Ranch lay about twenty miles south of the town.
    Luttie was up to something besides ranching. Those hands of his were more than cowboys; Smoke had a hunch they were drawing fighting wages. If that was true, who were they fighting, and why?
    At the first coloring of dawn, Smoke was on a hill overlooking Luttie’s ranchhouse. He studied the men as they exited the bunkhouse heading for chow in a building next to it. He counted fifteen men. Say three or four were not in yet from nightherding; that was a hell of a lot of cowboys for a spread this size.
    So what was Luttie up to?
    Smoke stayed on the ridges as long as he dared, looking things over through field glasses. For a working ranch, there didn’t seem to be much going on. And he found that odd.
    Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen any cattle on his way in. What he had seen were a lot of signs proclaiming this area to be “posted” and “no trespassing allowed.” Odd. Too many odd things cropping up about the Seven Slash Ranch.
    It was time to move on; his position on the ridge was just too vulnerable. He tightened the cinch and swung into the saddle. He hadn’t learned much, but he had learned that something very odd was going on at the Seven Slash Ranch. And Smoke didn’t think it had a damn thing to do with cattle.
    * * *
    â€œSo what is going on?” Mills asked.
    The men were sitting on the boardwalk in front of the saloon, enjoying the night air. Mills was contentedly puffing on his pipe, and Smoke had rolled a cigarette.
    â€œI don’t know. Luttie could say he stripped his range during roundup, and a range detective would probably accept that. But he hasn’t run any cattle in several years on the ground that I covered today. Any cattleman could see that. So why does he have the big crew, all of them fighting men?” Smoke smiled. “Maybe I know.”
    â€œShare it with me?”
    â€œIt’s just a guess.”
    â€œA lot of good police work starts right there.”
    â€œIt might be that he’s hit a silver strike and wants it all for himself, mining it out in secret. But a better guess is that he’s running a front for stolen goods.”
    â€œI like the second one. But I have some questions about that theory. Why? is one. He’s a rancher who has done very well, from all indications. He is a reasonably monied man. I suppose we could chalk it up to greed; however, I think, assuming you’re correct, there must be other reasons.”
    â€œWhy, after all the years of outlawing on the west coast, would Lee Slater put together a gang and come to Colorado?” Smoke questioned. “The west coast is where all his contacts and hiding places would be.”
    â€œWhere are you going with this, Smoke?”
    â€œI don’t know. I’m just trying to put all the pieces together. I may be completely off-base and accusing an innocent man