Battle of the Mountain Man

The Mexican nodded, glancing sideways to the gun Smoke held to his head. “Si, senor. I will tell Jessie.”

Smoke wasn’t quite satisfied yet. “I killed three of your partners just now, an’ put a litde gash across your ribs ’cause you were lucky. Don’t count on bein’ lucky the next time. Tell Jessie Evans what I said.”

“Si, senor. I swear I will tell him.”

“I imagine Evans figures he’s pretty tough, pretty good with a gun. He can go on believin’ that if he wants, only be sure an’ tell him he’s never crossed paths with Smoke Jensen before. If he does it again, I’ll fill him so goddamn full of bullet holes he won’t have to take his pecker out to piss, ’cause he’s gonna be leakin’ all the time.”

“I will tell him you are one bad hombre, senor. I have seen this… for myself.”

Smoke lowered his Colt, lifted the Mexican’s pistol out of his gunbelt, and took his rifle before he stood up cautiously to check his surroundings. Then he spoke to the Mexican again in a voice like ice. “I don’t really figure it’ll do any good to give Jessie that warning, but I’m doin’ it anyway, just in case he’s got more sense than most. Men who think they’re tough usually have to be proven wrong. You can tell him Smoke Jensen is just the man who can get that job done. If it’s a fight he wants, I’m the man he’s lookin’ for.”

John Chisum lowered his pistol when he saw Smoke riding down to the cattle pasture. He waited until Smoke rode up to him to speak. Both Chisum cowboys guarding the herd had ridden up to the north end of the pasture with guns drawn.

“I heard all the shooting,” Chisum said. “You must have scared them off. I stayed put, not knowing whether I’d be in your line of fire. When these boys rode up, we were about to head up this slope, when all of a sudden, the shooting ended.”

“You’ll find three dead Mexicans up there in those trees,” Smoke said. “I reckon somebody oughta bury ’em an’ notify their next of kin. I wounded another bushwacker and we had a little talk before I let him go. He told me he works for a man by the name of Jessie Evans…”

“He’s the ramrod of Jimmy Dolan’s gang of rustlers,” Chisum said bitterly, “only I can’t prove a thing and nobody in official circles will look into it. Evans is a paid killer from down in Texas some place.” Chisum stared at Smoke a moment. “You said you killed three of them all by your lonesome?”

Smoke began reloading his pair of Colts. “Mexican pistoleros, by the look of ’em, I’ve tangled with their kind before.”

“You must be one hell of a gunman yourself, Mr. Jensen. I’d like to offer you a job, if you’re interested.”

“My guns ain’t for hire,” he replied, closing the loading gate on an ivory-handled .44 before he hoistered it. “But I did send Jessie Evans a little message, by way of his wounded sidekick. I told him if one more bullet came at me or my men, or if I lost a single cow on my way back to Colorado, I’d come lookin’ for him, and that I’d kill him.”

“Evans won’t scare easy,” Chisum declared.

Smoke gave the crossbred steers another look as he said, “I wasn’t meanin’ to scare him, Mr. Chisum. I meant every goddamn word. Whoever this Jessie Evans is, he’ll be a dead son of a bitch if he tests me on it. Now, if you’re ready, let’s take a look at those young longhorn cows you’re offering for sale.”Twenty

Billy Barlow glanced over his shoulder as his horse ran up a steep incline. Another horseman was gaining ground on him. Was it the broad-shouldered crazy man with two pistols, he wondered. He relaxed some when he recognized Pedro Lopez racing away from the scene of the shooting, the same as Billy had when it became clear the man who rode with Chisum had no fear, no sense, like a locoed bronc, the way he’d charged up that mountain with both guns blazing.

Billy slowed his horse to a walk at the top of the climb to scan the trail behind Pedro. The lunatic with two guns was not following them. He waited for Pedro to catch up.

Pedro’s horse was floundering under the punishment of spurs when Pedro rode up beside Billy.

“He ain’t followin’ you?” Billy asked, looking again at their backtrail, finding it empty.

“No,” Pedro gasped, looking back himself. “El hombre loco is too busy killing Jorge and Carlos and Raul. This son of a bitch be muy loco, to come at us like that.”

“He ain’t just loco,” Billy said. “He can goddamn sure shoot.”

“Verdad, it is the truth,” Pedro wheezed. “He come straight at us like un idiota. I never see a man so foolish as him before today.”

“It’s like he wasn’t afraid of our guns at all.”

Pedro mopped his brow with a bandanna, glancing back again to look for dust or any sign of the stranger. “I see Roy Cooper ride off very fast when this idiota come up the hill. He ride to the east. I don’t understand. Cooper is loco himself, but he is also mean with a gun. But he don’t stay when this stranger come shooting. He run away, like he know this hombre don’t be right in his head.”

“I didn’t see which way Cooper went,” Billy said. “I was too busy lookin’ out for my own ass. That guy, whoever he is, can’t have a lick of sense to charge us like that all by himself with just two pistols. He’s either dumb as a rock, or nearly the meanest bastard who ever stood in a pair of boots.”

“Maybeso Cooper go back to get him when he think we all go away,” Pedro suggested.

“I ain’t so damn sure,” Billy replied. “Maybe Mr. Roy Cooper ain’t as tough as we think he is. He lit out of there like his tailfeathers was afire.”

Pedro shrugged. “Who can say? I see Cooper shoot those cowboys in the night like he enjoy it.”

“Maybe he don’t enjoy it so much when somebody’s shootin’ back at him.”

“Senor Jessie be plenty mad when he hear this,” Pedro said, as though he was speaking to himself.

“Then let him face this crazy son of a bitch. We’ll tell him he’d better bring Pickett an’ every spare gun he’s got if he aims to kill that big bastard. I got a feelin’ this guy ain’t gonna be easy to kill.”

“Is the truth,” Pedro muttered, looking over his shoulder yet another time. “I don’t see Victor. Maybeso this hombre kill him too.”

“You’re right about one thing,” Billy added as he urged his horse to a lope. “Jessie sure as hell ain’t gonna like this when we give him the news.”

Roy Cooper lay on his belly in tall grass near the mouth of the valley, putting his rifle sights on the square-shouldered cowboy who came at them earlier. He was riding beside Chisum and his ranch hands like a man who didn’t have a care in the world. Roy knew the others were either dead or they’d deserted him, which was typical of Mexican gunmen—short on courage when things got tight.

The range for his Winchester .44 was still too great to be sure of the shot, and thus Roy waited, holding his rifle against his shoulder, doing his best to keep the barrel from catching sunlight that might warn the riders below of his presence. He was sure he could take down the newcomer when the distance was right.

The stranger’s head turned toward the grassy hilltop where Roy lay, but only for a moment. “He didn’t see me,” Roy whispered. Then the stranger did an odd thing… He got down off his horse and walked into a line of trees while the others halted to wait for him.

“He needed to piss,” Roy told himself. “He’s too bashful to pull his pecker out while everybody’s watchin’. Maybe I can get him when he walks out of them pines…”

Time seemed frozen, although it did seem to be taking the stranger a hell of a long time to let his water down. Roy was motionless, his rifle aimed for the spot where the stranger went into the trees, judging his chances of a quick kill with just one slug.

Minutes passed. “Maybe he’s takin’ a shit,” Roy wondered softly. The others, including Chisum, sat their horses in clear view as though nothing was wrong, never once looking up at Roy’s hiding place.

A sound behind him, something brushing against the grasses, made him turn. Then a towering figure blocked out the sun. The glint of a huge knife blade flashed.

“Son of a…”

A blinding pain entered Roy’s rib cage, along with a noise like snapping willow limbs. Cartilage was torn from his sternum by a single slash of a razor-sharp knifepoint. He heard himself scream, staring into a face twisted with hatred above him, and just as quickly, the scream died in his throat when a second swipe of the blade went across his windpipe, slicing through cords of muscle, ligaments, and skin.

“Die slow, you backshootin’ bastard,” a grating voice said quietly.

Roy ’s backbone arched, and he struggled to bring his gun up at the same time until a heavy boot landed on his wrist, knocking the rifle from his hand.

“You’ve got no balls, pilgrim. You’re just another yellow son of a bitch who can’t face the man he aims to kill. I’ve known half a hundred like you. I don’t know your name, but it don’t matter who you are. What you are is dead, only not yet, not till the ants feed on you for a spell, until your blood runs all over this hill.”

Pain shot through Roy’s body from head to toe and for a moment he was sure he would lose consciousness. He made a second attempt to sit up, choking on his own blood, strangling when it entered his windpipe.

“Wish you could live long enough to tell this Jessie Evans he’s messin’ with the wrong man. But you won’t. You’ll be dead in half an hour, maybe less.”

Roy saw winking stars before his eyes, but he could still see the twisted face looming over him.

“Bleedin’ to death is a helluva slow way to die, mister. I hope it don’t hurt too awful bad. But if it does, think about all the cows you stole that wasn’t yours, or the men you killed who never had a chance. Think about those things while you’re dyin’. You ain’t got long.”

Roy fell back on the grass, unable to breathe at all now.

“Adios, cowboy, whoever you are,” the same voice said as Roy slipped slowly into a black void.

Jessie watched two men ride in at a hard gallop with a vague sense of apprehension. He recognized Barlow and Lopez by their horses. “Somethin’s wrong,” he told Pickett.

Pickett came up from his bull hide chair, squinting in the sun’s glare, cradling a shotgun in the crook of his arm. “It’s that Barlow boy an’ Pedro Lopez. They’s after their horses with a spur mighty hard.”

“Wonder where Roy is?” Jessie asked. “It ain’t like Roy to let ’em split up… ’less there’s been trouble.”

Billy and Pedro galloped their winded mounts up to the cabin, and Barlow was the first to speak.

“We got real problems,” Barlow said, dropping to the ground in more of a hurry than Jessie felt was warranted. “This stranger showed up at Chisum’s, We had it all laid out to kill him, only he come at us like a nest of hornets. He rode right up the ridge where we was hidin’ an’ started shootin’ like a bullet was never gonna hit him. Roy Cooper took off in the other direction soon as it happened.”

“Is true, Serior Jessie,” Pedro agreed, climbing down from his lathered horse. “This stranger, he don’t be afraid of nothing. He ride his horse toward us while we be shooting, and he don’t act afraid.”

Jessie stood up. “Where the hell is Roy?” he asked with a note of impatience. Roy Cooper had never run away from any man that Jessie knew of.

“He run away, just like Billy say,” Pedro said. “He ride off like he be scared of this hombre.”

“Nonsense. Roy ain’t afraid of nobody.”

Billy shrugged. “Can’t explain what he did no other way, boss. He jumped on his horse an’ rode east as fast as that brown gelding could travel.”

“What happened to the others?” Jessie demanded.

“Maybeso all are dead,” Pedro answered. “This big hombre, he come up shooting with two pistolas, one in each hand. He no be afraid of our guns.”

Jessie’s attention was distracted by another rider coming in at Bosque Redondo, a man slumped over his saddle like he was in a great deal of pain.

“Who’s that?” Jessie asked.

Pedro looked over his shoulder. “It is Victor Bustamante, and there is blood on his shirt.”

“Ain’t nobody gonna convince me Roy Cooper took off when it was time for a killin’,” Jessie stated. “See what the hell that Mexican has to say…”

Victor Bustamante rode his grullo gelding up to the cabin with obvious pain twisting his face. He stopped his horse in front of the porch. Blood was leaking from a wound across his right side, covering his right pants leg.

“I have… this message for you… Serior Jessie,” he said in clipped, breathless words.

“What kind of goddamn message?” Jessie wanted to know, as he grew impatient with this latest bit of news.

“This hombre… he call himself Smoke Jensen. He say he gone kill you… He say he come looking for you if we don’t stop shoot at him.”

Jessie’s sun-etched face crinkled. “Who the hell is Smoke Jensen? I never heard of him.”

“He be one malo hombre, ”Victor replied, still holding his side, wincing. “He kill Raul and Jorge real quick. Then he kill Carlos and he shoot this hole in me.”

Jessie stiffened. “The son of a bitch said he was gonna kill me?” he asked in a voice that boomed all over the clearing where the cow camp was hidden. “You mean that arrogant son of a bitch had the nerve to say that?”

“Si, Senor Jessie. He say he want me tell you how he kill you if anybody shoot at him or his compadres again. This be what he say to tell you.”

Jessie glanced over at Pickett. “Who the hell is Smoke Jensen?”

“Never heard of the bastard,” Pickett replied. “I’ll go saddle a horse an’ we’ll see if he’s as tough as he says he is.”

“Where did this happen?” Jessie asked Billy.

“North of the Chisurn ranch by maybe ten miles.”

“An’ you claim Roy took off runnin’ when it happened?”

“Yessir. That’s sure the way it looked. Roy jumped on his horse and rode east as fast as that pony could travel. Last we saw of him, he was headed for the Pecos River .”

“That ain’t like Roy. Maybe he was gonna ride a circle around ’em.”

“It sure as hell didn’t look that way, boss. Soon as Raul an’ Jorge got killed, Roy took off. He never fired a shot at this Jensen feller.”

“Roy ain’t no coward.”

Billy shrugged. “Maybe he just knowed it when he was outgunned. That Jensen never wasted a bullet. He killed Raul so quick it was like they was standin’ two feet apart. Then he shot Carlos an’ Jorge, all of ’em from the back of a runnin’ horse. I took off right after that, when I seen there wasn’t no stoppin’ this Jensen. He ain’t no ordinary man.”

Jessie scowled. “You ain’t nothin’ but a yellow son of a bitch, Barlow. Get your gear an’ clear out of here. I’ll have your wages ready.”

Pickett lifted his shotgun and started down the porch steps two at a time. “I’ll saddle a horse an’ round up Ignacio, Billy, an’ Tom. Let’s see if this Jensen is as tough as he claims to be.”

Jessie gazed across the corrals. “Tell those boys from up in Arkansas to ride along with us. Chisum may have hired himself a fancy shooter, only we’ll see how good he is when the odds are against him. That one-eyed feller from Arkansas says he can hit a sparrow on the fly with a Sharps rifle. We’ll let him show us how good he is.”

Pickett ambled off toward the corrals, in no apparent hurry to get things started. Jessie looked at Billy. “Get your gear out of the bunkhouse, Barlow. You’re finished with this outfit, an’ if I ever lay eyes on you again, I’ll kill you myself.” He turned his attention to Victor. “Have somebody fix you a bandage for that scratch. Then get mounted on a fresh horse so you can show us where all this happened. Jensen could be dead by now, if Roy caught up with him. One thing you can bet on—Roy Cooper didn’t run from no kind of fight.”Twenty-one

Smoke heard horses corning up the hill as he wiped blood off his Bowie knife on the dying man’s pants leg. Standing out in plain view, he knew Chisum and his cowboys could see him now, and they were riding up to see what had brought him here… He’d only said to wait for him until he took care of a little unfinished business, without telling them a man was lying in ambush for them on this hilltop, just out of rifle range. Again, he’d seen a flash of polished metal in the sun as they were riding out of the valley, and he knew what it meant. There wasn’t time to explain.

“What happened, Mr. Jensen?” Chisum asked just before his horse snorted, scenting blood as it trotted toward Smoke.

“We had another surprise waiting for us,” Smoke replied as he sheathed his Bowie, “another gent who thought we’d ride right past his hiding place so he could shoot us down.”

Now Chisum saw the body lying in a patch of tall, bloody grass near Smoke’s feet. “Damn,” he said, swinging off his red sorrel to get a better look.

One of Chisum’s cowboys said, “That’s Roy Cooper, another one of Dolan’s hired guns. A feller told me Cooper had a real bad disposition, that he was a sure enough professional killer.”

Smoke took a last look at Cooper. “He should have chosen another line of work. It’s just one man’s opinion, but it don’t seem he was all that good at it.”

Chisum was staring at Smoke with a bit of slack in his jaw. “You killed him with a knife. How come you didn’t use a gun?” he asked. “You must have slipped up behind him.”

Smoke walked over to the bay a Chisum cowboy brought up the hill, taking its reins. “He was real busy watchin’ what was in front of him. It’s a mistake a lot of men make before they wind up on Boot Hill.”

Chisum watched Smoke mount his horse, still not quite ready to believe what he’d seen or heard. “For a big man, you sure as hell get around mighty quiet. It’s hard to slip up on a man from behind like that. And all you had to do was shoot him. You’d have been within your rights, seeing as he was trying to kill us with a rifle.”

Smoke was far more interested in the beefy carcasses of Chisum’s crossbred Hereford steers right then, the incident with Cooper already pushed from his mind, even though the gunman was still alive, still breathing shallowly. Smoke gazed across the valley, thinking of cattle like these carrying a Sugarloaf brand. “I’ve got no choice but to agree with you, Mr. Chisum. Herefords represent the future of the cattle business out west. A longhorn’s tough, and they can get by on poor pastures, but they don’t carry the meat these crosses do. In a couple of years, I hope to have steers like those yonder ready for market.”

Chisum shook his head and mounted his horse. “You’re quite a puzzlement, Mr. Jensen. On the one hand you seem like a very knowledgeable cattleman, but when the shooting starts, you behave like a seasoned Indian fighter, or a trained soldier.”

Smoke turned his horse toward the valley floor. “Sometimes a man has got to be a little of both,” he said, “if he aims to hold on to what’s his.”

The night was clear and chilly, near forty degrees, as Smoke and Pearlie and Johnny and Bob Williams stood at the corral fence examining Chisum’s Hereford bulls in the light of the moon. Cal and Cletus and Duke were inside the house enjoying another piece of Maria’s chocolate pie.

Bob seemed a bit doubtful. “They look too short-legged to suit me,” he said, “but they’ve damn sure got the meat on ’em. I reckon it’s the crosses that count. Until a railhead comes close to Big Rock, we’ve still got to drive our cattle to market a hell of a long way. A short-legged cow ain’t gonna cover much ground in a day. But I’m ready to try a couple of bulls. That pretty little wife of yours done a lot of convincin’ when we talked about Herefords last fall. Put me down for two of them young bulls.” He glanced over to Smoke. “I sure hope we make it all the way home with ’em, Smoke. After what them two cowboys of Chisum’s told us this evenin’ about all the shootin’ you did up north of here, I’m wonderin’ if us or these cattle will ever see Big Rock country.”

“There’s always a risk, Bob,” Smoke told him. “I never once got up in the mornin’ with any guarantee I’d see the end of the day.”

“I like our chances,” Pearlie said, chewing on a piece of straw. “I ain’t sayin’ it’s gonna be easy, but I still like our chances of gettin’ home with these here stumpy bulls. One thing they ain’t gonna do is outrun no horse.”

Johnny North offered his opinion. “It’s outrunnin’ lead we have to worry about, with all these hired guns on the prowl.”

Smoke heard a noise near the bunkhouse. Four of Chisum’s men were unloading dead bodies wrapped in canvas tarps from the back of a wagon, arranging four corpses in a neat row near the front porch. “We’ll make it,” Smoke said tonelessly. “Let’s get some shut-eye. Tomorrow I’ll pick out two hundred head of young cows for me and Sally’s new herd. Then we’ll be on our way.”

Pearlie turned away from the fence, yawning. “It’s been a spell since we had a roof over our heads. I’m gonna sleep like a baby tonight in one of them rawhide cots.”

“I’m ready to turn in,” Johnny agreed. “Cal’s gonna have a bellyache if he ain’t careful. I never saw a boy his size eat so much in one sittin’.”

Pearlie nodded as the four men ambled toward the bunkhouse. “I done told that boy he’s got worms. Can’t nobody eat that much without a bellyful of worms helpin’ him.”

Smoke gave the outlying black hills a passing inspection as they headed for bed. He wondered if the gunman named Jessie Evans had gotten word of what had happened to his crew of killers today. While he didn’t know anything about Evans, he was certain a shootist with a reputation on the line wouldn’t take any advice from a stranger… not until someone convinced him otherwise.Twenty-two

Boyd, Jack, and Lee Johnson were tobacco-chewing brothers from northwestern Arkansas, on the run from the law and Hanging Judge Isaac Parker’s unyielding rope justice in his judicial district. Judge Parker had been known to hang three men at the same time, a fate the Johnson brothers had hoped to escape by coming to New Mexico Territory. Boyd, eldest of the three, had but one eye, having lost the other to an Arkansas Toothpick knife similar in size to a Bowie. Along with the Johnsons came two cousins with similar reputations. Dewey Hyde was wanted for murder, in both Arkansas and Mississippi. Marvin Hyde had warrants out for him in Missouri charging him with murdering a Methodist minister for what was in the collection plates on a Sunday morning. As a gang, they were considered a blight on the citizens of Arkansas by Judge Parker, who ordered a squad of United States deputy marshals to chase them halfway across Indian Territory. But individually, none was more dangerous than one-eyed Boyd Johnson, a burly man with a thick red beard and deadly aim with a rifle. When Boyd and his followers answered Jessie’s call for experienced men who knew how to use a gun, it was a natural place for the Johnson brothers and the Hydes to show up.

As the hour approached midnight, Jessie led fourteen mounted men into the hills west of John Chisum’s South Springs ranch, all heavily armed. Jessie was still puzzled by the disappearance of Roy Cooper… It just wasn’t Cooper’s nature to turn tail and run. Roy, was utterly fearless in any kind of fight, whether it be with guns or knives or fists. Cooper wouldn’t have left the scene of a shoot-out without good reason, a plan of some sort to exact his brand of vengeance against this owlhoot named Smoke Jensen for taking the lives of Carlos, Jorge, and Raul. What Victor described, with Jensen charging recklessly into their guns, had to be nothing more than blind luck. Or stupidity. No man with all his faculties charged single-handedly into the teeth of seven riflemen behind cover. Those were the actions of a madman.

When they could see the ranch down below, Jessie held up his hand for a halt. A light was burning behind the windows of Chisum’s main house. The bunkhouse was dark.

“We’ll throw a circle around ’em,” Jessie explained, making a motion with his hand. “Catch ’em in a cross fire. Get as close as you can to that bunk-house, ’cause that’s where his paid guns are more likely to be. Pour lead into them windows an’ kill every son of a bitch who comes out them doors… There’s one at the back leadin’ to the outhouse. I’ll take four men an’ make a circle ’round the main house. Soon as the shootin’ starts, Chisum will come runnin’ out. One of us will get him an’ that’ll be the end of this cattle war for good.”

“What’ll Dolan say?” Tom asked. “He told us all we was supposed to do was rustle a few cattle an’ kill a few cowboys if they put up a fight. He never said nothin’ ’bout killin’ Chisum outright.”

“I’ll tell him it was an accident, that Chisum got in the line of fire. Main thing is to be sure we get this feller Smoke Jensen. It’s payback time for him. Victor said he was a real big feller, like Chisum, only he was wearing buckskins. Just be damn sure you kill him, whoever the hell he is. All that tough talk about him comin’ gunnin’ for me is gonna cost him. I’ll cut off his goddamn head an’ stick it on a fencepost at Bosque. Be a reminder to any son of a bitch who threatens me.”

Boyd Johnson urged his horse alongside Jessie’s, a Sharps rifle resting against his leg. “I’ll git him fer you, boss. All I gotta do is git him in my sights jest once.”

Jessie gave Boyd a sideways glance. “We’re about to find out if you’re as good as you claim to be. Kill Jensen, an’ I’ll talk to Dolan ’bout givin’ you a little bonus money.” He looked over his shoulder. “Take Victor with you so he can point him out in the dark. Just make damn sure you kill the son of a bitch, no matter what it takes.” Now Jessie spoke softly to the rest of his men. “Spread out. Billy, you an’ Tom an’ Bill Pickett come with me. Everybody else covers that bunkhouse. I’ll fire the first shot into one of them lighted windows at the big house. As soon as you hear it, start pourin’ lead into the place.”

Silent riders spread out in twos and threes, beginning a circle around the Chisum ranch headquarters. Jessie led his handpicked men down a grassy embankment, toward a stand of oak where they could tie their horses.

“I’m gonna enjoy this,” Pickett said. “Wish it was daylight so we could see ’em bleed better.”

Tom Hill spoke up again. “I sure hope Jimmy don’t get mad over this. He said he was glad we killed Tunstall, so he didn’t write no more complainin’ letters. Hope he feels the same way if we kill John Chisum.”

Jessie had some private doubts. Dolan wanted a controlled war that wouldn’t draw too much attention in the newspapers up in Santa Fe or over in Silver City, But when Victor brought back that message from Jensen, it got Jessie’s back up. “Ain’t no son of a bitch gonna threaten me like Jensen did,” he said. “I’ll tell Jimmy that Chisum was hirin’ too damn many gun-slicks, an’ we had to do somethin’ about it.”

Bill Pickett offered his opinion. “You worry too much, Tom. Dolan ain’t payin’ us to sit an’ whittle on a stick.”

They came to the trees and dismounted, taking rifles and a few extra boxes of cartridges along. Pickett carried a Winchester and his shotgun, one in each hand, as they began a slow walk through the darkness toward Chisum’s house, hunkered down to keep from being outlined against a night sky full of stars, in case Chisum had posted any guards.

“No dogs,” Pickett said as they neared the house. “Means I can get close enough to use ol’ Ten-Gauge Betsy.”

Jessie felt his pulse begin to race. Like Pickett, he was looking forward to a killing spree. His men had been idle too long, and until today, when this Jensen started killing a few of his pistoleros, things had been too damn quiet to suit everybody at Bosque Redondo. It was hard to keep men who killed for a living content unless they were doing what they were being paid to do.Twenty-three

Smoke lay asleep beside an open bunkhouse window when something he couldn’t identify disturbed his slumber. Several men across the room were snoring and for a moment he wondered what it was that had awakened him. Cletus Walker and Bob Williams were at the main house talking with Chisum over drinks, talking about the cattle market and some of Chisum’s troubles with the Santa Fe Ring and L.G. Murphy and Jimmy Dolan. Smoke had retired early, preferring sleep to conversation after so many days on the trail. But now something had interrupted his sleep, something beyond the window above his bunk.

He sat up slowly, peering out at a moonlit ranch yard and the hills beyond. A vague uneasy sensation warned him something was amiss, yet he was unable to see or hear anything out of the ordinary.

Swinging his legs off the bed, he put on his boots and took his gunbelts from a bedpost, and as an added precaution, he picked up his Winchester, after strapping both cartridge belts around his waist.

He crept to the back door and opened it softly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He was startled when he heard a soft whisper behind him.

“What is it?” Pearlie asked, sitting up.

The pockmarked gunfighter named Buck Andrews said, “I heard somethin’ too, like horses.” He swung his legs off the bunk beside Pearlie’s to nudge a gunman named Curly Tully, who was in a deep sleep, snoring in the next bunk. “Wake up, Curly. I’d take an’ oath I heard somethin’ outside. Git up and fetch yer guns.”

Tully raised his head off the pillow and shook it. “Maybe you was only drearnin’,” he said sleepily.

“Wasn’t no dream,” Andrews told him. “It was horses.”

Smoke let his gaze roam back and forth looking for a shape that didn’t belong. It was too dark to be sure of anything at a distance. “Might be a good idea if you woke everybody up,” he said a moment later, when it appeared something scurried across the crest of a hill behind the bunkhouse, perhaps only a wolf or a coyote. “If this is part of that bunch we tangled with today, they’ll be lookin’ for revenge. Get these men out of the bunkhouse and have ’em spread out around the corrals and barns. I’ll go warn Mr. Chisum that something ain’t right out yonder. First of all, it’s too damn quiet. That’s damn near always a bad sign in my experience. Make sure nobody shoots unless we get shot at first. I’ll see if I can find out who it is, or if it’s anything at all.”

Andrews got up while Pearlie pulled on his boots. He woke Cal up and whispered, “Git dressed, young ’un. Smoke says he thinks we may have us some company.”

Andrews went down the rows of cots, awakening cowboys, while Smoke edged out the rear doorway, his senses keened. He could almost smell trouble coming on a soft night wind blowing across the ranch.

Moving quietly in the shadow of the eaves, where the bunkhouse roof ended, he made his way to a corner and waited, hidden by the shadow until he crossed the ranch yard to a windmill tower and a water trough, crouching down, unable to shake the feeling that someone was out there in the hills. He could hear sleepy men stirring in the bunkhouse.

He stepped lightly along the front porch and tapped on the door, watching the moonlit hills.

“Who is it?” a deep voice belonging to Chisum inquired, a note of concern in his question.

“Smoke Jensen. I think we’ve got some night visitors off to the west. Maybe north of us too.”

Chisum swung the door open. “I’ll get my rifle and wake up the men.”

“Buck Andrews is already gettin’ ’em up. I told ’em to spread out around the corrals and barns. I’ll slip out there to see if it’s just my imagination. I told everybody to hold their fire unless someone shoots at us first. And it’d be a good idea to douse that lantern.”

Cletus appeared behind Chisum and Smoke was about to leave the porch to scout around.

“What is it, Smoke?” Cletus asked.

“I ain’t sure it’s anything yet. Just grab a rifle in case we got company.”

The lantern inside went out as Smoke crept off the porch to make his way to a split rail fence around ranch headquarters, an open stretch of ground that could be dangerous to cross, yet he was without choices. Hunkered down, he raced across the yard in the bright moonlight, knowing an experienced gunman would see the gleam of metal from his rifle.

A booming shot from a large-bore gun thundered from a grassy hilltop, the wink of a muzzle flash pinpointing the shooter’s location. A split pine iog on the top rail of the fence in front of Smoke most certainly saved his life from a heavy rifle slug, probably a .52 caliber, as the bullet splintered wood only a few inches from Smoke’s face, splitting the dry log almost in half.

He dove to the ground, crawling beneath the bottom rail as fast as he could toward clumps of foot-high prairie grass that would hide him.

“Mr. Evans got my message, no doubt,” Smoke hissed between gritted teeth, feeling his mind-set change suddenly, back to the savagery that had been a part of his nature in years past. Now, with a single-mindedness he could never fully explain to Sally, he would become a manhunter on a killing rampage. Something even he wasn’t able to comprehend took control of him, his thoughts, his actions, a lust for killing in any way possible, after someone made an attempt to take his life. Until it was over, his mind was a blank, his conscience without a voice, focused only on finding and killing his enemies. Afterward, he sometimes pondered on what it was that overtook him at times like this, when all reason and concern for his personal safety were discarded. All that mattered now was killing, silencing the gun on the hilltop… and he was sure there would be more guns out there, waiting for their opportunity to arrive.

Boyd Johnson knew he’d missed. “It was that damn fence,” he whispered to his brother Lee. “I’ll git the sumbitch next time, soon as he shows hisself.”

A rifle cracked from a hilltop north of the ranch, and then a chorus of gunfire erupted from every direction. Answering guns thundered from barns and hay sheds and deep shadows all across the ranch headquarters.

“They was expectin’ us!” Lee shouted above the roar of so many guns.

“Shut up, little brother!” Boyd snapped. “You’s gonna tell that bastard right where we is!”

Boyd waited, aiming down at the fence where he’d last seen the big fellow, bare-chested, wearing buckskin leggings. “That was him,” he muttered angrily. “I had the sumbitch dead in my sights till he come to that goddamn fence. I know one thing fer sure ’bout this Jensen feller—he’s damn sure lucky, or he’d be dead as a pig right now.”

The crackle of exploding rifles filled the night with sound, making Boyd uneasy. It helped to have keen hearing when a man was stalking about in the dark with a gun, but gunfire was drowning out every other noise, making it impossible to hear footsteps, the snap of a twig, or the brush of grasses against a man’s boots.

“How come you ain’t shootin’, Boyd?” Lee asked, as minutes dragged by without Boyd firing a shot, which caused Lee to keep his gun silent too.

“Nothin’ to shoot at yet,” Boyd answered. “No sense in lettin’ ’em know where we are till we got us a target we know we can hit. Let them others waste ammunition. Remember what Pa told us when we was kids huntin’ squirrels—Make every shot count, ’cause gunpowder an’ shot is expensive.” Scanning the spot where he’d last seen the gent he believed to be Jensen, it was hard to figure where such a big feller could be hiding.

Something tapped him on the sole of his right boot, and Boyd whirled around, focusing his lone functioning eye on the outline of a bare-chested man holding a pair of pistols. “How the hell did you… ?” he exclaimed, as both six-guns belched stabbing fingers of yellow flame.

Something cracked against Boyd’s forehead, slamming his head to the ground with the force of a mule’s kick. He heard Lee let out a scream as lightning bolts of pain shot through his skull in great waves. His vision blurred as he caught a glimpse of the man who had shot him and his brother, and damned if he could explain why the bastard seemed to be grinning just seconds before everything went black. He felt his body floating off the ground and he could not explain the sensation… Bodies didn’t float. But he was thankful that now, his terrible pain was fading away.

Dewey Hyde pumped seven slugs through his Winchester in a fit of rage, knowing he’d hit nothing with any of his bullets. Spittle dribbled down into his beard when he forgot to spit with a wad of chewing tobacco in his left cheek, thus he spat and took seven more shells from his pocket, pushing them into the loading gate to fill its cartridge chamber. As the roar of gunfire came from all directions, he wondered idly if Marvin was having any better luck in the ravine below, to the west. This kind of a fight didn’t suit Dewey, not when he couldn’t see who he was shooting at so far away in the dark.

“Turn around, creep,” someone said behind him. “I want to see your ugly face before I blow it off your skull.”

Dewey made a quick half turn, swallowing tobacco juice in his haste and fear, bringing his rifle around for a shot at the owner of the strangely calm voice in the middle of a deadly gun battle like this. He saw a squatting figure, muscles bunched in his bare chest, aiming two pistols at him from only a few yards away.

Before Dewey could aim, he heard a noise, an explosion, and in the same instant something akin to a red-hot poker entered the soft flesh beneath his chin—he was sure he could feel fire as it traveled upward, through his mouth and tongue, jarring him the way an iron-rimmed wagon wheel did when it struck a rock. He was scooted backward by the flaming poker entering his brain, and he could feel it tearing through the top of his head. Without truly understanding what was happening, he puzzled over the hot sensation, like fire. How could fire get inside his skull like this?

He lay back as the figure stepped over him, heading down to the ravine where Marvin was shooting. Dewey tried to yell, to warn Marvin, only his mouth was full of blood and tobacco juice and he could feel only the stump of his tongue moving when he tried to speak. He coughed and closed his eyes. Marvin would be able to take care of himself until Dewey could figure out what was wrong. For some reason, in spite of what had just happened to his head, he felt sleepy, and it was sure as hell the wrong time to be needing to take a nap.

Marvin Hyde decided it was time to pull back. Some of the bullets fired from the ranch were coming too close, whizzing over his head by no more than a foot or two. He didn’t want somebody to get off a lucky shot that would turn out to be unlucky for him and in all this noise and confusion, Jessie Evans would never know he’d moved to a safer place.

Marvin came slowly to his hands and knees, pulling his rifle along in the grass, its barrel still hot from so much shooting. A few feet more and he was behind the lip of the shallow ravine, where he could stand up.

As he turned around, he came face-to-face with a half-naked man holding two pistols. “Who the hell are you?” Marvin asked, unable to recall this fellow’s face as being a member of Jessie’s gang.

“Your executioner, plowboy. I’m gonna put a hole through your overalls while you’re wearin’ ’em.”

“The hell you say!” Marvin cried, bringing his Winchester up for a shot.

The roar of a Colt .44 caught Marvin in mid swing, before he could get his rifle muzzle lifted. He was torn off his planted feet by what felt like a whistling gust of wind striking his chest. His rifle flew from his hands as he fell backward from the force of it, and when he fell on his back it was as if an anvil had been dropped on his rib cage. He couldn’t breathe at all, not a single breath, and when he touched his chest he felt something wet on the front of his bib overalls, then the hole this sneaky stranger had promised.

He saw the stranger hurry off into the darkness, and thought how he needed to warn Dewey. But try as he might, he could not raise his head or suck in enough wind to shout to his brother.

He noticed his legs were trembling uncontrollably, feet twitching as though they had minds of their own. It occurred to Marvin that joining up with Jessie Evans and his gang hadn’t turned out to be such a good idea after all. Maybe he and Dewey should have stayed in Indian Territory, or headed north for the Kansas line.

Off in the distance, he could hear the pop of rifles, and it sounded like they were moving away, growing fainter. With all his strength, he tried to draw in a breath of badly needed air, and found again he couldn’t, Marvin had always feared drowning in a river someplace, running out of air. How could a man drown out in the middle of a cow pasture?Twenty-four

Smoke crept forward, toward the shape of a man lying prone at the crest of a rocky knob, firing down at the ranch in regular bursts, as fast as he could reload a Winchester .44. Smoke had a decided advantage tonight that he couldn’t always count on — the noise made by so many rifles firing at once. This made it far easier to slip up behind his quarry, not having to be so careful where he placed each foot.

The rifleman fired seven shells and then paused to load his gun, giving Smoke just the opportunity he needed.

“Turn around. I’ve got a message for you from Jessie,” he said quiedy, just loud enough to be heard above the din of guns banging.

A Mexican with a thin mustache looked over his shoulder as he continued thumbing shells into his rifle. He opened his mouth to speak, until he realized he did not recognize Smoke’s face in the dark. Then he saw Smoke’s pistols.

“Dios!”the man cried. “You are not with us!”

“No, I ain’t.”

“But you say you have a message from Senor Jessie…”

“I suppose I should have said I have a message for Jessie,” Smoke said. “Trouble is, I can’t leave you alive to give it to him.”

The Mexican seemed to understand at once that he stood no chance of turning his gun on Smoke in time. “Por favor, please do not kill me, senor.”

Smoke answered softly, in case other members of Jessie’s gang were close enough to hear him despite the constant rattle of rifle fire back and forth. “Funny you’d beg for your life when you came here to kill us. If the tables were turned, would you give me a chance to ride off?”

“Of course, senor. It would be the honorable thing to do in this situation, when you have the drop on me.”

“You think I oughta give you a chance to aim that rifle at me first?”

The Mexican hesitated, thinking. “I do not believe you would do that, senor.”

“Then you’re callin’ me a liar.”

“No, senor. I only say I do not think you would be so foolish.”

Smoke lowered his pistols to his sides. “Aim it at me. Go ahead. I’ll give you plenty of time.”

Another hesitation, then suddenly the Mexican squirmed around, sweeping his rifle barrel toward Smoke.

“Long enough,” Smoke whispered, whipping his left pistol up, and gently squeezing the trigger so the motion wouldn’t ruin his aim.

His Colt barked, jumping in his fist, its echo lost in a wall of noise coming from the surrounding hills and the ranch down below. The Mexican’s body jerked as though he’d been startled, jolted by the bullet passing through him at close range. He threw back his head and shrieked in pain, letting his rifle fall between his knees. He sat there a moment, staring at Smoke, then he looked down at his belly, where a dark stain was spreading over the front of his shirt

“Madre,” he groaned, touching the bullet hole in his stomach with a fingertip.

“Your mother can’t help you now,” Smoke said. “It’ll take you awhile to die, bein’ gutshot.”

“Take me to the doctor in Mesilla!” the Mexican begged in a high-pitched voice. “Can’t you see that I am badly wounded and without a doctor, I will surely die?”

Smoke turned away from the knob. “I might have considered it, if it wasn’t for the fact you came here to kill me an’ my friends. Adios, bastardo. ”He strolled away into the deep night shadows, looking for another victim, another paid assassin who came to South Springs ranch seeking a murderer’s payday.

A rifle spat flame to his left, behind a thick pinon pine trunk. Smoke crept toward the light on the balls of his feet.

Jack Johnson knelt in matted grass at the base of the tree, with brass cartridge casings scattered all around him. Now and then he saw a muzzle flash wink near one of the barns or a corner post of a corral. He wondered why Jessie Evans would order an attack on such a well-defended ranch. Jack guessed a dozen men were shooting back at them.

“Evans is a fool,” Jack mumbled. “Nobody in his right mind would challenge an outfit armed to the teeth like this bunch, if he knew it ahead of time. This could go on all night…” He took aim at a flickering flash of light and fired, knowing he stood no chance whatsoever of hitting anything at this range. A banging series of gunshots answered his bullet, all high or wide of the mark, whining through tree branches above his head.

He wondered about Boyd and Lee, guessing they were as frustrated with this standoff as he was. At least the three of them had found work in New Mexico Territory, no easy task for men with warrants out on them.

Jack doubted anyone on either side had been wounded or killed, what with everyone shooting in the dark at uncertain targets.

A short pause came in the endless gunfire, long enough for Jack to hear someone behind him, figuring it was probably Boyd or Lee. He glanced over his shoulder while he levered another shell into the firing chamber. “Ain’t this the worst?” he said to a man coming toward him from the rear, from friendly territory. “Can’t see a goddamn thing down there. Looks like somebody oughta decide this ain’t worth it, an’ call it off.”

“Somebody should have,” a voice replied, a voice Jack didn’t recognize.

Jack offered a simple solution. “Why don’t you go tell Mr. Evans this is a waste of time?”

“I’m looking for him now. Where is he?”

“Him an’ Bill Pickett an’ two more is near the big house down yonder. They was gonna try an’ get Chisum if they could.”

“Shoot him down in the dark?”

“Hell yes.” Jack began to wonder about all the strange questions, and he looked over his shoulder again. “Who the hell are you anyways, an’ how come you’re askin’ so goddamn many dumb questions?”

“My name doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you’ve got only a few seconds to live.”

A chilling tingle went down Jack’s spine when he realized he’d been talking to an enemy, one of the shooters from down below. With his rifle aimed in the wrong direction, it would take luck and perfect timing to get out of this alive. “I didn’t quite hear what you said, mister,” he replied, just as he made a springing dive forward toward a smaller tree trunk a few feet in front of him.

A gun roared while Jack was in mid flight. Something snapped between his shoulder blades… it felt like his backbone had been broken. He landed on his face and chest without feeling any pain, and when he tried to move his arms and legs to crawl to the tree, his limbs refused to obey his commands. He lay there a moment, wondering what was wrong.

“I’ll tell Evans what you said, that he oughta call this off,” the voice behind him said.

Tiny tremors began in Jack’s hands and feet He saw a circle of light and he began moving toward it despite the fact that his legs were motionless. Somewhere in the night a cricket chirped, the last sound he heard before he was surrounded by an eerie blanket of silence.

Smoke began working his way toward a dark grove of trees to the west of Chisum’s house, the logical place for men to take up firing positions if they were bent on killing whoever was inside.Twenty-five

Jessie whispered softly to Bill Pickett, “Wonder what the hell is keepin’ Billy?” He’d sent Billy Morton to find out what fool was shooting a pistol from hills north of the ranch, when all his men had brought rifles. Nobody with good sense would shoot a pistol from that distance, yet the distinctive sounds of a .44 had come fairly often… not always from the same spot.

“I told you somethin’ was wrong,” Pickett replied, keeping his rifle trained on a shattered window of the house where rifle fire exploded now and then. “They was ready for us. Some son of a bitch warned ’em we was comin’. I figure it was that little coward Barlow, after you ran him off. He probably rode over here an’ offered to throw in with ’em, tellin’ Chisum we was on the way.” Pickett glanced north. “The way I got it figured, one of ’em slipped around behind them Arkansas boys an’ now he’s takin’ potshots at ’em with a pistol. If they’re as good as they claim to be, one of ’em will kill whoever it is. That last pistol shot was five or ten minutes ago. Maybe the bastard is already dead if one of them farmers got him. Come to think of it, there ain’t been no shootin’ at all comin’ from them hills lately.”

Jessie felt his anger rising. “If I find out that little bastard Barlow warned ’em, I’ll kill him myself. I still can’t figure what’s takin’ Billy so long to get back here.” As he said it, he saw Billy coming up a draw behind them, moving in a crouch to avoid flying lead. “Yonder he is…”

Morton hurried up to Jessie as best he could, keeping down like he was. He sounded out of breath when he spoke quietly to Jessie. “Big trouble, boss. Somebody’s sneakin’ ’round up in them hills, killin’ off them pig farmers from Arkansas. The one-eyed Johnson brother is dead, an’ so is the young skinny one. I found that big redheaded guy with the top of his head blowed off, an’ it damn near made me sick to my stomach. His brains was all over the place, only the big bastard was still breathin’. I left him layin’ there. I got the hell outa there quick as I could, to bring word down to you. At least one of ’em got behind us, maybe more.”

“This has to be Barlow’s doin’,” Jessie growled. “They was ready for us. Hell, they was already spread out all over creation soon as the first shot was fired. I swear I’m gonna kill Barlow. It ain’t my way of doin’ things to pull away from a fight, but if some of ’em got behind us, we’re caught in a cross fire. Spread the word to pull out. Tell Tom to warn the boys over to the south to clear out now.”

Pickett turned away from the tree with a disgusted look on his face. “Far as I can tell, we ain’t shot nobody tonight. It was them who done all the killin’.”

“We rode into a trap,” Jessie said, heading for the draw as exchanges of gunfire lessened even more. Keeping his head down, he ground his teeth together while they made for their horses. A double-crossing son of a bitch had done them in tonight… he was sure of it.

Pickett seemed reluctant to leave, glancing over his shoulder, scowling in the moonlight. “Wish I’d had the chance to kill at least one of ’em,” he whispered. “Don’t seem like it’s askin’ too much to be able to kill just one. I ain’t smelled no blood in so long I plumb forgot what it smells like.”

“We’ll get another chance,” Jessie promised. “Lopez told me there’s at least a dozen more pistoleros headed up from Juarez to hire on with us. Said they’d be here by the end of the week. If Chisum thinks he’s heard the last of us, he’s goddamn sure in for a helluva surprise.”

They reached their tethered mounts just as Pickett said, “I reckon that Jensen feller was all talk. Every one of them yellow bastards kept their heads down so damn low there wasn’t nothin’ to shoot at. The only thing they did smart was puttin’ a few men behind us, an’ they couldn’t have done that ’less Barlow warned ’em we was comin’.”

Jessie mounted, thinking about the warning Victor had brought them from Smoke Jensen, whoever the hell he was, about how if one more bullet flew, he was planning to kill them all, including Jessie. “Like you said, just big talk is all it was. Maybe he got lucky killin’ those pistoleros like he done. If it hadn’t been for Barlow, we’d have killed Chisum an’ every one of his shooters tonight. That Buck Andrews an’ Curly Tully was supposed to be bad men. Killers. Only, when the shootin’ started, they stayed down just like the rest of ’em, includin’ that big-winded Jensen feller.” He reined his horse around. Shooting in the distance had all but ended. “Tomorrow I’ll ride up to the Mescalero reservation… see if some of them red-skinned bastards who know how to shoot are interested in makin’ a little money. There’s always a few renegades lookin’ for some excitement.” He urged his horse to a short lope, back in the direction of Bosque Redondo. “One way or another, I’m gonna have John Chisum’s ass.”

They were a few miles from the Chisum ranch when Tom Hill, Billy Morton, Ignacio Valdez, Pedro Lopez, and three more riders caught up with them at a hard gallop. Pedro was the first to speak, after jerking his horse to a halt.

“I see this hombre, Senor Jessie. I only see him one time. Then I hear gun, una pistola. I go see where he is, only nobody is there, only Juanito Gonzales, and he is dying. He say this loco hombre come from behind where he was shooting and he shoot him. Juanito tell me this hombre ask where to find you, that he have this message for you. It no make sense, Senor Jessie, how this hombre know your name and want to give you a message.”

“Jensen,” Jessie snarled, curling his lips when he said the name. “It had to be Jensen.” Rage welled in Jessie’s chest, and he gripped his saddle horn fiercely, trying to control an outburst of unreasoning anger. “That’s who got behind us. It was that bastard Smoke Jensen. I never laid eyes on the son of a bitch yet, but I’m swearin’ an oath I’m gonna kill him. He’s as good as dead. All I gotta do is find him…”Twenty-six

Smoke alerted the anxious men spread out across South Springs ranch before he crossed the fence in the dark, fearing a bullet might come flying his way from a nervous Chisum cowboy after a pitched battle like the one they’d just been through.

“It’s me, Smoke Jensen! Don’t anybody shoot! Looks like they cleared out!”

He heard Pearlie’s distinctive voice from a cowshed off to his right. “That’s Smoke all right, men. Lower them guns so you don’t shoot him accidental.”

Smoke went over the fence, his pistols bolstered, as Pearlie and Cal hurried up to him.

“How many was out there?” Pearlie asked. “Sounded like a whole damned army.”

“Twelve or fourteen,” Smoke replied, continuing on his way to Chisum’s house. “I scouted around after they left, just to make sure all of ’em hightailed it out of here.”

John Chisum met him at the porch steps. He gave Smoke a half grin. “Never heard so much lead flying in my life,” he said with obvious relief. “They had us surrounded. Must’ve been at least twenty riflemen out there…”

“More like a dozen or so,” Smoke replied. “A few more than that, maybe. I got six of ’em by circling around behind some of their positions. No sense goin’ after the bodies till daylight comes.”

“You killed six of them?” Chisum asked, relief turning to disbelief when he heard the number. “How in the hell did you do that without getting your ass shot to pieces?”

“They didn’t expect nobody to come at ’em from the rear, I reckon.”

“You’re an amazing man, Mr. Jensen, talking about knocking off half a dozen men like you’d been out picking peaches. Those boys were hired gunmen, not amateurs. Evans and Dolan have sent word all the way to Mexico that they’re hiring top shootists to fight on their side of this war.”

Smoke shrugged, climbing to the porch. “They didn’t appear to be all that experienced, not to me. Maybe I didn’t get the cream of the crop this time. But if they come back again, or if they try to stop me and my friends from drivin’ our herd up to Colorado, I’ll test the rest of ’em. I don’t pay much attention to what a man’s reputation is supposed to be. Just because some fool hires out to kill other men don’t make him good at it.”

Chisum wagged his head. “You sure as hell know your business. I wish you’d consider a proposition from me to stay on until this range war is over.”

Smoke discarded the notion with a wave of his hand. “I’m in the cattle business, Mr. Chisum. Like I told you before, my guns ain’t for hire at any price.”

The rancher rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “But you can’t deny you know the profession, the gunman’s trade. I’ve seen you in action.”

“I’ve had a little experience with it.”

“What made you change? It must have been something of great importance to you.”

“A woman,” he replied. “My wife broke me of a lot of bad habits, and I don’t figure she’s done with it yet.”

Chisum laughed. “She is certainly an influential lady, even if I haven’t met her.”

Smoke found himself yearning for a shot of whiskey right at the moment, although he answered the statement. “It isn’t so much just influence. When she gets her mind set on doin’ things her way, it’s mighty hard to change it.” He glanced into the house through a broken windowpane. “If all your whiskey bottles didn’t get busted, I could use a swallow or two of that good stuff from Kentucky, before I go back to bed.”

“I’ll have one with you,” Chisum said, “and I’ll send a bottle out to the men. They’ve earned it.” He turned around and led Smoke inside, lighting a lantern that revealed shattered glass all over the floor. “We were lucky tonight,” Chisum added as he went to the cabinet for the whiskey.

“How’s that?” Smoke asked, not quite sure what seemed so all-fired lucky about being attacked from all sides.

“Lucky to have you here,” he replied. “Maybe this will serve to discourage Evans and Dolan from making any further attempts like this one.”

Smoke settled into a stuffed bull hide chair near the fireplace. “I wouldn’t count on it,” he said quietly, glancing out a window. “Men like those who visited us just now ain’t so easily discouraged. They’ll be looking for a payday. I’m not much of a gamblin’ man, but I’ll bet we see ’em again before too awful long. Could be as early as tomorrow.”

Chisum handed Smoke a shot glass brimming with golden whiskey as he said, “I sure as hell hope you’re wrong.”

Smoke tasted his drink, finding it delicious, even though it burned all the way down his throat. “I’m seldom ever wrong when it comes to men with bad intentions,” he told Chisum. “I’ve had more’n my share of experience with their breed.”

Riders for Chisum acted as herd-holders while Smoke and John Chisum rode through hundreds of two- and three-year-old longhorn heifers. When Smoke pointed to a good long-backed cow, Pearlie and Cal and Duke cut it away from the main herd to a lower meadow, where Smoke’s selections were being held in a bunch by Bob Williams and Cletus Walker, along with a pair of Chisum cowboys. These young cows were in good trail flesh, making it easier for them to be driven to Sugarloaf without long grazing delays to keep the longhorns from getting hungry.

“You’ve got a good eye for a mother cow,” Chisum told him as they rode through the herd. “You’re picking my choice from the bunch damn near every time.”

“We’ve got a long drive ahead of us,” Smoke replied, with a nod toward a brindle heifer which Cal immediately cut away from the others, “and I figure picking a longer back will make the crosses better suited for our type of range.”

“I’ve done the same thing myself. We’ve got no railheads within two hundred miles, so I have to make damn sure what I raise can be driven to market.“

“We’re in the same boat. Denver is the closest railyard for us, an’ that’s a considerable drive through mountain country most of the way.”

A cowboy from ranch headquarters came riding up as they were picking the last of the heifers. He pulled his horse to a stop and spoke to Chisum.

“We found six bodies in them hills, Mr. Chisum. With the four we got already, makes ten. Them first four is already startin’ to stink. It’ll take two wagons to carry ’em all the way to Roswell so they can be buried proper. Trouble is, they wasn’t carryin’ no papers savin’ who they was, so I reckon the undertaker’ll have to bury ’em without no name on the marker.”

“Take two wagons,” Chisum said. “Tell Sheriff Romero they came gunning for us, and that I’ll ride in tomorrow and give him a full report”

“Yessir,” the young cowboy replied, wheeling his horse for a ride back to the ranch.

Chisum was staring at Smoke now. “Ten men,” he said. “You killed ten of Dolan’s gunmen without a lick of help from us, in a manner of speaking. I still have trouble believing it… how just one man could do all of that.”

Smoke didn’t care to talk about it, how easy it had been to send ten careless gunmen to early graves. “That oughta be about two hundred head, give or take. Let’s drive ’em back to the ranch and I’ll pay you for ’em, and for the bulls. We can get a final count while we’re drivin’ ’em to the corrals.”

“After all you’ve done for me, I’m tossing in ten extra head to help account for losses on the trail. You’ve been a good man to have backing me during all this trouble, and it’s my way of showing gratitude.“

“No need for that,” Smoke argued. “I did what I did because my friends and neighbors were in the line of fire. This ain’t our fight, but when it spilled over, an’ bullets started flyin’ in our direction, those boys had me to reckon with. We rode all this way to conduct an honest business transaction, an’ I damn sure won’t stand for nobody gettin’ in the way of it, not for no reason.”

“I understand,” Chisum told him. “All the same, I benefited from it, and I’m giving you ten extra heifers. No reason to talk about it anymore. It’s done.”

Smoke found he was liking Chisum and his honesty more and more. Chisum would make a good neighbor, and a solid friend a man could count on when the going got tough. “It’s your decision, Mr. Chisum,” he said, “only I want it understood I never expected payment for what I did.”

Chisum didn’t answer, swinging off to beckon to one of his men riding herd with Smoke’s heifers. “Go back and pick out ten good long-backed heifers to add to this bunch,” he said. “Tell Shorty to help you. Bring them up along with this bunch as quick as you can, only make damn sure none of them are cripples. They’ll be headed to Colorado Territory in the morning.”Twenty-seven

Pearlie shoveled refried beans and salsa into his mouth with a tin spoon, until his cheeks were bulging. They sat at a long oak table in John Chisum’s dining room eating Maria’s spicy hot Mexican food, their faces outlined by coal oil lamps overhead.

“I’m gonna miss this cookin’,” Cal said around a mouthful of flank steak seasoned with hot sauce, folding a tortilla over a piece of meat heavily coated with salsa picante. “We’ll be eatin’ beans an’ jerky plumb to Big Rock, an’ I’ll be rememberin’ what this tastes like.”

Bob Williams was sweating from the chili peppers in his food, and he sleeved perspiration from his brow. “This is sure fine eatin’, if a man’s stomach is made of iron. I’m gonna eat it even if it kills me.”

“It’ll put hair on your chest,” Cletus promised.

“Already got enough hair there the way things is. What I need is another glass of water.”

Duke Smith nodded. “Can’t put enough water in a man’s belly to put this fire out. If it was snowin’ outside, I’d run out an’ eat a fistful, just to cool my tongue.”

Chisum grinned. “Mexican food is supposed to be hot. It isn’t any good otherwise.”

Pearlie eyed his plate. “If hot’s got anythin’ to do with it bein’ good, this has gotta be the best I ever tasted.”

Cal was too busy chewing to offer an opinion at the moment, and he merely nodded, beads of sweat on his forehead, cheeks, and neck.

Cletus lifted the bandanna tied around his neck and wiped away a trickle of perspiration coming from his hatband while he chewed methodically on a bite of steak, “I’ve never seen fire on a plate, afore tonight,” he said. “Come mornin’ there’ll be a line at the outhouse half a mile long. That Maria can make fire taste mighty delicious.”

“She fixed flan custard to cool everybody off,” Chisum said. “That’s for dessert.”

Smoke listened to all the banter, but his mind was on the ride they would undertake at dawn. He was almost sure Jessie Evans and his gang hadn’t had enough of a lesson last night to convince them of their folly. “I want two men riding point on this herd,” he said. “I’ll be scouting what lies ahead, but in case there’s trouble, I want Pearlie and Duke guiding this bunch of cattle until we’re well north of Lincoln County.”

“You expect trouble,” Chisum observed.

“I always expect it. That way, I’m pleasantly surprised if it don’t show up.”

“It usually does,” Pearlie muttered, again filling his mouth with Maria’s cooking. “But if any outfit between here’n Big Rock can handle it, it’ll be the Sugarloaf crew. Hell-fire, I wouldn’t know what to do if somebody wasn’t shootin’ at us half the time. I’d figure I was with the wrong bunch if we wasn’t duckin’ lead.”

Chisum seemed puzzled. He looked over at Smoke.

“You said you were in the ranching business now, however, your men act like they expect problems.”

Smoke thought about it a while as he was chewing. “I guess I’ve got too many old enemies who won’t leave things alone. Now and then a batch of ’em shows up to try an’ settle old scores.”

The rancher appeared to be mildly amused. “Looks like after awhile word would spread that you’re the wrong man to be trifled with.”

Pearlie chuckled. “There’s been times when dead bodies did sorta stack up ’round the place. It’s been quieter lately, so maybe like you say, word got out that Sugarloaf is the wrong spot to come lookin’ for a little bit of excitement.”

Smoke finished cleaning his plate. “That egg custard does sound nice,” he said, changing the subject. Down deep he felt sure there would be excitement enough driving their cattle back up the trails to Big Rock country.

“One more thing,” Chisum said as he got up to tell Maria to bring the flan, “I asked one of my hands to send a telegram to Fort Stanton while he was in Roswell delivering those bodies to Sheriff Romero. I told him to ask Colonel Dudley to meet you along the trail up to Fort Sumner somewhere with a squad of his soldiers, as an escort just in case Evans and Dolan try to rustle any of your cattle. I doubt if Dudley will agree. He’s hand in glove with Tom Catron and his Santa Fe Ring when it comes to this beef contract business. I find I’m not only pitted against a gang of paid guns in this range war, but I’m also at odds with the most powerful politicians in the territory. They’ll do all they can to put me out of business.” He looked down at Smoke. “That’s one reason I wish you’d reconsider staying on here for a while, Mr. Jensen. I have a feeling I’ll need all the help I can get… men who know their way around a gun.”

“Sorry, but I’m not interested. I’ve got a wife waitin’ for me up in Colorado an’ a ranch to run. If things were different, I’d stay. As to those soldiers from Fort Stanton, I don’t reckon we’ll need ’em. I try to make a habit out of handlin’ my own affairs.”

Chisum nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. Smoke saw a frown on Bob’s face.

“After what happened last night, I sure wouldn’t mind havin’ a soldier escort,” Bob said,

“Me either,” Cletus added, toying with a spoon. “Wouldn’t be no disgrace to have a company of soldiers ridin’ with us part of the way.”

“If they show up, we won’t send ’em back,” Smoke said, more to comfort his friends than anything else. “But you heard Mr. Chisum say it ain’t likely they’ll show. Apparently the army is backing the other side in this conflict. I never had much high regard for soldiers or politicians.”

Johnny hadn’t said a word during supper, but he spoke up now, after mention was made of the soldiers. “Don’t know &’bout the rest of you, but I was plenty scared last night… bullets flyin’ all over the place, knockin’ holes in the side of that barn where I was hidin’. I couldn’t go back to sleep after it was over. I was thinkin’ how glad I was to be alive.”

Cal was quick to agree, looking at Smoke when he said, “I was feelin’ might’ near the same way. Not that I ever doubted you’d git us out of that fix, Mr. Jensen, but them slugs sure was comin’ close a few times.”

Smoke understood both boys’ concerns. They were young and inexperienced in the ways of battle. “Leave Evans and his gunslicks to me. The main thing you’re supposed to worry about is those cattle, come tomorrow. Just make sure you keep ’em bunched if there’s any trouble. Don’t let anybody close to those bulls, no matter what happens.”

Now Pearlie was eyeing Smoke. “You expect Evans an’ his boys to come after our cattle, don’t you?”

“It’s a strong possibility. I’ve never met Jessie Evans, but I know his kind. Some men can’t learn a lesson but one way, and that’s to teach it permanent.”

“You aim to kill him, don’t you?” Johnny asked quietly.

“Only if he comes at us again. I won’t go lookin’ for him, if that’s what you mean.”

It was Pearlie who said, grinning, “He’s done come at us once already, which only proves you’ve gone an’ mellowed some in my opinion. If that’d happened a few years back, you’d have gone lookin’ fer Mr. Evans by now.”

“We came here to buy Hereford bulls and cattle,” Smoke reminded Pearlie.

“So we did,” Pearlie agreed, as Maria brought a tray filled with cups of caramel-coated custard into the dining room, which signaled an end to all further conversation as far as Pearlie was concerned.

John Chisum had a small fire going in the fireplace due to a night chill, the house being without most of its windowpanes after the shooting. He had given Smoke a bill of sale for the cows and turned down the lantern while they shared glasses of whiskey while the men went to the bunkhouse.

“I’m also interested in buyin’ a good Morgan stud to cross on my mares,” Smoke said, enjoying his drink, and the peace and quiet.

Chisum wagged his head. “This isn’t good horse country yet, not by a long shot, however I have a friend in Saint Louis who raises purebred Morgans, and you can trust him. His name is Penn Wheelis. I’ll give you his address and you can say I recommended him to you. He’ll quote you a fair price, and even arrange for delivery by railroad car as far west as Denver. Wheelis is an honest man, and he’ll send you exactly what you’re paying for if you do business with him.”

“I’d sorta made up my mind to look at one before I paid for it, but if you say this Penn Wheelis is honest, that’ll be good enough for me. With those Herefords and cows to tend to this summer, I won’t have time to travel to Saint Louis.”

Chisum sipped his drink thoughtfully. “A Morgan is a good horse for adding muscle to a common mare. The crosses make good cow horses, I’m told.”

“I’ll take that address in Saint Louis, I reckon.”

Chisum got up and went to a rolltop desk, fumbling through a sheaf of papers until he found what he wanted. He wrote down a name and address and handed it to Smoke. “You won’t regret doing business with Wheelis. He’ll send you a good horse. You’ve got my word on that.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Smoke replied, tucking the paper into his waistband.

Chisum took his chair again… There was something else on his mind. “I can send Buck Andrews or Curly Tully along with you for part of the way,” he offered. “Both of them have made a name for themselves with a gun.”

“No thanks, but I’m obliged for the offer. I handle most of my own problems without any help.”

“I can see that,” Chisum said. “I’m curious about a couple of things. Where did you learn to fight like that? An ordinary man can’t kill almost a dozen men the way you did single-handedly without getting a scratch.”

Smoke thought about Preacher a moment. “I had a real good teacher, an old mountain man up in Colorado. If I had to try to explain it, I suppose I’d say he had a born instinct for taking care of himself in any situation. He lived alone in the wildest part of the Rockies. He never depended on anyone else. He survived in a place where all odds said he couldn’t, goin’ up against Indians like the Crows, Blackfeet, the Utes, and the Shoshoni back when the Indian wars were at their worst. After a spell, most tribes got to where they respected him… even made friends with him. Some of the Crow medicine men believed he was a medicine man himself, even though his skin was white and his eyes were the wrong color. He earned their respect as a fighting man, and they left him alone to hunt an’ run his traps.”

“It sounds to me like you were very close to him, whoever he was.”

Smoke felt a slight twinge when the old memories came back. “I reckon we were real close, if that’s the right word. He went by Preacher. He told me the last time I saw him his first name was Arthur. I never knew his last name.”

“Is he… gone now?”

Smoke downed the last of his drink, not wanting to discuss Preacher any longer. “Can’t say for sure. He’d be close to ninety by now, if he’s still alive. When I left him, it was at his request. He’d been wounded mighty bad and looked for all the world like he was gonna die. He asked me to dress him in his best buckskins an’ a sash, which is the way old-time mountain men want to be buried. Then he ordered me to leave that high country for good, to get clear of the trouble brewin’ there, He rode off on his favorite mare. That’s the last I ever saw of him, an’ I believe it was the way he wanted it, so I wouldn’t know if he’d lived or died. Preacher had a hell of a lot of pride, an’ I’m sure this was his way of sparing me from seeing him pass on, or as mountain men say, cross over.“(See "The Last Mountain Man")

“Haven’t you ever wondered what became of him?”

Smoke stood up, stretching his legs. “I owe him too much not to respect his wishes.”

Chisum got up, a puzzled expression on his face. “What an unusual story,” he said, following Smoke over to the front door to show him out.

“G’night, Mr. Chisum,” Smoke said, to end any further talk about Preacher or Smoke’s beginnings. “We’ll be up before first light to get that herd started.”

“My men will help you get them started north,” Chisum said as Smoke started for the bunkhouse.

“We’ll be grateful,” he said without turning around, lost in an unwanted memory, of the day Preacher was dressed in his best beaded buckskins, badly wounded from a scrape with men who had tracked him into the Needle Mountains, putting a rifle ball all the way through his hip, a wound that was badly festered by the time he found Smoke.

Smoke glanced up at the stars, hoping that somewhere those same stars were shining down on Preacher, perhaps at the high mountain pass Ned Buntline told Cal and Pearlie about. Was the man dressed in an albino buffalo robe truly Preacher?

Smoke knew he would never know, and that was the way Preacher had wanted it.Twenty-eight

Driving half-wild longhorns away from their home range could be tricky business, Smoke knew from experience, and as they put a few lead heifers in motion northward, some tried to turn back. A cowboy had to ride up at just the right time in order to get the animals moving in the right direction.

The young Herefords were another matter. Gentled by being around men feeding them in corrals, they plodded along at the back of the herd quietly.

Smoke leaned out of the saddle and shook hands with John Chisum. “Pleasure doin’ business with you,” he said, watching Pearlie and Duke lead the cattle north over the very same hills where he’d killed six of Jessie Evans’s men.

“The pleasure has been all mine,” Chisum replied. “You be careful, Smoke Jensen. Don’t let those owlhoots riding for Dolan jump you.”

Smoke grinned. “I’m always careful,” he said, urging his horse forward to ride around the herd so he could scout the way for several miles before the cattle came.

Dawn had just come to South Springs, casting golden light over tree-studded hills and shallow valleys. Off to the east, the Pecos River was a thin, distant line of deeper green where cottonwoods and grass were nourished by its waters. It was a peaceful beginning, as the heifers and bulls moved away from the Chisum ranch. Smoke wondered how long it would stay this way.

Keeping the Pecos in sight, he led them over grassy meadows where the cows would have plenty of grazing. Once the herd got settled to the trail, the likelihood of a stampede would be less of a worry.

When he’d scouted ahead for a couple of miles, Smoke turned back to see how the herd was moving, and when he topped a rise he could see them strung out in good trail fashion, traveling along at a slow pace, with the Hereford bulls bringing up the rear, an expected outcome since their legs were far shorter and they would have more trouble staying up with longer-strided longhorn cows.

“So far, so good,” he said under his breath. The land they were traveling was empty, no houses or signs of civilization in sight as far as the eye could see.

They were passing through what Chisum called the Haystack Mountain range, little more than foothills to a man who knew the Rockies. Water was plentiful in creeks and arroyos. With so much grass and water, the cattle would have an easy time of it until they reached drier regions to the north.

An hour later, Smoke tensed in the saddle when he saw Duke Smith headed his way at a fast trot. Smoke swung his horse to ride to meet him.

“Nothin’s wrong,” Duke said quickly, when he saw the look on Smoke’s face, “but we did see this horse an’ rider way off to the west, an’ he didn’t stay long afore he plumb disappeared.”

It could be someone riding to warn Evans of their departure from Chisum’s ranch, although he didn’t want to worry Duke or the others. “Maybe just a range cowboy out lookin’ for strays. But keep your eyes peeled anyway.”

“Pearlie said to tell you it didn’t look right, how this feller rode off that hilltop so quick, like he didn’t want nobody to see him.”

“Could just be a coincidence. I’ll ride over to the west a ways, just to make sure. Keep the cattle moving. Some of those longhorns are a little spooky yet. If one gun goes off, they’ll all break into a run.”

“I know the ornery critters right well,” Duke declared, as he turned his horse around. “Ain’t no creature on this earth as likely to run off as a damn longhorn. We’d be tryin’ to round ’em up till doomsday if somethin’ scares ’em.”

Smoke wondered about the rider they had seen as Duke rode off to rejoin the herd at point. Was Jessie Evans keeping an eye on them, planning his next attempt at revenge?

Swinging west, Smoke galloped his horse to the highest hill, where he had a view of what lay beyond. For a time, he sat his horse, motionless, making no effort to hide himself should anyone be watching. A herd the size of theirs couldn’t be hidden as it moved northward, no matter how carefully they were kept to low ground, making it pointless to hide his own presence on the hilltop now.

As far as the eye could see, the land was empty. A red hawk soared above distant stands of trees, hunting prey, a sign it sensed no danger from the presence of man in forests below. A hawk’s eyesight and hearing were far keener than a man’s, and it convinced Smoke they were alone here. For now.Twenty-nine

Ignacio Valdez came to a decision. Instead of riding back to Bosque Redondo to warn Jessie about the herd moving northward away from Chisum’s like Jessie wanted, he would take care of this broad-shouldered stranger called Smoke Jensen himself, and that would please Jessie. The sneaky gringo who’d killed so many of their gang would be dead, and Ignacio would get the credit for it, killing this loco hombre who had done so much damage when he snuck around behind them in the dark, like a coward. Ignacio was sure he could take Jensen down. In Chihuahua and Coahuila he’d been the fastest gun in northern Mexico, killing the likes of Luis Ortega, Manuel Soto, and the worst of them all in a pistol duel, Emiliano Zambrano.

He’d killed Zambrano with his first shot when they drew against each other in Juarez, over a woman. Ignacio remembered how much faster he had been, getting off a shot before the famous Zambrano could level his gun. Stories circulated that Zambrano had killed more than a dozen pistoleros in gunfights. He’d had ten notches in the walnut grips of the pistol he carried when Ignacio ended his life with a bullet through the heart.

“I can kill Jensen,” he told himself as he spurred his bay gelding well to the north of the cattle herd. “He is only a man, and I will be quicker, much quicker. I will cut off his head and bring it to Jessie as proof of what I have done…”

He guided his horse down a winding arroyo to a small stream lined with cottonwood trees, lying directly in the path of the herd. Ignacio spenta moment deciding where to hide his horse before he selected a spot to wait for Jensen. Jensen would stop to water his horse, or simply slow down to cross the creek, and this would be when Ignacio would kill him.

Hurrying away from the ravine where he tethered his bay, he trotted down to the stream, where a massive cottonwood trunk would hide his presence. Out of breath, he took off his sombrero and placed it on the ground in the tall grass where Jensen wouldn’t see it, before he pulled his Mason Colt .44/.40, checking each load carefully. Ignacio had decided against using a rifle—he wanted Jensen close before he killed him, close enough to see the fear and surprise on his face when he saw the man who would cut off his head for a trophy to give to Jessie Evans.

He peered around the cottonwood, waiting patiently. This would be easy, killing Jensen, almost too easy. It would make up for the lives Jensen had taken in such a cowardly fashion, to creep up behind some of Jessie’s men and four of Pedro Lopez’s pistoleros.

“Adios, Senor Jensen,” he whispered, pulling back so that only one eye was visible next to the tree trunk.

Water gurgled softly in the creek, passing over smooth stones on its way rejoin the Pecos. Ignacio ran the tip of his tongue across his gold tooth, almost grinning with anticipation.

A horse and rider approached the stream. Ignacio recognized Jensen and drew back out of sight, awaiting the moment when he could be sure of the kill. Resting his right palm on the butt of his Colt, he was eager for things to begin. The sounds made by the horse carne closer, very close, and suddenly, they stopped.

Ignacio jacked back the hammer on his pistol, so he only needed to draw and pull the trigger when he killed Jensen. He took a deep breath.

He heard a spur jingle when it touched the ground. He is down off his horse, Ignacio thought. All the better.

And still he waited for the right moment, when the sounds came nearer, making for surer aim.

Quiet footfalls approached the stream. This was the moment Ignacio had been waiting for. He swung around the cottonwood and spread his feet slightly apart.

“Jensen!” he cried, when he saw a tall cowboy wearing two pistols around his waist.

The man froze in his tracks and Ignacio was sure it was fear that made him so still.

“You called my name?” the cowboy asked, both hands relaxed at his sides.

“Si, and I am calling you a yellow coward. You killed some of mi amigos. I have come to make you pay for what you did.”

“You’d better be good,” the stranger said, his voice relaxed and even.

“But I am, senor. Very good. Muy bueno con una pistola. I am faster than you.”

“I reckon you’re gonna try to prove it now.”

“Verdad. This is the truth. I will kill you for what you did.”

Jensen gave him a one-sided grin, unusual for a man who was about to be gunned down.

“Lots of men have tried it over the years. You can see I’m still here.”

“But none were as fast as me, senor.” Ignacio raised his hand slightly closer to the butt of his gun, “Of that I am quite sure.”

“Only one way to find out,” Jensen replied. “Reach for that iron you’re carryin’ and we’ll decide this here and now.”

Now Ignacio grinned. “You are a fool, senor. Un idiota. You do not know who I am.”

“I don’t give a damn who you are. Just go for your gun and it won’t matter about the name.”

Ignacio noticed an odd, icy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “I am Ignacio Valdez,” he said, “the man who will put you in your grave.”

“I’ve already invited you to try it,” Jensen said. “Any time you’re ready.”

“You are indeed one loco hombre, Senor Jensen, You are too stupid to be afraid.”

“What’s there to be afraid of? Some Mexican pistolero who calls himself Ignacio Valdez?”

“Are you not afraid of dying, serior?”

“It ain’t been proven yet I’m the one who’s gonna die when we go for our guns. It could work out another way.”

Ignacio stared into the eyes of the stranger to these parts, and he wondered about him. His stare was unwavering, and he was so sure of himself.

Ignacio’s hand dipped for his pistol. His fingers closed around his gun grips. As he was pulling the heavy .44/.40 from its holster, he saw a sight that made his blood run cold.

Jensen came up with a gleaming Colt .44 in his right hand so quickly it did not seem possible, and for an instant Ignacio was looking down its,barrel, a dark round hole the size of his little finger. No man could be so fast, he thought as his own fist came up filled with iron.

The dark muzzle of Jensen’s gun shot forth a beacon of white light that was accompanied by a loud banging noise. Ignacio’s finger curled around the gun’s trigger, tightening, when it felt like he’d been struck in the ribs by a hammer blow.

The force of the impact drove him backward a half step at the same moment he triggered off a shot into the ground near his boots. He glanced down, seeing tiny tufts of lint arise from a puckering hole in his shirtfront. A trickle of blood came from the hole… Ignacio’s blood. His ears were ringing from the pair of gunshots.

“Madre!” he cried, trying to keep his feet under him when it seemed the earth was tilting at odd angles.

“You were too slow,” a voice said in front of him. “I gave you the first pull.”

Ignacio sank to his knees, his mind reeling. He barely noticed when his pistol fell from his hand. How could this have happened, he wondered. How could Jensen be faster than Emiliano Zambrano, the fastest gun in all of northern Mexico?

“Bastardo,” Ignacio spat angrily, waves of pain spreading across his chest. He looked up at Jensen, and he found the man smiling again.

“It’s all in the wrist,” Jensen explained, as if he were talking about the proper way to shoe a horse.

“Your wrist was too stiff. You gotta learn to bend it some, only I don’t figure you’ll have the time now.”

Ignacio saw himself as a small boy playing beside a creek in Torreon, a creek very similar to this one. He had skipped rocks there as a child. He knew his mind was wandering.

“Adios, Valdez,” Jensen said. “That slug caught you in a bad place. You’re bleedin’ like a stuck hog at butcherin’ time right now. I don’t figure you’ll last long.”

“Bastardo,” he said again, reaching for his wound with both hands to stem the flow of blood.

“I’d take offense to you callin’ me a bastard,” Jensen said, “if you wasn’t already dyin’.”

Ignacio’s vision blurred. He rocked forward on his knees and fell on his face, wondering if Jessie Evans had any idea how fast this Jensen was with a handgun… faster than any gunman Ignacio had ever seen… much faster than Emiliano Zambrano,Thirty

Two cowboys came galloping over the hilltop, their horses at full speed under the punishment of spurs, pistols drawn as they rode for the creek bank where Smoke stood over the body of the Mexican. Pearlie and Duke slowed their mounts when they could see the trouble was over. Both men pulled their horses to a halt a few yards from the stream.

“We heard shootin’!” Pearlie declared, glancing down at the body. “Don’t need no crystal ball to know that’s one of Jessie Evans’s men.”

Smoke holstered his gun. “Said his name was Ignacio Valdez, an’ that name should mean somethin’.”

Pearlie wagged his head and put his pistol away. “Means it’s gonna be hard to spell fer some undertaker when he puts it on his tombstone.” He gave Smoke a weak grin. “I figure it’s gonna be like this plumb to the Colorado border. I knowed we couldn’t just drive them cows peaceful all the way to Sugarloaf the way Cletus was hopin’ we could. I told Cletus last night to make damn sure his guns was loaded.”

Duke was last to rid his hand of a gun. “We heard two shots real close together.”

Smoke looked over his shoulder at Valdez. “He damn near shot himself in the foot just a moment ago. Had his pistol in the cocked position when he drew it, I’ve known a few gents who did without a toe or two the rest of their lives on account of that same bad habit.”

Duke chuckled. “I’ve never claimed to be much of a gunnie, but it don’t appear Mr. Valdez was much of one either.”

Smoke turned to collect his horse. “He was fast by most men’s standards, I suppose. He just wasn’t quite fast enough.”

Pearlie frowned. “That hired gun of Chisum’s, the one they call Buck, said to watch out fer a feller ridin’ with Evans by the name of Bill Pickett. An older feller, Buck said. Pickett is rattlesnake mean, accordin’ to Buck, an’ quicker’n greased lightnin’ with a pistol, only Buck claimed Pickett prefers usin’ a sawed-off shotgun.”

Nothing Pearlie said caused Smoke any worry as he mounted his bay Palouse colt. “A man with a sawed-off shotgun has to be mighty close to a target, Pearlie. Could mean his eyesight is a little on the bad side. If he crosses the road we’re takin’ to Big Rock, I’ll buy him a pair of spectacles so they can bury him with ’em on.”

Duke pointed to the body of Ignacio Valdez. “What you want us to do with that corpse, Mr. Jensen?” he asked.

“Not a damn thing. Let the buzzards and coyotes have a meal out of him. Scout around and find his horse. It won’t be far, an’ I’d hate to leave an animal tied up till it starves to death or breaks its reins. When Valdez don’t show up wherever Evans is waitin’ for him, he’ll come looking for him. And us. We can be sure of more gunplay sooner or later. Evans will likely bring this Pickett and anybody else he can hire. Like it or not, we’ve gotten ourselves into the middle of the Lincoln County War, just because we bought a herd of cattle from John Chisum.”

“I figured all along we’d have to shoot our way out of here,” Pearlie said, wheeling his horse away from the stream and the body. He spoke to Duke. “Look fer that horse whilst I git back to the herd. Ain’t nobody ridin’ point now an’ they’s sure liable to wander.” Then he noticed Smoke was looking off to the west.

“What’s wrong, boss?” Pearlie asked, when he saw a dark look cross Smoke’s face.

“I’m thinkin’,” Smoke replied.

“Thinkin’ ’bout what? If you don’t take no offense from me by askin’.”

Until right at that moment the attempted ambush by Ignacio Valdez hadn’t bothered him. But something changed inside his head in sudden fashion. “Thinkin’ about riding back to Lincoln right now to settle this once an’ for all, so the rest of you don’t have to duck lead all the way out of the territory. I can ask where to find Jimmy Dolan and look him up. I could warn him that if he sends one more gunman after this herd or any of my men, I’ll kill him. The more I think about it, the better that notion sounds.”

“It could be real dangerous,” Pearlie said.

Smoke’s mind was made up. A warning was what Jimmy Dolan needed. “You men keep pushing our herd north. Take your time, and don’t ride into any tight spots where a bushwhacker could take a shot at you. I’ll be back tomorrow. It’s time Mr. Dolan found out a thing or two about our intentions.”

Pearlie sounded worried. “What’ll we do if you don’t come back?

“Keep driving our cows toward Sugarloaf,” was all he said as he heeled his horse to a gallop.

The Murphy and Dolan General store sat across from the courthouse in Lincoln. By pushing his horse harder than he wanted to, Smoke arrived in front of the store just before closing time, at five o’clock. When he swung down from the saddle, bone-weary after so many hours of riding, trying to make Lincoln before dark, his legs were stiff.

Smoke entered the store in full stride, walking over to a clerk in a badly stained apron.

“Where’s Jimmy Dolan?” he demanded, staring down at the store clerk’s face.

“In the back, tallyin’ up the day’s receipts, only he don’t want to be disturbed right now.”

Smoke saw a door at the back of the building. “He’s gonna make an exception this time,” he said, stalking away from the glass-topped counter with his mouth set in a grim line.

He didn’t bother to knock, swinging a thin plank door inward as he walked into a small office. A man in shirtsleeves, with a distinctively pallid complexion, glanced up from a ledger book.

“I didn’t hear you knock, mister,” the man snapped, making no effort to disguise his anger.

“That’s because I didn’t,” Smoke said, stepping over to the desk where Dolan sat before he drew one pistol with his right hand, leveling it only a few inches from Dolan’s forehead. “I’m gonna give you some advice, Doian,” he said, glaring down at the store owner. He thumbed back the hammer on his .44. “My name is Jensen, Smoke Jensen. I bought a herd of cows from John Chisum and I’m takin’ ’em back to Colorado Territory. Only I’m havin’ this problem with a fool named Jessie Evans, He keeps tryin’ to kill me and my cowboys. I’ve been told Evans works for you in this range war you’re having in Lincoln County. I don’t give a damn about your war, or who you rustle cattle from, or anything else. I want you to send Evans a message tonight.”

“You’re a brazen man,” Dolan said, looking up at the muzzle of Smoke’s gun. “I’ll have you arrested for threatening me unless you put that gun away and get out of here immediately.”

“You don’t understand,” Smoke snarled. “You weren’t listening to me. Call off this Evans and your gunslingers right now, or so help me I’ll come back and kill you.”

“That’s strong talk, Jensen.”

Smoke leaned a little closer to Dolan’s face. “It ain’t just talk, you dumb son of a bitch. I’ve already killed eleven of your hired guns. I’ll kill every last one of ’em, including you, if anybody messes with me or my cowboys or my cattle again. I want you to understand, Dolan. The next son of a bitch who takes a shot at me is gonna start a game between us, a deadly game where you wind up bein’ the first to die. I’ll blow a goddamn tunnel through your head big enough to toss a tomcat through, and that’ll be just the start. I’ll hunt down Evans an’ every last one of his gunnies, and I’ll put ’em all in shallow graves.”

Dolan blinked. “One man wouldn’t stand a chance of doing what you claim to be able to do.”

“Just try me, creep. You can count on one thing bein’ for absolute certain. I’m gonna kill you first if a shot gets fired at me or my friends. You won’t be around to know if I can make good on the rest of my promise.”

“You’re crazy,” Dolan whispered,

Smoke wagged his head. “I’m just pissed-off. I’m tired of bein’ shot at. Tired of having to look over my shoulder to see if any more of your backshooters are behind me. I’m a rancher up in Colorado, but I’m also a real bad enemy to have if you don’t pay any attention to what I’m tellin’ you.”

“I’ll go to Sheriff Pat Garrett over in San Miguel County with this,” Dolan said.

“I hope you do,” Smoke hissed, barely able to control his rage over Dolan’s arrogance. “I’ll tell him how your boys came gunning for us at Chisum’s the other night, and how I killed six of the yellow bastards while they were shootin’ at the ranch in the dark. Then I’ll tell him how the big-talkin’ Mexican by the name of Ignacio Valdez tried to ambush me earlier today, only I killed him too, an’ it was easy. Notify this sheriff if you want, Dolan. But remember what I said… if just one more bullet comes at us, you’ll be as dead as Valdez an’ all the rest of your gunslicks.”

Dolan swallowed now, and Smoke saw the first hint of fear in his eyes. His message delivered, Smoke wheeled and walked out of the office.

“You may regret this,” Dolan warned as Smoke was leaving the store.

Smoke paused in the doorway. “I doubt it. You’ll be the one to regret your actions if you ain’t been listening to what I said.”

“One man can’t be all that good, that tough.”

Smoke smiled a humorless smile. “One way to find out. Send Evans and some of his men gunning for me.”

“I may just do that,” Dolan retorted, sounding like some of his nerve had returned.

Smoke kept smiling. “I’ll enjoy it, if you do. It’s been a long time since I killed more than a handful of men at one time. But I’ll enjoy killin’ you more than any of ’em, Dolan, because you’re a yellow son of a bitch who has to pay to get his dirty work done. Send your boys after me, if you’ve got the guts for it. But if you do, I’d check on the price of a good casket right after that, and a cemetery plot, ’cause you’re gonna need ’em both. And you’ll have to hire somebody to dig the hole ahead of time. You won’t be alive to attend to your final arrangements.”

He slammed the door and mounted his Palouse as the sun was setting on Lincoln. Dolan could have it any way he wanted now, after being warned of the consequences.Thirty-one

Cal and Pearlie and Johnny were saddling fresh horses at a stream the next afternoon as Smoke returned from Lincoln. Smoke could see the cow herd grazing along peacefully, and that all was well. He waved as he rode up to the creek, just in time to see Cal pull his saddle cinch and step aboard the back of a gray colt they’d brought along to season it to cow work. Smoke’s experienced eye saw the hump in the three-year-old colt’s back which Cal had apparently overlooked. Before Cal could get his leg over the cantle of his saddle, the gray downed its head and began to buck.

Cal was dislodged from his saddle during the first unexpected jump… He went sailing over the colt’s head as if he’d sprouted wings. Arms and legs wind-milling, Cal was propelled into the air, suspended above the stream for a moment before he fell headfirst into the water, sending up a shower of spray.

Pearlie was the first to burst out laughing, just as Cal came sputtering to the surface. Smoke chuckled, knowing it was a lesson Cal needed, to watch for a slight rise in a horse’s back before he mounted, a warning that the animal intended to buck as soon as it felt a man’s weight.

“What happened?” Cal cried, scrambling to his feet in the shallow water without his hat, blinking to clear his vision. His hat floated slowly downstream, unnoticed for now.

“You got your young ass bucked off,” Pearlie replied as he held his belly between fits of laughter. “You looked fer all the world like you was tryin’ to fly, young ’un, up there with them sparrows an’ blue jays. When I seen you way up yonder, I thought I’d just laid eyes on the ugliest buzzard on this earth!” He broke into another series of hee-haws, clutching his ribs.

“It ain’t all that funny,” Cal mumbled, staggering across slippery stones in the stream bottom to retrieve his Stetson before it floated away. “I just wasn’t ready, is all it was. That gray’s got a mean streak in him.”

Johnny North was grinning. “Wasn’t that gray’s fault, Cal. You shoulda noticed that hump in his back.”

“Wasn’t no hump there,” Cal insisted, shaking water from his hat, his young cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “It was that damn colt’s nasty disposition, is what it was.” Cal stumbled out of the creek, his boots full of water, unable to look directly at Smoke or Pearlie for the moment, so deep was his humiliation over being thrown.

“Hell, young ’un, you was needin’ a bath anyways,” Pearlie said, again breaking into a guffaw or two. “If I’d had a bar of lye soap, I’d have tossed it up in the air whilst you was testin’ your wings. That way, you coulda scrubbed clean soon as you landed. You done one of the prettiest dives I ever saw in my life just now. Damn near a perfect landin’.”

As Pearlie started laughing again, Smoke swung down from the saddle, exhausted by a long night ride to reach the herd as soon as he could, resting his Palouse more often on the return trip to spare it any bog spavins or other lameness. “It was a right pretty landing, son,” he said to Cal, knowing how the boy must feel with an audience for his mistake.

Pearlie fell quiet all of a sudden. He looked at Smoke for a time. “How did things go in Lincoln?” he asked. “Did you have to shoot Jimmy Dolan? Or was he ready to listen?”

Smoke loosened the cinch on his tired colt, “He didn’t pay all that much attention. I warned him what would happen if one more shot got fired at us. He figures I’m bluffing.”

“Then he don’t know you at all,” Pearlie said, serious now. “If he knowed anythin’ about Smoke Jensen, he’d know you don’t never run no bluff on nobody.”

“I’m expectin’ more trouble,” Smoke told Pearle. “Dolan is the type who thinks his money will get him everything he’s after. He talks big.”

“How come you didn’t kill him?” Pearlie asked, “Or slap him plumb silly with the barrel of a gun?”

“I’m giving him a chance to think it over. It was probably a waste of time talking to him, telling him what I’d do if Evans and his boys come back. I’m betting they will.”

Pearlie shook his head, glancing over to Cal as the boy was pulling off his boots to drain the water out. “Won’t be much sleepin’ fer this crew from now on,” he said. “I can damn near feel it comin’ in my bones, like when a blue norther is headed our way.”

Smoke cast a lingering look at the herd before he spoke again. “I’m of the opinion your bones are telling you the truth this time, Pearlie,” he said, leading his Palouse colt away from the creek to saddle a fresh horse.Thirty-two

He gave his name in broken English as Little Horse, then he pointed to seven young warriors standing behind him, introducing one as Dreamer, another as Sees Far, then the others, all names Jessie quickly forgot. He didn’t care what these Apaches called themselves.

“Can they shoot straight?” Jessie asked Little Horse.

Little Horse nodded once. “Many time kill white-eyes,” he said, balancing a badly worn Spencer carbine in one hand. “We kill more if you pay us money.” He carried a rusted Colt in a sash around his waist, along with a gleaming Bowie knife. This Indian in particular was always in trouble with the soldiers at Fort Stanton for running off from the reservation to steal horses and cattle, scalping white settlers in the process. Litde Horse had just gotten out of jail at the fort, along with the seven men who came with him, when no witnesses could identify them as the killers of six white farmers in the Penasco Valley last year.

“Get the ammunition you need from that store over yonder,” he told the Apache. “Then get mounted an’ follow us.” He gave Jimmy Dolan a sideways look. “That makes eight more. Ten just showed up last night from Mexico, all good pistoleros, accordin’ to Pedro Lopez. He knows most of ’em.“

Dolan frowned. “I hope they’re better than Ignacio Valdez,” he muttered. “You told me Valdez was really good.”

“That Jensen feller probably ambushed him from hidin’ some place or another. It sure as hell wasn’t no fair fight if he got Ignacio.”

“Just make damn sure you get Jensen at all costs,” Dolan said quietly, standing in the road where Jessie and more than thirty mounted men waited, all heavily armed. Townspeople were staring at the gang from all over Lincoln’s main street.

“You can bank on it,” Jessie replied.

Dolan’s expression hardened. “Jensen is a cocksure son of a bitch. He acted like he owned Lincoln County. I wasn’t carrying a gun, and yet he stuck his pistol right in my face when he came barging in the store. I want him dead. Nobody sticks a gun in my face like that.”

“I’ll bring you his head in a tow sack,” Jessie promised as the Apaches went inside the store to get cartridges. “I’ll have forty men with me, includin’ those redskins. There ain’t but seven or eight with that herd, includin’ Jensen. It’ll be over before it gets started.”

“Kill them all,” Dolan whispered, so that citizens of Lincoln standing nearby wouldn’t hear. “Don’t leave a goddamn one of them alive to tell what happened.”

“It’s as good as done,” Jessie said, resting a palm on the butt of his Colt, He grinned and aimed a thumb at Bill Pickett. “I’ve done promised Pickett he can make sure every last one of ’em is dead. He gets a kick out of killin’ with that shotgun of his. I’m sure as hell glad he’s on our payroll.”

“Just get the job done this time,” Dolan snapped. “I’m paying good money to get results, not a bunch of empty promises like the last time.”

“That was on account of Billy Barlow warned ’em. Soon as we get back, I’ll find Barlow an’ kill him myself.”

“Do whatever it takes,” Dolan said, walking away with his hands shoved in his pants pockets.

Jessie mounted his horse, waiting between Pickett and Tom Hill for the Apaches to come out of the store.

“Goddamn Injuns can’t shoot,” Pickett said with heat in his voice. “None of ’em can.”

“Maybe they’ll get lucky,” Jessie replied. “Little Horse, the one who speaks some English, is tough, an’ a dead shot when he’s up close, accordin’ to Colonel Dudley. They’ve been tryin’ to find something to pin on him so they can hang him, only he’s smart. He don’t get caught very often. They had to let him go this time because nobody would testify it was him murdered them farmers.”

“I hate Injuns,” Pickett declared. “After we get done with this Jensen feller, I’ll do the army a favor by blowin’ off that damn Apache’s skullbone.”

Jessie shrugged. “When we’re finished with Jensen, I don’t give a damn what you do. You can kill all those Apaches for all I care. That way, Dolan don’t have to pay ’em.”

“Sounds good to me,” Pickett said.

Jessie noticed Tom Hill’s color wasn’t quite right after he heard what Pickett meant to do to the Indians. Glancing over his shoulder, Jessie took another look at the ten Mexicans who’d ridden in at Bosque Redondo the night before. All were bearded, hard-faced men with crisscrossed cartridge bandoliers over each shoulder. The pistolero who led this bunch was named Jose Vasquez, and he had a certain look about him showing confidence. Pedro said Jose was a bandido, and a killer who took great pride in his work.

Jessie thought about Smoke Jensen. For a man he’d never met, this Colorado rancher was sure as hell causing a lot of trouble in New Mexico Territory, a condition that was about to end tonight, or whenever they caught up to him and his cow herd. With the odds being over four to one against Jensen, he would be dead by the time the sun went down tomorrow. Jessie was certain of it, as Little Horse and his Apaches came out of the store to climb aboard their scrawny ponies.

“Let’s ride,” he said to the men around him, wheeling his horse to the east.

“We can’t get there soon enough to suit me,” Pickett said as they struck a trot out of Lincoln.

Forty-three gunmen followed Jessie into the hills east of Lincoln Township. The rattle of curb chains, spur rowels, and armament accompanied their departure. Dust curled away from their horses’ heels.

Jessie noticed Jimmy Dolan standing on the porch of his store watching them ride off. Jessie promised himself Mr. Dolan wouldn’t be disappointed this time when he heard what had happened somewhere along the Pecos River.Thirty-three

Bob and Cletus and Johnny rode slow circles around the herd as the cattle bedded down for the night. The day had passed uneventfully, but when Smoke scouted for a place to hold the herd for the night, he selected it carefully, with defense from an all-out attack in mind, deciding upon the middle of a flat, grassy prairie with no trees or brush nearby where a rifleman would be in range. He knew, once the shooting started, the longhorns would scatter in every direction, making for a difficult time rounding them up, even in daylight. Under the present circumstances, it was the best he could do, to stay out in the open so Evans would have to charge them without benefit of cover. Defenders lying in tall bunch grass would have an advantage over men charging across the flat meadow toward the herd.

Pearlie handed Smoke a tin plate full of beans and fried fatback. He had been watching Smoke use a whetstone across the iron blade of a Ute tomahawk he always carried in his saddlebags. “You figure they’re comin’ tonight, don’t you?” he asked.

Smoke began eating, his face more deeply etched by lines in the light of their campfire. “Hard to say, Pearlie. Best thing to do is be ready for ’em anytime:”

“They’ll come from the west, from the direction of Lincoln., I reckon.”

“Most likely.” He chewed thoughtfully a moment. “That’s why I’m headed that way, as soon as I’ve eaten. Those trees way over yonder will give me some cover. I’ll go on foot, so I can move around quiet. They may come at us from the south if they’ve been following our tracks. I want you and the rest to spread out around the herd with rifles and plenty of ammunition. Find a spot in that tall grass where you’ll be harder to see when you shoot. They’ll have to cross a bunch of open ground to get to us, and that’ll cost ’em. Those longhorns are gonna run like mad as soon as the first shot gets fired. I’ll try to drop as many of Jessie’s boys as I can before they get too close. Main thing is to stay down. I don’t want anybody to take chances.”

“You’ll be the one takin’ chances,” Pearlie observed.

Smoke continued eating. “I’m accustomed to it, Pearlie. I reckon I’ve been taking chances all my life, so I’ve had plenty of practice. The most important thing is that none of you take a bullet, and if you can, protect those Herefords. We can buy more long-horns if we lose a few, but those white-faced bulls can’t be replaced very easy. Save as many as you can.”

Pearlie glanced across the dark prairie. “Evans would have to be a fool to charge us out in the open like this, even if he done it at night, ’less he’s got a helluva lot of men with him.”

“I expect him to bring a sizable bunch this time. I’ll kill as many as I can before they rush you.”

-“I noticed you’s wearin’ your moccasins ’stead of your boots tonight.”

“Quieter,” Smoke said.

Cal had been listening closely while he ate. “I reckon I’m about to git another chance to kill somebody. It sure does a job on my nerves.”

“It ain’t affected yer appetite any,” Pearlie said.

“I’m eatin’ because I’m nervous.”

“Hell, you eat all the time anyways…”

Smoke got up as Duke was corning to the fire after tying his horse to the picket rope. He saw the tomahawk in Smoke’s hand.

“I sure hope they don’t get that close, Mr. Jensen,” he said as Smoke tucked the handle under his cartridge belt.

“That’s why I’m headed for those trees yonder,” Smoke replied, inclining his head to the west, “so I can keep some of ’ern from getting close.” He looked over his shoulder at Pearlie and Cal. I’ll see you boys at daybreak if nothing happens tonight. Put out that fire soon as everyone’s eaten.“

Pearlie nodded. “We’s all wishin’ you good luck, boss.”

Smoke picked up his rifle. “You should know by now I never depend on luck, Pearlie.” He strode softly into the darkness, his moccasins making no sound.

False dawn came to the eastern sky, making shadows that played tricks on a man’s eyes… unless he knew a thing or two about shadows in early light. The night had passed without incident, although Smoke continued to circle the herd from a distance, moving from tree to tree, pausing to listen and study the forest before moving on again.

A sound came from an unexpected place, the unmistakable plop of an unshod horse’s hoof. He hadn’t been expecting Indians, not when Jessie Evans was the enemy. But few white men rode unshod horses in rough country, and the sound of a hoof without an iron shoe was distinctive, easy to recognize.

He hurried toward the sound, dodging from pine trunk to pine trunk, until he crept close to a small clearing, where the outlines of two Apache warriors on wiry ponies moved slowly in the direction of the prairie where the herd was bedded down.

Apache scouts, he thought, by the way they wore their hair under a headband. Smoke continued forward, pulling his tomahawk with his right hand, a pistol with his left.

The element of surprise would be with him if he moved quickly. He crept up behind the pair of Indians, and when the distance was right, he broke into a soundless headlong run.

His first blow with the razor-sharp tomahawk sliced across the back of an Apache’s neck, severing muscle and ligaments and tissue all the way down to bone. Jerking his weapon free, he swung at the other Indian just as he was turning to see what had made the wet, chopping noise, then the dull thud of a falling body.

The tomahawk’s blade struck the Apache full in the face, entering his cheek and eye socket, splitting bones with a sharp crack. A muffled cry came from the warrior’s throat as his pony lunged forward, sending him toppling to the ground with Smoke’s Ute tomahawk buried in his brain.

Again jerking the weapon free, Smoke whirled around to dash back into the forest with blood dripping from the ax blade onto his leggings. Where there were two scouts, there could be more. He was certain these were not wandering renegades on the lookout for easy pickings—they worked for Evans, leading his gang to Smoke and his friends. A full-fledged attack was only moments away, coming at dawn, when cowboys who had been vigilant all night would be tired, sleepy, not as watchful.

Smoke knew he had precious little time to reduce the odds against them before Evans led his men charging toward the herd.

The young Apache never heard Smoke’s stealthy approach up to his hiding place behind a tree, and when the tomahawk hit the back of his head, splitting it in half like a ripe melon, he did not utter a word or make a sound, crumpling to the forest floor in a growing pool of blood. Smoke knew there were two more Indians watching the herd somewhere… he’d found three ponies in a thicket, tied to low tree limbs.

Racing away from his third kill, Smoke saw a shadow move at the base of another oak tree at the edge of the prairie.

“They’re makin’ it easy for me, spreadin’ out like this,” he said in a feathery whisper.

Practicing the stalking art he’d learned from Preacher, Smoke came up behind an Apache cradling a Spencer rifle, peering around the oak to see the distant cattle herd. But this Indian somehow sensed something near him as Smoke leaped forward… he turned, just in time to see the flash of steel coming at him in a high arc above his head.

The pop of breaking bone ended a total silence in the forest when Smoke’s tomahawk cleaved open the Apache’s forehead, driving him back against the tree briefly. Then he sank to his knees as Smoke pulled the blade free amid a torrent of blood coming from a wound eight inches deep between the Indian’s eyes.

Smoke didn’t wait to see the Apache fall. He was running to the south when he heard a muted plop behind him.

He found the last Indian relieving himself behind a bush with his rifle leaning against a pinon pine. There wasn’t time to allow the Apache to empty his bladder before he died from a sweeping slash across the side of his throat from a tomahawk severing his head.

Smoke darted behind a tree, listening. Farther to the south he heard the clank of a metal spur rowel.

“Here comes the rest of the army,” he told himself. It was unlikely there could be any more killing without gunfire, and the commencement of all-out war.

Smoke trotted back to the fork of a tree where he’d hidden his rifle, passing five lifeless bodies in the soft light of a coming sunrise, the air already thick with the scent of blood.

A lone Mexican squatting behind a thick tangle of thorny brush gave Smoke one more chance to kill soundlessly. A blow to the head by a tomahawk snuffed out the Mexican’s life before he realized someone was behind him. He went over on his face in the briars with blood pumping from his skull, oblivious to the scratches on his bearded cheeks and chin where sharp thorns tore into his flesh.

Smoke paused and took a deep breath. His killing instincts had once again overtaken him, pushing everything else from his mind. But just once, before he took off looking for more victims in the forest, he thought about the promise he’d made to Sally to steer clear of a fight, if he could.

“She’d understand,” he whispered. He’d done everything he could to warn Jessie Evans and Jimmy Dolan what would happen if they pushed him.

He moved more slowly now, with light beaming over eastern hills that would reveal his presence. Carrying the Winchester in one hand, a pistol in the other, he’d belted the tomahawk, for it had done all the damage it could before sunrise.

Smoke stepped among the trees, halting often to sweep the forest for any sign of the enemy. When it was safe to continue, he moved south, wondering if Evans had split his forces so that some were already surrounding the herd.

Can’t be two places at once, he thought, trotting wherever he could, walking where there was less cover.

Then he saw what he’d been expecting all along, a bunch of mounted men waiting in a draw surrounded by slender oaks. He froze behind a tree to count them.

“A baker’s dozen,” he whispered. Thirteen men would be hard to tackle single-handed. Smoke knew he had no choice.Thirty-four

A pistol in each hand, his Winchester lying between his feet within easy reach, Smoke straightened up behind a bush at the lip of the ravine—as with the five Apaches, these men would get no warning before they died—this was open war now.

He began firing methodically, one pistol, then the other, sending a stream of lead into the gully while the roar of exploding gunpowder filled his ears. Bullets tore through flesh in a steady stream, snapping bone and gristle, piercing organs and muscle. Frightened horses whickered and reared, plunging to be free of the pull of reins as riders toppled down into a mass of churning hooves.

Cries of pain, screams of agony accompanied the gun blasts and the sounds of terrified horses. Taken completely by surprise, the gunmen merely sought an escape from the deadly hail of hot slugs pouring down on them, but as each one made a dash toward freedom, he was cut down, knocked from his saddle by a bullet. Not a shot was fired back at Smoke until both his pistols were empty, and as he seized his rifle, only two unharmed members of Evans’s gang remained aboard their horses. One was able to ride into the trees before Smoke could get off a rifle shot, but the second, a heavy Mexican, met his end as he was spurring his horse behind the first to flee. A rifle slug caught him in the ribs, cracking when it penetrated bone while passing into his chest. He fell sideways, with his right boot caught in a stirrup, so that as his horse galloped out of sight he was dragged along in its wake, leaving a trail of blood through the forest.

Smoke was moving before the echo of his rifle shot faded away, hurrying away from the scene, a ravine filled with writhing bodies and motionless corpses.

He raced back among the trees toward the herd, certain that now Evans would order a full charge toward the cattle. As he was running, he reloaded his Colts, cradling his rifle in the crook of his arm.

And as he expected, he heard the rumble of pounding hooves coming from the south and east. Men came pouring from the pines in every direction, spurring their mounts into a hard gallop, and even a quick count revealed there were far more of them than Smoke had anticipated. It appeared that twenty or more riders were rushing onto the prairie, and now the crackle of guns went back and forth almost in unison.

“The yellow bastard hired every gun in Lincoln County,” Smoke growled, running faster, hurrying toward a position where he could help Pearlie and Cal and Johnny and his neighbors by firing from the enemy’s flank. Until he was in range, he dared not waste a shot, telling Evans and the others where he was.

Answering fire came from Smoke’s friends, only a few shots at a time right then. In his heart, Smoke doubted everyone in his crew could make it through a war like this without a scratch, and the thought saddened him momentarily, until blind rage overtook his sorrow.

“I’m comin’, Evans!” he bellowed, knowing no one could hear him in the melee, racing along the edge of the forest with a killing fever burning in his brain.

An unexpected bit of good fortune presented itself just as he was nearing a thick oak trunk. Three riders came charging out of the trees with guns blazing, unaware that Smoke was only a few dozen yards away.

Smoke stumbled to a halt and drew a bead on the first rider with a pistol, firing too quickly, shooting high and wide. He triggered off a second shot as all three men turned toward the sound of his gun.

A man in a dirty brown Stetson flipped off his horse when Smoke’s second bullet found its mark. Smoke fired again at another gunman, more careful with his aim now. A Mexican with cartridge belts across his chest went down, his sombrero fluttering away while he fell.

The third rider fired at Smoke, a hurried shot from the back of a moving horse. A molten slug screamed high above Smoke’s head. Smoke downed him with a booming pistol, watching another Mexican gunman fly out of his saddle with his face twisted in pain.

Three riderless horses galloped onto the prairie, one with blood dripping from its withers, where its owner had bled before he fell.

The rattle of rifle fire became a din, a constant wall of noise as more than two hundred longhorn heifers scattered with their tails in the air, snorting through their muzzles as the stampede Smoke had been worrying about began. He could see the gentler Herefords milling about, but for the moment they stayed together in a tight bunch.

A rifle popped from a clump of bunch grass near the picketed horses. One of Evans’s men floated away from his galloping horse with both hands pressed to his face.

“Nice shot,” Smoke muttered, shouldering his rifle to begin dropping as many oncoming raiders as he could.

Leading a moving target with his rifle sights, he fired at a cowboy on a speeding pinto. A miss, and it made him angry as he levered another round into place.

“I’ve gotta get closer,” he said savagely.

Two of Evans’s men noticed him for the first time and swung their horses in his direction, bearing down on him as fast as their horses could run.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Smoke whispered, taking very careful aim.

His Winchester slammed into his shoulder, and the report made his ears ring. But mild discomfort did nothing to take away from the satisfaction when a cowboy tumbled into the grass, his horse swerving away from the noise.

Smoke killed the second horseman with a bullet through the crown of his hat, which also sliced through the top of his skull, permanently parting the gunman’s hair down the middle before he rolled off the rump of his horse.

“Time to move,” Smoke spat, ducking down as he left the tree at a run, heading straight for the middle of the fight.Thirty-five

Billy Morton spurred his horse relentlessly to catch up to Jessie, and when Jessie saw him angling across the prairie, he wondered where the others were, the dozen men Billy was supposed to lead into the attack from the southwest. Billy was all alone, and he shouldn’t have been. Dodging stampeding longhorns, Jessie motioned to Pickett and the men behind him to continue charging Jensen and his cowboys while he reined off to find out what Billy was in such a hurry to tell him.

Billy hauled back on his reins, bringing his lathered sorrel to a sliding stop when he rode up to Jessie. Jessie saw a look on Billy’s face that could only be fear.

“He got behind us again!” Billy shouted to be heard above the bang of guns and the bawling of runaway cattle.

“Who?” Jessie demanded.

“That feller Jensen. It’s gotta be him. A big son of a bitch with two pistols. I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it in all my horned days, Jessie. We was ready to charge out here when this big bastard appeared out of nowhere, both pistols blazin’. He killed everybody! ’Cept me. I was lucky to get out with my skin. One man ain’t supposed to be able to do what he did. He killed twelve goddamn men, Jessie, in less time than it takes me to tell it”

Despite the battle going on in front of him, Jessie stared at the spot where Billy and a mix of pistoleros from Vasquez’s bunch and Pedro Lopez’s gang were supposed to have entered the fight. He couldn’t quite make himself believe what Billy had told him just now. “Had to be some others shootin’,” he said, as the crack of a rifle close by made him flinch, a wild shot taken by one of the young Apaches galloping by. Sighting the Apache, Jessie wondered where the other Indians were now. Only two of them were out on the prairie doing any shooting, and their leader, Little Horse, wasn’t among them.

“Just him, Jessie. I swear to it,” Billy said. “Ain’t no man on earth can kill twelve men like he done, only I seen it with my own two eyes while I was gettin’ the hell away from there fast as this horse could run.”

“How come nobody shot him?” Jessie asked, feeling a touch of worry growing in the pit of his stomach.

“Wasn’t time. He stood up behind this bush an’ emptied both guns as fast as he could pull them triggers. Men was droppin’ like flies.” Billy looked over his shoulder quickly as a group of terrified longhorns raced by. “That ain’t even the worst of it,” Billy continued, his voice with an unusually high pitch. “Just when I was comin’ to tell you what happened to us, I saw that half-breed, Raul Jones, come ridin’ out of them trees yonder with a couple of Pedro’s men. Somebody cut ’em down before you could blink. I figure it had to be Jensen.”

It wasn’t possible, what Billy was telling him, how one man could be so lucky. Or was he that good? He couldn’t be, not an ordinary cattleman from some place up in Colorado.

Now Jessie looked at the fight going on around Jensen’s camp and he saw two more of his men fall from their saddles. Pickett and Tom Hill had already swung their horses around when rifle fire from Jensen’s cowboys proved too accurate. Pickett was no coward, but out in the open like he was, he and Tom were sitting ducks.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, Jessie,” Billy said, “tangling with Smoke Jensen. He ain’t the tinhorn everybody claimed he was. The big son of a bitch can damn sure shoot. .I seen it for myself.”

“I ain’t never met a man I backed down from,” Jessie growled, with more resolve than he truly felt at the moment, after finding out how many more lives this Jensen had taken, all in a matter of minutes, before the attack had really gotten started. Now he found himself wondering if Jensen had gotten Little Horse and his four scouts. He could see their assault on the cowboys’ camp was doing little beyond running off Jensen’s herd. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good plan to come at them out in the open like this. We’ll pull back an’ find another way. Ride a wide circle an’ tell the men to head north. It’s gonna take Jensen awhile to round up these cattle, an’ that’ll give us time to come up with a better idea. They’re headed north to Colorado with this herd, so we’ll look for a place north of here to set up an ambush that can’t fail.”

Bill Pickett and Tom Hill galloped up as Billy was leaving to give Jessie’s order to withdraw. Pickett’s face was a mask of hatred.

“Half your damn gunslicks ran off before we rushed ’em,” he said. “Look out yonder. There ain’t but fifteen or twenty of us, an’ we come here with more’n forty. So few of us can’t get close enough to find anything to shoot at. Them cowboys are all layin’ down in the grass where we can’t see ’em, an’ we’re out in the open.”

“Some of ’em didn’t run off,” Jessie said quietly, as most of the gunfire stopped when Billy began motioning men to pull out and follow him northward. “Billy told me Jensen killed twelve men in that ravine where they was waitin’ for my signal, an’ then he got three more, includin’ Raul. He may have killed Little Horse an’ our scouts. Ain’t seen ’em since before the fight started…” As he was speaking to Pickett, he saw a hatless man carrying a rifle running on foot toward the cowboy camp. “That must be Jensen right there. If I had a Sharps buffalo gun…”

Pickett saw the running figure too. He squinted to see him more clearly in the bright morning sunlight. “He’s just one man, Jessie. He may be good, but there’s always somebody who’s a little better. If he done what Billy claimed he did, then he’s pretty damn good. Only, I’m promisin’ you I can kill him if I get to pick the place, an’ the time.”

“I’m gonna give you that opportunity,” Jessie remarked as a final gunshot popped in the distance. “You can pick the spot. I don’t give a damn how you do it I just want Jensen dead. We’ll skirt their camp an’ head north, the direction they’ve got to go to get to Colorado. You can start lookin’ for the right place on the way up.”

The man Jessie believed to be Jensen disappeared into a tall stand of bunch grass near a group of tethered horses still pawing the ground, prancing as a result of loud gunfire coming from all directions.

“I’ll kill him for you,” Pickett promised again. “You just let me do it my way.”

Unconsciously Jessie shook his head in disbelief when he got a count of the men Billy was leading north, scarcely more than a dozen. Was it possible that Jensen could have killed so many men himself? It went against everything Jessie knew about paid shootists. Even the best of them in tough border towns like Laredo could barely claim a dozen kills over a lifetime. Jensen had killed at least that many in a matter of minutes.

Tom Hill spoke his mind. “Whoever Jensen is, he ain’t got any stake in this range war, really. We could let him ride back to Colorado an’ git on with rustlin’ Chisum out of business, so don’t no more of us git killed.”

“Are you turnin’ yellow on me, Tom?” Jessie asked.

“Nope,” Tom replied with conviction. “I’ve done my share of killin’ over the years, but there’s always come a few times when I knowed to toss in my cards an’ git out of the game. You ain’t asked me, but I’ve got this funny feelin’ about tryin’Jensen again. Never was all that superstitious myself, but I’ve seen with my own fwo eyes what this feller Jensen can do. Some men are borned with a knack fer killin’. It comes natural to ’em, same as breathin’ air.”

Pickett’s jaw tightened. “He’ll bleed same as any man”

“Maybe,” Tom said. “First, somebody’s got to git close enough to put a bullet in him. Since he come here, that ain’t been too awful easy.”

Pickett glared at Tom, as though he’d been insuited by the remark. “Ain’t nobody with backbone tried yet. These yellow sons of bitches Jessie hired don’t know the first thing ’bout killin’ a man, seems to me.”

Before Jessie lifted his reins to ride off, he caught a glimpse of an Indian riding out of trees to the west. It was Dreamer, if Jessie remembered right. “Yonder’s one of them Apaches. If he speaks any English, I’ll ask him what come of Little Horse an’ all the others.”

“My money says they cut an’ run,” Pickett growled. “I told you a goddamn Injun ain’t worth the gunpowder it takes to kill ’em when it comes down to cases.”

The Indian came galloping up on a piebald paint pony. He looked at Jessie for a moment as if trying to think of the right words to say.

Jessie grew impatient. “What the hell happened to Little Horse an’ the rest?”

“All dead,” Dreamer answered, making an odd slashing motion with his hand across the top of his scalp. “Chop head, like this. Come see.”

“I don’t need to see it,” Jessie snapped, when his grim prediction proved to be true.

Tom swallowed. “I didn’t know Jensen used a woodcutter’s ax in a fight like this. Most Apaches are mighty damn hard to sneak up on, ’specially fer a white man.”

“Let’s ride,” Jessie said, weary of hearing more bad news. “We’ll catch up with Billy an’ the others an’ then we’ll decide what to do.”

“I’ve already decided,” Pickett said as he turned his horse to follow Jessie. “I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch myself, an’ when I blow his goddamn head all to pieces with ol’ Betsy here, you’ll see Mr. Smoke Jensen wasn’t nothin’ but lucky he didn’t run into me first.”

As they rode around the cowboy camp Jessie wasn’t so sure of Pickett’s judgment when it came to Jensen. There was a ring of truth to what Tom had said, about some men having a natural gift when it came to killing. He recalled a time down in West Texas a few years ago, when he saw Clay Allison in action. Allison could draw and shoot as quickly as Jessie, and for that reason, Jessie left him completely alone until an offer of a job in New Mexico took him out of Sanderson.

He gave Jensen’s camp a last look before he urged his horse into a thin line of trees to the northeast. Jessie couldn’t help remembering what Dreamer had just told him, that Little Horse and his Apaches died from split skulls. Tom was right about one thing, that an Apache was hard to slip up on from behind. It was beginning to seem like Jensen was always finding a way to get behind them.Thirty-six

Smoke crept up to camp and spoke before he showed himself. “It’s me. Is everybody okay?”

Pearlie rose up from his grassy hiding place. “Johnny took a bullet in the leg, but it’s hardly more’n a scratch. I tied his bandanna ’round it till we could fix a proper bandage. He’s lyin’ over yonder next to the horses.” He pointed north. “All of ’em cleared out, leastways the ones we could see. Wasn’t near as many of ’em as I figured there’d be.”

Smoke didn’t bother to explain how he’d reduced the odds considerably. “Let’s get the horses saddled and round up as many of our cows as we can.” He examined the bunched Herefords not far away. “One of our young bulls caught a stray bullet in the neck, and we’ll probably have to put him down.”

“I seen it up close,” Bob called from a spot near the bulls, “an’ it’s in his brisket. Bullet passed clean through. It don’t hardly bleed any now, an’ I’m bettin’ he’ll make it.”

“That’s good news,” Smoke replied tiredly, sinking to the ground to put on his riding boots and place the bloody tomahawk in his saddlebags.

One by one, the cowboys stood up, when it was clear Evans and his men were gone. “We damn sure held ’em off,” Cletus said, as Johnny limped over to their blackened firepit with pain written across his face. “ ’Cept fer Johnny, I’d say we was lucky.”

Johnny agreed. “I was also lucky. That slug could have hit me in worse places. I’ll mend.”

Longhorn heifers were scattered from one end of the plain to the other, while many had run into the trees to escape the loud banging noises.

“We’ll be all day gittin’ ’em rounded up,” Pearlie said, as he carried his saddle to the picket ropes.

Duke was the last to come in from his hiding place in the grass. “I figured they was gonna run over us like a locomotive for a spell. Somethin’ must have changed their minds.”

Pearlie gave Smoke a knowing look. “I imagine Mr. Jensen can tell us what it was, ifn he’s of a mind to talk about it.”

“I got a few,” Smoke replied, pulling on his boots before he stood up with his saddle and bridle. “Everybody ride careful out there, just in case there’s some who ain’t dead, or still have some fight left.”

Cal ’s face was ghostly white when he spoke up. “What do we do if we find a wounded man, boss?”

“Leave the son of a bitch right where he is. We haven’t got time to be doctorin’ men who just tried to kill us. Let ’em rot for all I care.”

“I shot one,” Cal added quietly, “a big feller in a sombrero with belts on his chest. Makes two so far on this trip. I sure do hope there ain’t no more to my credit later on.”

“You were doing what you had to do to help protect your friends and the cattle herd, son,” Smoke told him. “Don’t let it eat on you so hard.”

“I’m tryin’ not to think about it.” Cal lifted his saddie to go to the picket line. “But I seen his face when I shot him. His eyes got big as fried turkey eggs, an’ then there was blood all over his face. He dropped the rifle he was carryin’ an’ put his hands over his eyes just before he fell off his horse. It damn near made me sick all over again.”

“I’m bettin’ a month’s pay you ain’t sick enough to keep from cleanin’ your plate tonight, young ’un. Don’t nothin’ make you that belly-sick.”

In spite of Johnny’s obvious pain, he chuckled. “That’s damn sure one thing about Cal, all right. He can eat no matter what.”

Cal pretended not to be listening, saddling his horse as quickly as he could.

Smoke was in for a pleasant surprise as the morning wore on, for it seemed the longhorns were willing to gather on the prairie without much urging. Most of them settled quickly and began to graze alongside the Hereford bulls.

As the cow work continued, Smoke thought about the direction the Evans gang had ridden… north, making it logical they would try again farther up the trail. He wondered how much convincing Jessie Evans needed.

Pearlie and Duke came trotting over to a grove of oaks where Smoke had just driven out three longhorns, helping him push them toward the main bunch.

“That makes over a hundred an’ thirty head so far,” Duke said. “This is easier than it looked like it was gonna be when we first got started.”

Smoke nodded his agreement as he saw Cletus and Cal bringing five more cows from the east. Two more strays came out of the woods farther north on their own. “Some of ’em are volunteering to come back themselves.”

Pearlie shrugged. “Longhorns is the most unpredictable critters on earth. Sometimes they run off fer no reason at all. Other times they won’t run if you ask ’em to, an’ a few times they stampede an’ then come back without bein’ asked. The first man who figures out how a longhorn’s brain works is gonna make hisself a fortune.”

Smoke was keeping an eye on the horizon, and Pearlie was the first to notice.

“You know they’ll be back, don’t you?” he asked, as the cows took off in a trot to rejoin the others.

“It’s likely,” was all he said.

“They’ll do it different next time,” Pearlie assured him a moment later. “They won’t come at us straight on.”

“Hard to say, Pearlie. About all we can do is stay watchful until it happens.”

“It’ll happen. You know it as well as me. The way I see it, after they’ve tried so many damn times, we’ll have to kill might’ near all of ’em afore it’s over an’ done with.”

Smoke knew there was a great deal of wisdom behind Pearlie’s words.

That evening, as Pearlie signaled a pot of beans was ready to eat, only seven heifers remained unaccounted for. Time was more important now than seven cows, Smoke decided, his eyelids heavy from lack of sleep.

He found good news when he climbed down from his saddle at the campfire. The wounded Hereford bull had stopped bleeding entirely, and now it was grazing along with the others, apparently suffering no real discomfort from its injury.

Smoke tied off his horse, carrying his bedroll.

“You gonna sleep or eat?” Pearlie asked good-naturedly.

“A little of both, I hope.”

Cletus picked up his rifle. “I already ate all I could stand of Pearlie’s beans, so I’ll take the first watch along with Gal. Cal’s young enough not to need as much sleep as the rest of us.”

Smoke tossed his bedroll over a stretch of soft grass before he came for a plate of beans. “Suits me, Cletus. I’ll relieve you before midnight. Ride as close to the herd as you can without spookin’ ’em. They’re still a little jittery after all that happened today.”

“So am I,” Cal said softly, leaving his beans mostly untouched to saddle the gray colt.

Pearlie straightened up from spooning more beans onto his plate. “Well I’ll be damned an’ hog-tied. We just witnessed a miracle, boys. That young ’un hardly touched his food tonight, an’ that’s like seein’ a man walk on water without gittin’ his feet wet.”Thirty-seven

North of the Haystack Mountain range, Jessie led his men to a fork in the Pecos River corning from the west, a shallow body of sluggish water only belly-deep on their horses. Pickett seemed to be interested in a spot north of the crossing, where big rocks and tall cottonwoods lined the river.

“This is it,” Pickett told Jessie, while Jose Vasquez and four of his remaining pistoleros made it across, followed by Billy Morton, Tom Hill, Pedro Lopez, and the two members of his gang left alive after the fight with Jensen. The last rider to cross was the Indian called Dreamer, who kept glancing backward as if he expected them to be followed.

“This is what?” Jessie asked, still brooding over their resounding defeat yesterday morning at the hands of Jensen.

“The perfect place,” Pickett replied, his voice turned to ice. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch while his horse is crossin’ this river. I can hide in them rocks yonder, an’ I’ll be close enough to use my scattergun. Betsy’ll cut him to pieces at this range. Probably kill his horse too.”

Jessie looked things over. “He may get suspicious when he comes to a spot like this where he can’t see if anybody’s hid on the other side. Might not work like you planned.”

“He has to cross here to make sure there ain’t no bogs or quicksand that’ll trap his cattle. He’s a rancher, an’ he’ll know the risks if he don’t test this crossing.”

“We can have the rest of the men spread out up and down this riverbank to cover you.”

Pickett wheeled on Jessie with fire in his eyes. “That’s what was wrong every goddamn time, Jessie. These idiots you hired don’t know the first thing ’bout killin’ a man out in the open. What you’ve got is a buncha saloon-raised gunmen who’ve got no experience bushwhackin’ a man who knows wild country. He’ll come real cautious down to this river, bein’ as careful as he knows how. That’s why I’m gonna do this my way, so none of the rest of these fools tip my hand on what I aim to do.”

“Suit yourself, Bill,” Jessie said. “The only thing I care about is findin’ Smoke Jensen dead.”

Pickett jutted his jaw. “You won’t find nothin’ but pieces of him. I give you my word on it. He’ll be twenty yards away when he’s in the middle of this river, an’ that’s close enough to shred every piece of meat on his body with a sawed-off shotgun like mine. You leave Jensen to me. The sumbitch is as good as dead right now if he crosses this river.”

Jessie wondered. However, Pickett’s reputation for killing his victims any way he could made him the perfect choice for this job. Jessie could never have admitted it to anyone, but after yesterday’s defeat and the incredible number of men Jensen had killed single-handed, he’d begun to experience twinges of doubt that he could do the job himself. Jensen apparently had some uncanny ability to move around without detection. How else could he have slipped up behind Little Horse and four more experienced Apache warriors, chopping their heads open with some kind of ax, not the sort of weapon the average man used in a war being fought with guns.

“I don’t give a damn how you do it, just make sure it don’t backfire,” Jessie said, as his grim-faced gunmen sat their horses around him, listening to his exchange with Pickett. Jessie knew the others feared Pickett, and rightfully so. Pickett was a madman, more than slightly out of kilter when it came to killing other men, even as they lay dying from other bullet wounds. Roy Cooper had been much the same in that regard. Only somehow, Jensen had been able to kill him along with all the others that night, and it still worried Jessie some.

Pickett turned back to Jessie. “Tell that Injun to ride back and see how far they are behind us. An’ tell the dumb son of a bitch not to let ’em see him. All Injuns are good at bein’ sneaky, so tell him to be careful.”

Dreamer apparently understood every word. At first he gave Pickett a chilly stare, then he swung his pony around and went back across the river, resting a very old Henry repeating rifle across his pony’s withers.

“Dreamer’s liable to double-cross us now, after what you just said about him,” Jessie remarked, watching the Apache ride out of sight around a bend in the trail.

Pickett made a face. “He won’t do it, because he’s after a payday. The rotten bastards will do damn near anything to get their hands on enough money to buy whiskey. Never saw an Injun who wasn’t drunk, or plannin’to get drunk. That’s why you can’t trust ’em.”

Jessie looked north, where the trail climbed to the top of a ridge between two low mountains. “We’ll ride on over that rise yonder an’ make camp wherever there’s water. Find a spring or somethin’, a feeder creek. We’ll be listenin’ real close for gunshots.”

“Won’t be but one,” Pickett said, “when little Miss Betsy gives Jensen her ten-gauge loads.” He drew his double-barrel Greener from a boot tied to the pommel of his saddle, and for a moment it seemed he almost caressed its dark walnut stock while his face visibly changed. He glanced over at Jessie and now a glint flickered in his pale eyes. “This here gun has ended a hell of a lot of men’s lives. Only this one’s gonna be special, because Jensen thinks he’s so goddamn tough an’ clever.”

“He is clever,” Jessie said. “But like you say, he’ll die the same as any other man if a load of double-size buckshot hits him in the right places.”

“He can’t be all that clever,” Pickett assured him. “A man makes mistakes now an’ then. The biggest mistake Jensen made was comin’ to Lincoln County at the wrong time. Now he’s gonna pay for it with his life.”

Jessie reined his horse for the top of the ridge. There was no point in discussing it with Pickett any farther. If Pickett was as good as his reputation, and what Jessie had seen of him in action during several attacks on Chisum’s cow camps, all their troubles with Mr. Smoke Jensen would soon be over.

Tom rode up beside Jessie as they were trotting up the ridge to look for water and a campsite.

“This is liable to be one helluva mistake,” Tom said under his breath. “I’ve got a real bad feelin’ about it.”

“You worry too much, Tom,” Jessie said, although he shared some of the same nagging doubts about Pickett’s planned ambush.

Tom looked up at a clear spring sky. “I worry when a man’s already proved he’s hard to kill, an’ I’m sidin’ the bunch who aims to kill him. Pickett ain’t never seen Jensen close before. When he gits a good look, he may change his mind.”

“That’s damn sure a fact,” Billy Morton said, riding along Jessie’s left side. “If I live to be a hundred years old, I won’t forgit what it was like when Jensen jumped up from behind that bush with both pistols spittin’ fire. It was the same as facin’ the devil himself.”

“Bill Pickett’s a proven killer,” Jessie argued.

It was Tom who said, “So’s this feller Smoke Jensen. I’ve never heard of him before he came here, but I’ll tell you one thing fer sure… he’s about as mean as they come, and this job ridin’ for Jimmy Dolan don’t pay enough to be worth gettin’ killed. If Pickett don’t kill him when he crosses that river, I’m quittin’ this outfit fer good. There’s gotta be easier ways to make money, an’ live long enough to spend it.”

Billy didn’t say anything, but Jessie was sure he was of the same mind. “Give Pickett a chance to prove himself before you start quittin’ a good-payin’ job with Dolan,” said Jessie. “There ain’t all that much work to be had for a shootist in this part of the West, an’ I’m sure as hell not askin’ to be taken off the payroll till I know there ain’t no other choice.”Thirty-eight

Cattle were strung out for half a mile when Smoke turned to look back at the herd. As they had from the beginning, the short Herefords brought up the rear. Cal and Cletus were riding drag at the back of the bunch. Bob and Johnny held the flank positions, keeping wandering strays driven back, while Pearlie and Duke rode point on either side, aiming lead cows in the right direction. A peaceful day had passed, with no sign of the Evans gang. Smoke had been reading their tracks every now and then, counting horses when the prints crossed barren ground. Between fifteen and twenty men were a day’s ride ahead of the herd, judging by the freshness of the tracks, the edges of the clear prints that were still sharp before wind and time had made the dirt crumble.

According to a crudely drawn map he carried in his saddlebags, they were a couple of days’ drive from old Fort Sumner, an abandoned army post turned into a small community where sheep men and Mexican goatherds lived in empty army barracks. The herd was managing fifteen or twenty miles a day, slower because of the short-legged bulls.

Smoke swung his horse away from the trees, where he’d been keeping an eye on the herd’s progress. He was staying closer to the cows than before, in part because the tracks left by Evans and his men continued due north, with no sign any of them had turned off to launch another attack or take up snipers’ positions when they came to high ground.

Still, Smoke was nagged by the dull certainty that Evans would try again. Arrogant men with high opinions of themselves rarely ever gave up completely, not until someone convinced them they had no other choice.

It appeared to be a small fork leading to the main body of the Pecos River a few miles to the east. Lined with cottonwoods and jumbles of limestone boulders swept aside by previous floods, it looked to be shallow, easy to cross. Smoke sat his Palouse on a high bluff above the river, watching things carefully from a considerable distance before he rode down to test the river bottom for treacherous sand pits and bogs.

Examining the branches of each tree, he was troubled when he found no birds perched on any of the leafy limbs near the crossing. As with most of his experience, reading this sort of sign had been taught to him by Preacher. Most all types of wildlife exhibited behavior that was as good as a signpost, if a man knew how to read it. The sudden flight of birds from a particular spot was a warning to knowledgeable men. The direction a deer ran when it was frightened, sensing danger, was as meaningful as the angry charge of a grizzly protecting her newborn cubs. Even a lowly cricket gave off excellent warnings in the dark, simply by suddenly growing silent when it felt another presence close to its hiding place. The absence of sparrows or blue jays in trees beside the river alerted Smoke to the possibility of danger,

He reined his Palouse around and tied it off in a thicket where it could graze, pulling his rifle, taking a single thin blanket from his bedroll, and wrapping it around his forearm. The sun was almost directly overhead. A soft breeze came from the west, thus he began his approach to the crossing from the east, upwind, in the fashion of all seasoned mountain men stalking prey. He had a possible use for the blanket, a trick, just in case someone was down there gunning for him.

Pickett had grown bored with all the waiting. Last night, as he rested on thin blankets with a pint of tequila for company, his impatience had lessened somewhat. But today his nerves were on edge more than usual… It was this damn waiting, even though he fully understood the necessity of it. If Smoke Jensen was the trained killer everyone else believed he was, he’d be smart and cautious.

He checked the loads in his pistol, a Colt Peacemaker, for what seemed the hundredth time, then he holstered it and after he took off his flat-brim Stetson, he peered above the rocks, where shadows from nearby cottonwoods covered his hiding place. Again there was no sign of a horseman approaching the river. He then clamped his jaw in frustration and ducked back down.

“I’ll bet the gutless son of a bitch headed another direction,” he said softly, angrily. “He’s liable to ride plumb to Nebraska to get back home.” Pickett took another swallow of tequila, listening closely for the sound of a horse in the distance.

He’d gone over what he meant to do a thousand times, not raising his head at all when the rider got close, waiting until he heard a horse in the river. Jensen would be looking for any kind of movement, and there would be none until he was in the water. Then he might catch a split-second glimpse of two shotgun barrels flashing in the sunlight just before they exploded, too late for any man to draw and shoot.

“C’mon, you yellow bastard,” Pickett whispered, resting his head against a rock, his shotgun held loosely in his left fist with both hammers cocked… he didn’t want the click of metal to alert Jensen just before he killed him.

He wondered what was keeping Jensen. According to what the Apache told Jessie, they should be nearing the river by now. He took a bite of jerky and washed it down with tequila. “Hard on a man’s nerves, all this waitin’.”

He let his gaze wander upriver, then downstream, examining every rock and tree, when suddenly he saw a shadow dart among the cottonwood trunks.

“It’s him,” Pickett hissed, whirling around to hide himself behind the boulder. Jensen wasn’t as clever as Jessie thought. Pickett was sure what he had seen was the outline of a man coming upstream, already on the north side of the river.

He left his horse somewhere, Pickett thought, so he’d make less noise. Peering cautiously around the rock, he aimed his ten-gauge and drew his Peacemaker, ready for anything, every muscle in his body tensed.

He saw the movement again and almost fired at it, until he caught himself. “Not till you’re closer, you bastard,” he whispered as his grip relaxed on his pistol. Pickett wanted to shred the Colorado cowboy with his scattergun if he could.

Now nothing moved, and only the quiet gurgle of the river passing over stones reached his ears. The second time he saw Jensen he’d been closer, yet not quite close enough for Betsy to do her best work.

“C’mon, turkey,” Pickett mouthed silently, as beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He could almost taste the moment when he would kill Jensen, a thickening of his tongue with a slightly sweet taste on the tip. He found himself longing for the sight of a bullet-torn body oozing blood from hundreds of pellet wounds, and he imagined the coppery smell of Jensen’s blood. He hoped the first twin charges didn’t kill Jensen instantly… It would be far better to stand over him, to see the fear and pain in his eyes just before another shotgun blast tore his head to pieces.

More waiting made him more impatient, until a heavier gust of wind blew down the river, rippling its waters, and at the same time Jensen moved again, darting around the base of a cottonwood, rushing toward him.

Pickett straightened up quickly and fired both barrels of the Greener, jolted by twin explosions that deafened him briefly. He saw the shadow swirl, twisting when a wall of lead struck.

“Gotcha, you son of a bitch!” Pickett cried as he took a step away from the rock, holstering his pistol to reload the ten-gauge for a sure kill when he reached Jensen.

“Not quite,” an even voice said behind him.

Pickett froze, twisting his head to look over his shoulder. He saw a man standing beside a rock pile less than twenty yards away. Pickett’s mouth fell open.

“You shot a blanket draped over a limb,” the man added, an evil grin widening his lips. “But the blanket does belong to me. I’m Smoke Jensen. I reckon you’ve been waitin’ here a long time to ambush me.”

Pickett only had one shell in the Greener, and its breech was open. His Peacemaker was holstered. “How’d you get behind me?” Pickett asked, buying time until he could think of a way to get at his pistol without being shot. Both of Jensen’s pistols were holstered… He carried a Winchester, muzzle aimed down at the ground.

“To tell the truth, it was mighty easy. I suppose you’re the feller named Bill Pickett, on account of that short shotgun. We were told you fancied yourself a man-killer. So far, the only thing you’ve shot holes in was a blanket”

“You’re gonna shoot me in the back, ain’t you?” Pickett asked.

“My conscience might bother me, so I’m gonna let you turn around and reach for that Colt. I’ll give you plenty of time.”

“You’re lyin’,” Pickett replied. “You’ll kill me soon as I move”

Jensen nodded. “I’m gonna kill you either way, but if you want a chance to see how good you are with that six-gun, make a move for it. But do it quick, or I’ll just kill you now an’ be on my way. That shotgun blast is liable to bring Evans and his men any minute.”

Pickett felt he had no selection. He dropped Betsy to the ground and made a slow, deliberate turn, expecting Jensen to draw a pistol before he could square himself. To his surprise, Jensen remained motionless until Pickett had his feet spread slighdy apart and his right hand hovering above his Peacemaker.

“Reach for it,” Jensen said, as calm as could be.

Pickett didn’t wait for a second invitation. His hand went clawing for his gun.

There was a flash of gun metal in sunlight, then a booming noise.Thirty-nine

Jessie and Billy Morton were the first to scramble aboard their horses when they heard gunshots, with the others mounting right behind them.

“That was Pickett’s shotgun!” Jessie cried, spurring his horse to cover the half mile down to the river crossing as rapidly as he could. “Pickett got the son of a bitch!”

Billy galloped up beside him. “I ain’t gonna believe it till I see it!” he shouted back over the clatter of iron horseshoes on rock.

Jessie drew his pistol, just in case, and as if it were a signal, every member of his gang was fisting guns. Riding as hard as they could, they covered the distance in only a few minutes, until Jessie reined to a halt on a knob above the river.

“Yonder he is,” Jessie said, as soon as the others came to a stop alongside him. “Pickett wrapped his body in a blanket so’s we can bury him.”

Billy kept looking up and down the river. “Where the hell is Pickett? I don’t see him nowhere.”

Jose Vasquez pointed to a distant horseman on a ridge on the far side of the crossing. The figure appeared to be watching them.

“Quien es? Who is that?” Vasquez asked.

“Probably just one of Jensen’s boys,” Jessie answered. “I’m ridin’ down to have a look. You can see Jensen’s dead from here, ’cause he ain’t moving, all wrapped up in that blanket like he is.”

Tom said, “I ain’t all that convinced it’s Jensen.”

Jessie ignored the remark and rode his horse off the knob to reach the river. But as he got closer, he felt something was wrong. He heard the others following him, but at a slower gait.

He rode up to the blanket-clad body and jumped down, in a hurry to set eyes on Jensen’s corpse. He knelt and pulled back the dark blue blanket, riddled with pellet holes, and what he saw made him draw in a quick breath.

“It’s Pickett,” Billy Morton observed without leaving the back of his horse.

Jessie’s hand, the one holding the blanket, began to shake. He dropped the woolen cloth quickly and stood up, gazing at the mounted figure far across the river. “That is Jensen,” he said with a dry mouth.

“He’s prob’ly laughin’ at us,” Tom said. “One thing’s for damn sure—he’s gotta be the toughest hombre I ever ran across, an’ if Bill Pickett was still alive, he’d be sayin’ the same damn thing. You can count me out of this, Jessie. I’m pulling stakes while I still can.”

“That goes fer me too,” Billy said, looking up at the man watching them from the ridge. “I knowed when he killed twelve of us back in that draw there was somethin’ about him that damn near wasn’t human. If you’re smart, Jessie, you’ll let that feller go wherever the hell he aims to go with his cows.”

Jessie whirled to Jose Vasquez. “How ’bout you, Jose?”

“I see enough,” Vasquez replied. “This man be muy malo, one bad hombre. Maybeso he is no man, un espiritu. He kill three of my cousins, also many of mi compadres. I don’t want no more to have fight with him. We going back to Mexico .”

When Jessie looked at Pedro, Pedro shrugged.

“Is no good, Senor Jessie. We no can kill him. He kill Ignacio and Roy and now he kill Senor Pickett. He make killing look easy. He kill us also if we don’t leave him alone.”

Jessie turned back to Jensen, scowling. “Mr. Dolan ain’t gonna like it when I tell him.”

Tom spoke. “Tell Dolan to try an’ kill him hisself. He’ll find out damn quick it ain’t easy done.”

Jessie’s jaw clamped angrily. “I wonder who he really is. I can guarantee you he ain’t just some cattle rancher from up north.”

“No lo hase, ”Vasquez said. “It make no difference to me. I only know one thing about him—he don’t get no more chances to kill me or mi compadres. We go home now.”

Billy rested his elbow on his saddle horn. “That don’t leave nobody but you, Jessie. We’ve knowed each other a long time, an’ I’m givin’ you good advice. Leave that Jensen feller plumb alone or you’ll wind up like Pickett an’ Cooper an’ all the rest.”

“He’s just sittin’ there watchin’ us,”Jessie said, with his gaze still fixed on the ridge.

“He’s waitin’ to see what we’ll do, I reckon,” Tom said. “If we act like we’re comin’ after him, he won’t be sittin’ there in plain sight very long.”

Jessie’s hands unconsciously balled into fists, then they relaxed.

“C’mon, Jessie,” Billy said quietly. “Let’s git the hell outa here afore Jensen changes his mind.”

“It ain’t my nature to run,” Jessie replied, still frozen to the same spot above Pickett’s corpse.

“It’s any man’s nature to wanna stay alive,” Tom suggested. “We got no quarrel with Jensen.”

Jose Vasquez was done talking. He gave a silent signal to his men and reined away from the river, riding off in a cloud of dust swirling in the breeze. Pedro and his two remaining men were not long in following Vasquez, swinging their mounts around after the other pistoleros.

Jessie’s shoulders sagged. He finally took his eyes off Jensen to look at Billy and Tom. “We can’t tell Dolan what really happened, boys. It’ll make us look like fools.”

Billy wagged his head. “The only way we’d look like bigger fools is to stay an’ tangle with Jensen again. We can tell Dolan a bunch of Chisum’s riders showed up, leavin’ us outnumbered. If you agree to leave this Jensen alone, I’ll stay on with Dolan’s outfit Otherwise, I’m cuttin’ a trail for parts unknown.”

“Same goes fer me,” Tom said, as Jessie finally mounted his horse.

Jessie gave Smoke Jensen a final stare, then without a word he wheeled his horse around to head back to Lincoln. It damn sure wasn’t going to be easy giving Dolan the bad news, and it could cost him a good-paying job as Dolan’s ramrod.Forty

Approaching the lush green mountains and meadows south of Sugarloaf range brightened everyone’s mood. The cattle were fat and had proven to be trail-worthy, even the short-strided Hereford bulls. It had been two weeks since the last confrontation with Jessie Evans and his paid guns, a peaceful two weeks of guiding cows across good grazing and plenty of water.

Smoke had all but forgotten about the battles with Dolan’s gunslingers, until they neared Sugarloaf. He’d have to come clean with Sally about what he’d done, the men he killed, and he feared making the admission more than he’d ever feared the risks when bullets were flying.

“She’ll throw a fit,” he said one clear, crisp spring morning less than a dozen miles below Sugarloaf.

“You’re talkin’ about Miz Jensen, ain’tyou?” Pearlie asked with a grin, “I understand. I’d rather face the Shoshoni tribe on the warpath than Miz Jensen when she’s got her feathers ruffled.”

“I’ll make her understand,” Smoke said without conviction, “even though she’ll keep reminding me of my promise to stay wide of difficulties.”

“We tried to avoid ’em,” Pearlie remembered.

“They was just too damn hardheaded, an’ wouldn’t leave us alone.”

Cal came riding up as the herd wound its way through a valley leading to Bob Williams’s ranch. “We’re home,” Cal said with unconcealed excitement. “Means we’ll be havin’ some of Miz Sally’s good cookin’ afore too long.”

Pearlie made a face. “I see your appetite has done returned to its usual.”

“I’m sick of beans an’ fatback. A big bearclaw drippin’ with melted brown sugar sure would be nice. Maybe two or three of ’em.”

Smoke was hoping all had remained quiet at the ranch while they were away. “Before she cooks up a bunch of bearclaws, I’m afraid she’s gonna fix me a dish of my own words, when I tell about all the troubles we had.”

“You hadn’t oughta promised her nothin’,” Pearlie said. “I reckon she knows you well enough to know such a thing just wasn’t possible.”

“She’ll have her say-so about it,” Smoke said, with all the assurance of experience.

“It’ll soften her some when she sees them good bulls,” Cal remarked. “That little one with the hole in his chest is doin’just fine. He don’t hardly notice it now.”

Pearlie spoke again. “Me, I’m lookin’ forward to sleepin’ in my own bed, ’stead of this hard ground. It’s damn sure gonna be good to be back home fer a change.”

Smoke looked back at the herd. Some of the Hereford bulls had already mounted heifers coming in season during rest stops. “Next spring we’ll have pastures full of white-faced crossbred calves. And I’m gonna wire that feller Chisum told me about down in Saint Louis, and have him ship me a good Morgan stud by rail this summer.”

“Sounds like you’ve got things all planned out,” Pearlie said. “Maybe things will settle down now. We’ve burned a hell of a lot of gunpowder lately.”

“For a fact,” Cal added quietly. “I still dream about them two fellers I killed, the Indian an’ that pistolero.”

“It’ll pass, young ’un,” Pearlie assured him. “Besides that, if you didn’t spend so damn much time sleepin’, you wouldn’t have time to do all that dreamin’.”

Bob Williams and Duke Smith rode up when they came to a fork in the valley leading to Smoke’s ranch. “If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Jensen, me an’ Duke will take a couple of those bulls, an’ head for home. I’ll bring the purchase money over in a few days, if that’s okay.”

“You’re a neighbor and a friend, Bob. Pay for ’em whenever you get ready.”

Bob extended a handshake offering. “Thanks again for takin’ us along.”

Smoke nodded. “As it turned out, we might not have made it if it hadn’t been for the two of you helpin’ out with your guns once in a while.”

Bob grinned. “Always glad to help a neighbor,” he said as he swung off to pick out two bulls.

As soon as Bob was out of earshot, Pearlie said, “Hell-fire, I never saw Bob or Duke hit nothin’ whilst we was shootin’. Bob couldn’t hardly hit the side of a barn with a rifle.”

“They did the best they could,” Smoke replied, not really caring either way. Marksmanship was a low priority when it came to picking good neighbors.

He saw Sally waiting on the front porch as they drove the herd up to the corrals. She smiled a beautiful smile and waved to him.

“Best you put yer lyin’ britches on afore you tell her about this trip,” Pearlie said, stifling a chuckle.

“I won’t lie to her,” Smoke replied. “She’d know right off I wasn’t telling the truth anyway.”

“You can tell her part of the truth. Say we ran into a bit of trouble but it didn’t amount to nothin’.”

“She’d know,” Smoke told him.

Now Pearlie laughed out loud. “Miz Jensen is the only two-legged thing on earth Mr. Smoke Jensen is afraid of.”

“That’s about the size of it, Pearlie. I wouldn’t do anything that might cause me to lose her.”

He kicked the Palouse colt toward the house while the others pushed the cattle toward the corrals. When he got to the front porch, he swung down and took her in his arms.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, kissing her lips. “Have things gone smoothly here?”

“No problems,” she told him, smiling. Then her face changed to a serious look, “But I can tell you had a few problems. I can see it in your eyes, and the fact that Johnny’s wearing that bandage around his leg.”

“There was some shooting,” he told her. “I had to discourage some hard cases who didn’t want us to get these cows to Sugarloaf.”

“You can tell me about it later,” she said. “Right now I want to see those Herefords up close.”

“I’d rather see you up close for a while,” he replied.

She gave him a taunting turn of her head. “That will come later, Smoke, if you behave yourself until the sun goes down.”

“I may not be able to wait that long.”

“Then find yourself another woman. I’m not that easy, to just take my clothes off when a man comes riding up to ask.”

“Even if he’s your husband?”

“I’d forgotten I had a husband, you’ve been away so long.”

“I got back as quick as I could.”

He held her in a powerful embrace, something he’d been thinking about for several long days on the trail. “You always win arguments, don’t you?” he asked.

“We are not arguing. I won’t let you take me to bed until I see those Herefords. End of discussion.”

“I suppose I should have looked for another woman on the trail.”

“Suit yourself, Mr. Jensen. But you won’t find another woman who loves you the way I do, and you’ll never find a woman who’s any better in bed.”

He looked down at her in mock surprise. “You’ve got a very high opinion of yourself, young lady.”

“I’ve earned it, for putting up with you. Now, show me the new bulls or you may wind up sleeping in the barn tonight.”

He let go of her and took her by the arm. “They’re just what you said they were. Beefy, and I’ve seen Chisum’s crosses on longhorns. They’ll be perfect for the markets.”

She squeezed his hand as they walked side by side down to the corrals, where Pearlie and Johnny and Cal were driving the Herefords into a separate pen.

She looked at the bulls a moment before she said anything.

“Those bulls are the future of this ranch,” she said. “I’ve never seen so much meat on one animal before.”

“Some of them have already bred some of the heifers on the drive up here.”

She looked up at him with a twinkle in her eyes. “I’m sure there’s much more to tell me about the drive,” she said.

“A few minor details,” he admitted.

“Like the gun battles you got into, and how many men you had to kill to get them here?” she asked.

“I did have to shoot a couple, maybe more than one or two, but I didn’t have a choice.”

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. “It seems you never have a choice when there’s a fight,” she told him. “I do wish you’d learn to turn your back on them.”

“Somebody might have shot me in the back if I’d done that,” he argued feebly, knowing he would have to tell her everything. It was because he loved her so deeply that he couldn’t hide the truth from her.

“You can tell me all about it after supper, Smoke. I’ll do my best to understand. There’s something inside you that won’t let you avoid taking a side in things, and I suppose that’s also one of the reasons why I love you. Some men would ride right past a one-sided fight. I’ve come to know you well enough to know you never would.” She examined the young bulls again, then she said, “Just remember, one fight you’ll never win is a fight with me.”