Bounty Hunter

CHAPTER 28

Even though his visit to Deadwood had a more bittersweet ending than he would have preferred, Luke took some good memories away from there. He knew Marcy was not only still alive but thriving, and that eased one of the worries he had carried around with him for years. He made himself a promise to drift up to the Black Hills every now and then to visit her and hoped the next time they met, she would still be glad to see him.

The next year, in the summer of 1878, he was in Santa Fe when he saw another familiar face across a crowded cantina. He picked up his mug of beer and made his way across the room until he reached the table where a thick-bodied man with graying fair hair and beard sat nursing a glass of tequila.

“Hello, Marshal,” Luke said to Jasper Thornapple.

The two of them had crossed trails several times over the years. Luke had turned over to Thornapple a few fugitives he’d captured and sometimes it was sheer coincidence how they met. The frontier, for all its vastness, could sometimes seem like a small place.

The lawman looked up with a pleased smile. “Luke! I was hoping I’d run into you again one of these days. I’ve got some news for you.” Thornapple gestured for Luke to have a seat at the table. “Heard about it from another deputy marshal.”

Luke settled down into the chair. “What kind of news?”

“Remember a long time ago, the first time we met up in Kansas, you asked me about four men?”

Luke stiffened. “You mean Potter, Stratton, Richards, and Casey?”

“Those are the ones. You never found them, did you?”

Luke frowned but didn’t say anything. His mind was too full of bitter memories. He had looked for the four men who had betrayed him, betrayed their country, murdered his friends, nearly killed him, and stolen the gold. As much as he roamed, as many people as he met during his travels, he had thought it was inevitable that he would pick up their trail.

But instead he had run into stone wall after stone wall. Nobody knew the men he was looking for. Maybe they were all dead already, he often told himself, but never really believed that. It was as if fate had conspired with those four no-good deserters to keep them safe from his vengeance.

Finally, in a quiet voice, he told Thornapple, “No, I never found them. To tell you the truth, after a while I quit looking so hard.” He looked at the marshal, his pulse quickening. “Do you know where they are?”

“I do,” Thornapple said, then dashed Luke’s hopes. “They’re in the ground. They’re all dead, Luke.”

A strange feeling washed through Luke. It wasn’t disappointment, really, or even relief, but rather an odd, hollow mixture of the two. He wanted them dead, but he took no real satisfaction from knowing that they were.

“What happened to them?” he asked Thornapple, although he didn’t really care.

“They were killed up in Idaho Territory a while back, at a settlement called Bury. The name turned out to be fitting. They started the town and ran everything in the area. Ran roughshod over everybody in those parts, too. A gunfighter calling himself Buck West rode in and raised hell. Wound up killing all of them. Turns out that wasn’t really West’s name at all. He was really a fella named Smoke Jensen.”

The surprise Luke had felt at hearing his enemies were dead was nothing compared to the shock that went through him upon hearing his family name. It had been so long since he’d used the name Jensen it seemed like he had always been Luke Smith.

Despite that, he had never forgotten his family. Sometimes it was hard to remember what his ma and pa had looked like. They might both be dead. Probably were. And Janey and Kirby would be grown. He might pass them on the street and never know them.

But who in blazes was Smoke Jensen?

Luke shook his head. “I haven’t heard of him.”

“No reason you would have,” Thornapple said. “There were wanted posters out on him for a while, especially while he was calling himself Buck West, but from what I hear there are no charges against him now.”

“Did you ever see him?”

Thornapple shook his head. “Nope. Supposed to be a big, sandy-haired fella who’s really fast with his guns. He’d have to be, because from what I’ve heard, not only did he kill those men you were looking for, but he and some old mountain man friends of his wiped out a small army of hired killers who worked for Potter and the others, too. It was a full-fledged war up there.”

Kirby had ash-blond hair, Luke recalled. If he’d grown big enough, he might fit the description of Smoke Jensen. But why in the world would he have taken that name?

Why not? That wry thought crossed Luke’s mind. I took a different name, and for a good reason, didn’t I? Maybe Kirby did, too.

“You know where he is now?”

“Jensen?” Thornapple shook his head. “No idea. The way I heard it, he rode away from Bury with some good-looking gal he met up there, and they never came back. Do you want to find him?”

“I thought I might look him up. Thank him for doing my job for me.”

“I had a feeling you had a score to settle with those hombres you asked about,” Thornapple said. “Well, it’s done, so you can forget about it now.”

“I suppose so.” Luke drank down the rest of his beer and set the empty mug on the table. Inside he felt as empty as that mug.

He continued to ride, drifting from one place to another. Over time that feeling faded. Glad Potter and the others were dead, Luke would have liked to have been the one to pull the trigger and send them to hell, but nobody ever said life was fair. Justice had caught up to them, and he had to be satisfied with that. He had other killers to hunt down and bring in. But as he went about it, he kept his ears open and learned everything he could about the man called Smoke Jensen.

Smoke was said to be fast with a gun, mighty fast. Maybe the slickest on the draw in the entire West. Luke heard stories about some of the battles Smoke had had with a wide assortment of outlaws and cold-blooded killers, and Smoke always emerged triumphant.

But those who had met him, without fail, said Smoke Jensen was no arrogant, vicious gunman, but rather a stalwart friend, a decent man, and a loving husband to his wife Sally. They had a successful ranch somewhere in Colorado called Sugarloaf, and judging by all the stories Luke heard about the man, Smoke wanted to live a peaceful life and never went out looking for trouble.

He sure didn’t back down from it, though, and just about the worst mistake anybody could ever make was to threaten one of Smoke’s friends or relatives. That was a mighty quick way to wind up dead.

Yes, Smoke Jensen sounded like the sort of man Luke would be proud to know, but despite what he had told Thornapple, he never made any attempt to find Jensen. Maybe the famous gunfighter really was his little brother Kirby, or maybe he wasn’t, but either way, he figured Smoke wouldn’t want a bloody-handed bounty hunter showing up on his doorstep claiming to be kinfolk. Luke felt sure if any of his family had even thought about him during the long years since the end of the Civil War, they must have assumed he was dead.

Because of that, whenever Luke was in Colorado, he was always careful to steer well clear of the Sugarloaf Ranch and the nearby town of Big Rock, the same way that he had never returned to the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri. It was entirely possible there weren’t any Jensens left back there, but he didn’t want to take that chance.

It was better for Luke Jensen to just stay dead.

He was in northern New Mexico Territory, in the town of Raton, with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and Raton Pass looming to the north, when he heard a rumor that Solomon Burke and his gang had been spotted in the area.

Luke had been trailing Burke for a couple weeks, so he took a keen interest in what he heard and finally located the old-timer who was the source of the rumor. He bought the man a drink in the High Hat Saloon and asked him about Burke.

The garrulous old man was glad to talk. “I seen ’em while I was out huntin’ one day. I got me some diggin’s up there, so I keep a pretty close eye on all the comin’s and goin’s thereabouts.”

Luke didn’t figure the old-timer’s mining claim amounted to much, but that wouldn’t stop him from being fiercely protective of it.

“I heard riders comin’ and took cover in some trees,” the wizened, bearded oldster continued. “Seen ’em ride right past me, no more ’n fifty yards away. I seen reeward dodgers on Burke with his picture on ’em before, so I recognized him right away. Had a couple o’ big Mexicans with him, so I figured they had to be Hernandez and Cardona. I’ve heard mighty bad stories about them two. Don’t know who all the other hombres were, but they was prob’ly Burke’s regular bunch of owlhoots.”

Luke didn’t doubt that. “Could you tell where they were going?”

The old prospector hesitated, licking his lips, and Luke signaled for the bartender to bring another round. That got the old-timer talking again.

“I don’t know for sure, no, but they rode on outta the valley where my diggin’s are and over the pass into the next valley. They’s an old abandoned cabin over there they could be usin’ as a hideout, right on the banks of Bluejay Creek. I can tell you how to get there”—a shrewd look appeared on the man’s whiskery face—“And I will, if you swear to give me a cut of the bounty you collect on ’em.”

“How do you know I’m a bounty hunter?” Luke wanted to know.

“Well, you don’t really look like a star packer, and I can’t think of nobody else who’d be trailin’ a bunch of hydrophobia skunks like Solomon Burke and his gang. Gimme your word you’ll cut me in?”

Luke nodded his agreement and then added, “If I come back alive, that is.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a sucker bet on my part, ain’t it? But here’s how to get to that cabin . . .”

Luke had followed the old-timer’s directions. The valley was a two-day ride from Raton. He thought he was still in New Mexico Territory, but up in the high country it was difficult to be sure. He might have crossed over into Colorado without realizing it.

Colorado . . . the place where Smoke Jensen lived. It wouldn’t take but a few days to reach Big Rock, Luke mused as he trailed the Burke gang. He might be able to get a look at Smoke without having to introduce himself. Would he recognize his own brother, if that’s who Smoke turned out to be?

That question still lurked in the back of Luke’s mind as he dismounted and crept forward through some trees to spy on the old cabin where he thought the outlaws might be hiding.

Then bad luck cropped up again, as José Cardona, out hunting or taking a leak or just looking around, stumbled on him, tackled him, and tried to kill him. Nothing could ever just be easy. Not for Luke Smith.

He’d wiped out the gang, but he’d taken three bullets in return. His efforts to patch himself up hadn’t done much good. He wound up passing out and crashing to the floor in the cabin.

Just like fifteen years earlier, when he’d been left for dead on the banks of a shallow river in Georgia, as blackness claimed Luke he was sure he would never wake up again, that it was the end.