Journey Of The Mountain Man

Table of Contents

DEADLY CHALLENGE

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Title Page

Copyright Page

Epigraph

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

DEADLY CHALLENGE

Smoke Jensen slipped out of the house onto the stone-and-wood porch. He knew the chance of his being seen by the outlaws up on the ridges several hundred yards away was practically nonexistent, but he stayed low from force of habit.

Smoke darted off the porch to a tree in the yard, then over a fence and a footrace to the corral. Just one more stretch of open space before the safety of the bunkhouse, but as he got set for the run, a cold voice spoke behind him.

“I’ll be known as the man who kilt Smoke Jensen. Die, you meddlin’ bastard!”

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This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

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—Bertrand De Vieuzac

Dedicated to: James Albert Martin

One

“I didn’t think you had any living relatives, except for your sister?”

“I didn’t either. But then I forgot about Pa’s brother. He was supposed to have gotten killed at Chancellorsville, back in ‘63. I guess this letter came from his kids. It would have to be; it’s signed Fae Jensen.”

“I wonder how they knew where to write?” Sally asked. “Big Rock is not exactly the hub of commerce, culture, and industry.”

The man laughed at that. The schoolteacher in his wife kept coming out in the way she could put words together.

It was 1882, in the high-up country of Colorado. The cabin had recently been remodeled: two new rooms added for Louis Arthur and Denise Nicole Jensen. The twins were approaching their first birthday.

And the man called Smoke was torn between going to the aid of a family member he had never seen and staying at home for the birthday party.

“You have to go, Smoke,” Sally spoke the words softly.

“Gibson, in the Montana Territory.” The tall, wide-shouldered and lean-hipped man shook his head. “A long way from home. On what might be a wild goose hunt. Probably is. I don’t even know where Gibson is.”

Sally once more opened the letter and read it aloud. The handwriting was definitely that of a woman, and a woman who had earned high marks in penmanship.

Dear Cousin Kirby,

I read about you in the local paper last year, after that dreadful fight at Dead River. I wanted to write you then, but thought my brother and I could handle the situation ourselves. Time has proven me incorrect. We are in the middle of a war here, and our small ranch lies directly between the warring factions. I did not believe when this range war was started that either Mr. Dooley Hanks or Mr. Cord McCorkle would deliberately harm us, but conditions have worsened to the point where I fear for our lives. Any help you could give us would be greatly appreciated.

Respectfully, your cousin

Fae Jensen

“Have you ever heard of either of those men, Smoke?”

“McCorkle. He came into that country twenty years or more ago. Started the Circle Double C. He’s a hard man, but I never heard of him riding roughshod over a woman.”

“How about this Dooley Hanks?”

Smoke shook his head. “The name sort of rings a bell. But it isn’t ringin’ very loud.”

“When will you be leaving, honey?” cold

He turned his brown eyes on her, eyes that were usually cold and emotionless. Except when he looked at her. “I haven t said I was going.”

“I’ll be fine, Smoke. We’ve got some good hands and some good neighbors. You don’t have to worry about me or the babies.” She held up the letter. “They’re blood kin, honey.”

He slowly nodded his head. “I’ll get things squared away around the Sugarloaf, and probably pull out in about three days.” He smiled. “If you just insist that I go.”

She poked him in the ribs and ran laughing out of the room.

“That’s him,” the little boy said to his friend, visiting from the East. “That’s the one ever’body writes about in them penny dreadfuls. That’s Smoke Jensen.”

Smoke tied his horse to the hitchrail in front of the BigRock Guardian and went inside to speak with Haywood Arden, owner and editor.

“He sure is mean-lookin’,” the boy from back East said. “And he really does wear them guns all whopper-jawed, don’t he?”

The first thing Haywood noticed was Smoke wearing two guns, the left hand .44 worn butt forward for a cross-draw, the right hand .44 low and tied down.

“Expecting trouble, Smoke?”

“Not around here. Just getting used to wearing them again. I’ve got to take a trip, Haywood. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Probably most of the spring and part of the summer. I know Sheriff Carson is out of town, so I’d be beholden if you’d d ask him to check in with Sally from time to time. I’m not expecting any trouble out there; Preacher Morrow and Bountiful are right over the ridge and my hands would fight a grizzly with a stick. I’d just feel better if Monte would drop by now and then.”

“I’ll sure do it, Smoke.” He had a dozen questions he’d like to ask, but in the West, a man’s business was his own.

Smoke stuck out his hand. “See you in a few months, Haywood. Give Dana my best.”

Haywood watched the tall, broad-shouldered, ruggedly handsome man stroll up the boardwalk toward the general store. Smoke Jensen, the last mountain man. The hero of dozens of dime novels. The fastest gun in the West. A man who never wanted the title of gunfighter, but who at sixteen years of age was taken under the tutelage of an old he-coon named Preacher. The old mountain man had taught the boy well, and the boy had grown into one of the most feared and respected men in the West.

No one really knew how many outlaws and murderers and gunslingers and highwaymen had fallen under Smoke’s thundering .44’s. Some said fifty, others said two hundred. Smoke himself didn’t really know for sure.

But Haywood knew one thing for a fact: if Smoke Jensen had strapped on his guns, and was going on a journey, it would darn sure be interesting when he reached his destination.

Interesting and deadly.

The next morning Smoke saddled a tough mountain-bred horse named Dagger—the outline of a knife was on the animal’s left rump—checked his canvased and tied-down supplies on the pack horse, and went back into the cabin.

The twins were still sleeping as their father slipped into their rooms and softly kissed each child’s cheek. He stepped back out into the main room of the cabin—the den, as Sally called it.

“Sally, I don’t know what I’m riding into this time. Or how long I’ll be gone.”

She smiled at him. “Then I’ll see you when you get back.”

They embraced, kissed, and Smoke stepped out the door, walking to the barn. With the pack horse rope in his left hand, Smoke lifted his right hand in farewell, picked up the reins, and pointed Dagger’s nose toward the north.

Sally watched him until he was out of sight, then with a sigh, turned and walked into the cabin, quietly closing the door behind her.

Smoke had dressed warmly, for it was still early spring in the high lonesome, and the early mornings and nights were cold. But as the sun touched the land with its warming rays, he would shed his heavy lined jacket and travel wearing a buckskin jacket, made for him by the squaws of Indian friends.

He traveled following a route that kept the Rocky Mountains to his left and the Medicine Bow Mountains to his right. He crossed the Continental Divide and angled slightly west. He knew this country, and loved it. Preacher had first shown this country to him, back in the late sixties, and Smoke had fallen in love with it. The columbine was in early bloom, splashing the countryside in blue and lavender and white and purple.

Smoke’s father, Emmett Jensen, was buried at Brown’s Hole, up near the Utah line, in the northwest corner of Colorado. Buried lying atop thousands and thousands of dollars in gold. No one except Smoke and Preacher knew that, and neither one of them had any intention of spreading it about.

Old Preacher was in his early eighties, at least, but it had filled Smoke with joy and love to learn that he was still alive.

Cantankerous old billy-goat!

On his third night out, Smoke made camp halfway between Rabbit Ears Pass and Buffalo Pass, in the high-up country of the Rockies. He had caught some trout just before dusk dropped night on the land and was frying them in a dollop of lard when he saw Dagger’s ears come up.

Smoke set the frying pan away from the flames, on a part of the circle of stones around the flames, and slipped back a few feet from the fire and put a hand on his Winchester .44.

“Hallo, the fire!” the voice came out of the darkness. “I’m friendly as a little wolf cub but as hongry as a just woke-up bar.”

Smoke smiled. But his hand did not leave his Winchester. “Then come on in. I’ll turn no hungry man away from a warm fire and a meal.”

The stranger came out of the brush, keeping one hand in view, the other hand tugging at the lead rope which was attached to a reluctant donkey. “I’m aheadin’ for the tradin’ post on the Illinois,” he said, stripping the gear from the donkey’s back and hobbling the animal so it could graze and stay close. “Ran slap out of food yesterday and ain’t seen no game atall.”

“I have plenty of fish and fried potatoes and bread,” Smoke told him. “ Spread your blanket and sit.” Smoke poured him a tin cup of coffee.

“Kind of you, stranger. Kind. I’m called Big Foot.” He grinned and held up a booted foot. “Size fourteen. Been up in Montana lookin’ for some color. Got snowed in. Coldest damn place I ever been in my life.” He hooked a piece of bread and went to gnawing.

“I run a ranch south of here. The Sugarloaf. Name’s Jensen.”

Big Foot choked on his bread. When he finally got it swallowed, he took a drink of coffee. “Smoke Jensen?” he managed to gasp.

“Yes.”

“Aunt Fanny’s drawers!”

Smoke smiled and slid the skillet back over the flames, dumping in some sliced potatoes and a few bits of some early wild onions for flavor. “Where’bouts in Montana?”

“All around the Little Belt Mountains. East of the Smith River.”

“Is that anywhere close to Gibson?”

“Durn shore is. And that’s a good place to fight shy of, Smoke. Big range war goin’ on. Gonna bust wide open any minute. ”

“Seems to me I heard about that. McCorkle and Hanks, right?”

“Right on the money. Dooley Hanks has done hired Lanny Ball, and McCorkle put Jason Bright on the payroll. I reckon you’ve heard of them two?”

“Killers. Two-bit punks who hire their guns.”

Big Foot shook his head. “You can get away with sayin’ that, but not me. Them two is poison fast, Smoke. They’s talk about that Mex gunhawk, Diego, comin’ in. He’s ’pposed to be bringing in half a dozen with him. Bad ones.”

“Probably Pablo Gomez is with him. They usually double-team a victim.”

“Say! You’re right. I heard that. They gonna be workin’ for Hanks.”

Smoke served up the fish and potatoes and bread and both men fell to it.

When the edges had been taken off their hunger, Smoke asked, “Town had to be named for somebody ... who’s Gibson?”

“Well, it really ain’t much of a town. Three, four stores, two saloons, a barber shop, and a smithy. I don’t know who Gibson is, or was, whatever. ”

“No school?”

“Well, sort of. Got a real prissy feller teachin’ there. Say! His name’s Jensen, too. Parnell Jensen. But he ain’t no kin to you, Smoke. Y‘all don’t favor atall. Parnell don’t look like nothin’!”

Parnell was his uncle’s middle name.

“But Parnell’s sister, now, brother, that is another story.”

Smoke dropped in more lard and more fish and potatoes. He sopped up the grease in his tin plate with a hunk of bread and waited for Big Foot to continue.

“Miss Fae would tackle a puma with a short switch. She ain’t no real comely lass, but that ain’t what’s keepin’ the beaux away. It’s that damn temper of her’n. Got her a tongue you could use for a skinnin’ knife. I seen and heared her lash out at that poor brother of her’n one time that was plumb pitiful. Made my old donkey draw all up. He teaches school and she runs the little ranch they got. Durnest mixed-up mess I ever did see. That woman rides astraddle! Plumb embarrassin‘!”

Big Foot ate up everything in sight, then picked up the skillet and sopped it out with a hunk of bread. He poured another cup of coffee and with a sigh of contentment, leaned back and rolled a smoke. “Mighty fine eats, Smoke. Feel human agin.”

“Where you heading. Big Foot?”

“Kansas. I’m givin’ er up. I been prowlin’ this countryside for twenty-five years, chasin’ color. Never found the mother lode. Barely findin’ enough color to keep body and soul alive. My brother s been pesterin’ me for years to come hep work his hog farm. So that’s where I’m headin’. Me and Lucy over yonder. Bes’ burro I ever had. I’m gonna retie her; just let ’er eat and get fat. You?”

“Heading up to Montana to check out some land. I don’t plan on staying long.”

“You fight shy of Gibson, now, Smoke. They’s something wrong with that town.”

“How do you mean that?”

“Cain’t hardly put it in words. It’s a feel in the air. And the people is crabby. Oh, most go to church and all that. But it’s ... well, they don’t like each other. Always bickerin’ about this and that and the other thing. The lid’s gonna blow off that whole county one of these days. It’s gonna be unpleasant when it do.”

“How about the sheriff?”

“He’s nearabouts a hundred miles away. I never put eyes on him or any of his deputies. Ain’t no town marshal. Just a whole bunch of gunslicks lookin’ hard at one another. When they start grabbin’ iron, it’s gonna be a sight to see.”

Big Foot drank his coffee and lay back with a grunt. “And I’ll tell you something else: that Fae Jensen woman, her spread is smack in the middle of it all. She’s got the water and the graze, and both sides wants it. Sharp tongue and men’s britches an’ all ... I feel sorry for her.”

“She have hands?”

“Had a half a dozen. Down to two now. Both of them old men. Hanks and McCorkle keep runnin’ off anyone she hires. Either that or just outright killin’ them. Drug one young puncher, Hanks s men did. Killed him. But McCorkle is not a really mean person. He just don’t like Hanks. Nothin’ to like. Hanks is evil, Smoke. Just plain evil.”

Two

Come the dawning, Smoke gave Big Foot enough food to take him to the trading post. They said their goodbyes and each went their own way: one north, one east.

Smoke pondered the situation as he rode, trying to work out a plan of action. Since he knew only a smattering of what was going on, he decided to go in unknown and check it out. He took off his pistols and tucked them away in his supplies. He began growing a mustache.

Just inside Wyoming, Smoke came up on the camp of half a dozen riders. It took him but one glance to know what they were: gunhawks.

“Light and set,” one offered, his eyes appraising Smoke and deciding he was no danger. He waved toward the fire. “We got beef and beans.”

“Jist don’t ask where the meat come from,” a young man said with a mean grin.

“You talk too much, Royce,” another told him. “Shut up and eat.” He looked at Smoke. “Help yourself, stranger.”

“Thanks.” Smoke filled a plate and squatted down. “Lookin’ for work. Any of you boys know where they’re hirin’?”

“Depends on what kind of work you’re lookin’ for,” a man with a long scar on the side of his face said.

“Punchin’ cows,” Smoke told him. “Breakin’ horses. Ridin’ fence. Whatever it takes to make a dollar.”

Smoke had packed away his buckskin jacket and for a dollar had bought a nearly wornout light jacket from a farmer, frayed at the cuffs and collar. He had deliberately scuffed his boots and dirtied his jeans.

“Can’t help you there,” the scar-faced man said.

Smoke knew the man, but doubted the man knew him. He had seen him twice before. His name was Lodi, from down Texas way, and the man was rattlesnake quick with a gun.

“How come you don’t pack no gun?” Royce asked.

Smoke had met the type many times. A punk who thought he was bad and liked to push. Royce wore two guns, both tied down low. Fancy guns: engraved .45 caliber Peacemakers.

“I got my rifle,” Smoke told him. ”She’ll bang seventeen times.”

“I mean a short gun,” Royce said irritably.

“One in the saddlebags if I need it. I don’t hunt trouble, so I ain’t never needed it.”

One of the other gunhands laughed. “You got your answer, Royce. Now let the man eat.” He cut his eyes to Smoke. “What be your name?”

“Kirby.” He knew his last name would not be asked. It was not a polite question in the West.

“You look familiar to me.”

“I been workin’ down on the Blue for three years. Got the urge to drift.”

‘I do know the feelin’.” He rose to his boots and started packing his gear.

These men, with the possible exception of Royce, were range wise and had been on the owlhoot trail many times, Smoke concluded. They would eat in one place, then move on several miles before settling in and making camp for the night. Smoke quickly finished his beef and beans and cleaned his plate.

They packed up, taking everything but the fire. Lodi lifted his head. “See you, puncher.”

Smoke nodded and watched them ride away. To the north. He stayed by the fire, watching it burn down, then swung back into the saddle and headed out, following their trail for a couple of miles before cutting east. He crossed the North Platte and made camp on the east side of the river.

He followed the Platte up to Fort Fred Steele, an army post built in 1868 to protect workers involved in the building of the Union Pacific railroad. There, he had a hot bath in a wooden tub behind a barber shop and resupplied. He stepped into a cafe and enjoyed a meal that he didn’t have to cook, and ate quietly, listening to the gossip going on around him.

There had been no Indian trouble for some time; the Shoshone and the Arapahoe were, for the most part, now settled in at the Wind River Reservation, although every now and then some whiskeyed-up bucks would go on the prowl. They usually ended up either shot or hanged.

Smoke loafed around the fort for a couple of days, giving the gunhands he’d talked with ample time to get gone farther north.

And even this far south of the Little Belt Mountains, folks knew about the impending range war, although Smoke did not hear any talk about anyone here taking sides.

He pulled out and headed for Fort Caspar, about halfway between Fort Fetterman and Hell’s Half Acre. The town of Casper would become reality in a few more years.

At Fort Caspar, Smoke stayed clear of a group of gunslicks who were resupplying at the general store. He knew several in this bunch: Eddie Hart, Pooch Matthews, Golden. None of them were known for their gentle, loving dispositions.

It was at Fort Caspar that he met a young, down-at-the-heels puncher with the unlikely handle of Beans.

“Bainbridge is the name my folks hung on me,” Beans explained with a grin. “I was about to come to the conclusion that I’d just shoot myself and get it over with knowin’ I had to go through the rest of my life with everybody callin’ me Bainbridge. A camp cook over in the Dakotas started callin’ me Beans. He didn’t have no teeth, and evertime he called my name, it come out soundin’ like Beans-Beans. So Beans it is. ”

Beans was one of those types who seemed not to have a care in the world. He had him a good horse, a good pistol, and a good rifle. He was young and full of fire and vinegar ... so what was there to worry about?

Smoke told him he was drifting on up into Montana. Beans allowed as how that was as good a direction as any to go, so they pulled out before dawn the next day.

With his beat-up clothes and his lip concealed behind a mustache and his hair now badly in need of a trim, Smoke felt that unless he met someone who really knew him, he would not be recognized by any who had only bumped into him casually.

“You any good with that short gun? ’ Smoke asked.

“Man over in Utah didn’t think so. I rattled my hocks shortly before the funeral.”

Now, there was two ways to take that. “Your funeral or his?”

“He was a tad quicker, but he missed.”

’Nuff said.

On the third night out, Beans finally said what he’d been mullin’ about all day. “Kirby ... there’s something about you that just don’t add up.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Now, to someone who just happened to glance over at you and ride on, you’d appear to be a drifter. Spend some time on the trail with you, and a body gets to thinkin’.”

Smoke stirred the beans and laid the bacon in the pan. He poured them both coffee and waited.

“You got coins in your pocket and greenbacks in your poke. That saddle don’t belong to no bum. That Winchester in your boot didn’t come cheap. And both them horses are wearin a brand like I ain’t never seen. Is that a circle double snake or what?”

“Circle Double-S.” As his spread had grown, Smoke had changed his brand. S for Smoke, S for Sally. It was registered with the brand commission.

“There ain’t no ‘S’ in Kirby.” Beans noted.

“Maybe my last name is Smith.”

“Ain’t but one ‘S’ there.”

“You do have a point.” Beans was only pointing out things that Smoke was already aware of. “How far into Montana are you planning on going?”

“Well,” Beans grinned, “I don’t know. Taggin’ along with you I found that the grub’s pretty good.”

“You’re aware of the impending range war in Montana?”

“There’s another thing that don’t ring true, Kirby. Sometimes you talk like a schoolteacher. Now I know that don’t necessarily mean nothin’ out here, but it do get folks to thinkin’. You know what I mean?”

Smoke nodded and turned the bacon.

“And them jeans of yours is wore slick on the right side, down low on the leg. You best get you some other britches or strap that hogleg back on.”

“You don’t miss much, do you, Beans?”

“My folks died with the fever when I was eight. I been on my own ever since. Goin’ on nineteen years. Startin’ out alone, that young, a body best get savvy quick.”

“My real name is Kirby, Beans.”

“All right.”

“You didn’t answer my question about whether you knew about the range war?”

“I heard of it, yeah. But I don’t hire my gun. Way I had it figured, with most of the hands fightin’, them rich ranchers is gonna need somebody just to look after the cattle.” He grinned. “That’s me!”

“I’d hate to see you get tied up in a range war, Beans,’cause sooner or later, you’re gonna have to take a stand and grab iron.”

“Yeah, I know. But I don’t never worry about bridges until I come to them. Ain’t that food about fitten to eat?”

They were lazy days, and the two men rode easy; no reason to push. Smoke was only a few years older than Beans—chronologically speaking; several lifetimes in experience—and the men became friends as they rode.

Spring had hit the high country, and the hills and valleys were blazing in God’s colors. The men entered Johnson County in the Wyoming Territory, rode into Buffalo, and decided to hunt up a hot bath; both were just a bit on the gamey side.

After a bath and a change of clothes, Smoke offered to buy the drinks. Beans, with a grin, pointed out the sign on the barroom wall: “Don’t forget to write your mother, boys. Whether you are worth it or not, she is thinking of you. Paper and inveelopes free. So is the picklled eggs. The whiskey ain t.”

“You got a ma, Kirby?”

“Beans, everybody has a mother!” Smoke grinned at the man.

“I mean ... is she still alive?” He flushed red.

“No. She died when I was just a kid, back in Missouri.”

“I thought I smelled a Missouri puke in here.” The voice came from behind them.

Smoke had not yet tasted his whiskey. He placed the shot glass back on the bar as the sounds of chairs being pushed back reached him. He turned slowly.

A bear of a man sat at a table. Even sitting down he was huge. Little piggy eyes. Mean eyes. Bully was invisibly stamped all over him. His face looked remarkably like a hog.

“You talking to me, Pig-Face?” Smoke asked.

Big Pig stood up and held open his coat. He was not wearing a gun. Smoke opened his jacket to show that he was not armed.

Beans stepped to one side.

“I think I’ll tear your head off,” Big Pig snorted.

Smoke leaned against the bar. “Why?”

The question seemed to confuse the bully. Which came as no surprise to Smoke. Most bullies could not be classified as being anywhere close to mental giants.

“For fun!” Big Pig said.

Then he charged Smoke, both big hands balled into fists that looked like hams. Smoke stepped to one side just at the last possible split second and Big Pig crashed into the bar. His bulk and momentum tore the rickety bar in half and sent Big Pig hurling against the counter. Whiskey bottles and beer mugs and shot glasses were splintered from the impact. The stench of raw whiskey and strong beer filled the smoky barroom.

Hollering obscenities and roaring like a grizzly with a sore paw, Big Pig lumbered and stumbled to his feet and swung a big fist that would’ve busted Smoke’s head wide open had it landed.

Smoke ducked under the punch and sidestepped. The force of Big Pig’s forward motion sent him staggering and slipping across the floor. Smoke picked up a chair and just as Big Pig turned around, Smoke splintered the wooden chair across his teeth.

Big Pig’s boots flew out from under him and he went crashing to the floor, blood spurting from smashed lips and cuts on his face. But Smoke saw that Pig was a hard man to keep down. Getting to his feet a second time, Pig came at a rush, wide open. Smoke had already figured out that the man was no skilled slugger, relying on his enormous strength and his ability to take punches that would have felled a normal man.

Smoke hit him flush on the beak with a straight-from-the-shoulder right. The nose busted and the blood flew. Big Pig snorted away the pain and blood and backhanded Smoke, knocking him against a wall. Smoke’s mouth filled with the copper taste of blood.

Yelling, falsely sensing that victory was his, Pig charged again. Smoke dropped to his knees and drove his right fist straight up into the V of Big Pig’s legs.

Pig howled in agony and dropped to the floor, both hands cupping his injured parts. Still on his knees, Smoke hit the man on the side of the jaw with everything he could put into the punch. This time, Big Pig toppled over, down, but still a hell of a long way from being out.

Spitting out blood, Smoke got to his feet and backed up, catching his breath, readying himself for the next round that he knew was coming.

Big Pig crawled to his feet, glaring at Smoke. But his eyes were filled with doubt. This had never happened to him. He had never lost a fight; not in his entire life.

Smoke suddenly jumped at the man, hitting him with both fists, further pulping the man’s lips and flattening his snout.

Pig swung and Smoke grabbed the thick wrist with both hands and turned and slung the man, spinning Big Pig across the room. Pig crashed into the wall and went right through it, sailing across the warped boardwalk and landing in a horse trough.

Smoke stepped through the splintered hole in the wall and walked to the trough. He grabbed Big Pig’s head and forced it down into the water, holding him there. Just as it appeared the man would drown, Smoke pulled the head out, pounded it with his fists, then grabbed the man by his hair and once more forced the head under water.

Finally, Big Pig’s struggling ceased. Smoke wearily hauled him out of the water and left him draped half in, half out of the trough. Big Pig was breathing, but that was about all.

Smoke sat down on the edge of the boardwalk and tried to catch his breath.

The boardwalk gradually filled with people, all of them staring in awe at Smoke. One man said, “Mister, I don’t know who you are, but I’d have bet my spread that you wouldn’t have lasted a minute against old Ring, let alone whip him.”

Smoke rubbed his aching leg. “I’d hate to have to do it again. ”

Beans squatted down beside Smoke. When he spoke his voice was low. “Kirby, I don’t know who you really are, but I shore don’t never want to make you mad.”

Smoke looked at him. “Hell, I’m not angry!” He pointed to the man called Ring. “He’s the one who wanted to fight, not me.”

“Lord, have mercy!” Beans said. “All this and you wasn’t even mad.”

Ring groaned and heaved himself out of the horse trough.

Smoke picked up a broken two-by-four and walked over to where Ring lay on the soaked ground. “Mister Ring, I want your attention for a moment. If you have any thoughts at all about getting up off that ground and having a go at me, I’m going to bust your head wide open with this two-by-four. You understand all that?”

Ring rolled over onto his back and grinned up at Smoke. One eye was swollen shut and his nose and lips were a mess. He held up a hand. “Hows ’bout you and me bein’ friends. I shore don’t want you for an enemy!”

Three

The three of them pulled out the next morning, Ring riding the biggest mule Smoke had ever seen.

“Satan’s his name,” Ring explained. “Man was going to kill him till I come along. I swapped him a good horse and a gun for him. One thing, boys: don’t never get behind him if you vegot a hostile thought. He’ll sense it and kick you clear into Canada.”

There was no turning Ring back. He had found someone to look up to in Smoke. And Smoke had found a friend for life.

“I just can’t handle whiskey,” Ring said. “I can drink beer all day long and get mellow. One drink of whiskey and I’ll turn mean as a snake.”

“I figured ou were just another bully,” Beans said.

“Oh, no! I love everybody till I get to drinkin’ whiskey. Then I don’t even like myself.”

“No more whiskey for you, Ring,” Smoke told him.

“Yes, sir, Mister Kirby. Whatever you say is fine with me.”

They were getting too far east, so when they left Buffalo, they cut west and crossed the Bighorn Mountains, skirting north of Cloud Peak, the thirteen-thousand-foot mountain rearing up majestically, snow-capped year round. Cutting south at Granite Pass, the men turned north, pointing their horses’ noses toward Montana Territory.

“Mister Kirby?” Ring asked.

“Just Kirby, Ring. Please. Just Kirby.”

“OK ... Kirby. Why is it we’re going to Montana?”

“the sights. Ring”

“OK. Whatever you say. I ain’t got nothin’ but time.”

“We might find us a job punchin’ cows,” Beans said.

“I don’t know nothin’ about cows,” Ring admitted. “But I can make a nine-pound hammer sing all day long. I can work the mines or dig a ditch. There ain’t a team of horses or mules that I can’t handle. But I don’t know nothin’ about cows.”

“You ever done any smithing?” Smoke asked.

“Oh, sure. I’m good with animals. I like animals. I love puppy dogs and kitty cats. I don’t like to see people mistreat animals. Makes me mad. And when I get mad, I hurt people. I seen a man beatin’ a poor little dog one time back in Kansas when I was passin’ through drivin freight. That man killed that little dog. And for no good reason.”

“What’d you do?” Smoke asked him.

“Got down off that wagon and broke his back. Left him there and drove on. After I buried the little dog.”

Beans shuddered.

“Dogs and cats and the like can’t help bein’ what they are. God made them that way. If God had wanted them different, He’d have made ’em different. Men can think. I don’t know about women, but men can think. Man shouldn’t be cruel to animals. It ain’t right and I don’t like it.”

“I have never been mean to a dog in my life,” Beans quickly pointed out.

“Good. Then you’re a nice person. You show me a man who is mean to animals, and I’ll show you a low-down person at heart.”

Smoke agreed with that. “You born out here, Ring?”

“No. Born in Pennsylvania. I killed a man there and done time. He was a no-good man. Mean-hearted man. He cheated my mother out of her farm through some legal shenanigans. Put her on the road with nothin’ but the clothes on her back. I come home from the mines to visit and found my mother in the poor farm, dying. After the funeral, I looked that man up and beat him to death. The judge gimme life in prison.”

“You get pardoned?” Beans asked.

“No. I got tired of it and jerked the bars out of the bricks, tied the guard up, climbed over the walls and walked away one night.”

“Your secret is safe with us,” Smoke assured him.

“I figured it would be.”

They forded the Yellowstone and were in Montana Territory, but still had a mighty long way to go before they reached Gibson.

Smoke and Beans had both figured out that Ring was no great shakes when it came to thinking, but he was an incredibly gentle man—as long as you kept him away from the whiskey. Birds would come to him when he held out his arms. Squirrels would scamper up and take food from his fingers. And he almost cried one day when he shot a deer for food. He left the entrails for the wolves and the coyotes and spent the rest of the journey working on the hide, making them all moccasins and gloves.

Ring was truly one of a kind.

He stood six feet six inches and weighed three hundred pounds, very little of it fat. He could read and write only a little, but he said it didn’t matter. He didn’t have anyone to write to noways, and nobody ever wrote to him.

At a small village on the Boulder, Smoke resupplied and they all had a hot bath. Ring was so big he made the wooden tub look like a bucket.

But Smoke had a bad feeling about the village; not about the village itself, but at what might be coming at them if they stayed. Smoke had played on his hunches before; they had kept him alive more than once. And this one kept nagging at him.

After carefully shaving, leaving his mustache intact, he went to his pack horse and took out his .44’s, belting them around his lean hips, tying down the right hand gun. He carefully checked them, wiping them clean with a cloth and checking the loads. He usually kept the chamber under the hammer empty; this time he loaded them both up full. He stepped out from behind the wooden partition by the wooden tubs and walked into the rear of the store, conscious of the eyes of Beans and Ring on him; they had never seen him wear a short gun, much less two of them, one butt forward for a cross draw.

“Five boxes of .44’s,” Smoke told the clerk.

“You plannin’ on startin’ a war?” the clerk said, sticking his mouth into something that didn’t concern him.

Smoke’s only reply was to fix his cold brown eyes on the man and stare at him. The clerk got the message and turned away, a flush on his face.

He placed the ammunition on the counter and asked no more questions. Smoke bought three cans of peaches and paid for his purchases. He walked out onto the shaded porch, Ring and Beans right behind him. The three of them sat down and opened the peaches with their knives, enjoying a midmorning sweet-syruped snack.

“Don’t see too many people wearin’ twin guns thataway,” Beans observed, looking at Smoke’s rig.

“Not too many,” Smoke agreed, and ate a peach.

“Riders coming,” Ring said quietly. “From the south.”

The men sat on the porch, eating peaches, and watching the riders come closer.

“You recognize any of them?” Smoke tossed the question out.

Beans took it. “Nope. You?”

“That one on the right is Park. Gunfighter from over in the Dakotas. Man next to him is Tabor. Gunhawk from Oklahoma. I don’t know the others.”

“They know you?” Ring asked.

“They know of me.” Smoke’s words were softly spoken.

“By the name of Kirby?”

“No.”

The five dusty gunhands reined up and dismounted. A ferret-faced young man ducked under the hitchrail and paused by the porch, staring at Smoke. His eyes drifted to Smoke’s twin guns.

The other gunhawks were older, wiser, and could read sign. They were not being paid to cause trouble in this tiny village, therefore they would avoid trouble if at all possible.

The kid with the acne-pocked face and the big Colts slung around his hips was not nearly so wise. He deliberately stepped on Smoke’s boot as he walked past.

Smoke said nothing. The four older men stood to one side, watching, keeping their hands away from the butts of their guns.

Ferret-face laughed and looked at his friends, jerking a thumb toward Smoke. “There ain’t much to him.”

“I wouldn’t bet my life on it,” Park said softly. To Smoke, “Don’t I know you?”

Smoke stood up. At the approach of the men, he had slipped the leather hammer-thongs from his guns. “We’ve crossed rails a time or two. If this punk kid’s a friend of yours, you might better put a stopper on his mouth before I’m forced to change his diapers.”

The kid flushed at the insult. He backed up a few yards, his hands hovering over the butts of his fancy guns. “They call me Larado. Maybe you’ve heard of me?”

“Can’t say as I have,” Smoke spoke easily. “But I’m glad to know you have a name. That’s something that everybody should have.”

“You’re makin’ fun of me!”

“Am I? Maybe so.”

“I think I’ll just carve another notch on my guns,” Larado hissed.

“Yeah? I had you pegged right then. A tinhorn.”

“Draw, damn you!

But Smoke just stood, smiling at the young man.

Two little boys took that time to walk by the store; perhaps they were planning on spending a penny for some candy. One of them looked at Smoke, jerked dime novel out of the back of his overalls, and stared at the cover. He mentally shaved off Smoke’s mustache. His mouth dropped open.

“It’s really him! That’s Smoke Jensen! ”

All the steam went out of Larado. His sigh was audible. He lifted his hands and carefully folded them across his chest, keeping his hands on the outside of his arms.

Beans and Ring sat in their chairs and stared at their friend.

“You some distance from Colorado, Smoke,” Tabor said.

“And you’re a long way from Oklahoma,” Smoke countered.

“For a fact. You headin’ north or south?”

“North.”

“I never knowed you to hire your guns out.”

“I never have. It isn’t for sale this trip, either.”

“But you do have a reputation for buttin’ in where you ain’t wanted,” Park added his opinion.

“I got a personal invitation to this party, Park. But if you feel like payin’ the fiddler, you can write your name on my dance card right now.”

“I ain’t got nothin’ agin you, Smoke. Not until I find out which side you buckin’ leastways. McCorkle or Hanks?”

“Neither one.”

The gunslicks exchanged glances. “That don’t make no sense,” one of the men that Smoke didn’t know said.

“You got a name?”

“Dunlap.”

“Yeah, I heard of you. You killed a couple of Mexican sheepherders and shot one drunk in the back down in Arizona. But I’m not a sheepherder and I’m not drunk.”

Dunlap didn’t like that. But he had enough sense not to pull iron with Smoke Jensen.

“You was plannin’ on riding in with nobody knowin’ who you were, wasn’t you?” Tabor asked.

“Yes.”

“Next question is why?”

“I guess that’s my business.”

“You right. I reckon we’ll find out when we get to Gibson.”

“Perhaps.” He turned to Beans and Ring. “Let’s ride.”

After the three men had ridden away, toward the north, one of the two gunhands who had not spoken broke his silence.

“I’m fixin’ to have me a drink and then I’m ridin’ over to Idaho. It’s right purty this time of year.”

Larado, now that Smoke was a good mile away, had reclaimed his nerve. “You act like you re yeller!” he sneered.

But the man just chuckled. “Boy, I was over at what they’s now callin’ Telluride some years back, when a young man name of Smoke Jensen come ridin’ in. He braced fifteen of the saltiest ol’ boys there was at that time. Les’ see, that was back in, oh, ’72, I reckon.” He looked directly at Larado. “And you bear in mind, young feller, that he kilt about ten or so gettin’ to that silver camp. He kilt all fifteen of them so-called fancy gunhandlers. Yeah, kid, he’s that Smoke Jensen. The last mountain man. Since he kilt his first Injun when he was about fifteen years old, over in Kansas, he’s probably kilt a hundred or more white men—and that’s probably figurin’ low. There ain’t nobody ever been as fast as he is, there ain’t never gonna be nobody as fast as he is.

“And I know you couldn’t hep notice that bear of a man with him? That there is Ring. Ring ain’t never followed no man in his life afore today. And that tells me this: Smoke has done whipped him fair and square with his fists. And if I ain’t mistaken, that young feller with Smoke and Ring is the one from over in Utah, round Moab. Goes by a half a dozen different names, but one he favors is Beans.

“Now, boys, I’m a fixin’ to have me a drink and light a shuck. ‘Cause wherever Smoke goes, they’s soon a half a dozen or more of the randiest ol’ boys this side of hell. Smoke draws ’em like a magnet does steel shavin’s. I had my say. We partin’ company. Like as of right now!”

Down in Cheyenne, two old friends came face-to-face in a dingy side-street barroom. The men whoopped and hollered and insulted each other for about five minutes before settling down to have a drink and talk about old times.

Across the room, a young man stood up, irritation on his face. He said to his companion, “I think I’ll go over there and tell them old men to shut up. I’m tared of hearin’ them hoot and holler.”

“Sit down and close your mouth,” his friend told him. “That’s Charlie Starr and Pistol Le Roux.”

The young man sat down very quickly. A chill touched him, as if death had brushed his skin.

“I thought them old men was dead!” he managed to croak after slugging back his drink.

“Well, they ain’t. But I got some news that I bet would interest them. I might even get to shake their hands. My daddy just come back from haulin’ freight down in Colorado. You wanna go with me?”

“No, sir!”

The young man walked over to where the two aging gunfighters were sitting and talking over their beers. “Sirs?

Charlie and Pistol looked up. “What can I do for you?” Le Roux said.

The young man swallowed hard. This was real flesh and blood legend he was looking at. These men helped tame the West. “You gentlemen are friends with a man called Smoke Jensen, aren’t you?”

“You bet your boots!” Charlie smiled at him.

“My daddy just come home from haulin’ freight down to a place called Big Rock. He spoke with the sheriff, a man called Monte Carson. Smoke’s in trouble. He’s gone up to some town in Montana Territory called Gibson to help his cousin. A woman. He’s gonna be facin’ forty or fifty gunhands; right in the middle of a range war.”

Pistol and Charlie stood up as of one mind. The young man stared in astonishment. God, but they were both big and gray and gnarled and old!

But the guns they wore under their old jackets were clean and shiny.

“I wish we could pay you,” Charlie said. “But we’re gonna have to scratch deep to get up yonder.”

The young man stuck out his hand and the men shook it. Their hands were thickly calloused. “There’s a poke of food tied to my saddle horn. Take it. It’s all I can do.”

“Nice of you,” Pistol said. “Thankee kindly.”

The men turned, spurs jingling, and were gone.

The silver-haired man pulled off his boot and looked at the hole in the sole. He stuck some more paper down into the boot. “Hardrock, today is my birthday. I just remembered.”

“How old are you, about a hundred?”

“I think I’m sixty-seven. And I know you two year older than me.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thankee.”

“I ain’t got no present. Sorry.”

Silver Jim laughed. “Hardrock, between the two of us we might be able to come up with five dollars. Tell you what. Let’s drift up to Montana Territory. I got a friend up in the Little Belt Mountains. Got him a cabin and runs a few head of cattle. Least we can eat.”

“Silver Jim ... he died about three years ago.”

“Ummm ... that’s right. He did, didn t he. Well, the cabin’s still there, don’t you reckon?”

“Might be. I thought of Smoke this mornin’. Wonder how that youngster is?”

“Did you now? That’s odd. I did, too.”

“I thought about Montana, too.”

The two old gunfighters exchanged glances, Silver Jim saying, “I just remembered I had a couple of double eagles I was savin for hard times.”

“Is that right? Well ... me, too.”

“We could ride back to that little town we come through this morning and send a message through the wires to Big Rock.”

The old gunslingers waited around the wire office for several hours until they received a reply from Monte Carson in Big Rock.

“Let’s get the hell to Montanee!” Silver Jim said.

Four

“I thought you would be a much older man,” Ring remarked after they had made camp for the evening.

It was the first time Smoke’s real identity had been brought up since leaving the little village.

Smoke smiled and dumped the coffee into the boiling water. “I started young.”

“When was you gonna tell us?” Beans asked.

“The same time you told me that you was the Moab Gunfighter.”

Beans chuckled. “I wasn’t gonna get involved in this fight. But you headin’ that way... well, it sorta peaked my interest.”

“My cousin is in the middle of it. She wrote me at my ranch. You can’t turn your back on kin.”

“Y’all must be close.”

“I have never laid eyes on her in my life. I didn’t even know she existed until the letter came.” He told them about his conversations with Big Foot.

“This brother of hers sounds like a sissy to me,” Beans said.

“He does for a fact,” Smoke agreed. “But I’ve found out this much about sissies: they’ll take and take and take, until you push them to their limits, and then they’ll kill you.”

The three of them made camp about ten miles outside of Gibson, on the fringes of the Little Belt Mountains.

“There is no point in any of us trying to hide who we are,” Smoke told the others. “As soon as Park and the others get in town, it would be known. We’ll just ride in and look the place over first thing in the morning. I’m not going to take a stand in this matter unless the big ranchers involved try to run over Fae ... or unless I’m pushed to it.”

The three topped the hill and looked down at the town of Gibson. One long street, with vacant lots separating a few of the stores. A saloon, one general store, and the smithy was on one side of the street, the remainder of the businesses on the other side. Including a doctor’s office. The church stood at the far end of town.

“We’d better be careful which saloon—if any—we go into,” Beans warned. “For a fact, Hanks’s boys will gather in one and McCorkle’s boys in the other.”

“I don’t think I’ll go into either of them,” Ring said. “This is the longest I’ve been without a drink in some time. I like the feeling.”

“Looks like school is in session.” Smoke lifted the reins. “You boys hang around the smithy’s place while I go talk to Cousin Parnell. Let’s go.”

They entered the town at a slow walk, Ring and Beans flanking Smoke as they moved up the wide street. Although it was early in the day, both saloons were full, judging by the number of horses tied at the hitchrails. A half a dozen or more gunslicks were sitting under the awnings of both saloons. The men could feel the hard eyes on them as they rode slowly up the street. Appraising eyes. Violent eyes; eyes of death.

“Ring,” they heard one man say.

“That’s the Moab Kid,” another said. “But who is that in the middle?”

“I don’t know him.”

“I do,” the voice was accented. Smoke cut his eyes, shaded by the wide brim of his hat. Diego. “That, amigos, is Smoke Jensen.”

Several chair legs hit the boardwalk, the sound sharp in the still morning air.

The trio kept riding.

“Circle C on the west side of the street,” Beans observed.

“Yeah.” Smoke cut his eyes again. “That’s Jason Bright standing by the trough.”

“He is supposed to be very, very fast,” Ring said.

“He’s a punk,” Smoke replied.

“Lanny Ball over at the Hangout,” Beans pointed out.

“The Pussycat and the Hangout,” Ring said with a smile. “Where do they get the names?”

They reined up at the smith’s place; a huge stable and corral and blacksmithing complex. Beans and Ring swung down. Smoke hesitated, then stepped down.

“Changed my mind,” he told them. “No point in disturbing school while it’s in session. We’ll loaf around some; stretch our legs.”

“I’m for some breakfast,” Ring said. “Let’s try the Cafe Eats.”

Smoke told the stable boy to rub their horses down, and to give each a good bait of corn. They’d be back.

They walked across the wide street, spurs jingling, boots kicking up dust in the dry street, and stepped up onto the boardwalk, entering the cafe.

It was a big place for such a tiny town, but clean and bright, and the smells from the kitchen awakened the taste buds in them all.

They sat down at a table covered with a red-and-white checkered cloth and waited. A man stepped out of the kitchen. He wore an apron and carried a sawed-off double-barreled ten gauge express gun. “You are velcome to eat here at anytime ve are open,” he announced, his German accent thick. “My name is Hans, and I own dis establishment. I vill tell you what I have told all the rest: there vill be no trouble in here. None! I operate a nice quiet family restaurant. People come in from twenty, terty miles avay to eat here. Start trouble, und I vill kill you! Understood?”

“We understand, Hans,” Smoke said. “But we are not taking sides with either McCorkle or Hanks. I do not hire my guns and neither does Beans here.” He jerked his thumb toward the Moab Kid. “And Ring doesn’t even carry a short gun.”

“Uummph!” the German grunted. “Den dat vill be a velcome change. You vant breakfast?”

“Please.”

“Good! I vill start you gentlemen vith hot oatmeal vith lots of fresh cream and sugar. Den ham and eggs and fried potatoes and lots of coffee. Olga! Tree oatmeals and tree breakfasts, Liebling.”

“What’d he call her?” Beans whispered. “Darling,” Ring told him.

Smoke looked up. “You speak German, Ring?”

“My parents were German. Born in the old country. My last name is Kruger.”

The oatmeal was placed before them, huge bowls of steaming oatmeal covered with cream and sugar. Ring looked up. “Danke.”

The two men then proceeded to converse in rapid-fire German. To Beans it sounded like a couple of bullfrogs with laryngitis.

Then, to the total amazement of Smoke and Beans, the two big men proceeded to slap each other across the face several times, grinning all the time.

Hans laughed and returned to the kitchen. “Y’all fixin’ to fight, Ring?” Beans asked.

Ring laughed at the expression on their faces. “Oh, no. That is a form of greeting in certain parts of the old country. It means we like each other.”

“That is certainly a good thing to know,” Smoke remarked drily. “In case I ever take a notion to travel to Germany.”

The men fell to eating the delicious oatmeal. When they pushed the empty bowls away, Hans was there with huge platters of food and the contest was on.

“Guten appetit, gentlemans.”

“What’d he say. ” Beans asked Ring.

“Eat!” He smiled. “More or less.”

Olga stepped out of the kitchen to stand watching the men eat, a smile on her face. She was just as ample as Hans. Between the two of them they’d weigh a good five hundred pounds. Another lady stepped out of the kitchen. Make that seven hundred and fifty pounds.

When they had finished, as full as ticks, Ring looked up and said, “Prima! Grobartig!” He lifted his coffee mug and toasted their good health. “Auf Ihre Gesundheit!”

Olga and the other lady giggled.

“I didn’t hear nobody sneeze.” Beans looked around.

Ring stayed in the restaurant, talking with Hans and Olga and Hilda and drinking coffee. Beans sat down in a wooden chair in front of the place, staring across the street at the gunhawks who were staring at him. Smoke walked up to the church that doubled as a schoolhouse. The kids were playing out front so he figured it was recess time.

The children looked at him, a passing glance, and resumed their playing. Smoke walked up the steps.

Smoke stood in the open doorway, the outside light making him almost impossible to view clearly from the inside. He felt a pang of ... some kind of emotion. He wasn’t sure. But there was no doubt: he was looking at family.

The schoolteacher looked up from his grading papers. “Yes?”

“Parnell Jensen?”

“Yes. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Smoke had to chew on that for a few seconds. “I reckon I’m your cousin, Parnell. I’m Smoke Jensen.”

Parnell gave Smoke directions to the ranch and said he would be out at three-thirty. And he would be prompt about it. “I am a very punctilious person,” Parnell added.

And a prissy sort too, Smoke thought. “Uh-huh. Right.” He’d have to remember to ask somebody what punch-till-eous meant.

He was walking up the boardwalk just as the thunder of hooves coming hard reached him. The hooves drummed across the bridge at the west end of town and didn’t slow up. A dozen hard-ridden horses can kick up a lot of dust.

Smoke had found out from Parnell that McCorkle’s spread was west and north of town, Hanks’s spread was east and north of town. Fae’s spread, and it was no little spread, ran on both sides of the Smith River; for about fifteen miles on either side of it. McCorkle hated Hanks, Hanks hated McCorkle, and both men had threatened to dam up the Smith and dry Fae out if she didn’t sell out to one of them.

“And then what are they going to do?” Smoke asked.

“Fight each other for control of the entire area between the Big Belt and the Little Belt Mountains. They’ve been fighting for twenty years. They came here together in ’62. Hated each other at first sight.” Parnell flopped his hand in disgust. “It’s just a dreadful situation. I wish we had never come to this barbaric land.”

“Why did you?”

“My sister wanted to farm and ranch. She’s always been a tomboy. The man who owned the ranch before us, hired me—I was teaching at a lovely private institution in Illinois, close to Chicago—and told Fae that he had no children and would give us the ranch upon his death. I think more to spite McCorkle and Hanks than out of any kindness of heart.”

Smoke leaned against a storefront and watched as King Cord McCorkle—as Parnell called him—and his crew came to a halt in a cloud of dust in front of the Pussycat. When the dust had settled, Jason Bright stepped off the boardwalk and walked to Cord’s side, speaking softly to him.

Parnell’s words returned: “I have always had to look after my sister. She is so flighty. I wish she would marry and then I could return to civilization. It’s so primitive out here!” He sighed. “But I fear that the man who gets my sister will have to beat her three times a day.”

Cord turned his big head and broad face toward Smoke and stared at him. Smoke pegged the man to be in his early forties; a bull of a man. Just about Smoke’s height, maybe twenty pounds heavier.

Cord blinked first, turning his head away with a curse that just reached Smoke. Smoke cut his eyes to the Hangout. Diego and Pablo Gomez and another man stood there. Smoke finally recognized the third man. Lujan, the Chihuahua gunfighter. Probably the fastest gun—that as yet had built a reputation—in all of Mexico. But not a cold-blooded killer like Diego and Pablo.

Lujan tipped his hat at Smoke and Smoke lifted a hand in acknowledgment and smiled. Lujan returned the smile, then turned and walked into the saloon.

Smoke again felt eyes on him. Cord was once more staring at him.

“You there! The man supposed to be Smoke Jensen. Git down here. I wanna talk to you.”

“You got two legs and a horse, mister!” Smoke called over the distance. “So you can either walk or ride up here.”

Pablo and Diego laughed at that.

“Damned greasers!” Cord spat the words.

The Mexicans stiffened, hands dropping to the butts of their guns.

A dozen gunhands in front of the Pussycat stood up.

A little boy, about four or five years old, accompanied by his dog, froze in the middle of the street, right in line of fire.

Lujan opened the batwings and stepped out. “We—all of us—have no right to bring bloodshed to the innocent people of this town.” His voice carried across the street. He stepped into the street and walked to the boy’s side. “You and your dog go home, muchacho. Quickly, now.”

Lujan stood alone in the street. “A man who would deliberately injure a child is not fit to live. So, McCorkle, it is a good day to die, is it not?”

Smoke walked out into the street to stand by Lujan’s side. A smile creased the Mexican’s lips. “You are taking a side, Smoke?”

“No. I just don’t like McCorkle, and I probably won’t like Hanks either.”

“So, McCorkle,” Lujan called. “You see before you two men who have not taken a side, but who are more than willing to open the baile. Are you ready?”

“Make that three people,” Beans’s voice rang out.

“Who the hell are you?” McCorkle shouted.

“Some people call me the Moab Kid.”

“Make that four people,” Ring said. He held his Winchester in his big hands.

“Funf!” Hans shouted, stepping out into the street. He held the sawed-off in his hands.

The window above the cafe opened and Olga leaned out, a pistol with a barrel about a foot and a half long in her hand. She jacked back the hammer to show them all she knew how to use it. And would.

“All right, all right!” Cord shouted. “Hell’s bells! Nobody was going to hurt the kid. Come on, boys, I’ll buy the drinks.” He turned and bulled his way through his men.

At the far end of the street, Parnell stepped back from the open doorway and fanned himself vigorously. “Heavens!” he said.

Five

“Almost come a showdown in town this morning, Boss,” Dooley Hanks’s foreman said.

Hanks eyeballed the man. “Between who?”

Gage told his boss what a hand had relayed to him only moments earlier.

Hanks slumped back in his chair. “Smoke Jensen,” he whispered the word. “I never even thought about Fae and Parnell bein’ related to him. And the Moab Kid and Lujan sided with him?”

“Or vicey-versy.”

“This ain’t good. That damn Lujan is poison enough. But add Smoke Jensen to the pot ... might as well be lookin’ the devil in the eyeballs. I don’t know nothin’ about Ring, except he’s unbeatable in a fight. And the Moab Gunfighter has made a name for hisself in half a dozen states. All right, Gage. We got to get us a backshooter in here. Send a rider to Helena. Wire Danny Rouge; he’s over in Missoula. Tell him to come a-foggin’.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where’s them damn boys of mine?”

“Pushin’ cattle up to new pasture.”

“You mean they actually doin’ some work?”

Gage grinned. “Yes, sir.”

Hanks shook his head in disbelief. “Thank you, Gage.”

Gage left, hollering for a rider to saddle up. Hanks walked to a window in his office. He had swore he would be kingpin of this area, and he intended to be just that. Even if he bankrupted himself doing it. Even if he had to kill half the people in the area attaining it.

Cord McCorkle had ridden out of town shortly after his facedown with Smoke and Lujan and the others. He did not feel that he had backed down. It was simply a matter of survival. Nobody but a fool willingly steps into his own coffin.

His hands would have killed Smoke and Lujan and the others, for a fact. But it was also hard fact that Cord would have gone down in the first volley ... and what the hell would that have proved?

Nothing. Except to get dead.

Cord knew that men like Smoke and Lujan could soak up lead and still stay on their feet, pulling the trigger. He had personally witnessed a gunfighter get hit nine times with .45 slugs and before he died still kill several of the men he was facing.

Cord sat on the front porch of his ranch house and looked around him. He wanted for nothing. He had everything a man could want. It had sickened him when Dooley had OK’d the dragging of that young Box T puncher. Scattering someone’s cattle was one thing. Murder was another. He was glad that Jensen had come along. But he didn’t believe anyone could ever talk sense into Hanks.

Smoke, Ring, and Beans sat their horses on the knoll overlooking the ranch house of Fae and Parnell Jensen. Fae might well be a bad-mouthed woman with a double-edged tongue, but she kept a neat place. Flowers surrounded the house, the lawn was freshly cut, and the place itself was attractive.

Even at this distance, a good mile off, Smoke could see two men, with what he guessed was rifles in their hands, take up positions around the bunkhouse and barn. A woman—he guessed it was a woman, she was dressed in britches—came out onto the porch. She also carried a rifle. Smoke waved at her and waited for her to give them some signal to ride on in.

Finally the woman stepped off the porch and motioned for them to come on.

The men walked their horses down to the house, stopping at the hitchrail but not dismounting. The woman looked at Smoke. Finally she smiled.

“I saw a tintype of your daddy once. You look like him. You’d be Kirby Jensen.”

“And you’d be Cousin Fae. I got your letter. I picked up these galoots along the way.” He introduced Beans and Ring.

“Put your horses in the barn, boys, and come on into the house. It’s about dinnertime. I got fresh doughnuts; ‘bear-sign’ as you call them out here.”

Fae Jensen was more than a comely lass; she was really quite pretty and shapely. But unlike most women of the time, her face and arms were tanned from hours in the sun, doing a man’s work. And her hands were calloused.

Smoke had met Fae’s two remaining ranch hands, Spring and Pat. Both men in their early sixties, he guessed. But still leather-tough. They both gave him a good eyeballing, passed him through inspection, and returned to their jobs.

Over dinner-Sally called it lunch—Smoke began asking his questions while Beans skipped the regular food and began attacking a platter of bear-sign, washed down with hot strong western coffee.

How many head of cattle?

Started out with a thousand. Probably down to less than five hundred now, due to Hanks and McCorkle’s boys running them off.

Would she have any objections to Smoke getting her cattle back?

She looked hard at him. Finally shook her head. No objections at all.

‘Ring will stay here at the ranch and start doing some much needed repair work,” Smoke told her. ”Beans and me will start working the cattle, moving them closer in. Then we’ll get your other beeves back. Tell me the boundaries of this spread.”

She produced a map and pointed out her spread, and it was not a little one. It had good graze and excellent water. The brand was the Box T; she had not changed it since taking over several years back.

“If you’ll pack us some food,” Smoke said, “me and Beans will head out right now; get the lay of the land. We’ll stay out a couple of days—maybe longer. This situation is shaping up to be a bad one. The lid could blow off at any moment. Beans, shake out your rope and pick us out a couple of fresh horses. Let’s give ours a few days’ rest. They’ve earned it.”

“I’ll start putting together some food,” Fae said. She looked at Smoke. “I appreciate this. More than you know.”

“Sorry family that don’t stick together.”

They rode out an hour later, Smoke on a buckskin a good seventeen hands high that looked as though it could go all day and all night and still want to travel.

The old man who had given the spread to Fae had known his business—Smoke still wondered about how she’d gotten it. He decided to pursue that further when he had the time.

About ten miles from the ranch, they crossed the Smith and rode up to several men working Box T cattle toward the northwest.

They wheeled around at Smoke’s approach.

“Right nice of you boys to take such an interest in our cattle, Smoke told a hard-eyed puncher. ”But you’re pushing them the wrong way. Now move them back across the river.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” the man challenged him.

“Jensen.”

The man spat on the ground. “I like the direction we’re movin’ them better.” He grabbed iron.

Smoke drew, cocked, and fired in one blindingly fast move. The .44 slug took the man in the center of his chest and knocked him out of the saddle. He tried to rise up but did not have the strength. With a groan, he fell back on the ground, dead. Beans held a pistol on the other McCorkle riders; they were all looking a little white around the mouth.

“Jack Waters,” Smoke said. “He’s wanted for murder in two states. I’ve seen the flyers in Monte’s office.”

“Yeah,” Beans said glumly. “And he’s got three brothers just as bad as he is. Waco, Hatley, and Collis.”

“You won’t last a week on this range, Jensen,” a mouthy McCorkle rider said.

Smoke moved closer to him and backhanded the rider out of his saddle. He hit the ground and opened his mouth to cuss. Then he closed his mouth as the truth came home. Jensen. Smoke Jensen.

“All of you shuck outta them gun belts,” Beans ordered. “When you’ve done that, start movin’ them cattle back across the river.”

“Then we’re going to take a ride,” Smoke added. “To see Cord.”

While the Circle Double C boys pushed the cattle back across the river, Smoke lashed the body of Jack Waters across his saddle and Beans picked up the guns, stuffing guns, belts, and all into a gunny sack and tying it on his saddle horn. The riders returned, a sullen lot, and Smoke told them to head out for the ranch.

A hand hollered for Cord to come out long before Smoke and Beans entered the front yard. “Stay in the house,” Cord told his wife and daughter. “I don’t want any of you to see this.”

Beans stayed in the saddle, a Winchester .44 across his saddle horn. Smoke untied the ropes and slung Jack Waters over his shoulder, and Jack was not a small man. He walked across the lawn and dumped the body on the ground, by Cord’s feet.

Cord was livid, his face flushed and the veins in his neck standing out like ropes. He was breathing like an enraged bull.

“We caught Jack and these other hands on Box T Range, rustling cattle. Now you know the law out here, Cord: we were within our rights to hang every one of them. But I gave them a chance to ride on. Waters decided to drag iron.”

Cord nodded his head, not trusting his voice to speak.

“Now, Cord,” Smoke told him, “I don’t care if you and Hanks fight until you kill each other. I don’t think either of you remember what it is you’re fighting about. But the war against the Box T is over. Fae and Parnell Jensen have no interest in your war, and nothing to do with it. Leave ... them ... alone!”

Smoke’s last three words cracked like whips; several hardnosed punchers winced at the sound.

“You all through flappin’ your mouth, Jensen?” Cord asked.

“No. I want all the cattle belonging to Fae and Parnell Jensen rounded up and returned. I m not saying that your hands ran them all off. I’m sure Hanks and his boys had a hand in it, too. And I’ll be paying him a visit shortly. Get them rounded up and back on Box T Range.”

“And if I don’t—not saying I have them, mind you?”

Smoke’s smile was not pretty. “You ever heard of Louis Longmont, McCorkle?”

“Of course, I have! What’s he have to do with any of this?”

“He’s an old friend of mine, Cord. We stood shoulder to shoulder several years back and cleaned up Fontana. Then last year, he rode with me to New Hampshire ... you probably read about that.”

Cord nodded his head curtly.

“He’s one of the wealthiest men west of the Mississippi, Cord. And he loves a good fight. He wouldn’t blink an eye to spend a couple of hundred thousand putting together an army to come in here and wipe your nose on a porcupine’s backside.”

From in the house, Smoke heard a young woman’s laughter and an older woman telling her to shush!

The truth was, Louis was in Europe on an extended vacation and Smoke knew it. But sometimes a good bluff wins the pot.

Cord had money, but nothing to compare with Louis Longmont ... and he also knew that Smoke had married into a a great deal of money and was wealthy in his own right. He sighed heavily.

“I can’t speak for Hanks, Jensen. You’ll have to face him yourself. But as for me and mine... OK, we’ll leave the Box T alone. I don’t have their cattle. I’m not a rustler. My boys just scattered them. But I’m damned if I’ll help you round them up. You can come on my range and look; any wearing the Box T brand, take them.”

Smoke nodded and stuck out his hand. Cord looked startled for a few seconds, then a very grudging smile cut his face. He took the hand and gripped it briefly.

Smoke turned and mounted up. “See you.”

Beans and Smoke swung around and rode slowly away from the ranch house.

“My back is itchy,” Beans said.

“So is mine. But I think he’s a man of his word. I don’t think he’ll go back on his word. Least I’m a poor judge of character if he does.”

They rode on. Beans said, “My goodness me. I plumb forgot to give them boys their guns back.”

“ Well, shame on you, Beans. I hate to see them go to waste. We’ll just take them back to Fae and she can keep them in reserve. Never know when she might need them. You can swap them for some bear-sign.”

“What about hands?”

“We got to hire some, that’s for sure. Fae’s got to sell off some cattle for working capital. She told me so. So we’ve got to hire some boys.”

“Durned if I know where. And there’s still the matter of Dooley Hanks.”

Fae would hire some hands, sooner than Smoke thought. But they would be about fifty years from boyhood.

Six

They made camp early that day, after rounding np about fifty head of Box T cattle they found on Cord’s place. They put them in a coulee and blocked the entrance with brush. They would push them closer to home in the morning.

They suppered on the food Fae had fixed for them and were rolled up in their blankets just after dark.

Smoke was the first one up, several hours before dawn. He coaxed life back into the coals by adding dry grass and twigs, and Beans sat up when the smell of coffee got too much for him to take. Beans threw off his blankets, put on his hat, pulled on his boots, and buckled on his gun belt. He squatted by the fire beside Smoke, warming his hands and waiting for the cowboy coffee to boil.

“Town life’s done spoiled me,” Beans griped. “Man gets used to shavin’ and bathin’ every day, and puttin’ on clean clothes every mornin’. It ain’t natural.”

Smoke grinned and handed him a small sack.

“What’s in here?”

“Bear-sign I hid from you yesterday.”

Beans quit his grousing and went to eating while Smoke sliced the bacon and cut up some potatoes, adding a bit of wild onion for flavor.

“The problem of hands has got me worried,” Beans admitted, slurping on a cup of coffee. “Ain’t no cowboy in his right mind gonna go to work for the Box T with all this trouble starin’ him in the face.”

“I know.” Smoke ladled out the food onto tin plates. “But I think I know one who just might do it, for thirty and found, just for the pure hell of it. I’ll talk to him this afternoon if I can. ”You got a lot of damn nerve, Jensen,” the foreman of the D-H spread told him. ”Mister Hanks don’t wanna see you.”

“You tell him I’m here and I’ll wait just as long as it takes.”

Gage stared into the cold eyes of the most respected and feared gunfighter in all the West. He sighed, shook his head, and finally said, “All right, mister. I’ll tell him you insist on seein’ him. But I ain’t givin’ no guarantees.”

Hanks and McCorkle could pass for brothers, Smoke thought, as he squatted under the shade of a tree and watched as Dooley left the house and walked toward him. Both of them square-built men. Solid. Both of them in their early to mid forties.

Dooley did not offer to shake hands. “Speak your piece, Jensen.”

Smoke repeated what he’d told Cord, almost word for word, including the bit about Louis Longmont. Grim-faced, Hanks stood and took it. He didn’t like it, but he took it.

“Maybe I’ll just wait you out, Jensen.”

“Maybe. But I doubt it. You’re paying fighting wages, Dooley. To a lot of people. You’re like most cattlemen, Dooley: you’re worth a lot of money, but most of it is standing on four hooves. Ready scratch is hard to come up with.”

Dooley grunted. Man knew what he was talking about, all right. “You won’t get between me and McCorkle?”

“I don’t care what you two do to each other. The area would probably be better off if you’d kill each other.”

“Plain-spoken man, ain’t you?”

“I see no reason to dance around it, Dooley. What’d you say?”

Something evil moved behind Dooley Hanks’s eyes. And Smoke didn’t miss it. He did not trust this man; there was no honor to be found in Dooley Hanks.

“I didn’t rustle no Box T cattle, Jensen. We just scattered them all to hell and gone. You’re free to work my range. You find any Box T cattle, take them. You won’t be bothered, and neither will Miss Fae or any punchers she hires.” He grinned, and it was not a pleasant curving of the lips. He also had bad breath. “If she can find anyone stupid enough to work for her. Now get out of my face. I’m sick of lookin at you.”

“The feeling is quite mutual, Hanks.” Smoke mounted up and rode away.

“I don’t trust that hombre,” Beans said. “He’s got more twists and turns than a snake.”

“I got the same feeling. See if you can find some of Fae’s beef and start pushing them toward Box T graze. I’m going into Gibson.”

“You’re serious?”

“Oh, yes,” Smoke told him. “Thirty and found, and you’ll work just like any other cowboy.”

The man threw back his head and laughed; his teeth were very white against his deeply tanned face. He tossed his hat onto the table in Hans’s cafe.

“All right,” he said suddenly. “All right, Smoke, you have a deal. I was a vaquero before I turned to the gun. I will ride for the Box T.”

Smoke and Lujan shook hands. Smoke had always heard how unpredictable the man was, but once he gave his word, he would die keeping it.

Lujan packed up his gear and pulled out moments later, riding for the Box T. Smoke chatted with Hans and Olga and Hilda for a few moments—Hilda, as it turned out, was quite taken with Ring—and then he decided he’d like a beer. Smoke was not much of a drinker, but did enjoy a beer or a drink of whiskey every now and then.

Which saloon to enter? He stood in front of the cafe and pondered that for a moment. Both of the saloons were filled up with gunhands. “Foolish of me,” he muttered. But a cool beer sounded good. He slipped the leather thongs from the hammers of his guns and walked over to the Pussycat and pushed open the batwings, stepping into the semi-gloom of the beery-smelling saloon.

All conversation stopped.

Smoke walked to the bar and ordered a beer. The barkeep suddenly got very nervous. Smoke sipped his beer and it was good, hitting the spot.

“Jack Waters was a friend of mine,” a man spoke, the voice coming from the gloom of the far end of the saloon.

Smoke turned, his beer mug in his left hand.

His right thumb was hooked behind his big silver belt buckle, his fingers only a few inches from his cross-draw .44.

He stood saying nothing, sipping at his beer. He paid for the brew, damned if he wasn’t going to try to finish as much of it as possible before he had to deal with this loudmouth.

“Ever’body talks about how bad you are, Jensen,” the bigmouth cranked his tongue up again. “But I ain’t never seen none of your graveyards.”

“I have,” the voice came quietly from Smoke’s left. He did not know the voice and did not turn his head to put a face to it.

“Far as I’m concerned,” the bigmouth stuck it in gear again, “I think Smoke Jensen is about as bad as a dried-up cow pile.”

“You know my name,” Smoke’s words were softly offered. “What’s your name?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Wouldn’t be right to put a man in the ground without his name on his grave marker.”

The loudmouth cursed Smoke.

Smoke took a swallow of beer and waited. He watched as the man pushed his chair back and stood up. Men on both sides of him stood up and backed away, getting out of the line of fire.

“My name’s John Cheave, Jensen. I been lookin’ for you for nearabouts two years.”

“Why?” Smoke was almost to the bottom of his beer mug.

“My brother was killed at Fontana. By you.”

“Too bad. He should have picked better company to run with. But I don’t recall any Cheave. What was he, some two-bit thief who had to change his name?”

John Cheave again cursed Smoke.

Smoke finished his beer and set the mug down on the edge of the bar. He slipped his thumb from behind his belt buckle and let his right hand dangle by the butt of his .44.

John Cheave called Smoke a son of a bitch.

Smoke’s eyes narrowed. “You could have cussed me all day and not said that. Make your grab, Cheave.”

Cheave’s hands dipped and touched the butts of his guns. Two shots thundered, the reports so close together they sounded as one. Smoke had drawn both guns and fired, rolling his left hand .44. It was a move that many tried, but few ever perfected; and more than a few ended up shooting themselves in the belly trying.

John Cheave had not cleared leather. He sat down in the chair he had just stood up out of and leaned his head back, his wide, staring eyes looking up at the ceiling of the saloon. There were two bloody holes in the center of his chest. Cheave opened his mouth a couple of times, but no words came out.

His boots drummed on the floor for a few seconds and then he died, his eyes wide open, staring at and meeting death.

“I seen it, but I don’t believe it,” a man said, standing up. He tossed a couple of dollars on the table. “Cheave come out of California. Some say he was as fast as John Wesley Hardin. Count me out of this game, boys. I’m ridin’.”

He walked out of the saloon, being very careful to avoid getting too close to Smoke.

The sounds of his horse’s hooves faded before anyone else spoke.

“The barber doubles as the undertaker,” Pooch Matthews said.

Smoke nodded his head. “Fine.”

The bartender yelled for his swamper to fetch the undertaker.

“Impressive,” a gunhawk named Hazzard said. “I have to say it: you’re about the best I’ve ever seen. Except for one.”

“Oh?”

Hazzard smiled. “Yeah. Me.”

Smoke returned the smile and turned his back to the man, knowing the move would infuriate the gunhawk.

“Another beer, Mister Smoke?” the barkeep asked. No. ”

The barkeep did not push the issue.

Smoke studied the bottom of the empty beer mug, wondering how many more would fall under his guns. Although he knew this showdown would have come, sooner or later, one part of him said that he should not have come into the saloon, while another part of him said that he had a right to go wherever he damned well pleased. As long as it was a public place.

It was an old struggle within the man.

The barber came in and he and the swamper dragged the body out to the barber’s wagon and chunked him in. The thud of the body falling against the bed of the wagon could be heard inside the saloon.

“I believe I will have that beer,” Smoke said. While the barkeep filled his mug, Smoke rolled one of his rare cigarettes and lit up.

The saloon remained very quiet.

The barkeep’s hand trembled just slightly as he set the foamy mug in front of Smoke.

Several horses pulled up outside the place. McCorkle and Jason Bright and several of Cord’s hands came in. They walked to a table and sat down, ordering beer.

“What happened?” Smoke heard Cord ask.

“Cheave started it with Jensen. He didn’t even clear leather.”

“I thought you was going to stay out of this game, Jensen?” McCorkle directed the question to Smoke’s back.

Smoke slowly turned, holding the beer mug in his left hand. “Cheave pushed me, Cord. I only came in here for a beer.”

“Man’s got a right to have a drink,” Cord grudgingly conceded. “I seen some Box T cattle coming in, Jensen. They was grazin’ on range ’bout five, six miles out of town. On the west side of the Smith.”

“Thanks.” And with a straight face, he added, “I’ll have Lujan and a couple of others push them back to Box T Range.”

“Lujan!” Jason Bright almost hollered the word.

“Yes. He went to work for the Box T a couple of hours ago.” A gunslick that Smoke knew from the old days, when he and Preacher were roaming the land, got up and walked toward the table where Cord was sitting. “I figure I got half a month’s wages comin’ to me, Mister McCorkle. If you’ve a mind to pay me now, I’d appreciate it.”

With a look of wry amusement on his face, Cord reached into his pocket and counted out fifty dollars, handing it to the man. “You ridin’, Jim?”

“Yes, sir. I figure I can catch up with Red. He hauled his ashes a few minutes ago.”

Cord counted out another fifty. “Give this to Red. He earned

“Yes, sir. Much obliged.” He looked around the saloon. “See you boys on another trail. This one’s gettin’ crowded.” He walked through the batwings.

“Yellow,” Hazzard said disgustedly, his eyes on the swinging and squeaking batwings. “Just plain yellow is all he is.”

Cord cut his eyes. “Jim Kay is anything but yellow, Hazzard. I’ve known him for ten years. There is a hell of a lot of difference between being yellow and bettin’ your life on a busted flush.” He looked at Smoke. “There bad blood between you and Jim Kay?”

Smoke shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of. I’ve known him since I was just a kid. He’s a friend of Preacher.”

Cord smiled. “Preacher pulled my bacon out of the fire long years back. Only time I ever met him. I owe him. I often wonder what happened to him.”

“He’s alive. But getting on in years.”

Cord nodded his head, then his eyes swept the room. “I’ll say it now, boys; we leave the Box T alone. Our fight is with Dooley Hanks. Box T riders can cross our range and be safe doin’ it. They’ll be comin’ through lookin’ for the cattle we scattered. You don’t have to help them, just leave them alone.”

A few of the gunslicks exchanged furtive glances. Cord missed the eye movement. Smoke did not. The gunfighters that Smoke would have trusted had left the area, such as Jim Kay and Red and a few others. What was left was the dregs, and there was not an ounce of honor in the lot.

Smoke finished his beer. “See you, Cord.”

The rancher nodded his head and Smoke walked out the door. Riding toward the Box T, Smoke thought: You better be careful, McCorkle, ‘cause you’ve surrounded yourself with a bunch of rattlesnakes, and I don’t think you know just how dangerous they are.

Seven

The days drifted on, filled with hard honest work and the deep dreamless sleep of the exhausted. Smoke had hired two more hands, boys really, in their late teens. Bobby and Hatfield. They had left the drudgery of a hardscrabble farm in Wisconsin and drifted west, with dreams of the romantic West and being cowboys. And they both had lost all illusions about the romantic life of a cowboy very quickly. It was brutally hard work, but at least much of it could be done from the back of a horse.

True to his word, Lujan not only did his share, but took up some slack was well. He as a skilled cowboy, working with no wasted motion, and he was one of the finest horsemen Smoke had ever seen.

One hot afternoon, Smoke looked up to see young Hatfield come a-foggin’ toward him, lathering his horse.

“Mister Smoke! Mister Smoke!” he yelled. “I ain’t believing this. You got to come quick to the house.”

He reined up in a cloud of dust and Smoke had to wait until the dust settled before he could even see the young man to talk to him.

“Whoa, boy! Who put a burr under your blanket?”

“Mister Smoke, my daddy read stories about them men up to Miss Fae’s house when he was a boy. I thought they was all dead and buried in the grave!”

“Slow down, boy. What men?”

“Them old gunfighters up yonder. Come on.” He wheeled his horse around and was gone at a gallop.

Lujan pulled up. “What s going on, amigo?”

“I don t know. Come on, let’s find out.”

Fae was entertaining them on the front porch when Smoke and Lujan rode up. Smoke laughed when he saw them.

Lujan looked first at the aging men on the porch, and then looked at Smoke, When he spoke, there was disapproval in his voice. “It is not nice to laugh at the old, my friend.”

“Lujan, I’m not laughing at them. These men are friends of mine. As well known as we are, we’re pikers compared to those old gunslingers. Lujan, you’re looking at Silver Jim, Pistol Le Roux, Hardrock, and Charlie Starr.”

“Dios mio!” the Mexican breathed. “Those men invented the fast draw.”

“And don’t sell them short even today, Lujan. They can still get into action mighty quick.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute,” Lujan said, dismounting.

“If I’d known you old coots were going to show up, I’d have called the old folks home and had them send over some wheelchairs,” Smoke called out.

“Would you just listen to the pup flap his mouth,” Hardrock said. “I ought to get up and spank him.”

“Way your knees pop and crack he’d probably think you was shootin’ at him,” Pistol laughed.

The men shook hands and Smoke introduced them to Lujan.

Charlie Starr sized the Mexican up. “Yeah, I seen you down along the border some years back. When them Sabler Brothers called you out. Too bad you didn’t kill all five of them.”

“Wasn’t two down enough?” Lujan asked softly, clearly in awe of these old gunslingers.

“Nope,” Silver Jim said. “We stopped off down in Wyoming for supplies. Store clerk said the Sabler boys had come through the day before, heading up thisaway. Ben, Carl, and Delmar.”

Lujan sighed. “Many, many times I have wished I had never drawn my pistol in anger that first time down in Cuauhtemoc.” He smiled. “Of course, the shooting was over a lovely lady. And of course, she would have nothing to do with me after that.”

“What was her name?” Hatfield asked.

Lujan laughed. “I do not even remember.”

The old gunfighters were all well up in years—Charlie Starr being the youngest—but they were all leather-tough and could still work many men half their age into the ground.

And the news that the Box T had hired the famed gunslingers was soon all over the area. Some of Cord McCorkle’s hired guns thought it was funny, and it would be even funnier to tree one of the old gunnies and see just what he’d do. The gunfighter they happened to pick that morning was the Louisiana Creole, Pistol Le Roux.

Ol’ Pistol and Bobby were working some strays back toward the east side of the Smith when the three gunhawks spotted Pistol and headed his way. Just to be on the safe side, Pistol wheeled his horse to face the men and slipped the hammer thong off his right hand Colt and waited.

That one of the men held a coiled rope in his right hand did not escape the old gunfighter. He had him a hunch that these pups were gonna try to rope and drag him. A hard smile touched his face. That had been tried before. Several times. Ain’t been done yet.

“Well, well,” the hired gun said, riding up. “What you reckon we done come across here, boys?”

“Damned if I know,” another said with a nasty grin. “But it shore looks to me like it needs buryin’.”

“Yeah,” the third gunny said, sniffing the air. “It’s done died and gone to stinkin’.”

“That’s probably your dirty drawers you smellin’, punk,” Pistol told him. “Since your mammy ain’t around to change them for you.”

The man flushed, deep anger touching his face. Tell the truth, he hadn’t changed his union suit in a while.

“I think we’ll just check the brands on them beeves,” they told Pistol.

“You’ll visit the outhouse if you eat regular, too,” Pistol popped back. “And you probably should, and soon, ’cause you sure full of it.”

“Why, you godda—” He grabbed for his pistol. The last part of the obscenity was cut off as Pistol’s Colt roared, the slug taking the would-be gunslick in the lower part of his face and driving through the base of his throat.

Pistol had drawn and fired so fast the other two had not had time to clear leather. Now they found themselves looking down the long barrel of Pistol’s Peacemaker. The dying gunny moaned and tried to talk; the words were unintelligible, due in no small measure to the lower part of his jaw being missing.

“Shuck out of them gun belts,” Pistol told them, just as Bobby came galloping up to see what the shooting was all about. “Usin’ your left hands,” Pistol added.

Gun belts hit the ground.

“Dismount,” Pistol told them. “Bobby, git that rope.”

“Hey!” one of the gunnies said. “We was just a-funnin’ with you, that’s all.”

“I don’t consider bein’ dragged no fun. And that’s what you was gonna do, right?”

“Aw, no!”

Pistol’s Colt barked and the bootheel was torn loose from the gunny’s left boot. “Wasn’t it, boy?” Pistol yelled.

On the ground, holding his numbed foot, the gunny nodded his head. ”Yeah. We all make mistakes.”

“Git out of them clothes,” Pistol ordered. “Bare-butted nekkid. Do it!”

Red-faced, the men stood before Pistol, Bobby, and God in their birthday suits.

“Tie‘em together, Bobby. But give them room to walk. They got a long way to hoof it.’

The gunny on the ground jerked and died.

The bare-butted men tied, their hands behind their backs, Pistol looped the rope around his saddle horn and gave the orders. “Move out. Head for your bunkhouse, boys. Git goin’.”

“What about Pete?” one hollered.

“He’ll keep without gettin’ too gamy. Now move!”

It was a good hour’s walk back to the Circle Double C ranch house, and the gunnies hoofed it all the way. They complained and moaned and hollered and finally begged for relief from their hurting, bleeding feet. They shut up when Pistol threatened to drag them.

“Pitiful,” Pistol told him. “Twice the Indians caught me and made me run for it, bare-butt nekkid. Miles and miles and miles. With them just a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ right behind me. You two are a disgrace.”

Cord stood by the front gate and had to smile at the sight as the painful parade came to a halt. He had ordered his wife and daughter not to look outside. But of course they both did.

The naked men collapsed to the ground.

“Mister McCorkle, my name is Le Roux. They call me Pistol. Now, sir, I was minding my own business, herdin’ cattle like I’m paid to do, when three of your hands come up and was gonna put a loop around me and drag me. One of them went for his gun. He was a tad slow. You’ll find him dead by that big stand of cottonwoods on the Smith. He ain’t real purty to look at. Course, he wasn’t all that beautiful when he was livin’. I brung these wayward children back home. You want to spank them, that’s your business. Good day, sir.”

Pistol and Bobby swung their horses and headed back to Box T Range.

Cord looked at the naked men and their bloody feet and briar-scratched ankles and legs. “Get their feet taken care of, pay them off, and get them out of here,” he instructed his foreman. He looked at the gunslicks on his payroll. “Pete was one of your own. Go get him and bury him. And stay the hell away from Box T riders.” He pointed to the naked and weary and footsore men on the ground. “One man did that. One ... old ... man. But that man, and those other old gunfighters over at the Box T came out here in the thirties and forties as mountain men. Tough? You bet your life they’re tough. When they do go down for the last time, they’ll go out of this world like cornered wolves, snarling and ripping at anything or anyone that confronts them. Leave them alone, boys. If you feel you can’t obey my orders, ride out of here.”

The gunfighters stared at Cord. All stayed. As Cord turned his back to them and walked toward his house, he had a very bad feeling about the outcome of this matter, and he could not shake it.

“It’s stupid!” Sandi McCorkle said to her friend. “They don’t even know why they hate each other.”

Rita Hanks nodded her head in agreement. “I’m going to tell you something, Sandi. And it’s just between you and me. I don’t trust my father, or my brothers.”

Sandi waited for her friend to continue.

“I think Daddy’s gone crazy.” She grimaced. “I think my brothers have always been crazy. They’ve never been ... well, just right; as far as I’m concerned. They’re cruel and vicious.”

“What do you think your dad is going to do?”

“I don’t know. But he’s up to something. He sent a hand out last week to Helena. Then yesterday this ratty-faced-looking guy shows up at the ranch. Danny Rouge. Has a real fancy rifle. Carries it in a special-made case. I think he’s a back-shooter, Sandi.”

The two young women, both in their late teens, had been forbidden by their fathers to see each other, years back. Of course, neither of them paid absolutely any attention to those orders. But their meetings had become a bit more secretive.

“Do you want me to tell Daddy about this, Rita?”

“No. He’d know it came from me and then you’d get in trouble. I think we’d better tell Smoke Jensen.”

Sandi giggled. “I’d like to tell him a thing or two—in private. He’s about the best-looking man I’ve ever seen.”

“He’s also married with children,” Rita reminded her friend. “But he sure is cute. He’s even better looking than the covers of those books make him out to be. Have you seen the Moab Kid?”

“Yes! He’s darling!”

The two young women talked about men and marriage for a few minutes. It was time for them to be married; pretty soon they’d be pegged as old maids. They both had plenty of suitors, but none lasted very long. The young women were both waiting for that “perfect man” to come riding into their lives.

“How in the world are we going to tell Smoke Jensen about this back-shooter?”

“I don’t know. But I think it’s our bounden duty to tell him. People listen to him.”

“That Bobby’s been gettin’ all red-eared everytime he gets around me,” Sandi said. “I think maybe he could get a message to Smoke and he’d meet us.”

“Worth a try. We’ll take us a ride tomorrow over to the Smith and have a picnic and wait. Maybe he’ll show up.”

“Let’s do it. I’ll see you at the pool about noon.”

The young women walked to their buggies. Both buggies were equipped with rifle boots and the boots were full. A pistol lay on the seat of each buggy. Both Sandi and Rita could, would, and had used the weapons. With few exceptions, ranch-born-and-raised western women were no shrinking violets. They lived in a violent time and had to be prepared to fight. Although most western men would not bother a woman, there were always a few who would, even though they knew the punishment was usually a rope.

Very little Indian trouble now occurred in this part of Montana; but there was always the chance of a few bucks breaking from the reservations to steal a few horses or take a few scalps.

With a wave, the young women went their way, Sandi back to the Circle Double C, Rita back to D-H. Neither noticed the two men sitting their horses in the timber. The men wore masks and long dusters.

“You ready?” one asked, his voice muffled by the bandana tied round his face.

“I been ready for some of that Rita. Let’s go.”

Eight

Silver Jim found the overturned buggy while out hunting strays. The horse was nowhere in sight. He noticed that the Winchester .44 Carbine was a good twenty feet from the overturned buggy. He surmised that whoever had been in this rig had pulled the carbine from its boot and was makin’ ready to use it. Then he found the pistol. He squatted down and sniffed at the barrel. Recently fired.

He stood up and emptied his Colt into the air; six widely spaced shots. It took only a few minutes for Smoke and Lujan to reach him.

“That is Senorita Hanks’s buggy,” Lujan said. “I have seen her in it several times.”

“Stay with it, boys,” Smoke said. “Look around. I’ll ride to the D.H.”

He did not spare his horse getting to the ranch, reining up to the main house in a cloud of dust and jumping off. “Switch my saddle,” he told a startled hand. He ran up the steps to face a hard-eyed Dooley Hanks. “Silver Jim found Miss Hanks’s buggy just north of our range. By that creek. Overturned. No sign of Miss Hanks. But Silver Jim said her pistol had been fired. I left them looking for her and trying to cut some trail.”

The color went out of Dooley’s face. Like most men, his daughter was the apple of his eye. “I’m obliged. Let’s ride, boys!” he yelled.

Already, one of his regular hands was noosing a rope.

Within five minutes, twenty-five strong, Dooley led his hands and his hired guns out at a gallop. The wrangler had switched Smoke’s saddle to a mean-eyed mustang and was running for his own horse.

Smoke showed the mustang who was boss and then cut across country, taking the timber and making his own trail, going where no large group of riders could. He reached the overturned buggy just a couple of minutes before Dooley and his men.

“Silver Jim cut some sign,” Bobby told him. “Him and Lujan took off thataway. Told me to stay here.”

Dooley and his party reined up and Dooley jumped off his horse. Smoke pointed to the pistol, still where Silver Jim had found it.

“That’s hers,” the father said, a horrified look in his eyes. “I give it to her and taught her how to use it.”

“Look!” Bobby pointed.

Heads turned. Silver Jim was holding a girl in his arms, Lujan leading the horse, some of its harness dragging the ground.

The cook from the D-H came rattling up in a wagon, Mrs. Hanks on the seat beside him. “I filled it with hay, Boss,” he told Dooley. “Just in case.”

Dooley nodded.

Smoke took the girl from Silver Jim and carried her to the wagon and to her mother. She had been badly beaten and her clothing ripped from her. One of her eyes was closed and discolored and blood leaked from a corner of her mouth. Silver Jim had wrapped her in a blanket.

“How did you ... I mean,” Dooley shook his head. “Had she been ... ?”

“I reckon,” Silver Jim said solemnly. “Her clothes and ... underthings was strewn over about a half a mile. Looks like they was rippin’ and tearin’ as they rode. Two men took her, a third joined them over yonder on that first ridge.” He pointed. “He’d been waitin’ for some time. Half a dozen cigarette butts on the ground.”

“She say who done this?” Dooley’s voice was harsh and terrible sounding.

“No, senor,” Lujan said. “She was unconscious when we found her.”

“Shorty!” Dooley barked. “Go fetch that old rummy we call a doctor. If he ain’t sober, dunk him in a horse trough until he is. Ride, man!”

Smoke had walked to the wagon bed and was looking at the young woman, her head cradled in her mother’s lap. He noticed a crimson area on the side of her head. “Bobby, bring me my canteen, hurry!”

He wet a cloth and asked Mrs. Hanks to clean up the bloody spot.

“Awful bump on her head,” the mother said, her voice calm but the words tight.

“For sure she s got a concussion,” Smoke said. “Maybe a fractured skull. Cushion her head and drive real slow, Cookie. She can’t take many bumps and jars.”

Smoke and his people stood and watched the procession start out for the ranch. Dooley had sent several of his men to follow the trail left by the rapists. “Bring them back alive,” he told them. “I want to stake them out.” He turned his mean and slightly maddened eyes toward Smoke. “Ain’t that what you done years back, Jensen?”

“That’s what I did.”

The man’s gone over the edge, Smoke thought. This was all it took to push him into that shadowy, eerie world of madness.

“They’re going to find out what we didn’t tell them, Smoke,” Lujan said. “The trail leads straight to Circle Double C Range.”

“And one of them horses has a chip out of a shoe. It’ll be easy to identify.” Silver Jim said.

Smoke thought about that. “Almost too easy, wouldn’t you think.”

“That thought did cross my mind,” the old gunfighter acknowledged, rolling a cigarette.

“I better get over there.” Smoke swung into the saddle and turned the mustang’s head.

He looped the reins around the hitchrail and walked up tothe porch, conscious of a lot of hard eyes on him as he knocked on the door.

A very lovely young woman opened the door and smiled at him. “Why, Mister Jensen. How nice. Please come in.”

Smoke removed his hat and stepped inside the nicely furnished home just as Cord stepped into the foyer. “Trouble, Cord. Bad trouble.” He looked at Sandi.

“Go sit with your mother, girl,” the father said.

Sandi smiled sweetly and leaned up against the wall, folding her arms under her breasts.

Cord lifted and spread his big hands in a helpless gesture. “Boys are bad enough, Smoke, but girls are impossible.”

Smoke told them both, leaving very little out. He did not mention anything about the chipped shoe; not in front of Sandi. Nor did he say anything about the trail leading straight to Circle C Range.

“I’ve got to get over there,” Sandi said, turning to fetch her shawl.

“No.” Smoke’s hard-spoken word stopped her, turning her around. “There is nothing you can do over there. Rita is unconscious and will probably remain so for many hours. Dooley is killing mad and likely to go further off the deep end. And those who ... abused Rita are still out there. Your going over there would accomplish nothing and only put you in danger.”

She locked rebellious eyes with Smoke. Then she slowly nodded her head. “You’re right, of course. Thank you for pointing those things out. I’ll go tell Mother.”

Smoke motioned Cord out onto the porch where they could talk freely, in private. He leveled with Cord.

“Damn!” the man cursed, balling his fists. “If the men who done it are here, we’ll find them and hold them for the law ... or hang them,” he added the hard words. “No matter what I feel about Hanks himself, Rita and my Sandi have been friends for years. Rita and her momma is the two reasons I haven’t gone over there and burned the damn place down. I’ve known for years that Dooley was crazy; and his boys is twice as bad. They’re cruel mean.”

“I’ve heard that from other people.”

“It’s true. And good with short guns, too. Very good. As good and probably better than most of the hired hands on the payroll.” He met Smoke’s eyes. “There’s something you ought to know. Dooley has hired a back-shooter name of Danny Rouge.”

“I know of him. Looks like a big rat. But he’s pure poison with a rifle.”

Cord looked toward the bunkhouse, where half a dozen gunhands were loafing. “Worthless scum. I was gonna let them go. Now I don’t know what to do.”

Smoke could offer no advice. He knew that Cord knew that if Dooley even thought his daughter’s attackers came from the Circle Double C, he would need all the guns he could muster. They were all sitting on a powder keg, and it could go up at any moment.

A cowboy walked past the big house. “Find Del for me,” Cord ordered. “Tell him to come up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You want me to stick around and help you?” Smoke asked. Cord shook his head. “No. But thanks. This is my snake. I’ll kill it.”

“I’ll be riding, then. If you need help, don’t hesitate to send word. I’ll come.”

Smoke was riding out as the foreman was walking up.

Smoke rode back to the site of the attack. His people had already righted the buggy and hitched up the now calmed horse.

“I’ll take it over to the D-H,” Smoke offered. “I’ve got to get my horse anyway.”

“I’ll ride with you,” Lujan said.

“What are we supposed to do?” Silver Jim asked. “Sit here and grow cobwebs? We’ll all ride over.”

Bobby had returned to chasing strays and pushing them toward new pasture.

The foreman of the D-H, Gage, met them halfway, leading Smoke’s horse. “You boys is all right,” he said. “So I’ll give it to you straight. Don’t come on D-H Range no more. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, me and the regular hands, you could ride over anytime; but Dooley has done let his bread burn. He’s gone slap nuts. Sent a rider off to wire for more gunhands; they waitin’ over at Butte. Lanny Ball found where them tracks led to McCorkle Range and that’s when Dooley went crazy. His wife talked him out of riding over and killing Cord today. But he’s gonna declare war on the Circle Double C and anybody who befriends them. So I guess all bets is off, boys. But I’ll tell you this: me and the regular boys is gonna punch cows, and that’s it ... unless someone tries to attack the house. I’m just damn sorry all this had to happen. I’ll be ridin’ now. You boys keep a good eye on your backtrail. See you.”

“Guess that tears it,” Smoke said, after Gage had driven off in the buggy, his horse and the horse Smoke had borrowed tied to the back. “Let’s get back to the ranch. Fae and Parnell need to be informed about this day.”

Rita regained consciousness the following day. She told her father that she never saw her attackers’ faces. They kept masks and hoods on the entire time she was being assaulted.

Cord McCorkle sent word that Dooley was welcome to come help search his spread from top to bottom to find the attackers.

Dooley sent word that Cord could go to hell. That he believed Cord knew who raped and beat his daughter and was hiding them, protecting them.

“I tried,” Cord said to Smoke. “I don’t know what else I can do.”

The men were in town, having coffee in Hans’s cafe.

Parnell had wanted to pack up and go back east immediately. Fae had told him, in quite blunt language, that anytime he wanted to haul his ashes, to go right ahead. She was staying.

Beans and Charlie Starr had stood openmouthed, listening to Fae vent her spleen. They had never heard such language from the mouth of a woman.

Parnell had packed his bags and left the ranch in a huff, vowing never to return until his sister apologized for such unseemly behavior and such vile language.

That set Fae off again. She stood by the hitchrail and cussed her brother until his buggy was out of sight.

Lujan and Spring walked up.

“They do this about once a month,” Spring said. “He’ll be back in a couple of days. I tell you boys what, workin’ for that woman has done give me an education I could do without. Someone needs to sit on her and wash her mouth out with soap.”

“Don’t look at me!” Lujan said, rolling his dark eyes. “I’d rather crawl up in a nest of rattlesnakes. ”

“Get back to work!” Fae squalled from the porch, sending the men scrambling for their horses.

“There they are,” Smoke said quietly, his eyes on three men riding abreast up the street.

“Who?” Cord asked.

“The Sabler Brothers. Ben, Carl, and Delmar. They’ll be gunning for Lujan. He killed two of their brothers some years back.”

“Be interesting to see which saloon they go in.”

“You takin’ bets?”

“Not me. I damn sure didn’t send for them.”

The Sabler boys reined up in front of the Hangout.

“It’s like they was told not to come to the Pussycat,” Cord reflected.

“They probably were. No chipped shoes on any of your horses, huh?”

“No. But several were reshod that day; started before you came over with the news. It’s odd, Smoke. Del is as square as they come; hates the gunfighters. But he says he can account for every one of them the morningRita was raped. He says he’ll swear in a court of law that none of them left the bunkhouse-main house area. I believe him.”

“It could have been some drifters.”

“You believe that?”

“No. I don’t know what to believe, really.”

“I better tell you: talk among the D-H bunch—the gunslicks—is that it was Silver Jim and Lujan and the Hatfield

Smoke lifted his eyes to meet Cord’s gaze. Cord had to struggle to keep from recoiling back. The eyes were ice-house cold and rattler deadly. “Silver Jim is one of the most honorable men I have ever met. Lujan was with me all that morning. Both Hatfield and Bobby are of the age where neither one of them can even talk when they get around women; besides he was within a mile of me and Lujan all morning. Whoever started that rumor is about to walk into a load of grief. If you know who it is, Cord, I’d appreciate you telling me.”

“It was that new bunch that came in on the stage the day after it happened. They come up from Butte at Hanks’s wire.”

“Names?”

“All I know is they call one of them Rose.”

Lujan came galloping up, off his horse before the animal even stopped. He ran into the cafe. “Smoke! Hardrock found Young Hatfield about an hour ago. He’d been tortured with a running iron and then dragged. He ain’t got long.”

Nine

Doc Adair, now sober for several days, looked up as Smoke and Cord entered the bedroom of the main ranch house. He shook his head. “Driftin’ in and out of consciousness. I’ve got him full of laudanum to ease the pain. They burned him all over his body with a hot iron, then they dragged him. He isn’t going to make it. He wouldn’t be a whole man even if he did.”

No one needed to ask what he meant by that. Those who did this to the boy had been more cruel than mean.

Bobby was fighting back tears. “Me and him growed up together. We was neighbors. More like brothers than friends. ”

Fae put her arm around the young man and held him, then, at a signal from Smoke, led him out of the bedroom. Smoke knelt down beside the bed.

“Can you hear me, Hatfield?”

The boy groaned and opened his one good eye. “Yes, sir, Mister Smoke.” His voice was barely a whisper, and filled with pain.

“Who did this to you?”

“One of them was called ... Rose. They called another one Cliff. I ain’t gonna make it, am I, Mister Smoke?”

Smoke sighed.

“Tell me ... the truth.”

“The doc says no. But doctors have been wrong before.”

“When they burned my privates ... I screamed and passed out. I come to and they ... was draggin’ me.”

His words were becoming hard to understand and his breathing was very ragged. Smoke could see one empty eye socket. “Send any money due me to ... my ma. Tell her to buy something pretty ... with it. Watch out for Bobby. He’s ... He don’t look it, but he’s ... cat quick with a short gun. Been ... practicin’ since we was about ... six years old. Gettin’ dark. See you, boys.”

The young man closed his good eye and spoke no more. Doc Adair pushed his way through to the bed. After a few seconds, he said, “He’s still alive, but just. A few more minutes and he’ll be out of his pain.”

Smoke glanced at Lujan. “Lujan, go sit on Bobby. Hogtie him if you have to. We’ll avenge Hatfield, but it’ll be after the boy’s been given a proper burial.”

Grim-faced, and feeling a great deal more emotion than showed on his face, the Mexican gunfighter nodded and left the room.

Hatfield groaned in his unconsciousness. He sighed and his chest moved up and down, as if struggling for breath. Then he lay still. Doc Adair held a small pocket mirror up to the boy’s mouth. No breath clouded the mirror. The doctor pulled the sheet over Hatfield’s face.

“I’ll start putting a box together,” Spring spoke from the doorway. “Damn, but I liked that boy!”

The funeral was at ten o’clock the following morning. Mr. and Mrs. Cord McCorkle came, accompanied by Sandi and a few of their hands. Doc Adair was there, as was Hans and Hilda and Olga. Olga went straight to Ring’s side and stood there during the services.

No one had seen Bobby that morning. He showed up at the last moment, wearing a black suit—Fae had pressed it for him—with a white shirt and black string tie. He wore a Remington Frontier .44, low and tied down. He did not strut and swagger. He wore it like he had been born with it. He walked up to Smoke and Lujan and the others, standing in a group.

“Bobby just died with Hatfield,” he told them. “My last name is Johnson. Turkey Creek Jack Johnson is my uncle. My name is Bob Johnson. And I’ll be goin’ into town when my friend is in the ground proper and the words said over him. ”

“We’ll all go in, Bob,” Smoke told him.

The preacher spoke his piece and the dirt was shoveled over Hatfield’s fresh-made coffin.

“Cord, I’d appreciate it if you and yours would stay here with Fae and Parnell until we get back.”

“We’ll sure do it, Smoke. Take your time. And shoot straight,” he added.

The men headed out. Four aging gunfighters with a string of kills behind them so long history has still not counted them. One gunfighter from south of the border. Smoke Jensen, from north of the border. The Moab Kid and a boy/man who rode with destiny on his shoulders.

They slowed their horses as they approached Gibson, the men splitting up into pairs, some circling the town to come in at different points.

But the town was nearly deserted. Hans’s cafe had been closed for the funeral. The big general store—run by Walt and Leah Hillery, a sour-faced man and his wife—was open, but doing no business. The barber shop was empty. There were no horses standing at the hitchrails of either saloon. Smoke walked his horse around the corral and then looked inside the stable. Only a few horses in stalls, and none of them appeared to be wet from recent riding.

The men gathered at the edge of town, talked it over, and then dismounted, splitting up into two groups, one group on each side of the street.

Smoke pushed open the batwings of the Hangout and stepped inside. The place was empty except for the barkeep and the swamper. The bartender, knowing that Smoke had on his warpaint, was nervously polishing shot glasses and beer mugs.

“Ain’t had a customer all morning, Mister Smoke,” he announced. “I think the boys is stayin’ close to the bunkhouse.”

Smoke nodded at the man and stepped back out onto the boardwalk, continuing on his walking inspection.

He met with Beans. “Nothing,” the Moab Kid said. “Town is deserted.”

“They are not yet ready to meet us,” Lujan said, walking up. “We’re wasting time here. We’ve still got cattle to brand and more to move to higher pasture. There’ll be another day. Let’s get back to work.”

The days passed uneventfully, the normal day-to-day routine of the ranch devouring the men’s time. Parnell, just as Old Spring had called it, moved back to the ranch and he and Fae continued their bickering. Rita improved, physically, but was not allowed off the ranch. And to make sure that she di not try any meetings with Sandi, her father assigned two to watch her at all times.

Bob Johnson was a drastically changed young man. Bobby was gone. The boy seldom smiled now, and he was always armed. Smoke and Charlie Starr had watched him practice late one afternoon, when the day’s work on the range was over.

“He’s better than good,” Charlie remarked. “He’s cursed with being a natural.’

He did not have to explain that. Smoke knew only too well what the gunfighter meant. With Bob, it was almost as if gun was a physical extension of his right arm. His draw was oil-smooth and his aim was deadly accurate. And he was fast . very fast.

Old Pat rode out to the branding site in the early morning the sixth day after Hatfield’s burying.

“Hans just sent word, Smoke. Them Waters Brothers come into town late yesterday and they brought a half dozen hardcases with them.”

“Hans know who they are?”

“He knowed two of‘em. No-Count George Victor and Three-Fingers Kerman. Other four looked meaner than snakes, Hans said. ’Bout an hour later, four more guns come in on the stage. Wore them big California spurs.”

“Of course they went straight to the Hangout?” Charlie asked.

“Waters’s bunch did. Them California gunslicks went on over to the Pussycat. McCorkle’s hirin’ agin.”

Smoke cursed, but he really could not blame Cord. Every peace effort he had made to Hanks had been turned down with a violent outburst of profanity from Dooley. And Hanks’s sons were pushing and prodding each time they came into town. Sonny, Bud, and Conrad Hanks had made their brags that they were going to kill Cord’s boys, Max, Rock, and Troy. They were all about the same age and, according to Cord, all possessing about the same ability with a short gun. Cord’s boys were more level-headed and better educated—his wife had seen to that. Hanks’s boys were borderline stupid. Hanks had seen to that. And they were cruel and vicious.

“We’re gonna be pulled into this thing,” Hardrock remarked. “Just sure as the sun comes up. There ain’t no way we can miss it. Sooner or later, we’re gonna run up on them no-goods that done in Young Hatfield. And whether we do it together, or Young Bob does the deed, we’ll have chosen a side.”

“I’m curious as to when that back-shootin’ Danny Rouge is gonna uncork,” Pistol said. “I been prowlin’ some; I ain’t picked up no sign of his ever comin’ onto Box T Range.”

“Hanks hasn’t turned him loose yet.” Smoke fished out the makings and rolled him a cigarette, passing the sack and the papers around. He was thoughtful for a moment. “I’ll tell you all what’s very odd to me: these gunhawks are drawing fighting wages, but they have made no move toward each other. I think there’s something rotten in the potato barrel, boys. And I think it’s time I rode over and talked it out with Cord.”

“You would have to bring that to my attention,” Cord said, a glum look on his face. “I hadn’t thought of that. But by George, you may be right. I hope you’re not,” he quickly added, “but there’s always a chance. Have you heard anything more about Rita’s condition?”

“Getting better, physically. Hanks keeps her under guard at the ranch.”

“Same thing I heard. Sandi asked to see her and Dooley said he wouldn’t guarantee her safety if she set foot on D-H Range. He didn’t out and out threaten her—he knows better than that—but he came damn close. His sons and my sons are shapin’ up for a shootin’, though. And I can’t stop them. I want to, but I don’t know how, short of hogtyin’ my boys and chainin’ them to a post.”

“How many regular hands do you have, Cord?”

“Eight, counting Del. I always hire part-timers come brandin’ time and drives.”

“So that’s twelve people you can count on, including yourself and your sons.”

“Right. Cookie is old, but he can still handle a six-gun and a rifle. You think the lid is going to fly off the pot, don’t you, Smoke?”

“Yes. But I don’t know when. Do you think your wife and Sandi would go on a visit somewhere until this thing is over?”

“Hell, no! If I asked Alice to leave she’d hit me with a skillet. God only knows what Sandi would do, or say,” he added drily. “Her mouth doesn’t compare to Fae’s, but stir her up and you’ e got a cornered puma on your hands.”

“How about those California gunhands that just came in?

“I don’t trust them any more than I do the others. But I felt had to beef up my gunnies.”

“I don’t blame you a bit. And I may be all wrong in my suspicions.”

“Sad thing is, Smoke, I think you’re probably right.” Smoke left McCorkle’s ranch and headed back to the Box T. Halfway there, he changed his mind and pointed his horse’s nose toward Gibson. Some of the crew was running out chewing tobacco. He was almost to town when he heard the pounding of hooves. He pulled over to the side of the road and twisted in the saddle. Four riders that he had not seen before. He pulled his Winchester from the boot, levered in a round, and eared the hammer back, laying the rifle across his saddle horn. He was riding Dagger, and knew the horse would stand still in the middle of a cyclone; he wouldn’t even look up fr grazing at a few gunshots.

The riders reined in, kicking up a lot of unnecessary dust. Smoke pegged them immediately. Arrogant punks, would-be gunslicks. Not a one of them over twenty-one. But they wore two guns tied down.

“You there, puncher!” one hollered. “How far to Gibson?”

“I’m not standing in the next county, sonny, and I’m not deaf, either.”

“You ’bout half smart, though, ain’t you?” He grinned Smoke. “You know who you’re talkin’ to?”

“Just another loud-mouthed punk, I reckon.”

The young man flushed, looked at his friends, and th laughed. “You’re lucky, cowboy. I feel good today, so I won’ call you down for that remark. I’ve killed people for less. I’ Twain.”

“Does that rhyme with rain or are you retarded?”

“Damn you!” Twain yelled. “Who do you think you are, anyways?”

“Smoke Jensen.”

Twain’s horse chose that moment to dump a pile of road apples in the dirt. From the look on Twain’s face, he felt like doing the same thing in his saddle. He opened and closed his mouth about a half dozen times.

His friends relaxed in their saddles, making very sure both hands were clearly visible and kept well away from their guns.

“You keep on this road,” Smoke told them. “Gibson’s about four miles.”

“Ah ... uh ... yes, sir!” Twain finally got the words out. “I ... uh ... we are sure obliged.”

“You got any sense, boy, you won’t stop. You’ll just keep on ridin’ until you come to Wyoming. But I figure that anybody who cuts kill-notches in the butt of their gun don’t have much sense. Who you aimin’ to ride for, boy? ”

“Ah ... the D-H spread.”

Smoke sat his saddle and stared at the quartet. He stared at them so long they all four began to sweat.

“Is ... ah ... something the matter, Mister Smoke?” Twain asked.

“The rest of your buddies got names, Twain?”

“Ah ... this here is Hector. That’s Rod, and that’s Murray.”

“Be sure and tell that to the barber when you get to town.”

“The ... barber?” Hector asked.

“Yeah. He doubles as the undertaker.” Smoke turned his back on the young gunhands and rode on toward town.

Ten

Among the many horses tied to the hitchrails, on both sides of the street, the first to catch Smoke’s eyes was Bob’s paint, tied up in front of Hans’s cafe. Smoke looped his reins and went in for some coffee and pie. He wondered why so much activity and then remembered it was Saturday. Parnell sat with Bob at a table. They were in such heated discussion neither noticed as Smoke walked up to their table. They lifted their eyes as he pulled back a chair and sat down.

“Perhaps you can talk some sense into this young man’s head, Mister Jensen,” Parnell pleaded. “He is going to call out these Rose and Cliff individuals.”

Smoke ordered apple pie and coffee and then said, “His right, Parnell. I’d do the same was I standing in his boots.”

Parnell was aghast. His mouth dropped open and he shook his head. “But he’s just a boy! I cannot for the life of me understand why you didn’t call the authorities after the murder!”

“Because the law is a hundred miles away, Parnell. And out here, a man handles his own problems without runnin’ whining to the law.”

“I find it positively barbaric!”

Smoke ate some apple pie and sipped his coffee. Then he surprised the schoolteacher by saying, “Yes, it is barbaric, Parnell. But it’s quick. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of lawyers out here before you know it, and they’ll be messin’ things up and writin’ contracts so’s that only another lawyer can read them. That’ll be good for people like you ... not so good for the rest of us. You haven’t learned in the time you’ve been here that out here, a man’s word is his bond. If he tells you he’s sellin’ you five hundred head of cattle, there will be five hundred head of cattle, or he’ll make good any missing. Call a man a liar out here, Parnell, and it’s a shootin’ offense. Honorable men live by their word. If they’re not honorable, they don’t last. They either leave, or get buried. Lawyers, Parnell, will only succeed in screwing that all up.” He looked at Bob. “You nervous, Bob?”

“Yes, sir. Some. But I figure I’ll calm down soon as I face him.”

“As soon as we face them, Bob,” Smoke corrected. “Yes, you’ll calm down. Ever killed a man, Bob?”

“No, sir.”

Smoke finished his pie, wiped his mouth with the napkin, and waved for Olga to refill his cup. He sugared and stirred and sipped. “A man gets real calm inside, Bob. It’s the strangest thing. You can hear a fly buzz a hundred yards off. And you can see everything so clearly. And the quiet is so much so it’s scary. Dogs can be barking, cats fighting, but you won’t hear anything except the boots of the man you’re facing walking toward you.”

“How old was you when you killed your first man, Smoke?” Bob asked.

“Fifteen, I think. Maybe fourteen. I don’t remember.”

“That must have been a terribly traumatic time for you,” Parnell said.

“Nope. I just reloaded’er up and went on. Me and Preacher. I killed some Indians before that ... in Kansas I think it was. Pa was still alive then. They attacked us,” he added. “I always got along with the Indians for the most part. Lived with them for a while. Me and Preacher. That was after Pa died. Drink your coffee, Bob. It’s about time.”

Smoke noticed the young man’s hands were calm as he lifted the cup to his mouth, sipped, and replaced the cup in the saucer.

Parnell looked at the men, his eyes drifting back and forth. He had heard from his sister and from the old gunfighters at the ranch that Smoke was a devoted family man: totally faithful to his wife and a loving father. A marvelous friend. Yet for all of those attributes, the man was sitting here talking about killing with less emotion than he exhibited when ordering a piece of pie.

Parnell watched with a curious mixture of fascination and revulsion as Smoke took his guns from leather, one at a time, and carefully checked the action, using the napkin to wipe them free of any dust that might have accumulated during his ride to town. He loaded up the usually empty chamber under the hammer.

Bob checked his Remington .44 and then pulled a short-barreled revolver out of his waistband and checked that, loading both guns full. He cut his eyes to Smoke. “Insurance,” he said.

“Never hurts.” Smoke pushed back his chair and stood up. “You know these people, Bob?”

“They been pointed out to me.” He stood up.

“Their buddies are sure to join them. We’re probably not going to have much time for plan-making. At the first twitch, we start shooting. Take the ones to your left. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go.”

Both men had noticed, out of the corners of their eyes, the horses lining both sides of the wide dusty street being cleared from the line of fire.

They stepped out of the cafe and stood for a moment on the boardwalk, hats pulled down low, letting their eyes adjust to the bright sunlight.

“Your play,” Smoke said. “You call it.”

“Rose!” Bob yelled. “Cliff! And any others who tortured and dragged Hatfield. Let’s see if you got the backbone to face someone gun to gun.”

Rose looked out the window of the Hangout. “Hell, it’s that damn kid.”

“And Smoke Jensen,” he was reminded.

“Let’s shoot ’em from here,” Cliff suggested.

“No!” Lanny Ball stepped in. “They’re callin’ you out fair and square. If you ain’t got the stomach for it, use the back door and cut and run ... and don’t never show your faces around here agin. I’ve killed a lot of men, and I’ve rode the owlhoot trail with a posse at my back. But I ain’t never tortured nobody while they was trussed up like a hog. I may not be much, but I ain’t no coward.”

Only a few of the other gunhawks in the large saloon murmured their agreement, but those few were the best-known and most feared of their kind. It was enough to bring the sweat out on the faces of Cliff and Rose and the two others who had taken part in the dragging and torture of Hatfield.

When open warfare was finally called by Hanks, Lanny and the few other who still possessed a modicum of honor would back-shoot and snipe at any known enemy ... that was the way of war. But when a man called you out to face him, you faced him, eyeball to eyeball.

With a low curse, Rose checked his guns and stepped out through the batwings, Cliff and the others behind him. It was straight-up noon, the sun a hot bubbling ball overhead. There were no shadows of advantage for either side.

Smoke and Bob had drifted down the boardwalk and now stood in the middle of the street, about ten feet apart, waiting.

Rose and Cliff and their two partners in torture stepped off the boardwalk and walked to the center of the street.

“Rose to my left,” Bob said. “Cliff is to your right.”

“Who are those other two?”

“I don’t know their names.”

“You two in the middle!” Smoke called, his voice carrying the two hundred odd feet between them. “You got names?”

“I’m Stanford and this here is Thomas!”

“You take Stanford, Bob. Thomas is mine.” Smoke’s voice was low.

“You ready?” Bob asked. “I been ready.”

Smoke and Bob started walking, their spurs softly jingling and their boots kicking up small pockets of dust with each step toward showdown.

“You boys watch this,” Lanny told the others. “I doubt they’s many of you ever seen Jensen in action. Don’t make no mistakes about him. He’s the fastest I ever seen. Some of you may want to change your minds about stayin’ once you seen him.”

“I do not have to watch him,” Diego boasted. “I am better.” He knocked back a shot of whiskey.

Several of the others in the saloon agreed.

Lanny smiled at their arrogance. Lanny might be many things, but he was not arrogant when it came to facing Smoke Jensen. He did not feel he was better than Smoke, but he did feel he was as good. When the time came for them to meet, as he knew it would, it would all come down to that first well-placed shot. Lanny knew that he would probably take lead when he faced Smoke, therefore he would delay facing him as long as possible.

“You shoulda heard that punk squall when we laid that hot runnin’ iron agin him!” Thomas yelled over the closing distance. “He jerked and hollered like a baby. Squalled and bawled like a calf.”

Neither Smoke nor Bob offered any comment in reply.

The loud silence and the artificial inner brightness consumed them both.

There was less than fifty feet between them when Rose made his move. He never even cleared leather. None of the four managed to get clear of leather before they began dancing and jerking under the impact of .44 slugs. Thomas took two .44 slugs in the heart and died on his feet. He sat down in the dirt, on his knees, his empty hands dangling in the bloody dirt.

Bob was nearly as fast as Smoke. His .44 Remington barked again and Stanford was turned halfway around, hit in the stomach and side just as Cliff experienced twin hammer-blows to his chest from Smoke’s Colt and his world began to dim. He fell to the dirt in a slack heap, seemingly powerless to do anything except cry out for his mother. He was still hollering for her when he died, the word frozen in time and space.

“Jesus Christ!” a gunslick spoke from the saloon window. He picked up his hat from the table and walked out the back door. He had a brother over in the Dakotas and concluded that this was just a dandy time to go see how his brother and his family was getting along. Hell would be better than this place.

Smoke and Bob turned and walked to the Pussycat, reloading as they walked. Inside the coolness of the saloon, they ordered beer and sat down at a table, with a clear view of the street.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes. When the barkeep had brought their pitcher of beer and two mugs and returned to his post behind the long bar, Bob picked up his mug and held it out. “For Hatfield,” he said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Smoke said, lifting his mug.

Parnell entered the saloon, walking gingerly, sniffing disdainfully at the beery odor. Smoke waved him over and kicked out a chair for him.

“You want something to drink?” the barkeep called.

“A glass of your best wine would be nice.” Parnell sat down.

“Ain’t got no wine. Beer and whiskey and sodee pop.”

Parnell shook his head and the bartender went back to polishing glasses, muttering under his breath about fancy-pants easterners.

Outside, in the bloody street, the barber and his helper were scurrying about, loading up the bodies. Business certainly had taken a nice turn for the better.

Smoke noticed that Parnell seemed calm enough. “Not your first time to see men die violently, Parnell?”

“No. I’ve seen several shootings out here. All of them as unnecessary as the one I just witnessed.”

“Justice was served,” Smoke told him, after taking a sip of beer.

Parnell ignored that. “Innocent bystanders could have been killed by a stray bullet.”

“That is true,” Smoke acknowledged. “I didn’t say it was the best way to handle matters, only that justice had been served.”

“And now you’ve taken a definite side.”

“If that is the way people wish to view it, yes.”

“I have a good notion to notify the army about this matter.”

“And you think they’d do what, Parnell? Send a company in to keep watch? Forget it. The army’s strung out too thin as it is in the West. And they’d tell you that this is a civilian matter.”

“What you’re saying is that this ... ugly boil on the face of civilization must erupt before it begins the healing process?”

“That’s one way of putting it, yes. Dooley Hanks has gone around the bend, Parnell. I suspect he was always borderline nuts. The beating and rape of his daughter tipped him the rest of the way. He’s insane. And he’s making a mistake in trusting those gunslicks he’s hired. That bunch can turn on a man faster than a lightning bolt.”

“And McCorkle?”

“Same with that bunch he’s got. Only difference is, Cord knows it. He’s tried to make peace with Hanks ... over the past few weeks. Hanks isn’t having any of it. Cord had no choice but to hire more gunnies.”

“And now ... ?”

“We wait.”

“You are aware, of course, about the rumor that it was really some of your people who beat and sexually assaulted Rita Hanks?”

“Some of that crap is being toted off the street now,” Smoke reminded the schoolteacher. “When Silver Jim and Lujan hear of it—I have not mentioned it to them—the rest of it will be planted six feet under. But I think that rumor got squashed a few minutes ago.”

“And if it didn’t, there will be more violence.”

“Yes.”

“Why are we so different, Cousin? What I’m asking is that we spring from the same bloodlines, yet we are as different as the sun and the moon.”

“Maybe, Parnell, it’s because you’re a dreamer. You think of the world as a place filled with good, decent, honorable men. I see the world as it really is. Maybe that’s it.”

Parnell pushed back his chair and stood up. He looked down at Smoke for a few seconds. “If that is the case, I would still rather have my dreams than live with blood on my hands.”

“I’d rather have that blood on my hands than have it leaking out of me,” Smoke countered. “Knowing that I could have possibly prevented it simply by standing my ground with a gun at the ready.”

“A point well put. I shall take my leave now, gentlemen. I must see to the closing of the school for the summer.”

“See you at the ranch, Parnell.”

Both Smoke and Bob had lost their taste for beer. They left the nearly full pitcher of beer on the table and walked out onto the boardwalk. Most of the gunnies had left the Hangout, heading back to the D-H spread. Lanny Ball stood on the boardwalk in front of the saloon, looking across the street at Smoke.

“He’s a punk,” Smoke said to Bob. “But a very fast punk. I’d say he’s one of the best gunslicks to be found anywhere.”

“Better than you?” Bob asked, doubt in the question.

“Just as good, I’d say. And so is Jason Bright.”

Lanny turned his back to them and entered the saloon.

“Another day,” Smoke muttered. “But it’s coming.”

Eleven

Smoke was riding the ridges early one morning, looking for any strays they might have missed. He had arranged for a buyer from the Army to come in, in order to give Fae some badly needed working capital, and planned to sell off five hundred head of cattle. He saw the flash of sunlight off a barrel just a split second before the rifle fired. Smoke threw himself out of the saddle, grabbing his Winchester as he went. The slug hit nothing but air. Grabbing the reins, Smoke crawled around a rise and picketed the horse, talking to the animal, calming it.

He wasn’t sure if he was on Box T Range, or D-H Range. It would be mighty close either way. If the gunman had waited just a few more minutes, Smoke might well be dead on the ground, for he had planned to ride in a blind canyon to flush out any strays.

Working his way around the rise of earth, Smoke began to realize just how bad his situation was. He was smack in the middle of a clearing, hunkering down behind the only rise big enough to conceal a human or horse to be found within several hundred yards.

And he found out just how good the sniper was when a hard spray of dirt slapped him in the face, followed closely by the boom of the rifle. Smoke could not tell the caliber of the rifle, but it sounded like a .44-40, probably with one of those fancy telescopes on it. He’d read about the telescopes on rifles, but had never looked through one mounted on a rifle, only seen pictures of them. They looked awkward to Smoke.

He knew one thing for an iron-clad fact: he was in trouble.

Whatever the gunman was using, he was one hell of a fine rifleman.

Hanks had cut loose his rabid dog: that rat-faced Danny Rouge.

What to do? He judged his chances of getting to the timber facing him and rejected a frontal run for it. He worked his way to his horse and removed his boots, slipping into a pair of moccasins he always carried. The fancy moccasins Ring had made were back at the house.

Smoke eased back to his skimpy cover and chanced a look, cursing as the rifle slammed again, showering him with dirt.

No question about it, he had to move, and soon. If he stayed here, and tried to wait Danny out—if it was Danny, and Smoke was certain it was—sooner or later the sniper would get the clean shot he was waiting for and Smoke would take lead. He’d been shot before and didn’t like it at all. It was a very disagreeable feeling. Hurt, too.

Smoke looked around him. There was a drop-off about fifty yards behind him; a natural ditch that ran in a huge half circle, the southeast angle of the ditch running close to the timber. He studied every option available to him, and there weren’t that many.

His horse would be safe, protected by the rise. If something happened to Smoke—tike death—the horse would eventually pull its picket pin and return to the ranch.

Smoke checked his gun belt. All the loops were full. Returning to the horse, he stuffed a handful of cartridges into his jeans’ pocket and slung his canteen after first filling his hat with water and giving the horse a good drink. Squatting down, he munched on a salt pork and biscuit sandwich, then took a long satisfying pull at the canteen. He patted the horse’s neck.

“You stay put, fellow. I’ll be back.” I hope, he silently added.

Smoke took several deep breaths and took off running down the slope.

Smoke knew that shooting either uphill or downhill was tricky; bad enough with open sights. But with a telescope, trying to line up a running, twisting target would be nearly impossible.

He hoped.

The gunman started dusting Smoke’s running feet, but he was hurrying his shots, and missing. But coming close enough to show Smoke how good he was with a rifle.

Smoke hurled himself in the ditch, managed to stay on his feet, then dive for the cover of the ravine’s wall. Now, Danny would have to worry about which side Smoke would pop up out of. Catching his breath, Smoke began working his way around, staying close to the earthen wall. He knew the distance was still too great for his .44, and besides that, he didn’t want to give away his position.

Smoke took his time, smiling as the ravine curved closer to the timber and began narrowing as the timber loomed up on both sides. When he came to a brushy spot, Smoke carefully eased out of the ravine and slipped into the timber. His jeans were a tan color, his shirt a dark brown; he would blend in well with his surroundings.

He began closing the distance. Smoke had been taught well the ways of a woodsman; Preacher had been his teacher, and there was no finer woodsman to be found than the old mountain man.

He moved carefully while still covering a lot of ground, stopping often to check the terrain all around him. Danny not only looked like a big rat, the killer could move as furtively as a rodent.

Before making his run for it, Smoke had inspected the area on the ridges as carefully as possible—considering that he was being shot at—and kept Danny’s position highlighted in his mind.

But Smoke was certain the sniper would have changed positions as soon as he made his run for it. Where to was the question.

He moved closer to where he had last seen the puff of smoke. When he was about a hundred yards from where he thought Danny had been firing from, Smoke made himself comfortable behind a tree and waited, every sense working overtime. He felt he could play the waiting game just as good, or better, than Danny.

He waited for a good twenty minutes, as motionless as a snake waiting for a passing rat. Then the rat he was waiting for moved.

It was only a very slight move, perhaps to brush away a pesky fly. But it was all Smoke needed. Very carefully, he raised his rifle and sighted in—he had been waiting with the hammer eared back—and pulled the trigger. The rifle slammed his shoulder and Smoke knew he had a clean miss on his target.

The gunman rolled away and came up shooting, shooting way fast. Maybe he had two rifles, one a short-barreled carbine, or maybe he was shooting one of those Winchester .44-40’s with the extra rear sight for greater accuracy. If that was the case, the man was still one hell of a marksman.

Smoke caught a glimpse of color that didn’t seem right in the timber and triggered off two fast rounds. This time he heard a squall of pain. He fired again and something heavy fell in the woods. A trick on the man’s part? Maybe. Smoke settled back and waited.

He listened to the man cough, hard, racking coughs of pain. Then the man cursed him.

“Sorry, partner,” Smoke called. “You opened this dance, now you pay the fiddler.”

“You Injun bastard!” the man said with a groan. “I never even heard you come up on me.”

Smoke offered no reply.

“I’m hit hard, man. I got the makins but my matches is all bloody. Least you can do is give me a light.”

“You’re gonna have lots of fire where you’re goin’, partner. Just give it a few minutes.”

That got Smoke another round of cussing.

But Smoke was up and moving, working his way up the ridge to a vantage point which would enable him to look down on the wounded man. If he was as hard hit as he claimed.

The man was down, all right, Smoke could see that. And the front of his shirt was badly stained with blood. But it wasn’t Danny Rouge.

It was a man he’d seen riding with Cord’s hired guns.

What the hell was going on?

The man had stopped his moaning and was lying flat on his back, both hands in plain sight. He was not moving.

Smoke inched his way down the ridge to just above the gunman. He was dead. He had taken a round in his guts and one in his chest. Smoke had been right: it was a .44-.40, and a brand spanking new one from the looks of it.

It took him a few minutes to find the man’s horse and get him roped belly-down across the saddle. He shoved the dead man’s Winchester in the boot and led the animal down the ridge to his own horse. His horse shied away from the smell of blood and death, pulling his picket pin, and Smoke had to catch him and calm him down.

Now what to do with the McCorkle rider?

If the gunnies on Cord’s payroll were playing both ends against the middle, it would not be wise to just ride over there with one of their buddies draped belly-down across his saddle. On the other hand, Cord had to be notified.

Smoke headed for the Box T. On the way, he ran into Hardrock and sent him over to the Circle Double C to get Cord.

The old gunfighter had looked close at the dead man.

“You know him, Hardrock?”

“Only by his rep. His name is Black. Call him Blackie. He’s a back-shooter. Was.”

“Keep this quiet at the ranch. Speak to only Cord.”

“Right.”

Smoke rode on over to the bunkhouse and relieved the horse of its burden and saddle, letting the animal water and feed and roll. Fae came out of the house, accompanied by her brother.

Smoke explained, ending with, “Something s up. I think we’d better get set for a hard wind.”

“And a violent one,” Parnell added, grimacing at the smell of the dead gunny.

“You better get a gun, Parnell,” Smoke told him.

“I will not have one of those abominable things in my possession!”

“Suit yourself. But I have a hunch you’re gonna change your mind before this is all over.”

“Never!” Parnell stood his ground.

“Uh-huh” was all Smoke said in reply to that.

Parnell’s sister had plenty to say about her brother. Smoke could but stand in awe and amazement at the words rolling from her mouth.

“I don’t understand this,” Cord said, after viewing the dead man.

“I didn’t think you would. But the big question is this: was the sniper working as a lone wolf, perhaps just to gain a reputation for killing me, or was he part of a larger scheme?”

“Involving the gunhands from both ranches?”

“Yes.”

Cord’s sigh was loud in the hot stillness of Montana summer. “I don’t know. My first thought is: yes. My next thought is: I’ve got to get Dooley to talk to me; bury the hatchet before this thing goes any further.”

“Forget it,” Smoke said bluntly. “The man is crazy. He’s kill-crazy. I’ve heard he’s making all sorts of wild claims and charges and plans. He’s going to take over the whole area and be king. Keep a standing army of a hundred gunhawks—all sorts of wild talk.”

“He’s damn near got a hundred,” Cord said glumly. “If what we’re both thinking is true.”

“Close to fifty if they all get together,” Smoke added it up.

“And if I go back and fire all of those drawing fighting wages ... ?” Cord left it hanging.

“ We’d know where they stand. And you and your family would probably be safer. But if we’re wrong, it would leave you wide open, ’cause for sure the gunnies you fire would just hire on at the D-H.”

Cord cursed softly for a few seconds. “I’m stuck between that much-talked-about rock and a hard place.”

“Whichever way you decide to go, watch your back.”

“Yeah.” He looked at the blanket-covered body of the sniper. “What about him?”

“We’ll bury him. And don’t mention it, Cord. Just let the others wonder what happened—if there really is some sort of funny business going on.”

“There is some grim humor in all of this, Smoke. If this thing goes on for any length of time, both Dooley and me will go broke paying fighting wages.”

“Maybe that s what the gunhands want. Maybe that’s why they’re hanging back, for the most part.”

Cord shook his big head. It appeared that the man’s hair had grayed considerably since Smoke had first seen him, only a few weeks back. “This thing’s turnin’ out to have more maybe’s and what-if’s than a simple man can understand.”

Smoke motioned for Charlie and Spring to come over. “Let’s get him in the ground, boys. Well away from the house and unmarked. Spring, you can have that .44-40. It’s a whale of a rifle. Dusted my butt proper,” he added.

“I’ll go through his pockets,” Charlie said. “See if there is some address for his family.”

Smoke nodded. “Take his horse and turn him loose. He’ll find his way back to the ranch. We’ll keep the rig. That’ll add even more doubt in the minds of the gunslicks.” He turned to Cord. “You ’bout caught up at your place, Cord?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Pull a couple of your best men off the range. Keep them close by at all times. When you ride, take one of them with you and let the other stay around the house.”

“Good idea. But at night I don’t worry much.” He smiled a father’s smile. “Ever’time I look up, the Moab Kid is over there sparkin’ my daughter.”

Smoke chuckled. “She could do worse. Beans is a good man.”

“At first, I told her she couldn’t see him. That made about as much impression on her as a poot in a whirlwind. I finally told her to go ahead and see him. She told me that she’d never stopped. Daughters!”

“ You keepin’ a tight rein on your boys?” ”I’m trying. Lord, I’m trying. I’ve got them working just as far away from D-H Range as possible. But they told me last night they think they’re being watched. Stalked was the word Max used. That gives me an uneasy feelin’.”

“It might be wise to pull them in and keep them around the house.” He smiled. “Tell you what; do this: Tell the gunhands to start workin’ the range.”

Cord thought about that for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Hell, yes! That’ll make them earn their pay and keep them away from the house.”

“Or it’ll put them on the road.”

The men shook hands and Cord rode back to his ranch. Fae came to Smoke’s side. “Now what?”

“We sell some cows to the Army. And wait.”

The buyer for the Army had already looked over the cattle and agreed to a price. When he returned, a couple of days after Smoke’s misunderstanding with the sniper, he brought drovers with him. Smoke and the buyer settled up the paperwork and the bank draft was handed over to Fae. The two men leaned up against a corral railing and talked.

“You know about the battle looking at us in the face, don’t you?” Smoke asked.

“Uh-huh. And from all indications it’s gonna be a real cutter.”

“What would it take to get the Army involved?”

“Not a chance, Jensen. The Army’s done looked this situation over and, unofficially, and I didn’t say this, they decided to stay out of it. It’d take a presidential order to get them to move in here.”

It was as Smoke had guessed. All over the fast-settling West little wars were flaring up; too many for the authorities or the Army to put down, so they were letting them burn themselves out. Here, they would be on their own, whichever way it went.

The buyer and his men moved the cattle out and the range was silent.

Smoke wondered for how long?

Twelve

“You tellin’ me you’re not gonna work cattle?” Cord faced the gunslick.

“I’m paid to fight, not herd cattle,” Jason Bright told him.

“You re not being paid to do either one after this moment. Pack your kit and clear out. Pick up your money at the house.”

Jason’s eyes became cloudy with hate. “And if I don’t go?”

“Then one of us is going to be on the ground.”

Jason laughed. “Are you challengin’ me, old man?”

Cord was far from being an old man. At forty-five he was bull-strong and leather-tough. And while he was no fast gun, there was one thing he was good at. He showed Jason a hard right fist to the jaw.

Flat on his back, his mouth leaking blood, Jason grabbed for his gun, forgetting that the hammer thong was still on it. Cord stomped the gunfighter in the belly, reached down while Jason was gasping for breath, and jerked the gun out of leather, tossing it to one side. He backed up, his big hands balled into fists.

“Catch your breath and then get up, you yellow-bellied pup. Let’s see how good you are without your gun.”

A dozen gunhawks ran from the bunkhouse, stopping abruptly as Cord’s sons, his daughter, his wife, and four regular hands appeared from both sides of the house and on the porch, rifles and sawed-off shotguns in their hands.

“It’s going to be a fair fight, boys,” Alice McCorkle said, her voice strong and calm. She held a double-barreled shotgun in her hands. “Between two men; and my husband is giving Mr. Bright a good ten or fifteen years in age difference. Boys, I was nineteen when I killed my first Indian. With this very shotgun. I’ve killed half a dozen Indians and two outlaws in my day, and anytime any of you want to try me, just reach for a gun or try to break up this fight—whichever way it’s going—and I’ll spread your guts all over this yard. Then I’ll make your gunslinging buddies clean up the mess.”

She lifted the shotgun, pointing the twin muzzles straight at Pooch Matthews.

“Lord, lady!” Pooch hollered. “I ain’t gonna interfere.”

“And you’ll stop anyone who does, right, Mr. Matthews?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am!”

Jason was on his feet, his eyes shiny with hate as he faced Cord.

“Clean his plow, honey,” Alice told her husband.

Cord stepped in and knocked Jason spinning, the gunfighter’s mouth suddenly a bloody smear. Like so many men who lived by the gun and depended on a six-shooter to get them out of any problem, Jason had never learned how to use his fists.

Cord gave him a very short and very brutal lesson in fistfighting.

Cord gave him two short hard straight rights to the stomach then followed through with a crashing left hook that knocked the gunfighter to the ground. Normally, Cord would have kicked the man in the face and ended it. No truly tough man, who fights only when hard-pushed, does not consider that “dirty” or unfair fighting, but merely a way to get the fight over with and get back to work. In reality, there is no such thing as a “fair fight.” There is a winner and a loser. Period.

But in this case, Cord just wanted the fight to last a while. He was enjoying himself. And really, rather enjoying showing off for his wife a little bit.

Cord dropped his guard while so pleased with himself and Jason busted him in the mouth.

Shaking his head to clear away the sparkling confusion, for Jason was no little man, Cord settled down to a good ol’fashioned rough-and-tumble, kick-and-gouge brawl.

The two men stood boot to boot for a moment, hammering away at each other until finally Jason had to give ground and back up from Cord’s bull strength. Jason was younger and in good shape, but he had not spent a lifetime doing brutally hard work, twelve months a year, wrestling steers and digging postholes and roping and branding and breaking horses.

Jason tried to kick Cord. Cord grabbed the boot and dumped the gunhawk on the ground, on his butt. That brought several laughs from Jason’s friends, all standing and watching and being very careful not to let their hands get too close to the butts of their guns.

Jason jumped to his boots, one eye closing and his nose a bloody mess, and swung at Cord. Cord grabbed the wrist and threw Jason over his hip, slamming him to the ground. This time Jason was not as swift getting to his feet.

Cord was circling, grinning at Jason, but giving the man time to clear his head and stand and fight.

But this time Jason came up with a knife he’d pulled out of his boot.

“No way, Jason!” Lodi yelled from the knot of gunslingers. “And I don’t give a damn how many guns is on me. Drop that knife or I’ll shoot you personal.”

With a look of disgust on his face, Jason threw the knife to the ground.

Cord stepped in and smashed the man a blow to the jaw and followed that with a wicked slash to Jason’s belly, doubling him over. Then he hit him twice in the face, a left and right to both sides of the man’s jaw.

Jason hit the ground and did not move.

Cord walked to a water barrel by the side of the house and washed his face and soaked his aching hands for a moment. He turned and faced the gunslicks.

“I want Jason out of here within the hour. No man disobeys an order of mine. Any of you who want to stay, that’s fine with me. But you’ll take orders and you’ll work the spread, doing whatever Del tells you to do. Make up your mind.”

“Hell, Mister McCorkle ...” a gunhawk said. He looked at the ladies. “I mean, heck. We come here to fight, not work cattle. No disrespect meant.”

“None taken. But the war is over as far as I’m concerned. Any of you who want to ride out, there’ll be no hard feelings and I’ll have your money ready for you at the house.”

All of them elected to ride.

“See me on the porch for your pay,” Cord told them.

When the last gunslick had packed his warbag, collected his pay, and ridden out, Del sat down beside Cord on the front porch.

“Feels better around the place, Boss. But if them gunnies hire on with Hanks, we’re gonna be hard up agin it.”

“I know that, Del. Tell the men that from this day on, they’ll be receiving fighting wages.” He held up a warning finger. “We start nothing. Del. Nothing. We defend home range and no more. I won t ask that the men stay out of Gibson; only that they don’t go in there looking for trouble. Send Willie riding over to the Box T and tell Smoke what I’ve done. He needs to know.”

“Sure got the crap pounded out of you,” Lanny said, looking at the swollen and bruised face of Jason Bright.

Jason lay on a bed in the bunkhouse of the D-H spread. “It ain’t over,” he mush-mouthed the words past swollen lips. “Not by no long shot, it ain’t.”

Dooley Hanks had eagerly hired the gunslicks. He was already envisioning himself as king. And he wanted to kill Cord McCorkle personally. In his maddened mind, he blamed Cord for everything. He’d worked just as hard as Cord, but had never gained the respect that most people felt toward McCorkle. And this just wasn t right. King Hanks. He sure liked the way that sounded.

“It’s just going to make matters worse,” Hanks’s wife was telling their daughter.

Rita looked up from her packing. “Papa’s crazy, Mother. He’s crazy as a lizard. Haven’t you seen the way he slobbers on himself? The way he sits on the porch mumbling to himself? Now he’s gone and hired all those other gunfighters. Worse? For who? I’ll tell you who: everybody. Everything from the Hound to the Sixteenmile is going to explode.”

“And you think you’ll be safer over at the Box T?”

“I won’t be surrounded by crazy people. I won’t be under guard all the time. I’ll be able to walk out of the house without being watched. Are you gong to tell on me, Mother?”

She shook her head. ”No. You’re a grown woman, Rita. Your father has no right to keep you a prisoner here. But I don’t know how you’re going to pull this off.”

Rita smiled. “I ll make it, Mother.” She kissed her mother’s cheek and hugged her. “This can’t last forever. And I won’t be that far away.

“Have you considered that your father might try to bring you back by force?”

“He might if I was going to Sandi’s. I don’t think he’ll try with Smoke Jensen.”

The mother pressed some money into the daughter’s hand. “You’ll need this.”

“Thank you, Mother. I’ll pretend I’m going to bed early. Right after supper. Then I’ll be gone.”

After the mother had left the room, Rita laid out her clothes. Men’s jeans, boots, a man’s shirt. She had one of her brother’s old hats and a work jacket to wear against the cold night. She picked up the scissors. Right after supper she would whack her hair short.

She believed it would work. It had to work. If she stayed around this place, she would soon be as nutty as her father and her crazy brothers.

“Peaceful,” Cord said to Alice. “Like it used to be.”

They sat on the front porch, enjoying the welcome coolness of early evening after the warm day.

“If it will only last, Cord.”

“All we can do is try, honey. That’s all a mule can do, is try.”

“Tell me about this Smoke Jensen. I’ve met him, but never to talk with at length.”

“He’s a good man, I believe. A fair man. Not at all like I thought he d be. He’s one of those rare men that you look at and instantly know that this one won’t push. I found that out very quickly.” His last comment was dry, remembering that first day he’d yelled at Smoke, in Gibson, and the man had looked at him like he was a bug.

“It sounds like you have a lot of respect for the man.”

“I do. I’d damn sure hate to have him for an enemy.”

From inside the house, they heard the sounds of Sandi’s giggling. She was entertaining her young man this evening, as

she did almost every evening. The Moab Kid was fast becoming

a fixture around the place.

Cord and Alice sat quietly, smiling as they both recalled their own courting days.

Smoke leaned against a corral railing and thought about Sally and the babies. He missed them terribly. One part of him wanted this little war to come to a head so he could go home. But another part of him knew that when it did start, there would be a lot of people who would never go home ... except for six feet of earth. And he might well be one of them.

Charlie Starr walked up and the men stood in silence for a moment, enjoying the peaceful evening. Charlie was the first to break the silence.

“I’d like to have seen that fight ’tween Cord and Jason.”

Smoke smiled, then the smile faded. “Jason won’t ever forget it, though. The next time he sees Cord, Cord better have a gun in his hand.”

“True.”

They stood in silence for another few moments. Both men rolled an after-supper cigarette and lit up.

“You were in deep thought when I walked up, Smoke. What’s on your mind?”

“Oh, I had a half dozen thoughts going, Charlie. I was thinking about my wife and our babies; how much I miss them. And, I was thinking just what it’s going to take to blow the lid off this situation here.”

“What don’t concern me as much as when.”

“Tonight.”

Charlie looked at him. “What are you, one of them fortune-tellers?”

“I feel it in my guts, Charlie. And don’t tell me you never jumped out of a saddle or spun and drew on a hunch.”

“Plenty o’ times. Saved my bacon on more than one occasion, too. That’s what you’re feelin’?”

“That’s it.” Smoke dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out with the heel of his boot. “It’s always something you least expect, too.”

“I grant you that for a fact. Like that time down inTaos this here woman crawled up in bed with me. Like to have scared the longhandles right off of me. Wanted me to save her from her husband. Didn’t have a stitch on. I tell you what, that shook me plum down to my toenails.”

“Did you save her?”

Charlie chuckled softly. “Yeah. ’Bout two hours later. I’ve topped off horses that wasn’t as wild as she was.”

Thirteen

Rita had cropped her hair short, hating to do it, but she had always been a tomboy and, besides, it would grow back. She had turned off the lamp and now she listened at her bedroom door for a moment, hearing the low murmur of her mother talking to her father. The front door squeaked open and soon the sound of the porch swing reached her. She picked up her valise and swung out the window, dropping the few feet to the ground. She remained still for a long moment, checking all around her. She knew from watching and planning this that her guards were not on duty after nine o’clock at night. It had never occurred to her father that his daughter would attempt to run away.

Sorry, Pa, Rita thought. But I won’t be treated like a prisoner.

Rita slipped away from the house and past the corral and barn. She almost ran right into a cowboy returning from the outhouse but saw him in time to duck into the shadows. He walked past her, his galluses hanging down past his knees. The door to the bunkhouse opened, flooding a small area with lamplight.

“Shut the damn door, Harry!” a man called.

The door closed, the area once more darkened. But something primeval touched Rita with an invisible warning. She remained where she was, squatting down in her jeans.

“It’s clear,” a man’s voice said.

Rita recognized it as belonging to the shifty-eyed gunslinger called Park. And the men were only a few yards away.

Rita remembered something else, too: she had heard that voice before. The sudden memory was as hot and violent as the act that afternoon. While she was being raped.

Fury and cold hate filled the young woman. Her father’s own men had done that to her. She thought about returning to the house and telling her father. She immediately rejected that. She had no proof. And her father would take one look at her close-cropped hair and lock her up tight, with twenty-four-hour guards.

She touched the short-barreled .44 tucked behind her belt. She was good with it, and wanted very badly to haul it out and start banging.

She fought back that feeling and waited, listening.

“When? ” the other man asked.

“Keep your britches on,” Park said. “Lanny gives the orders around here. But it’ll be soon, he tole me so hisself.”

“I’d like to take my britches off with Rita agin,” the mystery man said with a rough chuckle.

And I’d like to stick this pistol ... Rita mentally brushed away the very ugly thought. But it was a satisfying thought.

“You reckon Hanks is so stupid he don’t realize what his boys is up to?”

“He’s nuts. He don’t realize them crazy boys of his’n would kill him right now if they thought they could get away with it.”

Rita crouched in the darkness and wanted to cry. Not for herself or for her father—he had made the boys what they were today, simply by being himself—but for her mother. She deserved so much better.

“It better be soon, ’cause the boys is gettin’ restless.”

“It’ll be soon. But we gotta do it all at once. All three ranches. There can’t be no survivors to tell about it. They got to be kilt and buried all in one night. We can torture the widows till they sign over the spreads to us.”

“We gonna keep the young wimmen alive for a time, ain’t we? ’Specially that Fae Jensen. I want her. I want to show her a thing or two.”

“I don’t know. Chancy. Maybe too chancy. It’s all up to Jason and Lanny.”

“Them young wimmen would bring a pretty penny south of the border.”

“Transport them females a thousand miles! You’re nuts, Hartley.”

“It was jist a thought.”

“A bad one. Man, just think of it: the whole area controlled by us. Thousands and thousands of acres, thousands of cattle. We could be respectable, and you want to mess it all up because of some swishy skirts. Sometimes I wonder about you, Hartley.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t bring it up no more.”

“Fine.”

The men walked off, splitting up before entering the bunkhouse.

Rita felt sick to her stomach; wanted to upchuck. Fought it back. Now more than ever, she had to make it to the Box T. She waited and looked around her, carefully inspecting each dark pocket around the ranch, the barn and the bunkhouse. She stood up and moved out, silently praying she wouldn’t be spotted.

Once clear of the ranch complex, Rita began to breathe a little easier. She slung her valise by a strap and could move easier with it over her shoulder. She headed southwest, toward the Box T.

The restlessness of the horses awakened Smoke. He looked at his pocket watch. Four o’clock. Time to get up anyway. But the actions of the horses bothered him. Dressed and armed, he stepped out of the ranch house just as the bunkhouse door opened and Lujan stepped out, followed by the other men. Smoke met them in the yard. They all carried rifles.

“Spread out,” Smoke told them. “Let’s find out what’s spooking the horses.”

“Hello the ranch!” the voice came out of the darkness. A female voice.

“Come on in,” Smoke returned the call. “Sing out!”

“Rita Hanks. I slipped away from the house about eight o‘clock last night. You might not recognize me,’cause I cut off my hair to try to fool anyone who might see me.”

“Come on in, Rita,” Smoke told her, then turned to Beans. “Wake up those in the house; if they’re not already awake. Get some coffee going. As soon as Hanks finds out his girl is gone, we’re going to have problems.”

She was limping from her long walk, and she was tired, but still could not conceal her happiness at finally being free of her father. Over coffee and bacon and eggs, she told her story while Fae and Parnell and all the others gathered around in the big house and listened.

When she was finished, she slumped in her chair, exhausted.

“I wondered why the gunnies were holding back,” Hardrock said. “This tells it all.”

“Yes,” Lujan said. “But I don’t think they came in here with that in mind. No one ever approached me with any such scheme. And both sides offered me fighting wages.”

“I think this plan was just recently hatched, after several others failed. Rita’s attack did not produce the desired effect; Hanks didn’t attack Cord. Blackie failed to kill me. So they came up with this plan.”

Smoke looked at Rita. The young woman was asleep, her head on the table.

“I’ll get her to bed,” Fae said. “You boys start chowing down. I think it’s going to be a very long day.”

“Yeah,” Beans agreed. “ ’Cause come daylight, Hanks and his boys are gonna be on the prowl. If this day don’t produce some shootin’, my name ain’t Bainbridge.”

Silver Jim looked at him and blinked. “Bainbridge! No wonder they call you Beans. Bainbridge!”

Hanks knocked his wife sprawling, backhanding her. “You knew, damn you!” he yelled at her. “You heped her, didn’t you? Don’t lie to me, woman. You and Rita snuck around behind my back and planned all this.”

Liz slowly got to her feet. A thin trickle of blood leaked from one corner of her mouth. She defiantly stood her ground. “I knew she was planning to leave, yes. But I didn’t know when or how. You’ve changed, Dooley. Changed into some sort of a madman.”

That got her another blow. She fell back against the wall and managed to grab the back of a chair and steady herself. She stared at her husband as she wiped her bloody mouth with the back of her hand.

“Where’d she go?” Hanks yelled the question. “Naw!” Dooley waved it off. “You don’t have to tell me. I know. She went over to Cord’s place, didn’t she?”

“No, she didn’t,” Liz’s voice had calmed, but her mouth hurt her when she spoke.

“You a damn liar! ” Dooley raged. ”A damn frog-eyed liar. There ain’t no other place she could have gone.”

Outside, just off the porch, Lanny was listening to the ravings .

“This might throw a kink into things,” Park spoke softly.

“Maybe not. This might be a way to get rid of Cord and his boys in a war that even if the law was to come in, they’d call it a fair shootin . Man takes another man’s kid in without the father’s permission, that’s a shootin’ offense.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. You right.”

“If she did go to the Double Circle C,” Lanny added.

“Where else would she go? Her and that damn uppity Sandi McCorkle is good friends.”

“Rita is no fool. She just might have gone over to the Box T. But we won’t mention that. Just let Hanks play it his way.”

“I’m gonna tell you something, woman,” Hanks pointed blunt finger at his wife. “I find out you been lyin’ to me, I’ gonna give you a hidin’ that you’ll remember the rest of your life.”

“That would be like you,” she told him. “Whatever don’t understand, you destroy.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Dooley screamed at her, slobber leaking out of his mouth, dribbling onto his shirt and vest.

She turned her back to him and started to leave the

“Don’t you turn your back to me, woman! I done put with just about all I’m gonna take from you.”

She stopped and turned slowly. “What are you going to Dooley? Beat me? Kill me? It doesn’t make any difference. Love just didn’t die a long time ago. Your hatred killed it. Y hatred, your obsession with power. You allowed our sons to grow up as nothing more than ignorant savages. You...”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Dooley screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Lies, all lies, woman. I’m ridin’ to get my kid back. And when I get her back here, I’m gonna take a buggy whip to her backside. That’s something I shoulda done a time ago. And I just might take it in my head to use the whip on you.”

Liz stared hard at him. “If you ever hit me again, Dooley. I’ll kill you.” Dooley recoiled as if struck with those words. “And the same goes for Rita. But you’ve lost her. She’ll never come back here; don’t worry about that. I’ll tell you where she’s gone, Dooley. She’s gone to the Box T.”

“Lies! More lies from you. Cord planned with you all on this, and you know it. He’s con-spired agin me ever since we come into this area. He’d do anything to get at me. He’s jealous of me.”

His wife openly laughed at that.

Dooley’s face reddened and he took a step toward his wife, his hand raised. She backed up and picked up a poker from the fireplace.

“You were warned,” she told him. “You try to hit me and I’ll bash your head in.”

He stood and cursed her until he ran out of breath. But she would not lower the poker and even in his maddened state he knew better than to push his luck.

“I’ll deal with you later,” he said, then turned and stalked out the door.

She leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, listening to him holler for his men to saddle up and get ready to ride. She did not put down the poker as long as he was on the front porch. Only when she heard him mount up and the thunder of hooves pound away did she lower the poker and replace it in the set on the hearth.

She walked outside to stand on the porch, waiting for the dust to settle from the fast-riding men. She noticed Gage and several of the other hands had not ridden with her husband.

The foreman walked over to the porch and looked up at the still attractive woman. There was open disgust in his eyes as he took in the bruises on her face.

“I ain’t got no use atall for a man who hits a woman,” Gage said.

“That’s not the man I married, Gage.”

“Yeah, it is, Liz. It’s the same man I been knowin’ for years. You just been deliberately blind over the years, that’s all.”

“Maybe so, Gage.” She sighed. She knew, of course, that Gage had been in love with her for a long, long time. And her feelings toward the foreman had been steadily growing stronger with time. She cut her eyes toward him. “You’re not riding with him?”

“Me and the boys punch cows, Liz. I made that plain to him the other day. He still has enough sense about him to know that someone has to work the spread.”

“What would you say if I told you I was going to leave him?”

“Then me and you would strike out together, Liz.”

She smiled. “And do what, Gage?”

“Get married. Start us a little spread a long ways from here.”

“I’m a married woman, Gage. It’s not proper to talk to a married woman like that.”

“I don’t see you turnin’ around and walkin’ off, Liz.”

She looked hard at him. “Mister Hanks and I will be sharing separate bedrooms from now on, Gage. I would appreciate if you would stay close as much as possible.”

“I would consider that an honor, Liz.”

“Would you like to have some coffee, Gage?”

“I shore would.”

“Make yourself comfortable on the porch, Gage. I’ll go freshen up and hotten the coffee. I won t be a minute.” “Take your time, Liz. I’ll be here.”

She smiled. Her hair was graying and there were lines in her face. But to the foreman, she was as beautiful as the first day he’d laid eyes on her. “I’m counting on that, Gage.”

Fourteen

Cord heard the riders coming long before he or any of his men could spot them. It was a distant thunder growing louder with each heartbeat.

“Load up the guns, Mother,” he told his wife. “I believe it’s time.” He walked to the dinner bell on the porch and rang it loudly, over and over. Del and four hands came on the run, carrying rifles, pistols belted around them.

“Stand with me on the porch, boys. Mother, get your shotgun and take the upstairs.”

“I’m up here with a rifle, Daddy!” Sandi called.

“Good girl.”

Rifles were loaded to capacity. Pistols checked. A couple of shotguns were loaded up and placed against the porch railing.

Thirty riders came hammering past the gate and up to the picket fence around the ranch house, Hanks in the lead.

“I don’t appreciate this, Dooley,” Cord raised his voice. “You got no call to come highballin’ up to my place.”

“I got plenty of call, Cord. Where’s my daughter?”

Cord blinked. “How the hell do I know? I haven’t seen her in days.”

“You a damn liar, McCorkle!”

Cord unbuckled his gun belt and handed it to Dell. He swung his eyes back to Hanks. “You’ll not come on my property and call me names, Dooley. Git out of that saddle and let’s settle this feud man to man.”

“Goddamn you! I want my daughter!”

“I ain’t got your daughter! But what I will have is your apology for callin’ me a liar.”

“When hell freezes over, McCorkle!”

Two upstairs windows were opened. A shotgun and a rifle poked out. Sandi’s voice said, “The first man to reach for a gun, I kill Lanny Ball.” The sound of a hammer being eared back was very plain.

The sounds of twin hammers on a double-barreled shotgun was just as plain. “And I blow the two Mexicans out of the saddle,” Alice spoke.

Diego and Pablo froze in their saddles.

“Dooley,” Cord’s voice was calm. “Would you like to step down and have some coffee with me? You can inspect the house and the barn and the bunkhouse ... after you tell me your anger overrode your good sense when callin’ me a liar.”

Hanks’s eyes cleared for a moment. Then he looked confused. “I know you ain’t no liar, Cord. But where’d she go?” There was a pleading note in the man’s voice.

“I don’t know, Dooley. I didn’t even know she was gone.”

But the moment was gone, and Jason Bright and Lanny Ball and most of the others knew it. There would be no gunfire this day.

“The Box T,” Dooley said. “Liz wasn’t lyin’.”

“Dooley,” Cord said, “You go over there a-smokin‘, and if she is there, she’s liable to catch a bullet. ’Cause Smoke Jensen and them others are gonna start throwin’ lead just as soon you come into range.”

“She’s my daughter, dammit, Cord!” Some of the madness reappeared.

“She’s also a grown woman,” Alice called from the second floor.

Hanks slumped in his saddle. The fire had left him ... for the moment. “She don’t want my hearth and home, she can stay gone. I don’t have no daughter no more.” He looked at Cord. “It ain’t over, Cord. Not between us. The time just ain’t right. There’ll be another day.”

“Why, Dooley? Tell me that. Your spread is just as big as mine. I made peace with Fae Jensen. She ain’t botherin’ nobody. Let’s us bury the hatchet and be friends. Then you can fire these gunslicks and we can get on with livin’.”

Dooley shook his head. “Too late, Cord. It’s just too late.” He wheeled his horse and rode off, the gunnies following.

“Did you see his eyes, Boss?” Willie asked. “The man is plumb loco.”

“I’m afraid you’re right, Willie. Question is, when will it take control of him ... or rather, when will he lose control?”

“One thing for certain, Boss,” Del said. “When he does go total nuts, we’re all going to be right smack dab in the big fat middle of it.”

“Something is rotten,” Cord spoke softly. “Something is wrong with this whole setup.”

“Riders coming, Boss,” Fitz said.

As the dot on the landscape grew larger, Del squinted his eyes. “Smoke Jensen and the Moab Kid.”

Sandi smiled and Alice said, “I’ll make fresh coffee.”

Beans sniffed the air. “Lots of dust in the air.”

“I think Cord’s had some visitors,” Smoke replied. “Look at the hands gathered around the house.”

The men swung down and looped the reins around the hitchrail. Cord shook hands with them both and introduced Smoke to those punchers he had not met.

“Fancy seeing you, Beans,” Cord said, a twinkle in his eyes. “It’s been so long since you’ve come callin’. Hours, at least.”

Beans just grinned.

“Gather your men, Cord,” Smoke told the man. “This is something that everybody should hear.”

Cord’s three sons had just ridden in. His other four punchers were out on the range. Everybody gathered around on the porch and listened as Smoke related what Rita had told him.

“Damn!” Max summed it up, then glanced at his mother, who was giving him a warning look for the use of profanity.

“Let’s kick it around,” Smoke said. “Anybody got any suggestions?”

“Take it to them ’fore they do it to us,” Corgill said.

“No proof,” Cord said. “Only the word of Rita and she didn’t even see the men; just heard them talkin’.”

“If we don’t do something,” Cal said, “we’re just gonna be open targets, and they’ll pick us off one at a time.”

Cord shook his head. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think they got to do everything all at once. At night. If what Rita says is true—and I ain’t got no reason to doubt it—they’ll split their people and hit us at the same time. And they can’t leave any survivors.”

“I’ve got people bunching the cattle and moving them to high graze,” Smoke said. “They’ll scatter some, but they can be rounded up. From now on, we stay close to the ranch house.”

Cord nodded his head and looked at Willie. “Ride on out, Willie. Tell the boys to start moving them up toward summer graze. Get as much as you can done, and then you boys get on back here. We’re gonna lose some to rustlers, for a fact. But it’s either that or we all die spread out.” He glanced at Smoke. “When do you think they’ll hit us?”

Smoke shook his head. “Tonight. Next week. Next month. No way of knowing.”

Cord did some fancy cussing, while his wife listened and looked on with a disapproving frown on her face. “We may end up taking to the hills and fighting defensively.”

“I’m thinking that we will,” Smoke agreed.

“You mean leave the house?” Sandi protested. “But they’ll just move in!”

“Can’t be helped, girl,” her father told her. “We can always clean up and rebuild.”

“Or just go on over and kill Dooley Hanks,” Rock McCorkle said grimly.

“Rock!” his mother admonished.

Cord put a big hand on her shoulder. “It may come to that, Alice. God help me, I don’t want it, but we may have no choice in the matter.”

“Here comes Jake,” Del said. “And he’s a-foggin’ it.”

The puncher slowed up as he approached the house, to keep the dust down, and walked his horse up to the main house, dismounting.

“What’s up, Jake?” the foreman asked.

“I just watched about fifteen guys cut across our range, comin’ from the northeast. Hardcases, ever’ one of them. They was headin’ toward Gibson.”

Alice handed the puncher a cup of coffee and a biscuit, then looked at her husband. He wore an increasingly grim expression.