Journey Of The Mountain Man

“The Cat Jennings gang,” Charlie said. He had been to town and back while Smoke was talking with the men and women of the Double Circle C. “He’s been up in Canada raisin’ Cain for the past few years.”

“This here thing is shapin’ up to be a power play,” Pistol said.

“Yeah,” Lujan agreed. “With us right in the middle of it.”

“Damn near seventy gunslingers,” Silver Jim mused. “And the most we can muster is twenty, and that’s stretchin’ it.”

“One thing about it,” Smoke stuck some small humor into a grim situation, “we’ve sure taken the strain off of a lot of other communities in the West.”

“Yeah,” Hardrock agreed. “Ever’ outlaw and two-bit pistol-handler from five states has done con-verged on us. And it wouldn’t do a bit of good to wire for the law. No badge-toter in his right mind would stick his face into this situation.”

“Must be at least a quarter of a million dollars worth of reward money hanging over them boys’ heads,” Silver Jim said. “And that’s something to think about.”

“Yeah, it shore is,” Pistol said. “Why, with just a little dab of that money, we could re-tire, boys.” There was a twinkle in his hard eyes.

“Now, wait just a minute,” Smoke said.

The old gunfighters ignored him. “You know what we could do,” Charlie said. “We could start us up a re-tirement place for old gunslingers and mountain men.”

“You guys are crazy!” Lujan blurted out the words. “You are becoming senile!”

“What’s that mean?” Hardrock asked.

“It means we ain’t responsible for our actions,” Charlie told him.

“That’s probably true,” Hardrock agreed. “If we had any sense, none of us would be here.” He looked at Lujan. “And that goes for you, too.”

Lujan couldn’t argue with that.

“Cat backed up from me a couple of times,” Charlie said. “This time, I think I’ll force his hand.”

Smoke and Beans had stepped back, letting the men talk it out.

“Peck and Nappy is gonna be with him, for sure,” Pistol said. “That damn Nappy got lead in a friend of mine one time. I been lookin’ for him for ten year. And that Peck is just a plain no-good.”

“No-Count George Victor’s got ten thousand on his head,” Silver Jim mused. And he don’t like me atall.”

“Insane old men!” Lujan muttered.

“Well, I damn shore ain’t gonna try to stop them,” Beans made that very clear. “I ain’t real sure I could take any of them ... even if I was a mind to,” he added.

Smoke stepped back in. “You boys ride for the Box T,” he reminded them. “You took the lady’s money to ride for the brand. Not to go off head-hunting. You all are needed here. Now when the shootin’ starts, speaking for myself, you can have all the reward money.”

“Same for me,” Beans and Lujan agreed.

“Aw, hell, Smoke,” Charlie said, a bit sheepishly. “We was just flappin’ our gums. You know we’re stickin’ right here. But Cat Jennings is mine.”

“And Peck and Nappy belong to me.” Pistol’s tone told them all to stand clear when grabbin’-iron time came.

“And No-Count George Victor is gonna be lookin’ straight at me when I fill his belly full of lead,” Silver Jim said.

Hardrock said, “Three-Fingers Kerman and Fulton kilt a pal of mine over to Deadwood some years back. Back-shot him. I didn’t take kindly to that. So them two belongs to me.”

“You men are incorrigible!” Parnell finally spoke.

“Damn right,” Pistol said.

“Whatever the hell that means,” Hardrock muttered.

Fae walked out to join them. “Rita’s up, having breakfast.”

“How’s she feeling?” Smoke asked.

“Aside from some sore feet—she’s not used to walking in men’s boots—she’s doing all right. I think she’s pretty well resigned that her father is around the bend. I told her what you said about Dooley saying he no longer had a daughter. It hurt her. But not as much as I thought it would. I think she’s more concerned about her mother.”

“She should be. There is no telling what that crazy bastard is liable to do,” Silver Jim summed it up.

Fifteen

He had looked into their bedroom and came stomping out. “Where is all your clothes, Liz?” Dooley demanded, his voice hard.

“I moved them out. I no longer feel I am married to you, Dooley.”

“You don’t ... what?”

“I don’t love you anymore. I haven’t for a long time. Years. I cringe when you touch me. I ...”

He jumped at her and backhanded her, knocking her against a wall. She held back a yelp of pain. She didn’t want Gage to come storming in, because she knew that she had absolutely no rights as a married woman. She owned nothing. Could not vote. And in a court of law, her husband’s word was next to God’s. And if Gage were to kill Dooley during a domestic squabble, he would hang.

She leaned against the wall, staring at Dooley as the front door opened, her sons stomping in.

Conrad, the youngest of the boys, grinned at her. “You havin’ a good time while Pa’s usin’ you for a punchin’ bag?”

Sonny and Bud laughed.

Dooley grabbed Liz by the arm and flung her toward the kitchen. “Git in there and fix me some dinner. I don’t wanna hear no more mouth from you.”

Liz walked toward the kitchen, her back straight. I won’t put up with this any longer, she vowed. I’ll follow Rita, just as quickly as I can.

A plan jumped into her head and she smiled at the thought. It might work. It just might work.

She began putting together dinner and working out the plan. It all depended on what Gage said. And the other hands.

She had gone out to gather eggs in the henhouse. Dooley and her sons had left the house without telling her where they were riding off to. As usual. All the hired guns were in town, drinking. Gage had ambled over, as he always did, to carry her basket. She told him of her plan.

“I like it, Liz. Go in the house and pack a few things while ever’body is gone. I’ll get the boys.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You mean ... ?”

“Right now, Liz. Let’s get gone from this crazy house ‘fore Dooley gets back. Move, Liz! ’

She went one way and Gage trotted to the bunkhouse. He sent the only rider in the bunkhouse out to tell the others to meet him at the McCorkle ranch.

“We quittin’, Gage?”

“I am.”

“I’m with you. And so will the others. Hep me pack up their stuff, will you. I’ll tote it to them on a packhorse. How about ol’ Cook? ”

“He’ll go wherever Liz goes. He came out here with them.”

The hand cut his eyes at the foreman and grinned. “Ahh! OK, Gage.”

Working frantically, the two men stuffed everything they could find into canvas and lashed it on a packhorse. “I’ll tell Cook to hightail it. Move, Les. See you at the Circle Double C.”

Ol’ Cook was right behind Les. He packed up his warbag and swung into the saddle just as Liz was coming out of the house, a satchel in her hand.

“You want me to hitch up the buckboard, Gage?”

“No time, Cook.”

“Wal, how’s she fixin’ to ride then? We ain’t got no sidesaddle rigs.”

“Astride. I done saddled her a horse.”

Ol’ Cook rolled his eyes. “Astride! Lord have mercy! Them sufferingetts is gonna be the downfall of us all.” He galloped out.

Gage led her horse over to the porch. “Turn your head, Gage. I don’t quite know how I’m going to do this. I have never sat astride in my life.”

Gage turned his head.

“You may look now, Gage,” she told him.

He had guessed at the stirrup length and got it right. She sure had a pretty ankle. “Hang on, Liz. We got some rough country and some hard ridin’ to do.”

“Wherever you ride, I’ll be with you,” she told him, adding, “Darling.”

Gage blushed all the way down to his holey socks.

“I’ll kill ever’ goddamn one of them!” Dooley screamed. “I’ll stake that damn Gage out over an anthill and listen to him scream.” Dooley cussed until he was red-faced and out of breath.

“This ain’t good,” Jason said. “I’m beginnin’ to think we’re snake-bit.”

“I don’t know.” Lanny scratched his jaw. “It gives the other side a few more guns, is all.”

“Seven more guns.”

“No sweat.”

Inside the house, Dooley was still ranting and cussing and roaring about what he was going to do to Gage and to his wife. The men outside heard something crash against a wall. Dooley had picked up a vase and shattered it.

The sons were leaning against a hitchrail, giggling and scratching themselves.

“Them boys,” Jason pointed out, “is as goofy as their dad.”

“And just as dangerous,” Lanny added. “Don’t sell them short. They’re all cat-quick with a gun.”

“About the boys ... ?”

“We’ll just kill them when we’ve taken the ranches.”

“Of course you can stay here, Liz,” Alice told her. “And stop saying it will be a bother.” She smiled. “You and Gage. I’m so happy for you.”

“If we survive this,” Liz put a verbal damper on the other woman’s joy.

“We’ll survive it. Oh, Liz!” She took the woman’s hands into hers. “Do you remember how it was when we first settled here? Those first few years before all the hard feelings began. We fought outlaws and Indians and were friends. Then...” She bit back the words.

“I know. I’ve tried to convince myself it wasn’t true. But it was and is. Even more so now. Dooley began to change. Maybe he was always mad; I don’t know. I know only that I love Gage and have for a long, long time. From a distance,” she quickly added. “I just feel like a great weight has been lifted from me.”

“You rest for a while. I’ll get supper started.”

“Pish-posh! I’m not tired. And I want to do my share here. Come on. I’ve got a recipe for cinnamon apple pie that’ll have Cord groaning.”

Laughing, the two women walked to the kitchen.

Outside the big house, Cord briefed Gage and the other men from the D-H about the outlaws’ plans.

Gage shuddered. “Kill the women! God, what a bunch of no-goods. Well, we got out of that snake pit just in time. Cord, me and boys will hep your crew bunch the cattle.” He cut his eyes to Del. “You ’member that box canyon over towards Spitter Crick?”

Del nodded. “Yeah. It’s got good graze and water that’ll keep ‘em for several weeks. That’s a good idea. We’ll get started first thing in the morning. Smoke said him and his boys will be over at first light to hep out. They done got their cattle bunched and safe as they could make ’em.”

“I sent a rider over to tell them about y‘all,” Cord told him. “I ’magine Rita will be comin’ over to stay with her momma. Smoke s already makin’ plans to vacate the Box T. We both figure that’ll be the first spread Dooley will hit, and Smoke ain’t got the men to defend it agin seventy or more men.”

“No, but them men that he’s got was shore born with the bark on,” Gage replied. “I’d shore hate to be in that first bunch that tackles ‘em.”

“They’ll cut the odds down some, for sure,” Del said. “You know,” he reminisced, “I growed up hearin’ stories about Pistol Le Roux and Hardrock and Silver Jim ... and Charlie Starr. Lord, Lord! Till Smoke Jensen come along, I reckon he was the most famous gun-handler in all the West. Hardrock and Pistol and Silver Jim ... why, them men must be nigh on seventy years old. But they still tough as wang leather and mean as cornered grizzlies. It just come to me that we’re lookin’ at history here.”

“Let’s just hope that we all live to read about it,” Cord said drily.

“I think they’ll try us tonight, Smoke,” Charlie said. “My old bones is talkin’ to me.”

“I agree with you.”

“I done tossed my blankets over yonder in that stand of trees,” Pistol said, pointing. “I never did like to sleep all cooped up noways. I like to look at the stars.”

“We’ll all stay clear of the house tonight,” Smoke said. “Fill your pockets with ammunition, boys, and don’t take your boots off. I think tonight is gonna be interesting.”

Bob was in the loft of the barn. Spring and Pat stayed in the bunkhouse, both of them armed with rifles. Lujan was in the barn, lower level. Pistol, Silver Jim, Charlie, and Hardrock were spread around the house. Smoke elected to stay close to the now-empty corral. The horses had been moved away to a little draw; Ring was with them. Beans had slipped into moccasins and was roaming. Parnell was in the house with the women. Rita and Fae were armed with rifles. Parnell refused to take a gun.

About a quarter of a mile from the ranch complex, Beans knelt down in the road and put his ear to the hard-packed earth. He smiled grimly, then stood up. “Coming!” he shouted to Silver Jim, who was the closest to him. “Sounds like a bunch of them, too.”

Silver Jim relayed the message and then settled in, earing back the hammer on his Winchester.

Beans was the first to see the flames from the torches the gunnies carried. “They’re gonna try to burn us out!” he yelled.

Then the hard-riding outlaw gunslingers were thundering past Beans’s position. At almost point-blank range, Beans emptied his six-shooter into the mass of riders, then holstered his pistol and picked up his Winchester. He put five fast rounds into the outlaws, then shifted positions when the lead started flying around him.

Beans knew he’d hit at least three of the riders, and two of them were hard hit and on the ground.

Silver Jim got three clean shots off, with one outlaw on the ground and the other two just hanging on, gripping the saddle horn. Not dead, but out of action.

Bob took his time with his Winchester and emptied two saddles before Lujan hollered, “Another bunch coming behind us, Bob. Shift to the rear.”

Smoke stood by the corral, a dim figure in the torchlit night, with both hands full of long-barreled Colts, and picked his targets. His aim was deadly true. He knocked two to the ground and knew he’d hit several more before being forced to run for cover

A rider threw his torch through a window—only two windows were not shuttered, front and back, giving the women a place to fire from—and the torch landed on the couch. The couch burst into flames and Parnell went to work with buckets of water already filled against such an action. He managed to keep the fire confined to the couch.

The barn was not so lucky. While Lujan and Bob were fighting at the rear of the barn, a rider tossed a torch into the hay loft. That action got him a bullet from Smoke that cut his spine and shattered his heart, but there was no saving the barn. Bob and Lujan fought inside until it became too difficult to see and breathe and they had to run for cover amid a hail of lead.

The small band of defenders of the Box T were now having to fight against range-robbers on all sides. One outlaw made the mistake of finding the horses and thinking he was going to set them free.

One second he was in the saddle, the next second he was on the ground. The last thing he would remember hearing on this earth was a deep voice rumbling, “I do not like people who are mean to nice people.”

Huge hands clamped around the man’s head and with one quick jerk, Ring broke the gunny’s neck and tossed him to one side, his head flopping from side to side. Ring got the rifle from the outlaw’s saddle boot, made sure it was full, and waited for some more action.

The area around the ranch house was now brightly lighted from the flaming barn; too bright for the outlaws’ taste, for the accuracy of the defenders was more than they had counted on.

“Let’s go!” came the shout.

No one bothered to fire at or pursue the outlaws. All ran into the yard to form a bucket line to wet down the roof of the house so sparks from the burning barn could not set it on fire. The men worked frantically, for already there were smouldering spots on the roof.

It did not take long for the barn to go; soon there was nothing left except a huge mound of glowing coals.

The men sat down on the ground where they were, all of them suddenly tired as the adrenaline had slowed.

“Fae!” Parnell said. “Give up this madness. Let us leave this barbaric country and return to civilization.”

Fae walked toward him, her gloved hands balled into fists. Her face was sooty and her short hair disheveled and she was mad clear through. When she got within swinging distance she let him have it, giving him five in the mouth and dropping him to the ground.

Parnell lay flat on his butt, blood leaking out of a busted lip, looking up at his baby sister. He wore a hurt expression on his face. He blinked and said, “I suppose, Sister, that is your quaint way of saying no?”

Smoke and the others burst out laughing. The laughter spread and soon Fae and Rita were laughing. No one paid any attention to the bodies littering the yard and the areas all around the ranch complex.

Parnell sat up and rubbed his jaw. “I, for one, fail to see the humor in this grotesque situation.”

That caused another round of laughter. They were still laughing as Ring walked up, leading several horses, one with the body of the neck-broke outlaw draped across the saddle.

“Crazy folks,” Ring said. “But nice folks.”

Sixteen

“This ain’t worth a damn!” Jason summed up the night’s action. “Nine dead and six wounded. Couple more nights like this and we might as well hang it up.”

“Shore got to change our plans,” Lanny agreed. “We should have hit McCorkle first.”

“Well, you can bet they all is gonna be on the alert after this night,” No-Count Victor said. “Hell, let’s just go on and kill that stupid Dooley and his sons and settle for this spread.”

“No!” Lanny stopped that quick. ”It’s got to be the whole bag or nothing. Think about it. You think Cord and Smoke would let us stay in this area, on this spread? And what about Dooley’s wife; you forgettin’ about her?”

“I reckon so,” Cat said sullenly.

Both Jason and Lanny had been admiring Cat’s matched guns since he’d arrived. They were silver-plated, scroll-engraved, with ivory grips. Smith & Wesson .44’s, top break for easier loading. They both coveted Cat’s guns. Both of them had thought, more than once: When this is over, I’ll kill him and take them fancy guns.

Honor extended only so far.

A wounded man moaned in restless unconsciousness on his bloody bunk. Before he had passed out, he had drunk a full bottle of laudanum to ease the pain in his chest. Pink froth was bubbling past his lips. Lung shot, and all knew he wasn’t going to make it.

“You want me to shoot him, Jason?” Nappy asked.

“Naw. He’ll be gone in a few hours. If he s still alive come the mornin’, we’ll put a piller over his face and end it thataway. It won’t make so much noise.”

Smoke stepped out before first light, carrying his rifle, loaded full. It had come to him during the night, and if it came to the range-robbers, the small band of defenders would be in trouble. They could starve them out; a few well-placed snipers could keep them pinned down for days. He hated to tell Fae, but Smoke felt it would be best to desert the ranch and head for Cord’s place. If they stayed here, it was only a matter of time before they were overrun.

He looked around the darkness. Before turning in, they had stacked the bodies of the outlaws against a wall of a ravine. At first light, they would go through their pockets in search of any clues to family or friends. They would then bury the men by collapsing dirt over the stiffening bodies. There would be no markers.

Smoke smelled the aroma of coffee coming from the bunkhouse, the good odors just barely overriding the smell of charred wood from the remnants of the barn. Smoke walked to the bunkhouse, faint lanternlight shining through the windows.

“Comin’ in,” he announced just before reaching the door.

“Come on,” ol’ Spring called. “Got hot coffee and hard biscuits.”

Before Smoke poured his first cup of coffee of the day, he noticed the men had already packed their warbags and rolled their slim mattresses.

“You boys read my mind, hey?”

“Figured you’d be wantin’ to pull out this mornin’,” Hardrock said, gumming a biscuit to soften it. He had perhaps four teeth left in his mouth. “What about the cattle?”

Smoke took a drink of the strong cowboy coffee before replying. “Figured we’d drive them on over to Cord’s.”

“Them no-goods is gonna fire the cabin soon as we’re gone,” Silver Jim said. “After they loot it.” He grinned nastily. “We all allow as to how we ought to leave a few surprises in there for them.”

Smoke, squatting down, leaned back against the bunkhouse wall and smiled. “What you got in mind?”

Hardrock kicked a cloth sack by his bunk. The sack moved and buzzed. “I gleamed me a rattler nest several days back. ‘Fore I snoozed last night I paid it a visit and grabbed me several. I figured I’d plant ’em in the house ’fore we left, in stra-teegic spots.” He grinned. “You like that idee?”

“Oh, yeah!”

“Thought you would. Soon as Miss Fae and that goosy brother of her’n is gone we’ll plant the rattlers.”

Smoke chewed on yesterday s biscuit and took a swallow of coffee. “You reckon any varmits got to the bodies last night?”

“Doubtful,” Charlie said. “Ring stayed out there, close by. Said he didn’t much like them people but it wouldn’t be fitten to let the coyotes and wolves chew on them. Strange man.”

Pistol looked toward the dusty window. “Gettin’ light enough to see. I reckon we better get to it whilst it’s cool. Them ol’ boys is gonna get plumb ripe when the sun touches ’em.”

The men put on their hats, hitched up their britches, and turned out the lamps. “I’d hate to be an undertaker,” Hardrock said. “Hope when I go I just fall off my horse in the timber.”

“By that time, you’ll be so old you won’t be able to get in the saddle,” Silver Jim needled him.

“Damn near thataways now,” Hardrock fired back.

They kept the outlaws’ guns and ammunition and put what money they had in a leather sack, to give to Fae. Then they caved in the ravine wall and stacked rocks over the dirt to keep the varmints from digging up the bodies and eating them. By the time they had finished, it was time for breakfast.

Fae and Rita had fixed a huge breakfast of bacon and eggs and oatmeal and biscuits. The men dug in, piling their plates high. Conversation was sparse until the first plates had been emptied. Eating was serious business; a man could talk anytime.

After eating up everything in sight—it wasn’t polite to leave any food; might insult the cook—the men refilled their coffee cups, pushed back their chairs, and hauled out pipes and papers, passing the tobacco sack around.

“We’re leaving, aren’t we?” Fae asked, noticing how quiet the men were.

“Till this is over,” Smoke told her. “It’s a pretty location here, Cousin, but it’d be real easy for Hanks’s men to pin us down.”

“They’ll destroy the house.”

“Probably. But you can always rebuild. That beats gettin’ buried here. Take what you just absolutely have to have. We can stash the rest for you. Spring, you and Pat stay here and keep a sharp eye out. We’ll go bunch the cattle and start pushing them toward Cord’s range. We’ll cross the Smith at the north bend, just south of that big draw. Let’s go, boys.”

The cattle were not happy to be leaving the lush grass of summer graze, but finally the men got the old mossyhorn lead steer moving and the others followed. Smoke and Hardrock rode back to the ranch house. Hardrock went to the bunkhouse to get his bag of goodies for the outlaws. Ring had bunched the horses and with Pat’s help was holding them just off the road. Spring was driving the wagon. Both Rita and Rae were riding astride; Parnell was in his buggy. He had a fat lip from his encounter with his sister the night past. He didn’t look at all

“I’ll catch up with y’all down the road,” Hardrock told Smoke.

“What is in the sack?” Parnell inquired.

“Some presents for the range-robbers. It wouldn’t be neighborly to just go off and not leave something.”

Parnell muttered something under his breath about the strangeness of western people while Smoke grinned at him.

The caravan moved out, with Smoke riding with his rifle across his saddle horn. Smoke did not expect any trouble so soon after the outlaw attack the past night, but one never knew about the mind of Dooley Hanks. The man didn’t even know his own mind.

The trip to the Smith was uneventful and Spring knew a place where the wagon and the buggy could get across with little difficulty. A couple of Cord’s hands were waiting on the west side of the river to point the way for the cattle. Smoke rode on to the ranch with the women and Parnell. Cord met them in the front yard.

“The house and barn go up last night?” he asked. “We seen a glow.”

Just the barn. I imagine the house will be fired tonight.” He smiled. ”After they try to loot it. But Hardrock left a few surprises for them.” He told the ranch owner about the rattlesnakes in the bureau drawers and in other places.

Cord’s smile was filled with grim satisfaction. “They’ll get exactly what they deserve. Your momma’s in the house, Rita.” He stared at her. “Girl, what have you done to your hair?”

“Whacked it off.” Rita grinned. You like my jeans, Mister Cord?”

Cord shook his head and muttered about women dressin’ up in men’s britches and ridin’ astride. Rita laughed at him as Sandi came out onto the porch. She squealed and the young women ran toward each other and hugged.

“The women been cleaning out the old bunkhouse all mornin’, Smoke. It ain’t fancy, but the roof don’t leak and the bunks is in good shape and the sheets and blankets is clean.”

“Sounds good to me. I’ll go get settled in and get back with you.”

“Smoke?”

He turned around to face Cord. The man stuck out his big hand and Smoke took it. “Good to have you with us in this thing.”

“They done pulled out!” Larado reported back to Jason and Lanny. “They moved the cattle toward the Smith this mornin’. I found where they caved a ravine in on top of them they kilt last night. And it looks like the house is nearabouts full of good stuff.”

“One down,” Lanny said with a grin. “Let’s take us a ride over there and see what we can find in the house. If they left in a hurry, they prob’ly didn’t pack much.”

The range-robbers rode up cautiously, but already the place had that aura of desertion about it. Lanny and Jason were feeling magnanimous that morning and told the boys to go ahead, help themselves to whatever they could find in the house.

A dozen gunnies began looting the house.

“Hey!” Slim called. “This here box is locked. Gimme that there hammer over yonder on the sill.” He hammered the lock off while others squatted down, close to him, ready to snatch and grab should the box be filled with valuables. Slim opened the lid. Two rattlesnakes lunged out, one of them taking Slim in the throat and the other nailing a bearded gunny on the cheek and hanging on, wrapping around the gunny’s neck, striking again and again.

One outlaw dove through a window escaping the snakes; another took the back door off its hinges. A gunny known only as Red fell over the couch knocking a bureau over. A rattler slithered out of the opened drawer and began striking at the man’s legs, while Red kicked and screamed and howled in agony.

Larado ran from the house in blind fear, running into Lanny who was running toward the house, Lanny fell back into Jason, and all three of them landed in the dust in a heap of arms and legs.

Ben Sabler rode up with his kin just in time to see Red crawl from the house and scream out his misery, the rattlesnake coiled around one leg, striking again and again at Red’s stomach.

Ben did not hesitate. He jerked iron and shot Red in the head, putting him out of his agony, and then shot the snake, clipping its head off with deadly accuracy.

The bearded gunny staggered out the door, dying on his feet. Venom dripped from his face. He stood for a moment, and then fell like a tree, facefirst in the dirt. The rattler sidewinded toward Larado, who jerked out his pistol and emptied it into the rattler.

“Burn this damn place!” Lanny shouted.

“Slim’s in there!”

Lanny looked inside. Slim was already beginning to swell from the massive amount of venom in his body. Lanny carefully backed out. “Slim’s dead,” he announced. “Damn Smoke Jensen. The bassard ain’t human to do something lak this.”

“I heard that he was from hell, myself,” a gunny called Blaine said. He sat his horse and looked at the death house. “I knowed a man said Jensen took lead seven times one day some years back. Never did knock him down. He just kept on comin’.”

“That ain’t no story,” Ben Sabler said. “I was there. I seen it.”

Lanny looked at Ben. “I’ll kill him. And that’s a promise.”

“I gotta see it.” Ben didn’t back down. “I seen his graveyards. I ain’t never seen none of yours.”

“Hang around,” Lanny told him. He turned his back and shouted the order. “Burn this damn place to the ground!”

Seventeen

They stood in the front yard and watched the smoke spiral up into the sky, caught by vortexes in the hot air and spinning upward until breaking up.

Parnell stood with clenched fists, his eyes on the dark smoke. “I say now, that was unnecessary. Quite brutish. And that makes me angry.” He stalked away, muttering to himself.

Fae was on the porch, her face in her hands, crying softly. “She’s a woman after all,” Lujan said, so softly only Smoke could hear.

Del worked the handle of the outside pump, wetting a bandana and taking it to Fae.

Fae looked at the foreman, surprise in her eyes, and tried a smile as she took the dampened bandana. “Thank you, Del.”

“You’re shore welcome, ma’am.” He backed off a few feet.

“Lujan,” Smoke said. “You and me and Beans. We hit them tonight.”

“Si, señor.” Lujan’s teeth flashed in a smile. “I was wondering when you would have enough of being pushed.”

By late afternoon, everyone at the Circle Double C knew the three men were going headhunting. But no one said a word about it. That might have caused some bad luck. And no one took umbrage at not being asked along. This was to be—they guessed—a hit-hard-and-quick-and-run-like-hell operation. Too many riders would just get in the way.

When Smoke threw a saddle on Dagger, the big mean-eyed horse was ready for the trail, and he showed his displeasure at not being ridden much lately by trying to step on Smoke’s foot.

The men took tape from the medicine chest and taped everything that might jingle. They took everything out of their pockets that was not necessary and looped bandoleers of ammunition across their chests. They were all dressed in dark clothing.

Just after dusk, Beans and Sandi went for a short walk while Smoke and Lujan squatted under the shade of a huge old tree by the bunkhouse and watched as Cord left the main house and walked toward them.

He squatted down beside them in the near-darkness of Montana’s summer dusk. “Nice quiet evenin’, boys.”

“Indeed it is, senor.” Lujan flashed his smile. His eyes flicked over to Beans and Sandi, now sitting in the yard swing. “A night for romance.”

Cord grunted, but both men knew the rancher liked the young man called the Moab Kid. “Sandi would be inclined to give me all sorts of grief if anything was to happen to Beans.”

When neither Smoke nor Lujan replied, Cord said, “Three against sixty is crappy odds, boys.”

“Not the way we plan to fight,” Smoke told him. “They’ll be expecting a mass attack. Not a small surprise attack.”

Again, the rancher grunted. It was clear that he did not like the three of them going head-hunting. “We can expect you back when?”

“Around dawn. But keep guards out, Cord. If we do as much damage as I think we will, Dooley is likely to ride against you this night.”

“I’ll double the guards.”

Beans and Sandi had parted, with Sandi now on the lamplighted front porch. The Moab Kid was walking toward the three men at the tree. Faint light reflected off the double bandoleers of ammunition crisscrossing his chest.

All three men wore two guns around their waist; a third pistol rested in homemade shoulder holsters. They had each added another rifle boot; with two fully loaded Winchester .44 rifles and three pistols, that meant each man was capable of firing fifty-two times before reloading. And each man carried a double pouch over their saddlebags, each pouch containing a can of giant powder, already rigged with fuse and cap.

The men intended to raise a lot of hell at Dooley’s D-H spread.

Smoke and Lujan rose to their boots.

Cord’s voice was soft in the night. “See you, boys.”

The three men walked toward their horses and stepped into the saddles. They rode toward the east, fast disappearing into the night.

The old gunslingers joined Cord by the tree. “Gonna be some fireworks this night,” Silver Jim said. “Pistol, you ’member that time me and you and that half-breed Ute hit them outlaws down on the Powder River?”

Pistol laughed in the night. “Yeah. They was about twenty of them. We shore give them what-for, didn’t we?”

“Was that the time y’all catched them gunnies in their drawers?” Hardrock asked.

“Takes something out of a man to have to fight in his longhandles. We busted right up into their camp. Stampeded their horses right over them, with us right behind the horses, reins in our teeth and both hands full of guns. Of course,” he added with a smile, “that was when we all had teeth!”

The men rode slowly, saving their horses and not wanting to reach the ranch until all were asleep. They kept conversation to a minimum, riding each with their own thoughts. They did not need to be shared. Facing death was a personal thing, the concept that had to be worked out in each man’s mind. None of the three considered themselves to be heroes; they were simply doing what they felt had to be done. The niceties of legal maneuvering were fast approaching the West, but it would be a few more years before they reached the general population. Until that time, codes of conduct would be set and enforced by the people, and the outcome would usually be very final.

The men forded the Smith, careful not to let water splash onto the canvas sacks containing the giant powder bombs. On the east side of the river, they pulled up and rested, letting their horses blow.

The men squatted down and carefully checked their guns, making sure they were loaded up full. Only after that was done did Lujan haul out the makings and pass the sack and papers around. The men enjoyed a quiet smoke in the coolness of Montana night and only then was the silence broken.

“We’ll walk our horses up to that ridge overlooking Dooley’s spread,” Smoke spoke softly. “Look the situation over. If it looks OK, we’ll ride slow-like and not light the bombs until we’re inside the compound. Lujan, you take the new bunkhouse. Beans, you toss yours into the bunkhouse that was used by Gage and his boys. I’ll take the main house.” He picked up a stick and drew a crude diagram in the dirt, just visible in the moonlight. “We’ve got about a hundred and fifty rounds between us all loaded up for the first pass. But let’s don’t burn them all up and get caught short.

“Beans, the corral is closest to your spot; rope the gates and pull ’em down. The horses will be out of there like a shot. We make one pass and then get the hell gone from there. We’ll link up just south of that ridge. If we get separated, we’ll meet back at the Smith, where we rested. I don’t want to bomb the barn because of the horses in there. Ain’t no point in hurtin’ a good horse when we don’t have to.”

Lujan chuckled quietly. “I think when the big bangs go off, there will be no need for Beans to rope the gates. I think the horses will break those poles down in a blind panic and be gone.”

“Let’s hope so,” Smoke said. “That’ll give us more time to raise Cain.”

“And,” Beans said, “when them bombs go off, those ol’ boys are gonna be so rattled they’ll be runnin’ in all directions. I’d sure like to have a pitcher of it to keep.”

Lujan ground out his cigarette butt under a boot heel and stood up. “Shall we go make violent sounds in the night, boys?”

The men rode deeper into the night, drawing closer to their objective. It was unspoken, but each man had entertained the thought that if Dooley had decided to strike first this night, Cord would be three guns short. If that was the case, and they were hitting an empty ranch, Dooley would experience the sensation of seeing another glow in the night sky.

His own ranch.

The three men left their horses and walked up to the ridge overlooking the darkened complex of the D-H ranch. They all three smiled as their eyes settled on the many horses in the double corral.

Without speaking, Smoke pointed out each man’s perimeter and, using sign language, told them to watch carefully. He gave the soft call of a meadowlark and Lujan and Beans nodded their understanding, then faded into the brush.

They watched for over an hour, each of them spotting the locations of the two men on watch. They were careless, puffing on cigarettes. Smoke bird-called them back in and they slipped to their horses.

“What’d you think?” Smoke tossed it out.

“Let’s swing around the ridge and walk our horses as close in as we can,” Beans suggested.

“Suits me,” Lujan said.

“Let’s do it.”

They swung around the ridge and came up on the east side of the ranch, walking their horses very slowly, keeping to the grass to further muffle the sound of the hooves.

“They’re either drunk or asleep,” Beans whispered.

“With any kind of luck, we can put them to sleep forever,” Lujan returned the whisper. He reached back for the canvas sack and took out a giant powder bomb, the others following suit.

They were right on the edge of the ranch grounds when a call went up. “Hey! They’s something movin’ out yonder!”

The three men scratched matches into flames and lit the fuses. Beans let out a wild scream that would have sent any self-respecting puma running for cover and the horses lunged forward, steel-shod hooves pounding on the hard-packed dirt road.

Smoke reached the house first, sending Dagger leaping over the picket fence. He hurled the bomb through a front window and circled around to the back, lighting the fuse on his second bomb and tossing it into an upstairs window. The front of the house blew, sending shards of glass and splintered pieces of wood flying just as Smoke was heading across the backyard, low in the saddle, his face almost pressing Dagger’s neck. He was using his knees to guide the horse, the reins in his teeth and both hands filled with .44’s.

The upstairs blew, taking part of the roof off just as the bunkhouses exploded. All the men knew that with these black powder bombs, as small as they were, unless a man was directly in the path of one, or within a ten-foot radius, chances of death were slim. Injury, however, was another matter.

The first blast knocked Dooley out of bed and onto the floor. The second blast in the house went off just as he was getting to his feet, trying to find his boots and hat and gun belt. That blast went off directly over his bedroom and caved in the ceiling, driving the man to his knees and tearing out the button-up back flap in his longhandles. A long splinter impaled itself to the hilt in one cheek of his bare butt, bringing a howl of pain from the man.

One of his sons fell through the huge hole in the ceiling and landed on his father’s bed, collapsing the frame and folding the son up in the feather tick.

“Halp!” Bud hollered. “Git me outta here. Halp!”

Conrad came running, saw the hole in the ceiling too late, and fell squalling, landing on his father, knocking both men even goofier than they were already were.

Outside, Smoke leveled a six-shooter and fired almost point-blank at a gunny dressed in his longhandles, boots, and hat—with a rifle in his hands. Smoke’s slug took the man in the center of the chest and dropped him.

Dagger’s hooves made a mess of the man’s face as Smoke charged toward a knot of gunnies, both his guns blazing, barking and snarling and spitting out lead.

He ran right through and over the gunnies, Dagger’s hooves bringing howls of pain as bones were broken under the steel shoes.

Lujan knee-reined his horse into a mass of confused and badly shaken gunslicks. He fired into the face of one and the man s face was suddenly slick with blood. Turning his horse, Lujan knocked another gunslick sprawling and fired his left hand gun at another, the bullet taking the man in the belly.

Smoke was suddenly at his side, and both men looked around for Beans, spotting him, and with a defiant cry from Lujan’s throat, the two men charged toward the Moab Kid. They circled the Kid, holstering their pistols and pulling Winchesters from the boots. The three of them charged the yard, firing as fast as they could work the levers of their seventeen-shot Winchesters. In the darkness, they could not be sure they hit anything, but as they would later relate, the action sure solved blocked bowel-movement problems any of the gunnies might be suffering from.

The horses from the corral were long gone, just as Lujan had predicted, stampeding in a mad rush and tearing down the corral gates after the explosion of the first bomb.

“Gimme a bomb!” Smoke yelled over the confusion.

At a full gallop, Beans handed him a bomb and Smoke circled the house, screaming like a painted-up Cheyenne, while Lujan and Beans reined up and began laying down a blistering line of fire. Smoke lit the bomb and tossed it in a side window.

“Let’s go!” he yelled.

Screaming like young bucks on the warpath, the three men gave their horses full rein and galloped off into the dusty night. Smoke took one look back and grinned.

Dooley was getting to his feet for the third time when the bomb blew. The blast impacted with Dooley, turning him around and sending him, door, and what was left of his longhandles, right out the bedroom window. Dooley landed right on top of Lanny Ball, the door separating them, both of the men knocked out cold.

“Lemme out of here!” Bud squalled. “Halp! Halp!”

Eighteen

There had been no pursuit. It would take the gunnies hours to round up their horses. But come the dawning, all three men knew the air would be filled with gunsmoke whenever and wherever D-H riders met with Circle Double C men.

Several miles from the house, the men stopped and loosened cinch straps on their horses, letting them rest and blow and have a little water, but not too much; this was no time for a bloated horse.

Smoke, Lujan, and Beans lay bellydown beside the little creek and drank alongside their horses, then sat down on the cool bank and rolled cigarettes, smoking and relaxing and unwinding. They had been very, very lucky this night, and they all knew it.

Suddenly, Beans started laughing and the laughter spread. Soon all three were rolling on the bank, laughing almost hysterically.

Gasping for breath, tears running down their tanned cheeks, the men gripped their sides and sat up, wiping their eyes with shirt sleeves.

“Sabe Dios!” Lujan said. “But I will never see anything so funny as that we witnessed tonight if I live to be a hundred!”

“Man,” Beans chuckled, “I never knew them fellers was so ugly. Did you ever see so many skinny legs in all your life?”

“I saw Dooley blown slap out of the house,” Smoke said. “He looked like he was in one piece, but I couldn’t tell for sure. He was on a door, looked like to me. Landed on somebody, but I couldn’t tell who it was,’cept he wasn’t wearing longjohns, had on one of those short-pants lookin’ things some men have taken to wearing. Come to think of it, it did sorta resemble Lanny Ball. He had his guns belted on over his drawers.”

That set them off again, howling and rolling on the ground while their horses looked at the men as if they were a bunch of idiots.

After a few hours’ sleep, Smoke rolled out of his blankets, noting that Lujan and Beans were already up. Smoke washed his face and combed his hair and was on his first cup of bunkhouse coffee—strong enough to warp a spoon—when Cord came in.

“I just got the word,” the rancher said. “You and the boys played Billy-Hell last night over to the D-H. Doc Adair was rolled out about three this morning. So far there’s four dead and two wounded who ain’t gonna make it. Several busted arms and legs and heads. Dooley took a six-inch-long splinter in one side of his butt. Adair said the man has gone slap-dab nuts. Just sent off a wire to a cattle buyer to sell off a thousand head for money to hire more gunslicks ... or rather, he sent someone in to send the wire. Dooley can’t sit a saddle just yet.” Try as he did, Cord could not contain his smile.

“Hell, Cord,” Smoke complained. “There aren’t any more gunfighters.”

“Dad Estes,” Cord said, his smile fading.

Smoke stood up from the rickety chair. “You have got to be kidding!”

“Wish I was. They been hiding out over in the Idaho wilderness. Just surfaced a couple of weeks ago on the Montana border.”

“I haven’t heard anything about Dad in several years. Not since the Regulators ran them out of Colorado.”

Cord shook his head. “I been hearin’ for some time they been murderin’ and robbin’ miners to stay alive. Makin’ little forays out of the wildnerness and then duckin’ back in.”

“How many men are we talking about, Cord?”

Cord shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know. Twenty to thirty, I’d guess.”

“Then all we’re doing is taking two steps forward and three steps back.”

“Looks like.”

“Did you get a report on damage last night?”

“One bunkhouse completely ruined, the other one badly damaged. The big house is pretty well shot, back and front. Smoke, Dooley has given the word: shoot us on sight. He says Gibson is his and for us to stay out of it.”

“The hell I will!”

“That’s the same thing everybody else around here told me ... more or less.”

“Well, it was funny while it lasted.” Smoke’s words were glum.

Cord poured a cup of coffee. “Personally, I’d like to have seen it. Beans and Lujan has been entertaining the crews for an hour. Did Lanny Ball really have his guns strapped on over his short drawers? ”

Smoke laughed. “Yeah. That was right before the door hit him.”

Both men shared a laugh. Cord said, “Would it do any good to wire for some federal marshals?”

“I can’t see that it would. It would be our word against theirs. And they’d just back off until the marshals left, then we’d still have the same problem facing us. If I had the time, I could probably get my old federal commission back ... but what good would it do? Dooley’s crazy; the gunslicks he’s buyin are playing a double-cross and Dooley’s so nuts you’d never convince him of it. I think we’d just better resign ourselves that we’re in a war and take it from there.”

“The wife says we need supplies in the worst way. We’ve got to go into town.”

“Then we’ll go in a bunch. This afternoon. We’ve got to show Dooley he doesn’t run the town.”

“Sorry, Mister McCorkle,” Walt Hillery said primly. “I’m completely out of everything you want.”

“You’re a damn liar!” Cord flushed. “Hell, man, I can see most of what I ordered.”

“All that has been bought by the D-H spread. They’re coming in to pick it up this afternoon.”

“Jake!” Cord yelled at his hand driving the wagon. “Pull it around back and get ready to load up.”

“Now, see here!” Leah’s voice was sharp. “You don’t give us orders, Mister Big Shot!”

“Dooley’s bought them,” Smoke said quietly. He stood by a table loaded with men’s jeans. He lifted his eyes to Walt. “You should have stayed out of this, Hillery.” He walked to the counter and dug in his jeans pocket, tossing half a dozen double eagles onto the counter. “That’ll pay for what I pick out, and Cord’s money is layin’ right beside mine. If Dooley sets up a squall, you tell him to come see me. Load it up, Jake.”

The sour-faced and surly Walt and Leah stood tight-lipped, but silent as Jake began loading up supplies.

“Grind the damn coffee, Walt,” Cord ordered. “As a matter of fact, double my order. That way I won’t have to look at your prissy face for a long time.”

“I hope Mister Hanks kills you, McCorkle!” Leah hissed the verbal venom at him. “And I hope you die hard!”

Cord took the hard words without changing expression. “You never have liked me, Leah, and I never could understand why.” didn’t back down. “You don’t have the mental

She didn’t back down. “You don’t have the mental capability to appreciate quality people, McCorkle ... like Dooley Hanks.”

“Quality people? What in the name of Peter and Paul are you talking about, Leah?”

But she would only shake her head.

“Money talks, Cord,” Smoke told him. “Especially with little-minded people like these two fine citizens. They’re just like Dooley: prideful, envious, spiteful, hateful ... any and all of the seven deadly sins.” He walked around the counter and stripped the shelf of all the boxes of .44 and .45 rounds. “Tally it up, storekeeper.”

Cord walked around the general store, filling a large box with all the bandages and various balms and patent medicines he could find. “Might as well do it right,” he muttered.

If dark looks of hate could kill, both Cord and Smoke would have died on the spot. Not another word was exchanged the rest of the time spent in the store except for Walt telling the men the amount of their purchases. All the supplies loaded onto the wagon, both Cord and Smoke experienced a sense of relief when they exited the building to stand on the boardwalk.

“Quality people?” Cord said, shaking his head, still not able to get over that statement.

“Forget them,” Smoke said. “They’re not worth worrying about. When this war is over, and we’ve won—and we will win, count on it—those two will be sucking up to you as if nothing had happened.”

“What they’ll do is do without my business,” Cord said shortly.

The men walked over to Hans for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. Beans and Lujan, with Charlie Starr and his old gunslinging buddies, had dropped into the Pussycat for a beer. There were half a dozen horses wearing the D-H brand, among others, at the hitchrail in front of the Hangout.

“You any good with that six-gun?” Smoke asked the rancher.

“Contrary to what some believe, I’m no fast gun. But I hit what I aim at.”

“That counts most of all in most cases. I’ve seen so-called fast guns many, many times put their first shot in the dirt. They didn’t get another shot.” Then Smoke added, “Just buried.”

They sipped their coffee and enjoyed the dried apple pie with a hunk of cheese on it. They both could sense the tension hanging in and around the small town; and both knew that a shooting was more than likely looking them in the face. It would probably come just before they tried to leave Gibson.

Nothing stirred on the wide street. Not one dog or cat could be seen anywhere. And it was very hot, the sun a bubbling ball in a very blue and very cloudless sky. A dust devil spun out its short frantic life, whipping up the street and then vanishing.

Hilda refilled their cups. “And how is Ring?” she inquired, blushing as she asked.

“Fine.” Smoke smiled at her. “He sends his regards.”

She giggled and returned to the kitchen.

Smoke looked at Cord as he scribbled in a small tally book most ranchers carried with them. “Eighteen dead,” the rancher muttered. “Near as I can figure. May God have mercy on us.”

“They’ll be fifty or sixty dead before this is over. If Dooley doesn’t pull in his horns.”

“He won’t. He’s gone completely around the bend. And you know,” Cord said thoughtfully, some sadness in his voice, “I don’t even remember what caused the riff between us.”

“That’s the way it usually is. Your rider who talked to Doc Adair, he have any idea when Dad Estes and his bunch will be pulling in?”

“Soon as possible, I reckon. They’ll ride hard gettin’ over here. And I’d be willing to bet they’d already left the wilderness and was waitin’ for word; and I’d bet it was Jason or Lanny who put the bug about them into Dooley’s ear.”

“Probably right on both counts.”

Both men looked up as several riders rode into town, reining up in front of the Hangout.

“You know them, Smoke?”

“Some of No-Count Victor’s bunch.”

“Daryl Radcliffe and Paul Addison are ze zwo in der front,” Hans rumbled from behind the counter. “Day vas pointed out to me when day first come to zown.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Smoke said. “They’re scum. Bottom of the barrel but good with a pistol.”

“Maybe ve vill get lucky and day will all bite demselves und die from der rabies,” Hans summed up the feelings of most in the town.

They all heard the back door open and close and Hans turned as Olga came to his side and whispered in his ear. She disappeared into the kitchen and Hans said, “Four men she didn’t know have hitched dere horses at der far end of town and are valking dis vay. All of dem vearing zwo guns.”

“Is that our cue?” Cord asked.

“I reckon. But I’m going to finish my pie and coffee first.”

“You always this calm before a gunfight?”

“No point in getting all worked about it. Stay as calm as you can and your shootin hand stays steady.”

“Good way to look at it, I suppose.” Cord finished his pie and took a sip of coffee. “I hate it that we have to do this in town. A stray bullet doesn’t care who it hits.”

Smoke drained his coffee cup and placed it carefully in the saucer. “It doesn’t have to be on the street if you’re game.”

“I’m game for anything that’ll keep innocent people from getting hurt.”

“You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be. Where are we going?”

“Like Daniel, into the lion’s den. Or in this case, the Hangout. Let’s see how they like it when we take it to them.”

Nineteen

Beans and Lujan and Charlie Starr and his old buddies were waiting on the boardwalk.

“The beer is on me, boys,” Smoke told them. “We’ll try the fare at the Hangout.”

“I hope they have tequila,” Lujan said. “They didn’t a couple of weeks ago. I have not had a decent drink in months.”

“They probably do by now, with Diego and Pablo hanging around in there. But the bottles might be reserved for them.”

“If they have tequila, I shall have a drink,” Lujan replied softly, tempered steel under the liltingly accented words.

The men pushed through the batwing doors and stepped inside the saloon. For all but Lujan and Cord, this was their first excursion into the Hangout. The men fanned out and quickly sized up the joint.

They realized before the first blink that they were outnumbered a good two to one. Surprise mixed with irritation was very evident on the faces of the D-H gunfighters. This move on the part of the Circle Double C had not been anticipated, and it was not to their liking. For in a crowded barroom, gunfights usually took a terrible toll due to the close range.

Smoke led the way to the bar, deliberately turning his back to the gunslicks. The barkeep looked as if he really had to go to the outhouse. “Beer for me and the Moab Kid and Mister McCorkle, please. And a bottle of whiskey for the boys and a bottle of tequila for Mister Lujan.”

The barkeep looked at the “boys,” average age about sixtyfive, and nodded his head. “I got ever‘thing’cept the tequila. Them bottles is reserved for my regular customers.”

“Put a bottle of tequila on the bar, partner,” Smoke told him. “If a customer can see it, it’s for sale.”

“Yes, sir,” the barkeep said, knowing he was caught between a rock and a hard place. But who the hell would have ever figured this bunch would come in here?

Smoke and his men could watch the room of gunfighters in the mirror behind the bar, and they could all see the D-H hired guns were very uncertain. It showed in their furtive glances at one another. Smoke kept a wary eye on Radcliffe and Addison, for they were known to be backshooters and would not hesitate to kill him should Smoke relax his guard for just a moment.

Several D-H guns had been standing at the bar. They had carefully moved away while Smoke was ordering the drinks.

“Diego finds out you been suckin’ at his tequila bottle,” a gunny spoke, “you gonna be dead, Lujan.”

“One day is just as good as the next day to meet the Lord,” Lujan replied, turning to face the man. “But since Diego is not present, perhaps you would like to attempt to fill his boots, puerco.”

“What’d you call me?” the man stood up.

Lujan smiled, holding his shot glass in his left hand. “A pig!”

Radcliffe and Addison and half a dozen others stood up, their hands dangling close to their guns.

The town’s blacksmith pushed open the batwings, stood for a moment staring at the crowd and feeling the tension in the room. He slowly backed out onto the boardwalk. The sounds of his boots faded as he made his exit.

“No damn greasy Mex is gonna call me a pig!” the gunny shouted the words.

Lujan smiled, half turning as he placed the shot glass on the bar. He expected the D-H gunny to draw as he turned, and the man did. Lujan’s Colt snaked into his hand and the beery air exploded in gunfire. The D-H gunny was down and dying as his hand was still trying to lift his pistol clear of leather.

Radcliffe and Addison grabbed for iron. Smoke’s right hand dipped, drew, cocked, and fired in one smooth cat-quick movement. A second behind his draw, Cord drew and fired. Radcliffe and Addison stumbled backward and fell over chairs on their way to the floor.

The room erupted in gunsmoke, lead, and death as Beans and the old gun-handlers pulled iron, cocked it back, and let it bang,

Two D-H riders, with more sense than the others, jumped right through a saloon window, landing on the boardwalk and rolling to the street. They were cut in a few places, but that beat the hell out of being dead.

The bartender had dropped to the floor at the first shot. He came up with a sawed-off ten gauge shotgun, the hammers eared back, and pointed it at Pistol’s head. Cord turned and shot the man in the neck. The bartender jerked as the bullet took him, the barrels of the shotgun pointed toward the ceiling. The shotgun went off, the stock driving back from the recoil, smashing into the man’s mouth, knocking teeth out.

Cord felt a hammer blow in his left shoulder, a jarring flash of pain that turned him to one side for a painful moment and rendered his left arm useless. Regaining his balance and lifting his pistol, the rancher fired at the man who had shot him, his bullet taking the man in his open mouth and exiting out the man’s neck.

Beans felt a burning sensation on his cheek as a slug grazed him, followed by the warm drip of blood. He jerked out his second pistol and added more gunsmoke and death to the mounting carnage.

Lujan twisted as a slug tore through the fleshy part of his arm. Cursing, he lifted his Colt and drove two fast rounds into the belly of the D-H gunhawk who stood directly in front of him, doubling the man over and dropping him screaming to the floor.

The barroom was thick with gunsmoke, making it almost impossible to see. The roaring of guns was near-deafening, adding to the screaming of the wounded and the vile cursing of those still alive.

Smoke jerked as a bullet burned his leg and another slug clipped the top of his ear, sending blood flowing down his face. He stumbled to one side and picked up a gun that had fallen from the lifeless fingers of a D-H gunslick. It was a short-barreled Colt Peacemaker .45. Smoke eared the hammer back and let it snarl as he knelt on the floor, his wounded leg throbbing.

The old gunfighters seemed invincible as they stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder, hands filled with .44’s and .45’s, all of them belching fire and smoke and lead. This was nothing new to them. They had been doing this since the days a man carried a dozen filled cylinders with him for faster reloading. They had stood in barrooms from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, and from Canada to the Mexican border and fought it out, sometimes with a tin star pinned to their chests, sometimes close to the outlaw trail. This was as familiar to them as to a bookkeeper with his figures.

Several D-H hired guns stumbled through the smoke and the blood, trying to make it to the boardwalk, to take the fight into the streets. The first one to step through the batwings was flung back into the fray, his face missing. Hans had blown it off with a sawed-off shotgun. The second D-H gunny had his legs knocked out from under him from the other barrel of Hans s express gun.

Through the thick choking killing haze, Smoke saw a man known to him as Blue, a member of Cat Jennings’s gang of no-goods and trash. Blue was pointing his Smith & Wesson Schofield .45 at Charlie.

He never got to pull the trigger. Smoke’s Peacemaker roared and bucked in his hand and Blue felt, for a few seconds, the hot pain of frontier justice end his days of robbing and murdering.

The gunfire faded into silence, broken only by the moaning of wounded gunslingers.

“Coming in!” Hans shouted from the boardwalk.

“Come on, partner,” Hardrock said, punching out empties and filling up his guns.

Hans stepped through the batwings and coughed as the arid smoke filled his nostrils. His eyes widened in shock at the human carnage on the floor. Widened further as he looked at the wounded men leaning up against the bar. “I vill get the doctor.” He backed out and ran for Doc Adair’s office.

While Charlie and Pistol kept their guns on the moaning gunslicks on the floor, Smoke and Lujan walked among them, silently determining which should first receive Adair’s attentions and who would never again need attention.

Not in this life.

Smoke knelt down beside a young man, perhaps twenty years old. The young man had been shot twice in the stomach, and already his dark eyes were glazing over as death hovered near.

“You got any folks, boy?” Smoke asked.

“Mother!” the young man gasped.

“Where is she?”

“Arkansas. Clay County. On the St. Francis. Name’s ... name’s Claire ... Shelby.”

“I’ll get word to her,” Smoke told him as that pale rider came galloping nearer.

“She always told me ... I was gonna turn out ... bad.” The words were very weak.

“I’ll write that your horse threw you and you broke your neck.”

“I’d ... ’preciate it. That’d make her ... feel a bunch better.” He closed his eyes and did not open them again.

“I thought you was gonna kiss him there for minute, Jensen,” a hard-eyed gunslick mocked Smoke. The lower front of the man’s shirt was covered with blood. He had taken several rounds in the gut.

“You got any folks you want me to write?” Smoke asked the dying man.

The gunslick spat at Smoke, the bloody spittle landing close to his boot.

“Suit yourself.” Smoke stood up, favoring his wounded leg. He limped back to the bar and leaned against it, just as the batwings pushed open and Doc Adair and the undertaker came in.

Both of them stopped short. “Jesus God!” Adair said, looking around him at the body-littered and blood-splattered saloon.

“Business got a little brisk today, Doc,” Smoke told him, accepting a shot glass of tequila from Lujan. “Check Cord here first.” He knocked back the strong mescal drink and shuddered as it hit the pit of his stomach.

The doctor, not as old as Smoke had first thought—of course he’d been sober now for several weeks, and was now wearing clean clothes and had gone back to shaving daity—knew his business. He cleaned out the shoulder wound and bandaged it, rigging a sling for Cord out of a couple of bar towels. He then turned his attention to Lujan, swiftly and expertly patching up the arm.

Smoke had cut open his jeans, exposing the ugly rip along the outside of his leg. “It ought to be stitched up, Adair said. ”It’ll leave a bad scar if I don’t.”

“Last time my wife Sally counted, Doc, I had seventeen bullet scars in my hide. So one more isn’t going to make any difference.”

“So young to have been hit so many times,” the doctor muttered as he swabbed out the gash with alcohol. Smoke almost lifted himself out of the chair as the alcohol cleaned the raw flesh. Adair grinned. “Sometimes the treatment hurts worse than the wound.”

“You’ve convinced me,” Smoke said as his eyes went misty, then went through the same sensation as Adair cleaned the wound in his ear.

“How ’bout us?” a gunfighter on floor bitched. “Ain’t we get no treatment?”

“Go ahead and die,” Adair told him. “I can see from here you’re not going to make it.”

Charlie and his friends had walked around the room, all the guns and gun belts, from both the dead and living.

“Always did want me a matched set of Remingtons,” Silver Jim said. “Now I got me some. Nice balance, too.”

“I want you to lookee here at this Colt double-action,” Charlie said. “I’ll just be hornswoggled. And she’s a .44-.40,

Got a little ring on the butt so s a body could run some twine through it and not lose your gun. Ain t that something, now. Don’t have to cock it, neither. Just point it and pull the trigger.” He tried it one-handed and almost scared the doctor half to death when Charlie shot out a lamp. ”All that trigger-pullin’ -the-hammer-back does throw your aim off a mite, though. Take some gettin’ used to, I reckon.”

“Maybe you ’pposed to shoot it with both hands,” Hardrock suggested.

“That don’t make no sense atall. There ain’t no room on the for two hands. Where the hell would you put the other’n?”

“I don’t know. Was I you, I’d throw the damn thing away. They ain’t never gonna catch on.”

“I’m a hurtin’ something fierce!” a D-H gunhawk hollered.

“You want me to kick you in the head, boy?” Pistol asked him. “That’d put you out of your misery for a while.”

The gunhawk shut his mouth.

Adair finished with Beans and went to work on the fallen gunfighters. “This is strictly cash, boys,” he told them. “I don’t give no credit to people whose life expectancy is as short yours.”

Twenty

All was calm for several days. Smoke imagined that even in Dooley’s half-crazed mind it had been a shock to lose so many gunslicks in the space of three minutes, and all that following the raid on Dooley’s ranch. So much had happened in less than twenty-four hours that Dooley was being forced to think over very carefully whatever move he had planned next.

But all knew the war was nowhere near over. That this was quite probably the lull before the next bloody and violent storm.

“Dad Estes and his bunch just pulled in,” Cord told Smoke on the morning of the fourth day after the showdown in the saloon. “Hans sent word they came riding in late last night.”

“He’ll be making a move soon then.”

“Smoke, do you realize that by my count, thirty-three men have been killed so far?”

“And about twenty wounded. Yes. I understand the undertaker is putting up a new building just to handle it all.”

“That is weighing on my mind. I’ve killed in my lifetime, Smoke. I’ve killed three white men in about twenty years, but they had stole from me and were shooting at me. I’ve hanged one rustler.” He paused.

“What are you trying to say, Cord?”

“We’ve got to end this. I’m getting where I can’t sleep at night! That boy dying back yonder in the saloon got to me.”

‘I’m certainly open to suggestions, Cord. Do you think it didn’t bother me to write that boy’s mother? I don’t enjoy killing, Cord. I went for three years without ever pulling a gun in anger. I loved it. Then until I got Fae’s letter, I hadn t even worn both guns. But you know as well as I do how this little war is going to be stopped.”

Cord leaned against the hitchrail and took off his hat, scratching his head. “We force the issue? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Do you want peace, Cord?”

“More than anything. Perhaps we could ride over and talk to ... ?” He shook his head. “What am I saying? Time for that is over and past. All right, Smoke. All right. Let me hear your plan.”

“I don’t have one. And it isn’t as if I haven’t been thinking hard on it. What happened to your sling?”

“I took it off. Damn thing worried me. No plan?”

“No. The ranch, this ranch, must be manned at all times. We agreed on that. If not, it’ll end up like Fae’s place. And if we keep meeting them like we did back in town, they’re going to take us. We were awfully lucky back there, Cord.”

“I know. So ... ?”

“I’m blank. Empty. Except for hit and run night fighting. But we’ll never get as lucky as we did the other night. Count on that. You can bet that Dooley has that place heavily guarded night and day.”

“Wait them out, then. I have the cash money to keep Gage and his boys on the payroll for a long time. But not enough to buy more gunslicks ... if I could find any we could trust, that is.”

“Doubtful. Must be half a hundred range wars going on out here, most of them little squabbles, but big enough to keep a lot of gunhawks working.”

“I’ve written the territorial governor, but no reply as yet.”

“I wouldn’t count on one, either.” Smoke verbally tossed cold water on that. “He’s fighting to make this territory a state; I doubt that he’d want a lot of publicity about a range war at this time.”

Cord nodded his agreement. “We’ll wait a few more days; neither one of us is a hundred percent yet...” He paused as a rider came at a hard gallop from the west range.

The hand slid to a halt, out of the saddle and running to McCorkle. “Saddle me a horse!” he yelled to several punchers standing around the corral. “The boys is bringin’ in Max, Mister Cord. Looks like Dooley done turned loose that back-shootin’ Danny Rouge. Max took one in the back. He’s still able to sit a saddle, but just barely. I’ll ride into town and fetch Doc Adair.” He was gone in a bow-legged run toward the corral.

Cord’s face had paled at the news of his oldest son being shot. “I’ll have Alice get ready with hot water and bandages. She’s a good nurse.” He ran up the steps to the house.

Smoke leaned against the hitchrail as his eyes picked up several riders coming in slow, one on either side helping to keep the middle rider in the saddle. Smoke knew, with this news, all of Cord’s willingness to talk had gone right out the window. And if Max died ... ?

Smoke pushed away from the hitchrail and walked toward the bunkhouse. If Max died there would be open warfare; no more chance meetings between the factions involved. It would be bloody and cruel until one side killed off the other.

“Might as well get ready for it,” Smoke muttered.

“All we can do is wait,” Adair said. “I can’t probe for the bullet ’cause I don’t know where it is. It angled off from the entry point. It missed the kidney and there is no sign of excessive internal bleeding; so he’s got a chance. But don’t move him any more than you have to.”

Smoke and several others stood listening as Doc Adair spoke with Cord and Alice.

“His chances ... ?” Cord asked, his voice tired.

“Fifty-fifty.” Adair was blunt. “Maybe less than that. Don’t get your hopes up too high, Cord. Have someone close by him around the clock. We’ll know one way or the other in a few days.”

“Did you get him?” Dooley asked the rat-faced Danny Rouge.

“I got him.” Danny’s voice was high-pitched, more like a woman’s voice.

“Good!” Dooley took a long pull from his whiskey bottle, some of the booze dribbling down his unshaven chin. “One less of that bastard’s whelps.”

He was still mumbling and scratching himself as Danny walked from the room and stepped outside. Dooley’s sons were on the porch, sharing a bottle.

“Did he squall when you got him?” Sonny asked, his eyes bright from the cruelty within the young man.

“I ’magine he did,” Danny told him. “But I couldn’t hear him; I was a good half mile away.” Danny stepped from the porch and walked toward the one bunkhouse that was still usable. With the coming in of Dad Estes and his bunch, tents had been thrown up all over the place, the ranch now resembling a guerrilla camp.

The other gunhawks avoided Danny. No one wanted anything to do with him, all feeling that there was something unclean about the young man, even though Danny was as fastidious as possible, considering the time and the place. He was considerate of his personal appearance, but his mind resembled anyone’s concept of hell. Danny was a cold-blooded killer. He enjoyed killing, the killing act his substitute for a woman. He would kill anybody: man, woman, or child. It did not make one bit of difference to Danny. Just as long as the price was right.

He went to his bunk and carefully cleaned his rifle, returning it to the hard leather case. Then he stretched out on the bunk and closed his eyes. It had been a very pleasing day. He knew he’d gotten a good clean hit by the way the man had jerked and then slumped in the saddle, slowly tumbling to the ground, hitting the ground like a rag doll.

It was a good feeling knowing he had earned his pay. A day’s work for a day’s pay. Made a man feel needed. Yes, indeed.

At the Circle Double C, the men sat, mostly in small groups, and mostly in silence, cleaning weapons. The hands, not gunfighters, but just hard-working cowboys, were digging in warbags and taking out that extra holster and pistol, filling the loops of a spare bandoleer. They rode for the brand, and if a fight was what Dooley Hanks wanted, a fight would be what he would get.

The hands who had come over to Cord’s side from the D-H did not have mixed feeling about it. They had been shoved aside in favor of gunhawks; they had seen Dooley and his ignorant sons go from bad to savage. There was not one ounce of loyalty left among them toward Dooley. They knew now that this was a fight to the finish. OK. Let’s do it.

Just before dusk, Cord walked out to the bunkhouse, a grim expression on his face. “I sent Willie in for the doctor. Max is coughin’ up blood. It don’t look good. I can’t stand to sit in here and look at my wife tryin’ to be brave about the whole damn thing when I know that what she really wants to do is bust out bawlin’. And the same goes for me.”

Then he started cussing. He strung together some mighty hard words as he stomped around the big room, kicking at this and that; about every fourth and fifth word was Dooley Hanks. He traced the man’s ancestry back to before Adam and Eve, directly linking Dooley to the snake in the Garden.

He finally sat down on a bunk and put his face in his hands. Smoke motioned the men outside and gently closed the door, leaving Cord with his grief and the right for a man to cry in private.

“It’s gonna be Katy-bar-the-door if that boy dies,” Hardrock said. “We just think we’ve seen a little shootin’ up to now.”

“I’m ready,” Del said. “I’m ready to get this damn thing over with and get back to punchin’ cows.”

“It’s gonna be a while fore any of us gets back to doin’ that,” Les said, one of the men who had come from the D-H.

“And some of us won’t,” Fitz spoke softly.

Someone had a bottle and that got passed around. Beans pulled out a sack of tobacco and that went the way of the bottle. The men drank and smoked in silence until the bottle was empty and the tobacco sack flat as a tortilla left out in the sun.

“Wonder how Dooley’s ass is?” Gage asked, and the men chuckled softly.

“I hope it’s healed,” Del said. “’Cause it’s shore about to get kicked hard.”

The men all agreed on that.

Cord came out of the bunkhouse and walked to the house, passing the knot of men without speaking. His face bore the brunt of his inner grief.

Holman got up from his squat and said, “I think I’m gonna go write my momma a letter. She’s gettin’ on in years and I ain’t wrote none in near’bouts a year.”

“That’s a good idea,” Bernie said. “If I tell you what to put on paper to my momma, would you write it down for me?”

“ Shore. Come on. I print passable well.”

They were happy-go-lucky young cowboys a few weeks ago, Smoke thought. Now they are writing their mothers with death on their minds.

That ghostly rider would be saddling up his fire-snorting stallion, Smoke mused. Ready for more lost souls.

“What are you thinking, amigo?” Lujan asked him.

Smoke told him.

“You are philosophical this evening. I had always heard that you were a man who possessed deep thoughts.”

Smoke grunted. “My daddy used to say that we came from Wales—years back. Jensen wasn’t our real name. I don’t know what it was. But Daddy used to say that the Celts were mysterious people. I don’t know.”

“I know that there is the smell of death in the air,” the Mexican said. “Listen. No birds singing. Nothing seems to be moving. ”

The primal call of a wolf cut the night air, its shivering howl touching them all.

“Folks cut them wolves down,” Del spoke out of the darkness. “And I’ve shot my share of them when they was after beeves. But I ain’t got nothing really agin them. They’re just doing what God intended them to do. They ain’t like we’re supposed to be. They can’t think like nothin except what they is. And you can’t fault them for that. Take a human person now, that’s a different story. Dooley and them others, and I know that Dooley’s done lost his mind, but I think his greed brung that on. His jealousy and so forth. But them gunning over yonder. They coulda been anything but what they is. They turned to the outlaw trail’cause they wanted to. What am I tryin’ to say anyways?”

Silver Jim stood up and stretched. “It means we can go in smokin’ and not have no guilty conscience when we leave them bassards dead where we find them.”

Lujan smiled. “Not as eloquently put as might have been, but it certainly summed it up well.”

Cord stepped out on the porch just as Doc Adair’s buggy pulled up. The men could hear his words plain. “Max just died.”

Twenty-One

Max McCorkle, the oldest son of Cord and Alice, and brother to Rock, Troy, and Sandi, was buried the next day. He was twenty-five years old. He was buried in the cemetery on the ridge overlooking the ranch house. Half a dozen crosses were in the cemetery, crosses of men who had worked for the Circle Double C and who had died while in the employment of the spread.

Sandi stood leaning against Beans, softly weeping. Del stood with Fae. Ring stood with Hilda and Hans and Olga. Gage with Liz. Cord stood stony-faced with his wife, a black veil over her face. Parnell stood with Smoke and the other hands and gunfighters. And Smoke had noticed something: the schoolteacher had strapped on a gun.

The final words were spoken over Max, and the family left while the hands shoveled the dirt over the young man’s final resting place on this earth.

Parnell walked up to Smoke. “I would like for you to teach me the nomenclature of this weapon and the proper way to fire it. ”

A small smile touched Smoke’s lips, so faint he doubted Parnell even noticed it. “You plannin’ on ridin’ with us, Cousin?”

The man shook his head. “Regretfully, no. I am not that good a horseman. I would only be in the way. But someone needs to be here at the ranch with the women. I can serve in that manner.”

Smoke stuck out his hand and the schoolteacher, with a surprised look on his face, took it. “Glad to have you with us, Parnell.”

“Pleased to be here, Cousin.”

“We’ll start later on this afternoon. Right now, let’s wander on down to the house. Mrs. McCorkle and the others have been cookin’ all morning. Big crowd here. I ’spect the neighbors will be visitin’ and such all afternoon.”

“Funerals are barbaric. Nothing more than a throwback to primitive and pagan rites.”

“Is that right?

“Yes. And dreadfully hard on the family.”

Weddings and funerals were social events in the West, often drawing crowds from fifty to seventy-five miles away. It was a chance to catch up on the latest gossip, eat a lot of good food—everybody brought a covered dish-and see old friends.

“We got the same thing goin’ on up on the Missouri,” Smoke heard one man tell Cord. “Damn nesters are tryin’ to grab our land. Some of the ranchers have brung in some gunfighters. I don’t hold with that myself, but it may come to it. I writ the territorial governor, but he ain’t seen fit to reply as yet. Probably never even got the letter.”

Smoke moved around the lower part of the ranch house and listened. Few knew who he was, and that was just fine with him.

“Maybe we could get Dooley put in the crazy house,” a man suggested. “He’s sure enough nuts. All we got to do is find someone to sign the papers. ”

“No,” another said. “There’s one more thing: findin’ someone stupid enough to serve the papers when Dooley’s got hisself surrounded by fifty or sixty gunslicks.”

“I wish I could help Cord out, but I’m shorthanded as it is. The damn Army ought to come in. That’s what I think.”

Smoke heard the words “vigilante” and “regulators” several times. But they were not spoken with very much enthusiasm.

Smoke ate, but with little appetite. Cord was holding up well, but his two remaining sons, Rock and Troy, were geared up for trouble, and unless he could head them off, they would be riding into disaster. He moved to the boys’ side, where they stood backed up against a wall, keeping as far away from the crowd as possible.

“You boys best just snuff out your powder fuse,” Smoke told them. “Dooley and his bunch will get their due, but for right now, think about your mother. She s got enough grief on her shoulders without you two adding to it. Just settle down.”

The boys didn’t like it, but Smoke could tell by the looks on their faces his words about their mother had hit home. He felt they would check-rein their emotions for a time. For how long was another matter.

Having never liked the feel of large crowds, Smoke stayed a reasonable time, paid his respects to Cord and Alice, and took his leave, walking back to the bunkhouse to join the other hands.

“When do we ride?” Fitz asked as soon as Smoke had walked in.

“Don’t know. Just get that burr out from under your blanket and settle down. You can bet that Dooley is ready and waiting for us right this minute. Let’s don’t go riding into a trap. We’ll wait a few days and let the pot cool its boil. Then we’ll come up with something.”

Fine words, but Smoke didn’t have any plan at all.

They all worked cattle for a few days, riding loose but ready. In the afternoons, Smoke spent several hours each day with Parnell and his pistol. Parnell was very fast, but he couldn’t hit anything but air. On the third day, Smoke concluded that the man never would be able to hit the side of a barn, even if he was standing inside the barn. Since they had plenty of rifles, Smoke decided to try the man with a Winchester. To his surprise, Parnell turned out to be a good shot with a carbine. ”

“You can tote that pistol around if you want to, Parnell,” Smoke told him. “But you just remember this: out here, if a man straps on a gun, he best be ready and able to use it. Don’t go off the ranch grounds packing a short gun, somebody’s damn sure going to call your hand with it. Stick with the rifle. You’re a pretty good shot with it. We got plenty of rifles, so keep half a dozen of them loaded up full at all times.”

“I need to go in and get some books and papers from the school.”

“I wouldn’t advise it, Cousin. You’d just be askin’ for trouble. Tell me what you need, and I’ll fetch it for you.”

“Perhaps,” the schoolteacher said mysteriously, and walked away.

Smoke had a feeling that, despite his words, the man was going into town anyway. He’d have to keep an eye on him. He knew Parnell was feeding on his newly found oats, so to speak, and felt he didn’t need a baby-sitter. But Smoke had a hunch that Parnell really didn’t know or understand the caliber of men who might jump him, prod him into doing something that would end up getting the schoolteacher hurt, or dead.

Smoke spread the word among the men to keep an eye on Parnell.

“Seems to me that Rita’s been lookin’ all wall-eyed at him the last couple of days,” Pistol said. “Shore is a bunch of spoonin’ goin’ on around here. Makes a man plumb nervous.”

“Wal, you can re-lax, Pistol,” Hardrock told him. “No woman in her right mind would throw her loop for the likes of you. You too damn old and too damn ugly.”

“Huh!” the old gunfighter grunted. “You a fine one to be talkin’. You could hire that face of yours out to scare little children.”

Smoke left the two old friends insulting each other and walked to the house to speak with Cord sitting on the front porch, drinking coffee.

Cord waved him up and Smoke took a seat.

“I’m surprised Dooley hasn’t made a move,” the rancher said. “But the men say the range has been clear. Maybe he’s counting on that Danny Rouge to pick us off one at a time.”

“I doubt that Dooley even knows what’s in his mind,” Smoke replied. “I’ve been thinking, Cord. If we could get a judge to him, the judge would declare him insane and stick him in an institution. ”

“Umm. Might be worth a shot. I can send a rider up to Helena with a letter. I know Judge Ford. Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Maybe he’d like to come down for a visit?” Smoke suggested. “Has he been here before?”

“Several times. Good idea. I’ll spell it all out in a letter and get a man riding within the hour. I’ll ask him if he can bring a deputy U.S. marshal down with him.”

“We just might be able to end this mess,” Smoke said, a hopeful note in his voice. ”With Dooley out of the picture, Liz could take over the running of the ranch, with Gage to help her, and she could fire the gunslicks.”

“It sounds so simple.”

“All we can do is try. Have you seen Parnell and Rita?”

“Yeah. They went for a walk. Can’t get used to the idea of that schoolteacher packin’ iron. It looks funny.”

“I warned him about totin’ that gun in town.”

“And I told Rita not to go into town. However, since I’m not her father, it probably went in one ear and out the other. Dooley and me told those girls fifteen years ago not to see one another. Did a hell of a lot of good, didn’t it? Both those girls are stubborn as mules. Did Parnell get his back up when you warned him?”

“I ... think perhaps he did. I tell you, Cord, he can get that six-shooter out of leather damn quick. He just can’t hit anything with it.”

The men chatted for a time, then Smoke left the rancher composing the letter he was sending to Judge Ford. The rider would leave that afternoon. Smoke saddled up and rode out to check on Fae’s cattle. As soon as he pulled out, Parnell and Rita left in the buggy, heading for town.

“I shan’t be a moment, Rita,” Parnell said as they neared Gibson. “I only need to gather up a few articles from the school.”

Rita put a hand on Parnell’s leg and almost curled his toenails. “Take as long as you like. I’ll be waiting for you ... darling.”

Parnell’s collar suddenly became very tight.

He gathered up his articles from the school and hurried back to the buggy.

“Would you mind terribly taking me over to Mrs. Jefferson’s house, Parnell? I have a dress over there I need to pick up.”

“Not at all ... darling.”

Rita giggled and Parnell blushed. He clucked the horse into movement and they went chatting up the main street of Gibson. They did not go unnoticed by a group of D-H gunslicks loafing in front of the Hangout, the busted window now boarded up awaiting the next shipment of glass.

“Yonder goes Miss Sweety-Baby and Sissy-Pants,” Golden said, sucking on a toothpick.

“Let’s us have some fun when they come back through,” Eddie Hart said with a wicked grin.

“What’d you have in mind?

“We’ll drag Sissy-Britches out of that there buggy and strip him nekkid right in the middle of the street; right in front of Pretty-Baby.”

They all thought that would be loads of fun.

Golden looked at an old rummy sitting on the steps, mumbling to himself. “What the hell are you mumbling about, old man?”

“I knowed I seed that schoolteacher afore. Now it comes to me.”

“What are you talkin’ about, you old rum-dum?”

“‘Bout fifteen year ago, I reckon it was. Back when Reno was just a sandy collection of saloons and hurdy-gurdy parlors. They was a humdinger of a shootin’ one afternoon. This kid come riding in and some hombres decided they’d have some fun with him. In ’bout the time hit’d take you to blink your eyes four times, they was four men in the street, dead or dyin’. The kid was snake quick and on the mark. He disappeared shortly after that.” The old man pointed toward the dust trail of the buggy. “That there, boys, is the Reno Kid!”

Twenty-Two

“The Reno Kid!” Golden hissed, as his front chair legs hit the boardwalk.

“He’s right!” Gandy, a member of Cat Jennings’s gang almost shouted the words. “I was there! I seen it! That there is shore nuff the Reno Kid. He’s all growed up and put on some weight, but that’s him!”

“Damn right!” the wino said. “I said it was, din I. I was thar, too.”

“That’s why he don’t never pack no gun,” another said. “Who’d have thought it?”

“He’s mine,” Golden said.

“We’ll both take him,” Gandy insisted. “Man lak’at you cain’t take no chances with.”

“But he ain’t packin’ no iron!” another said. “Hit’d be murder, pure and simple.”

Golden said a cuss word and leaned back in his chair.

“Here they come!” Gandy looked up the street. “To hell with it. I’ll force his hand and call him out. Make him git a six-gun. ”

“I’ll keep you covered in case he’s packin’ a hideout gun,” Golden told him.

Both men stood up, Gandy stepping out into the wide street, directly in the path of the buggy.

Parnell whoaed the horse and sat glaring at the gunslick.

Gandy glared back.

“Will you please remove your unwashed and odious presence from the middle of the street, you ignorant lout!” Parnell ordered.

“Whut the hale did you say to me, Reno?”

Parnell blinked and looked at Rita, who was looking at him.

“I’m afraid you have me confused with someone else,” Parnell said. “Now kindly step out of the way so we may proceed on our journey.”

“Git outta that thar buggy, Reno! I’m a gonna kill you.”

“He thinks you’re the Reno Kid.” Rita gripped Parnell’s arm.

“Who, or what, is the Reno Kid?”

“A legendary gunfighter from theNevadaTerritory. He’d be about your age now. No one has seen him in fifteen years.”

“What the hale-far is y‘all whisperin’ about?” Gandv hollered. “What’d the matter, Reno, you done turned yeller? ’

“I beg your pardon !” Parnell returned the shout. Begone with you before I give you a proper hiding with a buggy whip, you fool!”

No one seemed to notice the tall, lean, darkly tanned stranger standing in the shadows of the awning in front of the Pussycat. He was wearing a gun, but then, so did nearly every man. He stood watching the goings-on with a faint twinkle of amusement in his dark eyes.

If it got out of hand, he would interfere, but not before.

“Y’all heard it!” Gandy shouted. “He called me a fool! Them’s fightin’ words, Reno. Now get out of that there buggy. ”

“I most certainly will not, you ... you ... hooligan!”

“I think I’ll just snatch your woman outta there and lift her petticoats. Maybe that’ll narrow that yeller stripe a-runnin’ down your back.”

Before he even thought about the consequences, Parnell stepped from the buggy to the street. His coat was covering his pistol. “I demand you apologize to Miss Rita for that remark, you brute!”

“I ain’t a-gonna do no sich of a thing, Reno.”

“My name is not Reno and oh, yes, you will!”

“Your name shore as hell is Reno and I will not!”

Gandy could not see most of Parnell for the horse. Parnell brushed back his coat and put his hand on the butt of his gun, removing the leather thong from the hammer and stepping forward, drawing as he walked.

Gandy saw the arm movement and grabbed iron. Parnell stubbed his toe on a rock in the street and fell forward, pulling the trigger. The hammer dropped, the slug striking Gandy right between the eyes and knocking him down, dead before he hit the dirt.

Shocked at what he’d done, Parnell turned, the muzzle pointing toward Golden just as Golden jerked his gun out of leather.

Parnell instinctively cocked and fired, the bullet slamming into Golden’s stomach and doubling him over. By this time, Rita had jerked a Winchester out of the boot and eared the hammer back.

“That’s it, Reno!” Eddie Hart hollered. “We don’t want no more trouble.”

Parnell looked at the dead and dying men. He felt sick at his stomach; fought back the nausea as he climbed back into the buggy, first holstering his pistol. He picked up the reins and clucked the mare forward, moving smartly up the street.

“I feel quite ill,” Parnell admitted.

“You’re so brave!” Rita threw her arms around his neck and gave him a wet kiss in his ear.

Parnell almost lost the rig.

“I seen some fancy shootin’ in my days, boys,” Pooch Matthews said. “But I ain’t never seen nothing like that. Damn, but that Reno is fast.”

“Like lightnin’,” another said. “Smoke’s been holding an ace in the hole all this time.”

The stranger walked back into the Pussycat and up to the bar. “You got rooms for rent upstairs?”

“Sure do. Bath’s out back. That was some shootin’, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” the stranger chuckled. “I will admit I have never seen anything like it. I’ll take a room; might be here several days.”

“Fix you right up. Even give you a clean towel. Them sheets ain’t been slept in but once or twice. Maybe three times. Clean sheets’ll cost you a quarter.”

The stranger laid a quarter down on the bar. “Clean ones, please.”

“We ain’t got no registry book. But I’m nosy. You ain’t from around here, are you?”

“No.”

“If you gonna hire on with Dooley, the room is gonna cost you fifty dollars a night.”

“I never heard of anyone called Dooley. I’m just tired of riding and would like to rest for a few days.”

“Good. Fifty cents a night, then. The schoolteacher is really the Reno Kid. Dadgum! How about that? Where are you from, mister?”

“Oh, over Nevada way.”

“Dammit, Parnell!” Smoke grabbed the reins behind the driving bit. “I told you not to go into town wearin’ that gun.”

“He s the Reno Kid!” Rita shouted, and everybody within hearing range turned and came running. “I just watched him beat two gunnies to the draw and kill them both. Right in front of the Hangout.”

Smoke looked at Parnell, shock in his eyes. “You hit something? With a pistol?”

“I stubbed my toe. The gun went off. I am not the Reno Kid.”

“He ain’t the Reno Kid!” Charlie said. “I been knowin’ Reno for twenty years.”

Parnell turned to Rita. “You see. I told you repeatedly that I am not the Reno Kid.”

“Oh, I know that, honey. But I sure got everybody’s attention, didn’t I?” She hopped from the buggy and raced over to Sandi to tell her story.

“Reno changed his name about fifteen years ago and went to ranchin’ up near the Idaho border.” Charlie cleared it up. “But he shore left a string of bodies while he was gunslingin’.”

Smoke turned back to Parnell. “You really got them both?”

“One was hit between the eyes. I’m sure he s dead. The lout called Golden took a round in the stomach. If he isn’t dead, he’ll certainly be incapacitated for a very long time.”

“What the hell is in-capassiated?” Hardrock muttered.

“Beats me,” Pistol said. “Sounds plumb awful, though.”

Parnell climbed down from the buggy and Corgill led the rig to the barn. Smoke faced the man. “All right, Parnell. You’re tagged now. There’ll be hundred guns looking for you ...”

That is perfectly ridiculous!” Parnell cut in. ”I am not the Reno Kid!”

“That don’t make no difference,” Silver Jim told him. “This time tomorrow the story will be spread fifty miles that the Reno Kid has surfaced and is back on the prowl. By this time next week it’ll be all over the territory and they’ll be no tellin’ how many two-bit punks and would-be gunhawks comin’ in to make their rep. By killin’ you. Welcome to the club, Schoolteacher,” he added bitterly.

Charlie patted Parnell on the back. “You go git out of them town duds, Parnell. The four of us is gonna take you under our wing and teach you how to handle that there Colt.”

Parnell stood with his mouth open, unable to speak.

“But Parnell don’t sound like no gunfighter’s name to me,” Silver Jim said. “Where was you born, Parnell?”

“In Iowa. On the Wolf River.”

“That’s it!” Charlie exclaimed. “You ain’t the Reno Kid, so from now on, your handle is Wolf.”

“Wolf!” Parnell stared at the man. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Nope. Wolf, it is. The Wolf is on the prowl. I like it.”

“This is madness!” Parnell yelled.

“Go on now, Wolf,” Hardrock told him. “Git you some jeans and boots. Strap on and tie down that hogleg. We’ll set up a target range.”

“See you in a few minutes, Wolf.” Pistol grinned at him.

“This is absurd!” Parnell muttered. He started up the steps, tripped, and fell facedown on the porch. He picked himself up with as much dignity as possible and entered the house.

Charlie shook his head. “We got our work cut out for us, boys.”

Golden died that night, cursing the man he believed to be the Reno Kid as he slipped across that dark river. Twenty-four hours later, a dozen men were riding for Gibson, their burning ambition to be the one man who faced the Reno Kid and brought him down. Another twenty-four later, two dozen more punks and tinhorns would be on their way, until those looking to make a reputation by killing the Reno Kid would grow to a hundred. And the news had spread that Smoke Jensen was really in Gibson-nobody had believed it up to now; indeed, many people believed that Smoke Jensen really did not exist, he was such an elusive figure.

Telegraph wires began humming and a dozen big newspapers sent reporters into Montana to cover the story. Within a week, Gibson had a brand-spanking-new hotel and had been added to the stagecoach route.

The stranger from Nevada decided to stay, watching all the fuss with amusement in his eyes, spending most of his time sitting in a chair under the awning in front of the Pussycat.

Dooley had pulled in his men, cussing at all the notoriety and knowing this was no time to enlarge the range war. The hate within the man continued to fester, ready to erupt at any moment, spewing blood and violence all over the area.

Judge Ford was at some sort of conference, out of the state, and would be back in about a month.

“Another good idea shot down,” Cord said, disgusted at the news.

Four more saloons had been thrown up in Gibson, along with several more stores, including a gunshop, a dress shop—for a lot of ladies of the evening were coming in-an apothecary shop, and another general store.

A lot had happened in a week.

Thanks to the Reno Kid aka Parnell.

“We found out what was wrong with Wolf not bein’ able to shoot worth a damn,” Charlie told Smoke.

Smoke closed his eyes for a few seconds and shook his head. “Wolf,” he muttered. “What a name. What was wrong with him, Charlie?”

“He’s scared of guns! Pistols ’specially.”

“Good God! Charlie, there’s about a hundred people in Cibson—new people-with one thought in mind: to kill the Reno Kid, real name Parnell, now called Wolf. He’s a schoolteacher, Charlie. Not a gunfighter. The poor man is a walking target.”

Hardrock grinned. “But we come up with something, Smoke. Lookee here.” He held up the ugliest and most awesome-looking rig Smoke had ever seen.

“What in God’s name ... !”

The old gunfighters had taken two double-barreled shotguns and sawed the barrels down to about ten inches long. They had then fashioned a pistol-type butt for the terrible weapons.

“Those things would break a man’s arm!” Smoke said, eyeballing the rigs.

“Not Wolf arm. For a schoolteacher, he’s powerful strong. And he’s just as fast with these here things as he is with a pistol,” Silver Jim said with a nearly toothless grin.

“That’s all the booming I been hearing.”

“Right! Man, Wolf is plumb awesome with these here things,” Pistol said. “We got ‘um loaded up with rusty nails and ball-bearin’s and raggedly little rocks and the like. We done loaded up near’bouts a case of shells for him. He’s ready to go huntin’ him a rep.”

“ Pistol, Parn ... Wolf doesn’t want a rep,” Smoke said.

Charlie grinned. “You ain’t seen much of him for a week, Smoke. You gonna be ass-tonished at the change. Come on.”

Smoke was more than astonished. He didn’t even recognize the man. Parnell had grown a mustache, and that had completely changed his appearance. He was dressed all in black, from his hat down to his polished boots. He looked very capable and very tough.

“I gotta see him draw and cock and fire these hand cannons,” Smoke said.

“With pleasure, Cousin.” Parnell strapped on the weapons.

“You watch this,” Charlie said, as Cord and several others gathered around.

Pistol and Silver Jim rolled several full water barrels out and backed away.

“They’s a-facin’ you, Wolf!” Charlie said, excitement in his voice. ‘ Watch ’um now. Watch they eyes. That’ll give ’em away ever time.”

Parnell tensed, his hands hovering over the butts of the terrible weapons.

“They’s about ready to make their play!” Hardrock called out. “You got to take out the man on your left first, he’s the bad one.”

“Now!” Silver Jim yelled.

Parnell’s right hand dipped and his left hand came across to support the sawed-off shotgun. One barrel exploded in a roar of gunsmoke, the second barrel was shattered as Parnell let loose the second charge. As fast as anything Smoke had ever seen-considering the cumbersome weapons he was using-Parnell I dropped the first sawed-off to the ground and drew the left hand shotgun. The third barrel was reduced to splinters.

“I’m impressed,” Smoke said.

“I’m proud of you, Brother!” Fae said.

“I love you!” Rita yelled.

Hardrock looked close at Parnell and shook his head. “Furst time I ever seen a wolf blush!”

Twenty-Three

“Feel like trying out the new general store?” Cord asked Smoke.

“I thought you’d never ask. I forgot to pick up some tobacco last time in.”

“Ah ... Parnell wants to go along. I refuse to call him Wolf. I just can’t!”

Smoke laughed. “I can’t either. Sure, if he wants to come along. I notice he’s been in the saddle for the last week. He’s turned out to be a pretty good rider.”

“Man is full of surprises. And speaking of surprises, I’m told that we’re all in for a surprise when we see what’s happening, or has happened, to Gibson.”

“Yeah. I hear there’s even a paper.”

“The Gibson Express. I want to pick up a copy.”

“How about your boys?”

“I ordered them to stay close to their ma. They’ll obey me.”

“I’ll put on a clean shirt and meet you out front.”

Cord, Smoke, Parnell, Lujan, Beans, Del, Charlie, and Ring rode into Gibson. A wagon rattled along behind them to carry the supplies back, Cal at the reins. At the edge of town, they reined up and stared in disbelief. The once tiny and sleepy little town was now a full three blocks long and several blocks deep on either side. Many of the new stores were no more than knocked-together sideboards with canvas tops, but it was still a very impressive sight.

“This spells trouble, gentlemen,” Lujan said.

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed, standing up in his stirrups for a moment. “You bet your boots it does.”

“I fail to see how the advancement of civilization, albeit at first glance quite primitive in nature, could be called trouble, Parnell stated.

“That town ain’t filled with nothin’ but trash,” Charlie told him. “Hurdy-gurdy girls, tin-horn hustlers and pimps, two-bit gunslingers, slick-fingered gamblers, and the like. It’s dyin’ while it seems to be growin’. As soon as this war is settled, one way or the other, ninety-nine percent of them down yonder will pull up stakes and haul their ashes. Town will be right back where it started from.”

“How about the one percent that will stay?” Parnell questioned.

“Good point,” Charlie agreed. “Wolf, you stay on top of things down yonder in that town. They’s gonna be a bunch of people eyeballin’ ever move you make. And you gonna get called out. Bet on it.”

“I am aware of that,” the schoolteacher turned gunfighter said. “I am ready to confront whatever comes my way. ”

“Me and you, Parnell,” Beans said, “will have us a cool beer in one of them new saloons. Check things out.”

Parnell glanced at him. “I detest the taste of beer. However, I might have a sarsaparilla.”

The Moab Kid returned the glance. “You go sashayin’ up in a saloon in the middle of a bunch of hardcases and order sodee pop, Parnell, you better be ready for trouble, ’cause it’s shore gonna be comin’ at you.”

“I am aware of that, too.”

“Let’s go,” Smoke said.

The men rode slowly toward the now-crowded street of the West’s newest boom town. The news of their arrival spread as quickly as a prairie fire across dry grass. In less than a minute, the wide street had emptied. No one wanted to be caught in the middle of agu nfight, and that was something that everybody knew might be, probably was, only a careless word away.

As the men rode past the Pussycat, Charlie cut his flint-hard eyes to a stranger sitting on the boardwalk, his chair tilted back. Charlie smiled faintly.

Gonna get real interestin’ around here, Charlie thought.

Ring reined up in front of Hans and dismounted. “I shall be visiting Hilda,” he told them. “I will come immediately if there is trouble.”

Cord, Del, and Cal pulled up in front of the new gener store. “Which one of those new joints are you boys going try?” Cord asked.

“How about Harriet’s House?” Parnell asked. “That sounds quite congenial.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will be,” Beans said. “Harriet always runs a stable out back.”

“Well, then, that will be a convenient place for our horses.”

“A stable of wimmin, Parnell,” Beams told him. “For hire.”

“You mean ... I ... ladies who sell their ... ?”

“Right, Parnell.”

Smoke dismounted and almost bumped into a small man wearing a derby hat and a checkered vest. The man’s head struck Smoke about chest-high.

“Horace Mulroony’s the name, sir. Owner and editor of The Gibson Express. And you would be Smoke Jensen?”

“That’s right.”

Horace stuck out his hand and Smoke took it, quickly noticing that the hand was hard and calloused. He cut his eyes just for a flash and saw that the stocky man’s hands were thick with calluses around the knuckles. A Cornish boxer sprang into Smoke’s mind. Not very tall, but built like a boxcar. Something silently told him that Horace would be hard to handle.

“And your friends, Mister Jensen?”

Smoke introduced the man all around, pointing them out. “Charlie Starr, Lujan, The Moab Kid, Parnell Jensen.”

“The man they’re calling the Reno Kid.”

“I am not the Reno Kid.”

“Name’s Wolf,” Charlie said shortly. He didn’t like newspaper people; never wanted any truck with them. They never got anything right and was always meddlin’ in other folks’ business.

“I see,” Horace scribbled in his notebook. “That is quite an unusual affair strapped around your waist, Wolf.”

“I would hardly call two sawed-off shotguns an affair, Mister Mulroony. But since this is no time to be discussing proper English usage, I will let your misunderstanding of grammer be excused-for now.”

Mulroony laughed with high Irish humor. “You sound like a schoolteacher, Wolf.”

“I am.”

“Ummm. Are you gentlemen going to have a taste in Miss Harriet’s saloon?”

“We was plannin’ on it,” Charlie said. “The sooner the better. All this palaverin’ is makin’ me thirsty.”

“Do you mind if I join you?”

“Could we stop you?” Charlie asked.

“Of course not!” Horace grinned. “After you, Mister Starr.” He waved at a man toting a bulky box camera and the man came at a trot. Horace grinned at thegu nfighters. “One never knows when a picture might be available. I like to record events for posterity.”

Charlie grunted and pushed past the smaller man, but not before he saw the stranger leave his chair in front of the Pussycat and walk across the street, toward the saloon they were entering.

Charlie had a hunch the stranger was thinking about joining the game. He knew from experience that the man was a sucker for the underdog.

The saloon was filled with hardcases, both real and imagined. Smoke’s wise and knowing eyes immediately picked out the real gunslingers from the tinhorn punks looking for a reputation.

Smoke knew a few of the hardcases in the room. Several from Dad Estes’s gang were sitting at a table. A few that had left Cord’s spread were there. A couple of Cat Jennings’s bunch were present. They didn’t worry Smoke as much as the young tinhorns who were sitting around the saloon, their guns all pearl-handled and fancy-engraved and tied down low.

The known and experienced gunhandlers had stiffened when their eyes touched the awesome rig belted around Parnell’s waist. Nobody in their right mind wanted to tangle with a sawed-off shotgun, since a buckshot load at close range would literally tear a man in two. Even if a man could get lead into the shotgun toter first, the odds were, unless the bullet struck him in the brain or the heart, that he could still pull a trigger.

“Beer,” Smoke said.

“Tequila,” Lujan ordered.

Beans and Charlie opted for whiskey.

Horace ordered beer.

Parnell, true to his word, looked the barkeep in the eyes and ordered sarsaparilla.

Several young punks seated at a nearby table started laughing and making fun of Parnell.

Parnell ignored them.

The barkeep served up the orders.

“What’s the matter with you, slick?” a young man laughed the question. “Cain’t you handle no real man’s drink?”

Parnell took a sip of his sarsaparilla and smiled, setting the bottle down on the bar. He turned and looked the young man in the eyes. “Does your mother know where you are, junior?”

The punk’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to retort just as the batwings swung open and the stranger entered.

There is an aura about really bad men, and in the West a bad man was not necessarily an outlaw. He was just a bad man to fool with. The stranger walked between the punk and Parnell, his hands hanging loosely at his side. He wore one gun, a classic Peacemaker .45, seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. It was tied down. The man looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, deeply tanned and very sure of himself. He glanced at Parnell’s drink and a very slight smile creased his lips.

Walking to Charlie’s side, he motioned to the barkeep. “A sarsaparilla, please.”

Another loudmouth sitting with the punk started giggling. “Another sissy, Johnny. You reckon they gonna kiss each other.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

The barkeep served up the stranger’s drink and backed away, to the far end of the bar. When they had entered, the bar had been full. Now only the seven of them remained at the long bar.

The stranger lifted his bottle. “A toast to your good health,” he said to Charlie.

Charlie lifted his shot glass and clinked it against the bottle. “To your health,” he replied. If the man wanted to reveal his real identity. That was up to him. Charlie would hold the secret.

“Hey, old man!” Johnny hollered. “You with them wore-out jeans on.”

Charlie sipped his whiskey and then turned to face the mouthy punk. “You talkin’ to me, boy?”

“I ain t no boy!”

“No,” Charlie said slowly, drawling out the word. “I reckon you ain’t. Strappin’ on them guns makes you a man. A loudmouth who ain’t dry behind the ears yet. And if you keep flappin’ them lips at me, you ain’t never gonna be dry behind your dirty ears.”

Johnny stood up, his face flushed red. “Just who the hell do you think you are, old man?”

“Charlie Starr.”

The words were softly offered, but they had all the impact of a hard slap across Johnny’s face.

Johnny s mouth dropped open. He closed it and swallowed hard a couple of times. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

Charlie spoke, his words cracking like tiny whips. “Sit down, shut your goddamned mouth, or make your play, punk!”

The experienced gunhandlers had noticed first off that the men at the bar had entered with the leather thongs off their hammers.

“You cain’t talk to me lak’at!” Johnny found his voice. But it was trembly and high-pitched.

“I just did, boy.”

Johnny abruptly sat down. He tried to pick up his beer mug but his hand was shaking so badly he spilled some of it on the tabletop.

Charlie turned his back to the mouthy punk and picked up his shot glass in his left hand.

But there wasn’t a man or woman in the bar who thought it was over. The punk would settle down, gulp a few more drinks to boost his nerve, and would have to try Charlie, or leave town with his tail tucked between his legs.

“Been a long time, Charlie,” the stranger said.

“Near’bouts ten years, I reckon. You just passin’ through?”

“I was. I decided to stay.”

“What name you goin’ by nowadays?”

“Same name that got hung on me seventeen-eighteen years ago. ”

Being a reporter—Charlie would call it being a snoop, among other things—Horace leaned around and asked, “And what name is that, sir?”

The stranger turned around, facing the crowd of punks and tinhorns, loudmouths and barflys, hurdy-gurdy girls,gamblers, and gunfighters, who were all straining to listen. He let his eyes drift around the room. “I never did like a lopsided fight, Charlie. You recall that, I suppose.” It was not posed in question form.

“I allow as to how I do. I ’member the time me and you

up to a whole room filled to the rafters with trash and cleaned it out.” He chuckled. ”That there was a right good fight.” Charlie held up his shot glass in salute and the stranger clinked his sarsaparilla bottle to the glass.

“I got my other gun in my kit over to the roomin’ house. reckon I best go on over and get it and strap it on. Looks like got some house-cleanin’ to do.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Smoke was smiling, nursing his beer. He’d already figured who the stranger was.

One of Cat Jennings’s men lifted his leg and broke wind. “That’s what I think about you, stranger.”

“How rude!” Parnell said.

“Sissy-pants,” the man who had made the coarse social comment stood up. “I think I’ll just kill you. ’Cause I n’t believe you’re the Reno Kid.”

“Of course, he isn’t,” the stranger said. “I am!”

Twenty-Four

That news broke the spirit of a couple of men who had already been toying with the idea of rattling their hocks. They stood up and walked toward the door. Charlie Starr and them old gray-headed he-cougars with him was bad enough. Add the Moab Kid and Lujan to that mixture and you was stirrin’ nitro too fast with a flat stick. Smoke Jensen was the fastest gun in the West. Now here comes the Reno Kid, and there goes anybody with a lick of sense.

The batwings squeaked and two gunnies were gone.

The gunhand facing Parnell didn’t back down. Without taking his eyes from Parnell, he said, “Did anybody pull your chain, Reno?”

“Nope,” Reno answered easily.

“You gonna fight Sissy-pants battles for him?”

“Nope.”

“You ready to die, Sissy-pants?”

“Oh, I think not.” Parnell had turned, facing the man, his right hand hovering near the butt of the holstered sawed-off. “But I do have a question?”

“Ax it!”

“What is your name?”

“Readon. What’s it to you?”

“I just wondered what to have carved on the marker over your grave.”

“Draw, damn your eyes!” the man shouted, and grabbed for his six-gun.

Parnell was calm and quick. Up came the awesome weapon, the right side hammer eared back. Across went his left hand in a practiced move, gripping the short barrels. The range was no more than twelve feet and the booming was enormous in the beery, smoky room. The ball-bearings and rusty nails and ragged rocks hit the gunhand in the belly and lifted him off his boots while the charge was tearing him apart. He landed on a table several feet away from where he had been standing, smearing the tabletop with crimson and collapsing the table. He had never even cleared leather.

The hurdy-gurdy girls began squalling like hogs caught in barbed wire and ran from the room, their short dresstails flapping as they ran.

Parnell, seeing that no one was going to immediately take up the fight, but sensing that was only seconds away, broke open the shotgun pistol and tossed aside the empty, loading it up full. He snapped it shut and eared back both hammers.

The gunhand Smoke had first seen at that little store down on the Boulder stood up. “Me and Readon had become pals, Jensen,” Dunlap said. “You a friend of that shotgun-toter, so that makes you my enemy. I think I’ll just kill you.”

He grabbed for his guns.

Smoke shot Dunlap in the chest just as his hands gripped the butts of his guns. Dunlap looked puzzled for a moment, coughed up blood, and sat down in the chair he should never have gotten out of. He slowly put his head on the tabletop and sighed as that now-familiar ghost rider came galloping up, took look around, and grinned in a macabre fashion. He decided to stick around. Things were quite lively in this little town.

The ghost rider put a bony hand on another’s shoulder as half the men in the barroom grabbed for iron and Lujan shot one between the eyes.

Mulroony jumped behind the bar and landed on top of the barkeep who was already on the floor. He’d been a bartender in too many western towns not to know where the safest place was.

Parnell’s sawed-off shotgun-pistol roared again, the charge knocking two gunnies to the floor. Johnny picked that time to make his move. Just as he was reaching for his guns, Parnell stepped the short distance as he was reversing the weapon. Using it like a club, he hit Johnny in the mouth. Teeth flew in several directions and Johnny was out cold. Parnell dropped to the floor and once more loaded up.

The Reno Kid was crouched by the bar, coolly and carefully picking his shots.

Charlie had dropped two before a bullet took him in the shoulder and slammed him against the bar. He did a fast border-roll with his six-gun and kept on banging. When his gun was empty, Lujan grabbed the older man and literally slung him over the bar, out of the line of fire.

The Moab Kid took a round in the leg and the leg buckled under him, dropping him to the floor, his face twisted in pain.

But it was Parnell who was dishing out the most death and destruction. Firing and loading as fast as he could, the schoolteacher did the most to clear out the room and end the fighting.

The gunnies and tinhorns gave it up, one by one dropping their still-smoking six-guns and raising their hands in the air. Cord, Del, Ring, and Cal stepped through the batwings, pistols drawn and cocked, Ring with his double-barrel express gun.

“Get Doc Adair,” Smoke said, his voice husky from the thick gunsmoke in the saloon.

Cal was gone at a bow-legged trot to fetch the doctor.

Lujan helped Charlie to a chair. The front of the old gunslinger’s shirt was soaked with blood.

“Did I get the old bassard?” a gunhawk moaned the question from the floor. He had taken half a dozen rounds in the chest and stomach and death was standing over him, ready to take him where the fires were hot and the company not the best.

“You got lead in me,” Charlie admitted. “But I’m a long ways from accompanyin’ you.”

“If not today, then some other time. So I’ll see you in hell, Starr,” the gunny grinned the words, his mouth bloody. He started to add something but the words would not form on his tongue. His eyes rolled back in his head and he mounted up behind the ghost rider.

Smoke had reloaded. He stood by the bar, his hands full of Colts, his eyes watching the gunnies who had chosen to give up the fight.

Johnny moaned on the floor and rolled over on his stomach, one hand holding his busted mouth. The other hand went to his right hand gun. But it was gone.

“Are you looking for these?” Parnell asked, holding out the punk’s guns in his left hand. His right hand was full of twelve gauge sawed-off blaster.

Johnny mumbled something.

“You’re diction is atrocious,” Parnell told him. He looked at Smoke and smiled. “My, Cousin, but for a few moments, it was quite exhilarating.”

Smoke grinned and shook his head. “Yeah, it was, Parnell. I’ll stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you anytime, Cousin.”

Mulroony had crawled from behind the bar and waved his photographer in. The man set up his bulky equipment and sprinkled the powder in the flashpan. “Smile, everyone!” he hollered, then popped his shot, adding more smoke to the already eye-smarting air.

Beans had cut his jeans open to inspect the wound, and it was a bad one. “Leg’s busted,” he said tightly. “Looks like I’m out of it.”

The flashpan popped again, the lenses taking in the bloody sprawl of bodies and the line of gunhawks standing against a wall, their hands in the air, their weapons piled on a table.

While Doc Adair tended to Charlie and Beans, Smoke faced the surrendered gunhandlers. His eyes were as cold as chips of ice and his words flint-hard.

“You’re out of it. Get on your horses and ride. If I see any of you in this area again, I’ll kill you! No questions asked. I’ll just shoot you. And no, you don’t pack your truck, you don’t get your guns, you don’t draw your pay—you ride! Now! Move!”

They needed no further instrucitons. They all knew there would be another time, another place, another showdown time. They rushed the batwings and rattled their hocks, leaving in a cloud of dust.

“You tore up my place!” a woman squalled, stepping out of a back room.

“Howdy, Harriet,” Beans called. “Right nice to see you again.

“You!” she hollered. “I might have known it’d be you, Moab.” Her eyes flicked to the Reno Kid. “You back gunhandlin’, Reno?”

“I reckon.”

She looked at Smoke. Took in his rugged good looks and heavy musculature. “Remember me, big boy? ”

“I remember you, Harriet. You were one of the smart ones who left Fontana early.”

“Did you kill Tilden Franklin?”

“I sure did.”

“Man ever deserved killin’, that one did. You gonna run me out of Gibson?”

“I didn’t run you out of Fontana, Harriet.”

“For a fact. See you around, baby.” She turned and pushed through a door.

“He can’t sit a saddle,” Adair said, standing up from working on Beans’s leg. “And I’d rather he didn’t for a few days.” The doctor pointed to Charlie.

“I’ll put some hay in the wagon,” Cal said, and left the saloon.

The undertaker and his helper, both of them trying very hard to keep from smiling, entered the saloon and walked among the dead and dying, pausing at each body to go through the pockets.

“Does I get my guns back?” Johnny pushed the words through mashed lips and broken teeth.

Parnell looked at Smoke. Smoke nodded his head. “Give them to the punk. He’d just find some more. One of us is gonna have to kill him sooner or later.”

The flashpan belched once again.

“What a story this will make!” Horace chortled, rocking back and forth on his feet. “I shall dispatch it immediately to New York City.”

“Do try to be grammatically correct,” Parnell reminded him. Horace gave him a smile. A very thin smile.

Sandi hollered and bawled and carried on something fierce when she saw Beans in the back of the wagon but then brightened up considerably when she realized he’d be laid up for several weeks and she could nurse him.

Reno had checked out of his room and rode back to the Circle Double C with the men. He had strapped on his other Peacemaker and was in the fight to the finish.

Charlie bitched about having to be bedded down in the main house so the ladies could take proper care of his wound. Hardrock told him to shet his mouth and think about what a relief it would be to the others not to have to look at his ugly face for a spell.

“It works both ways,” Charlie popped back, smiling as the ladies fussed over him.

Parnell had taken a slight bullet burn on his left arm. But the way Rita acted a person would have thought he’d been riddled. She insisted on spoon-feeding him some hot soup she fixed-just for him.

“What did we accomplish?” Cord asked Smoke.

“Damn little,” he admitted.“Seems like every time we run off or kill a gunhawk, there’s ten to step up, taking his place.”

Cord added some more numbers in his tally book and shook his head at the growing number of dead and wounded. “Why did the Reno Kid toss in with us, Smoke? Charlie says he’s married, with several children.”

“So am I,” Smoke reminded the man.

Something good did come out of the gunfight inside Harriet’s saloon: many of the hangers-on decided to pull out; the fight was getting too hot for many of the tin-horn and would-be gunfighters. They’d go back to their daddy’s farms and be content to milk the cows and gather the eggs, their guns hanging on a peg.

But it left the true hardcases, many of them on no one’s payroll. Like buzzards, they were waiting to see the outcome and perhaps pick up a few crumbs of the pie.

Johnny and his punk sidekick, Bret, were still in town, swaggering around, hanging on the fringes of the known gunslingers, talking rough and tough and lapping up the strong beer and rotgut and snake-head whiskey served at most of the newer saloons.

Crime had increased in Gibson, with foot-padders and petty thieves plying their trade on the unsuspecting men and women who had to venture out after dark. And the hardcases were getting surly and hard to handle, craving action.

There were several minor run-ins among the gunhawks, provoked by recklessness and restlessness and booze and the urge to kill and destroy. The leaders of the gangs had to step in and calm the situation, reminding the outlaws that their fight was not with each other, but with the Double Circle C.

“Then gawddammit!” Lodi snarled. “Let’s make war on them!”

The Hangout, jammed full of hired guns, shook with the roars of approval.

Dad Estes did his best to shout his boys down while Jason Bright and Cat Jennings and Lanny Ball tried to calm their people.

They were only half successful.

The leaders looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Dad jerked his head toward the boardwalk and the men stomped outside, to stand in the night.

“We got to use them or lose them,” Dad summed it up. “My boys ain’t gonna stand around here much longer twiddlin’ their thumbs.”

The others agreed with Dad.

“So you got some sort of a plan, Dad?”

“We hit them, tonight.”

“What does Dooley have to say about that?” Jason asked.

“I ain’t discussed it with him.”

The others smiled, Dad continuing, “Look here, we could turn this into a right nice town, and if we was all big land owners, why, we’d also own the sheriff and deputies and the like.”

“We got to kill Dooley and them first,” he was reminded by Cat Jennings.

Dad shifted his chewing tobacco to the other side of his mouth. He took out an ornate pocket watch and clicked it open. “Well, boys, I got some people doin’ that little thing in about an hour.”

Twenty-Five

Dooley came awake, keeping his eyes closed. The slight creaking of the hall door had brought him awake. He had drank himself to sleep, sitting in the big chair just inside the living room. The first time he’d ever done that. Now wide awake, he sat very still in the darkness and opened his eyes.

“I tole you to oil that door!” his oldest boy, Sonny, hissed the words.

“Shet your mouth,” Bud whispered. “The old fool was prob’ly so drunked up when he went to bed a shotgun blast wouldn’t wake him up.”

Conrad giggled. “A shotgun blast is what we’re goin’give him!”

Cold insane fury washed over the father as he froze still in his chair. If he’d had a gun in his hand, he’d have killed all three of them right this minute. But his gun belt was hanging on the peg in the hall.

Sonny shushed his brothers. “Stay here and keep watch, Conrad. Me and Bud will do the deed.”

“I don’t wanna keep no watch! I wanna see it when the buckshot hits him. And what the hell is I gonna be watchin’ for anyways? There ain’t nobody here but us. The others is all back in town.”

“Do what I tell you to do.”

Dooley carefully drew his feet up under the chair, hiding them from view should any of his traitorous offspring look into the living room. The sorry sons of bitches.

The dark humor and irony of that thought almost caused him to chuckle.

The stillness of the house was shattered by twin shotgun blasts.

Then he remembered he hadn’t made up his bed from the past night; the pillows and covers must have fooled the boys into thinking their dad was lying in bed.

Boots ran up the hall. “Got the old nut-brain!” Sonny shouted. “The ranch is ourn. Let’s go join the other boys and finish the deed.”

The front door slammed shut.

What deed? Dooley thought.

The thunder of hooves hammered past the house. Dooley moved to the window and watched his bastard sons gallop out of sight.

That damn Cord put them up to this! Dooley’s fevered brain quickly reached that conclusion. He jerked on his boots and ran into the hall, pausing to yank his gun belt from the peg and belt it around his waist. He ran to the kitchen and filled a gunnybag with cans of food, a side of bacon, some hardtack. He took a big canteen and filled that at the kitchen pump. Then he ran to the study and quickly opened his safe, stuffing a money belt full of cash money he’d just received from the army cattle buyer. He belted the money bag around his middle. In his bedroom, he rolled up some clothes in a blanket and slipped out the back of the house, stopping only once, to fill his pockets with .44 rounds and pick up a small coffeepot and skillet.

Dooley saddled a horse and stuffed the saddlebags full of supplies. He hung the canteen and bag on the saddle horn and took off into the timber of the Little Belt Mountains. When his boys come back, they’d find that what they’d shot was only a bed, and they’d come lookin’ to kill their pa.

“Come on, you miserable whelps,” Dooley muttered, talking to his horse. His best horse. His favorite horse. Dooley could sleep in the saddle and his horse would never falter. The horse also knew where Dooley was going as soon as Dooley guided the way toward the old Indian trail that wound in a circuitous route to the base of Old Baldy, the highest peak in the Little Belts, which ran for some forty miles from southeast of Great Falls to the Musselshell. Dooley and his horse had come here often, just to think-to let the hate fester over the past few years.

“Goddamn you, Cord,” Dooley muttered. “You heped take my woman from me and now you done turned my sons agin me. I’m a-gonna kill ever’ one of you. Ever’ stinkin’ one of you!”

“Here they come!” the shout from Smoke was only seconds before the mass of riders entered the Circle Double C ranch complex. But it was enough to roust everybody out of bed.

Smoke’s shout was followed by a war whoop from Hardrock that echoed across the draws and hollows and grazing land of the ranch.

“Hep me clost to that winder.” Charlie told Parnell. “I’ll take it from there. I can shoot jist as good with my left hand as I can with my right.”

Across the hall, Beans told Sandi, “Get some help and shove my bed to that window and hand me my rifle. Then you and Rita get on the floor.”

The girls positioned the bed and reached for their own rifles.

“Cain’t you wimmin take orders?” Beans asked over the thunder of hooves.

“We stand by our men,” Sandi told him. “Now shut up and shoot!”

“Yes, dear,” Beans said, just as a bullet from an outlaw’s gun knocked a pane of glass out of the window.

Before Beans could sight the rider in, Parnell’s sawed-off blaster roared, the charge lifting the man out of the saddle and hurling him to the ground, his chest and throat a bloody mess.

“Give ’em hell, baby!” Rita shouted her approval.

“You curb that vulgar tongue, woman!” Parnell glared at her.

“Yes, dear,” Rita muttered.

From the bunkhouse, Ring was deadly with a rifle, knocking two out of the saddle before a round misfired and jammed the action. Ring turned just as a man was crawling in through a rear window. Reversing the Winchester, Ring used the rifle like a club and smashed the outlaw on the forehead with the butt. The sound of a skull cracking was evident even over the hard lash of gunfire. Ring grabbed up the man’s Colts and moved to a window. He wasn t very good with a pistol, but he succeeded in filling the night with a lot of hot lead and made the evening very uncomfortable for a number of outlaws.

Smoke and the Reno Kid had grabbed up rifles and bandoleers of ammunition and raced to the barn and corral, knowing that if the outlaws succeeded in stampeding their horses they were doomed. Reno climbed into the loft, with Jake and Corgill. Fitz, Willie, and 01’Cook stayed below, while Smoke and Gage remained outside, behind watering troughs by the corral.

The outlaw, Hartley, who was wanted for murder down in the Oklahoma Nations, tried to rope the corral gates and bring them down. Smoke leveled his pistol and the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Running to the man, Smoke jerked him off his horse and smashed the man in the face with a balled right fist, then a left to the man’s jaw. He jerked Hartley’s pistol from leather and rapped the outlaw on the head-bone with it. Hartley lay still in the dirt.

Smoke stuck both of Hartley’s pistols behind his belt, reloaded his own .44’s, and climbed onto Hartley’s horse, a big dun. He would see how the outlaws liked the fight taken to them.

Smoke charged right into the middle of the confusing dust-filled fray. He saw the young punk gunslick Twain and shot him out of the saddle, one of Twain’s boots caught in the stirrup. Twain’s horse bolted, dragging the wounded and screaming young punk across the yard. His screaming stopped when his head impacted against a tree stump.

Smoke stayed low in the saddle, offering as little target as possible for the outlaws’ guns. He slammed the horse’s shoulder into an outlaw’s leg. The gunny screamed in pain from his bruised leg and then began screaming in earnest as the horse lost its balance and fell on him, breaking the outlaw’s other leg. The horse scrambled to its feet, the steel-shod hooves ripping and tearing flesh and breaking the outlaw’s bones.

Cat Jennings rammed his big gelding into Smoke’s horse and knocked Smoke to the ground. Rolling away from the hooves of the panicked horse, Smoke jumped behind a startled outlaw, stuck a pistol into the man s side, and pulled the trigger. Shoving the wounded man out of the saddle, Smoke slipped into the saddle, grabbed up the reins, and put his spurs to the animal’s sides, turning the horse, trying to get a shot at Cat.

But the man was as elusive and quick as his name implied, fading into the milling confusion and churning dust. Smoke leveled his pistol at Ben Sabler and missed him clean as the man wheeled his horse. The bullet slammed into another outlaw. The outlaw was hard-hit, but managed to stay in the saddle and gallop out of the fight.

“Back! Back!” Lanny Ball screamed, his voice faint in the booming and spark-filled night. “Fall back and surround the place.”

Smoke tried to angle for a shot at Lanny and failed. Jumping off his horse, Smoke rolled behind a tree in the front yard of the main house, and with a .44 in each hand, emptied the guns into the backs of the fast-retreating outlaws. He saw several jerk in their saddles as hot lead tore into flesh and one man fell, the back of his head bloody.

Smoke ran to the house. Jumping on the front porch, he saw the body of Willie, draped over the porch railing. On the other side of the porch, Holman was sprawled, a bloody hole in his forehead.

“Damn!” Smoke cursed, just as Cord pushed open the screen door and stepped out.

Cord’s face was grim as he looked at the body of W illie. “Been with me a long time,” the rancher said. “He was a good hand. Loyal to the end.”

“Man can’t ask for a better epitaph,” Smoke said. “Cord, you take the barn and I’ll run to the bunkhouse. Tell the men to fortify their positions and fill up every canteen and bucket they can find.” He cut his eyes as Liz and Alice came onto the porch. “You ladies start cooking. The men are going to need food and lots of it. We might be pinned down here for days.”

Cord said, “I’ll have some boys gather up all the guns and ammo from the dead. Pass them around.” He stepped off the porch and trotted into the night.

“Larry!” Smoke called, and the hand turned. “Get the horses out of the corral and into the barn. Find as much scrap lumber as you can and fortify their stalls against stray lead.

The cowboy nodded and ran toward the corral, hollering for Dan to join him.

Smoke and Parnell carried the bodies of Holman and Willie away from the house, placing them under a tree; the shade would help as the sun came up. The men covered them with blankets and secured the edges with rocks.

Snipers from out in the darkness began sending random rounds into the house and the outbuildings, forcing everyone to seek shelter and stay low.

“This is going to be very unpleasant,” Parnell said, lying on the ground until the sniping let up and he could get back to the house.

“Wait until the sun comes up and the temperature starts rising,” Smoke told him. “Our only hope is that cloud buildup.” He looked upward. “If it starts raining, I plan on heading into the timber and doing some head-hunting. The rain will cover any sound.”

“Do you think prayer would help?” Parnell said, only half joking.

“It sure wouldn’t hurt.”

There were seven dead outlaws, and all knew at least that many more had been wounded; some of them were hard-hit and would not live.

But among their own, Corgill and Pat had been wounded. Their wounds were painful, but not serious. They could still use a gun, but with difficulty.

Smoke and Cord got together just after first light and talked it out, tallying it up. They were badly outnumbered, facing perhaps a hundred or more experienced gunhandlers, and the defenders’ position was not the best.

They had plenty of food and water and ammunition, but all knew if the outlaws decided to lie back and snipe, eventually the bullets would seek them out one by one. The house was the safest place, the lower floor being built mostly of stone. The bunkhouse was also built of stone. The wounded had been moved from the upstairs to the lower floor. Beans, with his leg in a cast, could cover one window. Charlie Starr, the old warhoss, had scoffed off his wound and dressed, his right arm in a sling, but with both guns strapped around his lean waist.

“I’ve hurt myself worser than this by fallin’ out of bed,” he groused.

Parnell had gathered up a half dozen shotguns and loaded them up full, placing them near his position. The women had loaded up rifles and belted pistols around their waists.

Silver Jim almost had an apoplectic seizure when he ran from the bunkhouse to the main house and put his eyes on the women, all of them dressed in men’s britches, stompin’ around in boots, six-guns strapped around their waists. He opened his mouth and closed it a half dozen times before he could manage to speak. Shielding his eyes from the sight of women all dressed up like men, with their charms all poked out ever’ whichaway, he turned his beet-red face to Cord and found his voice.

“Cain’t you do something about that! It’s plumb indecent!”

“I tried. My wife told me that if we had to make a run for it, it would be easier sittin’ a saddle dressed like this.”

“Astride!” Silver Jim was mortified.

“I reckon,” Cord said glumly.

“Lord have mercy! Things keep on goin’ like this, wimmin’ll be gettin’ the vote for it’s over.”

“Probably,” Parnell said, one good eye on Rita. There was something to be said about jeans, but he kept that thought to himself.

“Wimmin a-voting’?” Silver Jim breathed.

“Certainly. Why shouldn’t they? They’ve been voting down in Wyoming for years.”

The old gunfighter walked away, muttering. He met Charlie in the hall. “What’s the matter, that bed get too much for you?”

“’Bout to worry me to death. Layin’ in there under the covers with nothing on but a nightgown and wimmin comin’ and goin’ without no warning. More than a body can stand.”

“Where are you fixin on shootin’ from?”

“I best stay here with these folks. Come the night they’ll be creepin’ in on us.”

“Gonna rain in about an hour. My bones is talkin’ to me.” “Then Smoke is gonna be goin’ headhuntin”. Preacher taught him well. He’ll take out a bunch.”

“You reckon some of us ought to go with him?”

“Nope. You know Smoke, he likes to lone-wolf it.”

“He’s been diggin’ in his war bag and he’s all dressed up in buckskin, right down to his moccasins. He was sittin’ on a bunk, sharpenin’ his knife when I left.”

Charlie’s grin was hard. “Them gunhandlers is gonna pay in blood this afternoon. Bet on that, old hoss.”

“Who’s gonna pay in blood?” Cord asked, walking up to the men.

“Them mavericks out yonder. Smoke’s fixin’ to go lookin’ for scalps come the rain. ”

“Sounds dangerous to me,” the rancher shook his head.

Silver Jim laughed. “Oh, it will be.” He jerked his thumb toward the hills. “For them out there.”

Twenty-Six

The sky darkened and lightning began dancing around the high mountains of the Little Belt, thunder rolling ominously. Then the sky opened and began dumping torrents of rain. With his rifle slung over his shoulder with a strap, hanging barrel down, and his buckskin shirt covering his six-guns and a long-bladed Bowie knife sheathed, Smoke slipped out into the rain on moccasin-clad feet. He kept low to the ground, utilizing every bit of natural cover he came to. He moved swiftly but carefully and made the timber and brush without drawing a shot.

Once in the brush, he paused, studying every area in his field of vision before moving out. He had shifted his long-bladed knife to just behind his right hand .44.

He froze still as a mighty oak at the sound of voices. Clad in buckskins, with the timber dark and gloomy as twilight, Smoke would be hard to spot unless he was right on top of a man.

And he was just about was!

“I shore wants me a crack at that Sandi McCorkle,” the voice came to him very clear, despite the driving rain and gusts of wind.

“We’ll use all them pretty gals ’fore we kill them,” a second voice was added. “You see anything movin’ down yonder?”

“Naw. They all shet up in the buildings.”

“I be back, Tabor. I got to ...” His words were drowned out by a clap of thunder.... Must have been somethang I et.”

Slowly Smoke sank down behind a bush as a red-and-white checkered shirt stood and began moving toward him. The pair must be Tabor and Park. Two thoroughly tough men. When Park passed the bush, Smoke rose up like a brown fog. His Bowie in his right hand. He separated Park’s head from his shoulders with one hard slash, catching the headless body before it could come crashing to the ground and alert Tabor.

Easing the body to the wet earth, Smoke picked up the head and placed it in a gunnybag he’d tucked behind his belt.

Then he went looking for Tabor.

Circling around to come in behind the Oklahoma outlaw, Smoke laid his bloody-bottomed sack down on a rock and Injuned up to Tabor, coming in slowly and making no sound.

Tabor never knew what happened. The big-bladed and heavy knife flashed in the stormy light and another head plopped to the earth. That went in the sack with Park’s head.

Smoke moved on through the rain and spots of fog that clung low to the ground, swirling around his moccasined feet, as silent as his footsteps.

Someone very close to him began firing—not at Smoke, for at the sound of the hammer being eared back, Smoke had bellied on the gound-but at the house. More guns were added to the barrage and Smoke added his .44 to the manmade thunder, his bullet striking a gunman in the head.

“Hey!” a man shouted, his voice just audible over the roar of rifles. “Pete’s hit!” He stood up, an angry look on his face, sure that someone on his side was getting careless.

Smoke shot him between the eyes and the man fell back with a thud that only Smoke could feel as he lay on the ground.

Smoke worked his way back into the timber, climbing up the hill as he moved. Behind a thick stand of timber, he paused for a break and squatted down, the bloody sack beside him. He hadn’t made up his mind what to do with the heads, but an idea was formed.

He ate a biscuit and cupped his hands for a drink of rainwater. He did not have one ounce of remorse or regret for what he was doing. He knew only too well that to fight the lawless, one must get down and wallow in the muck and the crud and the filth with them, using the same tactics, or worse, that they would use against an innocent. To win a battle, one must understand the enemy.

Rested, Smoke moved out, staying above the positions of the outlaws. He circled wide, wanting to hit them at widely separated spots, wanting them to know they had not been alone and had been attacked by someone who had walked among them with the stealth of a ghost.

A hard burst of gunfire came from the house, the bullets hitting the rocks and the rain-soaked earth several hundred feet below Smoke’s position. As the outlaws returned the fire, Smoke leveled his Winchester and counted more coup, his fire covered by the outlaw’s own noise. The lone outlaw-Smoke did not know his name and did not recall ever seeing him before-slumped forward, his rifle sliding from lifeless hands, a bloody hole in the man’s back.

Smoke slipped down to the man’s position and left the bloody bag of heads by the dead man s side. He added his ammunition to that he’d gathered from the others and moved on.

He had planned on sticking the heads up on poles but decided this way would be just as effective.

He continued his circling, which would eventually bring him out on the north end of the ranch complex. He caught just a glimpse of the Hanks boys. Bellying down, he started working his way to their position, freezing log-still as two gunslicks, wearing canvas ponchos, stepped out of the timber and headed in his direction. They were so sure of themselves they were not expecting any trouble and were not checking their surroundings. Smoke could catch only a few of the words that passed between them.

“... Never thought them boys would do it ...”

“... Didn’t like my old man, but I don’t think I’d have had the ... kill him with a shotgun.”

“... Be gettin’ripe layin’ up in that bed ... Sonny pulled the trigger, I reckon.”

“... All three of um’s crazy as a bessy-bug.”

The outlaws moved out of earshot and Smoke lay for a moment, putting some sense into what he’d heard. The Hanks boys had killed their father with a shotgun, probably as he lay sleeping in bed.

Smoke broke off his head-hunting and began making his way back to the ranch. If the news was true, and he had no reason to doubt it, for the Hanks boys were as goofy as their father, that meant that part of the outlaws’plans had been accomplished. And everyone at the Circle Double C had to die for the outlaws’ planned takeover to succeed.

Smoke moved quickly, always staying in the brush and timber. As he was approaching the ranch complex, he heard a horrified shout from the hills and knew that the bag of heads had been found ... either that or the headless bodies of the outlaws.

Smoke began moving cautiously, for at this point he was open to fire from either side. Closer to the house, he began a meadowlark’s call. Charlie waited for a moment and then returned the call. When a human gives a birdcall, a practiced ear can pick up the subtle difference, no matter how good the caller is.

Smoke ran the last few hundred feet, zigging and zagging to offer a hard target. But if the outlaws saw him, they did not fire; probably they were too busy searching the ridges for the unknown headhunter. On the back porch, Liz and Alice had towels for him, a change of clothes-Cord’s long underwear and jeans and shirt—and a mug of coffee, for Smoke was soaked and cold.

Smoke broke the news to a horrified audience.

Liz shook her head but shed no tears for her husband or sons. And neither did Rita.

“Killed their own father!” Cord was visibly shaken by the news. “Good God!”

Parnell was the first to put the upcoming horror into words. “Then we—all of us-have to die if their plans are to succeed.”

The women looked at each other. They knew that for them, it would not be a quick bullet. They would be used, and used badly, until the outlaws tired of them. Only then would death bring relief.

“Reno comin’ at a run,” Charlie said, looking out the window. “He’s been out eyeballin’ the situation close to home.”

The gunfighter was as soaked as Smoke had been. The women shooed him into a room and handed him towels and dry clothing. When he emerged, they had coffee waiting for him.

He took a gulp of the strong hot coffee. “They blocked off the road leading south and have men waiting in the passes. They have so many men it was no problem to seal us off. Any bust-out is gonna be difficult, if not downright impossible.”

“And walking out will be tough with the wounded,” Smoke added. “But if we stay here, they’ll eventually overrun us by their number. Or they’ll burn the buildings down around us. Beans is gonna have to be carried out of here. Pat and Corgill can walk out with him. I’m going to suggest that the women leave with them.” He looked at Parnell. “Parnell, you and Gage, Del and Bernie will spell each other with the litter. Me and Reno will make the litter right now. You people pack some food and blankets; make a light backpack and get ready to move out at dark. Let’s do it.

All knew that Smoke had casually but deliberately chosen the men to accompany the women. Then he irritated the hell out of Charlie Starr by suggesting that he accompany the foot party.

“I’ll be damned if I will!” the old gunfighter flared up. “Charlie ...,” Smoke put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “They need you. They need your experience in guiding them and they need your gun.”

“Well ...” Charlie calmed down. “If you put it that way. All right. But I hate like hell to miss out on this here fight.”

“Damned ol’ rooster with a busted wing.” Hardrock told him. “You look after them folks, now, you hear me, you old coot?”

“I’ve told them to head for the old Fletcher gold mine in the Big Belt,” Cord said. “It’s been abandoned for years and we cache supplies there. From there, they can angle back East and make it into Gibson. But it’s gonna be a long hard haul for them all.”

“You just get me in a saddle!” Beans groused. “I ain’t never seen the day I couldn’t sit on a hurricane deck.”

“Oh, hush up!” Lujan told him. “Just lay back and enjoy the trip. Amigo, you injure that leg again, and you’ll be a cripple for the rest of your life. It’s better this way and you know it.”

Beans did some fancy cussing, but finally agreed to shut up about it and accept his fate.

Smoke pulled Cord to one side. “How do you feel about leaving your ranch to those jackals out there on the ridges?”

“I don’t like it. But I think it’s gonna happen. See if my plan agrees with yours: We give them walkin’ out a full twenty-four hours. Then we saddle up, put sacks on the horses’ hooves, and lead them out a’ways. Then we all hit one spot just as hard as we can.”

“That’s it. We’ll get the foot party moving just after dark and pray that this rain doesn’t let up. They’re going to be wet and cold and miserable, but I think they’ve got more of a chance out there than staying here.”

Cord nodded his big head. “I’ll pass the word to the hands. You sure you don’t want a diversion?”

“No. That would be a sure tipoff that we’re up to something. Anyway, I think they’ll hit us at full dark. That ’ll be enough.”

The afternoon wore on with only a few shots being exchanged from each side. Those in the house knew that the outlaws would be cold, soaking wet, miserable, and their patience would be growing thin with each sodden hour that passed.

And those in the ranch compound also knew, some more than others, that after finding the sack of bloody heads and several more of their kind shot to death, most of the outlaws would be wanting revenge in the worst sort of way, for they would know it had been Smoke stalking them silently on the ridges.

Smoke looked out onto the gray dripping afternoon. Twenty-four hours. They had to hold out for twenty-four hours.

Reno seemed to read his thoughts. “We’ll hold, Smoke. Some of them might breech the house, but it’ll be a death trap for them. One thing in our favor, they damn sure can’t burn the place down ... at least not this night.”

“From the outside,” Smoke stuck an amendment to that. “A couple of torches tossed inside, though ...”

Cord heard it. “I’ve got some lumber out in the shed. Rock, Troy, you boys fetch the lumber while we get some nails and hammers. We’ll board up windows we’re not shooting from. On both levels of the house.” He began ripping down curtains and drapes to lessen the fire hazard.

As the sounds of the muffled hammering began drifting to the outlaws on the ridges, the gunfire picked up, forcing the men to work more carefully, without exposing themselves. Those inside the house didn’t have to worry about breaking a window with all the hammering; all the windows were already shot out.

Those windows not being used as shooters’ positions boarded up, Smoke went to find Fae.

He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “I’m headin’ back outside, Fae. I like to be outside when the action goes down.” He looked at the other women. “You ladies watch your step this night. We’ll see you all in a couple of days.”

He shook hands with the men who were leaving that night. “You boys enjoy your stroll. As soon as it gets full dark, take off. And good luck.”

He walked back into the living room, leaving Cord to say his goodbyes to wife and daughter.

“I’m going to pull Ring and Hardrock, Silver Jim, and Pistol in the house with you and Cord and the boys,” he told Reno. “The rest of us will be in the bunkhouse and the barn.” He looked outside. “Be dark shortly. I’m heading out yonder. The others will be showing up one at a time about five minutes apart. Good luck tonight. ”

“Luck to you, Smoke.”

There was nothing left to say. The two famed gunhandlers looked at each other, nodded their heads, and Smoke slipped out onto the stone and wood porch. He knew the chances of his being seen from several hundred yards away were practically nonexistent, but he stayed low from force of habit.

Smoke darted off the porch and to a tree in the yard, then over the fence and a foot race to the corral. Then, as he got set for the run to the bunkhouse, a cold voice spoke from behind him.

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

Twenty-Seven

Smoke threw himself to one side just as the pistol roared. He could feel the heat of the bullet as it passed his arm. He twisted his body in the air and hit the muddy ground with a .44 in his hand, the muzzle spitting fire and smoke and lead.

Hartley took the first slug in his chest and Smoke fired again, the force of his landing lifting his gun hand, the second slug striking the gunhawk in the throat. Hartley, with a knot plainly visible on his rain-slicked head, the hair matted down, leaned up against a corral rail and lifted his six-gun, savage all the way to the grave.

A .44-.40 roared from the bunkhouse and Spring’s aim was true. Hartley’s head ballooned from the impact of the slug and he pitched forward, into a horse trough.

Riflemen from the ridges and the hills opened up, not really sure what they were shooting at, but filling the air with lead. Smoke lay where he was, as safe there as anywhere in the open expanse between house and bunkhouse. When the fire from the outlaws slacked up, Smoke scrambled to the bunkhouse and dove headfirst into the building, rolling to his feet.

“Thanks, Spring,” he told the old hand. “Hartley must have laid out there in the corral all covered up with hay since I conked him on the noggin last night.”

“Hell, he was dead on his feet when I shot him,” the old hand said. “I just like some in’shorence in cases like that.”

He poured Smoke a cup of coffee and returned to his post by a window.

Smoke drank the strong hot brew and laid out the plans. One by one, the old gunfighters began leaving the bunkhouse, heading for the house. Ring was the last to stand in the door. He smiled at Smoke.

“You always bring this much action with you when you journey, Smoke?”

“It sure seems like it, Ring,” Smoke said with a laugh.

The big man returned the laugh and then slipped out into the rapidly darkening day, the rain still coming down in silver sheets.

“I got to thinkin’ a while back,” Spring said. “After Ring asked me how it was nobody come to our aid. Smoke, they’s sometimes two, three weeks go by don’t none of us go to town. Ain’t nobody comin’ out here.”

“And even if they did come out, what could they do? Nothing,” he ansered his own question. “Except get themselves killed. It’d take a full company of Army troops to rout those outlaws.”

There had been no fire from the ridges, so the men had safely made the house. Darkness had pushed aside the day. Those walking out would be leaving shortly, and they had a good chance of making it, for the move would not be one those on the ridges would be expecting. To try to bust out on horseback, yes. But not by walking out. Not in this weather.

When the wet darkness had covered the land for almost an hour, Smoke turned to Spring. He could just see him in the gloom of the bunkhouse.

“I don’t think they’ll try us on horseback this night, Spring. They’ll be coming in on foot.”

“You right,” Donny whispered from the far end of the bunkhouse. “And here they come. You want me to drop him now or let them come closer?”

“Let them come on. This rain makes for deceptive shooting. ”

A torch was lighted, its flash a jumping flame in the windswept darkness. The torch bobbed as the carrier ran toward the house. From the house, a rifle crashed. The torch stopped and fell to the soaked earth, slowly going out as its carrier died.

All around the compound, muzzle flashes pocked the gloom, and the dampness kept the gunsmoke low to the ground as an arid fog.

A kerosene bomb slammed against the side of the bunkhouse, the whiskey bottle containing the liquid smashing. The flames were slow to spread and those that did were quickly put out by the driving rain. Spring’s pistol roared and spat sparks. Outside, a man screamed as the slug ripped through flesh and shattered bone. He lay on the wet ground and moaned for a moment, then fell silent.

Smoke saw a moving shadow out of the corner of his eyes and lifted his pistol. The shadow blended in with the night and Smoke lost it. But it was definitely moving toward the bunkhouse. It was difficult, if not impossible, to hear any small sounds due to the hard-falling rain and the crash of gunfire. Smoke left the window and moved to the door of the bunkhouse, standing some six feet away from the door. Spring and Donny and two other hands kept their eyes to the front, occasionally firing at a dark running shape within their perimeter.

The bunkhouse door had no inner bar; most people didn’t even lock their doors when they left for town or went on a trip. If somebody used the house to get out of the weather or to fix something to eat, they were expected to leave it as they found it.

The door smashed open and the doorway filled with men. Smoke’s .44’s roared and bucked in his hands. Screaming was added to the already confusing cacophony of battle. More men rushed into the bunkhouse, leaping over the bodies sprawled in the doorway. Smoke was rushed and knocked to the floor. He lost his left hand gun but jammed the muzzle of his right hand gun into the belly of a man and pulled the trigger. A boot caught him on the side of the head, momentarily addling him.

Smoke heaved the badly wounded man away and rolled to the far wall. Men were all over him swinging fists and gun barrels. Using his own now-empty pistol as a club, he smashed a face, the side of a head, Jerking the pistol from a man’s holster, Smoke began firing into the mass of wet attackers. A bullet burned his side; another slammed into the wooden leg of a bunk, driving splinters into Smoke’s face.

Jerking his Bowie from its sheath, Smoke began slashing out, feeling the warm flow of blood splatter his arm and face as the big blade drew howls of pain from his attackers.

He slipped to one side and listened to the cursing of the outlaws still able to function. Lifting the outlaw’s pistol, Smoke emptied it into the dark shapes. The bunkhouse became silent after the battle.

“You hit, Smoke?” Spring called.

“Just a scratch. Donny?”

The young cowboy did not reply.

“I’ll check,” Fitz spoke softly. He walked to the cowboy’s position and knelt down. “He rolled twelve,” Fitz’s voice came out of the darkness.

“Damn!” Smoke said.

Another attack from the outlaws had been beaten back, but Donny was dead and Cal had been wounded. Smoke’s wounds were minor but painful. No one in the house had been hurt.

They had bought those walking out some time and distance. By this time, if they had not been discovered, they were clear. Clear, but facing a long, cold, wet, and slow march into the Big Belts. The house, the barn, and the bunkhouse were riddled with bullet holes. They had lost two horses, having to destroy them after they’d been hit by stray bullets. And no cowboy likes to shoot a horse.

The rain slacked and the clouds drifted away, exposing the moon and its light. With that, the outlaws slipped away into the shadows and made their way back to the ridges overlooking the ranch.

The moonlight cast its light upon the bodies of outlaws sprawled in death on the grounds. Some of those with wounds not serious tried to crawl away. Cord and Smoke and the others showed them no mercy, shooting them if they could get them in gunsights.

After the intitial attack had been beaten back, the outlaws fired from the ridges for several hours, finally giving it up and settling down for some rest.

The moonlight was both a blessing and a curse, for it would make their busting out a lot more difficult.

Smoke ran to the house to confer with Cord.

“I figure just after sunset,” the rancher said. “After the moon comes up, it’ll be impossible.”

“All right. We’ll head in the opposite direction of those walking out. We’ll start out like we’re trying to bust through the roadblock, then cut east toward the timber. That sound all right to you?”

“Suits me.”

Dooley had changed his mind about heading farther into the mountains, turning around when he was about halfway to Old Baldy. He rode slowly back toward Gibson.

At dawn of the second day of the attack on the Circle Double C, he was standing in front of the newly opened stage offices, waiting for the station agent. He plopped down his money belt.

“Stash that in your big safe and gimme a receipt for it,” he told the agent.

That taken care of, Dooley walked over to the new hotel and checked in. He slept for several hours, then carefully bathed in the tub behind the barber shop, shaved, and dressed in clean clothes. He was completely free of the effects of alcohol and intended to remain that way. Nuts, but sober.

He walked over to Hans and enjoyed a huge breakfast, the first good meal he’d eaten in days. Hans and Olga and Hilda eyeballed the man suspiciously.

“Vere is everybody?” Hans broke the silence.

“I ain’t got no idea,” Dooley told him, slurping on a mug of coffee. “I ain’t been to the ranch in two-three days.” Really, he had no idea how long he’d been gone. Two days or a week. Time meant nothing to him anymore. He had only a few thoughts burning in his brain: to kill Cord McCorkle and then turn his guns on his traitor sons and watch them die in the muddy street. And if he didn’t soak up too much lead doing that, and he could find her, he wanted to shoot his wife.

That was the sum total of all that was in Dooley Hanks’s brain. He paid for his meal and took a mug of coffee with him, sitting in a chair on the boardwalk in front of the cafe. He would wait.

He sat in his chair, watching the town wake up and the people start moving around. He drank coffee and rolled cigarettes, smoking them slowly, his eyes missing nothing.

He watched as two very muddy and tired-looking riders rode slowly up the street, coming in from the north. Dooley set his coffee mug on the boards and stood up, staying in the morning shadows, only a dark blur to those still in the sunlight. He slipped the thongs from the hammers of his guns. The two riders reined up and dismounted, looping the reins around the hitchrail and starting up the steps to Hans. They stopped and stared in disbelief at the man.

Hector and Rod, two punk gunslicks Dooley had hired, stood with their mouths open.

“You ’pposed to be dead!” Hector finally managed to gasp.

“Well, I ain’t,” Dooley told them. “And I want some answers from you.”

“We ain’t got no quarrel with you,” Rod told him. “All we want is some hot coffee and food.”

“You’ll get hot lead, boy,” Dooley warned him. “Where the hell is my no’count sons?”

“I ...” Hector opened his mouth. A warning glance from Rod closed it.

“You’d better talk to me, pup!” Dooley barked. “‘Fore I box your ears with lead.”

Hector laughed at the man. “You ain’t seen the day you could match my draw, old man.” Hector was all of nineteen. He would not live to see another day.

Dooley drew and fired. He was no fast gunslinger, but he was quick and very, very accurate. The slug struck Hector in the heart and the young man died standing up. He fell on his face in the mud.

Dooley turned his gun toward Rod, the hammer jacked back. “My boys, punk. Where is they?”

“They teamed up with Jason and Lanny and Cat Jennings,” he admitted. “I don’t know where they is,” he lied.

Dooley bought it. He sat down in the chair, his gun still in his hand. He would wait. They would show up. Then he’d kill them. He’d kill them all.

Rod backed up and led his horse across the street, to a little tent-covered cafe. Horace Mulroony had stood on the boardwalk across the street and witnessed the shooting. He motioned for his cameraman to bring the equipment. They had another body to record for posterity.

“Mister Hanks,” he said, strolling up. “I would like to talk to you.”

“Git away from me!” Dooley snarled, spittle leaking out of one corner of his mouth.

Horace got.

Twenty-Eight

In the middle of the afternoon, in order to keep suspicion down, Smoke risked a run to the barn and began saddling all the horses himself. He laid four gunnybags or pieces of ripped-up blankets in front of each stall, to be used to muffle the horses’ hooves when they first pulled out. Smoke went over each saddle, either taping down or removing anything that might jingle or rattle.

That done, he climbed up into the warm loft to speak to the men. Lujan was reclining on some hay. He opened his eyes and smiled at Smoke.

“At full dark, amigo?”

“At full dark. If you know any prayers, you best be saying them.”

The gunfighter grinned. “Oh, I have!”

The other men in the loft laughed softly, but in their eyes, Smoke could see that they, too, had been calling—in their own way—for some heavenly guidance.

He climbed back down and decided to stay in the barn until nightfall. No point in drawing unnecessary gunfire from the ridges. He lay down on a pile of hay and closed his eyes. Might as well rest, too. It was going to be a long night.

Gage and Del had led the party safely past the gunmen on the ridges. An hour later they were deep in the timber and feeling better. It was tough going, carrying Beans on the stretcher, but by switching up bearers every fifteen minutes, they made good time.

Dawn found them miles from the Circle Double C. But instead of following Cord’s orders, Del had changed directions and was heading toward Gibson. He had not done it autocratically, but had called for a vote during a rest period. The vote had been unanimous: head for town.

By midafternoon they were only a few miles from town, a very tired and foot-sore group.

Late in the afternoon, they came staggering up the main street of Gibson. People rushed out of stores and saloons and houses to stand and stare at the muddy group.

“Them wimmin’s wearin’ men’s britches!” a man called from a saloon. “Lord have mercy. Would you look at that.”

Gage quickly explained what had taken place and why they were here, Dooley listening carefully.

Rod stood on the boardwalk and stared at the group, his eyes bugged out. Parnell felt the eyes on him and turned, his hot gaze locking with Rod’s disbelieving eyes. Parnell slipped the thongs from his blasters and walked toward the young man.

“I ain’t skirred of you!” Rod shouted.

“Good,” Parnell said, still walking. “A man should face death with no fear.”

“Huh! It ain’t me that’s gonna die.”

“Then make your play,” Parnell said, and with that he became a western man.

Rod’s hands grabbed for iron.

Parnell’s blaster roared, and Rod was very nearly cut in two by the heavy charge. It turned him around and tossed him through the window and into the cafe, landing him on a table, completely ruining the appetite of those having an early supper.

Beans had been keeping a good eye on Dooley ; a good eye and his gun. Crazy as Dooley might be, he wasn t about to do anything with Beans holding a bead on him.

Dooley stood up slowly and held out his hand as he walked up to Gage. With a look of amazement on his face, Gage took the offered hand.

“You got a good woman, Gage. I hope you treat her better than I did.” He turned to Liz and handed her the receipt from the stage agent. “Money from the sale of the cattle is over yonder in the safe. I’m thinkin’ straight now, Liz. But I don’t know how long it’s gonna last. So I’ll keep this short. Them boys of ourn took after me. They’re crazy. And they got to be stopped. I sired them, so it’s on my shoulders to stop them.” Then, unexpectedly, and totally out of character for him, he took off his hat and kissed Liz on the cheek.

“Thank you for some good years, Liz.” He turned around, walked to his horse, and swung into the saddle, pointing the nose of the horse toward the Circle Double C.

“Well, I’ll just be damned!” Gage said. “I’d have bet ever’ dollar I owned—which ain’t that many—that he was gonna start shootin.’”

Liz handed him the receipt. “Here, darling. You’ll be handling the money matters from now on. You might as well become accustomed to it.”

“Yes, dear,” the grizzled foreman said meekly. Then he squared his shoulders. “All right, boys, we got unfinished business to take care of. Let’s find some cayuses and get to it.”

Their aches and pains and sore feet forgotten, the men checked their guns and turned toward the hitchrails, lined with horses. “We’re takin’ these,” Del said. “Anybody got any objections, state ’em now.”

No one had any objections.

Hans rode up on a huge horse at least twenty hands high. He had belted on a pistol and carried a rifle in one big paw. “I ride vit you,” he rumbled. “Friends of mine dey are, too.”

Horace came rattling up in a buggy, a rifle in the boot and a holstered pistol on the seat beside him. “I’m with you, boys.”

More than a dozen other townspeople came riding up and driving up in buggies and buckboards, all of them heavily armed.

“We’re with you!” one called. “We’re tired of this. So let’s ride and clean it out.”

“Let’s go, boys!” Parnell yelled.

“Oohhh!” Rita cooed. “He’s so manly!”

“Don’t swoon, child,” her mother warned. “The street’s too muddy.”

Del leaned out of the saddle and kissed Fae right on the mouth, right in front of God and everybody.

Parnell thought that was a good idea and did the same with Rita.

The hurdy-gurdy girls, hanging out of windows and lining the boardwalks, all applauded.

Olga and Hilda giggled.

Gage leaned over and gave Liz a good long smack while the onlookers cheered.

Then they were gone in a pounding of hooves, slinging mud all over anyone standing close.

Dooley rode slowly back to his ranch. He looked at the buckshot-blasted bed and shook his head. Then he fixed a pot of coffee and poured a cup, taking it out to sit on the front porch. He had a hunch his boys would be returning to the ranch for the money they thought was still in the safe.

He would be waiting for them.

“I don’t like it,” Jason told Lanny, with Cat standing close. “Something’s wrong down there. I feel it.”

“I got the same feeling,” Cat spoke. “But I got it last night while we was hittin’ them. It just seemed like to me they was holdin’ back.”

Lanny snapped his fingers. “That’s it! Them women and probably a few of the men walked out durin’ the rain. Damn them! This ain’t good, boys.”

Cat looked uneasily toward the road.

Jason caught the glance. “Relax, Cat. There ain’t that many people in town who gives a damn what happens out here.” Then he smiled. “The town,” he said simply.

Lanny stood up from his squat. “We’ve throwed a short loop out here, boys. Our plans is busted. But the town is standin’ wide open for the takin’.”

But Cat, older and more experienced in the outlaw trade, was dubious. “There ain’t nobody ever treed no western town, Lanny. We done lost twenty-five or so men by the gun. Them crazy Hanks boys left nearabouts an hour ago.”

“Nobody ever tried it with seventy-five-eighty men afore, neither. Not that I know of. ’Sides, all we’ve lost is the punks and tin-horns and hangers-on.”

“He’s got a point,” Jason said.

“Let’s ride!”

Dooley Hanks sat on his front porch, drinking coffee. When he saw his sons ride up, he stood up and slipped the thongs from the hammers of his guns. The madness had once more taken possession of his sick mind, leaving him with but one thought: to kill these traitor sons of his.

He drained his coffee mug and set the mug on the porch railing. He was ready.

The boys rode up to the hitchrail and dismounted. They were muddy and unshaven and stank like bears after rolling in rotten meat.

“If you boys come for the money, you’re out of luck,” Dooley called. “I give it to your momma. Seen her in town hour or so back.”

The boys had recovered from their initial shock at seeing their father alive. They pushed through the fence gate and stood in the yard, facing their father on the porch. The boys spread out, about five feet apart.

“You a damn lie, you crazy old coot!” Sonny called. “She’s over to Cord’s place. Trapped with the rest of them.”

“Sorry, boys.” Dooley s voice was calm. “But some of ’em busted out and walked into town, carrying the Moab Kid on a stretcher. Now they’s got some townspeople behind’ em and is headin’ back to Cord’s place. Your little game is all shot to hell.”

Sonny, Bud, and Conrad exchanged glances. Seems like everything that had happened the last several days had turned sour.

“Aw, hell, Daddy!” Bud said, forcing a grin. “We knowed you wasn’t in that there bed. We was just a-funnin’ with you, that’s all. It was just a joke that we made up between us.”

“Yeah, Daddy,” Sonny said. “What’s the matter, cain’t you take a joke no more?”

“Lyin’ scum!” Dooley’s words were hard, verbally tossed at his sons. “And you knowed who raped your sister, too, didn’t you?”

The boys stood in the yard, sullen looks on their dirty and unshaved faces.

“Didn’t you?” the father screamed the question at them. “Damn you, answer me!”

“So what if we did?” Sonny asked. “It don’t make no difference now, do it?”

A deadly calm had taken Dooley. “No, it doesn’t, Sonny. It’s all over.”

“Whut you mean, Daddy?” Conrad asked. “Whut you fixin’ to do?”

“Something that I’m not very proud of,” the father said. “But it’s something that I have to do.”

Bud was the first to put it together. “You can’t take us, Daddy. You pretty good with a gun, but you slow. So don’t do nothing stupid.”

“The most stupid thing I ever done was not takin’ a horsewhip to you boys’ butts about five times a day, commencin’ when you was just pups. It’s all my fault, but it s done got out of hand. It’s too late. Better this than a hangman’s noose.”

“I think you done slipped your cinches agin, Pa,” his oldest told him. “You best go lay down; git you a bottle of hooch and ponder on this some. ’Cause if you drag iron with us, you shore gonna die this day.”

Dooley shot him. He gave no warning. He had faced men before, and knew what had to be done, so he did it. His slug struck Sonny in the stomach, doubling him over and dropping him to the muddy yard.

Bud grabbed iron and shot his father, the bullet twisting Dooley, almost knocking him off his boots. Dooley dragged his left hand gun and got off a shot, hitting his middle son in the leg and slamming the young man back against the picket fence, tearing down a section of it. The horses at the hitchrail panicked, breaking loose and running from the ugly scene of battle.

Conrad got lead in his father before the man turned his guns loose on his youngest boy. Conrad felt a double hammer-blow slam into his belly, the lead twisting and ripping. He began screaming and cursing the man who had fathered him. Raising his gun, the boy shot his father in the belly.

But still Dooley would not go down.

Blood streaming from his chest and face, the crazed man took another round from his second son. Dooley raised his pistol and shot the young man between the eyes.

As the light began to dim in Dooley’s eyes, he stumbled from the porch and fell to the muddy earth. He picked up one of Sonny’s guns just as the gut-shot boy eared back the hammer on his Colt and shot his father in the belly. Dooley jammed the pistol into the young man’s chest and emptied it. coming

Dooley fell back, the sounds of the pale rider’s horse coming closer.

“Daddy!” Conrad called, his words very dim. “Help me, Daddy. It hurts so bad!”

The ghost rider galloped up just in time to see Dooley stretch his arm out and close his fingers around Conrad’s hand. “We’ll ride out together, boy.”

The pale rider tossed his shroud.

Twenty-Nine

“They’re pullin’ out!” Lujan yelled from the loft.

Smoke was up and running for his horse as the men streamed out of the bunkhouse, all heading for the barn.

“Why?” Reno asked.

“That damn crazy Del led ’em into town!” Cord said, grinning. “We got help on the way. Bet on it.”

In the saddle, Smoke said, “That means the town is gonna get hit. That’s the only thing I can figure out of this move.”

“Let’s go, boys!” Cord yelled the orders. “They’ll hit that town like an army.”

The men waited for a few minutes, to be sure the outlaws had really pulled out, then mounted up and headed for town. They met the rescue party halfway between the ranch and Gibson.

Smoke quickly explained and the men tore out for Gibson.

“There she is, boys,” Lanny pointed toward the fast-growing town. “We hit them hard, fast, grab the money, and get gone.

“I gotta have me a woman,” one of Cat Jennings’s men said. “I can’t stand it no more.”

“Mills,” Cat said disgustedly. “You best start thinkin’ with your brain instead of that other part. You can always find you a woman.”

“A woman,” Mills said, his eyes bright with his inner cruelty.

“Let’s go.” Jason spurred his horse.

Some seventy strong, the outlaws hit the town at a full gallop, firing at anything that came into sight. They rampaged through on the first pass, leaving several dead in the muddy main street and that many more wounded, crawling for cover.

At the end of the street, the men broke up into gangs and began looting the stores and terrorizing the citizens. Mills blundered into Hans’s cafe and eyeballed Hilda.

“You a fat pig, but you’ll do,” he told the woman, walking toward her.

Hilda threw a full pot of boiling coffee into the man’s face.

Screaming his pain and almost blind, Mills stumbled around the cafe, crashing into tables and chairs, both hands covering his scalded face.

Olga ran from the upstairs, carrying two shotguns. She tossed one to Hilda and eared back the hammers of her own, leveling the double-barrel twelve gauge at Mills. She gave him both barrels of buckshot. The outlaw was slung out the window and died on the boardwalk.

Mills’s buddy and cohort in evil, Barton, ran into the cafe, both pistols drawn. He ran right into an almost solid wall of buckshot. The charges blew him out of one boot and sent him sailing out of the cafe, off the boardwalk, and into a hitchrail. Barton did a backflip and landed dead in the mud.

Hilda and Olga picked up his dropped pistols and reloaded their shotguns, waiting for another turkey to come gobbling in.

Harriet and her hurdy-gurdy girls had armed themselves and already had accounted for half a dozen outlaws, the bodies littering the floor of the saloon and the boardwalk out front a clear warning to others not to mess with these short-skirted and painted ladies.

The smithy, a veteran of The War Between The States and several Indian campaigns, stood in his shop with a Spencer .52 and emptied several saddles before the outlaws decided there was nothing of value in a blacksmith shop anyway.

Some of Dad Estes’s men had charged the general store and laid a pistol up side Walt Hillery’s head, knocking the man unconscious. They then grabbed his sour-faced wife, Leah, dragging her to the storeroom and having their way with her.

Leah s screaming brought Liz and Alice and Fae on the run, the women armed with pistols and rifles. Sandi and Rita were at the doctor’s office with the wounded men.

Fae leveled her .45 at a man with his britches down around his boots and shot him in the head just as Alice and Liz began pulling the trigger and levering the action, clearing the storeroom of nasties.

Liz tossed a blanket over the still-squalling and kicking and pig-snorting Leah and gave her a look of disgust. “They must have been hard up,” she told the shopkeeper.

Leah stopped hollering long enough to spit at the woman. She stopped spitting when Liz balled her right hand into a fist and started toward her.

“You wouldn’t dare!” Leah hissed.

“Maybe you’d like to bet a broken jaw on it?” Liz challenged.

Leah pulled the blanket over her head, leaving her bony feet sticking out the other end.

The agent at the stagecoach line had worked his way up the ladder: starting first as a hostler, then a driver, then as a guard on big money shipments from the gold fields. He didn’t think this stop would be in operation long, but damned if a bunch of outlaws were going to strip his safe.

When some of No-Count George Victor’s bunch shot the lock off the door, the agent was waiting behind the counter, with several loaded rifles and shotguns and pistols. With him was his hostler and two passengers waiting for the stage, all heavily armed.

The first two outlaws to step through the door were shot dead, dying on their feet, riddled with bullet holes. Another tried to ride his horse through the big window. The animal, already frightened by all the wild shooting, resisted and bolted, running up the boardwalk. The outlaw, just able to hang on, caught his head on the side of an awning and left the saddle, missing most of his jaw.

Beans was sitting next to an open window of the doctor’s office, a rifle in his very capable hands. He emptied half a dozen saddles.

And Charlie Starr was calmly walking up the boardwalk, a long-barreled Colt in his hand. He was looking for Cat Jennings. One of Cat’s men, a disgustingly evil fellow who went by the name of Wheeler, saw Charlie and leveled his pistol at him.

Charlie drilled him between the eyes with one well-placed shot and kept on walking.

A bullet slammed into Charlie’s side and turned him around. He grinned through the pain. Doc Adair had seen the lump pushing out of Charlie’s side and their eyes had met in the office.

“Cancer,” Charlie had told him.

Charlie lifted his Peacemaker and another outlaw went on that one-way journey toward the day he would make his peace with his Maker.

“Cat!” Charlie called, and the outlaw wheeled his horse around.

Charlie shot him out of the saddle.

Cat came up with his hands full of Colts, the hate shining in his eyes.

Charlie took two more rounds, both of them in the belly, but the old gunfighter stayed on his feet and took his time, carefully placing his shots. Cat soaked up the lead and kept on shooting.

Charlie border-rolled his second gun just as he was going to his knees in the muddy street. He could hear the thunder of hooves and something else, too: singing. It sounded like a mighty choir was singing him Home.

Charlie lifted his Peacemaker and shot Cat Jennings twice in the head. Propped up on one elbow, the old gunfighter had enough strength to make sure Cat was dead, then slumped to the floor.

Hardrock and Silver Jim and Pistol LeRoux had seen Charlie go down, and they screamed their rage as they jumped off their horse, their hands full of guns.

Silver Jim stalked up the boardwalk, holding his matched set of Remington .44’s, looking for No-Count George Victor. Hardrock was by his side, his hands gripping the butts of his guns, his eyes searching for Three-Fingers Kerman and his buddy, Fulton. Pistol had gone looking for Peck and Nappy.

The Sabler Brothers, Ben, Carl, and Delmar were waiting at the edge of town, waiting for Lujan.

Diego, Pablo, and a gunfighter called Hazzard were waiting to try Smoke.

Twenty or more gunslicks had already hauled their ashes out of town. They had realized what the townspeople already knew: nobody hogties and trees a western town.

The Larado Kid had teamed up with several more punks, including Johnny and his buddy, Bret, and the backshooter, Danny Rouge. They had turned tail and galloped out of town. There would be another day. There always was. Besides, Johnny had him a plan. He wanted to kill Smoke Jensen. And he knew this fight was just about over. Smoke would be heading home. And a lot could happen between Montana and Colorado.