The Last Mountain Man

“Oh — hell!” Nicole said.

That startled Smoke. It was the first time he’d ever heard a lady swear.

They looked at each other: Smoke, with beans and venison on his head; Nicole, with honey and gravy dripping off her chin. They began laughing and pointing at each other.

He offered his hand and she took it, both of them rising to their feet, slipping in the mess on the floor. He took off his shirt and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To the creek, to take a bath. I’ll holler when it’s all clear.”

She smiled, and Smoke was not at all sure he liked the look in her eyes.

Standing in the water, with lather from the waist up, Smoke could not believe his eyes when Nicole appeared on the bank, towels in her hand. He closed his eyes and turned his back, speechless, when she began taking off her stained dress. Then she was by his side.

“Give me the soap,” she said. “I’ll scrub your back.”

“Nicole …” he managed to croak.

“Turn around, Smoke — look at me.”

He turned, and she laughed when she saw his eyes were tightly closed.

“You’ll have to open them sometime,” she whispered.

He did.

And there was no more need for words.

Full dark when he slipped from her side to step out into the coolness of Colorado night. He left Nicole sprawled in sleep in his bed. Smoke rolled a cigarette and lit it, the match explosive in the night. He inhaled deeply.

He felt drained, but yet, ten feet tall. He felt weak, but yet powerful. They had made love, and told each other of their love, for what seemed like hours, on the cool grass of the creek bank. They had bathed and soaped each other, then walked naked back to the house where they made love again. Then they had slept.

In all his young but eventful life, the man called Smoke had never before experienced anything to compare with the sensual events of that afternoon and early evening with Nicole, in the quiet valley.

He stepped back into the house, pulling on his boots and buckling his guns around his lean waist. Shirtless, he stepped back out into the purple night.

He checked the grounds around the house, then the corral and the lean-to that served as a barn. Quiet. It really was an unnecessary move, since Seven would sound an alarm if a stranger approached, but it made Smoke feel better to double check. He went back into the house and stoked up the fire, putting on coffee to boil, the pot hanging on a swivel iron, attached to the fireplace wall. He sensed, rather than heard, Nicole enter the room.

She was barefoot, wearing one of his shirts, and he thought she had never appeared more beautiful.

“Would you like me to fix supper?”

He rose and shook his head. She came into his arms.

“I love you,” he said.

Her reply was a loving whisper; a commitment spoken from the heart.

Preacher did not return that winter of 1870–71, and although Smoke did not admit his feelings aloud, Nicole knew he was worried about the old mountain man, fearing he might be hurt, or dead.

And it was Nicole who finally eased his mind, calming the unrest in him.

“How old is Preacher?” she asked one evening. A steady rain fell in the valley, occasionally mixed with sleet and snow. The winter had been a hard one, requiring brutal work from both of them just to stay alive.

“He’s pushin’ seventy. Least that’s what he’ll admit to bein’. Getting old.”

“And he’s lived a very long, exciting, and fruitful life. He wouldn’t want to die in a bed, would he? He’d want to pass this life the way he’s lived — in the wilderness. And wouldn’t he be sad if he knew you were sad?”

He smiled, his mood lifting from him. He looked at her, something he never tired of doing. “Yes, Nicole, you’re right. As usual.”

She came to him, sitting very unladylike in his lap, in the wood and rawhide chair, the frame covered with a bearskin. “We’ve got to get married, Smoke.”

“We are. We said we wanted to wait until Preacher came back.”

“Well … I’m pretty sure we’re going to have a baby.”

He sat stunned in the chair. “Nicole, we’re better than a hundred miles from the nearest doctor.”

“I went to nursing school, honey. There is nothing to worry about. All I want is for us to be married. I want the baby to have a legal name.”

“Preacher told me there was a little settlement of Mormons just west of here — over in Utah Territory. It’ll be a week there and a week back. Can you stand the ride?”

She smiled and kissed him. “Just watch me.”

The air was still cool when they rode out of the valley, heading for Utah. But spring was in the air, evident in the leafing trees, the plants, and the flowers that grew wild, coloring the valley. Nicole sat her little mare, Smoke rode Seven.

Nicole looked back at the cabin she had called home for months. “How dangerous is this trip?”

“We might go there and back without seeing an Indian. We might be ambushed ten miles from the cabin. No way to answer that question. I don’t know much about Utah Territory, so we’ll be seeing it for the first time — together.”

They camped on the third night just north of the Hovenweep, near Keely Canyon. They had seen a few Indians on the third day — the first since leaving the valley — Weminuche Ute. But they did not bother the man and woman, but only watched through obsidian eyes, faces impassive. They were armed with ancient rifles and bows and arrows, and perhaps they did not want to risk a fight against the many-shoot rifles of the man and woman; perhaps they did not feel hostile that day; perhaps they were hunting and did not want to take the time for an attack. With an Indian, one never knew.

On the fifth day, Smoke figured they were in Utah Territory — probably had been all day — and the settlement of Mormons should be in sight. But all they found were rotting, tumble-down cabins, and no signs of life.

“Preacher said they were here in ’55,” Smoke said. “Wonder where they went?”

Nicole’s laughter rang out over the deserted collection of falling-down cabins. “Honey, that’s sixteen years ago.” Her eyes swept the land, spotting an old, weed-filled graveyard. “Let’s look over there.”

The last faded date on a rotting headmarker was fourteen years old.

In the largest building of the more than a dozen cabins, they found a rusting tin box and pried open the lid. They found rotting papers that crumbled at the touch.

Smoke took Nicole out into the sunlight. “I know what I’ll do,” he said.

He took a small hammer and a nail from the side pack of his packhorse, carried in case an animal threw a shoe. He built a fire and spent an hour heating and hammering the nail into a crude ring. When it cooled, he slipped it on her third finger, left hand.

“It’ll have to do,” he said. “Close as I can make us to being really married.”

She kissed him and said, “Let’s go home.”

Eleven

Preacher was sitting on the rough bench in front of the cabin when they rode into the yard. He was spitting tobacco juice and whittling on a piece of wood.

“Howdy,” he greeted them, as if he had been gone only a day instead of months. “Where you two younguns been?”

“We might ask you the same question,” Smoke replied.

“Ramblin’. Seein’ God’s country in all its glory.”

“We got married,” Nicole said proudly, showing him her nail ring.

“Right nice,” he acknowledged, looking first at the ring, then into her eyes. “You with child, girl?”

She blushed. “Yes, sir.”

“Figured ya’ll get into mischief while I’s gone. Tain’t no big deal; I helped birth dozens of papooses in my time. Woman does all the work; man just gets in the way. Who spoke the words?”

“Nobody,” Smoke said. “Couldn’t find a minister. Went all the way into Utah Territory looking.”

“Well … I always believed it was what was in your hearts that counted. Knowed you was in love when I seen you fall off your horse.”

“I didn’t fall off my horse!”

“Did, too.”

“Did not!”

“I’ll go fix supper,” Nicole said.

When she had closed the door to the cabin, Preacher said, “Good thing you didn’t ride east, boy — warrants out for you all over the place.”

They walked to the lean-to and stabled the horses, rubbing them down with burlap. Preacher gave Smoke the news.

“Got warrants for you with your pitcher on ’em at the Springs and at Walsenburg. Don’t ride no further east than the Los Pinos — you hear?”

Smoke looked at him, then opened his mouth to protest.

“You married now, son. You got ’sponsibilities to that there woman who’s a-carryin’ your child. And you got men huntin’ you. That there Potter and Richards … ’mong others. Price on your head, too. Big money. They some ’fraid of you, boy — or something like it.”

“It’s a mystery to me. What’d you hear about Potter and Stratton and Richards?”

“They all up in Ideeho Territory. Up in the wild country. All live in or around a town called Bury.”

“B-e-r-r-y?”

“No. Like you plant somebody in the ground. Way I got the story, Smoke, your Pa rode in that there town like a wild man, reins ’tween his teeth, both hands full of Colts. Kilt three or four, wounded two-three more, and took a right smart ’mount of gold them men took from the Rebs. Way I heared it, no one knowed him up there in Bury, so he hung around for a week or two ’fore he made his move, listenin’ till he learned where the gold was.”

“Wonder what he did with the gold?”

Old eyes studied the young man. “You interested in it?”

“Not in the least.”

“I hoped you’d say that.”

“If they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone.”

“It ain’t gonna work thataway, boy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You got bounty hunters sniffin’ your back trail. They’s at least three thousand dollars on your head, dead or alive. All of it put up by them three men up in the territory. That’s big money, boy — big money. That’s why I come back so soon. Got to have somebody watchin’ your back.”

“Don’t those bounty hunters know the truth about me? About what happened to Pa and Luke?”

“They don’t care, son. They after the money and to hell with how they earn it. Most bounty hunters is scum. I’d shoot a bounty hunter on sight — take his hair.”

“We’re going to raise horses here, Preacher. Run some cattle directly. You and me and Nicole. We’re going to raise a family, and our children will need a grandfather — that’s you, you old goat.”

“Thank you. Nicest thing you’ve said to me in months.”

“I haven’t seen you in months!”

“That’s right. You keep them guns of yourn loose. When the girl gonna birth?”

“November, she thinks.”

“Just like a woman. Don’t never know nothin’ for sure.”

The summer passed uneventfully, with Smoke tending to his huge gardens and looking after his growing herd of horses. Preacher hunted for game, curing some of the meat, making pemmican out of the rest.

In the first week of July, much to Preacher’s disgust, Nicole sent him off to the nearest town for some canning jars.

“What the hell is a cannin’ jug?”

“Jars,” she corrected. “They have screw-down, airtight lids. They keep food fresh and good-tasting for months.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Probably,” Smoke said, saddling Preacher’s pony.

“And don’t forget the lids,” Nicole reminded him. “And the vinegar. “And you come right back, now, Preacher. No dilly-dallying around, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said sourly. “And don’t fergit the lids!” he mimicked under his breath. “Shore hope none of my compadres see me doin’ this. Never live it down.”

He continued to mutter as he rode off. “I fit a grizzly bear and won one time,” he said. “Now I’m runnin’ errands to git jug lids. Ain’t nobody got no respect for an old man.”

If anyone else had called him an old man, Preacher would have dented his skull with the butt of his Henry.

The nearest town of any size — other than the Springs, and Preacher could not go there; too many people knew him and might try to track him back to Smoke — was Del Norte, located just a few miles south of the Rio Grande, on the eastern slopes of the San Juan Forest.

He knew of a town being built at the site of old Antoine Robidoux’s trading post, up close to the Gunnison, but he doubted they would have any canning jars and lids, so he pointed his pony’s nose east-northeast, to avoid settlements as much as possible. He rode through the western part of the San Juans, cross the Los Pinos, through the Weminuche, then followed the Rio Grande into Del Norte — a long bit of traveling through the wilderness. But Preacher knew all the shortcuts and places to avoid.

As Preacher rode into town, coming in from the opposite direction, deliberately, his eyes swept the street from side to side, settling on a group of men in front of a local saloon. Most were local men, but Preacher spotted two as gun-hands.

He knew one of them: Felter. An ex-army sergeant who had been publicly flogged and dishonorably discharged for desertion in the face of the enemy; the enemy being the Cheyenne up in the north part of the state. But Preacher knew the man was no coward — he just showed uncommon good sense in getting away from a bad situation. After his humiliation and discharge from the army, Felter had turned bounty hunter, selling his gun skills — which were considerable — to the highest bidder. He was an ugly brute of a man, who had killed, so it was said, more than twenty men. He was quick on the draw, but not as quick as Smoke, Preacher knew. Nobody he had ever seen or heard of was that quick. He cut his eyes once more to Felter. The man had been accused of rape — twice.

The other man standing beside Felter looked like Canning, the outlaw. But Preacher was not sure of that. If it was Canning, and he was riding with Felter, they were up to no good — and that was fact.

In a general store, Preacher sized up the shopkeeper as one of those pinch-mouthed Eastern types. Looked like he might be henpecked, too.

Preacher bought a little bit of ribbon for Nicole to wear in her hair, and some pretty gingham for a new dress — she was swellin’ up like a pumpkin.

“Got any cannin’ jars?”

The shopkeeper nodded. “Just got a shipment of those new type with the screw top. Best around.”

“Can you pack ’em for travel over some rough country — headin’ east?” Preacher lied.

“I can.”

Preacher ordered several cases and paid for them. “Put ’em out back. I’ll pick ’em up later on. My old woman is ’bout to wart me plumb to death. Up to her bustle in green beans and sich. Know what I mean? Never should have got hitched up.”

“Sir.” The shopkeeper leaned forward. “I know exactly what you mean. By all that is holy, I do.”

“Walter!” A shrill voice cut the hot air of the store. “You hurry up now and bring me my tea. Stop loafing about, gossiping like a fisherwoman. Hurry up!”

Preacher cringed at the thought of being married to someone who sounded like an angry puma with a thorn in its paw. God! he thought, her voice would chip ice.

“Walter!” the voice squalled from the rear of the store, causing the short hairs on the back of Preacher’s neck to quiver.

Black hatred flashed across the shopkeeper’s face.

“Git you a strap,” Preacher suggested. “Wear ’er out a time or two.”

The man sighed. “I have given that some thought, sir. Believe me, I have.”

“Good luck,” Preacher told him. He walked out into the street, his Henry cradled in his arms.

A young man in a checkered shirt, a bright red bandanna tied about his neck, dark trousers tucked into polished boots, and wearing two pearl-handled pistols, grinned at the mountain man.

“Hey, grandpa! Ain’t you too old to be walkin’ around without someone to look after you? You likely to forget your way back to the old folks’ home.”

The barflies on the porch laughed. All but Felter. He knew the breed of men called mountain man, and knew it was wise to leave them alone, for they had lived violently and usually reacted in kind.

Preacher glanced at the young would-be tough. Without slowing his stride, he savagely drove the butt of his Henry into the loudmouth’s stomach. The young smart aleck doubled over, vomiting in the street. Preacher paused long enough to pluck the pistols from leather and drop them in a horse trough.

“You run along home, now, sonny,” Preacher told him, over the sounds of retching and the jeering laughter of the loafers on the porch. “Tell your Ma to change your diapers and tuck you into bed. You ’pear to me to need some rest.”

Preacher stepped into the dark bar, allowed his eyes to adjust to the sudden gloom, and walked to the counter, ordering whiskey with a beer chaser.

The batwings swung open, boots on the sawdust-covered floor. The marshal. “Trouble out there, old-timer?”

“Nothin’ I couldn’t handle, young-timer.”

The marshal chuckled. “Calls himself Kid Austin. He’s been overdue for a comedown for some time. Thinks he’s quite a hand with those fancy guns.”

Preacher glanced at the lawman. “He’ll never make it. They’s a lot of salty ol’ boys ridin’ the hoot-owl trail that’ll feed them guns to him. An inch at a time.”

The marshal ordered a beer, then waited until the barkeep was out of earshot. He put his elbows on the bar and said softly, “You’re the Preacher; man who rides with the young gun, Smoke. Don’t talk, just listen. The bounty’s been upped on your friend’s head. That’s the word I get. Someone up in the Idaho Territory is out to get Smoke.”

“Potter, Stratton, and Richards.”

“That’s right. Potter is big … politically. Richards is in mining and cattle. Stratton owns the town of Bury. Those two gunfighters on the porch, Felter and Canning, work for those three men. They got a bunch of hardcases camped just north of town. When you leave, and I hope it’s soon, ride out easy and cover your trail.”

“Thanks.”

“No need for that. I just know what happened in the war, that’s all. Can’t abide a traitor.”

Preacher glanced at him.

“Since that first shooting, back at the mining camp, the story’s spread. I reckon all the way to the Idaho Territory. But there’s more. Your friend has a sister named Jane — right?”

“He don’t speak none of her.”

“Well, she’s up in the territory now.”

“Let me guess: She’s in Bury.”

“Yeah. She’s Richards’s woman. He keeps her.”

“I’ll tell him.”

When Preacher rode out of Del Norte, he did so boldly, not wanting to implicate the shopkeeper, maybe leaving him open to rough treatment from Felter or Canning. Poor fellow had enough woes to contend with from that braying wife. Preacher picked up his jars, secured them well, then rode out to the east.

He didn’t think he was fooling anybody, for Felter knew him; knew he was friends with the young gunfighter. He would be followed.

Preacher rode easy, constantly checking his back trail. He rode across the San Luis Valley, slowly edging north. No one alive knew Colorado like the Preacher, and he was going to give his followers a rough ride.

By noon of the second day, Preacher had spotted his trackers. He grinned nastily, then headed his horses toward the Great Sand Dunes. If any of those behind him had any pilgrim in them, this is where Preacher would cut the sheep from the goats.

He skirted the southernmost part of San Luis Creek, filled up his canteens and watered his horses, and grinning, headed for the dunes. On the east side of the lake, Preacher pulled into a stand of timber, carefully smoothed out his trail with brush and sand droppings, then slipped back and waited.

He watched two men, neither of them Felter or Canning, lose his trail and begin to circle. Leaving his horses ground reined, he worked his way to the edge of the timber until he was close enough to hear them talking.

“Damned ol’ coot!” one of them said. “Where’d he go?”

“Relax,” his partner said. “The boss’s got twenty men workin’ all around. We got him boxed. He can’t get out.”

Old coot! Preacher thought. Your Ma’s garters I can’t get out!

“Relax, hell! I want that five thousand dollars.”

The ante was going up.

“How much is on the ol’ fart’s head?”

Old fart! Preacher silently raged.

“Nothin’,” the meaner-looking of the pair said with a grin. “It’s the gunfighter Richards and them want. That old man ain’t worth a buffalo turd.”

Buffalo turd! Preacher almost turned purple.

“We’ll take the old man alive, make him tell where the kid’s at, then kill him.”

You just dug your own grave, Preacher thought.

The two men sat their horses. They rolled cigarettes. “How come all this interest in this Smoke? I ain’t never got the straight of it.”

“Personal, way I heard it. The kid’s sister is Richards’s private woman up in Bury. I ain’t never been there so I can’t say if she’s a looker. Probably is. Then they’s the gold.

“Seems the kid’s brother was a Reb in the war, on a patrol bringin’ gold in for the South. Richards and them others killed the Rebs and took the gold — ’bout a hundred or so thousand dollars of it. ’bout three-four years back, the kid’s Daddy comes a-bustin’ into Bury — ’fore it was a town proper — and killed some of Richards’s men. Took back some of the gold. ’bout forty thousand of it, so I heard — but some of it was dust that had been recently washed. Richards thinks the kid has it … wants it back and the kid dead.”

Preacher grinned. He had thought all along Emmett buried the gold with him. Smart man.

Preacher jacked back the hammer of his Henry and blew both men out of the saddle. “Call me an old fart and a buffalo turd, will you!”

Preacher rode hard to the north, following the creek, going from first one side to the other, many times riding down the middle of the creek to hide his horses’ tracks. Just south of the small settlement called Crestone, Preacher headed west, across the valley, undercutting another settlement between the San Luis and the Saguache Creeks. He was out of supplies when he reached Saguache. Picketing his pack animals just outside of town, he rode in, just in time for a hanging.

In the early 1870s, almost every third building in the town was a saloon, and it was a rough and rowdy place. Preacher rode to a general store, got his supplies, and asked who was getting hanged, and for what?

“Some tinhorn gambler named Anderson. Killed a man last night during a card game. Fellow caught him cold-deckin’ and braced him. Gambler had one of them little belly guns. Had the trial this mornin’. Judge and jury and all. Lasted forty minutes. Jury deliberated for five minutes. You wanna come watch him swing?”

“Thanks. I best be travelin’. Headin’ east,” he lied.

“Best be glad you ain’t headin’ west, lots of hardcases thataway. Lookin’ for that outlaw gunfighter and murderer Smoke Jensen. Got six thousand dollars on his head and the ante’s goin’ up.”

“I’m too old for that kind of nonsense,” Preacher said. “Leave the hard ridin’ and the gunsmoke to the young bucks.”

“I know what you mean.” The shopkeeper laughed, patting his ample belly. “’Sides, with me it’d be unfair to the horse!”

Outside of town, Preacher swung wide and headed west, into the Cochetopa Hills, then south into the wilderness, then angled southwest, straight through some of the wildest and most beautiful country in the world. Days later, in the Needle Mountains, he was ambushed.

He felt he was being watched as he rode, but figured it was Indians — and Indians didn’t worry him, since most of them thought him to be crazy, and he could usually ride through them, singing and cackling.

The slug that almost tore him from the saddle hit him in the left shoulder, driving out his back. Preacher slammed his heels to his pony’s side and, keeping low in the saddle, headed for a hole he knew in the mountains. Through his pain, he could hear men yelling off to his right.

“Get him alive! Don’t kill him.”

But “getting Preacher” took more doing than the men chasing him had. Another rifle barked, the slug hitting him in the leg, deflected off his leg bone and angled upward, ripping a hole when it exited out his hip, taking a piece of bone with it. Savagely reining his pony, Preacher leveled his Henry. He emptied two saddles and shot the horse out from under a third rider, grinning with grim satisfaction as the horse fell on the man, crushing him. The man’s screamings ripped through the mountains. Preacher slipped away, hunting a hole where he could tend to his wounds; he was losing a lot of blood.

Preacher rode hard, barely able to see, barely able to hang on to his saddle horn. The pack animals trotted along, keeping pace, frightened. Finally, in desperation, he tied himself in the saddle.

All though the afternoon he rode, half conscious, until he reached a small lake just west of the Animas. There he slid to the ground, dragging his bad leg. In a fog of pain, Preacher loosened the saddle cinch, allowing air to flow between saddle and hide. What he did not need now was a galled-up horse. He was fearful of removing the saddle; didn’t know if he would have the strength to swing it back on the pony. He put on his pickets, and collapsed to the earth.

All though the cold night he dreamed of his Indian wives and his kids, as his wounds festered and infected, fevering him. Their images were blurred, and he could not make out their faces.

He dreamed of the mountains and the valleys as they were when he first saw them, close to sixty years back. Lush and green and wild and beautiful. And he dreamed of his compadres, those men who, with Preacher, blazed the trails and danced and sang and whooped and hollered at the rendezvous … back when he — and they — were full of piss and vinegar and fire.

But most of them were now dead.

He dreamed of the battles he’d had, both with white and red men. And he wondered if his life, as the way of life of the red man, was ending.

When the chill of dawn touched him with her misty hand, Preacher knew he was close to death.

Twelve

His babbling and shouting woke him, jerking him into a world filled with pain. “Got to get to Smoke!” he was saying as he opened his eyes. “Got to get to my boy!”

And he knew his feelings toward the tall young man were just as parental as if he were his own flesh and blood.

And he knew he loved the young man with the dark brooding eyes and the cat-quick guns.

Dragging himself to the lake, he washed his wounds and bound them, the sight of them sickening him. He had been hit much harder than this, but that was years back, when he was younger and stronger. He knew he should prepare poultices for his wounds, but didn’t know if he had the strength, and, more importantly, the time.

He dragged himself to his pony and tightened the cinch and swung into the saddle. “I’m seventy year old,” he muttered. “Lived past my time. Turned into a babblin’ ol’ fool — maybe I am touched in the head. But I got to warn my boy they’s comin’. And I got to cover my tracks better than an Injun.”

Having said that, he touched his heels to the pony’s side and moved out, gritting his stubs of teeth against the waves of pain that ripped through him.

Modern-day doctors would have said what the old man did was impossible for a man half his age. But modern-day doctors do not know and will never know the likes of the mountain men who cut the trails of the way west.

A chill was in the morning air when Preacher rode up to the cabin on the knoll in the valley. He was a gaunt shell of the man who had ridden out in the middle of the summer. Through sheer iron will, stubbornness, and hard-headed cantankerousness, he had brought the pack animals with him.

“Howdy, purty thing.” He grinned at Nicole. “I brung your durned ol’ cannin’ jugs.” Then he fell from his pony and into the arms of Smoke.

They tended to his wounds, as best they could, for his leg had become infected and it was swollen and grotesque. Nicole turned a tear-stained face to her husband.

“I think he’s dying, Smoke.”

“Bend down here, son,” Preacher said. “I got something to tell you — and don’t argue with me. I ain’t time for no debate.”

Smoke squatted beside the bed.

“I covered my back trail,” Preacher whispered. “So you be safe for a time.” Slowly and with much pausing for breath, he told Smoke and Nicole what he knew, and about the gold in the bottom of his father’s grave at the Hole.

“When your woman births the baby, wait till spring and then get the hell out of this country. Find you a safe place to live out your lives. Right now, you get my fancy buckskins out of that there trunk over in the corner and then leave me be for a while.”

On the porch, Nicole asked, “What is he going to do?”

Smoke sighed heavily, a numbness gripping his heart. “Get all dressed up in his fancy buckskins and sash and such, prepare himself to die, mountain-man style.”

Smoke and Nicole sat on the porch of the cabin and waited, listening as Preacher hummed a French song as he dressed.

“I don’t know why he’s doing this,” Nicole said, tears running down her face.

“He’s doing it because he’s a mountain man.” Smoke’s eyes were on the mountains in the distance. “I’ve got to do something.” He rose and walked to the lean-to.

He selected a gentle horse, a mare, too old for breeding. He saddled her and took her back to the cabin. Preacher was waiting with Nicole on the porch.

Preacher’s eyes touched the horse, returned to Smoke. “I see you didn’t forget ever’thing I learned you.”

“No, sir,” Smoke said, fighting back tears. “Preacher? What is your Christian name?”

The old man smiled. “Arthur was my first name — why?”

“Because if we have a son, I want to name him after you.”

“That’d be right nice. Now help me on that nag yonder and stand back.”

Preacher was dressed in clean, beaded buckskins. His dying suit. He wore new leggings and moccasins and a wide red sash around his waist. A cap of skunk hide and hair on his head.

“You look grand,” Smoke said.

“You tell lies, too,” Preacher retorted. “Help me on the mare.”

In the saddle, Preacher looked at Smoke. “You know I’m gonna shoot this horse, don’t you, son?”

Smoke nodded. Nicole put her face in her hands and wept. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“So I can have something to ride when my human body is gone, girl. So don’t you fret and carry on. One old life is endin’, but you carryin’ new life. That’s the way of the world.” He looked at Smoke. “You be mindful of what I learned you, boy, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

He rode off without looking back, riding toward the high, far mountains. There, he would select his place to die. He would go out of this world as he had lived in it — alone.

“You know what?” Smoke said to Nicole, as they stood and watched him disappear. “I never even knew his last name.”

Autumn touched the valley under the shadows of the great mountains, painting the landscape with a multicolored brush: the grass a deep tan, the trees golden, the sky blue, and the flowers white and purple and red. On a huge rock by the banks of the creek, Smoke chipped Preacher’s name, when he died, and his approximate age. The course of the creek has long since shifted, the bed now part of grazing land, but the huge rock remains. And far in the mountains, high above the West Delores, time and wind have scattered the bones of man and horse. But some locals say that in early fall, on a clear night, if one listens with ears and heart, you can hear the sounds of a slow-moving old mare, carrying a grizzled old mountain man. The old man is singing a French song as he completes his circle, before dismounting to rest for another year, his eyes on a valley far off in the distance.

Of course, that’s just a myth. A local legend. Folklore. Certainly isn’t real. But in the 1930s when the CCC boys were working in the valley, they tried to move the huge boulder with four names chipped deep into it. Something frightened them so badly none of them would ever again go near the boulder. Work was halted at the site.

The local rancher would only say, “I told you so.”

And some say Preacher did not die of his wounds, but lay near death in an Indian village for months, while one of his daughters took care of him. Some say the old man returned to help the man called Smoke in his vendetta. Many people insist that is the way it happened. That Preacher and Smoke …

Well, that’s another story.

As the winds changed from cool to cold, and the first flakes of snow touched the valley, Nicole gave birth to a boy.

While Smoke paced the cabin floor, feeling totally inadequate — which, in this situation, he was — a tiny squall of outrage filled the bedroom, as breath was sucked into new lungs. Nicole’s hair was stuck to her head from sweaty, painful exertion, and her face was pale.

“Take the knife,” she told her husband. “And cut the cord where I show you.”

His hand trembled and he hesitated for a second. Her sharp command brought him back.

“Do it, Smoke!”

The umbilical lifeline severed, the baby washed, the tiny wound on his belly bandaged, Nicole wrapped the boy in clean white cloths and the baby nursed at her breast.

“You look like you’re going to be sick,” Nicole told him. “Go outside.”

He did and thought, what I know about birthing babies would fill volumes. And what I know about the inner strength of women would, too.

When he again entered the house, Nicole was nursing the child at her breast, and Smoke thought he had never seen a more beautiful sight. He stood in speechless awe.

Fed, warm, and secure, the child then slept beside its mother.

“You sleep, too,” Smoke told her. “I’ll stand watch.”

“If baby Arthur starts to cry,” she said wearily, “just take him.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

She smiled at him. “It will come natural to you. Just keep your hand under his head for support.”

“Oh, Lord,” Smoke said.

Nicole drifted off into sleep and after an hour, the child awakened. With much trepidation, the young man took his son in his big, work-hardened hands and held it gently.

“Now what do I do?” he said.

The baby looked up at him.

“Arthur,” Smoke said. “You behave, now.”

And the baby, like his namesake, promptly started squalling and grousing.

Winter locked in the valley and Smoke knew, as long as the hard winter held, the three of them would be safe from the stalled pursuit of the bounty hunters. But in the spring, their coming would be inevitable and relentless. Smoke would have to move his family to a safer place.

But where?

His smile was grim. Sure, why not. Right under their noses would be the last place they would look. Idaho. He would have to hang up his .36s — maybe get a new Remington or Colt — carry just one gun. Use Seven for breeding, never for riding. Maybe, he thought, they could pull it off.

Preacher drifted into his mind. God, how he missed that ornery old man, so full of common sense and mountain wisdom. He would have been a great companion for the baby.

Smoke shook his head. But Preacher was gone. And the living have to go on living. Preacher told him that.

He struggled to remember what Preacher had told him about Idaho Territory. He recalled Preacher telling him there was a lake on the eastern pan (Gray’s Lake). So wild and beautiful and lonely it had to be seen to be believed. No white men lived there, Preacher said. So that’s where Smoke would take his family to live, hopefully, in peace.

But he wondered if he could ever live in peace. And that ever present speculation haunted him, especially when he looked at his wife and son.

If anything ever happened to them …

Baby Arthur cooed and gurgled and grew healthy and strong and much loved during the winter of 1871–72. He would be big-boned and strong, with blond hair and blue eyes that flashed when he grew angry.

The three of them waited out the winter, making plans to leave the valley in late spring, when the baby was six months old, and they felt he could stand the trip. They both agreed it would be taking a chance, but one they had to take.

In a settlement that would soon wear the name of Telluride, in the primitive area of the Uncompahgre Forest, bounty hunters also waited for spring. They were a surly, quarrelsome bunch as the cold days and bitter nights drifted toward spring. With them, a young man who called himself Kid Austin. Kid was quick with a pistol — perhaps the quickest of them all — but the only man he had ever killed was a drunken old Mexican sheepherder. Even with the knowledge that the Kid was untested, the bounty hunters left him alone. For he was uncommonly fast and quick-tempered. And because the man they hunted was a friend of the old mountain man who had humiliated the Kid in front of that saloon. Kid Austin thus hated the man called Smoke. He dreamed of killing this Smoke, of facing him down in a street, beating him to the draw, and watching him die hard in the dirt, crying and begging for mercy, while men stood on the boardwalks and feared him, and women stood and wanted him. Those were his dreams — all his dreams. Kid Austin was not a very imaginative young man. And he would not live to dream many more of his wild dreams of glory and power.

Felter was a patient man, who shared none of the Kid’s dreams. Felter didn’t know how many white men he had killed. He thought it to be around twenty-five, and nobody gave a damn how many Indians. He slowly spun the cylinder of his Colt. “They got to be in that valley, southwest of the San Juan’s. Everything points in that direction.”

“That old Ute we talked to,” Canning said. “He said something ’bout a blond-haired woman called Little Lightning. That could be Smoke’s woman.” He grinned. “You boys can have the gunfighter; I’ll take me a taste of his wife. I’d like to hump me a yeller-haired white woman. Man gits tired of them greasy squaws.”

“You rape all the squaws you take a mind to,” a bounty hunter named Grissom told him. “Don’t nobody give a damn ’bout them. But you bother a white woman, you gonna get yourself hung.”

Canning’s grin spread across his unshaven face. “Not ifn I don’t leave her alive to talk about it, I won’t.”

“That there is a thought to think about,” Grissom agreed. “But that Ute said she was all swole up with kid, gettin’ ready to turn fresh.”

“So?”

“What about the kid?”

Canning shrugged that off. “I ’member the time up in north Colorado when we hit an Injun camp — surprised them. That were fun. After we had our fun with some young squaws, I found me a papoose just a-hollerin’ and grabbed him up by the heels. Swung him agin a tree. Head popped like a pistol shot.”

“That were a Injun kid. This here be a white baby.”

“No never-mind. Richards said to kill ’em all. Don’t want to leave no youngun around to grow up and git mean.”

The bounty hunters all agreed that made sense. And they would pleasure themselves with the woman — then kill her.

“I want Smoke,” Kid Austin said. The older bounty hunters smiled. “I want him face on so’s I can beat him at his own game. You all just watch me.”

“Yeah, Kid,” a man called Poker said. “You a real grizzly, you are.”

“I just need one chance.”

It’s probably the only one you’ll get, too, Felter thought. ’cause if the Preacher look him under his wing and taught him right, this Smoke will be a ring-tailed looter.

The first week in April, a violent pre-season thunderstorm, spawned by a week of abnormally warm weather, struck the valley, scattering the herd of breeding horses.

“I’ve got to get some of them back,” Smoke said. “We’ve got to have them for breeding stock. But I hate to leave you and Little Preacher alone.” His face was worry lined, for he knew with the warm weather, the bounty hunters would be riding hard to get him.

She laughed away his fears. “We have to get that cow back for milk, and there is no telling where that fool cow ran off to. And don’t forget, I’m a pretty good shot.”

“I might be gone for several days.”

“Honey,” she said touching his face, “it was the hand of Providence that brought us that cow — Lord knows how it got out here. But you’ve got to get it back for the baby.” She pressed a packet of food on him. “I’ll be packing while you’re finding the herd — and the cow.” She laughed. “You always look so serious when you’re milking.”

“Never did like to milk,” he said.

He left reluctantly, knowing he had no choice. As he rode away on Seven, he stopped once, turning in the saddle, looking back at his wife, holding their son in her arms. The sun sparkled off her hair, casting a halo of light around the woman and baby. Smoke lifted a hand in goodbye.

Nicole waved at him, then turned and walked back into the cabin.

To the northeast, still many hard miles away, just leaving the last fringes of heavy forest and tall mountains behind them, rode the bounty hunters. Since the middle of March they had fanned out in the mountains, asking questions of any white man and several friendly Indians. The Indians told them nothing, but several white drifters told them of a cabin in the valley, on a knoll, with a little creek running behind it. Where the Delores leaves the San Juans, head southwest, you can’t miss it.

Canning’s thoughts were of the yellow-haired woman.

Felter thought about the money.

Kid Austin thought of being the man who killed the gunfighter/outlaw Smoke. What a name he’d have after that — and all the women he wanted.

Smoke worked long hours, gathering his precious herd of mustangs and Appaloosa, tucking them in a blind canyon, holding them there while he searched for the others. He found the cow and the old brindle steer that had wandered up with her, probably, Smoke concluded, the only survivors of an Indian attack on a wagon train.

During the late afternoon of the second day out, Smoke thought he heard the faint sounds of gunfire carrying on the wind, blowing from the north, but he could not be certain. He listened intently for several moments. He could hear nothing except the winds, sighing lonely off the far mountains. He returned to his work.

“Fine-lookin’ woman,” Canning said, looking at Nicole. She was sprawled in semi-awareness on the floor. His eyes lingered on her legs where her dress had slid up when she was knocked to the floor. The bodice of the dress was ripped open, exposing her breasts. Canning licked his lips.

The bounty hunters had destroyed the interior of the cabin, looking for gold that was not there.

One bounty hunter sat in a chair, cursing as he bandaged a bloody arm. “She can shoot,” he said. “Damn near tore my arm off. Somebody see ifn you can find a bottle of laudanum.”

Felter’s eyes found the body of Stoner lying in front of the cabin. “Yeah, she sure can shoot. Just ask Stoner.”

“If he answers you,” Kid Austin said, “the back door’s mine.”

They all laughed at this.

“Drag his body out of sight,” Felter said. “Don’t want to spook this Smoke when he rides up. And hide your horses. We’ll take him when he comes in.”

Kid Austin opened his mouth to protest.

“Shut up,” Felter cut him off. “Maybe you’ll get a crack at him, maybe not. I’d like to take him alive, torture him, find out where the gold is.”

He knelt down beside Nicole, his hands busy on her body.

Arthur began crying.

“Shut that kid up!” Felter snarled. “’Fore I shoot the little snot.”

Canning picked up a blanket and walked to the cradle. He folded the wool and held it over the baby’s face for several minutes. The child kicked feebly, then was still as life was smothered from it.

Nicole was stripped naked and shoved into the bedroom. Her hands were tied to the bedposts. Arthur was silent, and Nicole knew, with the awareness mothers seem to possess, her son was dead.

She began weeping.

She opened her eyes, and through the mist of tears, watched Canning drop his trousers to the floor.

The perverted afternoon and evening would wear slowly for Nicole.

And Smoke was a day’s ride from the cabin on the knoll in the valley.

Thirteen

On the morning of the third day out, Smoke pushed his horses closer to the cabin, a feeling of dread building within him. Some primitive sense of warning caused him to pull up short. He left the cow, the steer, and the horses in a meadow several miles from the cabin.

He made a wide circle of the cabin, staying in the timber back of the creek, and slipped up to the cabin.

Nicole was dead. The acts of the men had grown perverted and in their haste, her throat had been crushed.

Felter sat by the lean-to and watched the valley in front of him. He wondered where Smoke had hidden the gold.

Inside, Canning drew his skinning knife and scalped Nicole, tying her bloody hair to his belt. He then skinned a part of her, thinking he would tan the hide and make himself a nice tobacco pouch.

Kid Austin got sick at his stomach watching Canning’s callousness, and went out the back door to puke on the ground. That moment of sickness saved his life — for the time being.

Grissom walked out the front door of the cabin. Smoke’s tracks had indicated he had ridden off south, so he would probably return from that direction. But Grissom felt something was wrong. He sensed something; his years on the hoot-owl back trails surfacing.

“Felter?” he called.

“Yeah?” He stepped from the lean-to.

“Something’s wrong.”

“I feel it. But what?”

“I don’t know.” Grissom spun as he sensed movement behind him. His right hand dipped for his pistol. Felter had stepped back into the lean-to. Grissom’s palm touched the smooth wooden butt of his pistol as his eyes touched the tall young man standing by the corner of the cabin, a Colt .36 in each hand. Lead from the .36s hit him in the center of the chest with numbing force. Just before his heart exploded, the outlaw said, “Smoke!” Then he fell to the ground.

Smoke jerked the gun belt and pistols from the dead man. Remington Army .44s.

A bounty hunter ran from the cabin, firing at the corner of the cabin. But Smoke was gone.

“Behind the house!” Felter yelled, running from the lean-to, his fists full of Colts. He slid to a halt and raced back to the water trough, diving behind its protection.

A bounty hunter who had been dumping his bowels in the outhouse struggled to pull up his pants, at the same time pushing open the door with his shoulder. Smoke shot him twice in the belly and left him to scream on the outhouse floor.

Kid Austin, caught in the open behind the cabin, ran for the banks of the creek, panic driving his legs. He leaped for the protection of the sandy embankment, twisting in the air, just as Smoke took aim and fired. The ball hit Austin’s right buttock and traveled through the left cheek of his butt, tearing out a sizable hunk of flesh. Kid Austin, the dreaming gun-hand, screamed and fainted from the pain in his ass.

Smoke ran for the protection of the woodpile and crouched there, recharging his Colts and checking the .44s. He listened to the sounds of men in panic, firing in all directions, hitting nothing.

Moments ticked past, the sound of silence finally overpowering gunfire. Smoke flicked away sweat from his face. He waited.

Something came sailing out the back door to bounce on the grass. Smoke felt hot bile build in his stomach. Someone had thrown his son outside. The boy had been dead for some time. Smoke fought back sickness.

“You wanna see what’s left of your woman?” a taunting voice called from near the back door. “I got her hair on my belt and a piece of her hide to tan. We all took a turn or two with her. I think she liked it.”

Smoke felt rage charge through him, but he remained still, crouched behind the thick pile of wood until his rage cooled to controlled venomous-filled fury. He unslung the big Sharps buffalo rifle that Preacher had carried for years. The rifle could drop a two-thousand-pound buffalo at six hundred yards. It could also punch a hole through a small log.

The voice from the cabin continued to mock and taunt Smoke. But Preacher’s training kept him cautious. To his rear lay a meadow, void of cover. To his left was a shed, but he knew that was empty for it was still barred from the outside. The man he’d plugged in the butt was to his right, but several fallen logs would protect him from that direction. The man in the outhouse was either dead or passed out; his screaming had ceased.

Through a chink in the logs, Smoke shoved the muzzle of the Sharps and lined up where he thought he had seen a man move, just to the left of the rear window, to where Smoke had framed it out with rough pine planking. He gently squeezed the trigger, taking up slack. The weapon boomed, the planking shattered, and a man began screaming in pain.

Canning ran out the front of the cabin, to the lean-to, sliding down hard beside Felter behind the water trough. “This ain’t workin’ out,” he panted. “Grissom, Austin, Poker, and now Evans is either dead or dying. The slug from that buffalo gun blowed his arm off. Let’s get the hell outta here!”

Felter had been thinking the same thing. “What about Clark and Sam?”

“They growed men. They can join us or they can go to hell.”

“Let’s ride. They’s always another day. We’ll hide up in them mountains, see which way he rides out, then bushwhack him. Let’s go.” They raced for their horses, hidden in a bend of the creek, behind the bank. They kept the cabin between themselves and Smoke as much as possible, then bellied down in the meadow the rest of the way.

In the creek, the water red from the wounds in his butt. Kid Austin crawled upstream, crying in pain and humiliation. His Colts were forgotten — useless anyway; the powder was wet — all he wanted was to get away.

The bounty hunters left in the house, Clark and Sam, looked at each other. “I’m gettin’ out!” Sam said. “That ain’t no pilgrim out there.”

“The hell with that,” Clark said. “I humped his woman, I’ll kill him and take the eight thousand.”

“Your option.” Sam slipped out the front and caught up with the others.

Kid Austin reached his horse first. Yelping as he hit the saddle, he galloped off toward the timber in the foothills.

“You wife don’t look so good now,” Clark called out to Smoke. “Not since she got a haircut and one titty skinned.”

Deep silence had replaced gunfire. The air stank of black powder, blood, and relaxed bladders and bowels, death-induced. Smoke had seen the men ride off into the foothills. He wondered how many were left in the cabin.

Smoke remained still, his eyes burning with rage. Smoke’s eyes touched the stiffening form of his son. If Clark could have read the man’s thoughts, he would have stuck the muzzle of his .44 into his mouth and pulled the trigger, ensuring himself a quick death, instead of what waited for him later on.

“Yes, sir,” Clark taunted him. He went into profane detail of the rape of Nicole and the perverted acts that followed that.

Smoke eased slowly backward, keeping the woodpile in front of him. He slipped down the side of the knoll and ran around to the side of the small hill, then up it to the side of the cabin. He grinned: The bounty hunter was still talking to the woodpile, to the muzzle of the Sharps stuck through the logs.

Smoke eased around to the front of the cabin and looked in. He saw Nicole, saw the torture marks on her, saw the hideousness of the scalping and the skinning knife. He lifted his eyes to the back door, where dark was crouching just to the right of the closed door.

Smoke raised his .36 and shot the pistol out of Clark’s hand. The outlaw howled and grabbed his numbed and bloodied hand.

Smoke stepped over Grissom’s body, then glanced at the body of the armless bounty hunter who had bled to death.

Clark looked up at the tall young man with the burning eyes. Cold slimy fear put a bony hand on his shoulder. For the first time in his evil life, Clark knew what death looked like. “You gonna make it quick, ain’t you?”

“Not likely,” Smoke said, then kicked him on the side of the head, dropping Clark unconscious to the floor.

When Clark came to his senses, he began screaming. He was naked, staked out a mile from the cabin, on the plain. Rawhide held his wrists and ankles to thick stakes driven into the ground. A huge ant mound was just inches from him. And Smoke had poured honey all over him.

“I’m a white man,” Clark screamed. “You can’t do this to me.” Slobber sprayed from his mouth. “What are you, half Apache?”

Smoke looked at him, contempt in his eyes. “You will not die well, I believe.” He mounted Seven and rode back to the cabin.

“Goddamn you!” Clark squalled. He spat out a glob of honey. “Shoot me, for God’s sake! It’ll take me days to die like this. You’re a devil — you’re a devil!”

The ants found him and Clark’s screaming was awful in the afternoon.

Smoke blocked the screaming from his mind as he rode back to the cabin, across the plain, so lovely with its profusion of wildflowers. Nicole had loved the wildflowers, he recalled, often picking a bunch of them to brighten a shelf or the table.

By the cabin on the knoll, Smoke found a shovel and began his slow digging of graves, one smaller than the other. Seven would warn him if anyone approached from any direction.

He paused often to wipe the tears from his eyes.

Fourteen

Smoke covered the mounds of earth with armloads of wildflowers from the meadow. He asked God to take mother and son into His place of peace and love and beauty.

But Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth the Lord, popped into his brain.

“No, Sir,” Smoke said. “Not this time.”

Clark’s screaming had hoarsened into an animal bellow.

Smoke fashioned two crosses of wood and hammered the stakes into the ground at the head of each grave. He walked down to the creek bank, to the boulder where he had chipped Preacher’s name. He added two more names.

Smoke gathered up all the weapons of the dead bounty hunters and put them in the cabin. He had made up his mind to change to the Army .44s. He would pick out the best two later; there would be ample shot and powder. He dragged the bodies of the dead bounty hunters far out into the plain, leaving them for the wolves, the coyotes, and the buzzards, the latter already circling.

It was late afternoon, the dark shadows of blue and purple were deepening. On a ridge to the northeast, Felter watched, as best he could, through field glasses, until it became too dark to see.

“He buried his wife and kid,” Felter told the others. “Drug the other bodies out in the plain, buzzards gatherin’ now. And he staked out Clark on an anthill.”

“The bastard!” Canning cussed.

But Felter chuckled. “He ain’t no more bastard than us. He’s just tougher than rawhide and meaner than a grizzly, that’s all. Madder than hell, too.”

Kid Austin moaned in pain.

Felter gazed down into the dark valley. He could not help but feel grudging admiration for the man called Smoke. That would not prevent him from killing Smoke when the time and place presented itself, but it was good to know, at last, what type of man he would be going up against. Felter was one of the best at the quick-draw, but, he reasoned, why tempt fate in that manner when shooting a man in the back was so much safer?

But with this man called Smoke, he pondered, he would have to be very careful how he set up the ambush. For Smoke had been trained by the old mountain man, Preacher, and now Felter knew Smoke was as dangerous as a cornered grizzly. It would not be easy, but it could be done.

The bounty hunters made a cold camp that night. “Look sharp,” Felter told the first night guard. “We up against a curly wolf. If any of you doubt that, just listen when the wind changes, and you can hear Clark squallin’.”

No one spoke. They had all heard the howling of Clark. He was dying as hard as if he had been taken by Apache.

The Kid had never seen a man staked out before, but the others had come upon several.

The head would swell to twice its normal size from the ant stings; the eyes would be blind; the genitals would be grotesquely swollen; the lips would be swollen, turned inside out, and the tongue would finally swell up, blacken, and the man would choke to death, usually going insane long before that happened. It usually took two to three days.

Kid Austin shuddered in the night. He lay on his stomach on his blankets. “Smoke’s crazy!” he said.

Felter chuckled. “No … he’s just got a touch of mountain man in him, that’s all.”

On a mesa opposite the timber where Felter and the others slept, Smoke made his cold camp. Seven was on guard. Sleep finally took the young man in soft arms … almost as soft as the arms of Nicole.

And he dreamed of her, and of their son.

Long before first light touched the mountains and the valley, creating that morning’s panorama of color, Smoke was up and moving. He rode across the valley. Stopping out of range of rifles, by a stand of cottonwoods, he calmly and arrogantly built a cook fire. He put on coffee to boil and sliced bacon into a pan. He speared out the bacon and dropped slices of potatoes into the grease, frying them crisp. With hot coffee and hot food, and a hunk of Nicole’s fresh baked bread, Smoke settled down for a leisurely breakfast. He knew the outlaws were watching him; had seen the sun glint off glass yesterday afternoon.

“That bastard!” Canning cussed him.

But Felter again had to chuckle. “Relax. He’s just tryin’ to make us do something stupid. Stay put.”

“I’d like to go down there and call him out,” Kid said. His bravado had returned from his sucking on the laudanum bottle all night.

Felter almost told him to go ahead, get the rest of his butt shot off.

“You just stay put,” he told Austin. “Rest your butt. We got time. They’s just one of him, four of us.”

“They was twice that yesterday,” Sam reminded him.

Felter said nothing in rebuttal.

The valley upon which the outlaws gazed, and upon which Smoke was eating his quiet breakfast, as Seven munched on young spring grass, was wild in its grandeur. It was several miles wide, many miles long, with rugged peaks on the north end, far in the distance, snow covered most of the time, with thick forests. And, Smoke smiled grimly, many dead-end canyons. One of which was only a few miles from this spot. And he felt sure the bounty hunters did not know it was a box, for it looked very deceiving.

Clark had told Smoke, in the hopes he would only get a bullet in the head, not ants on the brain, that it was Canning who scalped his wife. Canning who first raped her. Canning who skinned her breast to make a tobacco pouch with the tanned hide.

Smoke cleaned up his skillet and plate and then set about checking out the two Remington .44s he had chosen from the pile of guns. Preacher had been after him for several years to switch, and Smoke had fired and handled Preacher’s Remington .44 many times, liking the feel of the weapon, the balance. And he was just as fast with the slightly heavier weapon.

He spent an hour or more rigging holsters for his new guns, then spent a few minutes drawing and firing them. To his surprise, he found the weapon, with its sleeker form and more laid-back hammer, increased his speed.

His smile was not pleasant. For he had plans for Canning.

Mounting up, he rode slowly to the northeast, always keeping out of rifle range, and very wary of any ambush. When Smoke disappeared into the timber, Felter made his move.

“Let’s ride,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

But after several hours, Felter realized they were being pushed toward the northwest. Every time they tried to veer off, a shot from the big Sharps would keep them going.

On the second day. Canning brought his horse up sharply, hurting the animal’s mouth with the bit. “I ’bout had this,” he said.

They were tired and hungry, for Smoke had harassed them with the Sharps every hour.

Felter looked around him, at the high walls of the canyon, sloping upward, green and brown with timber. He smiled ruefully. They were now the hunted.

A dozen times in the past two days they had tried to bushwhack Smoke. But he was as elusive as his name.

“Somebody better do something,” Felter said. “’cause we’re in a box canyon.”

“I’ll take him!” Canning snarled. “Rest of you ride on up ’bout a mile or two. Get set in case I miss.” He grinned. “But I ain’t gonna do that, boys.”

Felter nodded. “See you in a couple of hours.”

Smoke had dismounted just inside the box canyon, ground reining Seven. Smoke removed his boots and slipped on moccasins. Then he went on the prowl, as silent as death. He held a skinning knife in his left hand.

“No shots,” Austin said. “And it’s been three hours.”

Sam sat quietly. Everything about this job had turned sour.

“Horse comin’,” Felter said.

“There he is!” Austin said. “And it’s Canning. By God, he said he’d get him, and he did.”

But Felter wasn’t sure about that. He’d smelled wood smoke about an hour back. That didn’t fit any pattern. And Canning wasn’t sitting his horse right. Then the screaming drifted to them. Canning was hollering in agony.

“What’s he hollerin’ for?” Kid asked. “I hurt a lot more’un anything he could have wrong with him.”

“Don’t bet on that,” Felter told him. He scrambled down the gravel and brush-covered slope to halt Canning’s frightened horse.

Felter recoiled in horror at the sight of Canning’s blood-soaked crotch.

“My privates!” Canning squalled. “Smoke waylaid me and gelded me! He cauterized me with a runnin’ iron.” Canning passed out, tumbling from the saddle.

Felter and Sam dragged the man into the brush and looked at the awful wound. Smoke had heated a running iron and seared the wound, stopping most of the bleeding. Felter thought Canning would live, but his raping days were over.

And Felter knew, with a sudden realization, that he wanted no more of the man called Smoke. Not without about twenty men backing him up, that is.

Using a spare shirt from his saddlebags, Felter made a crude bandage for Canning. But it was going to be hell on the man sitting a saddle. He looked around him. That fool Kid Austin was walking down the floor of the canyon, his hands poised over his twin Colts. An empty laudanum bottle lay on the ground.

“Get back here, you fool!” Felter shouted.

Austin ignored him. “Come on, Smoke!” he yelled. “I’m goin’ to kill you.”

“Hell with you, Kid,” Sam muttered.

They tied Canning in the saddle and rode off, up the slope of the canyon wall, high up, near the crest. There they found a hole that just might get them free. Raking their horses’s sides, the animals fought for footing, digging and sliding in the loose rock. The horses realized they had to make it — or die. With one final lunge, the horses cleared the crest and stood on firm ground, trembling from fear and exhaustion.

As they rested the animals, they looked for the Kid. Austin was lost from sight.

They rode off to the north, toward a mining camp where Richards had said he would leave word, or send more men should this crew fail.

Well, Felter reflected bitterly, we damn sure failed.

Austin, his horse forgotten, his mind numbed by overdoses of laudanum, stumbled down the rocky floor of the canyon, screaming and cursing Smoke. He pulled up short when he spotted his quarry.

Smoke sat calmly on a huge rock, munching on a cold biscuit.

“Get up!” the Kid shouted. “Get on your feet and face me like a man oughtta.”

Smoke finished his meager meal, then rose to his feet. He was smiling.

Kid Austin walked on, narrowing the distance, finally stopping about thirty feet from Smoke. “I’ll be known as the man who killed Smoke,” he said. “Me! Kid Austin.”

Smoke laughed at him.

The Kid flushed. “I done it to your wife, too, Jensen. She liked it so much she asked me to do it to ’er some more. So I obliged ’er. I took your woman, now I’m gonna take you.” He dipped his right hand downward.

Smoke drew his right-hand .44 with blinding speed, drawing, cocking, firing, before Austin could realize what was taking place in front of his eyes. The would-be gunfighter felt two lead fists of pain strike him in the belly, one below his belt buckle, the other just above the ornate silver buckle. The hammerlike blows dropped him to his knees. Hurt began creeping into his groin and stomach. He tried to pull his guns from leather, but his hands would not respond to the commands from his brain.

“I’m Kid Austin,” he managed to say. “You can’t do this to me.”

“Looks like I did, though,” Smoke said. He turned away from the dying man and walked back to Seven, swinging into the saddle. He rode off without looking back.

“Momma!” the Kid called, as the pain in his belly grew more intense. “It hurts, Momma. Help me.”

But only the animals and the canyon heard his cries for help. They alone witnessed his begging. The clop of Seven’s hooves grew fainter.

His intestines mangled, one kidney shattered, and his spleen ruptured, the Kid died on his knees in the rocky canyon, in a vague praying position. He remained that way for a long time, until his horse picked up its master’s scent and found him, nudging him with its nose, toppling the Kid over on his side. The horse bolted from the blood smell, running down the canyon. One Colt fell from a holster, clattering on the rocks, to shine in the thin sunlight filtering through the timber of the narrow canyon.

Then the canyon was quiet, with only the sighing of the wind.

Smoke rode back to the cabin in the valley and packed his belongings, covering the pack frame with a ground sheet. He rubbed Seven down and fed him grain and hay, stabling him in the lean-to.

He cleaned his guns and made camp outside the cabin. He could not bear to sleep inside that house of death and torture and rape. His sleep was restless during those starry nights of the first week back in the valley; his sleep troubled by nightmares of Nicole calling out his name, of the baby’s dying.

The second week was no better, his sleep interrupted by the same nightmares. So when he kicked out of his blankets on this final morning in the valley, his body covered with sweat, Smoke knew he would never rest well until the men who were responsible for this tragedy were dead — Potter, Stratton, Richards.

Smoke bathed in the creek, doing so quickly, for the creek and the mossy bank also held memories. He saddled Seven and cinched the pack on a pack horse, then went to the graves by the cabin, hat in hand, to visit with his wife and son.

“I don’t know that I will ever return,” he spoke quietly. “I wish it could have been different, Nicole. I wish we could have lived out our lives in peace, together, raising our family. I wish a lot of things, Nicole. Goodbye.”

With tears in his eyes, he mounted Seven and rode away, pointing the nose of the big spotted horse north.

But in a settlement on the banks of the Uncompahgre, Felter and Sam and Canning were telling a much different version of what happened in the cabin in the valley.

Fifteen

“I’m tellin’ you boys,” Felter said to the miners, “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it. Them murderin’ Utes raped the woman, killed her and the baby, then scalped ’em. It was terrible.”

“Yeah,” Sam picked up the lie. “Then that outlaw, Smoke Jensen, he all of a sudden comes up on us — shootin’. He kilt Grissom and Poker and Evans right off. Just shot ’em dead for no reason. He went crazy, I guess. Stampeded our horses and Felter and me took cover in a waller. He took our horses.”

“Time we worked our way out,” Felter said, “this Smoke had killed the rest of our crew and staked out Clark on an anthill, stripped him neked and poured honey all over him.” He hung his head in sorrow. “Wasn’t nothin’ we could do for him. You boys know how hard a man dies like that.”

The miners listened quietly.

“I found Canning,” Felter said. “You all know what was done to him. Most awfullest thing I ever seen one white man do to another. Kid Austin was shot in the back; never even had a chance to pull his guns.”

Some of the miners believed Felter; most did not. They knew about Smoke, the stories told, and knew about Felter and his scummy crew. Some of them had known Preacher, and knew the mountain man would not take a murderer to raise as his son. The general consensus was that Felter and Sam and Canning were lying.

Felter had not told them of the men riding hard toward the camp; men sent by Richards and Stratton and Potter. That message was waiting for Felter when he arrived at the miners’ camp.

Several miners left the smoke-filled tent, to gather in the dusky coolness.

“Pass the word,” one said. “This boy Smoke is bein’ set up. We all know the story as to why.”

“Yeah. The fight’ll be lopsided, but I sure don’t wanna miss it. I hear tell this Smoke is poison with a short gun.”

“Myself. See you.”

Although the trail of Felter was three weeks old, it was not that difficult to follow: a bloody bandage from Canning’s wounds; a carelessly doused campfire; an empty bottle of laudanum and several pints of whiskey. And Indians told him of sighting the men.

It all pointed toward the silver camp near the Uncompahgre. And it also meant Felter was probably expecting more men to join him — probably more men than had attacked his cabin. How many brave men does it take to rape and kill one woman and a baby?

That thought lay bitter on his mind as he rode, following the trail with dogged determination.

Just south of what would soon be named Telluride, in the gray granite mountains, two miners stopped the young man on the spotted horse — stopped him warily.

“I was told you’d be ridin’ a big spotted horse with a mean look in its eyes,” a miner said. “I ain’t tryin’ to be nosy, young feller, but if you’re the man called Smoke, I got news.”

“I’m Smoke.” He took out tobacco and paper and rolled a cigarette, handing the makings to the miners.

“Thanks,” one said, after they had all rolled, licked, and lit. “’bout fourteen salty ol’ boys waitin’ for you at the silver camp. Most of us figure Felter lied ’bout what happened at your cabin. What did happen?”

Smoke told them, leaving nothing out.

“That’s ’bout the way we had it figured. Son, you can’t go up agin all them folks — no matter how you feel. That’d be foolish. They’s too many.”

“If they’re gun-hands for Potter or Richards or Stratton, I intend to kill them.”

“’Pears to me, son, they ’bout wiped out your whole family.”

“They made just one mistake,” Smoke said.

“What’s that?”

“They left me alive.”

The miners had nothing to say to that.

“Thanks for the information.” Smoke moved out.

The miners watched him leave. One said, “I wouldn’t miss this for nothin’. This here is gonna be a fight that’ll be yakked about for a hundred years to come. You can tell your grandkids ’bout this. Providin’, that is, you can find a woman to live with your ugly face.”

“Thank you. But you ain’t no rose. Come on.”

How the tall young man had managed to Injun up on him, the miner didn’t know. He was woods-wise and yet he hadn’t heard a twig snap or a leaf rustle. Just that sudden cold sensation of a rifle muzzle pressing against his neck.

“My name is Smoke.”

The miner almost ruined a perfectly good pair of long johns.

“If you got friends in that camp,” Smoke told him, “you go down and very quietly tell them to ease out. ’cause in one hour, I’m opening this dance.”

“My name is Big Jake Johnson, Mr. Smoke — and I’m on your side.”

Smoke removed the muzzle from the man’s neck.

“Thank you,” the miner said.

“Do it without alarming Felter and his crew.”

“Consider it done. But Smoke, they’s fourteen hardcases in that camp. And they’re waitin’ for you.”

“They won’t have long to wait.”

The mining camp, one long street, with tents and rough shacks on both sides of the dusty street, looked deserted as Smoke gazed down from his position on the side of a sloping canyon wall.

The miners had left the camp, retreating to a spot on the northwest side of the canyon. They would have a grandstand view of the fight.

Felter knew what was happening seconds after the miners began leaving, and began positioning his men around the shacky camp.

The owners of the two saloons had wrestled kegs of beer and bottles of whiskey up the side of the hill, and were now doing a thriving business. A party atmosphere prevailed. This was better than a hanging — lasted longer, and would have a lot more action. But when the first shot was fired, the miners and the barkeeps would head for pre-picked-out boulders and trees. Watching a good gunfight was one thing; getting shot was quite another.

“Felter!” Smoke called, his voice rolling down the hillside. “You and Canning want to settle this between us? I’ll meet you both — stand-up, two to one. How about it?”

In a shack, an outlaw known only as Lefty looked at Felter. “You ain’t never gonna take this one alive, Felter. No way.”

Felter nodded. “I know it.” He was crouched behind a huge packing crate. No one in his right mind would trust the thin walls to protect him. A Henry .44 could punch through four inches of pine.

“Give us the gold your Daddy stole!” Felter yelled. “Then you just ride on out of here.”

“My Pa didn’t steal any gold. He just took what your bosses stole from the South — after they murdered my brother. And I don’t have it,” Smoke said truthfully.

Smoke shifted positions, slipping about twenty-five yards to his right. He had seen a man dart from the camp, working his way up the side of the hill.

Smoke watched the man pause and get set for a shot. He raised the Henry and put a slug in the man’s belly, slamming him backward. The man screamed, dropped his rifle, and tumbled down the embankment, rolling and clawing on his way down. He landed in a sprawl in the street, struggling to get to his feet. Smoke shot him in the chest and he fell forward. He did not move.

The miners across the way cheered and hollered.

“Thirteen to go,” Smoke muttered. He again shifted positions, grabbing up the dead man’s Henry, shucking the cartridges from it, putting them in his pocket.

Smoke watched as men fanned out in the town, moving too quickly for him to get a shot. Just to keep them jumpy, Smoke put a round in back of one man’s boots. The man yelped and dived for the protection of a shack.

“You boys ridin’ with Felter!” Smoke yelled. “You sure you want to stay with this dance? The music’s gonna get mighty fierce in a minute.”

“You go to hell!” the voice came from a shack. A dozen other voices shouted curses at Smoke.

Two men sprang from behind a building, rifles in their hands. They raced into a shack. Smoke put ten .44 rounds into the shack, working his Henry from left to right, waist high.

One man screamed and stumbled out into the street, dropping his rifle. He died in the dirt, boot heels drumming out his death song. The second man staggered out, his chest and belly crimson. He sat down in the street, remained that way for a moment, then toppled over on his face.

Smoke shifted positions once more, reloaded, and called out, “Any more of you boys want to dance to my music?”

Canning looked at Felter, both of them crouched behind the packing crate. “Hell with the gold. I’ll settle for the eight thousand. Let’s rush him.”

Felter was thoughtful for a moment. This whole plan was screwed up; nothing had worked right from the beginning. Smoke was pure devil — right out of hell. The cabin they had searched had been clean, but poor in worldly goods. Smoke didn’t have the gold. For all Felter knew, his Pa might have spent it on whiskey and whores.

Felter knew only that he could not fail twice. He could never set foot in the Idaho Territory if he botched this job, and the way it looked, it was going to be another screw-up.

“All right,” he said to Canning. “Can you ride?”

“I’ll do anything just so’s I can take him alive; so’s I can use my knife on him. Listen to him scream.”

Felter doubted Smoke would give any man the pleasure of screaming. But he kept that thought to himself. He also kept other thoughts to himself. He was sorry he ever got mixed up in this, and for the first time he could recall, he knew fear. For the first time in his evil life, Felter was really afraid of another man.

“All right,” Felter said. “This time, by God, let’s take him.”

He passed his orders down the street, from shack to shack. Three men to the right, three men to the left, three to stay in town, and two to circle around Smoke, coming in from the rear.

But Smoke had other ideas, and he was putting them into play. His guns roared, a man screamed.

“Damnit, Felter!” Lefty yelled, running across the dusty street. “The hombre’s in town!”

Smoke’s .44s thundered. Lefty spun in the street, a cry pushing out of his throat as twin spots of red appeared on his shirt front. He stumbled to the dirt.

“I’ll kill him!” a short hairy man snarled, running down the side of the street, darting in and out of doorways. He was shooting at everything he thought he saw.

“Over here,” Smoke called.

The outlaw spun and Smoke pulled both triggers of a shotgun he removed from under the counter of a tent saloon. The blast lifted the man off his feet, almost cutting him in half.

Smoke reloaded the sawed-off as he ducked down an alley, behind a shack, and up that alley. He came face to face with an ugly bounty hunter. The bounty hunter fired, the lead creasing Smoke’s left arm, drawing blood. Smoke pulled the triggers of the sawed-off and blew the man’s head from his shoulders.

He stepped into an open door just as a man ran toward him, his fists full of .45s. Splinters from the door frame jabbed painfully into Smoke’s cheek as he dropped the shotgun and grabbed his .44s. He shot the man in the chest and belly, the bounty hunter falling into a water trough. He tried to lift a .45 and Smoke shot him between the eyes at a distance no more than five feet. The trough became colored with red and gray.

The street erupted in black powder, whining lead, and wild cursing. Horses broke from their hitch-rails and charged wild-eyed up and down the street, clouding the air with dust, rearing and screaming in fear.

Smoke felt a hot sear of pain in his right leg. The leg buckled. He flung himself out of the doorway and to the protection of the trough as Canning hobbled painfully into the street, his hands full of guns, belching smoke and flame, his eyes wild with hate.

One of Canning’s slugs hit Smoke in the left side, passing through the fleshy part and exiting out the back as he knelt on his knees, firing. The shock spun him around and knocked him down. Smoke raised up on one elbow and leveled a .44, taking careful aim. He shot Canning in the right eye, taking off part of his face. Canning’s legs jerked out from under him and he fell on his back, his left eye open and staring in disbelief.

Smoke jerked pistols from the headless outlaw’s belt and hand just as Sam and another man ran into the smoky, dusty street, trying to find a target through the din and the haze. Smoke fired at them just as they found him and began shooting. A slug ricocheted off a rock in the street, part of the lead hitting Smoke in the chest, bringing blood and a grunt of pain.

Smoke dragged himself into an alleyway and quickly reloaded all four .44s. He was bleeding from wounds in his side, his leg, his face, and his chest, but he was also mad as hell. He looked around for a target, shoving the fully loaded spare .44s behind his belt.

Sam was on his knees in the middle of the street, one arm broken by a .44 slug. The outlaw screamed curses at Smoke and lifted a pistol, the hammer back. Smoke shot him in the chest. Sam jerked but refused to die. He pulled the trigger of his pistol, the lead plowing up the street and enveloping the man in dust. Smoke shot him again, in the belly. Sam doubled over, dropping his pistol. He died in the center of the street, in a bowing position, his head resting on the dirt, his hat blowing away as a gust of wind whipped between the tents and shacks.

Lead began whining down the alley, and Smoke limped and ran behind a building, pausing to reload and to catch his breath. It has been said that it’s hard to stop a man who knows he’s in the right and just keeps on coming. Smoke knew he was right — and he kept on coming.

Another of Felter’s men ran across the street and down the dirt walkway and into the open alleyway just as Smoke stepped away from the building.

Smoke shot him twice in the belly and kept on coming.

The miners were shouting and cheering and betting on who would be the last man on his feet when the fight was over. Bets against Smoke were getting hard to place.

Sam’s partner stepped out and called to Smoke, firing as he yelled. One slug spun Smoke around as it struck the handle of a .44 stuck behind his belt. Pain doubled him over for a second. He lifted his Remingtons and dropped the man to the dirt.

The sounds of a horse galloping hard away came to Smoke as Felter’s last man still on his feet ran out of a shack behind Smoke. Smoke coolly lifted a .44 and shot him six times, duckwalking the man across the street, the slugs sending dust popping from the man’s shirt front with each impact.

It was almost over.

Smoke reloaded his Remingtons, dropped the spare .44s to the dirt, and took a deep breath, feeling a twinge of pain from at least one broken rib, maybe two.

Felter had sat behind kegs of beer in the tent saloon and watched it all. He had had a dozen or more opportunities to shoot Smoke from ambush — but he could not bring himself to do it. Jensen was just too much of a man for that. He poured himself a glass of whiskey and shook his head.

What he had seen was the stuff legends are made of; it was rare — but it was not unknown to the West for one man to take on impossible odds and win.

He stood up. “I believe I can take you now, Smoke,” he muttered. “You got to be runnin’ out of steam.”

“Felter!” Smoke called. “Step out here and face me.” Blood dripped from his wounds to plop in the dust. His face was bloody and blood and sweat stained his clothing.

Smoke carefully wiped his hands free of sweat just as Felter stepped out of the tent saloon. Both men’s guns were in leather. Felter held a shot glass full of whiskey in his left hand. Smoke’s right thumb was hooked behind his gun-belt, just over the buckle. Twenty-five feet separated them when Felter stopped. The miners were silent, almost breathless on the hillside, watching this last showdown — for one of the men.

“I seen it, but it’s tough for me to believe. You played hell with my men.”

Smoke said nothing.

“You and me, now, huh, kid?”

“That’s it, and then I take out your bosses.”

Felter laughed at him and sipped his whiskey. “I just don’t think you can beat me, kid.”

“One way to find out.”

“I think you’re scared, Smoke.”

“I’m not afraid of you or of any other man on the face of this earth.”

His words chilled the outlaw. He mentally shook away that damnable edge of fear that touched him.

Felter drained the shot glass. Whiskey and blood would be the last thing he would taste on this earth. “Your wife sure looked pretty neked.”

Smoke’s grin was ugly. “I’m glad you think so, Felter — ’cause you’ll never see another woman.”

Felter flushed. Damn the man’s eyes! he thought. I can’t make him mad. “You ready, Smoke?”

“Any time.”

Felter braced himself. “Now!”

The air blurred in front of Felter, then filled with the thunderous roar of gunfire and black smoke. The bounty hunter was on his feet, but something was very wrong. There was something pressing against his back. He felt with his hands. A hitch-rail.

Empty hands! Empty?

My hands can’t be empty, he thought. “What …?” he managed to say. Then the shock of his wounds hit him hard.

Why … I didn’t even clear leather, he thought. The damn kid pulled a cross-draw and beat me! Me!

Felter steadied his eyes to see if he could be wrong. Smoke’s left hand holster was empty. He watched the kid shove the .44 back into leather.

“No way!” Felter said. He reached for his Colt and lifted it. His movements seemed so slow. He jacked back the hammer and something blurred in front of him.

Then the sound reached his ears and the fury of the slug in his stomach brought a scream from his lips. Felter again lifted his Colt and a booming blow struck him on the breastbone, somersaulting him over the hitch-rail, to land on his backside under the striped pole of a tent barber shop.

But Felter was a tough, barrel-chested man, and would not die easily. Unable to rise, he struggled to pull his left-hand Colt. He managed to get the pistol up, hammer back, and pointed. Then Smoke’s .44 roared one more time, the slug hitting Felter in the jaw, taking off most of the outlaw’s face. The slug whined off bone and hit the striped barber pole, spinning it.

The street was quiet. The battle was over.

The barber pole squeaked and turned, then was silent.

Smoke sank to his knees in the dirt.

“You hard hit, son,” a miner told him. Unnecessary information, for Smoke knew he was hurt. “You can’t just ride out bleedin’ like that.”

Smoke swung into the saddle, gathering the reins in his left hand, the pack horse rope in his right. “I’ll be all right.”

He had cleaned his wounds in town, now he wanted the high country, where he would make poultices of herbs and wildflowers, as Preacher had taught him.

The mountain man’s words returned to him. “Nature’s way is the best, son. You let old Mother Nature take care of you. They’s a whole medicine chest right out there in that field. All a man’s gotta do is learn ’em.”

“When you boys plant them,” Smoke told the crowd, “put on their headboards that Smoke Jensen was right and they were wrong.”

He rode off to the west.

“Boys,” a miner said. “We just seen us a livin’ legend. You remember his name, ’cause we all gonna be hearin’ a lot more about that young feller.”

EPILOGUE

For a month Smoke tended to his wounds and rested at his camp on the banks of the San Miguel, on the west side of the Uncompahgre Forest. He rested and treated his wounds with poultices.

He ate well of venison, fished in the river, and made stews of wild potatoes and onions and rabbit and squirrel. He slept twelve to fifteen hours a day, feeling his strength slowly returning to him. And he dreamed his dreams of Nicole, her soft arms soothing him, melting away the hurt and fever, calming his sleep, loving him back to health.

At the beginning of the fifth week, he knew he was ready to ride, ready to move, and he carefully checked his guns, cleaning them, rubbing oil into the pockets of his holsters, until the deadly .44s fitted in and out smoothly.

Then he packed his gear and rode out.

In the southwestern corner of Wyoming, a wanted poster tacked to a tree brought him up short.

WANTED

DEAD OR ALIVE

THE OUTLAW AND MURDERER

SMOKE JENSEN

$10,000.00 REWARD

Contact the Sheriff at Bury, Idaho Territory

Smoke removed the wanted flyer and carefully folded it, tucking it in his pocket. He looked up to watch an eagle soar high above him, gliding majestically northwestward.

“Take a message with you, eagle, “ Smoke said. “Tell Potter and Richards and Stratton and all their gun-hands I’m coming to kill them. For my Pa, for Preacher, for my son, and for making me an outlaw. And they’ll die just as hard as Nicole did. You tell them, eagle. I’m coming after them. “

The eagle dipped its wings and flew on.

Table of Contents

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Epilogue