Trail Of The Mountain Man//Revenge Of The Mountain Man

And, to make matters just a little worse, the town was attracting a small group of would-be gunslicks; young men who fancied themselves gunfighters and looked to make a reputation in Fontana. They strutted about with their pearl-handled Colts tied down low and their huge California spurs jangling. The young men usually dressed all in black, or in loudly colored silk shirts with pin-striped trousers tucked inside their polished boots. They bragged a lot about who they had faced down or shot, and did a lot of practicing outside the town limits. They were solid looking for trouble, and that trouble was waiting just around the corner for a lot of them.

The town of Fontana was still growing, both in businesses and population. It now could boast four hotels and half a dozen rooming houses. Cafes had sprung up almost as fast as the saloons and the hurdy-gurdy girls who made their dubious living in those saloons…and in the dirty cribs in the back rooms.

The mother lode of the vein had been located, and stages were rolling into town twice a day, to carry the gold from the assay offices and to drop off their load of passengers. Tilden Franklin had built a bank, The Bank of Fontana, and was doing a swift business. Supply wagons rolled and rattled and rumbled twenty-four hours a day, bringing in much-needed items to the various businesses.

To give the man a small amount of credit, Tilden Franklin had taken a hard look at his town and quietly but firmly begun rearranging the business district. There were now boundaries beyond which certain types could not venture during specific hours. The red-light district lay at one end of Fontana, and just behind a long row of saloons and greasy-spoon cafes. Those ladies who worked in the red-light houses—in God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash—were not allowed past the invisible line separating the good people from the less desirable people during the time between seven in the morning and four in the afternoon. Heaven forbid that a “decent woman” should have to rub shoulders with…that other kind of lady.

Peyton had found the butchered carcass of two of his beeves close to a miner’s camp.

“Take it easy,” Smoke said trying to calm the older man. “Those miners have hit a solid strike over there. No reason for them to have rustled any of your cows. Think about it, Peyton. Look here,” Smoke said, pointing. “These are horse tracks around these carcasses.”

“So?” Peyton angrily demanded. “What the hell has that got to do with it?”

“Those miners are riding mules, Peyton.”

That news brought the farmer-rancher up short and silent. He walked over and sat down on a fallen log. He thought about that news for a moment.

“We’re not actin’ like Tilden would like,” Peyton said softly. “So he’s tryin’ to prod us into doin’ something to blow the lid off. I was about to play right into his game, and he would have sent those so-called deputies up to arrest me, wouldn’t he, Smoke?”

“Probably.” Smoke had told none of the others about the old gunfighters on their way in. Charlie had returned from his travels, all smiles and good news.

The aging gunfighters would begin arriving at any time, trickling in alone or in pairs as they linked up on the trails and roads.

“Go on home,” Smoke told the older man, “I’ll go see the miners.”

Smoke watched the moan mount up and leave. He swung into the saddle and rode up toward the miners’ camp. He hailed the camp and was told to come on in.

Briefly Smoke explained, but he made no mention of Tilden Franklin.

“Who would try to cause trouble, Smoke?” a burly miner asked.

“I don’t know. But I just put the lid back on what might have been real trouble. You boys be careful from here on in. Tempers are frayed enough around here. The slightest thing could light the fuse.”

“We will. Smoke, you reckon Peyton and some of the others would mind if me and the boys pitched in and kind of helped around their places? You know…we’re all pretty handy with tools…maybe some repair work, such as that?”

“I think it would be a hell of a nice move on your part.” Smoke grinned and the miners grinned back. “And it’s gonna irritate whoever it is trying to stir up trouble. I’ll tell the others to look for you. I bet y’all would like some home-cooked grub too, wouldn’t you?”

That brought a round of cheers from the miners, many of whom had families far away.

Smoke wheeled his horse and rode back down the mountain. Smoke the gunfighter had suddenly become Smoke the peacemaker.

“Nothing,” Clint told Tilden. “Smoke made peace with the miners. He figured it all out somehow.”

“What’s it going to take to prod those goddamned nesters into action?” Tilden asked. “I’m about out of ideas.”

Clint didn’t like what he was about to suggest, but Clint rode for the brand. Right or wrong. “The Colby girl.”

Although it had originally been Tilden’s idea, the more he thought about it, the less he liked it. Bother a good woman out West and a man was in serious trouble…and it didn’t make a damn who you were or how much or how little you had.

“Risky, Clint.” He met the man’s eyes. “You have a plan?”

“Yes,” the foreman said, and stepped across that narrow chasm that separated good from evil, man from rabid beast.

“How long will it take you to set it up?”

“A few days. Them nesters got to be going into town for supplies pretty soon.”

Tilden nodded his head. “Do it.”

“You better get some sort of platform, Boss,” Pearlie told Smoke.

“Platform? What are you talking about?”

“Some of them old gunhands is pullin’ in. I swear to God there oughta be a hearse followin’ along behind ’em.”

Smoke stepped out of the barn just as Charlie was riding up from the Sugarloaf range.

Smoke had never seen a more disreputable, down-at-the-heels-looking bunch in all his life. Some of them looked like they’d be lucky to see another morning break clear.

“See what I mean about that platform, Boss? I swear that them ol’ boys is gonna hurt themselves gettin’ off their horse.”

Smoke had to smile. He was fondly recalling a bunch of Mountain Men who, at eighty, were as spry as many men half their age. “Don’t sell them short, Pearlie. I got a hunch they’re gonna fool us all.”

“Hi, thar, Buttermilk!” Charlie called.

“Aaa-yeeee!” the old man hollered. “You get uglier ever’ time I see you, Charlie.”

“Talks funny too,” Pearlie said.

“I seen now why he’s called Buttermilk.”

“Why?”

“That’s probably all he can eat. He don’t have any teeth!”

18

“That is The Apache Kid?” Sally said, speaking to Smoke. “I have heard stories about The Apache Kid ever since I arrived in the West. Smoke, he looks like he might topple over at any moment.”

“That’s him,” Smoke said. “Preacher told me about him. And I’ll make you a bet right now that that old man can walk all day and all night, stop for a handful of berries and take a sip of water, and go another twenty-four hours.”

“I ain’t dis-pootin’ your word, Boss,” Pearlie said. “But I’m gonna have to see it to believe it.”

Smiling, Smoke bent down and picked up a small chunk of wood. “Apache!” he called.

The old, buckskin-clad man turned and looked at Smoke.

“A silver dollar says you can’t knock it out of the air.”

“Toss ’er, boy!”

Smoke tossed the chunk high into the air. With fifty-odd years of gunhandling in his past, Apache’s draw was as smooth and practiced as water over a fall. He fired six times. Six times the hardwood chunk was hit, before falling in slivers to the ground.

“Jesus!” Pearlie breathed.

“That’s six silver dollars you owe me,” Apache said.

Smoke laughed and nodded his head. The Apache Kid turned to talk with Charlie.

“That Jensen?” Apache asked, as the other old gunfighters listened.

“That’s him.”

“He as good as they say?” Bowie asked.

“I wouldn’t want to brace him,” Charlie said, paying Smoke the highest compliment one gunhand could pay to another.

“That good, hey?” Luke Nations asked.

“He’s the best.”

“I heared he was that,” Dan Greentree said. “Rat nice of him to in-vite us on this little hoo-raw.”

Smoke and Sally had gone into the cabin, leaving the others to talk.

Pearlie shyly wandered over to the growing knot of men. He was expecting to get the needle put to him, and he got just that.

“Your ma know you slipped away from the house, boy?” a huge, grizzled old man asked.

Pearlie smiled and braced himself. “You be Pistol Le Roux?”

“I was when I left camp this mornin’.”

“I run arcost a pal of yourn ’bout three years ago—up on the Utah-Wyoming line. South of Fort Supply. Called hisself Pawnee.”

“Do tell? How was ol’ Pawnee?”

“Not too good. He died. I buried him at the base of Kings Mountain, north side. Thought you’d wanna know.”

“I do and I ’preciate your plantin’ him. Say a word over him, did you?”

“Some.”

“This is Pearlie, Pistol.”

“Pleased. Join us, Pearlie.”

Pearlie stood silent and listened to the men talk. Charlie said, “This ain’t gonna be no Sunday social, boys. And I’ll come right up front and tell you that some of you is likely to be planted in these here mountains.”

The sounds of horses coming hard paused Charlie. He waited until the last of the old gunslicks had dismounted and shook and howdied.

Charlie counted heads. Twenty of the hardest, most talked-about, and most legendary men of the West stood in the front yard of the sturdy little cabin. Only God and God alone knew how many men these randy old boys had put down into that eternal rest.

The Apache Kid was every bit of seventy. But could still draw and shoot with the best.

Buttermilk didn’t have a tooth in his head, but those Colts belted around his lean waist could bite and snarl and roar.

Jay Church was a youngster, ’bout Charlie’s age. But a feared gunhawk.

Dad Weaver was in his mid-sixties. He’d opened him a little cafe when he’d hung up his guns, but the rowdies and the punks hadn’t left him alone. They’d come lookin’ and he’d given the undertaker more business. He’d finally said to hell with it and taken off for the mountains.

Silver Jim still looked the dandy. Wearin’ one of them long white coats that road agents had taken to wearing. His boots was old and patched, but they shined. And his dark short coat was kinda frayed at the cuffs, but it was clean. His Colts was oiled and deadly.

Ol’ Hardrock. Charlie smiled. What could he say about Hardrock? The man had cleaned up more wild towns than any two others combined. Now he was aging and broke. But still ready to ride the high trails of the Mountain Men.

Charlie lifted his eyes and spotted Moody. Ol’ Moody. Standin’ away from the others, livin’ up to his name. Never had much to say, but by the Lord he was as rough and randy as they could come.

Linch. Big and hoary and bearded. Never packed but one short gun. Said he never needed but one.

Luke Nations. A legend. Sheriff, marshal, outlaw, gunfighter. Had books wrote about him. And as far as Charlie knew, never got a dime out of any of them.

Pistol Le Roux. A Creole from down in Louisiana. As fast with a knife as with a gun…and that was plenty fast.

Quiet Bill Foley. Wore his guns cross-draw and had a border roll that was some quick.

Dan Greentree. Charlie had riden many a trail with Dan. Charlie wondered if these mountain trails around Fontana would be their last to ride.

Leo Wood. Leo just might be the man who had brought the fast draw to the West. A lot of people said he was. And a lot of so-called fast guns had died trying to best him.

Cary Webb. Some said he owned a fine education and had once taught school back East. Chucked it all and came West, looking for excitement. Earned him a rep as a fast gun.

Sunset Hatfield. Supposed to be from either Kentucky or Tennessee. A crack shot with rifle or pistol.

Crooked John Simmons. Got that name hung on him ’cause he was as cross-eyed as anybody had ever seen. Had a hair-trigger temper and a set of hair-trigger Colts.

Bull Flagler. Strong as a bull and just as dangerous. Carried him a sawed-off shotgun with a pistol grip on his left side, a Colt on the other.

Toot Tooner. Loved trains. Loved ’em so much he just couldn’t resist holding them up back some years. Turned lawman and made a damn good one. Fast draw and a dead shot.

Sutter Cordova. His mother was French and his dad was Spanish. Killed a man when he was ’bout ten or eleven years old; man was with a bunch that killed his ma and pa. Sutter got his pa’s guns, mounted up, and tracked them from Chihuahua to Montana Territory. Took him six years, but he killed every one of them. Sutter was not a man you wanted to get crossways of.

Red Shingletown. Still had him a mighty fine mess of flamin’ red hair. He’d been a soldier, a sailor, an adventurer, a rancher…and a gunfighter.

And there they stood, Smoke thought, gazing at the men from the cabin. I’m looking at yet another last of a breed.

But did I do right in asking them to come?

Sally touched his arm. Smoke looked down at her.

“You did the right thing,” she told him. “The trail that lies before those men out there is the one they chose, and if it is their last trail to ride, that’s the way they would want it. And even though they are doing this for you and for Charlie, you know the main reason they’re doing it, don’t you?”

Smoke grinned, wiping years trom his face. He looked about ten years old. All except for his eyes. “Ol’ Preacher.”

“That’s right, honey. They all knew him, and knew that he helped raise you.”

“What do you plan on having for supper?”

“I hadn’t thought. Why?”

“How about making some bearsign?”

“It’s going to run me out of flour.”

“Well, I think me and Charlie and some of those ol’ boys out there just might ride into Fontana tomorrow. We’ll stop by Colby’s and get him to take his wagon. Stock up enough for everybody. ’Sides, I want to see Louis’s face when we all come ridin’ in.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, poking him in the ribs and tickling him, bending him over, gently slapping at her hands. “But mostly you want to see Tilden Franklin’s face.”

“Well…He suddenly swept her up in his arms and began carrying her toward the bedroom.

“Smoke. Not with all those…”

He kissed her mouth, hushing her.

“…men out…”

He kissed her again and placed her gently on the bed.

“Who cares about those men out there?” she finally said.

It came as no surprise to Smoke to find the men up before he crawled out from under the covers. This high up, even the summer nights were cool…and this was still late spring. The nights were downright cold.

The men had gotten their bearsign the previous night, but Sally had been just a bit late with them.

Smoke dressed, belted on his Colts, and, with a mug of coffee in one hand, stepped out to meet the breaking dawn, all silver and gold as the sun slowly inched over the high peaks of Sugarloaf.

“Charlie, I thought a few of us would ride into town this morning and pick up supplies. We’ll stop at Colby’s place and he’ll go with us in his wagon.”

“Who you want to go in with you?”

“You pick ’em.”

Adam Colby had been reading a dime novel about the life and times of Luke Nation, with a drawing of him on the cover, when he looked up at the sounds of horse’s hooves drumming on the road. The boy thought he’d been flung directly into the pages of the dime novel.

He looked at the man on the horse, looked at the cover of the book, and then took off running for the house, hollering for his pa.

“Boy!” Colby said, stepping out of the house. “What in tarnation is wrong with…”

The man looked at the group of riders still sitting their horses in his front yard. Colby’s eyes flitted from man to man, taking in the lined and tanned faces, the hard, callused hands, and the guns belted around the lean waists. Colby knew of most of the men…he just never imagined he’d see them in his front yard.

Adam approached Luke, the dime novel in his hand. He stood looking up at the famed gunfighter, awe in his eyes. He held out the book.

“Would you sign my book, Mister Nations?”

“I’d be right honored, boy,” the gunfighter said. He grinned. “That’s about all I can write is my name.” He took the book and a stub of a pencil Adam held out to him and slowly printed his name, giving book and pencil back to the boy.

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome.”

“We’re riding into Fontana, Colby. Sally needs some supplies. Wanna get your wagon and come in with us?”

“Good idea. Wilbur and the boys will stay here. Give me a minute to get my shirt on. Adam, hook up the team, son.”

Colby’s wife Belle, daughter Velvet, and boys Adam and Bob stood with Wilbur and his wife Edna and watched the men pull out. They would stop at several other small spreads to take any orders for supplies. The men and women and kids left at Colby’s place resumed their morning chores.

A mile away, hidden in the timber, a TF rider watched it all through field glasses. When the men had ridden and rumbled out of sight, the TF rider took a mirror from his saddlebags and caught the morning sun, signaling to another TF rider that everything was ready. He didn’t know who them hard-lookin’ old boys was with Jensen, but they didn’t look like they’d be much trouble to handle. Most of ’em looked to be older than God.

Tilden Franklin wanted to make damn sure he was highly visible to as many people as possible until after Clint’s plan was over. Tilden had taken to riding into Fontana every morning, early, with Clint and several of his hardcases for bodyguards. He and his foreman usually had breakfast at the best hotel in town and then took their after-meal cigars while sitting on the porch of the hotel, perhaps reading or talking or just watching the passing parade.

This morning, Tilden looked up from the new edition of the Fontana Sunburst, Haywood and Dana Arden’s endeavor, just as a TF rider rode by. Without looking at either Tilden or Clint, the rider very minutely nodded his head as he passed.

With a slight smile, Tilden lifted the newspaper and once more resumed his reading.

In a way, Tilden thought, he was kind of sorry he was gonna miss out on the action with that built-up little gal of Colby’s. Tilden would bet that, once she settled into the rhythm, Velvet would get to liking it. All women were the same when it came to that, Tilden felt. They liked to holler and raise sand, but they wanted it. They just liked to pretend they didn’t for the look of things.

Women, to Tilden’s mind, were very notional critters…and just like critters, not very bright. Pretty to have around, nice to pet, but that was about it.

One of Monte Carson’s deputies rode up and looped the reins over the hitch rail in front of the hotel. Dismounting, he stood on the boardwalk facing Tilden.

“Charlie Starr ridin’ in with that Smoke Jensen and the nester Colby, Mister Tilden.”

Tilden felt his face stiffen and grow hot as the blood raced to flush his cheeks. He lowered the newspaper and stared at the deputy.

“Charlie Starr?”

“Yes, sir. And that ain’t all. Smoke’s got some mean ol’ gunslicks with him, too. The Apache Kid, Sunset Hatfield, Bill Foley, Silver Jim, Moody, and Luke Nations. They ridin’ like they got a purpose if you know what I mean.”

A young, two-hit, half-assed punk, who thought himself to be a bad man, was hanging around near the open doors of the hotel. He smiled and felt his heart race at the news. The deputy had just mentioned half a dozen of the most famous gunslingers in all the West. And they were coming into town—here!

Right here, the punk who called himself The Silver Dollar Kid thought, is where I make my rep. Right here, right out there in that street, that’s where it all starts. He smiled and walked through the lobby, slipping out the back way. He wanted to change clothes, put on his best outfit before he faced one of those old gunhawks. There was a picture-taker in town; might be a good idea to stop by his studio and tell him about the old gunslicks so’s he could have all his equipment set up and ready to pop.

The punk ran back to his tent and began changing into his very finest.

The news of the approaching gunfighters, still several miles out of Fontana, swept through the town like wild-fire through a dry forest. Haywood heard it and walked rapidly toward the main business district. He found himself a spot on the boardwalk across the street from where Tilden Franklin sat, surrounded by his hardcases.

Shopkeepers had shooed customers outside, where they stood, lining the boardwalks and packed-dirt sidewalks, waiting for the event of the day.

Louis Longmont came out of his gaming tent to stand on the boardwalk, watching as he smoked his first cigar of the morning. So Smoke had done it, he thought. A smile curved his lips. He’d actually pulled in some of the randiest old boys still living in the West.

“Going to be interesting,” Louis murmured. “Very, very interesting.”

19

Smoke halted his small group on the edge of town. He looked at Charlie. “A whole passel of two-bit young punks who’ll be looking for a reputation in town. They’ll be on the prod for a fight.”

Charlie spat on the dirt beneath his horse’s belly. “They’ll damn sure get more than they bargained for with this bunch,” he replied.

“We’ll ride straight through,” Smoke said. “Stopping at Jackson’s Mercantile. Colby, pull your wagon up to the loading dock by the side. If there’s going to be trouble, let the other side start it. Let’s go, boys.”

Smoke and Charlie took the point, with Apache and Sunset riding to the left of the wagon, Bill Foley and Silver Jim to the right, and Moody and Luke Nations taking the drag. Smoke rode slowly, so the wheels of the wagon would not kick up much dust. The town had virtually come to a halt, the streets lined with citizens. They stood silently, watching the riders make their way along the street. Trouble hung in the air, as thick as dust.

The riders could practically feel the hate from Tilden Franklin’s eyes boring into them as they rode past where he sat like a king on the hotel boardwalk. Smoke met the man’s eyes and touched his hat brim in a gesture of greeting.

Tilden did not return the greeting.

They passed Louis Longmont’s gaming tent. Most of the old gunfighters knew the gambler and they greeted him. Louis returned the greeting and very minutely nodded his head in the direction Smoke was riding.

There was something or someone down there that Louis wanted Smoke to know about. Smoke’s eyes searched both sides of the street. Then he saw them, the three of them, lounging in front of a newly erected tent saloon.

Luis Chamba, Kane, and Sanderson.

The Mexican gunfighter stood with his arms folded across his chest, his sombrero off his head, hanging down his back by the chin cord.

“See them?” Smoke whispered the words, just audible over the clop of hooves.

“I see them,” Charlie returned the whisper. “That Chamba, he’s a bad one. Kills for pleasure. Gets his kicks that way, you know?”

Smoke knew the type.

Then they were past the killers.

“Kane and Sanderson?” Smoke asked. He knew of them, but did not know them personally.

“Just as bad. They’re all three twisted. And they’ll kill anything or anybody for money.”

“Look at them punks over to your left.”

“Seen them too,” Charlie said sourly. “Lookin’ to make themselves a reputation. I hope they don’t try none of this bunch. These guys are all on the shady side of their years, but Lord God, don’t sell ’em short.”

A young man with a smart-ass look to him and dressed like a San Francisco pimp stood glaring at the men. At least Smoke figured that’s how a San Francisco pimp might dress, having never been there.

“Reckon it’s time for us to start us a Boot Hill here in Fontana, boys!” the loud-mouthed, loudly dressed young man said, raising his voice so the riders could all hear him.

The Apache Kid favored the young man with a glance and dismissed him just as quickly.

Sunset openly laughed at the dandy.

“Yeah,” another duded-up, two-gun-totin’ young man agreed, his voice loud. “And them old boys yonder ain’t got long to go no ways. Might as well start with them. How ’bout it?”

None of the aging gunfighters even acknowledged the punk had spoken. They rode on.

“Hell!” another would-be gunslinger yelled, fanning the air with his fancy hat. “They so goddamned old they done lost their balls, boys!”

“That one is mine,” Luke said, just so his friends could hear.

“He means it, Smoke,” Charlie said. “Don’t interfere none.”

“Far be it for me to interfere,” Smoke answered.

Back in the high country, Velvet Colby, her chores done for the morning, thought it would be nice to take a walk through the woods.

“Stay close, Velvet!” her mother called.

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

Adam watched her go. He stuck his dime novel in his back pocket and picked up his .22 rifle, following Velvet but staying back, knowing how his sister enjoyed being alone.

While Ed Jackson and his brother loaded the wagon with supplies, Colby walked with Smoke over to Louis Longmont’s place. He introduced them and Louis invited them inside. Smoke had no intention of trying to shepherd and play check-rein on Charlie and the others. They’d been without his advice for a combination of about three hundred and fifty years. They didn’t need it now.

“A taste of the Glenlivet, gentlemen?” Louis asked.

“Huh?” Colby asked.

“Fine scotch whiskey,” Smoke told him.

Three tumblers poured three fingers deep, Louis lifted his glass. “Here’s to a very interesting summer, gentlemen.”

They clinked glasses and sipped.

Louis smiled. “Shall we adjourn to what laughingly passes for a veranda and watch the show, boys?”

“Sure going to be one,” Smoke agreed, moving toward the door.

Luke Nations had broken off from the others and was walking toward the knot of would-be gunslicks, walking directly toward the duded-up punk with the fat mouth. Luke stopped about twenty-five feet from him. He stood with the leather thongs off the hammers of his Colts. He stood with his feet slightly spread. He was big and bent and old and mean-looking. And the look in his eyes would have warned off a puma.

“You made a comment a minute or so ago, kid,” Luke said, his voice flat and hard. “Well, now is your chance to back up your mouth. Either that…or tuck your fancy tail between your legs and carry your ass!”

His name was Lester. But he called himself Sundance. At this moment, he felt more like Lester than Sundance.

The Silver Dollar Kid had backed up against a wall. Unlike Lester, he wasn’t afraid; he just wanted to see if the old men still had it in them. When he had studied them, then he would make his move.

“Goddamn you, boy!” Luke’s voice was so sharp, it hurt. “Do you hear me?”

“Yeah, I hear you.” Sundance surfaced, pushing Lester out of the way.

Monte Carson had come on the run when he heard the news of the impending shoot-out. He came to an abrupt halt, almost falling as his high-heeled boots dug into the dirt of the street. One of his deputies ran into him, and they both almost fell.

“What the hell?” the deputy said.

“Shut up and look around you!” Monte whispered hoarsely.

The Apache Kid was just across the street, standing alone, both hands to his sides, the palms very close to the butts of his Colts.

The deputy cut his eyes. Old Sunset was standing behind them, about thirty feet away.

Bill Foley stood just to their right, poised and ready for anything that might come his way.

“Ssshhittt!” Monte hissed, the breath whistling between his slightly gapped front teeth. He was looking eyeball to eyeball with Silver Jim, his long white duster brushed back, exposing the butts of the Colts, the leather hammer thongs off.

Back of them, facing Tilden Franklin and Clint, stood Moody. Moody said, “You boys come to watch or get dealt in?”

Tilden chewed his cigar soggy in a matter of a heartbeat. He felt no fear, for there was no fear in him. But he had grown up hearing stories about these old gunfighters. And at this distance, everybody was going to get lead in them. And there was something else too. Tilden knew, from hard experience, that when dealing with ballsy old men you’d best walk lightly. With their best years behind them, they had nothing to lose. Old men did not fight fair. Tilden had learned that the hard way too.

Clint cut his eyes. Louis Longmont, his tailored jacket brushed back over the butts of his guns, stood to Clint’s right. Smoke was facing Tilden’s other hands, and the other hands were looking a little green around the mouth.

And the gunslinger Johnny North had finally made his appearance. The blond-haired Nevada gunhand stood in the street, facing Luis Chamba and his two sidekicks. Johnny was smiling. And those that knew Johnny knew Johnny was not the smiling type.

All in all, as the Fontana Sunburst would later say in a column by its editor, it was a most exhilarating and tense moment. These legends of the Wild West, captivating an entire town with their bigger-than-life presence. A moment from the fading past that would be forever etched in the minds of all who had the opportunity to witness this fortuitous encounter of the last of the Bad Men.

Haywood did, on occasion, get a tad bit carried away with his writing.

But since the written word was scarce in the West, folks would read and enjoy nearabout anything. They might not understand what the hell they were reading, but read it they would.

“Do it, punk!” Luke shouted. He began walking toward the dandy. Luke had felt all along the dandy didn’t have the cold nerve to pull iron. When he reached the young man, who was beginning to sweat, he balled his left hand into a hard fist and knocked the loud-mouth to the dirt. Lester-Sundance fell hard. He lay on the dirt, looking up at Luke through wide, scared eyes.

Luke reached down and plucked the pearl-handled Colts from the young man’s holsters. He stepped to one side and wedged one barrel between a support block and the boardwalk. With a swift jerk, he broke off first one barrel, and then the other. He tossed the ruined pistols to Lester-Sundance.

“I’ll tell you something, boy,” Luke said. “I wish somebody had done something like that to me when I was your age. I might have amounted to something.”

Luke Nations turned his back to the sobbing, humiliated young man and walked away.

“I’ll kill him for that,” Lester-Sundance sobbed, but not loud enough for Luke to hear. “You just wait and see. I’ll get him for that.”

The Silver Dollar Kid walked across the street, in the direction Luke had taken.

“Well, boys!” Louis said. “How about the drinks on me? What say you all?”

Smoke looked at Tilden Franklin. “That includes you too, Franklin. Join us?”

His face flushed with rage and hate, Tilden turned his back on the invitation and stomped back up the street, Clint following like a dog behind him.

The TF puppies followed Clint.

Louis watched Tilden wheel around and stalk off. The man is obviously of low degree,” the gambler said.

Smoke, Colby, and the gunfighters had a laugh at that. Tilden had heard the remark, and his back stiffened with new anger. His rage was such that he could hardly see.

“Get the horses, Clint!” he snapped.

“Boss,” Clint warned. “Hadn’t we best stay in town?”

Tilden’s big hands gripped a hitchrail and he trembled in his hot fury. “Yes. Yes,” he repeated, then cleared his throat. “You’re right. Order your boys to take off their gunbelts, Clint.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Clint. We’re going to take that invitation for a drink. And then I’m going to stomp Smoke Jensen’s goddamned guts out. With my fists and boots!”

20

“What the hell?” Billy said, eyeballing Tilden and Clint and the other TF’ rowdies removing their gunbelts and looping them on their saddle horns.

The livery stable-swamper darted across the street and into Louis Longmont’s gaming place.

“Smoke!” he called. All heads turned toward the small boy in the doorway. “Tilden Franklin and them gunhands of his’n done dropped their gunbelts, and they’re all headin’ this way. I don’t know what they’re about, but I betcha it’s bad trouble.”

“I know what it is,” Smoke said. He set his untouched tumbler on the bar. “Thanks, Billy.”

“Come here, son,” Louis said. “You get over there,” he pointed, “and stay put. Andre!” he called for his chef. “Get this young man a sarsaparilla, s’il vous plait?”

“But monsieur…ou?”

“Reasonable question,” Louis muttered. “Where indeed? Lemonade?”

Andre’s face brightened. “Oui!”

A big glass of cool lemonade in front of him, Billy slipped from the table to the eggs-and-cheese-and-beef end of the bar and filled a napkin with goodies. Eating and sipping, Billy sat back to watch the show.

Louis watched the boy’s antics and smiled. His big bouncer, Mike, stood close by Billy, his massive arms folded across his barrel chest,

The chef, Andre, had beat it back to his kitchen. Let the barbarians fight, he thought.

Boot heels drummed on the boardwalk and Tilden Franklin’s bulk filled the doorway. “I thought I’d take you up on your offer, Gambler,” he said.

“Certainly,” Louis said. “Be my guest.”

Tilden walked to the bar and poured a tumbler of whiskey. He toyed with the shot glass for a moment, then lifted the glass. “To the day when we rid the country of all two-bit nesters.”

Tilden and his men drank. None of the others acknowledged the toast.

Tilden smiled. “What’s the matter boys? None of you like my toast?”

Smoke lifted his glass. “To the day when farmers and ranchers all get along.”

Smoke’s friends toasted that. Tilden, Clint, and the other TF men did not.

“What’s the matter, Tilden?” Smoke asked. “You don’t like my toast?”

Tilden’s smile was thin. Toying with his empty shot glass, his eyes on the polished bar, he said, “I’ve always had this theory, Jensen…or whatever your name is. My theory is that most gunslicks live on their reputations, that without a gun in their hand, they’re mighty thin in the guts department. What do you think about that?”

“I think you’re mighty thin between the ears, Tilden. That’s what I think. I think you sit on your brains. Now what do you think about that?”

“I’m not armed, Jensen,” Tilden said, still looking down at the bar.

Smoke unbuckled and untied. He handed his guns to Colby. “Neither am I, Tilden. So the next move is up to you.”

Tilden looked at his riders. “Clear us a space, boys.”

Gaming tables and chairs were pushed back, stacked against one wall. The barroom floor was empty.

Tilden’s smile was ugly and savage. “I’m gonna break you in half, Jensen. Then your wife can see for herself what a real man can do…when she comes to my bed.”

Smoke laughed at that. “You’re a bigger fool than I first thought, Tilden. Now make your move or shut your goddamned flapping mouth.”

Tilden spun away from the bar railing and charged Smoke. All two-hundred-forty-odd pounds of him, like an enraged bull, charging at the smaller man.

Smoke stepped to one side, stuck out a boot, and tripped the big man, sending him crashing and sprawling to the barroom floor. Smoke stepped in and kicked Tilden in the side, bringing a grunt of pain from the man. Before Smoke could put the boots to him again, Tilden rolled away and jumped to his feet.

Smoke, weighing some fifty-odd pounds less than Tilden, faced the bigger man. Both men lifted their hands and balled their fists.

“I’m taking bets on Smoke!” Louis announced. “Any takers?”

Clint and the TF men bet on their boss.

Haywood, Cohen, Hunt, Ralph, and Ed had quietly slipped into the gaming room, standing close to the front door.

Big Mamma O’Neil bulled her way past those at the door. “A hundred bucks on Tilden!” she yelled.

“Done!” Louis said.

“Barbaric!” Hunt muttered.

Big Mamma laughed and slapped the lawyer on the back, almost knocking him down. She stepped on past the men at the door and walked to a far wall.

Tilden flicked a right hand toward Smoke, a feeling-out punch. Smoke moved his head slightly, dodging the punch. He jabbed a hard left, catching Tilden in the mouth, snapping the man’s head back.

With a roar, Tilden swung a roundhouse left that caught Smoke on the shoulder. A powerfully thrown punch, it brought a grunt of pain from the smaller man. Smoke countered with a right, hitting Tilden in the belly. It was like hitting a piece of hardwood. Tilden grinned at Smoke and the men went after each other, toe to toe, slugging it out.

Smoke realized that if he was to win this fight, and that was something he had to do, for morale’s sake if nothing else, there was no way he could stand up and match Tilden punch for punch. The man was bigger and stronger, and in excellent physical shape.

Smoke jumped to one side and lashed out with one boot, the toe of the boot catching Tilden on the kneecap. Tilden howled in pain and, for a second, dropped his guard. A second was all that Smoke needed.

Smoke hit the man twice, a left-and-right combination to the jaw. His punches were savage, and they rocked the bigger man, bringing blood from one side of his mouth. Tilden staggered under the combination. Just for a second, his legs buckling.

Smoke hit the man flush on his mouth. Tildern’s lips splattered under the hard-thrown punch, the blood spurting. Tilden grabbed Smoke in a bear hug, holding on until he could recover. Smoke experienced the man’s massive strength as the air was crushed out of him. Tucking his head under Tilden’s jaw, Smoke brought his head up savagely. Tilden’s mouth snapped shut and he squalled in pain as the teeth caught his tongue and more blood was added to the flow from his battered mouth. The big man’s grip eased and Smoke slipped out of the bear hug.

Pivoting, Smoke poured on the steam and hit Tilden in the gut with every ounce of strength he could muster. The right fist caught Tilden just above the belt buckle, and the wind whooshed out of the man as he involuntarily doubled over. Smoke stepped in close and grabbed Tilden’s head and hair with both hands and brought the head down at the same time he was bringing a knee up. The knee caught Tilden smack on the nose and the nose crunched under the impact. Tilden was flung back against the bar.

The big man hung there, his eyes still wild but glazed over. Smoke stepped in close and went to work on the kingpin.

Smoke hammered at the man’s belly and face with work-hardened fists. In seconds, Tilden’s face was swollen and battered and bloody.

Clint stepped in to break up the fight and found himself suddenly lying on the barroom flour, hit on the back of the head by The Apache Kid’s rifle stock. Clint moaned once and then lay still, out cold.

Smoke went to work on Tilden’s belly, concentrating all his punches there, and they were thrown with all his strength. It was a savage, brutal attack on Smoke’s part, but Smoke knew, from having the old Mountain Man Preacher as his teacher, that there was no such thing as a fair fight. There was only a winner, and a loser.

He hammered at Tilden’s mid-section, working like a steam-driven pile-driver.

Twice, Tilden almost slumped to the floor. Twice, Smoke propped him back up and went to work on him. He shifted his attention to Tilden’s face, his punches ruining the man’s once-handsome features. Smoke’s flat-knuckled fists knocked out teeth and loosened others. His fists completely flattened Tilden’s nose. One punch to the side of Tilden’s head ripped loose an ear, almost tearing it off the man’s head. Still Smoke did not let up. His fists smashed into Tilden’s sides and kidneys and belly and face.

Smoke was fighting with a cold, controlled, dark fury. His fists battered the man; this man who had boasted he would take Smoke’s wife; this man who had sworn to run Smoke and the others out of this part of Colorado; this man who dared impose his will on all others.

Then Smoke realized he was battering and smashing an unconscious man. He stopped his assault and stepped back, his chest heaving and his hands hurting. Tilden Franklin, the bully of the valley, the man who would be king, the man who would control the destiny of all those around him, slipped to the floor to lie among the cigarette and cigar butts. His blood stained the trash on the floor.

He was so deep in his unconsciousness he did not even twitch.

“I’d have never believed it,” Big Mamma O’Neil was heard to whisper. “But I seen it. Lord have mercy, did I ever see it.”

“That’s a hundred dollars you owe me, Big Mamma,” Louis said. “You can give it to Billy over there.”

Louis looked at the Tilden riders. “You TF riders can pay Big Mike.”

“I have some medication at the office that will ease those swelling hands, Smoke,” Colton said, “I’ll be waiting for you.”

Smoke leaned against the bar and nodded his head.

“Ain’t you gonna see to Mister Franklin?” a TF rider asked.

“At the office,” Colton said shortly. “I’ll prepare a bed for him.”

Smoke belted his guns around him and began working his fingers, to prevent them from stiffening any worse than he knew they would.

“Drag that cretin from my premises,” Louis said, pointing at the prostrate Tilden Franklin.

Big Mamma O’Neil laid five twenty-dollar gold pieces on the table in front of Billy.

Billy looked up at her with a bit of egg sticking to his upper lip…

…and grinned!

BOOK TWO

Now this is the law of the jungle—as old and as true as the sky. And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

—Kipling

1

Twice, Adam thought he heard something back in the timber behind the Colby house. He lifted his head and concentrated. Nothing. He returned to his reading of the dime novel about the adventures of Luke Nations.

He was just getting to the part about where Luke rides into the Indian camp, both six-guns blazing, to rescue the lovely maiden when he heard kind of a muffled, cutoff scream from in the timber.

“Velvet!” he called.

Only the silence greeted his call. And then it came to him. The silence. The birds and the small animals around the place were used to Velvet’s walking through the woods. They seldom stopped their singing and chattering and calling simply because she came gently walking through.

The boy picked up his single-shot .22-caliber rifle and put his dime novel in the hip pocket of his patched and faded work pants. “Velvet!” he shouted.

Nothing.

Not the singing of a bird, not the calling or barking of a squirrel.

Something was wrong.

Adam hesitated, started to go back to the house for Mister Wilbur. Then he shook his head. It would take too long, for Velvet had strayed a pretty good piece from the house.

There was movement from his left. Adam turned just as something hard slammed into the back of his head and sent him spinning into darkness. The darkness blotted out the sunlight filtering through the trees.

When he awakened, the first thing he noticed was that the sunlight through the limbs had changed somewhat, shifting positions. Adam figured he’d been out a good thirty to forty-five minutes. Painfully, he got to a sitting-up position. His head was hurting something fierce and things were moving around like they shouldn’t oughta.

He sat very still for a few moments, until his head began to clear and settle down. He thought he heard some sort of grunting sounds. Adam couldn’t figure out what they might be.

He got to his feet, swaying for a moment. When things settled down, he looked around for his .22 rifle. He checked it, brushing the dirt from it, and checked the load. He kept hearing that grunting sound. Slowly, cautiously, the boy made his way through the timber toward that odd sound.

He came to a little clearing—must be two miles from the house—and paused, peering through the branches.

What he saw brought him up short and mad.

It was Velvet, and she didn’t have no clothes on; her dress was torn off and tossed to one side. And a bunch of them TF riders was standing around, some of them bare-assed naked, some in their long-handles.

And there was money all over the ground. Adam couldn’t figure out what all them greenbacks and silver dollars was doing on the ground.

But he knew what them men was doing. He’d never done it with no girl hisself, but he wasn’t no fool.

It looked like to him that Velvet wasn’t having no good time of it. It looked like to him she was out cold. He could see bruises on her face and her…on her chest. And there was dark marks on her legs where them riders had gripped at her with hard hands. Like that one was doing now. Pokin’ at her. From behind. Like an animal.

Adam lifted his rifle and sighted in. It was not going to be a hard shot, but he had the rifle loaded with little shorts for squirrels. He sighted in and pulled the trigger.

It was a good shot, the little chunk of lead striking the rapist in his right eye. The rapist just fell backward, off Velvet, and lay on his back, his privates exposed.

Velvet sort of rolled off the log they’d had her bent over and lay real still.

Adam quickly reloaded and sighted in again. But before he could pull the trigger, a short gun barked and something hard struck him in the chest. The slug knocked him backward. He lost his grip on his rifle. Adam knew he was bad hit, maybe going to die, but he lay still as the men ran up to him.

“Let’s get outta here!” he heard one say.

“What about Steve?”

“Take him with us. We’ll bury him proper.”

“Little son of a bitch kilt him with a lousy .22,” another spoke.

“Let’s ride.”

When the sounds of their horses had faded, Adam tried to reach his sister. He could not. The pain in his chest was getting worse and he was having a hard time seeing. He pulled his dime novel out of his pocket and took his worn stub of a pencil. Slowly, with bloody fingers, he began to print out a message.

A few minutes later, the boy laid his head down on the cool earth and closed his eyes. A moment later he was dead.

Smoke and the others arrived back a few hours before dark. They had pushed their horses hard. Colby and Charlie were about two hours behind.

Belle Colby met the men in the front yard.

“I can’t find Velvet or Adam,” she told Smoke. She had been crying, her eyes red-rimmed.

“Bob met us, Belle,” Smoke said. “Charlie stayed with Colby just in case. They’re a couple of hours behind us. Any idea where they might have gone?”

“No. The girl has her—what she calls her secret places in the timber where she goes to be alone.”

The men dismounted. Smoke turned to The Apache Kid. “Apache, Preacher once told me you could track a snake over a flat rock.”

“I’ll find her trail,” the old gunfighter said.

He moved out with a swiftness that belied his age. “Stay behind me,” he called to the others. “Jist stay back till I locate some sign. And don’t come up to me when I do find it. I don’t want none of it all mucked up.”

He began moving in a criss-cross manner, looking to anyone who did not understand tracking like a man who had lost his mind. In less than five minutes, he called out. “I got it. Stay behind me.”

Apache was following the girl’s sign, not Adam’s, so they found the girl first.

“Good Jesus Christ!” Silver Jim said. He peeled off his duster and wrapped it around the girl. She was conscious, but in some sort of shock. She seemed unable to speak.

“What’s all this money doing piled up here?” Moody asked. “I don’t understand none of this.”

“Twenty-one dollars,” Smoke said, counting the coin and greenbacks. “This isn’t making any sense to me.”

Then Apache found the body of Adam and called out. The men gathered around.

“They’s words writ on this page here,” Apache said. “My readin’ ain’t good enough to make ’em out.” He handed the dime novel to Smoke.

Smoke looked at the bloody, printed words. “IT WAS TF RIDERS WHO DONE IT TO SIS. TF RIDERS WHO SHOT ME. GET THEM FOR ME LUKE. LUKE, GET”

Smoke read the message and then folded the book.

Luke Nations stood stony-faced. But there were tears running down his tanned, lined, leathery face.

“We play it legal-like, Luke, boys,” Smoke said. “When that fails, then we go in shootin’.”

“You play it legal-like, Jensen,” Luke said, his words like chipped stone. “Me, I’ll play my way.”

He turned to go.

Smoke’s hard voice stopped the old gunfighter. “Luke!”

The gunfighter turned slowly.

“Charlie told me when you signed on, you rode for the brand.”

“I do.”

“It’s my brand.”

That stung Luke. He stood for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. “Right. Boss. We play it legal-like. But you know damned well how it’s gonna come out in the long haul.”

“Yes, I do. Or at least suspect. But when all the shooting is over and the dust settled, we’re going to have United States marshals in here, plus all sorts of lawyers and other big-worded people. I don’t want anyone to point the finger at us and be able to prove that we started a damn thing. That make sense to you?”

“Put that way, I reckon it do.”

“Fine. I hate to ask any of you boys to ride back to town. But we need the sheriff out here first thing in the morning.”

Wilbur Mason had walked up. “I’ll go,” he said quietly.

Smoke nixed that. “You’d be fair game, Wilbur. And you’re no hand with a gun. No, I’ll go. I’ll take the book and give it to Lawyer Brook and tell him the story in the presence of Sheriff Carson. Damn!” he said.

“What’s wrong?” Silver Jim said.

“I’ll have to take the girl into town to Doctor Spalding. She’s in bad shape. Wilbur, hitch up a wagon and fill the back with hay for her comfort. Luke, ride like hell for my place and tell some other men to come hard. They can catch up with me on the way in.”

Luke nodded and ran, in his odd, bowlegged, cowboy way, back to his horse.

“I’ve borrow a horse from Colby’s stable and pick up mine on the way back. You boys tell Sally I’ll be back when she sees me.”

“You take ’er easy, Smoke,” Silver Jim warned. “Them hands of yourn won’t be fit for no quick draw for several days yet.”

Smoke nodded and left.

Tilden Franklin had tried to sit a saddle. He fell off twice before he would allow himself to be taken back to his ranch in the back of a buckboard. If he was not blind crazy before, he was now. He knew it would be a week, maybe longer, before he was fit to do anything. He was hurt had, and he had enough sense to know it.

He also had enough sense to know, through waves of humiliation, that since he had started the fight, in front of witnesses, there was not a damn thing, legally, he could do about it.

Except lay in the back of the buckboard and curse Smoke Jensen.

Which he did, wincing with every bounce and jar along the rutted road.

Smoke had met Colby and Charlie on the trail and broken the news to the father. Colby and Wilbur had exchanged wagons and rolled on. Charlie had insisted on returning with Smoke. He didn’t say it, but Smoke was glad the gunfighter was wth him, for his own hands were in no shape for any standup gunfight.

It was long after dark when they rolled into Fontana and up to the doctor’s office. Velvet still had not spoken a word. Nor uttered any sound.

Colton looked at Velvet, looked at Smoke, and silently cursed. He ordered the girl taken into his examining room and called for his wife to be present.

“Tell me what happened,” he told Smokes. “As succinctly as possible.”

“As what?”

Colton sighed. “Make it short.”

Lawyer Hunt made his appearance, with his wife Willow. Mona asked her to assist her with Velvet. The women disappeared into the examining room.

Smoke had sent Billy for the sheriff as they passed the livery stable. For once, Sheriff Carson seemed genuinely concerned. He knew for an ironclad fact that nobody, but nobody, messed with a good woman and came off easy. Monte Carson was a hired gun, true, but he respected good womanfolk.

With everyone present, Smoke told his story, handing the bloody, damning dime novel, autographed by Luke Nations, to Lawyer Hunt.

Nobody heard Louis Longmont enter the office. He stood off to one side, listening.

Lawyer Hunt read the message and looked at Monte. “Can you read, Sheriff?”

“Hell, yes!”

“Then read it and pick a side!” There was hard and genuine anger in the lawyer’s voice. Goddamn people who would do this to a girl.

“Hey!” Monte said. “I don’t pick sides. I’m the law around here.”

“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” Louis spoke from the darkness near the open door to the office.

Monte flushed and read the bloody words. Now, he thought, I am in a pickle.

Doctor Spalding stepped out of the examining room. “The girl’s visible wounds will be easily treated. They’re mostly superficial. But her mental state is quite another matter. She is catatonic.”

Smoke lost his temper. He was tired, sore, hungry, disgusted, and could not remember when he wanted to kill anybody more than at this moment. “Now, what in the goddamn hell does all that jibber-jabber mean?”

“Settle down, Smoke,” Louis said. Then the gambler explained the doctor’s words.

Smoke calmed down and looked at Sheriff Carson. “You want a war on your hands, Monte?”

“Hell, no!”

“Somebody better hang for this, Monte,” Smoke warned, his voice low and menacing. “Or that is exactly what you’re going to have on your hands—a war.”

Smoke stepped out into the night and walked toward the best of the hotels.

“You ever heard the expression ‘caught between a rock and a hard place,’ Sheriff?” Louis asked.

“Sure. Why?”

“Because that’s where you are. Enjoy it.” The gambler smiled thinly.

2

The news swept through the town of Fontana fast. Sheriff Monte Carson found Judge Proctor and jerked him away from the bottle on the bar, leading the whiskered man out of the batwings to the boardwalk.

Monte pointed a finger at the judge. He told him what had gone down, shaking his finger in the judge’s face. “Not another drink until this is over,” he warned the highly educated rummy. “If you don’t think you can handle that, I can damn well put you in a cell and be shore of it.”

Judge Proctor stuck out his chest and blustered. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Try me,” Monte warned, acid in his voice.

Judge Proctor got the message, and he believed it. He rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re right, of course, Sheriff. Goddamn Tilden Franklin! What was he thinking of authorizing something of this odious nature?”

Sheriff Carson shrugged. “Be ready to go at first light, Judge. No matter how the chips fall, we got to play this legal-like, all the way.”

Judge Proctor watched the sheriff walk away into the night. “Should be interesting,” he muttered. “A fair hearing. How quaint!”

Louis Longmont sat in his quarters behind his gaming room and sipped hot tea. At first, the news of the money near where the girl was found puzzled him. Then his mind began working, studying all angles. Louis felt he knew the reason for the money. But it was a thin rope Tilden had managed to grab onto. The man really must be quite insane to authorize such a plan. Colby and Belle and their kids were all deeply religious folk—most farmers were. And the sheriff and judge were going to be forced to handle this right by the law books.

But, the gambler thought with a sigh, there was always the jury to consider. And money, in this case, not only talked, but cursed.

Big Mamma sat at the back of her bar and pondered the situation. In a case like this, wimmin oughta be allowed to sit on the jury…but that was years in the future. Even though Big Mamma was as cold-hearted and ruthless as a warlord, something like this brought out the maternal instinct from deep within her. She would have scoffed and cursed at the mere suggestion of that…but it was true.

She looked around her. It wouldn’t take near as long to tear all this down and get gone as it had to put it all up. Damned if she wanted to get caught up in an all-out shootin’ war. But sure as hell, that was what was gonna happen.

That Smoke Jensen…well, she had revised her original opinion of that feller. He was pure straight out of Hell, that one. That one was no punk, like she first thought. But one-hundred-and-ten-percent man. And even though Big Mamma didn’t like men, she could respect the all-man types…like Smoke Jensen.

Ralph Morrow lay beside his wife, unable to sleep. He was thinking of that poor child, and also thinking that he just may have been a fool where Tilden Franklin was concerned. After witnessing that fight in the gaming room this very day, and seeing the brutal, calculating madness in Tilden’s eyes, the preacher realized that Tilden would stop at nothing to attain his goals.

Even the rape of a child.

Hunt sat in his office, looking at the bloody dime novel. Like the gambler, Louis Longmont, Hunt felt he knew why the money had been left by the raped child. And, if his hunch was correct, it was a horrible, barbaric thing for the men to do.

But, his lawyer’s mind pondered, did Tilden Franklin have anything to do with it?

“Shit!” he said, quite unlike him.

Of course he did.

Colton dozed on his office couch. Even in his fitful sleep he was keeping one ear out for any noise Velvet might make. But he didn’t expect her to make any. He felt the child’s mind was destroyed.

He suddenly came wide awake, his mind busy. Supplies! He was going to have to order many more supplies. He would post the letter tomorrow—today—and get it out on the morning stage.

There was going to be a war in this area of the state—a very bad war. And as the only doctor within seventy-five miles, Colton felt he was going to be very busy.

Ed Jackson slept deeply and well. He had heard the news of the raped girl and promptly dismissed it. Tilden Franklin was a fine man; he would have nothing to do with anything of that nature. Those hard-scrabble farmers and small ranchers were all trash. That’s what Mister Franklin had told him, and he believed him.

There had been no rape, Ed had thought, before falling asleep. None at all. The money scattered around the wretched girl proved that, and if he was chosen to sit on the jury, that’s the way he would see it.

Sleep was elusive for Smoke. And not just for Smoke. In the room next to his, he could hear Charlie Starr’s restless pacing. The legendary gunfighter was having a hard time of it too. Mistreatment of a grown woman was bad enough, but to do what had been done to a child…that was hard to take.

War. That word kept bouncing around in Smoke’s head. Dirty, ugly range war.

Smoke finally drifted off to sleep…but his dreams were bloody and savage.

Not one miner worked the next day…or so it seemed at least. The bars and cafes and hotels and streets and boardwalks of Fontana were filled to overflowing with men and women, all awaiting the return of Judge Proctor and Sheriff Monte Carson from the sprawling TF spread.

Luke Nations had stayed at the Sugarloaf with Sally and most of the other gunslicks. Early that morning, however. Pistol Le Roux, Dan Greentree, Bull Flagler, Hardrock, Red Shingletown, and Leo Wood had ridden in.

And the town had taken notice of them very quickly. The aging gunhawks made Monte’s deputies very nervous. And, to the deputies’ way of thinking, what made it all even worse was that Louis Longmont was solidly on the side of Smoke Jensen. And now it appeared that Johnny North had thrown in with Smoke too. And nobody knew how many more of them damned old gunfighters Smoke had brought in. Just thinkin’ ’bout them damned old war-hosses made a feller nervous.

Just outside of town, Monte sat his saddle and looked down at Judge Proctor, sitting in a buckboard. “I ain’t real happy about bringin’ this news back to Fontana, Judge.”

“Nor I, Sheriff. But I really, honestly feel we did our best in this matter.”

Monte shuddered. “You know what this news is gonna do, don’t you, Judge?”

“Unfortunately. But what would you have done differently, Monte?”

Monte shook his head. He could not think of a thing that could have been done differently. But, for the first time in his life, Monte was beginning to see matters from the other side of the badge. He’d never worn a badge before, never realized the responsibilities that went with it. And, while he was a long way from becoming a good lawman, if given a chance Monte might some day make it.

“Nothin’, Judge. Not a thing.”

Judge Proctor clucked to his team and rolled on.

Standing beside Smoke on the boardwalk, Lawyer Hunt Brook said, “Here they come Smoke. Two went out, two are returning.”

“That’s about the way I flgurcd it would be.”

Judge Proctor halted his team in front of Hunt and Smoke. “Since you are handling this case for Miss Colby, Mister Brook,” the judge said, “I’ll see you in your offices in thirty minutes. I should like to wash up first.”

“Certainly, your honor,” Hunt said.

Smoke walked with the lawyer down the long, tightly packed street to his law office. Hunt went on into his personal office and Smoke sat out in the pine-fresh outer office, reading a month-old edition of a New York City newspaper. He looked up as Colby entered.

“It ain’t good, is it, Smoke?” the father asked.

“It doesn’t look good from where I sit. You sure you want to be here, listen to all this crap?”

“Yeah,” the man said softly. “I shore do want to hear it. I left Belle with Velvet. This is hard on my woman, Smoke. She’s talkin’ hard about pullin’ out.”

“And you?”

“I told her if she went, she’d have to go by herself. I was stayin.’”

“She won’t leave you, Colby.”

“Naw. I don’t think she will neither. It’s just…whatever the outcome today, Smoke, we gotta get back, get Adam into the ground. You reckon that new minister, that Ralph Morrow, would come up to the high country and say a few words over my boy?”

The man was very close to crying.

“I’m sure he would, Colby. Soon as this is over, I’ll go talk to him.”

“I’d be beholden, Smoke.”

Judge Proctor and Sheriff Carson entered the office. The judge extended his hand to Colby. “You have my deepest and most sincere condolences, sir.”

“Thank you, Judge.”

Monte stood with his hat in his hand, looking awfully uncomfortable.

Hunt motioned them all into his office. When they were seated, Judge Proctor looked at them all and said, “Well, this is a bit irregular, and should this case ever come to court, I shall, of course, have to bring in another judge to hear it. But that event appears highly unlikely.”

Smoke’s smile was ugly.

Monte caught the mocking smile. “Don’t, Smoke,” he said quietly. “We done our best. And I mean that. If you can ever prove we slacked up even a little, you can have my badge, and I’m sayin’ that in front of witnesses.”

For some reason, Smoke believed the man. Queer feeling.

“Here it is,” Judge Proctor said. He looked at Colby. “This is highly embarrassing for me, sir. And please bear in mind, these are the words of the TF men who were…well, at the scene.”

“Just say it,” the rancher-farmer said.

“Very well. They say, sir, that your daughter had been, well, shall we say…entertaining the men at that location for quite some time. They say this has been going on since last summer.”

“What’s been goin’ on?” Colby blurted. “I ain’t understandin’ none of this.”

Smoke had a sudden headache. He rubbed his temples with his fingertips and wished all this crap would be over. Just get all the goddamned lies over and done with.

“Sir,” Judge Proctor said. “The TF men claim that your daughter, Velvet, has been entertaining them with sexual favors for some time. For money.”

Colby sat rock still for a moment, and then jumped to his feet. “That there’s a damned lie, sir! My Velvet is a good girl!”

Smoke pulled the man back into the chair. “We know, Colby. We know that’s the truth. It’s all a pack of lies. Just like we figured it would be.”

“Please, Mister Colby!” Judge Proctor said. “Try to control yourself, sir.”

Colby put his face in his hands and began weeping.

Lawyer Brook wet a cloth from a pitcher on his desk and handed the cloth to Smoke, who handed it to Colby. Colby bathed his face and sighing, looked up. “Go on,” he said, his voice strained.

The judge looked at the sheriff. “Would you please take a part in these proceedings, Sheriff? You explain. That’s your job, not mine.”

“Mister Colby,” Monte said. “Them Harris brothers who ride for the TF brand, Ed and Pete? It was them and Billy and Donnie and Singer and…two or three more. I got their names writ down. Anyways, they claim that Miss Velvet was…” He sighed, thinking, Oh, shit! “Chargin’ the men three dollars a turn. There would have been more than twenty-one dollars there this time except that not all the men got their turn.”

“Dear God in Heaven!” Hunt Brook exclaimed. “Must you be so graphic, sir?”

“I don’t know no other way to say it, Lawyer!” Monte said. “I’m doin’ the bes’ I can.”

Hunt waved his hand. “I know, Sheriff. I know. Sorry. Please continue.”

“They say Miss Velvet kep’ her…earnin’s in a secret place back in the timber. They told us where it was. We ain’t been there, and you all know we ain’t had the time to go to the ranch, into the high country, and back here by now. I’ll tell y’all where they said it was. Y’all can see for yourselves.

“Anyways, Miss Velvet’s brother come up there and started yellin’ and hollerin’ and wavin’ that rifle of his’n around. Then he just up and shot Steve Babbin. That’s for a fact. They buryin’ Steve this afternoon. Shot him in the eye with a .22. Killed him. Little bitty hole. Had to have been a .22. Them ol’ boys just reacted like any other men. They grabbed iron and started shootin’. Killed the boy. They kinda got shook about it and took off. That’s about it, boys.”

Monte leaned back in his chair and looked at the newly carpeted floor.

“And you believe their story, Sheriff?” Lawyer Brook asked.

“It ain’t a question of’ believin’ or not believin’, Lawyer. It’s a matter of what can be proved. I don’t like it, fellers. I just don’t like it. But look at it like this: even if Miss Velvet could talk, which she cain’t, it’d still be her word agin theirs. And that’s the way it is, fellers.”

Smoke stood up and put his hat on his head. “And that’s it, huh, boys?”

“I’m afraid so, Mister Jensen,” Judge Proctor said. “I don’t like it. But we played this straight by the book. If you could bring me evidence to the contrary, I’d certainly listen to it and act accordingly.”

“So will I, Smoke,” Monte said softly. “Believe it.”

“Oddly enough, I do believe you. Come on, Colby. Let’s go.”

Lawyer Hunt Brook was so angry he was trembling. “This is terrible!” He practically shouted the words. “This is not justice!”

“The lady is blind, Mister Brook,” Judge Proctor said. “I shouldn’t have to remind you of that.” He stood up. “Come, Sheriff.”

Stepping outside, the judge almost ran into Pistol Le Roux. “Good Lord!” Proctor said. “It’s been years, Pistol. You’re looking quite well.”

“Thanks. How’d it go in yonder, Judge?”

“Not to anyone’s liking, I’m afraid. Are you going to be in town long?”

“I work for Smoke Jensen.”

“Oh, my!” the judge said. “How many of you, ah, men did Mister Jensen hire, Pistol?”

Pistol smiled. “Twenty or so.”

Judge Proctor suddenly felt weak-kneed. “I see. Well, it’s been nice seeing you, Pistol.”

“Same here, Judge.”

As they walked off, Monte asked. “How come it is you know that old gunslick, Judge?”

“I was up in the Wyoming country hearing a case of his when he was marshal of a town up there. Four pretty good gunhands braced him one afternoon.”

“How’d it come out?”

“Pistol killed them all.”

“And they’s twenty of them old gunhawks workin’ for Jensen?”

“Yes. Rather makes one feel inadequate, doesn’t it, Sheriff?”

“Whatever that means, Judge.”

The judge didn’t feel like explaining. “You know, Monte, you could be a good lawman if you’d just try.”

“Is that what I been feelin’ lately, Judge?”

“Probably. But since you—we—are in Tilden Franklin’s pocket, what are we going to do about it?”

“We wasn’t in his pocket in this one, Judge.”

“That is correct. And it’s a rather nice feeling, isn’t it, Sheriff Carson?”

“Damn shore is, Judge Proctor. Would you like to join me in a drink, Judge?”

“No, Sheriff. I think not. I just decided to quit.”

3

When Smoke and Sally and Pearlie and most of the other aging gunhawks rode up to Colby’s place the following morning, they were all amazed to see the hills covered with people

“What the hell?” Pearlie said.

“They’re showin’ Tilden Franklin how they feel,” Luke said. “And rubbin’ his nose in it.”

“Would you look yonder?” Jay said. “That there is Big Mamma. In a dress!”

“Musta been a tent-maker move into town,” Apache said.

“Who is that pretty lady beside the…large lady I presume you men are talking about?” Sally asked.

Smoke and Sally were in a buckboard, the others on horseback.

“That’s Big Mamma’s wife, Miss Sally,” Silver Jim explained.

Sally looked up at him. “I beg your pardon, Silver Jim?”

“They was married ’bout three year ago, I reckon it was. Big Mamma had to slap that minister around a good bit ’fore he’d agree to do it, but he done ’er.”

Sally turned her crimson face forward. “I do not wish to pursue this line of conversation any further, thank you.”

“No, ma’am,” Silver Jim said. “Me neither.”

The service was a short one, but sincerely given by Ralph. Adam’s forever-young body was buried on a hillside overlooking the Colby ranch.

And while most knew the TF riders were watching from the hills, no TF rider showed his face at the funeral. The mood of the crowd was such that if any TF riders had made an appearance, there most likely would have been a hanging.

Belle Colby and Velvet sat in the front yard during the service. Velvet had yet to speak a word or utter any type of sound.

Tilden sat on the front porch of his fine ranch house. He hurt all over. Never, never, in his entire life, had he been so badly torn up. And by a goddamned two-bit gunslinger.

Clint walked up to the porch. “Twelve hands pulled out last night, Boss.”

“You pay ’em off?” The words were hard to understand and even harder for Tilden to speak. His lips were grotesquely swollen and half a dozen teeth were missing. His nose had yet to be set because it was so badly broken and swollen hideously.

“No. They just packed it all up and rode off. Told Pete Harris they hired their guns to fight men, not to make war on little kids.”

“How noble of them. Hell with them!”

“Some of the others say they’ll ride for brand—when it comes to punchin’ cows. But they ain’t gettin’ involved in no way.”

“Hell with them too. Fire ’em!”

“Boss?”

“Goddamn you! I said fire them!”

Clint stood his ground. He put one boot up on the porch and stared square at Tilden. “Now you listen to me, Boss. We got a hell of a big herd out yonder. And we need punchers to see to that herd. Now I feel sick at my stomach over what I ordered them men to do to that Colby girl, but it’s done. And I can’t change it. I reckon I’ll answer to the Lord for that. If so, that’s ’tween me and Him. But for now, I got a herd to look after. Are you so crazy mad you can’t understand that?”

Tilden took several deep breaths—as deeply as he dared, that is. For Smoke had broken several of his ribs. He calmed himself. “All right, all right, Clint! You’ve made your point. I want a tally of how many men are going to fight for me. Those that want to punch cows, do so. But for every one that won’t fight, hire two that will. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s face it. You made a mistake by suggesting what was done to the Colby bitch; I made a mistake by going along with it. All right. Like you say, it’s done. I understand that Colby brat wrote in that stupid book about Luke avenging him, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I figured by now that old bastard would have come storming in here, fire in his eyes and his guns smoking. Maybe he’s lost his balls.”

Clint shook his head. “You never knew Luke Nations, did you, Boss?”

“Can’t say as I ever had the pleasure.”

“I do,” Clint said softly. “He’s…” The foreman searched for a word. “Awesome. There ain’t a nerve in his body, Boss. He’ll be comin’ in smokin’, all right. Bet on that. But he’ll pick the time and place.”

“Hire the gunnies!” Tilden ordered, his voice harsh. “And then tell our gunhawks it’s open season on nesters.”

Clint hesitated. “Can I say something, Boss?”

“What is it, Clint?”

“Why don’t we just drop the whole damned thing, Boss? Call it off? If word of this war gets to the governor’s ears, he’s liable to send in the Army.”

“Hell with the governor. We got the sheriff and the judge in our pockets; how’s anything goin’ to get out?”

“I don’t know about Monte and the judge no more, Boss. They was both pushin’ real hard yesterday about that Velvet thing.”

“I got them elected, I can get them un-elected.”

Clint’s smile was rueful. “You’re forgettin’ something, Boss.”

“What?”

“The people elected ’em, For four years.”

Clint turned around and walked off, leaving Tilden alone on the porch…with his hurting body.

And his hate.

Two weeks passed with no trouble…none at all. Between Tilden and the smaller spreads, that is. There was still minor trouble in town. But Monte and his men put that down quickly and hard. And the now-sober Judge Proctor hit the offenders with such stiff fines and terms in the new jailhouse that it seemed to deter other potential lawbreakers.

And Monte stopped collecting graft from the saloons and other businesses. He was being paid a good salary as sheriff, and decided that was enough. Any deputy that didn’t like the new rules could leave. A few did, most stayed. All in all, it was a good job.

Monte looked up as the front door to his office opened. Johnny North stood there, gazing at him.

“You decide to make your move now, Johnny?” Monte asked.

“I don’t know,” the gunfighter said. “Mind if I sit down?”

Monte pointed to a chair. “Help yourself.”

Johnny first poured himself a cup of coffee. He sat and looked at the sheriff. “What the hell’s the matter with you, Monte? You got religion or something?”

Monte smiled. “I ain’t got religion, that’s for sure. Maybe it’s the something. Why do you ask?”

“I been waitin’ for you to come brace me for two damn weeks. You forgot we’re supposed to hate each other?”

“No, I ain’t. But I’ll tell you this: I can’t remember what we’re supposed to hate each other for!”

Johnny scratched his chin. “Come to think of it, neither can I. Wasn’t it something about a gal?”

Monte started laughing. “I don’t know! Hell, Johnny. Whatever it was it happened so many years ago, what difference does it make now?”

Johnny North joined in the laughter. “You et yet?”

“Nope. You buyin’?”

“Hell, why not? it’s gettin’ too damn hot outside for a gunfight anyways.”

Laughing, the old enemies walked to a cafe.

A few of Tilden Franklin’s hands were lounging in a tight knot outside a saloon. These were not the gunhawks employed by the TF brand, hut cowboys. And to show they were taking no sides in this matter, they had checked their guns with the bartender inside the saloon.

Monte Carson had made it clear, by posting notices around the town, that TF gunhawks had better not start any trouble in his town, or in any area of his jurisdiction. He’d had to get the judge to spell all the words.

The judge had done so, gleefully.

“Looks like Johnny North and the Sheriff done kissed and made up,” one cowboy remarked.

“That’s more trouble for Tilden,” another observed. There was just a small note of satisfaction in the statement.

Another TF puncher sat down on the lip of a watering trough. “It’s May, boys. Past time to move the herds up into the high country for the summer.”

“I been thinkin’ the same thing.”

“I think I’ll talk to Clint when we get back to the ranch. Kinda suggest, nice-like, that we get the herds ready to move. If he goes along with it, and I think he will, that’ll put us some thirty-five miles from the ranch, up in the high lonesome. Take a hell of a pistol to shoot thirty-five miles.”

“Yeah. That’d put us clean out of any war, just doin’ what we’re paid to do: look after cows.”

Another cowboy sat down on the steps. He looked at the puncher who had suggested the high country. “You know, Dan, sometimes you can show some signs of havin’ a little sense.”

“Thank you,” Dan said modestly. “For a fact, my momma didn’t raise no fool for a son.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah,” Dan said with a smile. “I had a sister.”

The aging gunfighters were having the time of their lives. They were doing what most loved to do: work cattle. Smoke’s bulls had been busy during the winter, and his herd had increased appreciably now that the calving was over. It was branding time, and the gunfighters were pitching in and working just as hard as Smoke or Pearlie. Some had gone to other small spreads in the area, helping out there, their appearance a welcome sight to the overworked and understaffed ranchers.

It appeared that the area was at peace. Smoke knew, from riding the high country, that Tilden Franklin’s punchers were busy moving the TF herds into the high pastures, and doing so, he suspected, for many reasons, not all of them associated with the welfare of the cattle. That was another sign that Tilden had not given up in his fight to rid the area of all who would not bend to his will. Those TF hands who were not gunslicks but cowboys were clearing out of the line of fire.

He said as much to Charlie Starr.

The gunhand agreed. “It ain’t even got started good yet, Smoke. I got word that Tilden is hirin’ all the guns he can, and they’re beginning to trickle in. It’s shapin’ up to be a bad one.”

“They any good?”

“Some of them are bad hombres. Some of them are just startin’ to build a rep. But they’re alive, so they must be fair hands with a gun.”

Smoke looked around him, at the vast, majestic panorama that nature had bestowed on this part of Colorado. “It’s all so foolish,” he said. “There is more than enough room for us all.”

“Not to a man like Tilden,” Luke Nations said, walking up, a tin cup of coffee in his hand. He was taking a break from the branding. “Tilden, least for as long as I’ve known of him, has always craved to be the bull of the woods. He’s crazy.”

All present certainly agreed with that.

“What’d Colby say or do when you give him that money we found in that holler tree?” Charlie asked Smoke.

“Sent it to Tilden by way of the Sheriff. Wrote him a note too. Told him where to put the money. Told him to put it there sideways.”

Charlie and Luke both grinned at that, Luke saying, “I sure would have liked to seen the look on Tilden’s face when he got that.”

“How’s his health?” Charlie asked.

“Coming along,” Smoke said with a grin. “Doc Colton goes out there several times a week. ’Bout the only thing wrong with Tilden now—other than the fact he’s crazy—is that he don’t have any front teeth and his ribs is still sore.”

“I figure we got two, maybe three more weeks before Tilden pulls all the stops out,” Luke said. “He’s not goin’ to do nothin’ until he’s able to sit a saddle and handle a short gun. Then look out.”

And they all agreed with that.

“I figure he’ll save us for last,” Smoke said. “I figure he’ll hit Peyton first. That’s the ranch closest to his range, and the furtherest from us. I’ve warned Peyton to be careful, but the man seemed to think it’s all over now.”

“Is he a fool?” Luke asked.

“No.” Smoke said softly. “Just a man who tries to see the best in all people. He thinks Tilden has ‘seen the light,’ to use Peyton’s own words.”

“He’s a fool then,” Charlie opined. “There isn’t one ounce of good in Tilden Franklin. That little trick with Velvet should have convinced Peyton.”

“Speakin’ of Velvet…” Luke let it trail off into silence.

“No change,” Smoke said. “She eats, and sits. She has not uttered a sound in weeks.”

“Her pa?”

“Colby has turned real quiet-like,” Smoke told the men. “Never speaks of her. But I don’t like the look in his eyes. Belle told me he takes his pistol out every day and practices drawing and firing.”

“He any good?”

“No,” Smoke said flatly. “He just doesn’t have the eye and hand coordination needed to be any good. He’s slow as molasses and can’t hit jack-crap with a short gun.”

“Then he’s headin’ for trouble,” Luke said. “You want I should go talk to him?”

“Can if you want. But it won’t do any good. I tried talking to him. He just turned his back and walked away.”

Charlie spat on the ground. “The fool is diggin’ his own grave, Smoke.”

“Yeah. I know it. But he’s all tore up with grief. I’m thinkin’ he’s gonna brace the Harris Brothers if he ever gets the chance.”

“They’ll kill him,” Luke said. “Them boys is real good.”

Smoke nodded his head. He summed up his feelings by saying, “I think Colby wants to die.”

4

Paul Jackson walked into his brother’s office at the general store and told Ed he was quitting.

Ed looked at his brother as if he was looking at a fool. “To do what?”

“I staked me out a claim. Looks promisin’ too. You’re makin’ all the money here. Hell with you!”

“Fine. But remember this: you’ll not get a penny’s worth of credit from me.”

“I got money of my own.” He walked out of the office.

“You’re a fool!” Ed shouted after his brother.

His brother turned around and made a very obscene gesture. It was intended for Ed, but Ed’s wife caught it as well.

Peg stamped her foot.

Paul laughed and walked on out, feeling as though he had just had a great weight lifted from his shoulders. He swung into the saddle and trotted out, toward the high lonesome, where he had staked his claim.

Paul would show them all. He’d come back a rich man and take Bountiful from that namby-pamby preacher and then, just like in one of them dime novels, the both of them would ride off into the sunset, to be forever together.

Or something like that.

“What side of this fracus is Utah Slim on?” Johnny North asked Monte over coffee one bright early summer morning.

“I can’t figure it, myself. He don’t appear to be on neither side. And he ain’t hurtin’ for money. He’s always got a wad of greenbacks.”

“Gamble?”

Monte shook his head. “No. I ain’t never seen nor heard of him gamblin’.”

“He’s on somebody’s payroll,” the gunslinger opined. “You can bet on that. Utah don’t do nothin’ for nothin’. He’s here for a reason.”

“You find out, you let me know?”

“Why not? I sure ain’t got no axes to grind in this here fight.”

“Tilden’s hirin’ you know.”

“Screw Tilden Franklin. I got me a little claim staked out and got guys workin’ it for shares. ’Bout five years back, I started puttin’ back a little bit of money ever’ time I had some to spare. Got it in a bank up in Boulder. With the gold I get out of this claim, I aim to start me a little ranch; maybe do a little farmin’ too. Hang up my guns.”

Monte started grinning.

“What are you grinnin’ about, you ape?” Johnny asked.

“Gonna do a little bit of ranchin’ and a little bit of farmin’, hey?”

“Yeah! What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothin’. Nothin’ at all. But what happens if you run into some big rancher like Tilden when you decide to settle down?”

“Well…I reckon I’ll fight.”

Monte suddenly felt better. He started chuckling. “Oh, yeah, Johnny, you got an axe to grind in this war—you just ain’t realized it yet.”

Johnny thought about that, then he too started chuckling. “By God, Monte, you right. I think I’ll go see if that feller Colby needs a hand. Might do me some good to do some hard work for a change.”

“He can’t pay you nothin’.”

“I ain’t askin’ for nothin’.”

Boot heels drummed on the boardwalk and someone was hollering for the sheriff.

Monte jumped up and headed for the door, Johnny right behind him. A wild-eyed miner almost collided with them both.

“Come quick, Sheriff! That nester Colby is about to draw down on a TF gunnie named Donnie. Hurry, Sheriff, hurry!”

“Crazy farmer!” Monte yelled, running toward a saloon. He could see a crowd gathered on both sides of a man standing out in the street. He recognized the man as Colby, and with a sick feeling realized he was not going to be able to stop it. He just knew that Colby had started it, and if that was the case, he would not interfere. It was an unwritten rule in the West—and would be for about a decade to come—that a man broke his own horses and killed his own snakes. If one challenged another to a gunfight, and it was a fair fight, few lawmen would interfere.

The gunslick, Donnie, was standing on the boardwalk, laughing at the farmer. Colby was standing in the street, cursing the TF rider.

Monte stopped some distance away, halting both Johnny and the miner. “Who started it?”

“That farmer. He called Donnie out and started cussin’ him. Ain’t you gonna stop it, Sheriff?”

“There is nothin’ I can do, mister,” Monte told the man. “If Colby wants to back off, I’ll see that he gets that chance. But I can’t stop it. There ain’t no city or county law agin a one-on-one fight.”

“Colby’s gonna get killed,” the miner said.

“I reckon,” Monte agreed.

“What’s the matter, Pig-farmer?” Donnie taunted the older man. “You done lost your nerve?”

“No,” Colby said, his voice firm. “Anytime you’re ready, draw!”

Donnie and his friends laughed. “Hell, Nester,” Donnie said. “I ain’t gonna draw on you. You called me out, remember?”

“You raped my Velvet and killed my boy.”

“I didn’t rape nobody, Nester. Your daughter was sellin’ and we’uns bought. Cash money for merchandise. Your boy busted up in there and started throwin’ lead around. We fired back. And that’s the way it happened.”

“You’re a goddamned liar!” Colby shouted.

“Now that tears it, Nester,” Donnie said, his hands over the butts of his guns. “You make your play.” He grinned nastily. “Sorry ’bout Velvet, though. She shore liked it, the more the merrier.”

Colby went for his old Navy Colt .36. Grinning, Donnie let the man fumble and then with a smooth, practiced motion drew, cocked, and fired, the slug taking Colby in the right shoulder. The farmer spun around, dropping his Navy Colt onto the dirt of the street.

Colby reached for the gun with his left hand and Donnie fired again, the slug striking Colby in the stomach. The farmer was tossed to one side and Donnie’s Colt roared again, the slug raking Colby flush in the face, just above the nose and below the eye sockets. Colby’s face was shattered. He trembled once and was still.

“That’s it!” Monte shouted. “Holster your gun and ride out of town, Donnie. Right now. Git gone, boy, or face me. Make your choice.”

“Hey, I’m leavin’, Sheriff.” Donnie grinned, returning his Colt to leather. “I mean, you saw it—I didn’t start it.”

Louis Longmont had watched the whole sickening show from across the street. But, like the sheriff, he had made no attempt to stop it. Such was the code demanded of those who braved the frontier.

Longmont tossed his cigar into the street and walked back to his gaming tent. Then a truth made its way into the light of his mind: he was sick of the whole damned mess. Tired of late hours and tired of taking other people’s money—even if his games were honest—tired of sweat-stinking miners and cowboys, tired of the violence and dust and heat and intense cold. Tired of it all. Just plain tired of it.

The gambler realized then that this was to be his last boom town.

That thought made him immensely happy.

From his table in his gaming room, Louis watched the undertaker’s black hack rumble past.

He heard a voice saying, “This poor wretch have any family?”

He could not hear the reply.

Louis poured a tumbler of scotch and lifted the glass, silently toasting the dead Colby.

“Not much money in his pockets.” The undertaker’s voice came to Louis.

“Mike!” Louis called.

The bouncer stuck his big head around the corner “Yeah, Boss?”

“Go tell the undertaker to prepare Colby’s body and do it up nice—the best he can offer. I’m paying.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tell Johnny North to come see me.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few minutes later, Johnny North stepped into the gaming tent. “You wanna see me, Louis?”

The two were not friends, but then neither were they enemies. Just two men who were very, very good with a gun and held a mutual respect for each other.

“You know where Colby’s spread is located, Johnny?”

“I can probably find it.”

“Someone needs to ride up there and tell his wife that she’s a widow.”

“You tellin’ me to do it, Louis?”

“No.” The gambler’s left hand worked at a deck of playing cards on the table. His right hand was not visible. “But I am asking.”

“If that’s the case…fine. I’ll go.”

“Ask her…no, ride on to Smoke’s place and tell him what happened, if you will, please. Ask him to arrange for a wagon to come for Colby’s body.”

“I’ll do that too, Louis. Louis?”

The gambler looked at the gunfighter.

“It wasn’t right…that shootin’. But we couldn’t interfere.”

“I know. But the West is changing, Johnny. Going to ranch and farm a bit with the savings you have up in Boulder, Johnny?”

That shook the blond-haired Nevada gunslick. “How in the hell…”

“I own part of the bank, Johnny,” Louis said with a very slight smile.

Johnny returned the smile. “I think I might just ask the Widder Colby if she needs some help up there, Louis. Not today, now, that wouldn’t be fitten. But later on.”

“That would be a very decent act on your part, Johnny. I think Belle would appreciate that very much.”

“I’ll get goin’ now. See you, Louis.”

“See you. Thanks, Johnny.”

As the sounds of Johnny’s big California spurs faded on the boardwalk, Andre stuck his head out of the kitchen. “A snack, sir?” the chef asked.

“I think not, Andre. Just coffee, please.”

The chef hesitated. “It is a dismal and barbaric place, is it not, monsieur?”

“For a while longer, Andre. But it will change as time passes, and time will pass.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

Johnny North caught up with Donnie about five miles out of town. The young gunslick had several of his friends with him, but numbers had never bothered Johnny North before, and didn’t this time.

Johnny North made all the gunslicks and so-called gunslicks of this group nervous. They all kept their hands in plain sight, and as far away from their guns as could be humanly arranged.

“I ain’t lookin’ for no truck with you, Johnny,” Donnie said, his voice sounding a bit shrill.

“Peel off from your friends, Donnie,” Johnny told him.

“Why?”

“We’re gonna take a ride, just you and me.”

“Where we goin’?”

“To deliver a death message”

“I’ll be damned if I’m goin’!”

Johnny smiled grimly. “Do you prefer dead to damned, Donnie?”

“Huh?”

“You can either ride to the Colby place with me, and tell the widder how you gunned down her man, or you can be taken back to the TF spread…acrost your saddle. It’s up to you, Donnie.”

“They’s five of us, Johnny,” a TF gunhawk said.

“There won’t be when the smoke clears.”

Donnie and the others thought about that for a moment. “I reckon I’ll ride with you, Johnny,” Donnie said.

“Fine. You others hightail it back to the TF. You tell Tilden Franklin that from now on I’ll be workin’ out at Colby’s place. Tell him to keep his ass and your asses off that range. You got all that?”

“Yes, sir, Johnny,” a young TF gunnie said.

“Yes, sir, Mister North!”

“Yes, sir, Mister North!”

“Ride!”

The TF gunnies laid the spurs to their horses and left in a cloud of dust and drumming hooves. None of them was lookin’ forward to delivering this news to Tilden Franklin. But none of them wanted to tangle with Johnny North neither. Lesser of two evils, they figured.

“You ride in front of me, Donnie,” Johnny said. “Move out.”

There was a lot of things Donnie wanted to say. Wisely, he said none of them. Just silently cussed.

5

“There was five of you!” Tilden shouted at the men. “Five of you! I’m paying you men good money, fighting wages. But so far, I’ve seen damn little fighting. But a hell of a lot of running. What does it take to put some backbone in you men?”

The gunslicks stood and took it in silence. Luis Chamba and his sidekicks, Kane and Sanderson, stood by the corner of the big house and smiled at the dressing-down Tilden was giving his gunhands.

When the chastised men had departed, Luis said, “Perhaps, señor, it is time for some night-riding, si?”

Tilden shifted his cold eyes to the Mexican gunfighter. “I’ll pass the word, Luis. You’re in charge. The others take orders from you. Cooriente?”

Luis smiled his reply.

“Make your plans, Luis.”

“This game señor…what are the limits?”

“No limits, Luis. Let the chips fall.”

“I like this game, señor,” Luis said with a smile.

“I rather thought you would,” Tilden said tightly.

Belle Colby stood in her front yard, Bob by her side, and listened to Donnie haltingly tell what had happened. The TF gunslick’s face was flushed with anger, but he told it all, leaving nothing out.

When he had finished, Johnny said, “If I ever see you on this range, Donnie, I’ll kill you. Now ride, punk—ride!”

Donnie wheeled his horse and galloped out.

Bob said, “Are you really Johnny North?”

“Yes. Ma’am?” He looked at Belle. “I’ll be ridin’ over to the Sugarloaf. I should be back by sundown. I’ll bunk in the barn if that’s all right with you.”

“That will be fine, Mister North.”

She had taken the news of her husband’s death calmly. Too calmly for Johnny. He sat his horse and looked at her.

“You’re wondering why I’m behaving in such a calm manner, Mister North?”

“The thought did pass my mind, ma’am.”

“My husband told me before dawn this morning, as he was belting on a gun, that he was going into town. I felt then that I would never see him again. I did my grieving this morning.”

Johnny nodded his head. He sat looking at the woman for a moment longer. Nice-looking woman; kind of trail worn, but that was to be expected, for this was a hard life for a woman. Then he thought of all the dance-hall floozies and hurdy-gurdy girls he had known down through the long and bloody years. Belle Colby, with her worn gingham dress, sunburned face, and work-hardened hands, seemed beautiful compared to them.

Johnny cleared his throat and plopped his hat back on his head. “You gonna need help around here, ma’am,” he said. “If’n it’s all right, I’ll stick around and pull my weight and then some.”

“That would be nice, Mister North,” Belle said with a tired smile. “Yes. I’d like that.”

Johnny returned the smile and wheeled his horse, heading to the Sugarloaf.

The crowd was respectable at Colby’s burying, but not near so many people showed up as had Adam’s planting. Most men, whether they would say it aloud or not—and it was the latter if they were married, felt that Colby had done a damn fool thing. And while most of them didn’t condone what Donnie had done, they probably would not have interfered. They might have done something similar had they been in Colby’s boots, but it would have been done with sawed-off express gun in their hands, not with a pistol in a fast-draw type of situation.

Out here, a man had damned well best know his limitations and capabilities.

And behave accordingly.

Once again the Reverend Ralph Morrow conducted the funeral services, and once again he and Bountiful and lots of others stayed for lunch. That was no problem, for everyone who attended the services had brought some sort of covered dish.

Like hangings, funerals also served as quite a social event.

Louis Longmont was there, all fancied up in a tailored black suit…carefully tailored to hide the shoulder-holster rig he wore under the jacket.

The aging gunfighters were all in attendance, gussied up in their best. They made no attempts to conceal their Colts, wearing them openly, low and tied down.

Pearlie had stayed behind at the Sugarloaf, just in case some TF riders decided to use the occasion to come calling. With a funeral of their own in mind.

Monte Carson and Judge Proctor were there, and so were Hunt and Willow Brook, Colton and Mona Spalding, Haywood and Dana Arden.

Ed Jackson did not show. He figured he might lose a dollar or so by closing down his store.

Besides, Ed felt that Colby had gotten exactly what he deserved. And the next time he saw that Smoke Jensen, Ed just might give him a good piece of his mind about the totally uncalled-for beating of a fine man like Tilden Franklin. Well…he’d think about doing that, anyways.

“Going to stay on up here for a time?” Monte asked Johnny.

“Thought I might. Belle has her hands full all day just tryin’ to look after Velvet, and I think me and Bob can pretty well handle it. And some of them old gunslingers come over from time to time, Belle says. Them old boys know a lot about farming and such.”

Monte and Judge Proctor said their goodbyes to Belle and returned to Fontana.

By late afternoon, most of those attending had left for home, since many had traveled miles to get there. About half of the old gunslicks had left, returning to the Sugarloaf to give Pearlie a break.

Louis had returned with Monte and Judge Proctor, riding a magnificent black stallion.

“Like to ride over and spend the night at our place?” Smoke asked Reverend Morrow. “It’s a lot closer than town, and we have the room. ’Sides, I’d like Sally and Bountiful to get to know each other.”

After consulting with his wife, the young couple agreed. Those returning to the Sugarloaf made their way slowly homeward, Smoke and Sally and Ralph and Bountiful in buckboards, the rest on horseback.

“It’s so beautiful up here,” Bountiful said, squeezing her husband’s arm. “So peaceful and lovely and quiet. I think I would like to live up here.”

“Might have a hard time supporting a church up here, Bountiful.”

“Yes, that’s true. But you could do what you’ve always wanted to do, Ralph.”

He looked at her, beautiful in the sunlight that filtered through the trees alongside the narrow road.

“You would be content with that, Bountiful? A part-time preacher and a full-time farmer?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure of several things, Ralph. One is that I’m not cut out to be a preacher’s wife. I love you, but that isn’t enough. Secondly, I’m not so sure you’re cut out to be a preacher.”

“It’s that obvious, Bountiful?”

“Ralph, nothing happened back East. It was a harmless flirtation and nothing more. I think you’ve always known that. Haven’t you?”

“I suspected. I should have whipped that scoundrel’s ass while I was feeling like it.”

He spoke the words without realizing what he had really said.

Bountiful started laughing.

“What is so…” Then Ralph grinned, flushed, and joined his wife in laughter.

“Ralph, you’re a good, decent man. I think you’re probably the finest man I have ever known. But you went into the ministry out of guilt. And I think that is the wrong reason for choosing this vocation. Look at us, Ralph. Listen to what we’re saying. We’ve never talked like this before. Isn’t it funny, odd, that we should be doing so now?”

“Perhaps it’s the surroundings.” And for a moment, Ralph’s thought went winging back in time, back almost eight years, when he was a bare-knuckle fighter enjoying no small amount of fame in the ring, open-air and smokers.

The young man he’d been fighting that hot afternoon was good and game, but no match for Ralph. But back then, winning was all that Ralph had on his mind, that and money. And he was making lots of money, both fighting and gambling. The fight had gone on for more than thirty rounds, which was no big deal to Ralph, who had fought more than ninety rounds more than once.

And then Ralph had seen his opportunity and had taken it, slamming a vicious left-right combination to the young man’s head.

The young man had dropped to the canvas. And had never again opened his eyes. The fighter had died several days later.

Ralph Morrow had never stepped into another ring after that.

He and Bountiful had known each other since childhood, and it was taken for granted by all concerned that they would some day marry. Bountiful’s parents were relieved when Ralph quit the ring. Bountiful was a bit miffed, but managed to conceal it.

Both had known but had never, until now, discussed the obvious fact that Ralph simply was not cut out to be a minister.

“What are you thinking, Ralph?”

“About the death I caused.”

“It could just as easily have been you, Ralph,” she reminded him. “You’ve told me a thousand times that the fight was fair and you both were evenly matched. It’s over, Ralph. It’s been over. Stop dwelling on it and get on with the matter of living.”

Quite unlike the strait-laced minister, he leaned over and gave Bountiful a smooch on the cheek. She blushed while the old gunfighters, riding alongside the buckboards, grinned and pretended not to notice.

After supper, the young couples sat outside the cabin, enjoying the cool air and talking.

“How many acres do you have, Smoke?” Ralph asked.

“I don’t really know. That valley yonder,” he said, pointing to the Sugarloaf, “is five miles long and five miles wide. I do know we’ve filed on and bought another two thousand acres that we plan to farm. Right now we’re only farming a very small portion of it. Hay and corn mostly. Right over there—” again he pointed, “is seven hundred and fifty acres of prime farm land just sittin’ idle. I think we overbought some.”

“That acreage is just over that little hill?” Bountiful asked.

“Yes,” Sally said, hiding a smile, for it was obvious that the minister and his wife were interested in buying land.

“We’ll ride over in the morning and take a look at it, if you’d like,” Smoke suggested.

“Do you have a proper saddle for Bountiful?” Ralph asked.

“We’re about the same size,” Sally told him. “She can wear some of my jeans and ride astride.”

Bountiful fanned her suddenly hot face. She had never had on a pair of men’s britches in her life. But…this was the West. Besides, who would see her?

“I don’t know whether that would be proper for a minister’s wife,” Ralph objected.

“Don’t be silly!” Sally said, sticking out her chin. “If it’s all right for a man, why should it be objectionable for a woman to wear britches?”

“Well…” Ralph said weakly. Forceful women tended to somewhat frighten him.

“Have you ever read anything by Susan B. Anthony, Bountiful?” Sally asked.

“Oh, yes! I think she’s wonderful, don’t you?”

“Yes. As well as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. You just wait, Bountiful. Some day women will be on an equal footing with men.”

“Lord save us all!” Smoke said with a laugh. He shut up when Sally gave him a dark look.

“Do you think the time will come when women will be elected to Congress?” Bountiful asked.

Ralph sat stunned at the very thought.

Smoke sat grinning.

“Oh my, yes! But first we have to work very hard to get the vote. That will come only if we women band together and work very hard for it.”

“Let’s do that here!” Bountiful said, clapping her hands.

“Fine!” Sally agreed.

“But how?” Bountiful sobered.

“Well…my mother knows Susan B. very well. They went to school together in Massachusetts. I’ll post a letter to Mother and she can write Miss Anthony. Then we’ll see.”

“Wonderful!” Bountiful cried. “I’m sure Willow and Mona and Dana would be delighted to help us.”

Smoke rolled a cigarette and smiled at the expression on Ralph’s face. The man looked as though he might faint at any moment.

The ladies rose and went chattering off into the cabin.

“My word!” Ralph managed to blurt out.

Smoke laughed at him.

“Boss!” Pearlie stilled the laughter and sobered the moment. “Look yonder.” He pointed.

In the dusk of fast-approaching evening, the western sky held a small, faint glow.

“What is that?” Ralph asked. “A forest fire?”

“No,” Smoke said, rising. “That’s Peyton’s place. Tilden’s hands have fired it.”

6

There was nothing Smoke could do. Peyton’s spread was a good twenty-five miles away from Sugarloaf, his range bordering Tilden’s holdings.

It was not long before the fire’s glow had softened, and then faded completely out.

“Peyton refused our offer of help,” Buttermilk said. “Some of us offered to stay over thar with him. But he turned us down flat.”

“We’ll ride over in the morning,” Smoke said. “At first light. There is nothing we can do this evening.”

“Except wonder what is happening over there,” Ralph stated.

“And how many funerals you gonna have to hold,” Luke added.

Peyton, his wife June, and their kids had been forced to retreat into the timber when it became obvious they were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. The family had made it out of the burning, smoking area with the clothes on their backs and nothing else.

They had lain quietly in the deep timber and watched their life’s work go up, or down, in fire. They had watched as the hooded men shot all the horses, the pigs, and then set the barn blazing. The corral had been pulled down by ropes, the garden trampled under the hooves of horses. The Peyton family was left with nothing. Nothing at all.

They could not even tell what spread the men had come from, for the horses had all worn different or altered brands.

The family lay in the timber long after the night-riders had gone. They were not hurt, not physically, but something just as important had been damaged: their spirit.

“I tried to be friends with Tilden,” Peyton said. “I went over to his place and spoke with him. He seemed to be reasonable enough, thanked me for coming over. Now this.”

“They turned the wagon over,” June said, her eyes peering into the darkness. “Broke off one wheel. But that can be fixed. There’s lots of land to be had just north of here. I won’t live like this,” she warned. “I will not. And I mean that.”

“I got a little money. I can buy some horses. We’ll see what we can salvage in the morning.”

“Nothing,” June said bitterly. “Nothing at all.”

“And you don’t have any idea who they were?” Smoke asked Peyton.

Dawn had broken free of the mountains only an hour before. Smoke and some of his old gunhawks had left the Sugarloaf hours before first light, stopping along the way at the other small spreads.

“No,” Peyton said, a note of surrender in his voice.

The Apache Kid returned from his tracking. “Headin’ for the TF spread,” he said. “Just as straight as an arrow that’s where they’re headin’.”

“So?” June demanded, her hands on her hips. “So what? Prove that them riders come from the TF. And then even if you do that, see what the law will do about it.”

“Now, June,” Peyton said.

The woman turned around and walked off, her dress dirty and soot-covered.

“What are you gonna do?” Smoke asked Peyton.

“Pull out. What else is there to do?”

“We’ll help you rebuild, just like we’re doing with Wilbur Mason.”

“And then what?” Peyton demanded. “What happens after that? I’ll tell you,” he blurted out. “The same thing all over again. No. I’ll find me some horses, fix that busted wheel, and take off. This land ain’t worth dyin’ over, Smoke. It just ain’t.”

“That’s not what you told me a few weeks back.”

“I changed my mind,” the man replied sullenly. “I don’t feel like jawin’ about it no more. My mind is made up. We’re taking what we can salvage and pullin’ out. Headin’ up north of here. See you men.” He turned and walked off, catching up with his wife.

“Let him go,” Charlie said to Smoke. “He’s not goin’ to last anywhere out here. First time a drought hits him, he’ll pack up and pull out. The locust come, he’ll head out agin, always lookin’ for an easy life. But he’ll never find it. You know yourself it takes a hard man to make it out here. Peyton’s weak, so’s his woman. And them kids are whiners. He’ll leave the land pretty soon, I’m figurin’. He’ll get him a job in some little store, sellin’ shoes and ribbons, and pretty soon he’ll find something wrong with that job. But it ain’t never gonna be his fault. It’ll always be the fault of someone else. Forget him, Smoke. He ain’t got no good sand bottom to him.”

Smoke hated to say it, but he felt Charlie was right in his assessment of Peyton. Tilden had burned Wilbur Mason out; that had just made Wilbur and his family all the more determined to stay and fight.

“Good luck, Peyton!” Smoke called.

The man did not even turn around. Just waved his hand and kept on walking.

Somehow that gesture, or lack of it, made Smoke mad as hell. He wondered if he’d ever see Peyton or his family again. He thought, if he didn’t, he wouldn’t lose any sleep over the loss.

The few other small rancher-farmers in the high country met that afternoon on a plateau just about halfway between Smoke’s Sugarloaf and the beginning of the TF range. And it was, for the most part, a quiet, subdued gathering of men.

Mike Garrett and his two hands; Wilbur Mason and Bob Colby; Ray Johnson and his hired hand; Nolan Edwards and his two oldest boys; Steve Matlock, Smoke and his gunhands.

And Reverend Ralph Morrow, wearing a pair of jeans and checkered shirt.

“Ralph is gonna buy some land from me,” Smoke explained. “Farm some and ranch a little. Preach part time. The minister come up with a pretty good idea, I’m thinking. But we’ll get to his idea in a minute. Anybody got any objections to Ralph joinin’ our group?”

“I ain’t got no objections,” Ray said. “I’m just wonderin’ if, him bein a preacher and all, will he fight?”

Ralph stepped forward. “Some of you might know me. For five years, I went by another name. I fought under the name of the Cincinnati Kid.”

Matlock snapped his fingers. “I read about you in the Gazette. You kilt a man…ah…”

He trailed off into an uncomfortable silence.

“Yes,” Ralph said. “I killed a man with my fists. I didn’t mean to, but I did. As to whether I’ll fight. Yes. For my family, my land, my friends. I’ll fight.”

And everyone there believed him. Still, one had to say, “But, Reverend Morrow, you’re a minister; you can’t go around shootin’ folks!”

Ralph smiled…rather grimly. “Smoke and Charlie and some of the boys are going to help me build my cabin, first thing in the morning. You let some sucker come around and start trouble, you’ll see how fast I’ll shoot him.”

The laughter helped to relieve the tension.

And Reverend Ralph Morrow suddenly became just “one of the boys.”

“How about that other idea, Smoke?” Wilbur asked.

Smoke walked to the edge of the flats. He pointed down at the road. “That road, right there, connects Danner and Signal Hill. Seven, eight miles further down, you got to cut south to get to Fontana. Right?”

All agreed that was true. So?

“Pearlie is ridin’ hard to the county seat right now. The Reverend and his wife, Bountiful, come up with this idea at noonin’. Right here, boys, right here on this plateau, but back yonder a ways, there’s gonna be a town. We don’t need Fontana. The land the town will be built on is gonna be filed on by Pearlie; he’s carrying the money to buy some of it outright. When that surveyor was through here last year, he left a bunch of his markings and such at the house. Never did come back for them. Sally remembered ’em this morning. Everything is gonna he legal and right. My wife is puttin’ up the money to build a large general store. I figure that once I explain it all to Louis Longmont, he’ll see the humor in it and drop some of his money in. I’m hopin’ he will. Pretty sure. Pearlie is carryin’ a letter to the bank at the county seat; me and my wife have some money there.” He grinned. “She has a heap more than I do. Wilbur Mason and his wife is gonna run the store for us. Wilbur owned a store back east of here at one time. So they both know what to do.

“Day after tomorrow, there’s gonna be wagons rolling in here. Lumber, and a lot of it. We’re gonna have several buildings here, including a sheriff’s office and a jail.”

Everybody was grinning now. Some of the men were laughing outright.

“We’re gonna have a saloon, ’cause you all know that a saloon is just as much a meetin’ place as it is a place to drink. We’re gonna have us a cafe, with home-cookin’. The women will see to that. It’ll bring in some money—and I know you all could use that. A church too, where we can all go to services come Sunday morning. And…a school. Both Sally and Bountiful are schoolmarms. And I’m gonna tell y’all something: once the wives of Beaconfield and Jackson hear about this town, with a church and proper schoolhouse, don’t you think they won’t be putting the pressure on their husbands to lean toward us.”

“Who’s gonna be the sheriff?” Matlock asked.

“Charlie Starr,” Smoke said with a grin. “He’s still got an old badge he wore some years back down close to Durango. I think he’d make a damned good one. Any objections?”

None.

“Now we want this to be kept secret as long as possible. Soon as the wagons start rolling in, though, the cat’s gonna be out of the bag. But by that time, there won’t be a damned thing Tilden Franklin can do about it except cuss. Now here is something else. There ain’t no post office in Fontana. Never has been. We’ve always had to ride over to either Danner or Signal Hill to the post office. We can post a letter on the stage that comes through Fontana, but that don’t always mean it’ll get where it’s goin’. Sally wrote a letter this morning to the proper people up in Denver and also to her folks who have a lot of high-up connections back East. So I think we’ll get us a post office.

“Now the name. That come pretty easy too. Last evenin’, as Ralph and Bountiful was ridin’ along, talkin’, they come to this point, right down there.” He pointed. “And she said, ‘Oh, look at that beautiful big rock’.”

Smoke grinned. “Big Rock. Big Rock, Colorado!”

7

“The son of a bitch is doing what?” Tilden Franklin screamed the question at Clint.

“Buildin’ a town,” Clint said woefully. “Big Rock, Colorado.”

Tilden sat down. “Well, he can’t do that,” he said with something very close to a pout. “I done built a town. A proper one.”

“Maybe he can’t, Boss. But somebody forgot to tell him that. Him and that goddamned preacher and their wives. And lemme tell you something about that preacher man. He’s done up and bought some land from Smoke Jensen and his cabin is damn near complete. And maybe you oughta know this too: that preacher is more than just a preacher. He fought for some years under the name of the Cincinnati Kid.”

Tilden stared at his foreman as if the man had lost his mind. Then he slowly nodded his head. “I read about him. He killed a man with his fists right before he was scheduled to fight…somebody big-named. Iron Mike or something like that. What’s the point of all this, Clint? What does Jensen hope to prove by it?”

Clint sat down, rather wearily, and plopped his hat down on the floor beside the chair. “Damned if I know, Boss. I figured with his reputation, when we burned Mason out, he’d come shootin’. He didn’t. I figured when we…they done it to Velvet and killed Adam, Smoke would come a-shootin’. He didn’t. Luis and his bunch burned out Peyton. And Smoke builds him a town. I can’t figure it.”

“I won’t even ask if the town is legal.”

“It’s legal, and that Lawyer Hunt Brook and his wife done moved his practice out of Fontana and up to Big Rock. I spied on them some this morning. Then I nosed around Big Rock myself. That’s a mighty fine store that’s goin’ up. And the smells from that cafe got my mouth waterin’. Some of the nesters’ wives and older girls is doin’ the cookin’. And them miners is swarmin’ all over the place. They got ’em a saloon too. Big Rock Saloon. No games, no girls. A nice church and school combination goin’ up too. And a jail.”

“And I guess they elected themselves a sheriff, did they?”

“Shore did. Charlie Starr is the sheriff, and Luke Nations is his deputy.”

Tilden pounded his fists on the desk and cursed. He looked and behaved like a very large, spoiled, and petulant child.

Clint waited patiently. He had seen his boss act like this before.

When Tilden had calmed down, Clint said, “Herds look good.”

Tilden fixed him with a baleful look. “That’s wonderful, Clint. I can’t tell you how impressed I am. I’m making thousands of dollars a week on gold shares. I should be making several more thousands in kickbacks, except that goddamned sheriff I put into office has turned holy-roller on me. I am paying several thousands of dollars a month for some of the finest gunhands in the West, and they can’t seem to rid the country of one Smoke Jensen. The son of a bitch rides all over the country, usually by himself, and my so-called gunslicks can’t or won’t, tackle him.”

Clint sat quietly, knowing his boss was not yet through.

“Now Johnny North has taken up with a damned nester woman. Judge Proctor hasn’t had a drink in weeks; he’s turned just as righteous as Monte Carson. My men are afraid, afraid, to go into my goddamn town!”

Tilden rose from behind his desk to pace the study. He turned to face Clint’s back.

“Turn around and look at me!” he ordered. “Tell Luis to take his men into town and rid it of Monte and Proctor. Right now, Clint. Right now!”

Clint retrieved his hat and stood up. “Boss,” he said patiently. “Are you talkin’ about treein’ a town?”

“Exactly.”

Clint sighed and shook his head. He wished Tilden would get Smoke Jensen out of his mind and just get on with the business of ranching. The big foreman wished a lot of things, but he knew that Smoke Jensen had become an obsession with Tilden. He wasn’t even talkin’ much about Sally no more. His hatred of Smoke had nearly consumed the man.

And Clint felt—no, knew—somehow that Tilden wasn’t goin’ to win this fight. Oh, he would succeed in runnin’ out the nesters who were weak to begin with. Like Peyton. But Peyton was long gone. And them that remained was the tough ones. Not cold-eyed tough like Luis Chamba and Kane and Sanderson and Valentine and Suggs and them other gunslicks Tilden had on the payroll, but tough like with stayin’ power.

And now Tilden wanted to tree a Western town. He lifted his eyes, meeting the just-slightly-mad eyes of Tilden Franklin.

“Are you not capable of giving those orders, Clint?”

“Don’t push on me, Boss,” Clint warned. “Don’t do it.”

Tilden’s face softened a bit. “Clint…we’ve been together for years. We’ve spent more than a third of our lifetimes together. We’ve had rough times before. You own ten percent of this ranch. You could have taken your profits and left years ago, started your own spread, but you stayed with me. Just stay with me a while longer, you’ll see. Things will be like they were years ago.”

“Boss, things ain’t never gonna be like they was. Not ever agin.”

Tilden picked up a vase and hurled it against a far wall, breaking the vase, showering the carpet with bits of broken ceramic. “It will!” he screamed. “You’ll see, Clint. Just get rid of Smoke Jensen and those nesters will fold up and slink away. Now get out, Clint. Carry out my orders. Get out, damn you!”

Crazy! Clint thought. He ain’t just obsessed…he’s plumb crazy. He’s the one who’s livin’ in a house of cards. Not them nesters, but Tilden Franklin.

“All right, Boss,” Clint said. There was a different note in his voice, a note that Tilden should have picked up on. But he didn’t. “Fine. I’ll get out.”

Clint left the big house and stood for a moment on the front porch. His eyes swept the immediate holdings of Tilden Franklin. Thousands and thousands of acres. Too goddamn much for one man, and that silly bastard isn’t content with it. He wants more.

But not with my help.

Clint walked to his own quarters and began packing. He would take only what he had to have to travel light. One pack horse. Clint had money. Being a very frugal man, he had banked most of his salary and the profits from selling the cows over the years.

He smiled, not a pleasant smile. Tilden didn’t know that he owned land up on the Gunnison, up near Blue Mesa. Owned it under the name of Matthew Harrison. Everybody around here knew him as Clint Harris. He’d changed his name as a snot-nosed boy, when he’d run off from his home down in Texas, after he’d shot his abusive stepfather. Clint never knew whether he’d killed the man, or not. He’d just taken off.

And that was what he was going to do now. Just take off.

The foreman—no! he corrected that—ex-foreman…had not had a good night’s sleep since that…awfulness with Velvet Colby. He sat down at his rough-hewn desk and slowly wrote out instructions on a piece of paper. Finished with the letter, he walked to the door and opened it, calling for a puncher to get over there.

“Billy, can you read and write?”

“Yes, sir, Mister Clint,” the cowboy said. “I finished sixth grade.”

“Fine. Come on in.” With the cowboy inside Clint’s quarters, Clint pointed to the letter. “Sign your name where it says Witness.”

“Yes, sir, Mister Clint.” The cowboy did not read the letter; that wasn’t none of his business. He signed his name. “You want me to date this, Mister Clint?”

“Yes. Good thought, Billy.”

After Billy had gone, Clint looked around his spartan living quarters. Looked around for one last time. He could see nothing left that he wished to take. Outside, he rigged the pack horse and swung onto his own horse. Looking around, he spotted several punchers just down from the high country. They walked over to him.

“Where you goin’, Mister Clint?” a puncher called Rosie asked.

“Haulin’ my ashes, Rosie. And if you got any sense about you, you will too.” He looked at the others. “All of you.”

“You got a new job, Mister Clint?” a cowboy named Austin asked.

“Yeah, I do, Austin. And I’m hirin’ punchers. I’m payin’ forty a month and found. You interested?”

They all were.

Clint figured he could run his place with four hands, including himself. At least for a time.

“Pack your warbags, boys. And do it quiet-like. Meet me just north of Big Rock, south of Slumgullion Pass.”

He swung his horse’s head and moved out.

The punchers moved quietly to the bunkhouse and packed their meager possessions. One by one, they moved out, about thirty minutes behind Clint. None of them knew why the foreman was pullin’ out. But with Clint gone, damned if they was gonna stay around with all these lazy-assed, overpaid gunhands.

As they rode over and out of TF range, they met other TF punchers—not hired guns, cowboys. The punchers looked at those leaving, put it all together, and one by one, silently at first, made their plans to pull out.

“I ain’t seen my momma in nigh on three years,” one said. “I reckon it’s time to head south.”

“I got me a pard works over on the Saguache,” another said. “Ain’t seen him in two, three years. It’s time to move on anyway.”

“I know me a widder woman who owns a right-nice little farm up near Georgetown,” yet another cowboy said. “I’m tared of lookin’ at the ass end of cows. I think I’ll just head up thataway.”

“I ain’t never seed the ocean,” another cowboy lamented. “I think I’ll head west.”

Clint rode into Big Rock and tied his horses at the post outside the Big Rock Saloon. As he was stepping up onto the still-raw-smelling boardwalk, he saw Johnny North and that Belle Colby woman coming out of the general store. They stopped to chat with Lawyer Hunt Brook.

Clint removed his gunbelt and walked slowly over to them. Johnny saw the man coming at him and instinctively slipped the thongs off the hammers of his Colts. Then he noticed that Clint was not armed. His eyes found the pack horse.

“What the hell…” he muttered.

Clint had some papers in his right hand.

Clint stopped about twenty-five feet from the trio. “I’m friendly,” he said.

“Come on,” Johnny said.

Clint held the papers out to Belle. Slowly, she took them. Clint said, “It won’t make up for what was done to your daughter and your husband, but it’s something I’d like to do.” He turned and walked back to his horses.

Belle, Johnny, and Hunt watched him swing into the saddle and ride out of their lives.

“Let me see those papers, Belle,” Hunt said. The lawyer quickly scanned first one paper, then the others—older, slightly yellowing around the edges. He began to smile.

“What is it, Mister Brook?” Belle asked.

“Why, Belle…you own ten percent of the TF Ranch. I think you have just become a very wealthy woman.”

Tilden called for his houseboy.

“Yes, sir?”

“Get Clint for me, boy.”

“Yes, sir.”

The houseboy returned a few minutes later. “Sir? Mister Clint is gone.”

“Gone…where, damnit?”

“He packed up and rode out. His quarters is empty, and so is the bunkhouse. Old Ramon at the stable says all the punchers packed up and left. Following Mister Clint.”

“Get out!” Tilden said, real menace in his voice.

“Yes, sir,” the houseboy said. “I most certainly will do that, Mister Tilden.”

Thirty minutes later, the servant had packed his kit and was walking toward Fontana.

In his study, Tilden called for his houseboy. “Bring me a cup of coffee, boy!”

The big house creaked in empty silence.

“Boy!” Tilden roared. “You bring me a cup of coffee or I’ll take a whip to your lazy greaser ass!”

Silence. And Tilden Franklin, the man who would be king, knew he was alone in his large, fine home.

He walked to a large window and looked out. His thoughts were savage. “I’m gonna kill you, Jensen. I’m gonna bring Fontana to its knees first. Then I’m gonna burn your goddamn Big Rock to the ground. Then I’m gonna kill you and have your woman.”

He walked to a rack and took down his gunbelt, buckling it around his hips. He put his hat on his head and walked outside.

“Ramon?” he yelled.

“Si, señor?” the old man called.

“Bring me my horse. Then you find your mule and get Luis for me.”

“Si, señor.” Son of a bitch! he silently added.

8

The houseboy heard the thundering of hooves long before he saw them. He did not know what they meant, other than a lot of riders were in a big hurry. He shifted his heavy satchel to his other hand and trudged on, walking along the side of the rutted dirt road. As the thunder grew louder, he turned around, fear and panic on his face.

“Ride the insubordinate bastard down!” he heard Tilden Franklin scream, his voice just carrying over the steel-shod thunder.

The houseboy tried to run. He dropped his belongings and leaped to one side. He was too slow.

The rushing shoulder of a horse hit him in the back, tossing him to the road. Pain filled him as he heard his bones break. He looked up in time to see Tilden’s crazed face and his stallion rear up, the hooves flashing in the hard sunlight.

The houseboy screamed.

His screaming was cut off as the steel hooves came down on his face, crushing his skull. The riders galloped on, leaving the houseboy lying in the road, his blood staining and dampening the dust.

They were fifty-odd strong, drunk not with alcohol, but with the power given them by Tilden Franklin. Raw, unbridled, killing power. He was paying them good money, and offering them immunity and total impunity.

From the law. None of them was taking Smoke Jensen into consideration as any form of punishment. They should have.

One deputy saw them coming hard and ran for his horse. He hauled his ashes, leaving everything he owned behind him in Fontana. If it ever calmed down, he might be back. If not, to hell with it!

Yet another deputy, nicknamed Stonewall, saw the riders coming and ran across the street to the sheriff’s office. “Monte!” he hollered, jumping into the office and running to the shotgun rack. “Tilden and his gunhawks comin’ fast. Get ready.”

A third deputy ran inside the office-jail just as gunfire ripped the street. Like Monte and Stonewall, he grabbed a Greener from off the rack and stuffed his pockets full of shells

“Take the back, Dave,” Monte said, his voice calm. “Where are the others?”

“I seen Slim haulin’ his ashes outta here,” Dave told him. “I think Joel is out in the county somewheres servin’ a notice from Judge Proctor.”

“Stay calm,” Monte told his men. “We got some food, and we got a pump for water. Tilden wanted this place built of stone for strength, so that’s gonna work agin him. It’d take a cannon to bring these walls down.”

“Hey!” a miner back in lockup hollered. “What about me?”

“Turn him loose and give him a shotgun,” Monte ordered. “If he tried to get of here, those gunnies would cut him to rags.”

The miner looked out at the angry group of heavily armed riders. “Who the hell is all them people?”

“That’s your buddy, Tilden Franklin, and his gunhands,” Stonewall told him. “Would you like to go out and kiss him hello?”

“Would you like to kiss another part of me?” the miner challenged.

Stonewall laughed and handed the man a sawed-off shotgun and a sack of shells.

Monte called out through an open but barred window “As Sheriff I am ordering you to break this up and leave this town or you’ll all be under arrest.”

“That’s gonna be a good trick,” Dave muttered.

A TF gunhand made the mistake of firing into the jail. Monte lifted his express gun and blew the rider clear out of the saddle.

The street erupted in gunfire, the hard exchange returned from those in the fortlike jail.

Blood dropped onto the dusty street as the shotguns cleared half a dozen saddles of living flesh, depositing dead, dying, and badly wounded men into the dirt.

Monte reloaded his express gun and lined up a gunhand he knew only as Blackie. He gave Blackie both barrels full of buckshot. The double charge lifted the gunhand out of the saddle, a hole in his chest so large it would take a hat to cover it.

The screaming of frightened and bucking horses filled the gunsmoke air. The riders were hard pressed to control their mounts, much less do any fighting.

Louis Longmont stepped out of his gaming tent, a Colt in each hand. As calmly as in a seconded duel, Louis lifted first one Colt and then the other, firing coolly and with much deliberation. He emptied two saddles and then paused, not wanting to shoot a horse.

The man who owned and cooked at the Good Eats Cafe stepped out of his place with a Sharps .50. The man, a Civil War veteran with four hard years of fighting as a Union cavalryman, lifted the Sharps and emptied yet another saddle.

Big Mamma ran out of her place and literally jerked one gunhand off his horse. She began smashing his face with big, hard fists, beating the man into bloody unconsciousness.

Billy, up in the loft of the stable with his newly bought .22 caliber rifle, grinned as he took careful aim at the big man on the big horse. Gently he squeezed the trigger.

And shot Tilden Franklin smack in one cheek of his ass.

With a roar of rage, Tilden wheeled his horse around and took off at a gallop, out of town, the gunhands following closely.

Nobody treed a Western town in the 1870s. Nobody. Nearly every man in every town was a combat veteran of some war, whether it be against Indians, outlaws, the Union Blue, or the Rebel Gray. But nobody treed a Western town.

Two years prior to the formation of Fontana, back in September of 1876, Jesse James and his outlaw gang had tried to collar Northfield, Minnesota. They were shot to rags by the townspeople.

The dust settled slowly, and a quiet settled over Fontana. Only the moaning of the badly wounded TF gunslicks could be heard. Doctor Spalding came wheeling up in his buggy, sliding to a halt in the street. His unbelieving eyes took in the carnage before him. He began counting. He stopped at ten, knowing there were several more scattered about in the dirt and dust.

Monte and his deputies stepped out of the jail building. “Get ’em patched up, Doc,” he said. “Them that is able, bunk ’em in yonder.” He jerked his thumb toward the jail. “You!” His eyes found a man lounging about. “Git the undertaker on down here.”

The photographer was coming at an awkward run, his tripod-and-hood camera-and-flash container a cumbersome burden. He set up and began taking pictures.

“Sheriff!” Doc Spalding called. “Most of these men are dead. Several more are not going to make it much longer.”

“Good,” Monte said. “Saves the town the expense of a trial.”

Tilden Franklin lay on his belly, in bed, while the old camp cook probed and poked at his buttock, finally cutting out the small .22 slug. He dropped the bloody pellet into a pan.

“Somebody was a-funnin’ you with that thing,” the cook observed.

Tilden swore, loud and long.

News of the attempted collaring of Fontana was quick to reach Big Rock and the small spreads scattered out from it. When Smoke took the news to Ralph, the minister sat down on a log he was hewing and laughed.

“Billy shot Tilden Franklin in the ass!” he hollered, then started laughing again.

Bountiful came on the run, sure something was wrong with her husband. Sally was with her. The ladies had been working, making a list of prospective members for the Big Rock Women for Equal Rights Club.

“What’s wrong?” Bountiful asked.

“Billy shot Tilden Franklin in his big ass!” Ralph again hollered, then bent over with laughter.

The laughter was infectious; soon they were all howling and wiping their eyes.

Judge Proctor was furious. Since he had begun his program of alcohol abstention, he had realized he was supposed to help maintain law and order, not make a mockery of it by drunken antics.

The judge signed arrest warrants for Tilden Franklin and as many of the TF gunslicks that people on the street could recall being present during the shooting spree.

Louis Longmont put up five thousand dollars reward for the arrest and conviction of Tilden Franklin, and the judge had Haywood’s printing press cranking out wanted posters for Tilden Franklin. He then had them posted throughout the county.

Louis thought it all hysterically amusing.

Now everybody, or most everybody, knew that no one was really going to try to arrest Tilden Franklin. Or, for that matter, any of the TF gunhawks. But it did keep them out of Fontana and Big Rock and, for the most part, confined to the TF ranges. Punching cattle. Which pissed off the gunslicks mightily.

“You got no choice,” Tilden said to his new foreman, Luis Chamba. Tilden was unshaven, and sitting on a pillow. “Not if you want to stay alive. All them damned old gunslingers have ringed my range. They’re just waiting for you or me or some of the others to step off of this range. Anyway, what are you boys bitching about? You’re all drawing top wages for sitting around really doing nothing.” Tilden did manage a rueful smile. “Except herdin’ beeves, that is.”

Luis did not see the humor in it. He stalked out of the great house. But Luis was no fool. He knew that, for the time being, he was stuck. Herding cattle.

And then two things happened that would forever alter the histories of Fontana and Big Rock and the lives of most of those who called them home.

Belle Colby, accompanied by Johnny North and Lawyer Hunt Brook, claimed her ten percent of the TF.

And Utah Slim finally made his move, setting out to do what he had been paid to do.

Kill Smoke Jensen.

9

“Riders coming, Boss!” Luis Chamba hollered through an open window of the large home.

“Who are they?” Tilden shouted returning the holler. He was sitting in his study, drinking whiskey. The interior of the home was as nasty as Tilden Franklin’s unwashed body and unshaven face.

“Can’t tell yet,” the gunslinger called. “But there’s a woman in a buckboard, I can tell that much.”

Tilden heaved himself up and out of his chair. For a moment, the big man swayed unsteadily on his booted feet. He stumbled to a water basin and washed his face. Lifting his dripping face, he stared into a mirror. He was shocked at his appearance. A very prideful man, Tilden had always been a neat dresser and almost fastidious when it came to washing his body.

He could smell his own body odors wafting up to assail his nostrils. With a grimace, he called to Luis.

“Tell them I’ll be out in fifteen minutes, Luis.”

“Si, Boss.”

Hurriedly, Tilden washed himself best he could out back of the great house and toweled himself dry. He had water on the stove heating for shaving. He shaved, very carefully, noting his shaking hands. Somehow, he managed not to nick his face.

For some reason, his crazed mind felt that the woman in the buckboard was Sally Jensen, coming to see him.

Tilden splashed Bay Rum on his face and sprinkled some on his body, then dressed in clean clothes. He was shocked when he stepped out onto the porch and saw it was not Sally Jensen.

The woman was Belle Colby. With her was Johnny North, the lawyer Hunt Brook, Sheriff Monte Carson, and someone Tilden had never seen before. A man dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and string tie. His face was tanned and his eyes were hard. A drooping moustache.

He cleared up who he was in a hurry. “My name is Mitchell,” he said. “United States Marshal. I don’t know who started the war in this part of the country, Franklin, and I don’t much care. But I’m delivering two messages today. One to you, another to Smoke Jensen. The war is over. If I have to come back in here, I’ll bring the Army with me and declare a state of martial law. You understand all that?”

“Yes…sir,” Tilden said, the words bitter on his tongue. He glared at Carson.

“Fine,” Mitchell said. “Now then, Lawyer Brook is here representing Mrs. Colby. Me and Sheriff Carson will just sit here and see that the lady gets her due.”

“Her…due?” Tilden questioned.

Briefly, Hunt Brook explained. He further explained that the papers given Belle Colby were now part of court records.

“I want to see your books, Mister Franklin,” Hunt told Tilden. “When that is done, I shall determine how much is owed Mrs. Colby. She has confided in me that she is willing to sell her ten percent back to you. Once a fair price is determined. By me. Shall we get to it, Mister Franklin?”

Speaking through an almost blind rage, Tilden started to choke out his reply. Then some small bit of reason crept into his mind. He did not want these people inside his smelly house. That would not look good, and the word would get around.

“I’ll get my books. We’ll go over them on the porch. All right?”

“Fine, Mister Franklin,” the lawyer said.

Luis Chamba had discreetly disappeared into the bunk house. He had known who Mitchell was at first sighting. And while the Mexican gunfighter felt he could best him, no one in their right mind killed a federal marshal. He told his men to stay low and out of sight.

Chamba felt, along with many of the other gunhands, that Tilden Franklin had just about come to the end of his string. But as long as he could pay the money, they would stay. Anyways, Luis wanted his chance at Smoke Jensen. Now that the elusive gunfighter had finally surfaced, a lot of gunslicks wanted to try their skills against his.

Tilden was seething as the lawyer went over his books. As far as the money went, the money to buy out Belle Colby, Tilden had that much in his safe inside the house. It wasn’t the money. It was the fact that Clint had given his percentage to this trashy nester woman. Husband not even cold in the grave and she was probably hunchin’ and bumpin’ the gunslinger Johnny North. Trash, that’s all she was.

Tilden listened as the lawyer quoted an absurdly high figure. But Tilden wasn’t going to quibble about it. He just wanted his holdings intact, and this hard-eyed U.S. marshal out of the area. Mitchell was damn sure wrong on one count, though: the war was not over. Not by a long shot.

“All right,” Tilden said, agreeing to the figure.

The lawyer reached into his case and handed Tilden what the man knew was a binding note. He signed it, Belle signed it, and then Mitchell and North both witnessed it. Belle Colby was now a woman of some means.

Tilden Franklin sat in a chair and watched them leave. Slowly, the gunfighters began to once more gather around the porch.

“Play it close to the vest for a time,” Tilden said. “Let that damned marshal get clear of this area. Then you’ll all start earning your wages. I don’t care who you have to kill in order to get to him, but I want Smoke Jensen dead. Dead, goddamnit…dead!”

U.S. Marshal Mitchell looked at the legendary gunfighter Smoke Jensen. He was even younger than Mitchell had been led to believe. The man was still a ways from thirty.

“If I tried real hard, Jensen, I probably could come up with half a dozen arrest warrants for you. You know that, don’t you?”

Smoke grinned boyishly. “But findin’ people to stand up in court, look me in the eyes, and testify against me might give you some problems.”

Smart too, Mitchell thought. The marshal returned Smoke’s smile. “There is always that to consider, yes.”

“The war is not over, Marshal. You must know that.”

“I mean what I say, Jensen. If I have to, I’ll bring the Army in here. The Governor of the State of Colorado is tired of hearing about this place. In terms of blood.”

“Tilden Franklin is a crazy man, Marshal. I don’t know why he hates me, but he does. He will never rest until one of us is dead.”

“I know that,” Mitchell said. “But don’t sell him short, Jensen. Not even Luis Chamba is as fast as Tilden Franklin. He’s poison with a short gun.”

“He thought he was poison with his fists too,” Smoke replied, again with that boyish grin.

“So I heard.” The marshal’s reply was very dry. “That beating you gave him didn’t help matters very much.”

“It gave me a great deal of satisfaction.”

“I really hope I never see you again, Jensen. But somehow I feel I will.”

“I didn’t start this, Marshal. But if it comes down to it, I’ll damn sure finish it.”

The marshal looked at Smoke for a moment. “Other than Tilden Franklin, you know anyone else who might pay a lot of money to have you killed?”

Smoke thought about that for a moment. Then he shook his head. “No, not right off hand.”

Time took him winging back more than three years, back to the ghost town of Slate, where Smoke had met the men who had killed his brother and his father, then raped and killed his wife Nicole, and then killed Nicole and Smoke’s son Arthur.

Mitchell, as if sensing what was taking place in Smoke’s mind, stood motionless, waiting.

“Them old mountain men is pushin’ us toward Slate,” a gunhand said.

The one of the Big Three who had ordered all the killing, Richards, smiled at Smoke’s choice of a showdown spot. A lot of us are going to be ghosts in a very short time, he thought.

As the old ghost town loomed up stark and foreboding on the horizon, located on the flats between the Lemhi River and the Beaverhead Range, a gunslick reined up and pointed. “The goddamn place is full of people.”

“Miners,” another of the nineteen men who rode to kill Smoke said. “Just like it was over at the camp on the Uncompahgre.”

The men checked their weapons and stuffed their pockets full of extra shells and cartridges.

They moved out in a line toward the ghost town and toward the young gunfighter named Smoke.

“There he is,” Britt said, looking up the hill toward a falling-down store.

Smoke stood alone on the old curled-up and rotted boardwalk. The men could just see the twin .44s belted around his waist. He held a Henry repeating rifle in his right hand, a double-barreled express gun in his left hand. Suddenly, Smoke ducked into the building, leaving only a slight bit of dust to signal where he once stood.

“Two groups of six,” Richards said. “One group of three, one group of four. Move out.”

Smoke had removed his spurs, hanging them on the saddlehorn of Drifter. As soon as he’d ducked out of sight, he had run from the store down the hill, staying in the alley. He stashed the express gun on one side of the street in an old store, his rifle across the weed-grown street.

He met the gunslick called Skinny Davis in the gloom of what had once been a saloon.

“Draw!” Skinny hissed.

Smoke put two holes in his chest before Davis could cock his .44s.

“In the saloon!” someone yelled.

Williams jumped through an open, glassless window of the saloon. Just as his boots hit the old warped boards, Smoke shot him, the .44 slug stopping him and twisting the gunhawk back out the window to the boardwalk. Williams was hurt, but not out of it. He crawled along the side of the building, one arm broken and dangling, useless.

“Smoke Jensen!” the gunnie called Cross called. “You ain’t got the sand to face me.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Smoke muttered. He took careful aim and shot the man in the stomach, doubling him over and dropping him to the dirty street.

The miners had hightailed it to the ridges surrounding the old town. There they sat, drinking and betting and cheering. The old Mountain Men, Preacher among them, watched expressionless.

The young man called Smoke, far too young to have been one of that rare and select breed of adventuring pioneers called Mountain Men, had, nonetheless, been raised, at least in part, by Preacher, so that made Smoke one of them. Indeed, the last of the Mountain Men.

A bullet dug a trench along the old, rotting wood, sending splinters flying, a few of them striking Smoke in the face, stinging and bringing a few drops of blood.

Smoke ran out the back, coming face to face with Simpson, the outlaw gunfighter having both his dirty hands filled with .44s.

Smoke pulled the trigger on his own .44s, the double hammer-blows of lead taking Simpson in the lower chest, knocking him dying to the ground.

Smoke reloaded, then grabbed up Simpson’s guns and tucked them behind his belt. He ran down the alley. A gunslick stepped out of a gaping doorway just as Smoke cut to his right, jumping through a windowless opening. A bullet burned his shoulder. Spinning, he fired both Colts, one slug taking Martin in the throat, the second striking the outlaw just above the nose, almost removing the upper part of the man’s face.

Smoke caught a glimpse of someone running. He dropped to one knee and fired. His slug shattered the hip of Rogers, sending the big man sprawling in the dirt, howling and cussing. Another gunslick spurred his horse and charged the building where Smoke was crouched. He smashed his horse’s shoulder against the old door and came thundering inside. The animal, wild-eyed and scared, lost its footing and fell, pinning the outlaw to the floor, crushing the man’s stomach and chest. The outlaw, Reese, cried in agony as blood filled his mouth and darkness clouded his eyes.

Smoke slipped out the side door.

“Get him, Turkel!” a hired gun yelled.

Smoke glanced up roof-level high; he ducked as a rifle bullet flattened against the building. Smoke snapped off a shot and got lucky, the slug hitting Turkel in the chest. He crashed through an awning, bringing down the rotting awning. The hired gun did not move.

A bullet removed a small part of Smoke’s right ear; blood poured down the side of his face. He ran to where he had stashed the shotgun, grabbing it up and cocking it, leveling the barrels just as the doorway filled with gunslicks.

Smoke pulled both triggers, fighting the recoil of the 12-gauge. The blast cleared the doorway of all living things.

“Goddamn you, Jensen,” a hired gun yelled, his voice filled with rage and frustration. He stepped out into the street.

Smoke dropped the shotgun and picked up a rifle, shooting the gunhand in the gut.

It was white-hot heat and gunsmoke for the next few minutes. Smoke was hit in the side, twisting him into the open doorway of a rotting building where a dead man lay. Smoke picked up the man’s bloody shotgun and stumbled into the darkness of the building just as spurs jingled in the alley. Smoke jacked back both hammers and waited.

The spurs came closer. Smoke could hear the man’s heavy breathing. He lifted the shotgun and pulled both triggers, blowing a bullet-sized hole in the rotting pine wall.

The gunslick stumbled backward, and slammed into an outhouse. The outhouse collapsed, dumping the dying gunhand into the shit-pit.

Smoke checked his wounds. He would live. He reloaded his own Colts and the guns taken from the dead gunnie. He listened as Fenerty called for his buddies.

There was no response.

Fenerty was the last gunslick left.

He called again and Smoke pinpointed his voice. Picking up a Henry, Smoke emptied the rifle into the storefront. Fenerty came staggering out, stumbled on the rotting steps, and pitched face-forward into the street. There, he died.

Smoke laid down the challenge to Richards, Potter, and Stratton. “All right, you bastards!” he yelled. “Face me in the street if you’ve got the balls!”

The sharp odor of sweat mingled with blood and gunsmoke filled the summer air as four men stepped out into the death-street.

Richards, Potter, and Stratton stood at one end of the block. A tall, bloody figure stood at the other. All guns were in leather.

“You son of a bitch!” Stratton lost his cool and screamed, his voice as high-pitched as an hysterical girl’s. “You ruined it all!” He clawed for his .44.

Smoke drew, cocked, and fired before Stratton’s pistol could clear leather.

Screaming his outrage, Potter jerked out his pistol. Smoke shot him dead with his left-hand Colt. Holstering both Colts, Smoke faced Richards and waited.

Richards had not moved. He stood with a faint smile on his lips, staring at Smoke.

“You ready to die?” Smoke asked him.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” There was no fear in his voice that Smoke could detect. Richards was good with a short gun, and Smoke kept that in mind. Richards’s hands were steady. “Janey gone?”

“Took your money and pulled out.”

Richards laughed. “Well, it’s been a long run, hasn’t it Smoke?”

“It’s just about over.”

“What happens to all our—” He looked down at his dead partners. “—my holdings?”

“I don’t care what happens to the mines. The miners can have them. I’m giving all your stock to decent honest punchers and homesteaders.”

A puzzled look crawled over Richards’s face. “I don’t understand. You mean, you did all…this!” He waved his left hand. “For nothing?”

Someone moaned, the sound painfully inching up the bloody, dusty, gunsmoke-filled street.

“I did it for my pa, my brother, my wife, and my baby son. You, or your hired guns, killed them all.”

“But it won’t bring them back!”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I wish I had never heard the name of Jensen.”

“After this day, Richards, you’ll never hear it again.”

“One way to find out,” he replied with a smile, and went for his Colt. He cleared leather fast and fired. He was snake-quick, but he hurried his shot, the lead digging up dirt at Smoke’s feet.

Smoke shot him in the right shoulder, spinning the man around. Richards drew his left-hand gun and Smoke fired again, the slug striking the man in the left side of his chest. He struggled to bring up his Colt. He managed to cock it before Smoke’s third shot struck him in the belly. Richards sat down in the street, the pistol slipping from suddenly numbed fingers.

He opened his mouth to speak, and tasted blood on his tongue. The light began to fade around him. “You’ll…meet…”

Smoke never found out, that day, who he was supposed to meet. Richards toppled over on his side and died.

Smoke looked up at the ridge where the Mountain Men had gathered.

They were gone, leaving as silently as the wind.

And to this day, he had never seen or heard from any of them again.

“You been gone a time, boy,” Marshal Mitchell said.

Smoke sighed. “Just a few years. Bloody ones, though.”

He told the marshal about that day in the ghost town.

“I never knew the straight of it, Smoke. But you did play hell back then. That person Richards told you you’d meet?”

“Yeah?”

“He was talkin’ about the man who will be faster than you. We who live by the gun all have them in our future.”

Smoke nodded his head. “Yeah, I know. And yeah, I know who would pay to see me dead.”

“Oh?”

“My sister. Janey.”

10

“Your own sister would pay to have you killed!” Bountiful said, appalled at just the thought. “How dreadful. What kind of person is she?”

Ralph and Bountiful were having supper with Smoke and Sally. “She must have a lot of hate in her heart,” Ralph said.

“I reckon,” Smoke said. “Well, I’ll just have to be more careful and keep looking over my shoulder from now on.” He smiled. “That’s something I’m used to doing.”

Then he remembered Utah Slim. The man had aligned with no side in the mountain country war. No, Smoke thought, he didn’t have to. He already had a job.

U.S. Marshal Mitchell had told Smoke that his office had received word that a gunslick had been paid to kill Jensen. But none of their usual sources could, or would, shed any light on who that gunslick might be.

Or why.

Smoke felt he knew the answer to both questions.

Utah Slim.

“You’ve got a funny look in your eyes, Smoke,” Sally said, looking at her husband.

“I’m not going to sit around and wait for a bullet, Sally. I just made up my mind on that.”

“I felt that was coming too.”

“What are you two talking about?” Bountiful asked.

“A showdown,” Smoke told her, buttering a biscuit. He chewed slowly, then said, “Might as well brace him in the morning and get it over with.”

Ralph and Bountiful stopped eating and sat staring at the young gunfighter. Ralph said, “You’re discussing this with no more emotion than if you were talking about planting beets!”

“No point in gettin’ all worked up about it, Ralph. If I try to avoid it, it just prolongs the matter, and maybe some innocent person gets caught up in it and gets hurt. I told you and your friends a time back that we do things differently out here. And I’m not so sure that it isn’t the best way.”

“In the morning?”

“In the morning.”

“I’ll go in with you,” the minister-turned farmer said. His tone indicated the matter was not up for debate.

“All right, Ralph.”

Ralph was a surprisingly good horseman, and Smoke said as much.

“I was raised on a farm,” he said. “And I’m also a very good rifle shot.”

“I noticed you putting the Henry in the boot this morning.”

The morning was very clear and very bright as the two men rode toward Fontana. As they worked their way out of the mountains and toward the long valley where Fontana was located, the temperature grew warmer.

“Ever shot a man, Ralph?”

“No.”

“Could you?”

“Don’t ever doubt it.”

Smoke smiled faintly. He didn’t doubt it for a minute.

The town of Fontana seemed to both men to be a bit smaller. Ralph commented on that.

“The easy pickings have been found and taken out, Ralph. For however long this vein will last, it’s going to be hard work, dirty work, and dangerous work. Look yonder. One whole section of Fontana is gone. Half a dozen bars have pulled out.”

“Why…” Ralph’s eyes swept the visibly shrinking town that lay below them. “At this rate, there will be nothing left of Fontana by the end of summer.”

“If that long,” Smoke said, a note of satisfaction in his statement. “If we all can just settle the matter of Tilden Franklin, then we can all get on with the business of living.”

“And it will have to be settled by guns.” Ralph’s remark was not put in question form. The man was rapidly learning about the unwritten code of the West.

“Yes.”

Smoke reined up in front of Sheriff Monte Carson’s office. The men dismounted and walked toward the bullet-scarred stone building. As they entered, Monte smiled and greeted them.

His smile faded as he noted the hard look in Smoke’s eyes.

“I’ve had that same look a few times myself, Smoke,” Monte said. “Gonna be a shootin’?”

“Looks that way, Monte. I’d rather not have it in town if I can help it.”

“I’d appreciate that, Smoke. But sometimes it can’t be helped. I got to thinkin’ after talkin’ with that marshal. It’s Utah Slim, ain’t it?”

“Yeah.” Smoke poured a tin cup of coffee and sat down. “I got a strong hunch my sister hired him to gun me.”

“Your…sister?”

Smoke told him the story of Janey. Or at least as much as he knew about her life since she’d taken off from that hard-scrabble, rocky, worthless farm in the hills of Missouri. Back when Smoke was just a boy, after their ma had died, when their pa was off fighting in the War Between the States. And Smoke had had to shoulder the responsibilities of a boy forced into early manhood.

It was a story all too common among those who drifted West.

It sounded all too painfully familiar to Monte Carson, almost paralleling his own life.

“I seen Utah early this mornin’, sittin’ on the hotel porch.” He smiled. “The only hotel we got left here in Fontana, that is.”

“Won’t be long now,” Smoke told him. “How many businesses are you losing a day?”

“Half a dozen. As you know, up there in Big Rock, the stage is runnin’ twice a day now, carryin’ people out of here.”

“Seen some TF riders in town as we rode in,” Smoke said. “And didn’t see any of those flyers the Judge had printed up. What happened?”

“Some state man was on the stage three, four days ago, from the governor’s office. He looked at the charges I had agin Tilden and his men and told me to take them dodgers down. They wasn’t legal.” He shrugged. “I took ’em down.”

Smoke grinned. “It was fun while it lasted, though, wasn’t it?”

“Damn shore was.”

Conversation became a bit forced, as both Monte and Smoke, both gunfighters, knew the clock was ticking toward a showdown in the streets of Fontana. Stonewall and Joel came into the office.

“Git the people off the boardwalks,” Monte told his deputies. “And have either of you seen Utah Slim?”

“He’s standin’ down by the corral, leanin’ up agin a post,” Joel said. “He’s got a half dozen of them punk gunslingers with him. They lookin’ at Utah like he’s some sort of god.”

“Run ’em off,” Monte ordered. “I’ll not have no mismatched gunfight in this town.”

The deputies left, both carrying sawed-off express guns.

Monte looked at Smoke after the office door had closed. “Utah is fast, Smoke. He’s damn good. I’d rate him with the best.”

“Better than Valentine?”

“He don’t blow his first shot like Valentine, but he’s just as fast.”

Ralph looked out a barred window. “Streets are clear,” he announced. “Nobody moving on the boardwalks.”

Smoke stood up. “It’s time.” He slipped the leather thongs from the hammers of his Colts and put his hat on his head. “I’d like to talk to Utah first, find out something about my sister. Hell, I don’t even know if she’s the one behind this. I’ll give it a try.”

Smoke walked out onto the shaded boardwalks outside the sheriff’s office. He pulled his hat lower over his eyes and eased his Colts half out of leather a few times, letting them fall back naturally into the oiled leather. He stepped out into the street and turned toward the corral.

As he walked down the center of the street, his spurs jingling and his boots kicking up little pockets of dust, he was conscious of many unseen eyes on him, and even a few he could associate with a body.

Stonewall and Joel were on the opposite sides of the broad street, both still carrying shotguns. The duded-up dandies who fancied themselves gunslingers had gathered as close to the corral as the deputies would allow them. Smoke saw the young punk Luke had made eat crow that day. Lester Morgan, Sundance. He had himself some new Colts. And that kid who called himself The Silver Dollar Kid was there, along with a few other no-names who wanted to be gunfighters.

Smoke wondered how they got along; where did they get eating money? Petty thievery, probably.

Louis Longmont had stepped out of his gaming tent. “How many you facing, Smoke?” he asked, as Smoke walked by.

“Just one that I know of. Utah Slim. I think my sis, Janey, sent him after me.”

Louis paced Smoke, but stayed on the boardwalk. “Yes, it would be like her.”

“Where is she, Louis?”

“Tombstone, last I heard. Runnin’ a red-light place. She’s worth a lot of money. Richards’s money, I presume.”

“Yeah. Richards ain’t got no use for it. I never heard of no Wells Fargo armored stage followin’ no hearse.”

Louis laughed quietly. “I’ll watch your back, Smoke.”

“Thanks.”

Smoke kept on walking. He knew Louis had fallen back slightly, to keep an eye on Smoke’s back trail.

Then the corral loomed up, Utah Slim standing by the corral. Smoke’s eyes flicked upward to the loft of the barn. Billy was staring wide-eyed out of the loft door.

“Billy!” Smoke raised his voice. “You get your butt outta that loft and across the street. Right now, boy—move!”

“Yes, sir!” Billy hollered, and slipped down the hay rope to the street. He darted across the expanse and got behind a water trough.

“That there’s a good kid,” Utah said. “Funny the other week when he shot Tilden in the ass.”

“Yeah, I’d like to have seen that myself.”

“I ain’t got nothin’ personal agin you, Jensen. I want you to know that.”

“Just another job, right, Utah?”

“That’s the way it is,” the killer said brightly.

“My sister hire you?”

“Damned if’n I know. Some woman named Janey, down in Tombstone paid me a lot of money, up front.” He squinted at Smoke. “Come to think of it, y’all do favor some.”

“That’s my darlin’ sister.”

“Makes me proud I ain’t got no sister.”

“Why don’t you just get on your horse and ride on out, Utah. I don’t want to have to kill you.”

The killer looked startled. “Why, boy! You ain’t gonna kill me.”

“You want to wager on that?” Louis called.

“Yeah.” Utah smiled. “I’ll bet a hundred.”

“Taken,” Louis told him.

“How much did she pay you, Utah?” Smoke asked the man.

“Several big ones, boy.” He grinned nastily. “She’s a whoor, you know.”

“So I heard.” Smoke knew the killer was trying to anger him, throw him off, make him lose his composure.

“Yeah, she is,” Utah said, still grinning. “I tole her, as part of the payment, I’d have to have me a taste of it.”

“Is that right?”

“Shore is. Right good, too.”

“I hope you enjoyed it.”

“I did for a fact.” This wasn’t working out the way Utah had planned it. “Why do you ask?”

Smoke drew, cocked, and fired twice. Once with his right-hand Colt, that slug taking Utah in the chest and staggering him backward. The second slug coming from his left-hand gun and striking the gunslick in the stomach, dropping the killer to his knees, his left arm looped around the center railing of the corral.

Smoke holstered his left-hand Colt and waited for Utah. The killer managed to drag his Colt out of leather and cock it. That seemed to take all his strength. He pulled the trigger. The slug tore up the dirt at his knees.

Utah dropped the Colt. He lifted his eyes to Smoke. Just as the darkness began to fade his world, he managed to gasp, “How come you axed me if I enjoyed it?”

“’Cause you damn sure ain’t gonna get no more, Utah.”

Utah died hanging onto the corral railing. He died with his eyes open, staring at emptiness.

Smoke holstered his pistol and walked away.

11

The undertaker’s hack rumbled past Louis Longmont’s tent just as the gambler and the gunfighter were pouring tumblers of scotch.

Louis lifted his glass. “May I pay you a compliment, Smoke Jensen?”

“I reckon so, Louis.”

“I have seen them all, Smoke. All the so-called great gunfighters. Clay Allison, John Wesley Hardin, Bill Longley, Jim Miller. I’ve drank with Wild Bill Hickok and Jim, Ed, and Bat Masterson. I’ve gambled with Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. I’ve seen them all in action. But you are the fastest gun I have ever seen in my life.”

The men clinked glasses and drank of the Glenlivet.

“Thank you, Louis. But I’ll tell you a secret.”

Louis smiled. “I’ll bet you a double eagle I already know what it is.”

“No bets, Louis, for I imagine you do.”

“You wish you were not the faster gun.”

“You got that right.”

The men finished their drinks and stepped out onto the boardwalk. The photographer had set up his equipment at the corral and was taking his shots of Utah Slim. The duded-up dandies had gathered around, managing to get themselves in almost every shot the man took.

“Fools!” Smoke muttered.

“Look at them with their hands on the butts of their guns,” Louis pointed out. “They’ll be bragging about that picture for the rest of their lives.”

“However short they may be,” Smoke added.

“Yes.”

Ralph walked up, joining the gambler and the gunfighter. Louis smiled at him.

“I would offer you a drink, Mister Morrow, but I’m afraid I might offend you.”

“I’m not adverse to a cool beer, Mister Longmont.”

Louis was more than slightly taken aback. “Well, I’ll just be damned!” he blurted.

“Oh, I think not, sir,” Ralph replied. He met the man’s cool eyes. “How is your orphanage up in Boulder doing? Or that free hospital out in San Francisco?”

Louis smiled. “For a man of the cloth, you do get around, don’t you, Ralph?”

“But I wasn’t always a preacher, Mister Longmont,” he reminded the gambler.

“Tell me more,” Smoke said with a grin, looking at Louis.

“Don’t let the news of my…philanthropic urges get out,” the gambler said. “It might destroy my reputation.”

Smoke looked at him and blinked. “Hell, Louis! I don’t even know what that means!”

Laughing, the men entered the gaming tent for a cool one.

And the photographer’s flash pan popped again.

And Utah Slim still clung to the corral railing.

The town of Fontana had begun to die, slowly at first, and then more rapidly as the gold vein began to peter out. More businesses shut down, packed up, and pulled out. The rip-roaring boom town was not yet busted, but a hole had been pierced in the balloon.

Those who elected to stay until the very end of the vein had been found were slowly shifting their trading to the new town of Big Rock. But since the Mayor of Big Rock, Wilbur Mason, refused to allow gaming and hurdy-gurdy girls in, the town of Fontana soon became known as the pleasure palace of the high country.

But that was both a blessing and a curse for Sheriff Monte Carson and his three remaining deputies. A curse because it kept them on the run at all hours; a blessing because it kept them all in steady work, and doubly so for Monte, because it gave him a new direction in life to pursue. One that he found, much to his surprise, he enjoyed very much.

Louis had, of course, noticed the change in Monte, and in his quiet way tried to help the man, as did Judge Proctor, Louis helping the man with his reading and Proctor loaning him books on the law.

And Tilden Franklin maintained a very low profile, as did most of his gunslicks. Tilden wanted the area to settle down, stop attracting the governor’s attention. More importantly, he wanted that damned hard-eyed U.S. marshal to stay out of the high country.

But both Tilden and Smoke knew that the undeclared war in the high country was not over, that the uneasy truce was apt to break apart at any time. And when it did, the high lonesome was going to run red with blood.

Someone was going to come out on top, and Tilden was making plans for that someone to be named Tilden Franklin. And he had not given up on his plans to possess Sally Jensen. Not at all. They had just been shelved for a time. But not forgotten.

The festering blot on the face of the high country began to leak its corruption when Paul Jackson rode into Fontana after a lonely six weeks in the mountains. Paul had heard talk of the new town of Big Rock, but had never seen it. He had heard talk of Fontana slowly dying, but had given it little thought. Paul had been busy digging gold. Lots of gold. More gold than even he had ever imagined he would ever find. His saddlebags were stuffed with the precious dust. His packhorses were loaded down.

He rode slowly into Fontana and could not believe his eyes. He had remembered a town, just six weeks past, full of people.

Place looked dead.

No, he corrected that. Just dying.

And where had the good people gone? Place looked to be full of whores and gamblers and pimps and ne’er-do-wells.

Made Paul feel kind of uncomfortable.

He reined up in front of the bank. But the damn bank was closed. He saw a deputy and hailed him.

Stonewall ambled over. “Something wrong, Paul?”

“Where’s the bank?”

“Ain’t got no bank no more, Paul,” the deputy informed him. “It shut down when the gold began to peter out.”

Paul, not a bright person to begin with, had to think about that for a minute or so.

“The gold is petering out?”

Now Stonewall never figured himself to be no genius, but even he was a shining light compared to this yoyo sitting his horse in front of the empty bank building.

“Yeah, Paul. The vein is about gone. If you got gold, we can store it at the jail until you can figure out what to do with it.”

“I plan on taking my woman and my gold out of here,” Paul said. “We are going to San Francisco and becoming man and wife.”

“Your…woman?”

“Yes. I should like to see Bountiful now. So if you’ll excuse me…”

“The minister’s wife…Bountiful?” Stonewall asked.

“Yes.”

“Paul…they don’t live here in Fontana no more. The preacher quit his church and took to farmin’. He bought hisself some land up near the Sugarloaf. He preaches ever’ Sunday morning at the new church up in Big Rock.”

“Bountiful?”

Stonewall was rapidly losing patience with this big dumbbell. “Why, hell, man! She’s with her husband.”

“Not when she sees me,” Paul said, then swung his horses and rode slowly out of town, toward the high lonesome and the town of Big Rock.

And Bountiful.

“What the hell was all that about?” Monte asked, walking up to his deputy.

Stonewall took off his hat and scratched his head. “Sheriff, I don’t rightly know. That Paul Jackson never was too bright, but I think the time up in the mountains has flipped him over the edge.”

He told Monte the gist of the conversation.

“Strange,” Monte agreed. “But Paul is gonna be in for a surprise if he tries to mess with Ralph’s wife. That preacher’ll whip his butt up one mountain and down the other.”

“Surely Paul ain’t that dumb!”

“Don’t bet on it. Did he really have them horses loaded with gold?”

“Said he did.”

“Outlaws workin’ the high country; he’ll be lucky if he makes it to Big Rock.”

“Bountiful,” Paul said, sitting his horse in front of the Morrow cabin. “I’ve come for you.”

Bountiful blinked her baby blues. “You’ve…come for me?”

“Yes. Now get your things. I’m a rich man, Bountiful. We can have a beautiful life together. I’ll buy you everything you ever dreamed of.”

“Paul, everything I have ever dreamed of is right here.” She waved her hand. “What you see is what I want. I have it all.”

“But…I don’t understand, Bountiful. The way you looked at me…I mean…I was sure about your feelings.”

It had been that way all her life; men were constantly misreading her. Mistaking friendliness for passion. It was very difficult for a beautiful woman to have men friends.

“Paul, I like you. You’re a good man. And I’m happy that you found gold. I hope it brings you a lot of happiness. And you’ll find a nice lady. I just know it. Now you’d better leave.”

Smoke and Ralph rode into the yard. Sally stepped out of the cabin where she had been helping Bountiful make curtains.

“Hello, Paul,” Ralph said. “How have you been?”

“Very well, thank you, Ralph. I’ve come for your wife.”

Ralph blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

Bountiful looked at Sally and shook her head. Sally knew the story; Bountiful had told her that Paul was infatuated with her.

“Leave, Paul,” Sally told the man. “You’ve got everything all mixed up in your mind. It isn’t the way you think it is.”

“Is too!”

“Now Paul,” Ralph said soothingly. “You don’t want to make trouble for us. Why don’t you just leave?”

Paul shook his head and dismounted. With a knife, he cut open one saddlebag, the yellow dust pouring out onto the ground.

“See, Bountiful?” Paul cried. “See? It’s all for you. I did it for you. You can have it all.”

“I don’t want it, Paul,” Bountiful said softly. “It’s yours. You keep it.”

Paul stood like a big, dumb ox, slowly shaking his head. It was all so confusing. He had thought he had it all worked out in his mind, but something was wrong.

Then he thought he knew what would bring Bountiful to him. “I know,” he said. “You’re afraid to leave because of Tilden Franklin. I can fix that for you, Bountiful. I really can.”

“What do you mean, Paul?” Smoke asked.

Paul turned mean eyes toward Smoke. “You stay out of this. You’re one of the reasons Bountiful won’t go with me.”

Smoke blinked. “Huh?”

“I can use a gun too,” Paul said, once more looking at Bountiful. “I’ll show you. I’ll show you all.”

Smoke looked at Paul’s pistol. It was in a flap-type holster, the flap secured. Smoke figured he could punch Paul out before any real damage was done—if he went for his gun.

“I’ll come back a hero, Bountiful,” Paul said. “I’ll be the hero of the valley, Bountiful.” He cut the saddlebags loose and let them fall to the ground. He tossed the reins of the packhorses to the ground. “You keep this for me, Bountiful. Play with it. It’s not as pretty as you. But it’s pretty. I’ll be back, Bountiful. You go on and pack your things. Wait for me.”

Paul swung awkwardly into the saddle and rode off.

“Paul is not very bright,” Ralph said. “What in the world do you suppose he’s going to do?”

No one would even venture a guess.

Smoke squatted down and fingered the dust and the nuggets. He looked at them closely. Then he stood up with a sad smile on his face.

“It’s all fool’s gold.”

“If it wasn’t so pitiful, it would be funny,” Ralph said. “But Paul really believes, after he does whatever in the world he plans to do, that Bountiful is going with him. I wonder what he has in mind.”

“What was that about Tilden Franklin?” Sally asked.

“He said I was afraid to leave because of Tilden Franklin,” Bountiful said. “But that’s silly. Why should I be afraid of that man?”

No one could answer that.

And in a few hours, it wouldn’t matter to Paul either.

12

“Rider comin’, Boss,” Valentine called to Tilden.

Tilden stepped out onto the porch and squinted his eyes against the sun. It was that fool shopkeeper’s brother, Paul Jackson. “What in the hell does he want?”

“That one ain’t playin’ with a full deck,” Slim said. “That’s the one used to foller the preacher’s wife around with his tongue a-hangin’ out like a big ugly hound dog.”

“He looks like a hound dog,” Donnie observed. “A goofy one.”

The gunfighters had a good laugh at that remark; even Tilden laughed. But for some reason he could not explain, the big man slipped the thongs off his six-guns.

Luis Chamba noticed the movement. “What’s wrong, Boss?”

“I don’t know. Just something about the way he’s riding that bothers me.”

“You want me to kill him?” Donnie asked.

Tilden waved that off. “No. Let’s see what he’s got on his mind.”

Paul rode up to the house and sat his weary horse. “May I dismount?”

“Ain’t he po-lite?” a gunfighter said, laughing.

“Sure, Jackson,” Tilden said. “Climb down. What can I do for you?” Tilden noticed that the flap on the military-type holster was missing. Looked like it’d been freshly cut off. Paul’s gun was riding loose.

“I’ve come to meet you man to man, Mister Franklin,” Paul said.

“Well, Jackson, here I am. Speak your piece and then carry your ass off my range.”

“I’ve come to kill you,” Paul stated flatly.

“Is that so? Why?”

“Personal reasons.”

“Don’t I deserve better than that?” Tilden asked. This stupid sod was beginning to irritate him.

Several of the gunhands were beginning to giggle and titter and circle in the area of their temples with their forefingers.

Paul looked at the giggling gunslicks. “You men seem to find this amusing. Why?”

That brought them all down laughing. Tilden joined in the laughter. “Get off my range, you silly bastard!”

“Draw, goddamn you!” Paul shouted, and began fumbling for his gun.

Tilden drew, cocked, and fired with one blindingly fast motion. His slug hit Paul in the right shoulder, knocking the man to the dirt.

“You stupid son of a bitch!” Tilden snarled at the man, cocking the .44.

As Paul struggled to get to his feet, Tilden shot him again, this time the slug hitting the man in the right leg. Paul’s feet flew out from under him and he landed hard in the dirt.

Screaming his rage at the rancher, Paul tried to claw his pistol out of leather. Tilden shot him in the other shoulder, rendering the man helpless.

Laughing, Tilden cocked and fired, the bullet striking Paul in the stomach.

“Tie him on his goddamned old nag and send him on his way,” Tilden ordered, punching out the empties and reloading.

The gunslicks tied Paul upright in his saddle and slapped the already spooked horse on the rump. Paul went bouncing and swaying down the road, unconscious.

It was almost breaking dawn when Charlie Starr knocked on Smoke’s cabin door. “Charlie Starr, Smoke. Got news for you.”

In his longhandles, a Colt in his right hand, Smoke lifted the latch and peered out. “Mornin’, Charlie. Come on in. I’ll make us some coffee.”

“Put your pants on first,” Charlie said drily. “You ain’t no sight to see first thing in the mornin’.”

Smoke put on coffee to boil, visited the outhouse, then sat down at the kitchen table. “What’s wrong, Charlie?”

“Paul Jackson was found late yesterday afternoon by some miners. He was tied to his horse. Somebody had a good time putting a lot of unnecessary lead in the fool. He’s alive, but just barely. He told Doc Spalding he braced Tilden Franklin out at the TF ranch house. Then he went into a coma. Doc says he probably won’t come out of it. My question is, why’d he do it?”

Sipping coffee, Smoke told Charlie about Paul’s visit the day before.

“But there ain’t nothin’ between Bountiful and Paul Jackson. Is there?”

“No. It was all in Paul’s mind.”

“Fool’s gold,” Charlie muttered. “Finding that and thinkin’ it was real might have been what pushed him over the edge.”

“Probably was. How many times was he shot, Charlie?”

“Both shoulders, leg, and stomach. Me and Monte been up all night talkin’ about it. He admitted goin’ out there and bracin’ Tilden. Tilden had a right to protect hisself. But tyin’ the man on that horse was cruel. Still, the judge says there ain’t no laws to cover that.”

“How’s Ed taking it?”

“Harder than he’ll let on. Monte said the man was cryin’ last night after leavin’ the Doc’s office. He’s tore up pretty bad. And…he’s talkin’ about goin’ out there and seein’ Tilden.”

“That wouldn’t be smart on his part.”

“He’s a growed-up man, Smoke. I sure can’t stop him if that’s what he wants to do.”

“And he thought Tilden hung the stars and the moon.”

“Lots of folks seein’ the light about that crazy bastard. Monte told me to tell you something else too.”

Smoke lifted his eyes.

“Tilden’s replaced all them gunhawks that was shot in town. But he’s scrapin’ the bottom of the slime pit doin’ it. He’s hirin’ the real hardcases. Cold-blooded killers. Range-war types. He’s hiring some of them that was vigilantes down on the Oklahoma-Texas border. He’s hirin’ thugs, punks, cattle thieves, horse thieves…anybody who can pack a gun and even just brag about usin’ one. Them dandies in town, The Silver Dollar Kid and Sundance and them other punks? Tilden hired them too.”

“I guess we’d all better get ready for the balloon to bust, Charlie. I don’t see any other way out of it.”

Sally entered the kitchen and poured coffee. She set a plate of doughnuts on the table between the two men. Charlie grinned and helped himself.

“You heard?” Smoke asked his wife.

“I heard. I feel sorry for Paul. He wasn’t quite right in the head.”

Speaking around a mouthful of bearsign, Charlie said, “Out here, ma’am, man straps on a six-shooter, that gun makes him ten feet tall. Out here, they’s a sayin’. God didn’t make man equal. Colonel Colt did.”

Paul Jackson died mid-morning, the day after he was shot. And once more, the undertaker’s hack rumbled through the streets of Fontana. The streets were far less busy than they had been just a week before. The one remaining hotel had already announced plans to close.

Several TF riders had come to town, and the story of what had happened at the TF ranch was beginning to spread throughout the rapidly shrinking town. The TF gunhawks were drinking and laughing in the Blue Dog Saloon, telling the story of how Paul Jackson braced Tilden Franklin and how Paul had flopped around on the ground like a headless chicken after Tilden started putting lead into the man.

Stonewall stepped into the saloon just in time to hear the story being told for the umpteenth time. Each time it had been told with a bit more embellishment. Stonewall had not really cared much for Paul Jackson, but Jackson had been a decent sort of fellow…if a bit off in the head. But he had been no thief or footpad, just a hardworking guy who deserved a better death than the one he’d received.

The deputy said as much to the gunhands.

The saloon suddenly became very quiet as the TF gunslicks set their shot glasses and beer mugs on the bar and turned to face Stonewall.

“You makin’ light of Mister Franklin, Deputy?” a gunslinger asked.

Stonewall thought about that for a few seconds. “Yeah,” he said. “I reckon I am. A fair shootin’ is one thing. Torturin’ a man for sport is another thing.”

“Well, Mister Franklin ain’t here to defend hisself.”

“You here,” Stonewall said softly.

Monte took that time to step onto the boardwalk.

The TF gunhawks jerked iron and Stonewall matched their draw. The Blue Dog started yelping and barking with gunfire. Monte stepped through the batwing doors, his hands full of Colts. Stonewall was leaning against the bar, hard hit, but he had managed to drop two of the TF gunslingers. The front of Stonewall’s shirt was stained with blood.

Monte’s Colts started belching smoke and fire and lead. Two more TF riders went down, but not before Monte was hit twice, in the side and upper chest.

Stonewall died on his feet, his gun still clutched in his fingers. Monte was knocked back against a wall, losing one Colt on the way. He lifted his second Colt and got lead into the last remaining TF gunslick before he slid into darkness.

The wounded TF rider stumbled outside and made it to his horse, galloping out of town, holding onto the saddle horn with bloody fingers. Joel ran out of the sheriff’s office and lifted his rifle. The TF rider twisted in the saddle and shot the deputy through the head before he could get off a shot.

Dave jumped into the saddle and took off after the TF gunslick. He ran slap into a dozen TF riders, on their way into town, the wounded TF rider in the middle of the pack. Dave was literally shot out of the saddle, a dozen holes in him.

Slim turned in his saddle and said, “Singer, take him back to the ranch with you.” He indicated the wounded gunhawk. “And tell Mister Franklin that Fontana is ours!”

Dave was left where he had fallen, the deputy’s horse standing over its master, nudging at Dave with its nose.

Bob Colby reined up in Smoke’s yard in a cloud of dust. “Mister Smoke!” he hollered.

Smoke and Sally both ran from the cabin. “What’s the matter, Bob?”