“No one named Jesse works for me,” Luttie muttered, crawling to his bare feet. Smoke drew, cocked and fired so fast it was a blur. He put a slug between Luttie’s bare feet.
“Yeeeyow!” the man hollered and danced, as the splinters dug into his feet.
“I said get Jesse here,” Smoke said.
‘Jesus Christ!” Luttie bellered. “Jake, go get Jesse over here.” He glared at Smoke. “I hate you!”
“I’m all broken up about it. Aren’t you going to be neighborly and offer us some coffee?”
“Hell with you!”
“Disgusting lack of hospitality,” Mills said.
“Hell with you, too,” Luttie told him.
The men stood and stared at each other for a moment.
The foreman, Jake, reentered the house. “Jesse didn’t come back last night. His bunk ain’t been slept in.”
“We have a description of him,” Mills said. “I’ll get a federal warrant issued for his arrest, charging him with murder and attempted murder of a law officer.”
“Now both of you get out of my house!” Luttie yelled.
Smoke looked at the man’s soiled long-handles. “You need to do something about your personal hygiene, Luttie.”
“Get out of here!” the man screamed.
“What do you want done with the remains of poor Don King?” Smoke asked.
“Bury him!” Luttie yelled. “In the ground.”
“He didn’t have but two dollars on him,” Mills said. “A good box costs far more than that. I personally would suggest one lined with a subtle shade of cloth, perhaps with a soft pillow on which to lay his poor dead head. A simple service will suffice, with the minister reading from the . . .”
“Shut up!” Luttie roared. “Goddamnit! I don’t care if you read from a tobacco sack. Just get out of my house and put the man in the ground. Send me the bill.”
“You’re a true lover of your fellow man, Luttie,” Smoke said, trying to keep a straight face. It was hard to do: the buttons on Luttie’s back flap had torn loose, and he was trying to hold it up with one hand.
“I’m sure the service will be tomorrow,” Mills said, continuing to play the game with Smoke.
“Shall I tell everyone you'll be in attendance?”
Luttie started jumping up and down like a great ape in a cage. “GetoutGetoutGetoutGetout!” he screamed.
“I think we have overstayed our welcome,” Smoke said. “Do you agree, Marshal?”
“Quite. Shall we take our leave?”
“Oh, let’s do!”
Luttie was screaming obscenities at them as they rode away. Both breathed a little easier when they were out of rifle shot.
“Luttie, them two ain’t got a lick of sense!” Jake said, when he had calmed Luttie down. “And a crazy man’s dangerous!”
That set Luttie off again, jumping around and hollering.
“I think he needs a good dose of salts,” a hardcase suggested. “Maybe his plumbin’s all plugged up?”
“For a man that don’t believe in going to the extreme with law and order,” Smoke said, “you sure can jump right in there and help stick the needle to suspects.”
“Oh, I think a bit of agitation is good for the soul. The man is unbalanced. You realize that?”
“Uh-huh. And now I hope you’re not going to tell me that because he’s about half nuts he shouldn’t be shot if he drags iron on someone.”
“There is some debate on that, I will admit. But a dangerous person is dangerous whether he’s normal or insane. Besides, there are degrees of insanity. Luttie Charles is not a drooling idiot confined to a rocking chair. He simply lost control back there for a moment. He’s a very cunning man.” He chuckled. “Wouldn’t you lose control if someone grabbed you by the ankle and jerked you out of a sound sleep, then knocked you down and threw you down the stairs?”
Smoke smiled. “I might at that.” He shook his head. “That was sure some sight.”
Laughing, the men put their horses into an easy canter and headed back to town. Smoke noticed that Mills had stopped bobbing up and down like a cork in the water and was riding more and more like a Westerner.
The next several days were long and boring. Providing Jake had been telling the truth back at the ranch house, Jesse had left the country.
“If that’s the case,” Mills observed, “it’s probably for fear that Luttie would shoot him because he and that other wretch failed to kill you.”
Later on that day, shortly after the stage had run, Mills came to the marshal’s office. “This is it,” he said, smiling and waving a piece of paper. He sat down. “It seems that Lee Slater—and Slater is his Christian name—was born in Oklahoma. He left their farm when he was about fifteen, after raping and killing a neighbor girl. He had a younger brother that disappeared shortly after robbing a stagecoach and making off with a strongbox filled with thousands of dollars. The boys were named Lee and Luther.” Mills smiled again. “Luther’s middle name was Charles.”
“It’s good enough for me, but I doubt a jury would convict on it.”
“Nor do I. My superiors have given me orders to stay out here until Lee Slater and his band of thugs are contained.” He sighed. “At the rate I’m going, I may as well move my belongings out here and transfer my bank account.”
“Oh,” Smoke said, pouring them both coffee. “It’s not that bad. I tell you what I’ll bet you: you stay out here a few more months, Mills, and this country will grab you. Then you won’t want to leave.”
“I’m afraid you may be right. Do you have any sort of plan, Smoke? I seem to be fresh out.”
The gunfighter shook his head. “No, I don’t, Mills. It seems to me—and I’m no professional lawman—that all we can do is wait for something to break, then jump on it like a hound on a bone.”
Mills had noticed that Smoke had adopted a small cur dog he’d found wandering the town, eating scraps and having mean little boys throw rocks at it. After a lecture from Smoke Jensen about being cruel to animals, Mills was of the opinion the boys might well grow up to be vegetarians. Smoke had been rather stern.
Smoke had bathed the little dog and fixed it a bed in the office. The dog now lay in Smoke’s lap, contented as Smoke gently petted it.
“You’re a strange man, Smoke,” Mills had to say.
“You don’t appear to care one whit about the life of a person gone wrong, yet you love animals.”
“Animals can’t help being what they are, Mills,” Smoke said with a gentle smile. “We humans can. We have the ability to think and reason. I don’t believe animals do; at least not to any degree. We don’t have to rob and steal and lie and cheat and murder. That’s why God gave us a brain. And I don’t have any use for people who refuse to use that brain and instead turn to a life of crime. You read the Bible, Mills?”
“Certainly. But what has the Bible got to do with animals?”
“A lot. I think animals go to Heaven."
“Oh, come now!” Mills gently scoffed.
“Sure. And our Bible is not the only Good Book that talks of that. Our Bible says in Ecclesiates: ‘For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity.’ Paul preached about it, too. And my wife, who is a lot more religious than me, says that John Wesley came right out and outlined what he thought animals would experience in Heaven. John Calvin also admitted that he thought animals were to be renewed.”
Mills shook his head. “You never cease to baffle me, Smoke. You’re a . . . walking contradiction. You mentioned some other Good Book. What are you talking about?”
“The Koran. ‘You haven’t read it?”
“Good God, no! And you have?”
“Yes. Sally ordered a copy for me. I found it very interesting.”
Mills studied the man for a moment. Before him was the West’s most notorious gunfighter—no Jensen wasn’t notorious; “famous”
was a better word—and the man was calmly discussing the world’s religions. And sounding as if he did indeed know what he was talking about.
“You think you’ll go to Heaven, Smoke?” Mills asked gently.
“I don’t know. God loved His warriors. I do know that. But I like to think that maybe there is a middle ground for men like me.”
“Like Valhalla?”
“Yes.”
“Another personal question, Smoke?”
“Sure.”
“How many men have you killed?”
“I honestly don’t know, Mills. Over a hundred, surely, and possibly two hundred. I’ve got a lot of blood on my hands, I won’t deny that. Jesse James gave me my first pistol, way back during the war, when I was just a kid in Missouri. A Navy .36, it was. I carried that old pistol for a long time. And put some men in the ground with it.”
“What happened to it?”
“I think it’s in a trunk up at the ranch house.”
“You have children, Smoke?”
“Oh, yes. They’re in France with their grandparents, traveling and getting an education. Baby Arthur had to go for medical treatment. Their mother couldn’t go because she gets deadly ill on ship.”
“Outlaws killed your first wife, didn’t they?”
“Yes. And smothered my baby son in the cradle while they were raping Nicole.”
Mills knew the story. It was legend. At first he thought it was all a big lie. Now he knew it was all true. How a young Smoke Jensen tracked them down and killed them all. Castrated one of them and cauterized the terrible wound with a white hot running iron.
Frontier justice, Mills concluded, doesn’t leave any room for gray areas. It’s all black and white and very final.
“I found Sally about a year later,” Smoke said.
“We married and have been together and very happy since then. You married, Mills?”
The U.S. Marshal shook his head. “No. I haven’t found the right woman yet, I suppose.” He smiled, rather sadly, Smoke thought. “But I‘m still looking."
“I hope you find you a good woman, Mills. There’s one out there. Just keep looking.”
One of Mills’ men, Winston, stuck his head in the office door. “About half a dozen men riding in, Mills. They look like thugs to me.”
Smoke smiled. Probably half the men in the West look like thugs. He put the little dog in its bed and walked to the window. Winston had been correct in his assessment of the riders.
Deke Carey and Dirty Jackson were among the six men. He’d seen pictures of Deke, and Smoke had had a run-in with Dirty some years back, when both had been much younger.
“You know them?” Mills asked.
“I know them.”
Mills watched as Smoke slipped the leather thongs off the hammers of his .44s. “It’s come to that?”
“It’s come to that.” Smoke stepped out on the boardwalk.
Chapter Six
Dirty cut his eyes as the six outlaws rode slowly past the marshal’s office. His smile was savage.
“We’ll arrest them,” Mills said.
“On what charge? There aren’t any warrants on them that I’m aware of.”
“Then we have no right to interfere with their freedom of travel.”
Smoke chuckled at that. “Deke there, he’s a backshooter, a thief, and a child molester. Dirty has done it all: cold-blooded murder, rape, robbery, torture, kidnapping. I told him years ago that if I ever laid eyes on him again, I’d kill him. And that is exactly what I intend to do.”
“But you said there are no warrants on them!”
“None in Colorado. But I’ve been holding one just for him for years.”
“Where is it?”
Smoke patted the butt of a .44. “Right here in Mr. Colt. Now, Mills, you and I have become friends over the past week or so. But this is personal between Dirty and me. He killed a little girl in Nevada some years back. He bragged about doing it and then left town just ahead of the posse. He’s fixing to come to trial over that killing. Right shortly”
“But . . .”
“Mills, lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way.”
Smoke stepped off the boardwalk just as the outlaws were entering the saloon. Seconds later the saloon emptied of locals.
Smoke pushed open the batwings and stepped inside, Mills right behind him. Smoke heard Dirty asking for a room for the night.
“Not in this town, Dirty,” Smoke called out. “The only room you’re going to get is a pine box. And if there isn’t enough coins in your pocket to buy a box, we’ll roll you up in your blankets and plant you that way.”
Mills gasped at the sheer/audacity of Smoke.
Dirty turned and faced Jensen. The man was big and dirty and mean-looking. He wore one gun tied down and had another six-shooter shoved behind his belt. “You got no call to talk to me like that, Jensen.”
“You ever ridden back to Nevada to put flowers on the grave of that little girl you killed, Dirty?”
Dirty flushed under the beard and the dirt on his face. “I was drunk when that happened, Jensen. Man can’t be held responsible for what he does when he’s drunk.”
“Yeah,” Smoke said sourly. “The courts will probably hold that to be true one of these days. But ‘one of these days’ don’t count right now.”
Mills grunted softly.
“Give him a drink,” Smoke told the barkeep. “On me. Enjoy it, Dirty. It’s gonna be your last one.”
Deke Carey moved away from the bar to get a better angle at Smoke.
“Stand still, Deke,” Smoke told him. “You move again and I’ll put lead in you.”
Deke froze to the floor, both hands in plain sight. “You think you can take us all, Jensen?”
“Yes.”
Mills had moved to one side, one thumb hooked over his belt buckle. Smoke had noticed several days before that the federal marshal carried a hideout gun shoved behind his belt, under his jacket.
“Who’s your funny-lookin’ friend, Jensen?” another of the six asked.
“I am United States Marshal Walsdorf,” Mills informed him.
“Well, la-tee-da,” a young punk with both guns tied down said with a simper. “A U—nited States Marshal. Heavens!” He put a hand to his forehead and leaned up against the bar. “I’m so fearful I think I might swoon.”
Mills was across the room before the punk could stand up straight. Mills hit the smart-mouthed punk with a hard right fist that knocked him sprawling. He jerked him up, popped him again, and threw him across the room. The punk landed against the cold pot-bellied stove. The stove fell over, the stovepipe broke loose from the flue collar, and the two-bit young gunny was covered with soot.
“Show some respect for the badge, if not for me,” Mills said.
“I don’t like your damn attitude!” another gunny said. “I think I’ll just take that badge and shove . . .”
The only thing that got shoved was Mills’ fist, smack into the gunny’s mouth. Mills hit him two more times, and the man slumped to the floor, bleeding from nose and mouth and momentarily out of it.
Mills swept back his coat, put his hand on the butt of his short-barreled Peacemaker .45 and thundered, “I will have law and order, gentlemen!”
“Halp!” the soot-covered punk yelled. “I cain’t see nothin’. Halp!”
“Let’s take ’em, Greeny!” Dirty said.
But Smoke was already moving. He reached Dirty before the man could drag iron and loosened some of Dirty’s teeth with a short, hard right.
Greeny swung at Mills and almost fell down as Mills ducked the punch. Mills planted his lace-up boots and decked the outlaw.
Smoke jabbed a left fist into Deke’s face three times, the jabs jarring the man’s head back and bringing a bright smear of blood to his mouth. He followed the jabs with a right cross that knocked Deke to the floor.
“By the Lord!” Mills shouted. “This is exhilarating.” He just got the words out of his mouth when the punk hit him on t
op of the head with the stovepipe and knocked him spinning across the room.
Smoke splintered a chair across the punk’s teeth, the hardwood knocking the kid up against a wall.
The barkeep climbed up on the bar and jumped onto Deke’s back just as the man was getting to his boots. Deke threw the smaller man off and came in swinging at Smoke.
Bad mistake on Deke’s part.
Smoke hit him with a left—right combination that glazed the man's bloodshot eyes and backed him up against the bar. Smoke hit him twice in the stomach and that did it for Deke. He kissed the floor and began puking.
Dirty hit Smoke a sneak punch that jarred Smoke and knocked him around. Smoke recovered and the men stood toe to toe and slugged it out for a full minute.
Mills was smashing Greeny’s face with short, hard, brutal blows that brought a spray of blood each time his big fists impacted with the outlaw’s face.
The soot-covered kid climbed to his boots and decided to take on the barkeep.
Bad mistake on the kid’s part. The barkeep had retreated to the bar and pulled out a truncheon, which he promptly and with much enthusiasm laid on top of the punk’s head. The punk’s eyes crossed, he sighed once, and hit the floor, out cold.
Dirty backed up and with Smoke’s hands still balled into fists, grinned at him and went for his gun.
Smoke kicked the man in the groin, and Dirty doubled over, coughing and gagging. Smoke stepped forward and kicked the murderer in the face with the toe of his boot. Dirty’s teeth bounced around the floor. He screamed and rolled away, blood dripping from his ruined mouth.
Deke grabbed for his guns, and Smoke shot him twice in the belly, the second hole just an inch above the first. Deke tried to lift his pistol, and Smoke fired a third time, the slug hitting the man in the center of the forehead.
Dirty rolled to his boots and faced Smoke, a gun in each hand, his face a bloody mask of hate.
Smoke had pulled both .44s and started them thundering. He was cocking and firing so fast it seemed a never-ending deadly cadence of thunder. Puffs of dust rose from Dirty’s jacket each time a .44 slug slammed into his body. Dirty clung to the edge of the bar, his guns fallen to the floor out of numbed fingers.
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