The .45 clattered to the littered floor.
“By God,” one of Bobby’s friends declared. “That’ll not go unavenged.” He stood up, a pistol in his hand.
Charlie drilled him in the brisket and doubled the young man over like the closing of a fan. The young man fell, landing on Bobby.
Bobby screamed in pain.
“You still owe me fifty dollars,” Louis reminded the gut-shot punk who’d wanted revenge for Bobby.
“Help me!” the second punk bellered. “Oh, Lordy, Lordy, my belly’s on fire.”
“My God!” Larry yelled. “Somebody get a doctor and call the police.”
He was ignored.
Bobby’s other friends sat quite still at the table, their faces a sickly shade of green.
“Gimme a drink and one of them eggs over yonder,” Charlie told the bartender. “Shootin’ always makes me hungry.”
“You barbarian!” Larry yelled at him.
Charlie noticed the man wasn’t wearing a gun, so he did the next best thing. He walked over to him and slapped Larry across the mouth, knocking him down.
“I’ll sue you!” Larry hollered.
Bobby broke wind and died.
His friend yelled, “Help me!”
Charlie punched out his empties, loaded up full, holstered his gun, and began peeling the egg.
“Somebody run fetch that new undertaker feller that just set up business down the street,” the barkeep suggested. “I wanna see that shiny black hearse and them fancy-steppin’ horses.”
“You’re all mad!” Larry said, getting to his shoes.
“Somebody get a doctor for that poor boy.”
“Ain’t no doctor,” a man told him. “Go get the barber.
“The barber!” Larry exclaimed in horror.
“There’s a Ute medicine man down on the La Jara. But that young pup’ll done be swelled up and stinkin’ something awful time he gets here. That old Ute’s pretty good, but I ain’t never heard of him raisin’ the dead.”
“Halp!” the second punk yelled.
His voice was getting weaker.
“Won’t be long now,” Earl said, bending over the gut-shot young man. “Where’s your next of kin, lad?”
“I don’t wanna die!”
“Then you should have chosen your companions with a bit more care. Next of kin?” '
“I got a sister up in Denver. But she threw me out a couple of years ago.”
The batwings flapped open, and a man dressed all in black stood in the space. “I heard shooting!”
“My, but your hearing is quite keen,” Earl commented drily.
“I am the Reverend Silas Muckelmort. A minister of the gospel. I have come to this town to bring the word of God to the sinners who lust for blood money. Has that young man passed?” He pointed to Bobby
“Cold as a hammer,” Cotton told him.
“Then it is my duty to tend to his needs,“ the Rev. Muckelmort said.
“You keep your shit-snatchers off my body!” a small man dressed in a dark suit said, stepping into the barroom. “I’m the undertaker in town.”
“His spiritual needs, you jackass!” Silas thundered.
“Pass the salt and pepper,” Charlie told the barkeep. “I can’t eat an egg without salt and pepper."
Smoke holed up in the most inhospitable place he could find, very near the timber line, knowing the outlaws would, most likely. find the most comfortable spot they could to bed down for the night. He had already found a spot he would use to leave his horses, in an area so remote it would be pure chance if anyone stumbled upon them. Tomorrow he would ride there and leave them, packing on his back what he felt he would need in his fight against the bounty hunters and the Lee Slater gang.
Smoke rolled up in his blankets and went to sleep. The next several days were going to be busy ones.
He was up and riding before dawn, having committed to memory the trail to the cul-de-sac where he would leave the horses. He was there by mid-morning. He transplanted several bushes over to the small opening and carefully watered them. To get to the opening, he had to ride behind a thick stand of timber, then angle around a huge boulder, and finally take a left into the lush little valley of about ten acres with a small pool next to a sheer rock wall. The grass was belly high in places; ample feed for the horses for some time. If he did not return, they could easily find their way out.
Smoke put together a pack whose weight would have staggered the average man. He picked it up with his left hand.
He sat for a time eating a cold . . . what was it Sally called a mid-morning meal? Brunch, yeah, that was it, and wishing he had a potful of hot, strong, black coffee But he couldn’t chance that. He would hike a few miles and then have a hot dinner—lunch, Sally called it—and drink a whole a pot of strong cowboy coffee. He wanted the scum and crud to see that smoke. He wanted them to come right to that spot. By the time they got there, he would have a few surprises laid out for them.
He walked over and spoke with Buck for a few moments. Rubbing his muzzle and talking gently to the big horse. Buck seemed to understand, but then, everybody thinks that of their pets and their riding horses. Shotgun, the pack animal, and Buck watched Smoke pick up his heavy pack and leave. When he was out of sight, they returned to their grazing.
Smoke hiked what he figured was about three miles through wild and rugged country, then stopped and built a small, nearly smokeless fire for his coffee and bacon and beans. While his meal was cooking and the coffee boiling, he whittled on some short stakes, sharpening one end to a needle point. After eating, he cleaned plate and skillet and spoon and packed them away. Then he went to work making the campsite look semi-permanent and laying out some rather nasty pitfalls for the bounty hunters and outlaws.
That done, he tossed some logs on the fire and slipped back into the timber where he’d hidden his pack. He waited.
Curly Rogers and his pack of hyenas were the first to arrive.
Smoke was back in the timber with the 44-.40, waiting and watching.
The outlaws didn’t come busting in. They laid back and looked the situation over for a time. They saw the lean-to Smoke had built, and what appeared to be a man sleeping under a blanket, protected by the overlaid boughs.
“It might not be Jensen,” Taylor said.
“So what?” Thumbs Morton said. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone got shot by accident.”
“I don’t like it,” Curly said. “It just looks too damn pat to suit me.”
“Maybe Slim got lead into him?” Bell suggested. “He may be hard hit and holed up.”
Curly thought about that for a moment. “Maybe. Yeah. That must be it. Lake, you think you can Injun up yonder for a closer look?”
“Shore. But why don’t we just shoot him from here?”
“A shot’d bring everybody foggin’. Then we’d probably have to fight some of the others over Jensen’s carcass. A knife don’t make no noise.”
Lake grinned and pulled out a long-bladed knife. “I’ll just slip this ’tween his ribs.”
As Lake stepped out with the knife in his hand, Smoke tugged on the rope he’d attached to the sticks under the blankets. What the outlaws thought to be a sleeping or wounded Smoke Jensen moved and Lake froze, then jumped back into the timber.
“This ain’t a gonna work,” Curly said. “We got to shoot him, I reckon. One shot might not attract no attention. Bud, use your rifle and put one shot in him. This close, one round’ll kill him sure.”
Bud lined up the form in the sights and squeezed the trigger. Smoke tugged on the rope, and the stickman rose off the ground a few inches, then fell back.
“We got him!” Bell yelled, jumping up. “We kilt Smoke Jensen. The money’s our’n!”
The men raced toward the small clearing, guns drawn and yelling.
Taylor yelled as the ground seemed to open up under his boots. He fell about eighteen inches into a pit, two sharpened stakes tearing into the calves of his legs. He scr
eamed in pain, unable to free himself from the sharpened stakes.
Bell tripped a piece of rawhide two inches off the ground and a tied-back, fresh and springy limb sprang forward. The limb whacked the man on the side of his head, tearing off one ear and knocking the man unconscious.
“What the hell!” Curly yelled.
Smoke fired from concealment, the .44-.40 slug taking Lake in the right side and exiting out his left side. He was dying as he hit the ground.
“It’s a trap!” Curly screamed, and ran for the timber. He ran right over Bell in his haste to get the hell into cover.
Smoke lined up Bud and fired just as the man turned, the slug hitting the man in the ass, the lead punching into his left buttock and blowing out his right, taking a sizeable chunk of meat with it.
Bud fell screaming and rolled on the ground, throwing himself into cover.
Thumbs Morton jerked up Bell just as the man was crawling to his knees, blood pouring from where his ear had once been, and dragged him into cover just as Smoke fired again, the slug hitting a tree and blowing splinters in Thumbs’ face, stinging and bringing blood.
“Let’s get gone from here!” Curly yelled.
“What about Taylor?” Thumbs asked, pulling splinters and wiping blood from his face.
“Hell with him.”
With Curly supporting the ass-shot Bud, and Thumbs helping Bell, the outlaws made it back to their horses and took off at a gallop, Bud shrieking in pain as the saddle abused his shot-up butt.
Smoke lay in the timber and listened to the outlaws beat their retreat, then stepped out into his camp. He looked at Lake. The outlaw was dead. Smoke took his ammo belt and tossed his guns into the brush. He walked over to Taylor, who had passed out from the pain in his ruined legs. He took his ammunition, tossed his guns into the brush, and then jerked the stakes out of the man’s legs. The man moaned in unconsciousness.
Smoke found the horses of the men, took the food from the saddlebags, and led one animal back to the campsite. He poured a canteen full of water on Taylor. The man moaned and opened his eyes.
“Ride,” Smoke told him. “If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”
“I cain’t get up on no horse,” Taylor sobbed. “My legs is ruint.”
Smoke jacked back the hammer on his .44. “Then I guess I’d better put you out of your misery.”
Taylor screamed in fear and crawled to his horse, pulling himself up by clinging to the stirrup and the fender of the saddle. He managed to get in the saddle after several tries. His face was white with pain. He looked down at Smoke.
“You ain’t no decent human bein’. What you’re doin’ to me ain’t right. I need a doctor. You a devil, Jensen!”
“Then you pass that word, pusbag. You make damn sure all your scummy buddies know I don’t play by the rules. Now, ride, you bastard, before I change my mind and kill you!”
Taylor was gone in a gallop.
Smoke shoved Lake’s body over the side of the small plateau and began throwing dirt over the fire, making certain it was out. Then he sat down, rolled a cigarette, and had a cup of coffee.
All in all, he concluded, it had been a very productive morning.
Chapter Thirteen
The townspeople all turned out for the funeral parade that morning. Bobby had had enough money on him to have a fine funeral, complete with some Wailers the Reverend Muckelmort had hired. He’d found someone with a bass drum and a fellow who played the trumpet. It was a sight to see, what with the thumping of the bass drum and the tootin’ on the trumpet.
Muckelmort was something of a windbag. By the time he’d finished with his lengthy graveside harangue, nobody was left but the wailers—they were paid to stay—everybody else had retired to the saloon.
Nobody knew the second punk’s name, and herd only had ten dollars on him, so he was wrapped in a blanket and stuck in an‘ un-marked hole. Two dollars went to the gravedigger, two dollars for the blanket, two dollars for the preacher, and the remaining four bucks went to buy drinks after the service. Somebody recalled that four of them had ridden into town together. But the other two had split just after the shooting. One of them was heard to say that milkin’ cows wasn’t all that bad after all. He was headin’ back to the farm.
The RCMP had ridden in and collected the last prisoner, and the jail was empty.
When the morning stage rolled in, it was filled with reporters, all from back East. “Be another stage in this afternoon,” the driver told Earl. “We’re gonna be runnin’ two a day while this lasts. We must have passed five hundred people on the road, all headin’ this way.”
Sheriff Silva rode in, looked around, cussed, and then commented to Earl that he reckoned he’d better hire some more deputies. Fifteen minutes later, he swore in Louis, Johnny, and Cotton. Louis asked him if he’d received warrants for Smoke’s arrest.
“I tossed ’em in the trash can,” the sheriff said.
“There ain’t no lawman out here gonna try to arrest Smoke Jensen. Not none that has a lick of sense. I know all about that shootin’ in Idaho years ago. It was a fair fight, if you wanna call Smoke bein’ out-numbered twenty to one fair. Those warrants are bogus.”
A miner riding into town loping his mule as hard as he could cut off the conversation. He pulled up short at the sight of all the activity. When he’d been here last month there hadn’t been more than seventy-five people in the whole damn town. Now it looked to him like there was more than a thousand.
With a confused look on his face, he tried to kick the mule into movement. But the mule was smarter than the rider. When a mule is tired or is loaded too heavily, it just won’t move and no amount of cussing or kicking or threatening will make it move. The miner slid out of the saddle and ran up to Sheriff Silva and the other deputies.
The mule sat down in the street.
“Big shootin’ about ten miles out of town, Sheriff,” the miner said, pointing. “I don’t know if they was outlaws or bounty hunters—one and the same if town, strip it bare, and leave this part of the country?”
“It’s a possibility that I’ve considered. At first I think his plan was to hit the miners and the stages carrying gold and silver out. Maybe he might still do that. But I think now that Jensen has his brother’s men out looking for him, he just might turn his back on Lee and use the men he has to wipe this town clean.”
“Brotherly love doesn’t run very deep in that family, does it?” Earl said softly.
Silva shrugged. “That’s just a guess on my part. Who the hell really knows what Lee and Luttie will do?”
The men fell silent in the noisy, busy town, their eyes on the mountains that loomed around them. All of them had one overriding thought: Could Smoke pull this off?
Charlie Starr watched with some amusement in his hard eyes as Curly’s group tried to treat the wounded. He had left his horse and walked to within fifty yards of the outlaw band’s camp, casually leaning up against a tree at the edge of the clearing.
Bud was lying on his stomach, his britches down around his boots, his bare butt shinin’ in the sunlight, while Thumbs Morton poured alcohol on the bullet holes. That set Bud off, Jerking and squalling.
One side of Thumb’s face was swollen and red-looking.
Bell Harrison had a bloody bandage wrapped around his head, and Taylor’s legs, from the knees down, were wrapped in dirty, bloody bandages.
“I’m a-gonna kill that son of a bitch!” Bell said, considerable heat in his voice. “Torture him. Make it last. Burn him. I’ll start with his feet in a fire and work up. I hate Smoke Jensen.”
Charlie grinned. Smoke had really done a job on this bunch of no-goods.
“My legs is real hot, boys,” Taylor said with a moan. “I’m burnin’ up. I think Jensen put something on them stakepoints. Poison, maybe.”
Probably so, Charlie thought. He probably found him some bear shit and smeared the points with it. Or he might have used some poisonous plant leaves. Ol’ Preacher taught him every mean
and dirty trick in the book when it came to survival. You boys done grabbed hold of a grizzly bear’s tail when you decided to take on Smoke Jensen.
“I can’t do no more for you, Bud,” Thumbs said.
“I hate Smoke Jensen!” Bell said.
Charlie worked his way around the clearing until he had reached a spot about twenty yards from the bitching and moaning group of deadbeats. He pulled both .44s from leather and jacked the hammers back.
“What the hell was that?” Curly said, grabbing up a rifle and looking all around him.
“I didn’t hear nothin’,” Taylor said.
“I wonder if Jensen give Lake a decent buryin’?” Thumbs said.
“About the same as I’m gonna give you,” Charlie said, and stepped out and started shooting.
Curly recognized the man at once. Charlie Starr! He jumped away from the group and headed for the horses, none of whom had been unsaddled. Curly wanted no part of Charlie Starr. Smoke Jensen was bad enough, but combine him with Charlie, and that was just too much.
Curly left his fearless little group to fight it out by themselves.
Charlie’s first slug knocked Bell sprawling, his right arm hanging broken and useless by his side. Thumbs Morton was hit in the right side, the bullet shattering a rib and angling off to tear through a kidney. He lifted his six-gun, a curse forming on his lips, and got off one round, which missed.
Charlie didn’t miss. He didn’t even flinch as the slug from Thumbs‘ gun tore bark from a nearby tree. He leveled his long-barreled .44 and shot Thumbs in the belly, knocking the man down, hard-hit and dying.
Bell struggled to his boots and lifted his left-hand gun. Charlie perforated the man’s belly, and Bell would never again have to worry about indigestion or how to keep his hat on his head with only one ear. Now all he had to worry about was facing God.
Charlie stepped back into the timber and was gone, leaving Bud and Taylor alive in the middle of carnage. He’d seen Curly Rogers hightail it out. Charlie knew Curly from way back. Knew him for the coward and the bully he was. Let him go; they would meet up again.
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