“Now you just hold up on that order, Henry,” Sheriff Silva said.
“You’d better not cross me, Henry,” Sally warned him, a wicked glint in her eyes. “My name is Mrs. Smoke Jensen, and I can shoot damn near as well as my husband.”
“Yes’um,” Henry said. “I believe you, ma’am.”
“And you,” Sally spun around to face the sheriff, “would be advised to keep your nose out of my business.”
“Yes’um,” Silva said glumly, and followed her to the livery.
Sally picked out a mean-eyed blue steele that bared its teeth when the man tried to put a rope around it. Sally walked out into the corral, talked to the big horse for a moment, and then led it back to the barn. She fed him a carrot and an apple she’d picked up at the store, and the horse was hers.
“That there’s a stallion, ma’am!” Silva bellered. “He ain’t been cut. You can’t ride no stallion!”
“Get out of my way,” she told him.
“It ain’t decent, ma’am!”
“Shut up and take that pack animal around to the back of the store.”
“Yes’um,” Silva said. “Whatever you say, ma’am.” While Sally was saddling up, he turned to the hostler. “Send a boy with a fast horse to Rio. Tell them deputies of mine down there that Sally Jensen is pullin’ out Within the hour and looks like she’s plannin’ on joinin’ up with her husband. Tell them to do something. Anything!”
“Sheriff,” the hostler said, horror in his voice.
“Don’t look. She’s a-fixin’ to ride that hoss astride!”
“Lord, have mercy! What’s this world comin’ to?”
“Looking for me, boys?” Smoke called.
Crocker and Graham spun around, dropping their coffee cups, and grabbing for iron.
But Smoke was not playing the gentleman’s game. His hands were already filled with .44s. He began firing, firing and cocking with such speed the sounds seemed to be a continuous roll of deadly thunder. Crocker literally died on his feet, two slugs in his heart. Graham was turned completely around twice before he tumbled to the earth. He died with his eyes open, flat on his back and staring upward.
Smoke reloaded, listened for a moment, and then walked to the fire, eating the lunch and drinking the coffee the outlaws had fixed and no longer needed.
He drank the pot of coffee, kicked out the fire and left his tired horse to roll and water and graze, throwing a saddle on a fresh horse that was tied to a picket pin. He took what was left of a chunk of stale bread, sopped out the grease in the frying pan to soften it up, and finished off his lunch.
He looked at Crocker and Graham. “Nothing personal, boys. You just took the wrong trail, that’s all.” He swung into the saddle and put the camp of the dead behind him. Ray’s group came upon the bodies of Crocker and Graham and sat their horses for a time, looking around the silent camp.
“I’d like to think they et a good meal ’fore Jensen or that damned ol’ Charlie Starr come up on them," Keno said. “But if I was to bet on it, I’d wager that Jensen kilt ’em and then sat down an’ et their food.”
He shook his head. “We’re gonna lose this fight, boys. Somebody is shore to get lead in Jensen, least the odds lean thataway, but in the end, we’ll lose.”
Sonny shook his head. “It just ain’t possible what he’s a-doin’. By rights, we should have kilt him the first day or two. This makes nearabouts ten of us he’s kilt—and half a dozen or more bounty hunters—and we ain’t got no clear shot at him yet. I just ain’t likin’ this, boys.”
Jerry nodded his head in agreement. “I got me a bad feelin’ in my guts about this fight. But, hell, way I see it, we ain’t got no choice ’cept to go on with it.”
Ray swung down from the saddle. “Let’s give the boys a buryin’. Stoke up that far, McKay, make some coffee.”
“We got no quarrel with you, Charlie,” Luttie told the old gunfighter. “It’s Jensen we’re after.”
Charlie had stepped out of the timber, blocking the trail. His hands were by his side, by the butts of his guns, and his eyes were hard and unblinking. “You got a quarrel with Smoke, you got a quarrel with me. That’s the way it is. So I hope you made your peace with God.” He jerked iron and opened the dance.
Two of Luttie’s hands went down before anyone could react to the sudden gunfire. Horses were rearing and screaming in fright; several of the riders were dumped from the saddle. Charlie shot Nick Johnson between the eyes, and he fell over against Luttie, knocking the man from the saddle and falling on top of him in the brush.
Charlie took a round in his side, flinched from the painful impact, jerked out two spare six-guns from behind his gunbelt and kept on throwing lead.
A young hand who fancied himself a gunslick pulled iron and jacked the hammer back. One of Charlie’s slugs caught him in the chest and knocked him to the ground. He died calling for his mother.
Charlie’s left leg folded under him as a .45 hit him in the thigh. He went down rolling into the brush. Just as he got to his boots and staggered off into the timber, toward his horse, he turned and blew another of Luttie’s hired guns out of the saddle. Ted Danforth took the slug in the belly and hit the ground. He died on his knees.
Charlie managed to get into the saddle and point his horse’s head south, toward Rio.
“No need to chase after him, Luttie,” Jake said, after the spooked and screaming horses had been settled clown. “He’s had it. I seen him take at least three slugs. He’s dead in the saddle by now.”
Luttie looked around him at the carnage. “That old bastard just jumped out and killed five of my men. I ain’t believin’ this!" He was rubbing the bump on his head where his noggin hit a rock. “I started out with sixteen top guns, and my people has been cut damn near a third in less than a minute and a half. Jesus Christ!”
“But now Smoke is alone up here,” One-Eyed Jake pointed out.
“Wonderful,” Luttie said sourly.
* * *
Blackjack reined up when he spotted the ground-reined horse. That wasn’t the horse Smoke had been riding, but he could have changed horses somewhere along the way. Blackjack stepped down from the saddle and took cover behind a tree, his eyes sweeping the area in front of him. He should have been looking behind him.
Blackjack was so mad he wasn’t thinking straight. His head ached where Smoke had kicked him, and his nose and mouth hurt, too. All he could think about was killing Smoke Jensen. And he didn’t want to do it quick, neither. He wanted Jensen to suffer. He had plans for Smoke Jensen. Painful plans.
But a higher power had already checked off Blackjack’s name in the book of life.
“You should have stayed where I left you, Blackjack,” Smoke said from behind the outlaw.
Blackjack whirled around, a curse on his lips and his right hand filled with a .45. Smoke shot him twice, in the belly and the chest as the .44 rose in recoil.
Blackjack sighed once and fell back against the tree he’d thought was giving him cover. The .45 fell from his numbed hand. “Damn you, Jensen!” he gasped.
“Sometimes the cards just don’t fall right,” Smoke told him.
The light was fading around Blackjack.
“Any family?” Smoke asked.
“None that would give a damn about me dyin’.”
“Too bad.”
“You’re a .. . devil, Jensen! You musta . . . come here from somewhere’s outta hell.” His legs would no longer support him. He slumped to the ground.
Smoke kicked the .45 far from Blackjack’s reach and walked toward his horse, reloading as he walked. Blackjack’s voice stopped him.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Stay with me ’til I’m gone, Jensen—please?”
“All right,” Smoke said.
Smoke walked to him, reached down, and took the .41 derringer Blackjack had slipped from behind his big silver beltbuckle. Blackjack let his hand fall to his side.
“Damn you!” the outlaw moaned. “How’d you know?�
�
“I didn’t. But people like you never change.” He broke open the derringer and checked the loads. Full. He slipped the tiny gambler’s back-up behind his belt.
“I’ll see you in hell, Jensen!”
“Maybe. I’ve done some things that probably qualify me for that place.”
Blackjack fell over on his side. We was all so shore about this. Fifty, sixty . . . of us. One of you. I just cain’t understand it.” He shuddered and grabbed the ground in his pain. “What is it that . . . makes you so damn hard to kill?”
“Maybe it’s because I’m right, and you boys are wrong.”
Blackjack laughed bitterly.
“You got any money you want me to give to a church or an orphanage, Blackjack?”
Blackjack sneered past bloody lips and said some pretty terrible things about churches, orphans, the public in general and Smoke in particular.
He died with a curse on his lips.
“I don’t understand it either, Blackjack,” Smoke said to the dead outlaw.
Smoke stripped the saddle and bridle from Blackjack’s horse and turned the gelding loose. “Run free for a time, boy. You earned it.”
The last mountain man walked to his horse and swung into the saddle. “Let’s go meet what I was born to meet, boy,” he said. “No point in prolonging this.”
Chapter Seventeen
“What?” Earl almost lost his English cool. “That’s what the sheriff said,” the young man told him. “Missus Sally Jensen is headin’ into the mountains.”
Louis took off his badge and handed it to Earl. “I hereby resign my commission,” he told him. “The rest of you stay here. I’ve got to get into the mountains and head her off.”
“Look!” a citizen said, pointing up the muddy street.
“That’s Charlie!” Johnny shouted, running toward the man who appeared to be unconscious in the saddle.
“Get the doctor!” Cotton yelled, running after Johnny.
They gently took Charlie from the blood-soaked saddle and laid him down on the boardwalk. Charlie’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m hard hit, boys.”
“You’ll make it, you old war-hoss,” Johnny told him.
“I put about five or six of ’em down Tore they plugged me,” the old gunfighter said. “Seven Slash bunch.”
“Don’t talk, Charlie,” Lilly LaFevere said, kneeling down beside him.
“Hello, baby,” Charlie grinned up at her. “I ain’t seen you in ten years.”
“Nine,” she corrected him. “We was down on the border. Now hush your mouth.”
“Tired,” Charlie whispered. “Awful tired.”
“Take him to my quarters and put him in my bed,” Lilly told the men. “Move him gentle like. I count three bullet holes in his ornery old hide.”
She looked around her. “Where’s that goddamn sawbones?”
“He’s on the way,” a citizen said. “Is that really Charlie Starr?”
“Yeah,” Lilly said. “Now get the hell outta the way and give the man room to breathe.”
“I’m gone,” Louis said. “See you boys later.”
“You got enough grub?” Cotton asked.
“They’ll be food in the saddlebags of the outlaws,” Louis told him. “I’ll have a week’s supply fifteen minutes after I hit the mountains.”
He lifted the reins and was gone.
With his knife and strips of rawhide, Smoke made a pack out of two saddlebags, then carefully repacked all the supplies he’d taken from several dead men. He had a good five days’ food and plenty of ammo.
He tried not to think about when his luck was going to run out.
But he knew it would, sooner or later. The odds were just too great against him.
He was only a few miles away from where he’d left his horses—as the crow flies—but he didn’t want to head there, just yet. He stripped saddle and bridle from his borrowed horse and turned it loose to roll and water and graze. Then he picked up his pack and rifle and headed into the deep timber, to a place he remembered when roaming the country with old Preacher.
“You may get me, boys,” he said to the sighing winds and the soaring eagles high above him. “But you’ll pay a fearful price before you do.”
“Scum,” Louis said to the two riders.
“Huh?” one asked.
“I said you’re scum,” Louis repeated.
Stan and Glover had gotten separated from Noah’s group. They’d been wandering around in circles when they came upon the tall, well-built man dressed all in black. Kind of a dudey lookin’ fellow—except for those guns of his. They looked well-used. And his coat was brushed back to give him free access to the Colts. He was just standing in the middle of the trail, smiling sort of strange-like. Now he was insulting them.
“Git out of the way, fancy-pants!” Glover told him.
“I like it here.”
“Well, you about a stupid feller, then. I might decide to just run you down with this here horse. What do you think about that?”
Louis smiled. “I think your blow-hole is overloading your mouth, punk.”
Glover and Stan exchanged glances. It just seemed like nothin' had worked out right since they’d left the West coast and come to Colorado. All them hayseeds and hicks out in the rural areas of the coast states knowed who the Lee Slater gang was, and they kowtowed and done what they was told. But it seemed like that ever since they’d come to Colorado, all that was happenin’ was they was gettin’ the crap shot out of them. And nobody seemed to be afraid of them.
“You a bounty hunter, mister?” Stan asked.
“You might say that. I hunt punks. And it looks like I found me a couple.”
“I’m gettin’ tarred of you insultin’ me!” Glover popped off.
“Yeah,” Stan flapped his mouth. “We’re lookin’ for Smoke Jensen so’s we can collect the reward money.”
“You dumb clucks,” Louis said with a chuckle. “You’re part of the Lee Slater gang. You’re all wanted men, with bounties on your own heads. How in the devil do you think you’re going to collect any reward money?”
Stan and Glover exchanged another look. That hadn’t occurred to either of them.
“Uhhh . . .” Glover said.
“Well . . .” Stan said.
“Get off your horses, throw your guns in the bushes, and start walking,” Louis told them.
Stan told him what he could do with his orders. Sideways.
Louis shot him. His draw was like a blur and totally unexpected. Stan pitched from the saddle, and Louis turned his gun toward Glover just as the outlaw was jerking iron. Louis waited; a slight smile on his lips as the man cursed and jacked back the hammer.
That was as far as he got before Louis drilled him dead center in the chest, the slug knocking the outlaw out of the saddle, dead before he hit the ground. Quite unlike him, Louis twirled his six-shooter twice before dropping it back in leather.
“Punks,” he said scornfully.
He went through their saddlebags and took, out bacon, potatoes, bread, onions, and coffee. Fortunately, he did have with him his own coffee pot and small frying pan. The one he took from Stan’s saddlebag was so coated with old grease and other odious and unidentifiable specks it was probably contagious just by touch. With a grimace of disgust, Louis tossed it into the bushes.
He stripped both horses of saddle and bridle and turned them loose, then swung back into the saddle and headed out. He did not look back at the dead outlaws lying sprawled on the trail.
It was nearing dusk when Al Martine and his bunch spotted Smoke high up near the timber line in the big lonesome.
“We got him, boys!” Al yelled, and put the spurs to his tired horse.
A rifle bullet took Al’s hat off and sent it spinning away. The mountain winds caught it, and it was gone forever.
“Goddamn!” Al yelled, just as another round kicked up dirt at his horse’s hooves, and the animal started bucking. It was all Al could do to stay in the saddle.
/> A slug smacked Zack in the shoulder and nearly knocked him from the saddle. The second shot tore off the saddle horn and smashed into Zack’s upper thigh, bringing a scream of pain from the outlaw.
“He’s got help!” Pedro yelled. “Let’s get gone from here.”
The outlaws raced for cover, with Zack flopping around in the saddle.
Smoke looked down the mountain. “Now who in the devil is that?” he muttered.
Sally punched .44 rounds into her carbine and settled back into her well-hidden little camp in a narrow depression with the back and one side a solid rock wall.
“Who you reckon that was a-shootin’ at us?” Tom Post yelled over the sounds of galloping horses.
“I don’t know,” Crown returned the yell. “But he’s hell with a rifle, whoever he is.”
Using field glasses, Sally watched them beat a hasty retreat, and then laid out cloth and cup, plate and tableware, and napkin for her early supper. just because one was in the wilderness, surrounded by Godless heathens, was no reason to forego small amenities.
She opened a can of beans, set aside a can of peaches for dessert, and spread butter on a thick slice of bread. Before eating, she said a prayer for the continuing safety of her man.
“Hello the far!” the voice came out of the timber.
Louis edged back into the shadows and lifted his Colt. “If you’re friendly, come on in.”
“I reckon we’re friendly,” came the call. Two men stepped into the small clearing. “We’re all in this together, a-huntin’ that damn Smoke Jensen. Share your coffee, friend?”
“Why, certainly!” Louis called out cheerfully.
“Step right on in, boys.”
“Kind of you.” The men stepped closer. “I’m Nick Reeves, and this is my partner, Mike Beecham.”
Louis knew them both. No-goods from down near the Four Corners.
“What might your name be, mister?” Mike asked, squatting down by the small fire. “I think I know the voice, but I cain’t hardly see you in them shadows.”
“Louis Longmont, you cretin!”
Both men yelled, cussed, and grabbed for iron. Louis had both hands filled with .44s, and the campsite thundered with shots, the moist evening air filling with gray smoke.
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