The Family Jensen

by William W. Johnstone

  “Likewise,” Smoke said as he gripped the man’s hand. Both his pa and Preacher had taught him to be polite to folks, unless and until they demonstrated they deserved to be treated otherwise.

  “What brings you to Reno? Not trouble, I hope.”

  Smoke decided it might be worth talking to the stationmaster for a few minutes. “I’m actually headed for a settlement called Halltown. I looked it up on the map in the Denver depot, and I saw that it’s north of here a ways.”

  “You mean Helltown?”

  Smoke frowned. “No, I don’t think that’s the name of the place.”

  The stationmaster chuckled. “Sorry. You’re right, of course, it’s Halltown. But I’ve heard some folks have started using that other name for it.”

  Somehow, Smoke wasn’t surprised Matt had wound up in trouble in a place that had been dubbed Helltown.

  “There’s a spur line being built up in that direction, isn’t there?”

  The stationmaster’s jovial attitude turned serious. “That’s right. Cyrus Longacre is putting it in.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “I couldn’t really say,” the stationmaster replied with a shake of his head.

  “You’ve never met him?”

  “Oh, I’ve met him. He’s on good terms with my bosses at the Southern Pacific.”

  Smoke thought he knew what the man meant. The stationmaster didn’t like Cyrus Longacre, but he wasn’t going to speak up against him. It might get him in trouble with his own employer.

  But the stationmaster surprised Smoke by adding, “I don’t care much for some of the men who work for Mr. Longacre. They seem to me like nothing more than hired guns.”

  The history of the railroads being built across the frontier was littered with hired guns, Smoke thought. More than one small-scale war had broken out between rival companies as they strove to be the first to lay down the steel rails into lucrative areas. Smoke had even taken part in some of those dust-ups.

  He wasn’t shocked to hear Longacre had employed gunslingers to help him push his spur line through. From the sound of disapproval in the stationmaster’s voice, the situation was worse than usual.

  “Something going on up there I should know about if I’m headed in that direction?” Smoke asked bluntly.

  The stationmaster hesitated. “It’s not my place to spread rumors. . . .”

  “We’re just a couple fellas talking,” Smoke assured him. “And I don’t plan to be spreading around anything I hear inside this office.”

  “Well . . . there’s talk there might be trouble between Mr. Longacre and some Paiute Indians who live on the other side of Halltown. I’ve heard there might even be another Paiute war if things keep going the way they are.”

  The mention of the Indians rang an alarm bell in Smoke’s mind. He already thought Matt’s summons might have something to do with the reborn Indian Ring. What he was hearing from the stationmaster added weight to that theory.

  “Do you know what the problem is between Longacre and the Paiutes?”

  The stationmaster shook his head. “I honestly don’t, but even if I did, I’ve probably said too much already. Like I told you, Mr. Jensen, it’s not my place.”

  Smoke could tell he wasn’t going to get any more information out of the man. He nodded. “Thanks anyway. If you happen to see the old-timer I was asking about, you’ll tell him I was here and I’ve gone on to Halltown?”

  “I sure will,” the stationmaster replied with an emphatic nod. “I’d be glad to do that.”

  “So long, then.” Smoke shook hands with the man again and turned to leave the office.

  As he stepped back into the depot lobby, his eyes quickly scanned the room. It was a matter of habit, the sort of caution that had kept him alive in a world full of enemies. He spotted the men who started toward him, two from his right and another pair from his left.

  Smoke instantly pegged them for what they were—hired guns. One of the men to his right wore buckskins while the other was dressed in range clothes. The men on his left were another saddle tramp and a gent in a derby and flashy tweed suit. They all had hard faces and eyes that looked like chips of agate. Smoke felt them looking at him and knew they were there to kill him.

  Unfortunately, quite a few innocent people were moving in and out of the depot at the moment. Smoke would worry about them, but the hardcases wouldn’t. They’d probably gun down anybody who got in their way and never even blink, as long as they killed him, too. That was what they had been paid for.

  Though Smoke knew he was guessing, Cyrus Longacre’s name sprang into his mind again.

  The door of the stationmaster’s office opened again behind him. The man stepped into the doorway and called, “Mr. Jensen—”

  The man in the buckskins on Smoke’s right slapped leather.

  “Get down!” Smoke shouted as his hand streaked toward the Colt on his right hip. “Everybody down!”

  The man in the buckskins was pretty fast, but not in the same league as Smoke Jensen. Smoke’s gun roared first. The bullet punched into the would-be killer’s chest and rocked him back a step. He had cleared leather, but his revolver was still pointed at the floor when his finger clenched spasmodically on the trigger and sent a slug into the polished hardwood planks.

  All across the lobby, women screamed, men yelled curses and questions, and everybody started scurrying for cover or throwing themselves behind the benches in the waiting area.

  Smoke was already partially turned to his right. His second shot blasted at the same instant the man in range clothes pulled trigger, so the two reports sounded like one. Smoke felt as much as heard the slug smack through the air next to his ear.

  His shot was more accurate. It ripped into the gunman’s neck, causing blood to geyser from severed arteries. The shower of gore added to the screams from the terrified bystanders.

  The man in buckskins was on his knees, still trying to lift his gun. Smoke snapped off another shot that drilled cleanly into the center of the man’s forehead and flipped him backward.

  Only a couple of heartbeats had passed since Smoke reached for his gun, but he knew that trapped in a crossfire, it was already too late for him to down the other two men before they could draw a bead on him. He whirled toward them, and threw himself forward in a sliding dive. Bullets whipped through the air where his body had been a split second earlier. The shots echoed back from the depot’s high ceiling, booming like thunder.

  From where he lay on his belly, Smoke triggered again. Traveling at an upward angle, the bullet struck the man in the derby just under his right eye, bored through his brain, and blew out the top of his head, causing the derby to flip in the air. The hat and its dead owner hit the floor about the same time.

  That left just one gunman. Having seen how Smoke had killed his partners in little more than the blink of an eye, the man flung one last shot at his intended target and turned to run. Smoke surged to his feet and ran after him. He wanted to question that hombre and find out who had hired him . . . although Smoke already had a pretty good idea who that was.

  Somehow the Indian Ring had found out that Matt had summoned him and Preacher, Smoke thought. Still smarting over what had happened the year before in Wyoming, those conspirators didn’t want to deal with all three of them again. Knowing he would probably pass through Reno on his way to Halltown, the Ring had sent gunmen there to watch for him and ambush him as soon as he showed up. It made sense, though he didn’t yet know the motivation behind the whole thing.

  Nobody tried to stop the fleeing gunman. The people in the train station were only interested in getting out of the way of any flying lead. Smoke bounded past them. The hired gun twisted and snapped a shot at him, but it went high. He triggered a shot as the man ducked through the doorway. Missing by a narrow margin, the bullet struck the doorjamb, showering splinters over the gunman.

  Smoke’s .44 was empty. He holstered it and pulled the gun from the cross-draw rig on his left hip. He heard shou
ting, a gunshot, and what sounded like a scream of pain from a horse outside. As he raced through the doorway and out of the depot, he spotted a knot of people in the street. One man had hold of a horse’s reins, trying to control the animal as it reared and plunged, its eyes rolling wildly.

  Smoke looked for the man he was chasing but didn’t see him anywhere. The gunman hadn’t had time to get out of sight. That left the crowd near the spooked horse. The men stepped aside nervously as Smoke approached them, gun in hand.

  “Don’t shoot, mister,” one of them said. “If you were after that fella, you don’t have to worry about him anymore. He ain’t gettin’ away.”

  That was true. The gunman was stretched out on the street with a puddle of blood around his head, soaking into the dirt. The middle of his face had a grotesque, pushed-in look.

  “That horse kicked him in the head, didn’t it?” Smoke asked.

  The bystander who had spoken up nodded his head. “Yeah. That fella came runnin’ out of the train station and tried to steal the first horse he came to. The owner tried to stop him, and the fella took a shot at him. But he nicked the horse, and the varmint went plumb crazy. Reared up and planted a hoof right in the middle of the fella’s face.” The man telling the story shook his head. “That was sure some bad luck.”

  Bad luck indeed, Smoke thought. He couldn’t force the gunman to reveal who had hired him. But it was a lot better than being dead himself.

  A burly individual with a lawman’s badge pinned to his vest lumbered up holding a shotgun. “What in blue blazes is goin’ on here?” he demanded, pointing the Greener in Smoke’s general direction. “You better holster that hogleg, mister, before I get nervous.”

  “I wouldn’t want that, Marshal,” Smoke said, having read the designation on the badge. He slipped the Colt back into leather. “I can tell you what this is all about.”

  “Good,” the marshal said with a curt nod, “because I got a feelin’ it’s gonna be a mighty interestin’ story.”

  Chapter 28

  The marshal was quick to accept Smoke’s story that the men had tried to kill him because they wanted to be known as the hombres who killed Smoke Jensen. It was one of the drawbacks of owning a reputation as one of the fastest guns in the West.

  He didn’t explain his theory about the Indian Ring trying to prevent him from reaching Halltown—or Helltown, as the stationmaster had called it. The Ring had a history of paying off corrupt lawmen to do their bidding. Smoke didn’t know who he could trust in Reno, so it was better not to trust anybody.

  The marshal seemed happy to see him ride out of town. Monte Carson was the only lawman who really liked having Smoke around. Most other star packers he encountered considered him a magnet for trouble. There was some truth to that idea.

  He headed north, following the route of the spur line Cyrus Longacre was building, but Smoke soon veered off to the west into a range of hills. If Longacre and the Indian Ring were behind the attempt on his life in Reno, it stood to reason they might have more hired killers watching for him. He planned to stay out of sight as much as possible as he proceeded toward Halltown.

  He knew he wouldn’t reach the settlement by nightfall, but if nothing further happened to delay him, he ought to be there by noon the next day. He kept the ’Paloose moving at a steady, ground-eating pace as he rode through the hills, occasionally catching a glimpse of the railroad tracks in the distance.

  Just before dark he stopped and made camp at the foot of a hogback ridge. He didn’t build a fire, but made a skimpy meal from the supplies he’d picked up in Reno. It would have been nice to boil some coffee, but Smoke knew he’d be all right without it. He had made many a cold camp back in his wandering days, when he was still going by the name Buck West and was considered an outlaw. Before he met Sally . . .

  Thinking about her as he sat with his back propped against a rock made her image appear in his mind, and as usual it was so vivid he felt like he could reach out and stroke his fingers along the smooth skin of her cheek, let his hand stray through the silky strands of her dark hair, lean toward her and taste the warm sweetness of her mouth . . .

  “Daydreamin’ like a calf-eyed boy! I’ll swan, Smoke, you’re gettin’ careless in your old age. If I was out for your hair, you’d be—”

  “Putting a bullet through your scrawny old gizzard right about now, Preacher,” Smoke said as he moved his hand enough to reveal the Colt he held alongside his leg. “Yeah, I was feeling a mite homesick, but I still knew you were there. Shoot, I smelled forty-year-old bear grease on those buckskins of yours five minutes ago.”

  Preacher chuckled as he stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the camp. “Well, I’m glad to know that bein’ an old married man ain’t made you totally soft.”

  Smoke stood up and holstered his gun, then stepped forward to greet the man who was as much like a father to him as his own pa, God rest Emmett Jensen’s soul. He clasped Preacher’s outstretched hand, then they pulled each other into a fierce, back-pounding hug.

  “I asked about you in Reno,” Smoke said.

  “Decided not to go through there. Smoke, I had some trouble over yonder in Wyomin’. The Injun Ring sent some varmints after me, and the only reason I can figure why they’d do that is to keep me from gettin’ to Matt.”

  Smoke nodded. “They had gunnies waiting for me in Reno. They probably would have tried to cut you down too, if you had shown up there.”

  “I ain’t a bit surprised. Dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know why I even asked. Did you get a chance to ask any questions ’fore they all crossed the divide?”

  “No, things didn’t work out that way,” Smoke replied without going into details. “There’s no doubt in my mind who hired them, though.”

  “Mine, neither. You got any idea what sort of scrape Matt’s got hisself into this time?”

  “Nope. All I know is that I got a wire from him telling me to rattle my hocks to a place called Halltown.” Smoke grunted. “Helltown, I’m told some folks call it.”

  “Helltown,” Preacher repeated. “Yeah, that sounds like a place where Matt would wind up.”

  “How did you know where to look for me?”

  Preacher made an expansive gesture. “I figured you’d start for this Helltown place after you came through Reno. I knowed you’d stay off the beaten path, and this seemed like a likely path for you to follow. So when I got here yesterday, I just sort of squatted to wait for you. Found me a high spot and kept an eye on the countryside. I seen you comin’ this way before it got dark.”

  “You always did have eyes like an eagle.”

  “You want to head for the settlement tonight?”

  Smoke thought about it, then shook his head. “No, I’ve never been to Halltown before, and I wouldn’t want to miss it in the dark. We’ll ride on in the morning. Ought to be there by the middle of the day. That’s soon enough.”

  “You hope,” Preacher said. “We don’t know what sort of fix Matt’s in.”

  “That’s true, we don’t. I’d hate to get there too late to help him.” Smoke rubbed his jaw and frowned in thought. “Maybe we’d better keep moving for a while. We can stop later to get a little sleep and let the horses rest.”

  “Now you’re talkin’.” Preacher let out a low whistle, and his gray stallion clopped out of the shadows. “Me an’ Horse are ready to go.”

  Smoke swung his saddle back onto the ’Paloose. “You said the Indian Ring sent killers after you, too?”

  “Yep. Raised seven kinds o’ hell with that huntin’ party I went along on. Killed ol’ Hank Wilkerson, the no-good skunks.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Are they all dead?”

  “Yep.”

  Smoke gave a grim laugh as he mounted up. “I don’t know why I even asked.”

  Late the next morning, Smoke and Preacher rode into Halltown. It appeared to be a bustling settlement, and it would grow and thrive once the railroad got there.
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br />   Smoke hadn’t shaved, so his cheeks and jaw were covered by beard stubble. His hat was pulled low over his face. It wasn’t much of a disguise. If the Indian Ring had killers looking for him and Preacher, they would be spotted. It was impossible to make Preacher look like anything other than what he was, an old mountain man.

  As they entered the main street, Preacher grunted and said quietly, “You see what I see up yonder at the other end of town, Smoke?”

  “It’s a gallows,” Smoke replied, his voice grim. “But there’s nobody hanging from it.”

  “Yet.”

  A man stood on the death platform, testing the mechanism of the trapdoor. It looked like an execution was imminent.

  Preacher went on, “You don’t reckon that Matt—”

  “I don’t know.” Smoke turned the ’Paloose toward a hitch rail in front of a general store. “Let’s see if we can find out.”

  An air of excitement gripped the town. Hangings did that. But some people seemed to be anticipating the hanging, while others appeared to be upset about it. Luckily, no one was paying much attention to the two strangers in their midst.

  Smoke and Preacher dismounted, tied their horses to the hitch rail, and went up the steps to the mercantile’s porch. Saloons were usually the best place to find out what was going on in a town, but the Ring’s hired guns would more likely be hanging out in a saloon. Somebody in the store ought to be able to tell them what all the hoopla was about.

  The place wasn’t doing much business at the moment. An attractive young woman with red hair was behind the counter in the rear of the store, talking to a middle-aged matron. When the older woman left, Smoke ambled toward the counter and gave the redhead a nod and a friendly smile.

  The look she gave him in return was downright frosty. “If you’re one of Mr. Longacre’s new men, we’d just as soon not have your business,” she snapped.

  So she had taken him for a gunman, Smoke thought. Well, that didn’t come as much of a surprise. “No, ma’am, my pard and I don’t work for Longacre. Fact is, right now we don’t work for anybody. We’re sort of on the drift, I reckon you’d say.”