This Violent Land

by William W. Johnstone

  It was Richards’s time to smile. “Well, I’ll be damned. Yes, that would be a good idea.”

  “And since it would be a business trip, it would also pay for my visit,” Janey pointed out.

  “Meaning I would pay for the visit,” Richards said.

  “Well, of course you would, darling. They are your cattle, after all. Why should I be expected to pay for the trip to sell them?”

  Richards chuckled and shook his head. “Janey, Janey, Janey. You are as crooked as I am. The only difference between us is, you’re better looking.”

  Summit County

  Two days after the conversation between Janey and Richards, three men were waiting alongside the Union Pacific tracks in a remote area of the county. A few minutes earlier, they had placed one stick of dynamite under the south rail. They waited far enough away from the track so that when the train derailed, they would be in no danger.

  Janey was a passenger on that train bound for Kansas City. It was true that she was going to arrange with one of the packinghouses for shipment of some PSR cattle, but it wasn’t the only reason she was going to Kansas City.

  She was beginning to get more and more troubled about her relationship with Richards. As the train moved along the tracks, Janey was lost in thought.

  It isn’t just that Josh is crooked and that his entire operation could collapse someday if an honest lawman got word of everything he’s doing. I could handle that. I have squirreled away enough money to survive such a thing.

  Lately, I’ve been hearing disturbing rumors, stories about hiring a lot of men to kill one man . . . a man who, supposedly, was carrying on some personal vendetta against Josh and his cronies.

  I’ve heard the man’s name. Ironically, it’s the same last name as mine.

  Smoke Jensen, he’s called.

  Over the years since she had left home, she had run into more than one person named Jensen, none of whom she was related to or had ever heard of. As far as she knew, Smoke Jensen was just another man named Jensen.

  Except, from what she had been able to learn, he was no ordinary man. It was being said that he had killed as many as twenty men that Richards had sent after him. The man Smoke Jensen could be dangerous, not only to Richards but indirectly to her, as well.

  It was her intention to find out if it was safe for her to return to Kansas City. She thought of her time there.

  * * *

  I was on the line, but it was a good house, with women who became such good friends they were almost my sisters.

  It’s where I met Elmer Gleason, an older, rather strange man who was a frequent visitor of the house. He often bought the time of some of the girls, but rarely their services. He preferred just to talk with them.

  He never shared my bed, either, though I probably would have had he asked. He wasn’t handsome or polished and he was considerably older than me, but he was decent, through and through. I sometimes wonder if things had been different, perhaps we—

  Janey didn’t hear the explosion that derailed the train. One minute they were flying across the open land at better than twenty-five miles per hour, and the next minute the car had left the tracks, where it bumped along for several feet before it turned over, rending a crash of metal and the shattering of glass. Men shouted, women screamed, and children cried as they were thrown violently from their seats, crashing into each other.

  Janey was on top of the pile, so she wasn’t as badly hurt as some of the others. The screams, shouts, and cries stilled, replaced by low moans and whimpers.

  She looked for a way out of the car lying on its left side and quickly climbed on a seat and poked her head and shoulders through one of the windows from the right, which had become the top.

  She saw the reason for the crash. The train had been purposely derailed and was being robbed.

  “Hey, what’s going on here?” shouted a man who had just climbed out of the car in front of her and dropped to the ground.

  One of the robbers turned his pistol toward the shouting man and fired. The bullet drove into the man’s chest and threw him backward.

  She quickly dropped back down into the car and saw some others trying to get out. “No, stay where you are! This train is being robbed, and they’re killing passengers who get out of the cars.” She began tending to some of the more injured passengers, periodically looking out to see if the robbers were still there.

  Not until she saw them ride away did she give the word. “The robbers are gone! Those of you who can, help me get the injured out of the train.”

  Once again, this violent land had brought death and destruction to the innocent . . . and the not-so-innocent.

  CHAPTER 25

  Half an hour later, everyone was out of the train. There were only ten among all the passengers who, like Janey, had been uninjured, but of those, only five had enough wits about them to help. The dead—six men, two women, and two children—were laid out in one place and the injured in another. The injured were separated according to the severity of their injuries.

  Except for one black porter, the entire train crew had been killed—engineer, fireman, express man, brakeman, and conductor. The porter was one of only two men who had not been injured. The other uninjured male passenger was in his mid-seventies and not able to do much. As a result, Janey took charge, though it wasn’t something she asserted, it was just something that happened.

  The porter, whose name was Toby, had crawled through the wreckage to find what first-aid material was available. He produced bottles of alcohol and precut bandages for use in treating the injured.

  “Ma’am, we got to get a flagman out behind us to stop the next train,” Toby said. “If we don’t, it’ll come plowin’ into this one, ’n we’ll have us a lot more hurt folks.”

  “That’s right. I hadn’t thought of that. Mr. Sealy, why don’t you walk up the track and watch for the train, then flag it down when you see it?” Janey chose the older man primarily because he was the one she could most easily spare.

  Toby shook his head. “No, ma’am, don’t be sendin’ him. The engineer see a white man flaggin’ down the train, he mos’ likely think it’s somebody tryin’ to stop ’im so as to rob ’im, and he’ll go whizzin’ on by. I should be the one. They see my black face, and me in my porter’s uniform, they’ll know somethin’ has happened.”

  “Toby, you’re the only one strong enough to do the lifting and the moving.” Janey frowned in thought. “What if we send a woman back there to flag the train? They would stop for a woman, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yes’m, I expect they would. Unless they think maybe the robbers put out a woman to fool ’em.”

  “What if the woman has blood on her?”

  Toby said solemnly. “Yes, ma’am. They see a woman standin’ there with blood on her, they’ll know for sure somethin’ bad has happened.”

  “I’ll do it.” The volunteer had already identified herself as Maxine. “I’ll get some of my husband’s blood. Lord knows there’s enough of it.”

  Maxine’s husband was one of the injured, though most of his injuries seemed to be superficial cuts. She smeared her face with his blood, gave him a hug, and walked down the track behind the train.

  During the next half hour Janey and the others cleaned, bandaged, and comforted the injured as best they could. Then they heard the whistle of the approaching train.

  Janey looked toward the porter. “Do you think he will stop, Toby?”

  “Lord, let’s pray he stops, Miss Janey, ’cause if he don’t, we goin’ to be havin’ us a lot more injured folks to be dealin’ with than we got now.”

  The train’s long whistle changed to a series of short blasts, and a big smile spread across Toby’s face. “Yes, ma’am. You hear all them whistles? That means he’s goin’ to stop.”

  Janey nodded, heaved a sigh of relief, and went back to work.

  Preacher’s cabin

  A little more than three weeks had passed since Smoke, bloodied and wounded, had arrived at
Preacher’s cabin. During that time, the weather turned cooler and leaves changed colors, but he didn’t notice. Preacher had tended to his wounds, sewing shut the ones he could, treating with herbs and poultices those that couldn’t be sewed shut.

  Preacher fed him as much as he could. The first two days, Smoke could keep down only broth, but by the third day he was eating venison, fish, eggs, bacon, and biscuits. Preacher had even sacrificed a few of his chickens for him. He also made him stews of squirrel and rabbit, potatoes, and noodles that he made from flour and broth.

  Smoke slept twelve to fifteen hours a day, feeling his strength slowly returning to him. His dreams of Nicole, her soft arms soothing him, helped to melt away the hurt and the fever, calmed his sleep, and gradually brought him back to health.

  As he healed, he began to grow anxious and soon knew that he was ready to ride, ready to move.

  One day, he carefully checked his gun, loaded it, then rubbed oil into his holster until the deadly pistol slipped in and out of it smoothly. That done, he saddled Seven and waited for Preacher to return from his fishing trip.

  Preacher noticed the saddled horse right away. “You fixin’ to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “I figured the time was near ’bout here when you would be leavin’. Where are you agoin’?”

  “Thought I’d go back to Denver and check in with Marshal Holloway.”

  “Hell, boy. It’s been nigh two years since you done any deputyin’ for him. What makes you think he’d take you back now?”

  Smoke shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he won’t. But I thought I’d give it a try.”

  Preacher held up one fish on his line. “Well, you may as well go see ’im. I ain’t got enough fish for the both of us anyhow. Not the way you eat.”

  Smoke chuckled. “I didn’t figure you’d come back with much, no better a fisherman than you are.”

  “Ha! I’m a hell of a lot better fisherman than anyone you ever seen, ’n don’t you be aforgettin’ that.”

  “There’s a lot about you I won’t be forgetting, Preacher,” Smoke said, the smile gone, replaced by an expression of deep and abiding friendship. “One thing I won’t forget is how you saved my life. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have crawled off into the woods somewhere and died.”

  “Yeah? Well, don’t you go gettin’ all mushy on me now. I mean, you ain’t gonna try and hug me or anythin’ foolish like that, are you?”

  With a mischievous smile, Smoke snatched Preacher’s hat off, leaned over, and kissed him on the bald spot on top of his head.

  “What?” Preacher shouted. Grabbing his hat from Smoke, he started hitting him with it. “You get the hell out of here now, you hear me? Git! Git, I tell you!”

  Laughing out loud, Smoke mounted Seven. Without looking back, he threw a wave over his shoulder as he rode off.

  More than his physical wounds had been healed in the high country.

  His broken soul was starting to knit back together, too.

  Denver

  “Why, if it isn’t Deputy Jensen!” Annie Wilson said enthusiastically. “I was beginning to think we’d never see you again.”

  “You know what they say, Miss Wilson. A bad penny always comes back.”

  “Why, no such thing, Deputy Jensen. You’re not a bad penny. You aren’t a bad penny at all. Do you want to see Marshal Holloway?”

  “Yes, if he isn’t too busy.”

  “He isn’t too busy at all, and I know he would love to see you. Why, he speaks about you all the time.”

  “All I want to know, Smoke, is if it is true,” Marshal Holloway said once Miss Wilson had ushered the younger man into his office and the two men had shaken hands.

  “You’re talking about the little fracas at the mining camp on the Uncompahgre?”

  “Little fracas? I heard you’d killed thirty men, before you got killed.”

  “As you can see, I’m not dead,” Smoke said. “And the other part isn’t right, either. Nineteen were killed there, and Nicole killed one of them herself, before they killed her.”

  Marshal Holloway’s rugged face grew solemn. “Yes. I heard what happened to your wife and child. At first, I didn’t put any credence in it because I didn’t even know you were married.”

  “It all happened pretty quick after I left here.”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear that.”

  “Is there a warrant out for me?” Smoke asked.

  “For those killings?” Marshal Holloway shook his head. “No. After I heard the story from two or three different sources, including from some of the miners who witnessed what happened, I was convinced you were in the right. When the county sheriff came to me with a suggestion that maybe you should be charged . . . if you were still alive . . . I told him you were acting on official business. As it turned out, you were. At least six of the men you killed did have federal warrants out for them, and therefore, by association, the others were equally as guilty.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. That means I can still work for you. That is, if you’re willing to take me on again.”

  “I’m more than willing,” Marshal Holloway said. “If you’ll hang around Denver, I’ll give you the very next assignment.”

  “I’ll be here,” Smoke promised.

  Kansas City, Missouri

  Because she had “acted heroically and with great compassion” after the train wreck, the Union Pacific provided Janey with free, round-trip passage to Kansas City. When she arrived, she went straight to the Pretty Girl and Happy Cowboy House, once run by Maggie Mouchette.

  “Honey, if you’re lookin’ for your husband, he ain’t here,” one of the girls said when Janey stepped into the parlor.

  Janey decided to play along. “How do you know he isn’t here?”

  “Because any man who is married to you would be a fool to come here,” the girl replied.

  Janey laughed, then looked around at the girls who were lounging in the parlor. She didn’t recognize any of them. “Well, I’m not looking for my husband. Believe it or not, I used to work here. I was just dropping in to see if any of my old friends were still around.”

  “Blimey,” an attractive young blonde said with a definite Cockney accent. “You used to work here, luv?”

  “You?” another girl asked. “The way you’re dressed? What did you do, find yourself a rich husband?”

  “No,” a familiar voice said. “What she did was save my life.”

  Looking toward the speaker, Janey smiled broadly when she recognized Louise. The smile froze, however, when she saw how badly scarred the girl was. A large, puffy mass, like a purple flash of lightning, ran through and disfigured her left eye, then slashed across the corner of her lips, leaving some of her teeth and gum exposed.

  Louise saw Janey’s reaction to her appearance and smiled, or at least, tried to smile. The effort served only to emphasize the disfigurement. “Hello, Abigail”—she addressed Janey by the name she had used when she’d worked at The Pretty Girl and Happy Cowboy House—“or whatever you’re calling yourself these days.”

  “It’s Janey. Janey Garner.” She gave only half her real name. “I didn’t know if I would find any of the old girls still here.”

  “Well, I’m the only one still here. But as you can see, I wouldn’t make much these days.” She passed her hand across her face then smiled. “But I’m one hell of a madam.”

  “Yes, she is,” said the girl who had greeted Janey. “She really is.”

  * * *

  “His name is Josh Richards,” Janey told Louise when the two of them went out for dinner. “He and two others own a huge ranch, and I’m the business manager for the spread.”

  “Oh, my. That’s very impressive.” Louise raised a glass of tea to her lips. “How did you get that job?”

  “By sleeping with him,” Janey replied.

  Louise laughed just as she was taking a drink, and she sprayed tea on the table. Janey laughed with her, and both giggled as they pick
ed up their napkins and began wiping the table.

  “Oh, Abigail . . . I mean, Janey . . . it’s so good to see you again. I’ve been worried about you ever since you left. You just dropped off the face of the earth after that night.”

  “I didn’t have any other choice.”

  “I know. I do credit you with saving my life.”

  “Maggie had more to do with it than I did,” Janey said. “And it cost her her life.”

  “Yes,” Louise said, her mood more somber. “She was such a dear woman.”

  “She was, indeed. How did you . . . ?” Janey finished her question with a wave of her hand, but Louise understood the implication.

  “How did I wind up with the Pretty Girl and Happy Cowboy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you were gone.”

  “What?”

  “Maggie had a will drawn up. It said that if anything happened to her, she wanted everything left to you. And if you were no longer with the house, then she wanted everything left to me. Oh!” Louise realized something. “I suppose the house belongs to you, now.”

  Smiling, Janey reached across the table to put her hand on Louise’s hand. “No it doesn’t. Didn’t the will say that if I was no longer with the house, that it would belong to you?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But nothing. It belongs to you. The only reason I came by was to look up any old friends who might happen to be around, and I found the one who was dearest to me.”

  Louise gave Janey a rundown on all the girls who had been there when she was there. Two had gotten married, one had gone back to St. Louis, and she had lost track of three of them.

  “What about Abigail Fontaine?” Janey asked. “Is the law still looking for her? For me?”

  Louise shook her head. “They came around a few times for the first month or two after you left, then they just gave up.”