This Violent Land

by William W. Johnstone

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  CHAPTER 34

  The marshal’s warning was correct. Smoke had just stepped out into the street when he saw two men walking toward him, their hands near their pistols, ready to draw. Doors and windows facing the street banged shut as the townspeople scurried to get out of the line of fire from the bullets they believed were about to fly.

  “You know, we can stop this now if you want to,” Smoke called out to them. “There’s no reason either of you have to die today.”

  “What makes you think we’re the ones who’ll die?” Phillips asked defiantly.

  Smoke’s smile had an unnerving effect on the two men. No more than fifty feet separated them from him. He was close enough to see the sweat on their faces. Phillips was licking his lips nervously, and there was a visible tic in Carson’s jaw.

  Smoke studied his two adversaries. He knew he could not afford to draw first. He had to let them make the initial move in order for it to be called self-defense.

  “Have you thought you might be the one to die?” Carson asked, trying, by bravado, to ease his own fear.

  “Well, we all have to die sometime,” Smoke acknowledged. “Whether or not it happens for you two today is up to you. There’s no need for you to turn your backs on reason and good sense. Why don’t you come into the saloon and have a beer with me? I made that offer before our little scuffle, but you turned it down.”

  “You want to show some reason?” Carson said. “Beg, and we’ll let you turn tail and run away.”

  “No, I don’t think I’d like to do that.” Smoke’s face creased with an easy smile.

  “Then die!” Phillips shouted as he clawed at his gun.

  Smoke let him clear leather before he drew his own Colt. He fired twice, the first bullet hitting Phillips in the belly, the second one sending out a little spurt of blood as it plunged into the center of his chest.

  Phillips fell backward, mortally wounded. Carson, obviously surprised by Phillips’s draw, had not reached for his gun at the same time. He watched it all in shock.

  His mouth and eyes open in fear, he looked toward Smoke still holding the smoking pistol in his hand.

  “Back off, Carson,” Smoke said easily. He pouched the iron. “Just because your friend died today doesn’t mean you have to.”

  “I ain’t agoin’ to draw. I’m agoin’, I’m agoin’!” Carson held his arms forward, palms facing Smoke as if pushing him away.

  “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for,” Smoke said.

  Carson turned and started to walk away, and seeing that, Smoke also turned and started toward Marshal Dooley, who had watched everything from the porch in front of the jail.

  With a look of triumph on his face, Carson pulled his gun.

  “Look out!” Dooley suddenly shouted.

  Smoke spun quickly, drawing his pistol and firing before Carson could pull the trigger.

  The shock he felt was etched clearly on his face before he collapsed, twitched once, and then lay still.

  “Damn. How did he do that?” someone asked. “Carson already had his gun out and was fixin’ to shoot!”

  Shortly after the echo of the last shot reverberated through the street, the townspeople came streaming back out to the street from where they’d taken cover. Like carrion to a recent kill, they gathered around the two men who lay dead in the street.

  Smoke walked back toward Marshal Dooley. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “You know that beer you were going to buy them?” Dooley mentioned.

  “Yeah?”

  “How ’bout you buy one for me and my deputy, instead?”

  Smoke chuckled. “I’d be glad to.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Smoke, Dooley, and the marshal’s deputy were sitting at a table in the back of the saloon.

  “I want you to run me out of town,” Smoke said quietly.

  Dooley frowned. “Why?”

  “It wouldn’t look all that good for you to be friendly with a wanted man, now would it? I wouldn’t want it getting back to Richards and the others that we were pals.”

  Dooley’s frown changed to a small nod. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  “Besides, it might look good for us in the next election if we ran out a fast gun like Buck West,” the deputy added.

  Dooley smiled. “It might at that.”

  “You have to do it in public, though,” Smoke said.

  Dooley looked around the saloon. Twelve to fifteen other customers were in the saloon, in addition to the bartender and the working girls. Close to twenty in total.

  “What about here?” Dooley asked. “Is this place public enough?”

  Smoke looked around. “I’d say so.”

  “You ’bout finished with your beer?” Dooley asked.

  Smoke drained the last of it, set the mug down, then ran the back of his hand across his lips. “I am now.”

  Marshal Dooley stood up, then looked down at Smoke, speaking loudly enough for everyone in the saloon to hear him. “All right, West, you asked me to let you stay long enough to have a beer, and you’ve had it. I’ll not have my town filled up with would-be gunfighters lookin’ for you so’s they can make themselves a reputation. I want you to get your gear together and get out of town.”

  “You’re throwin’ me out of town, Marshal?” Smoke replied.

  Dooley crossed his arms. “I am doing just that.”

  “What if I don’t want to leave?” Smoke asked belligerently.

  “You don’t have that option, West.”

  “This is a right friendly place you have here,” Smoke said with a sneer on his face.

  “As a matter of fact, it is. But there is somethin’ about you that just invites trouble, boy.” At Smoke’s sputter, Dooley held up a hand. “I know, I know. You didn’t start the fight that got Carson and Phillips killed. But you didn’t avoid it, either, and if you hadn’t ever come into this town, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

  “All right, all right. I’m goin’,” Smoke muttered. He stood up and strolled to the door.

  “Damn, did you see that?” he heard someone in the saloon say. “Marshal Dooley just stood Buck West down.”

  “I’ve always said the marshal has sand,” another replied.

  Smoke kept a passive expression on his face until he stepped outside, then he smiled. His next stop would be Bury, but he wasn’t in a hurry. He wanted the word about him to spread first.

  * * *

  One of the witnesses to the gunfight between Smoke and the two challengers was an old mountain man named Lobo. Nobody knew Lobo’s real name, and some insisted he didn’t know it himself. He came by the name because it was rumored that he’d once lived with a band of wolves, a story that he neither confirmed nor denied.

  Leaving Bayhorse, he met up with a band of mountain men camping at the base of Gray Rock Mountain, about halfway between the Sawtooth Wilderness area and the town of Bayhorse. He told them about the gunfight he had witnessed. “Fastest thing I ever seed. Those two poor sumbitches din’t have no idee what they was lettin’ theyselves in for. Why, that boy snatched his gun out of the holster so fast it was a blur. I don’t believe hummin’birds can beat their wings no faster than he got his gun out.”

  “What was the boy’s name?” Beartooth had not had a tooth in his head in over forty years.

  “West, his name was. Buck West.”

  “No, it warn’t,” Preacher said. “His name is Smoke. Smoke Jensen.”

  “Smoke Jensen. Ain’t that your boy?” Greybull asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why is he callin’ hisself Buck West?” Lobo asked.

  “’Cause them three that kilt his pa has paid the sheriff up in Bury to put paper out on ’im. So he’s took to callin’ hisself Buck West. But he ain’t runnin’ from ’em, I can tell you that. He’s headin’ straight to Bury, and he plans to settle scores with Potter, Stratton, and Richards.”

  “It don’t bother him none th
at they’s three of them to his one?” Beartooth asked.

  “Four of ’em . . . no, five if you count the sheriff and his deputy. ’Cause I’m tellin’ you right now them two is in the pocket of Potter, Stratton, and Richards, sure as a gun is iron,” Greybull pointed out.

  “Hell, there’s a lot more of ’em than that,” Lobo said. “They’s all the cowboys that works out at the ranch for Richards, and then, I wouldn’t be surprised if half the town wasn’t on Stratton’s payroll.”

  Preacher nodded. “That’s how come I been trackin’ Smoke.”

  “Does the boy know you been followin’ him?” Pugh asked.

  “Damn, Pugh, you want to stand downwind a mite? When the hell’s the last time you took a bath?” Lobo had little room to talk, since he hadn’t taken a bath in three months.

  “Why are you so damn persnickety? Hell, I took me a bath back in seventy, it was. Or maybe it was seventy-one. I don’t rightly recollect exactly when it was.”

  “Four years? How come you ain’t molded?” Beartooth asked.

  “Prob’ly ’cause even the mold can’t stand to be close to him,” Greybull said.

  “Yeah, well, that still don’t answer the question I asked Preacher,” Pugh said. “Does the boy know you been followin’ him?”

  “No, he don’t know. He’d run me off if he knowed that I was followin’ him. More’n likely he’d be worried maybe I might get hurt or somethin’. I was shot up pretty bad some time back, and Smoke, bein’ the good boy he is, was some troubled by it.”

  “Yeah, well, if it was just you, I could see how, maybe, he might be a mite worried. But they’s five of us now,” Greybull declared.

  Preacher was surprised. “You men don’t have to take a hand in this. I mean, it ain’t your fight.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing for you to say to friends. We been together in these mountains for damn near fifty years,” Beartooth said.

  “Yeah,” Greybull said. “Well, not actual together, seein’ as we’d go most a year without seein’ one another ’ceptin’ at the rendezvous and such. But Beartooth is right. Iffen it’s your fight, then by damn, it’s our fight, too.”

  “All right,” Preacher agreed. “If you boys feel that way, I’d be downright proud to have you come along.”

  “Good.” Greybull voiced it as the others nodded in agreement.

  “Now that that’s settled, why don’t we just amble on over to Bury? If I know Smoke, and I reckon I know ’im better’n about anyone in the world, seein’ as I raised ’im, why he’ll take his time gettin’ there. More’n likely, he’ll lay back in the timber for a day or so and give the situation a good lookin’ over.”

  “What do you figure we should do, Preacher?” Lobo asked.

  “I figure we’ll cross the Lost River Range, head for the flats and turn north, then make camp in the narrows just south of Bury.”

  “I got me an idee,” Pugh said.

  “What is it?”

  “Once we get there, whyn’t I get Deadlead and Powder Pete to join up with us?” Pugh suggested. “I know where at they’re camped right now.”

  “Sounds like a pretty good idee to me,” Lobo said. “What do you think, Beartooth?”

  “I like the idea, but it’s up to Preacher. This here is his range.”

  Preacher nodded his agreement. “Yeah, Pugh, go ahead and do it.”

  “We need to get started,” Greybull said. “As old as we are, hell, if we wait around here much longer some of us is liable to die of old age afore we get there.”

  * * *

  The group of mountain men made their camp in the timber of the Lemhi Range about ten miles south of Bury.

  “So, Pugh, are you goin’ to go find Deadlead and Powder Pete?” Beartooth asked as soon as they set up.

  “Yeah, but I thought maybe I’d take me a bath first, seein’ as you folks is so put off by my smell and all.”

  “You ain’t takin’ a bath here, are you? ’Cause I’m afraid if you done that, you’d more than likely kill the fish for five miles downstream.” Beartooth grinned a toothless grin.

  “You just a barrel of laughs, ain’t you?” Pugh said as he took off his clothes, then waddled down to the stream.

  “I reckon I’ll ride on into Bury to buy some bacon, beans, coffee, flour, and salt,” Lobo said. “And while I’m there, I’ll also have me a look around the place, keep my ears open for talk of anything that might be of some use to us.”

  “They’s a tribe of Flathead Indians some east of here,” Preacher said. “I think I’ll ride over there for a bit.”

  “What you going there for?” Beartooth asked.

  “Just to visit some. I might have me a daughter there, or else mayhaps a granddaughter, or even a great grandkid. Injuns gets started whelping pretty early, so it can build up real quick.”

  Lobo put his hands on his hips and frowned at Preacher. “Well, do you or don’t you?”

  “Do I or don’t I what?”

  “Have any Injun kids or grandkids there?”

  Preacher gave a very small smile. “Don’t know for sure, but it’s more ’n likely that I do.”

  Pugh came back from the water, dripping wet, but considerably cleaner.

  “Damn, there really was a man under all that dirt,” Lobo said.

  “Yeah? Well, has it crossed anyone’s mind that I’m the cleanest one here?” Pugh asked. “Don’t none of you get too close to me. I wouldn’t want to get none of your dirt or stink on me.”

  “So, you’re good for another four years now, right, Pugh?” Lobo asked with a laugh.

  “If I live that long,” Pugh said, giving a serious answer to a joking question.

  CHAPTER 35

  Bury

  Muley Stratton was in the office of the town’s only newspaper as the week’s edition was being printed. He watched as the editor, Harold Denham, pulled one sheet off the Washington Hand Press, put it on the stack of papers already printed, then put a blank page on the bed and pulled down the typeset platen to print the next copy of what would be a two-hundred-copy press run.

  Stratton wasn’t a newspaperman, but he was a businessman, and as such, he owned the Bury Bulletin. He picked up one of the completed papers and perused the stories, finding one that caught his interest. “Where did this story come from?”

  “The copy came from the Associated Press, Mr. Stratton,” Denham said. “It’s where all the stories come from, unless they are local.”

  “Do you think it’s true?”

  “Well, I see no reason why it wouldn’t be true. The stories are pretty well vetted, otherwise the paper originating the story would be dropped by the AP. Nobody wants that.”

  Stratton nodded, then left the office.

  PSR Ranch Office

  “Look at this.” Stratton handed the paper to Richards. “Seems to me, this is the man we need to get.”

  Richards read the article Stratton pointed out.

  SHOOT-OUT IN THE

  STREETS OF BAYHORSE

  Two Men Killed

  Gunshots rang out in the street of Bayhorse Thursday last, when two local men, Harry Carson and Wade Phillips, confronted Buck West. Though West was a stranger to the citizens of the town, he has inscribed his name indelibly in the memory of all who witnessed the gunfight.

  Challenged by Carson and Phillips, it is reported that West made every effort to avoid gunplay, even offering, as an act of friendship, to buy a beer for each of the two men who accosted him. Carson and Phillips refused the offer and carried their challenge to fruition. Doing so was a fatal mistake on the part of the two men, for even though they drew first, West was able to dispatch them through the skillful and deadly employment of his pistol. Marshal Dooley, himself a witness to the events herein described, declared that as it was justifiable homicide. The gunfight clearly being an act of self-defense, no charges will be brought against West.

  It is said that Buck West is a bounty hunter in search of the outlaw and murderer, Smoke Jensen. Jensen
’s expert employment of the pistol is well known throughout the West, and though the name of Buck West is not yet known, those who observed his performance in the gunfight in the street of the town of Bayhorse are in agreement that his efficacy with the handgun must surely be commensurate with the proficiency so often demonstrated by Smoke Jensen.

  Richards looked up after reading the article. “What do we know about this man, West?”

  Stratton frowned. “What do we need to know about him? Cornett told us he was faster’n Luke. And you read it yourself, he is looking for Smoke Jensen. Those who saw him say that he is as good as Jensen.”

  “That’s what they said about Kid Austin and Clell Dawson . . . and you know what happened to them. How do you propose to get in touch with this”—Richards checked the newspaper article again to get the name—“Buck West?”

  “Why is it necessary for us to get in touch with him? According to the news articles that have appeared in papers all over the West, he is already looking for Smoke Jensen. If he finds him and kills him, then he’ll be coming here to see Sheriff Reece. When that happens, our troubles are over.”

  “Yeah.” Richards stroked his chin as he examined the paper for a moment longer. “I wish I was as confident as you are.”

  “What have we got to lose? If this man West doesn’t do the job, we aren’t out any money.”

  “No, but we will still have Smoke Jensen to deal with.”

  Bury

  In his office, Sheriff Dolan Reese was reading the same article that Josh Richards had just read. Reese tried unsuccessfully to place Buck West, but he couldn’t come up with a face to put with the name, and that was unusual. He knew most of the outlaws and gunhands throughout the West. He had been a sheriff in three other communities before coming to Bury.

  But it wasn’t just because he was a sheriff and it was his job to know the outlaws, for he hadn’t always been a sheriff. In the past, he had ridden on the other side of the line as an outlaw. As a matter of fact, he had ridden the outlaw trail more times than he had worn the star of a lawman.