The gun in his hand was rock-steady as he covered the remaining outlaw. From the corner of his eye, he saw his old friend Sheriff Monte Carson running along the street toward him. Monte had a shotgun in his capable hands.
“One in the store over there,” Smoke said, nodding toward the building with the broken front window. “The others are all here close by, except for the one whose horse dragged him off down the street.”
“I’ll check on them while you cover that hombre,” Monte said. “Not much doubt that they’re all dead, though.”
“How do you figure that?” Smoke asked.
“You shot ’em, didn’t you?” A grim smile appeared on the lawman’s weathered face.
Smoke knew the question was rhetorical so he didn’t answer. He told the man he had captured, “Take that gun out of your holster and toss it away. Slow and careful-like. You wouldn’t want to make me nervous.”
The idea of the famous gunfighter Smoke Jensen ever being nervous about anything was pretty far-fetched, but not impossible. He had loved ones, and like anybody else, sometimes he feared for their safety.
Not his own, though. He had confidence in his own abilities. Anyway, he had already lived such an adventurous life, he figured he was on borrowed time, so a fatalistic streak ran through him. If there was a bullet out there somewhere with his name on it, it would find him one of these days. Until then, he wasn’t going to waste time worrying about it.
The surviving outlaw followed Smoke’s orders, using his left hand to reach across his body and take out the iron he had pouched when he mounted up to flee. With just a couple fingers, he slid the gun from leather, tossed it aside, and thrust his hands high in the air again. Then he swallowed hard. “No need to shoot me, Mr. Jensen. I done what you told me.”
“How do you know who I am?” Smoke asked with a slight frown. Although he had spent quite a few years with a reputation, first as a notorious outlaw—totally unjustified charges, by the way—and then as one of the fastest men with a Colt ever to buckle on a gunbelt, he was still naturally modest enough to be surprised sometimes when folks knew who he was.
“Who the hell else could you be?” the captured outlaw asked. “You shot four fellas in less time than it takes to tell the tale. I warned Gallagher we shouldn’t try it right here in town. I told him. I said, Monte Carson’s a pretty tough law dog to start with, and Smoke Jensen lives near Big Rock and we’d be liable to run into him . . . into you, that is, Mr. Jensen . . . and I said that’s just too big a risk to run, and sure enough—”
“What’s this varmint babbling about?” Monte asked as he walked back up to Smoke with the scattergun tucked under his arm.
“Claims he didn’t want to pull this job and warned the boss they shouldn’t do it,” Smoke explained with a trace of amusement in his voice.
“Well, he must not have argued too hard. He’s here, ain’t he?”
“In the flesh,” Smoke agreed.
The frightened outlaw looked at both men. “You reckon I could put my arms down? They’re getting’ sort of tired.”
Monte shifted the Greener and covered him. “All right, but if you try anything funny, this buckshot’ll splatter you all over the street.”
“No tricks, Sheriff. You got my word on that.” The man licked his lips. “I just want to take what I got comin’ and get outta this without bein’ hung or shot.”
“Behave yourself and you won’t get shot. As for being strung up, well, that’s up to a judge and jury, not me.” Monte glanced over at Smoke. “The other four are dead, by the way, just like I figured. The one you shot in the shoulder might’ve lived if he hadn’t gotten dragged down the street with his head bouncing until it busted open.”
Smoke was reloading the Colt. He left an empty chamber for the hammer to rest on then slid the gun back into its holster. “Bad luck tends to dog a fella’s trail when he starts riding the owlhoot.”
“What were these varmints after, anyway?”
“Don’t know,” Smoke replied with a shake of his head. “I saw them come running out of the freight company office while I was on my way down to the train station.” He nodded toward several canvas bags the outlaws had slung on their saddles as they tried to make their getaway. “I’d check those bags.”
Monte squinted over the shotgun’s barrels at the prisoner.
“Or I could just ask this varmint, and if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll answer.”
“Money, of course,” the outlaw volunteered quickly. “We got a tip that a fella named Reilly was having a payroll brought in by freight wagon, rather than on the train. He figured it’d be safer that way, since nobody would know the money was hidden in some sacks of flour.”
Monte frowned. “Jackson Reilly, the rancher? He’s sort of an oddball. That sounds like something he’d do. You know him, Smoke?”
“Met him once or twice,” Smoke said in his usual laconic fashion. “Wouldn’t say I know him all that well. He’s been in these parts less than a year.”
“I’ve heard him say he doesn’t trust banks. Appears he doesn’t trust the railroad, either.”
Now that the shooting was over, quite a few of the citizens who had scrambled for cover earlier were coming back out to gawk at the sprawled bodies of the outlaws and stare at Smoke, Monte, and the prisoner. A ripple of laughter suddenly went through them. The man walking toward them was covered in white powder that clung to his clothes, his hair, and his mustache.
Smoke recognized Angus Mullen, one of the clerks from the freight office. He smiled and said, “Angus, you look like you got caught in a snowstorm.”
“There’ll be snow soon enough,” Mullen said as he slapped at himself and raised a little floating cloud of white. “This is flour! Those scoundrels were cutting bags open and throwing them around the office.”
Smoke nodded. Now that he took a closer look, he could see that some of the bandits were dusted with flour as well, although not nearly to the extent that Mullen was.
“Who the hell had the bright idea of hiding money in flour sacks?” the clerk went on.
“You should check your manifests,” Smoke suggested. “I’ll bet those sacks were being held for Jackson Reilly.”
Mullen grimaced and scratched his jaw. “Yeah, now that you mention it, I reckon that’s right,” he admitted. “I’ll have to have a talk with Mr. Reilly. The freight company has rules about this sorta thing, you know!”
“You do that, Angus.” Monte jerked the shotgun’s barrels in a curt gesture to the prisoner. “You march on down to the jail now. Smoke, thanks like always for lending a hand. You sure keep the undertaker busy.”
“Not by choice,” Smoke said. “I’m a peaceable man.”
Monte just snorted and prodded the prisoner into marching toward the jail. Smoke returned to the errand that had brought him to Big Rock. He had come to meet the westbound train, which would soon be delivering his wife Sally to him.
He’d been early, so he had parked the buckboard at the station and walked back up to Longmont’s Saloon for a cup of coffee and a visit with his old friend Louis Longmont. As the time for the train to arrive had approached, Smoke had said his good-byes and started for the depot again.
He had spotted the outlaws and recognized trouble in the making right away. When he’d called out for them to hold it, a man across the street, who had probably been posted as a lookout, opened fire on him.
Smoke hadn’t wasted time asking any questions. Anybody shot at him, he regarded it as a declaration of war and proceeded accordingly.
And anybody not prepared to back it up hadn’t ought to slap leather in the first place, as far as Smoke Jensen was concerned.
A thin overcast hung in the sky, thickening into darker clouds over the mountains. Avery Mullen was right. There would be snow soon enough. But that was expected in the fall in the Colorado high country. Smoke had seen plenty of snow and never minded it. The brisk nip in the air felt pretty doggoned good, in fact.
The sh
ootout with the would-be thieves had delayed him some, but the train still hadn’t rolled in. As he walked out onto the platform after crossing the station lobby, he heard the locomotive’s shrill whistle in the distance, heralding the train’s arrival.
A few people on the platform were waiting to board, others looked more like they were there to meet someone . . . like Smoke was. He smiled and nodded pleasantly to several he knew.
It was impossible not to notice a few folks whispering to each other behind their hands. Smoke wasn’t so full of himself that he assumed they were talking about him, but given the recent ruckus, it made sense if they were.
Smoke knew he was famous—or infamous, depending on how you looked at it—but it wasn’t anything he had ever set out to be. All those years ago, in the hardscrabble days right after the war, when he and his pa Emmett had left the farm in Missouri and headed west, all young Kirby Jensen had been interested in was getting by from day to day. That was before he’d met the old mountain man called Preacher, who had dubbed him Smoke because of his speed with a gun, and before he’d set out on the vengeance quest that had changed the course of his life forever.
Smoke preferred not to dwell on that.
Anyway, the train was pulling in, with smoke puffing from the diamond-shaped stack on the big Baldwin locomotive, and as it came to a stop he looked toward the passenger cars, eager to catch a glimpse of the woman he loved.
There she was! Sally stepped down from one of the cars, graceful as always. She looked up as Smoke came toward her, and a smile appeared on her face, making her more beautiful than ever.
Then she was in Smoke’s arms and his lips were on hers, and he wasn’t going to waste one bit of time or energy thinking about anything else for a while.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over 300 books, including the series Preacher, the First Mountain Man, MacCallister, Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter, Flintlock, Those Jensen Boys!, Savage Texas, Matt Jensen, the Last Mountain Man, and The Family Jensen. His thrillers include Tyranny, Stand Your Ground, Suicide Mission, and the upcoming Black Friday.
Visit his website at www.williamjohnstone.net.
Being the all-around assistant, typist, researcher, and factchecker to one of the most popular western authors of all time, J. A. JOHNSTONE learned from the master, Uncle William W. Johnstone.
The elder Johnstone began tutoring J.A. at an early age. After-school hours were often spent retyping manuscripts or researching his massive American Western History library as well as the more modern wars and conflicts. J.A. worked hard—and learned.
“Every day with Bill was an adventure story in itself. Bill taught me all he could about the art of storytelling. ‘Keep the historical facts accurate,’ he would say. ‘Remember the readers—and as your grandfather once told me, I am telling you now: Be the best J. A. Johnstone you can be.’”
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