Hour of Death

by William W. Johnstone

  “On your feet if you can, and keep your hands where I can see ’em!”

  The rustler remained motionless. He appeared to be lying facedown. Smoke hooked a boot toe under his shoulder and rolled him onto his back.

  The loose-limbed way the man flopped over spoke volumes. The fall from the running horse had either busted the rustler’s head open or broken his neck, more likely the latter. Either way, he sure looked dead.

  Or he was mighty good at playing possum.

  Smoke backed off and holstered the Colt. He’d return later and check on the rustler. At the moment, his men needed his help elsewhere.

  He mounted up quickly and rode toward the sound of the guns, which had become intermittent. The shots died out completely as Smoke approached several dark shapes that turned into men on horseback as he got closer.

  He had his rifle ready, but he recognized the voice that called, “Smoke? Is that you?”

  “Yeah, Cal, it’s me. Are you all right?”

  “Fine as frog hair. How about you?”

  “A few of those bullets came close enough for me to hear, but that’s all. How about the other fellas?”

  “Don’t know. Randy and Josh are with me and they’re all right, but I can’t say about the rest.”

  “And the rustlers?”

  “We downed a couple. Don’t know about the rest of them, either.”

  Smoke said, “The fight seems to be over. Let’s see if we can round up the rest of our bunch.”

  “Then we can round up those cows,” Cal said. “They scattered hell-west and crosswise, just like I figured they would.”

  “But they’re still on Sugarloaf range,” Smoke pointed out. “Those rustlers didn’t succeed in driving them off.”

  “They sure didn’t!”

  Smoke drew his Colt and fired three shots into the air, the signal for his riders to regroup. Over the next few minutes they came in. One man had a bullet burn on his arm, but the others were unhurt . . . until the last two horses plodded up. One man rode in front, leading the other horse.

  Smoke could make out a shape draped over the second horse’s saddle, and the sight made his jaw tighten in anger. “Who’s that?” he snapped.

  “I’m Jimmy Holt, Mr. Jensen.” With a catch in his voice, the young cowboy said, “That’s Sid MacDowell behind me. He . . . he cashed in his chips. One of those damn rustlers drilled him right through the brisket. I ain’t sure Sid had time to know what happened.”

  “Might be better that way,” Smoke muttered. “What about the rustlers? Did any of them get away?”

  “I think one of them did,” another cowboy reported. “I’m pretty sure he was hit, but he managed to stay on his horse. Do you want us to see if we can trail him, Mr. Jensen?”

  “The best tracker in the world couldn’t follow a trail on a night like this, and I’ve known a few who could lay claim to that title.” Smoke shook his head. “No, we might see if we can find any tracks in the morning, but right now, some of you boys start gathering those cows and the rest of you come with me and Cal. I want to see if any of the rustlers are still alive.”

  For the next half hour, Smoke, Cal, and a couple other men rode around the pasture, hunting for the bodies of the rustlers. Smoke hoped to find at least one of them only wounded and still able to talk, but as thief after thief turned up dead, that hope began to fade.

  Finally they rode over to the man Smoke had knocked out of his saddle. Smoke knelt beside him, struck a lucifer, and saw by its flaring light that the rustler’s wide, staring eyes were sightless. The unnatural twist of his head told that his neck was broken. Smoke had tried to take him alive, but fate had had other ideas.

  Smoke straightened and told Cal, “You can bring a wagon out here in the morning and collect the bodies . . . if the wolves haven’t dragged them off by then. Haul ’em into Big Rock to the undertaker. I’ll pay to have them put in the ground if they don’t have enough money on them to cover the cost.”

  Cal nodded. “Should I get Sheriff Carson to take a look at them?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt. Chances are some of them are wanted. You fellas might have some reward money coming to you.”

  Cal rubbed his chin. “I’m not sure I’d want to take blood money. On the other hand, the world’s probably better off without these varmints, and that’s worth something, I guess.”

  “Up to you.” Smoke wouldn’t be taking any reward money. Between the Sugarloaf’s success and the lucrative gold claim he had found many years earlier, he was one of the wealthiest men in Colorado, although no one would ever know it to look at him. He still dressed like a common cowhand.

  “We’ll make sure none of those cattle ran too far when they spooked, then head back to the bunkhouse,” Cal said. “How about you?”

  Smoke had already turned his horse. He said over his shoulder, “I’m headed home.”

  Chapter Two

  The small ranch house that Smoke had built when he and Sally first settled on the Sugarloaf had been added onto many times over the years, until it was a big, sprawling, two-story structure surrounded by cottonwoods and oaks. He always felt good when he rode up to it. He couldn’t help but think about all the fine times he and his wife and their children had had. More often than not, the house had rung with laughter.

  As he approached the house, he saw that a lamp still burned in the parlor despite the late hour. The glow in the window was dim enough he knew the flame was turned low. More than likely, Sally had waited up for him. That came as no surprise.

  Movement on the porch caught his eye. Out of habit—one that had saved his life on occasion—his hand was close to the butt of his revolver. He relaxed, though, as he recognized Pearlie’s tall, lanky figure.

  “Thought I heard shots up yonderways a while back,” the retired foreman said as he came down the steps from the porch. “You must’ve had a run-in with those wide-loopers.”

  “We did.” Smoke dismounted. “They figured on chasing off a hundred head. We changed their minds.”

  Pearlie reached for the reins of Smoke’s horse. “I’ll take care of that for you. I ain’t forgot how to wrangle a cayuse. How’s the kid?”

  Even though Cal wasn’t that far from being middle-aged, he would always be a kid to Pearlie. The two of them had shared many adventures, had been through tragedy and triumph together, and were fast friends.

  “Cal’s fine,” Smoke assured him. “We lost one man. Sid MacDowell.”

  “Blast it! I didn’t really know the younker—Cal hired him, not me—but he deserved better’n a damn rustler’s bullet.”

  “That’s the truth. We tried to even the score for him, though. Five carcasses are still out there for Cal to haul into town in the morning.”

  “Didn’t manage to take any of ’em alive?”

  Smoke shook his head. “Nope. And one got away, although he might’ve been wounded. We’ll do some tracking in the morning and see if we can turn up another body.”

  “Even if you don’t, killin’ five out of six practically wipes out the gang,” Pearlie said.

  “Only if there were just half a dozen of them to start with,” Smoke pointed out.

  “No reason to think otherwise, is there?”

  “Not really,” Smoke admitted. “If the rustling stops now, I reckon we can assume that was all. But if they were just part of a bigger gang—”

  “We’ll probably know that soon enough, too,” Pearlie said in a gloomy voice. He started toward the barn, leading Smoke’s horse, and added over his shoulder, “Miss Sally’s waitin’ up in the parlor.”

  Even though Smoke was tired and the smell of gun smoke clung to him, he was smiling as he stepped into the house.

  Wearing a soft robe, Sally was sitting in one of the rocking chairs beside the table where the lamp burned. She was reading a book, but she set it aside on the table and looked up with a smile as he stepped into the parlor.

  She was on her feet by the time he reached her. Her arms went around his neck and
his arms encircled her trim waist. Their mouths met in a passionate kiss that had lost none of its urgency despite the time they had been together.

  He lifted his lips from hers and said, “You ought to be in bed getting your beauty sleep . . . not that you need it.”

  That was certainly true. There might be a few more small lines on Sally’s face, and if you looked hard enough you could find a strand of gray here and there in her thick, lustrously dark hair, but to Smoke she was every bit as beautiful as when he had first laid eyes on her in the town of Bury, Idaho, all those years ago.

  Smoke knew he hadn’t changed much, either. If there was gray in his hair, its natural ash blond color made that sign of age hard to see. Most men on the far side of fifty were past the prime of life, but not Smoke Jensen. He was still as vital as ever, his muscular, broad-shouldered frame near to bursting with strength. He attributed that to fresh air, sunshine, clean living, and being married to the prettiest girl alive.

  “I didn’t see any bloodstains on your clothes when you came in,” Sally said, “so I assume you’re all right.”

  “How do you know there was even any trouble?”

  “You went out looking for it, didn’t you? If there’s one thing Smoke Jensen is good at, it’s finding trouble.”

  He chuckled. “I’d like to think I’m good for more than one thing.”

  “Well, we might find out about that in a little while, but first, tell me what happened.”

  Smoke grew serious as he said, “Those rustlers made a try for the stock in the big pasture up north of Granite Creek, just like I had a hunch they might. We killed five out of the six of them and probably wounded the one who got away. No telling how bad.” He paused a moment. “But Sid MacDowell was killed in the fight.”

  Sally took a step back and put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. Sid was a fine young man. I’ll have to write to his mother and sister down in Amarillo.”

  Smoke hadn’t known that the young cowboy had a mother and sister in Amarillo, but he wasn’t surprised Sally was aware of it. She made it a point to be a good friend to every member of the ranch crew.

  “We’ll send them the wages he had coming, and more besides,” Smoke said. “Of course, that won’t make up for losing him.”

  “No, but it’s all we can do, I suppose.”

  He changed the subject by gesturing toward the book on the table. “What are you reading?”

  “Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. It’s very good.”

  “Maybe I’ll read it one of these days,” Smoke said.

  She reached for the book. “There’s something else in here you’ll want to see right away.” She opened the volume’s front cover and took out a small, square sheet of yellow paper. “Late this afternoon, right after you and Cal and the others rode out, a boy from town brought me this telegram that had just come in.”

  “Telegrams are usually bad news,” Smoke said with a slight frown.

  “Not this one, I’m happy to say. Denise Nicole and Louis Arthur are coming home!”

  Smoke’s frown disappeared. He reached for the flimsy and scanned the words printed in block letters by the telegrapher in Big Rock.

  ARRIVING BIG ROCK 27 TH STOP

  COMING HOME FOR GOOD STOP

  LOVE TO YOU BOTH STOP

  LAJ AND DNJ

  Smoke’s heart beat faster as the news soaked in on him. His kids were coming back to the Sugarloaf, and according to the telegram Louis had sent, they would be staying. That was enough to quicken the pulse of any man who loved his children and missed them when they were away.

  For most of their lives, Louis and Denise had indeed been away from the Sugarloaf. Twins, they had been inseparable as youngsters, and when sickness had threatened Louis’s life and forced Smoke and Sally to seek treatment for him in Europe, Denise had gone along. Sally had taken the children back east to her parents’ home, and then John and Abigail Reynolds had sailed across the Atlantic and delivered Louis to top specialists in France.

  Through their efforts, the boy had been saved, but his health had remained precarious enough that he had remained in Europe to be closer to the medical help he might need.

  That wasn’t the only reason the twins had stayed in Europe, living on an estate in England owned by Sally’s parents. They had traveled all over the continent and soaked up all the education and culture available to them. Smoke’s mentor, the old mountain man called Preacher, thought such behavior was plumb foolishness, and to be honest, at times Smoke felt sort of the same way, but it seemed important to Sally and her folks, so he had gone along with the idea. He missed his kids, but he wanted what was best for them.

  They had come back to Colorado for frequent visits to the Sugarloaf, and each time Smoke had harbored the hope in the back of his mind that they might decide to stay. Judging by the telegram in his hand, it looked like that might finally come to pass.

  “It’ll sure be good to have the kids around again,” he said as he placed the telegram on top of Mr. Dickens’s novel.

  “I’m not sure we can think of them as children anymore,” Sally said. “They’re twenty years old. They’re grown, Smoke.”

  “Twenty’s not grown.”

  “Think of all the things you had done by the time you were twenty years old.”

  Smoke scowled. He had killed more than two dozen men and been forced to battle for his life countless times. He had married a woman, fathered a child, lost them both to vicious murderers, and avenged their deaths by tracking down those killers and blasting them to hell. He had been a wanted outlaw and worn a lawman’s badge.

  Yes, it was safe to say that Smoke Jensen had grown up fast. Too fast.

  But his children hadn’t lived that sort of life, thank God. Instead of dodging the law and shooting it out with gunmen, they had spent their time in clinics and universities and concert halls. They had learned mathematics and natural science and literature instead of how to track an enemy and reload a gun in the heat of battle and stay calm with bullets whipping around their heads.

  Smoke was glad they hadn’t had to endure such hardships. To his way of thinking, that easy life meant they were still kids. Nothing wrong with that.

  Instead of arguing with Sally about whether or not the twins could be considered grown, he said, “The twenty-seventh is only a couple days away. Can we be ready for them by then?”

  “There’s no getting ready to do,” Sally said. “I keep their rooms just like they’ve always been. They can move right in.”

  “It’s been a while since we’ve seen them. I wonder if they’ve changed much.”

  “Probably not. Louis Arthur will still be handsome and Denise Nicole will be as beautiful as always.”

  Smoke smiled. “I don’t doubt it.” They had always been beautiful to him, even as red-faced, squalling babies.

  Louis Arthur was named for two of Smoke’s oldest friends, the gambler and gunman Louis Longmont and Preacher, whose real name was Arthur. The name was also a way of honoring Smoke’s first son, the one who had been murdered, who was named Arthur as well. Along with the old Reynolds family name Denise, Nicole, Smoke’s first wife, had inspired the middle name given to his daughter.

  Smoke would never forget his first family, the one that had been ripped brutally from him. That tragedy had forged his steel-hard determination to see evildoers brought to justice, and he was more than willing to deliver that justice from the barrel of a gun whenever and wherever necessary.

  He wasn’t one to dwell on the violence of the past, though. It was more his nature to look ahead to the future with optimism and a friendly smile.

  Sally put a hand on his arm. “Would you like a cup of coffee before we go upstairs?”

  Smoke slid his other arm around his wife’s waist again, feeling the supple warmth of her body under the robe, and smiled “No, I reckon not. If I’m going to be kept awake for a while, I’d rather it was by something else besides coffee.”

  She laughed and linked her arm wit
h his as they turned toward the parlor entrance. They had gone up only a few steps when she said, “Do you think the rustling is over?”

  “I hope so. There’s no reason to think otherwise, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I can trust Cal and the others to keep a close eye on the stock and let me know if any more turn up missing.”

  “I hope that’s the way it turns out. I’d hate to have a bunch of trouble going on just as Louis Arthur and Denise Nicole finally come home to stay.”

  “Yeah,” Smoke agreed. “Jensens and trouble just don’t mix.”

  She laughed and swatted him lightly on the shoulder, and they continued on their way upstairs to their bedroom.

  Chapter Three

  Louis Arthur Jensen reached out and caught hold of his sister’s arm as she started to get up from the bench seat in the train car. He said in a low, urgent voice, “Blast it, Denny, do you always have to cause trouble?”

  “I didn’t start it,” Denise Nicole Jensen replied through clenched teeth. “That son of a—” She caught herself before the oath could slip out. “That scoundrel in the derby hat started it, and you know it, Louis!”

  As she pulled her arm free from her brother’s grip and stood up, the train went around a fairly sharp curve and swayed. Denny lost her balance, but her hand shot out and gripped the back of the seat, and she steadied herself before Louis could steady her.

  Then she took off up the aisle after the man who had leered at her and made an improper suggestion. “Sir!” she called, although “Hey, you!” would have been more appropriate for such an uncouth hombre.

  He had a broad, beefy face and a mustache that curled up at the tips. His attire, as well as his general demeanor, suggested that he was some sort of traveling salesman. The man stopped and turned to look at her. A stub of a cigar protruded from thick lips that curved in a smile. “Well, howdy again, little missy. I didn’t expect you to take me up on my offer. At least not so soon. But I’m happy you did. Let’s go on up to the club car and have that drink.” He put out a hand as if he intended to take her arm.