Smoke bounded up the stairs, stepping over the dead man who still lay there, eyes glassy and staring at nothing.
A slug whipped past his head when he reached the second-floor landing. The other guards who had charged into the mansion must have doubled back when they heard the shots break out behind them.
Smoke dropped to one knee as he saw a muzzle flash to his right. A gunman had taken cover behind a spindly-legged little table. It didn’t offer him enough protection, though. Smoke’s next bullet smashed one of the table legs and knocked it out of the way. The slug after that ripped through the man’s spine and sent him rolling across the floor.
A bullet chewed splinters from the wall near Smoke’s head. He twisted and fired the other way at a man standing in an open doorway. The man jerked back out of sight as the bullet smashed into the doorjamb beside his ear.
Smoke didn’t like leaving a threat behind him, but according to Matt, Preacher was being held in the attic so Smoke wanted to keep going in that direction. His gun was empty, though, so before starting up to the third floor, he ducked into an alcove to thumb fresh cartridges into the Colt’s cylinder.
“What’s going on out there?” a man’s voice bellowed from down the hallway. “By God, what’s all that shooting? Somebody answer me!”
The man’s tone told Smoke he was used to giving orders and to being obeyed. That probably meant it was Colonel Hudson Ritchie doing the yelling. As he thought about all the death and destruction the Colonel was responsible for, either directly or indirectly, Smoke wanted to go after him and deliver some hot lead justice to the man, but saving Preacher and Little Hawk had to come first. He leaped for the stairs that led to the third floor. A bullet whined past his head as he dashed across the open space between the alcove and the staircase.
Shots had been ringing out above him. Just as Smoke started up the stairs, the big man he had seen earlier with Matt lunged onto the staircase at the top. For a split-second the two men froze as they looked at each other.
The shot that crashed in the next instant didn’t come from either of their guns. Smoke felt the bullet’s impact. It twisted him halfway around. He kept moving, spinning out of the way as the man at the top of the stairs opened fire. More shots came from the other end of the corridor, where the man Smoke took to be the Colonel was firing around the corner of an open doorway. He was the one Smoke’s shot had chased back into the room a moment earlier.
Smoke had to take cover in the alcove again. He looked down at his right side where the bullet had hit him and saw that the slug had torn along the thick leather of his gun belt at an angle instead of penetrating his body. It had been enough to knock him off-balance for a moment, but hadn’t done any real damage.
That was a stroke of luck, but Smoke knew he couldn’t count on that happening again.
He heard movement on the stairs. More shots blasted, tearing up the wall at the corner of the alcove. As the gun fell silent, he risked a look and saw the big man, who had to be Randall, lunge past, dragging a man in a gray suit. That would be Colonel Ritchie. Smoke threw a shot at them, but he missed and the bullet exploded the newel post on the staircase’s top baluster.
Another figure suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs from the third floor. Smoke held off on the trigger at the last second as he recognized Matt.
Matt had almost fired as well. They stared at each other over their gun barrels for a heartbeat, and then Matt grinned. He waved at someone up the stairs and said, “Come on! Smoke’s here!”
That was encouraging. Sure enough, Preacher appeared at Matt’s side a moment later, although Smoke had a little trouble recognizing the old mountain man at first. Preacher looked like he had taken a bath in blood.
A fair-haired woman hesitantly came down the stairs behind Preacher as Smoke hurried to join them. Preacher looked at her and asked, “Where’s the young’un?”
“In my room,” she answered. “He must be terribly frightened with all this shooting going on.”
“He comes from good stock,” Preacher told her. “He’ll be all right. Best fetch him, though.”
As the woman hurried down the corridor away from the stairs, Smoke asked, “Preacher, are you all right? You look like you just crawled out of a slaughterhouse.”
“It ain’t my blood,” Preacher assured him. “I’ll be a mite stiff and sore for a while, but I’m fine. Better now that the three of us are together again.”
Smoke felt the same way. They were still in great danger, but as long as they were together, he liked their chances.
“Where are Randall and the Colonel?” Matt asked.
“Randall made it past me,” Smoke said. “He hustled a fella I took to be the Colonel downstairs.”
“Big man, bald, forehead sort of bulges?”
“I didn’t get a real good look at him,” Smoke said, “but I think that’s him.”
Matt nodded and said, “That’s the Colonel, all right. And if there are any guards left alive downstairs, Randall will rally them and try to keep us trapped up here.”
“He’s liable to have his hands full with other things if Standing Rock and his warriors are able to fight their way through the Colonel’s men outside.”
The woman came back up the hall with a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms.
“Here he is,” she said.
Preacher said, “Smoke, Matt, this here’s Miz Dayton. She helped me get loose. She works for the Colonel, but she wants Little Hawk to get back to his pa where he belongs.”
Smoke tugged on his hat brim and said, “Smoke Jensen, ma’am. I’m pleased to meet you. I just wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Please, Mr. Jensen . . . if it’s possible . . . if you could spare Hudson’s life . . .”
“Ma’am, I’m afraid that’s going to be entirely up to him,” Smoke told her. “But one way or another, we’re taking this baby home.”
Mrs. Dayton swallowed hard and nodded.
“I know. Little Hawk should go home. It . . . it’s the only right thing—”
A shot roared. She cried out and staggered. Little Hawk was about to slip from her arms and fall when Preacher caught the child, using his free arm to pull Little Hawk against his bloodstained chest.
“You bitch!” a man roared. “You betrayed me!”
Smoke, Matt, and Preacher whirled toward the far end of the hall. The Colonel stood there, smoke curling from the barrel of the pistol in his hand. He knew this house much better than they did, and Smoke realized he must have slipped up a rear set of stairs to reach the second-floor corridor and get behind them.
Shooting Mrs. Dayton was the last thing he was going to do. Smoke, Matt, and Preacher all fired at the same time, the three shots blending into a thunderous explosion. The slugs hammered into the Colonel’s chest and threw him back against the wall behind him. He hung there for a second, his gun hand sagging and blood bubbling from the bullet holes in his chest.
“You . . . you can’t do this,” he said, his voice weak. “That’s . . . an order. . . .”
He pitched forward, already dead by the time his face smacked into the carpet runner.
“That just leaves Randall,” Matt said.
“And whoever he’s still got with him,” Smoke added. He turned to Preacher. “Is Little Hawk all right?”
“Yeah, the little feller don’t appear to be hit,” the mountain man said. “Better see about Miz Dayton, though.”
The woman had collapsed after being shot by the Colonel. Smoke holstered his gun and knelt beside her, carefully lifting her so that she was propped against his leg. Blood stained the front of her dress. Her eyes fluttered open. She peered up at Smoke and whispered, “The . . . the baby?”
“He’s fine,” Smoke assured her. “The Colonel missed him.”
“No . . . he never meant to hurt Little Hawk.... He was trying to kill me. . . . I gave him . . . everything . . . but none of that mattered. He didn’t care . . . didn’t care who he hurt . . . as long a
s he . . . got what he wanted. . . .” Her eyes widened, and she had even more trouble talking as she said, “You’ll keep the little one . . . safe . . . take him home . . .”
“You got our word on it, ma’am,” Preacher said as he held Little Hawk. “This little varmint’s gonna be fine.”
“Thank you . . . I . . .” A spasm shook her. In a clear, amazed voice, she said, “Oh, my.”
Then her head fell back against Smoke’s knee as death claimed her.
He lowered her gently to the floor and then stood up. His face was grim as he said, “The Colonel got what was coming to him.”
“You won’t get any argument from us,” Matt replied. “What now?”
The shooting had stopped outside. Smoke moved closer to the landing and called downstairs, “Randall! Randall, do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Randall said. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“Name’s Smoke Jensen,” Smoke told him. “Colonel Ritchie is dead. You don’t have anything to fight for anymore. You might as well throw down your gun.”
Randall’s answer came back immediately.
“The hell with that! The Colonel died fighting, didn’t he?”
“He died with a gun in his hand . . . after he killed a poor woman who never did anything except love him when he didn’t deserve it!”
Randall was silent for a moment after that. When he spoke again there was a trace of regret in his voice.
“Mrs. Dayton was a good woman, all right, and maybe the Colonel was a little loco. But he was my commanding officer.”
“The war’s been over for a long time!”
“The war’s never over. Not for some of us . . .”
Randall’s voice trailed off. After a moment, he went on, “Looks like I’m the only one still alive down here. From the sound of it, all the Colonel’s men who were outside are dead, too, or at least wounded bad enough to be out of the fight. That leaves me to carry on.”
“Randall, what are you—” Smoke began.
The sound of the front door opening interrupted him. A second later, it slammed.
“He’s gone out to face down Standing Rock and the rest of the Assiniboine!” Matt exclaimed.
Shots began to roar outside.
The battle, if it could be called that, lasted only a few seconds. Then silence settled down again.
“Come on,” Smoke said.
The three men, with Preacher carrying the baby and staying back a little, walked down the stairs. They had their guns in their hands, just in case. But as they stepped out of the mansion onto the verandah, they saw the weapons wouldn’t be necessary. Randall’s body lay crumpled on the flagstone path leading to the arched entrance. He had been shot to pieces. A soldier’s death, thought Smoke . . . but still senseless.
Standing Rock and the rest of the Assiniboine came out of the shadows in front of the mansion. It looked like the rescue party had lost a few men in the fighting. Standing Rock had blood on his buckskins, but didn’t seem to be badly wounded. He glanced contemptuously at Randall’s body, and then hurried forward.
“My son . . . ?” he asked.
Smoke and Matt stepped aside and let Preacher move forward with Little Hawk cradled in his left arm. Standing Rock stopped short. Anybody who thought all Indians were stoic should have seen the tears of joy and relief on Standing Rock’s face at that moment, Smoke thought. Carefully, he took his son from the old mountain man and hugged him.
“We will go home now,” he said, his voice choked with emotion.
“Soon,” Preacher said. “First, though, I reckon we better let the folks in the settlement know they ain’t all about to be massa-creed.”
Chapter 43
“I swear, none of us knew a blessed thing about any kidnapping,” Archibald Ingersoll said.
“Or about raiding some Indian village,” the storekeeper, Fred Springhorn, added.
The men were in the Emerald Palace Saloon, gathered there with most of the other business owners in Hammerhead, as Smoke and Matt explained what had happened tonight at the big house on the western edge of the settlement.
Smoke nodded and said, “We know that. The Colonel kept his real plans secret from everybody except Randall and the other gunmen who worked for him.”
Matt said, “Not even that fella Webster who kept books for him knew everything that was going on. When he found out the truth, he opened the office and let us go through all the files. It’s pretty clear from the documents we found that Colonel Ritchie planned to take over everything, including all of your businesses, as soon as the railroad came in.”
“But what are we going to do now?” one of the men asked. “If the railroad doesn’t come in, the town can’t make it! We’ll still lose everything!”
“Maybe not,” Smoke said. “I know some men who are involved with the railroads. If I tell them about this basin and how it’s just sitting here waiting to boom, I’ve got a hunch some of them will want to come in and do it right this time, so that all of you have a chance to get rich.”
“But the Colonel’s heirs will still own all the land,” Ingersoll pointed out. “We’ll have to deal with them.”
Matt said, “From what we’ve been able to find out, the Colonel’s family back East is pretty proper and respectable. Chances are, when they hear how loco he had gone, they’ll want to keep the whole thing as quiet as they can. The easiest way to sweep it all under the rug will be to cooperate with you folks.”
“You’re going to need some law in here as the town continues to grow, too,” Smoke said. “You’ll need to hire a marshal, maybe even try to form your own county here in the basin and elect a sheriff.”
“How about one of you fellas?” Springhorn asked. “You’re the ones who found out what was really goin’ on and put a stop to it.”
Ingersoll nodded enthusiastically and said, “One of you can be the marshal and the other can be the sheriff!”
Smoke laughed and shook his head.
“Sorry, but I’ve got a wife and a ranch waiting for me down in Colorado, and I’m ready to get back to them,” he said.
“And I, uh, never stay in one place long enough to do something like that,” Matt said. He grinned. “But maybe you could get Preacher—”
“Who’s talkin’ about me? Get Preacher to do what?” the old mountain man asked as he came into the saloon. He had gone to the hotel to soak all the blood off in a tub of hot water, and now he was dressed in baggy trousers, a white homespun shirt, and a cowhide vest instead of his usual buckskins. The clothes were borrowed, but he had found his battered old hat in the mansion and had it perched on his head.
Matt waved a hand at Hammerhead’s civic leaders and said, “These fellas are looking for a star packer, Preacher. I thought you might like to retire and take the job.”
“Retire? Pin on some tin star and strut around like I’m some sort o’ highfalutin’ muckety-muck? Have you done lost all the sense you was borned with? I know it weren’t much to start with, but good Lord, son!”
Smoke and Matt each took hold of one of Preacher’s arms and steered him toward the bat wings. Smoke smiled back over his shoulder and told the townspeople, “I reckon you can assume he’s not interested in the job, either.”
Once they were outside, Preacher stopped ranting and muttering. He pulled loose from Smoke and Matt and said, “What about that goldurned Indian Ring? The Colonel was mixed up with them, and they ain’t gonna like it when they hear how his plans fell through.”
“They won’t be able to do anything about it,” Smoke said. “I’m going to make sure the U.S. Marshal for this territory gets the whole story. He’ll see to it that nobody bothers Two Bears and his people again. As for the Ring . . .” Smoke shrugged. “I guess this is one more grudge they can hold against us. It probably won’t be the last one.”
Matt said, “One of these days they’re liable to decide to settle all those scores.”
“Let ’em,” Preacher said. “Let those buzzards co
me after us and we’ll hand ’em their needin’s. We’ll burn powder all the way to dadgum Washington if we have to!”
A Little Bit of William W. Johnstone
by J. A. Johnstone
William W. Johnstone was born in southern Missouri, the youngest of four children. He was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father, and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. Despite this, he quit school at age fifteen.
“I have the highest respect for education,” he says, “but such is the folly of youth, and wanting to see the world beyond the four walls and the blackboard.” True to this vow, Bill attempted to enlist in the French Foreign Legion (“I saw Gary Cooper in Beau Geste when I was a kid and I thought the French Foreign Legion would be fun”) but was rejected, thankfully, for being underage. Instead, he joined a traveling carnival and did all kinds of odd jobs. It was listening to the veteran carny folk, some of whom had been on the circuit since the late 1800s, telling amazing tales about their experiences which planted the storytelling seed in Bill’s imagination.
“They were honest people, despite the bad reputation traveling carny shows had back then,” Bill remembers. “Of course, there were exceptions. There was one guy named Picky, who got that name because he was a master pickpocket. He could steal a man’s socks right off his feet without him knowing. Believe me, Picky got us chased out of more than a few towns.”
After a few months of this grueling existence, Bill returned home and finished high school. Next came stints as a deputy sheriff in the Tallulah, Louisiana, Sheriff’s Department, followed by a hitch in the U.S. Army. Then he began a career in radio broadcasting at KTLD in Tallulah, Louisiana, that would last sixteen years. It was here that he fine-tuned his storytelling skills. He turned to writing in 1970, but it wouldn’t be until 1979 that his first novel, The Devil’s Kiss, was published. Thus began the full-time writing career of William W. Johnstone. He wrote horror (The Uninvited ), thrillers (The Last of the Dog Team), even a romance novel or two. Then, in February 1983, Out of the Ashes was published. Searching for his missing family in the aftermath of a post-apocalyptic America, rebel mercenary and patriot Ben Raines is united with the civilians of the Resistance forces and moves to the forefront of a revolution for the nation’s future.
Hard Ride to Hell (9780786031191) Page 29
