Then Smoke Jensen was all over him, fists flying. The last thing Buck recalled, for a few moments, was that getting the living hell beat out of you was not a very pleasant experience.
When he woke up, his world was also upside down. And his clothes were gone, right down to his socks and boots and guns. And there was not a horse to be seen anywhere.
“Hammer,” he managed to speak through battered lips.
“The next time you get in trouble, I wish you would please keep your mouth shet!”
“Halp!” Hammer hollered.
“Will you stop that! You’re makin’ my head hurt!”
“Halp!”
“Who said that?” Hammer asked.
“Well, it damn shore wasn’t me!”
By twisting around, they could just see a newly hired gunny name of Ben Lewis. Someone—Jensen for sure— had peeled him buck naked and tied him backwards in the saddle. And from the looks of him, he’d been sitting in that saddle for some time. Looked worn to a frazzle.
“I’m a-gonna kill that crummy Smoke Jensen!” Ben hollered.
“Yeah,” Buck said drily. “Right. Shore you are. Me, too. But furst I’d like to get shut of this damn tree limb!”
13
The hired guns and bounty hunters and would-be toughs began drifting back to the ranch one by one, and they were a sorry sight to behold. Jud Vale sat on the front porch sipping whiskey and viewed the unfolding scene with disgust in his eyes.
Glen Regan, the punk who fancied himself fast with a gun was the first back. Hoofing it. Naked, except for his fancy silver conchoed gun belt, all the shells shucked out of the loops. He wore his empty holsters in strategic locations.
“Plumb pitiful,” Jud said mournfully.
“What do you want done with him, Boss?” Jason asked.
“Get him out of my sight. And, Jason? Get ready for a lot more of the same. Jensen’s playing games.”
Barstow, the no-good from Colorado way was the next to come limping in. Barefoot and clad only in a bush he had uprooted. Jensen hadn’t even left him his guns. Jud just pointed to the bunkhouse and poured another drink.
Three of Jud’s own regular hands came staggering in about fifteen minutes later. They were drawerless and had been tied together in such a way so they had to move in a circle to get anywhere. They were sodizzy they fell down in a heap in the front yard.
Jud looked at the pile of struggling flesh in his front yard. “Jason?”
“Boss?”
“Get me a headache powder, will you?”
“I believe I’ll join you,” the foreman said. “But it cain’t get much worse than this.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
Jaeger, the German gunhand, came in riding his own horse and wearing clothes. But he had a bloody bandage lied around his big head and a very grim expression on his broad face. “Jensen shoot ear off,” he said, and rode on toward the bunkhouse.
“Least he left you your britches,” Jud told him.
“I vould ratter have me in ear!” the German called.
The bounty hunter, John Wills, came riding in without his clothes, his hands tied to the saddle horn. But Smoke had neatly wrapped him up, from neck to waist and both his legs, in poison ivy. He was already breaking out and swelling.
Jud pointed to the bunkhouse. “Ointment in the cabinet over yonder,” he said with a sigh.
Hammersmith and Buck had found their horses and came riding in with Ben Lewis, the last two in their birthday suits. No guns or rifles. Jensen was going to have quite a collection before this was over.
Of course, Jud knew what he was doing: arming the kids to the teeth.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Jud told the three, and pointed to the bunkhouse.
It just got worse. But the numbers were fewer. Hazelhurst came in draped over his saddle. His partner explained. “He wanted to make a fight of it. Stupid thing to do with Jensen. I figured my life was worth more than my britches and guns. Jensen said the shirts and jeans was gonna have to be altered some—and shore washed—but the kids would have work clothes a-plenty.”
“Get a shovel and some boys and plant Hazelhurst,” Jud told him, a weary note to his voice.
Vale got up and walked into the house, closing the door behind him. He just did not want to see any more of this.
Smoke stampeded the Bar V horses that night. He jerked down the corral bars and tossed a stick of dynamite outside the corral so no horses would be hurt—just scared half to death.
It was a move that no one expected. After the damage he had done all that day, all thought he would head back to the Box T.
Smoke put an end to those thoughts by emptying his six guns into the bunkhouse, then grabbing two more hung on the saddle horn and blasting away at the mansion, sending Jud Vale jumping out of bed, skinning his knee, banging his big toe on the chiffonier and ultimately falling down his own fancy curving stairs. In his long handles.
“You son of a bitch!” Jud hollered, holding his aching head where he’d banged it on his way down the stairs, head over butt. “I’ll get you, Jensen. I swear by my mother’s grave—I’ll kill you for this!”
But Smoke was smiling as he crossed over the series of ridges that would lead him out of Bar V range, leading a Bar V pack horse carrying clothes and guns.
“Don’t you look like the cat who licked the cream,” Cheyenne told him when Smoke rolled out of bed and walked outside to wash and shave.
When Smoke had finished telling him what he’d done, the old mountain man and gunfighter was cackling and slapping his knee.
“By God, I’ll just bet that was some sight to see! I’d have give a month’s wages to seen ’er.”
“Well, it was fun,” Smoke admitted with a smile. “Most of it. But there is no telling what Jud will do in retaliation.”
“And Clint Perkins come up and stole the girl away, huh?”
“Yes.” Walt and Rusty had walked up, to stand listening. “He’s a tough one. Don’t ever sell him short on courage. He’s got his share and more of that.”
Smoke had collected thirty pistols and fifteen rifles and more than five hundred rounds of .44 and .45 caliber ammunition. He distributed the weapons and ammo and gave Alice and Doreen the clothes to wash and alter for the boys. He had tossed the boots in a pile in the barn for the boys to prowl through.
“Argood has gone to Utah,” Walt told him. “Begone for a month or more.”
“Then Jud will throw everything he’s got at us,” Smoke said. “It’ll be open warfare from this point on.” He smiled. “And after what I did to the Bar V, I sure can’t blame them.”
With little else to do, Chuckie, Ed, Eli, Jimmy, Clark, and Buster busied themselves at the creek, picking up and carefully selecting rocks for the weapons they had been working on. The rocks they picked up were just the perfect size, round and smooth, flawless. They would fit well in the pockets of their slingshots. Maybe they couldn’t carry guns around, but they could sure use those slingshots with deadly accuracy.
And the youngsters had just as carefully picked out the spots from which they would launch their small war when Jud Vale’s men attacked the ranch. And it was there they stashed their carefully chosen hoard of rocks and spare slingshots, telling no one else about it.
But Cheyenne, wise and watchful old man that he was, had seen the boys scurrying about and became curious as to what they were up to. When he had satisfied his curiosity, he sat down and chuckled.
“Brave little lads,” he muttered. And he knew just how deadly a slingshot could be in the hands of a boy with a steady eye. They might not kill anybody with those propelled little rocks, but they could spook some horses and cause some fearful bumps and dents in the head and some painful bruises in the flesh of any attacker.
“I do believe it’s gonna get right interestin’ around here,” he quietly said to himself.
Matthew had been practicing daily with his Peacemaker. One hour a day, faithfully, every day, he practiced his dr
aw. And with lots of ammo available, he could also practice his marksmanship.
The boy was a natural. Better than good, he was awesome in his ability with a short gun.
“I hate to see it,” Smoke said to Cheyenne, after watching Matt practice.
“He’d a done it with or without us, Smoke,” the old gunfighter said. “I allow as to how it was best that we was here to hep him along.”
“Maybe you’re right. But the West is slowly changing, Cheyenne. Perhaps not all for the better, but law and order is coming and fast guns will be a thing of the past before we know it.”
“I’ll never live to see it,” the old man said flatly. “And for all the lawyers and judges with their fancy words, and handsewn duds, it’s gonna be years afore all the West is tamed—maybe never. Matthew will be a growed-up man afore he’ll be able to hang up his guns. And who knows, Smoke? Maybe he’ll go on to become a fine lawman. There ain’t a bad bone in the lad.”
“I’m going to encourage him to do just that.”
“I already been doin’ that,” Cheyenne said. “He seems interested in it, for a fact.”
Smoke’s eyes came open out of sleep. Something, or somebody was in the barn. He looked out the open window without moving from his bunk. About three o’clock, he guessed.
He lay still, his right hand around the butt of a Colt. When the sound came again, Smoke eared back the hammer.
A soft chuckle came out of the darkness, just outside the open door to his room. "I didn’t think I’d be able to get this far without you hearing me," the voice spoke.
“Perkins?” Smoke returned the whisper.
“Oh, my, yes. I’ve come to lend whatever assistance I can to this little war.”
“I watched you the other day. From the ridges.”
“Careless on my part, not seeing you. You’re very, very good. As good as your reputation makes you out to be, I must admit.”
Smoke felt that Perkins was not alone. All his senses were working overtime. “The girl with you?” “Good guess, compañero.”
With that correct useage, Smoke knew the man had spent some time below the border. “Going to leave her here?”
“I really have no choice in the matter. She’ll be much safer with Walt and Alice.”
“Why do you hate them so? They seem like good people to me.”
“Oh, I don’t hate them. Not at all. I know they think that, but it isn’t true. There is a medical term for my mental condition, but I shan’t bore you with ten-dollar words when a single word can sum it all up rather well. I’m crazy.”
“You have good days and you have bad days.”
“Umm. Gunfighter you may be, but you are not overcome with ignorance. Yes. That is correct”
“Have you sought help?”
“Oh, my, yes. But unfortunately, the field of psychiatry is still in its infancy, and the methods they use are really quite primitive. And they don’t work,” he added the last with a note of bitterness.
“There ought to be some coffee left in the pot. Help yourself.”
“Thank you, but I’m afraid I must decline your kind offer. How is Micky?”
“He’s a fine boy.”
“Ah, good. Doreen thinks I deserted her out of pure callousness. That was not the case. When these twilight moods strike me, I can kill anybody who stands in my way, who speaks to me in a cross manner, or simply because of a wrong word. I would be sorry for it immediately afterward, but apologizing to a corpse is a rather futile gesture, don’t you agree, Mr. Jensen?”
“I would think so, yes.”
“Should our paths cross again, Mr. Jensen, and I have a rather obvious wild-eyed look about me, leave me alone. Depart the area immediately. It’s for your own good, I assure you.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Silence.
“Clint?”
But he was speaking to shadows. Clint Perkins had vanished as softly and silently as he had arrived. “Susie?”
“I’m right here, Mr. Jensen.”
Smoke rose from his bunk and dressed. Then he lit the lamp. Susie was perhaps eighteen—no more than that. A very pretty girl, she had a wide-eyed scared look on her pale face.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Susie,” Smoke told her. “Come on. Let’s go wake up the house and get you settled in.”
Over coffee and bear sign, the story Susie told was one of horror, clearly indicating that Jud Vale was as nutty as a tree full of squirrels. She told of beatings, of being forced into Jud’s bed—and into the bed of Jason when Jud was feeling magnanimous. And of being forced to do things, things about which no decent person should know. Walt looked sick and Alice and Doreen almost had an attack of the swooning vapors, both of them fanning themselves vigorously.
Cheyenne wore a very uncomfortable look on his leathery face. Rusty’s face was red as a beet. Smoke had heard the boys gather around the windows, outside the house, but said nothing about it. They were getting an earful, no doubt about that. Dolittle and Harrison had not been awakened.
“Have you seen Jud kill other . . . slaves?” Smokeasked her.
“One. But half a dozen have just disappeared. I know where they’re buried, though.”
“Your parents?”
“Dead. I was on my way to California to stay with my uncle and aunt when outlaws robbed the train. They took me and sold me to Jud. If he finds out I’m here, he’ll attack this ranch.”
“He’s going to do that anyway, girl,” Walt told her. “Just relax. You’ll be safe here with us. When this is over, we’ll get you to California.”
“How did Clint find out you were at the Bar V?” Smoke asked.
“How does he find out anything?” she countered. “He’s like a ghost.” She looked at Doreen. “And no, there was never anything between us. He’s just been a good friend.”
The look Doreen gave her silently stated that she believed thai about as much as she believed elephants wore pink tights and danced the can-can.
Susie met Doreen’s eyes and accurately read the other woman’s expression. She shrugged indifferently.
“Micky can sleep in with his mother,” Alice said, stepping between the hot looks. “Susie, you take ihe boy’s bedroom until we can fix up the other bedroom. Go on, dear. Walt’s put fresh water in the basin and the towels are on the rack and the bedpan’s clean. You get some sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
“Good idea,” Walt said, knocking the ashes from the bowl of his pipe and standing up. His wife joined him and they left the kitchen, Doreen and Susie following.
Smoke, Cheyenne, and Rusty sat around the table for a few more minutes, with Rusty and Cheyenne eating up every doughnut they could find.
“Near four-thirty,” Smoke said, refilling his coffee cup. He was almost forced to break Rusty’s hand as he reached for the last bear sign. “No point in going back to bed.”
Rusty looked frantically around for another platter of doughnuts.
He found a fresh chocolate cake and his smile almost added new light to the room as he whacked off a hunk that would choke a bull.
“Growin’ boy still,” Cheyenne said with a grin. “Cut me a piece of that, too, Rusty.”
“Smoke?”
“I’ll pass, Rusty, thanks. I’m fixing to rustle me up some bacon and eggs before long.”
“Fix some for me, too,” the young puncher spoke i around a mouthful of cake.
“Yeah. Me, too,” Cheyenne said.
Smoke grined and shook his head at the two characters. Then he sobered when he thought of what Jud Vale might do in retaliation. And another matter had been nagging at him off and on for a week or so.
“What you ruminatin’ about?” Cheyenne asked.
“Jud Vale, for one thing.”
“Just ride over and call him out and kill him. Me and Rusty and Walt will go with you.”
“The odd thing is, Cheyenne, I don’t want to kill him. He’s not right in the head, and therefore he isn’t responsibl
e for what he’s doing. It might come to a killing, but I hope it isn’t me who has to do it.”
Cheyenne thought about that for a moment. “And the other thing?”
Smoke sighed and finished his coffee. He nodded his head toward the outside. Rusty cut the lamps low and followed them. They walked over to the corral and Smoke pulled out the makings and built himself a cigarette.
“Walt has confided in me that he is a wealthy man,” Smoke said. “Why doesn’t he hire guns and let them bang it out with Jud’s men?”
“I’ve pondered over that my very own self,” Cheyenne admitted. “I can’t come up with no firm answer.”
Rusty looked startled for a moment. Then he shook his head in disbelief. He threw down his own cigarette and stomped it out, his spurs jingling with the movement. “I can’t believe you two guys!” he finally blurted.
“What do you mean, you red-headed pup?” Cheyenne looked at him.
Rusty just laughed at him.
“I’ll bust you up side your punkin head,” Cheyenne told him, balling a hand into a fist and drawing it back.
“Whoa!” Rusty stepped back.
“You better explain yourself, Rusty. If you know something we need to know, spit it out.”
“I didn’t mean to laugh at neither of you. I just figured that you both knew.”
“Knew what, you knothead?” Cheyenne growled at him.
Rusty looked at Smoke. “Soon as you told me I was workin’ for the Box T, I figured the fire had done reached the grease. But it never dawned on me that Mr. Walt hadn’t leveled with you. Hell . . .” He paused. “Well, maybe the old bunch has died out and the new bunch of folks in this area don’t know. Jud Vale is Walt’s kid brother!”
14
After recovering from his shock, Cheyenne said, “I been in and out of here for the last fifty years, Rusty. I ain’t never heard that story.”
“Rancher up in Montana told me some five or six years ago. Sorry, boys, I just figured you knew.”
“So Clint is really Walt’s nephew,” Smoke spoke the words softly. “I wonder what surprises Doreen has in store for us?”
Law of the Mountain Man Page 11
