Live by the West, Die by the West

by William W. Johnstone

  “Sounds good to me. I’ll go get settled in and get back with you.”

  “Smoke?”

  He turned around to face Cord. The man stuck out his big hand and Smoke took it. “Good to have you with us in this thing.”

  * * *

  “They done pulled out!” Larado reported back to Jason and Lanny. “They moved the cattle toward the Smith this mornin’. I found where they caved a ravine in on top of them they kilt last night. And it looks like the house is nearabouts full of good stuff.”

  “One down,” Lanny said with a grin. “Let’s take us a ride over there and see what we can find in the house. If they left in a hurry, they prob’ly didn’t pack much.”

  The range-robbers rode up cautiously, but already the place had that aura of desertion about it. Lanny and Jason were feeling magnanimous that morning and told the boys to go ahead, help themselves to whatever they could find in the house.

  A dozen gunnies began looting the house.

  “Hey!” Slim called. “This here box is locked. Gimme that there hammer over yonder on the sill.” He hammered the lock off while others squatted down, close to him, ready to snatch and grab should the box be filled with valuables. Slim opened the lid. Two rattlesnakes lunged out, one of them taking Slim in the throat and the other nailing a bearded gunny on the cheek and hanging on, wrapping around the gunny’s neck, striking again and again.

  One outlaw dove through a window escaping the snakes; another took the back door off its hinges. A gunny known only as Red fell over the couch, knocking a bureau over. A rattler slithered out of the opened drawer and began striking at the man’s legs, while Red kicked and screamed and howled in agony.

  Larado ran from the house in blind fear, running into Lanny, who was running toward the house. Lanny fell back into Jason, and all three of them landed in the dust in a heap of arms and legs.

  Ben Sabler rode up with his kin just in time to see Red crawl from the house and scream out his misery, the rattlesnake coiled around one leg, striking again and again at Red’s stomach.

  Ben did not hesitate. He jerked iron and shot Red in the head, putting him out of his agony, and then shot the snake, clipping its head off with deadly accuracy.

  The bearded gunny staggered out the door, dying on his feet. Venom dripped from his face. He stood for a moment, and then fell like a tree, face-first in the dirt. The rattler side-winded toward Larado, who jerked out his pistol and emptied it into the rattler.

  “Burn this damn place!” Lanny shouted.

  “Slim’s in there!”

  Lanny looked inside. Slim was already beginning to swell from the massive amount of venom in his body. Lanny carefully backed out. “Slim’s dead,” he announced. “Damn Smoke Jensen. The bassard ain’t human to do something lak this.”

  “I heard that he was from hell, myself,” a gunny called Blaine said. He sat his horse and looked at the death house. “I knowed a man said Jensen took lead seven times one day some years back. Never did knock him down. He just kept on comin’.”

  “That ain’t no story,” Ben Sabler said. “I was there. I seen it.”

  Lanny looked at Ben. “I’ll kill him. And that’s a promise.”

  “I gotta see it.” Ben didn’t back down. “I seen his graveyards. I ain’t never seen none of yours.”

  “Hang around,” Lanny told him. He turned his back and shouted the order. “Burn this damn place to the ground!”

  SEVENTEEN

  They stood in the front yard and watched the smoke spiral up into the sky, caught by vortexes in the hot air and spinning upward until breaking up.

  Parnell stood with clenched fists, his eyes on the dark smoke. “I say now, that was unnecessary. Quite brutish. And that makes me angry.” He stalked away, muttering to himself.

  Fae was on the porch, her face in her hands, crying softly.

  “She’s a woman after all,” Lujan said, so softly only Smoke could hear.

  Del worked the handle of the outside pump, wetting a bandanna and taking it to Fae.

  Fae looked at the foreman, surprise in her eyes, and tried a smile as she took the dampened bandanna. “Thank you, Del.”

  “You’re shore welcome, ma’am.” He backed off a few feet.

  “Lujan,” Smoke said. “You and me and Beans. We hit them tonight.”

  “Sí, señor.” Lujan’s teeth flashed in a smile. “I was wondering when you would have enough of being pushed.”

  * * *

  By late afternoon, everyone at the Circle Double C knew the three men were going headhunting. But no one said a word about it. That might have caused some bad luck. And no one took umbrage at not being asked along. This was to be—they guessed—a hit-hard-and-quick-and-run-like-hell operation. Too many riders would just get in the way.

  When Smoke threw a saddle on Dagger, the big mean-eyed horse was ready for the trail, and he showed his displeasure at not being ridden much lately by trying to step on Smoke’s foot.

  The men took tape from the medicine chest and taped everything that might jingle. They took everything out of their pockets that was not necessary and looped bandoleers of ammunition across their chests. They were all dressed in dark clothing.

  Just after dusk, Beans and Sandi went for a short walk while Smoke and Lujan squatted under the shade of a huge old tree by the bunkhouse and watched as Cord left the main house and walked toward them.

  He squatted down beside them in the near-darkness of Montana’s summer dusk. “Nice quiet evenin’, boys.”

  “Indeed it is, señor.” Lujan flashed his smile. His eyes flicked over to Beans and Sandi, now sitting in the yard swing. “A night for romance.”

  Cord grunted, but both men knew the rancher liked the young man called the Moab Kid. “Sandi would be inclined to give me all sorts of grief if anything was to happen to Beans.”

  When neither Smoke nor Lujan replied, Cord said, “Three against sixty is crappy odds, boys.”

  “Not the way we plan to fight,” Smoke told him. “They’ll be expecting a mass attack. Not a small surprise attack.”

  Again, the rancher grunted. It was clear that he did not like the three of them going headhunting. “We can expect you back when?”

  “Around dawn. But keep guards out, Cord. If we do as much damage as I think we will, Dooley is likely to ride against you this night.”

  “I’ll double the guards.”

  Beans and Sandi had parted, with Sandi now on the lamp-lighted front porch. The Moab Kid was walking toward the three men at the tree. Faint light reflected off the double bandoleers of ammunition crisscrossing his chest.

  All three men wore two guns around their waist; a third pistol rested in homemade shoulder holsters. They had each added another rifle boot; with two fully loaded Winchester. 44 rifles and three pistols, that meant each man was capable of firing fifty-two times before reloading. And each man carried a double pouch over their saddlebags, each pouch containing a can of giant powder, already rigged with fuse and cap.

  The men intended to raise a lot of hell at Dooley’s D-H spread.

  Smoke and Lujan rose to their boots.

  Cord’s voice was soft in the night. “See you, boys.”

  The three men walked toward their horses and stepped into the saddles. They rode toward the east, fast disappearing into the night.

  The old gunslingers joined Cord by the tree. “Gonna be some fireworks this night,” Silver Jim said. “Pistol, you ’member that time me and you and that half-breed Ute hit them outlaws down on the Powder River?”

  Pistol laughed in the night. “Yeah. They was about twenty of them. We shore give them what-for, didn’t we?”

  “Was that the time y’all catched them gunnies in their drawers?” Hardrock asked.

  “Takes something out of a man to have to fight in his longhandles. We busted right up into their camp. Stampeded their horses right over them, with us right behind the horses, reins in our teeth and both hands full of guns. Of course,” he added with a smi
le, “that was when we all had teeth!”

  * * *

  The men rode slowly, saving their horses and not wanting to reach the ranch until all were asleep. They kept conversation to a minimum, riding each with their own thoughts. They did not need to be shared. Facing death was a personal thing, the concept that had to be worked out in each man’s mind. None of the three considered themselves to be heroes; they were simply doing what they felt had to be done. The niceties of legal maneuvering were fast approaching the West, but it would be a few more years before they reached the general population. Until that time, codes of conduct would be set and enforced by the people, and the outcome would usually be very final.

  The men forded the Smith, careful not to let water splash onto the canvas sacks containing the giant powder bombs. On the east side of the river, they pulled up and rested, letting their horses blow.

  The men squatted down and carefully checked their guns, making sure they were loaded up full. Only after that was done did Lujan haul out the makings and pass the sack and papers around. The men enjoyed a quiet smoke in the coolness of the Montana night and only then was the silence broken.

  “We’ll walk our horses up to that ridge overlooking Dooley’s spread,” Smoke spoke softly. “Look the situation over. If it looks OK, we’ll ride slow-like and not light the bombs until we’re inside the compound. Lujan, you take the new bunkhouse. Beans, you toss yours into the bunkhouse that was used by Gage and his boys. I’ll take the main house.” He picked up a stick and drew a crude diagram in the dirt, just visible in the moonlight. “We’ve got about a hundred and fifty rounds between us all loaded up for the first pass. But let’s don’t burn them all up and get caught short.

  “Beans, the corral is closest to your spot; rope the gates and pull ’em down. The horses will be out of there like a shot. We make one pass and then get the hell gone from there. We’ll link up just south of that ridge. If we get separated, we’ll meet back at the Smith, where we rested. I don’t want to bomb the barn because of the horses in there. Ain’t no point in hurtin’ a good horse when we don’t have to.”

  Lujan chuckled quietly. “I think when the big bangs go off, there will be no need for Beans to rope the gates. I think the horses will break those poles down in a blind panic and be gone.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Smoke said. “That’ll give us more time to raise Cain.”

  “And,” Beans said, “when them bombs go off, those ol’ boys are gonna be so rattled they’ll be runnin’ in all directions. I’d sure like to have a pitcher of it to keep.”

  Lujan ground out his cigarette butt under a boot heel and stood up. “Shall we go make violent sounds in the night, boys?”

  The men rode deeper into the night, drawing closer to their objective. It was unspoken, but each man had entertained the thought that if Dooley had decided to strike first this night, Cord would be three guns short. If that was the case, and they were hitting an empty ranch, Dooley would experience the sensation of seeing another glow in the night sky.

  His own ranch.

  The three men left their horses and walked up to the ridge overlooking the darkened complex of the D-H ranch. They all three smiled as their eyes settled on the many horses in the double corral.

  Without speaking, Smoke pointed out each man’s perimeter and, using sign language, told them to watch carefully. He gave the soft call of a meadowlark and Lujan and Beans nodded their understanding, then faded into the brush.

  They watched for over an hour, each of them spotting the locations of the two men on watch. They were careless, puffing on cigarettes. Smoke birdcalled them back in, and they slipped to their horses.

  “What’d you think?” Smoke tossed it out.

  “Let’s swing around the ridge and walk our horses as close in as we can,” Beans suggested.

  “Suits me,” Lujan said.

  “Let’s do it.”

  They swung around the ridge and came up on the east side of the ranch, walking their horses very slowly, keeping to the grass to further muffle the sound of the hooves.

  “They’re either drunk or asleep,” Beans whispered.

  “With any kind of luck, we can put them to sleep forever,” Lujan returned the whisper. He reached back for the canvas sack and took out a giant powder bomb, the others following suit.

  They were right on the edge of the ranch grounds when a call went up. “Hey! They’s something movin’ out yonder!”

  The three men scratched matches into flames and lit the fuses. Beans let out a wild scream that would have sent any self-respecting puma running for cover and the horses lunged forward, steel-shod hooves pounding on the hard-packed dirt road.

  Smoke reached the house first, sending Dagger leaping over the picket fence. He hurled the bomb through a front window and circled around to the back, lighting the fuse on his second bomb and tossing it into an upstairs window. The front of the house blew, sending shards of glass and splintered pieces of wood flying, just as Smoke was heading across the backyard, low in the saddle, his face almost pressing Dagger’s neck. He was using his knees to guide the horse, the reins in his teeth and both hands filled with .44s.

  The upstairs blew, taking part of the roof off just as the bunkhouses exploded. All the men knew that with these black powder bombs, as small as they were, unless a man was directly in the path of one, or within a ten-foot radius, chances of death were slim. Injury, however, was another matter.

  The first blast knocked Dooley out of bed and onto the floor. The second blast in the house went off just as he was getting to his feet, trying to find his boots and hat and gun belt. That blast went off directly over his bedroom and caved in the ceiling, driving the man to his knees and tearing out the button-up back flap in his longhandles. A long splinter impaled itself to the hilt in one cheek of his bare butt, bringing a howl of pain from the man.

  One of his sons fell through the huge hole in the ceiling and landed on his father’s bed, collapsing the frame and folding the son up in the feather tick.

  “Halp!” Bud hollered. “Git me outta here. Halp!”

  Conrad came running, saw the hole in the ceiling too late, and fell squalling, landing on his father, knocking both men even goofier than they were already were.

  Outside, Smoke leveled a six-shooter and fired almost point-blank at a gunny dressed in his longhandles, boots, and hat—with a rifle in his hands. Smoke’s slug took the man in the center of the chest and dropped him.

  Dagger’s hooves made a mess of the man’s face as Smoke charged toward a knot of gunnies, both his guns blazing, barking and snarling and spitting out lead.

  He ran right through and over the gunnies, Dagger’s hooves bringing howls of pain as bones were broken under the steel shoes.

  Lujan knee-reined his horse into a mass of confused and badly shaken gunslicks. He fired into the face of one and the man’s face was suddenly slick with blood. Turning his horse, Lujan knocked another gunslick sprawling and fired his left-hand gun at another, the bullet taking the man in the belly.

  Smoke was suddenly at his side, and both men looked around for Beans, spotting him, and with a defiant cry from Lujan’s throat, the two men charged toward the Moab Kid. They circled the Kid, holstering their pistols and pulling Winchesters from the boots. The three of them charged the yard, firing as fast as they could work the levers of their seventeen-shot Winchesters. In the darkness, they could not be sure they hit anything, but as they would later relate, the action sure solved blocked bowel-movement problems any of the gunnies might be suffering from.

  The horses from the corral were long gone, just as Lujan had predicted, stampeding in a mad rush and tearing down the corral gates after the explosion of the first bomb.

  “Gimme a bomb!” Smoke yelled over the confusion.

  At a full gallop, Beans handed him a bomb and Smoke circled the house, screaming like a painted-up Cheyenne, while Lujan and Beans reined up and began laying down a blistering line of fire. Smoke lit the bomb and tossed i
t in a side window.

  “Let’s go!” he yelled.

  Screaming like young bucks on the warpath, the three men gave their horses full rein and galloped off into the dusty night. Smoke took one look back and grinned.

  Dooley was getting to his feet for the third time when the bomb blew. The blast impacted with Dooley, turning him around and sending him, door, and what was left of his longhandles, right out the bedroom window. Dooley landed right on top of Lanny Ball, the door separating them, both of the men knocked out cold.

  “Lemme out of here!” Bud squalled. “Halp! Halp!”

  EIGHTEEN

  There had been no pursuit. It would take the gunnies hours to round up their horses. But come the dawning, all three men knew the air would be filled with gunsmoke whenever and wherever D-H riders met with Circle Double C men.

  Several miles from the house, the men stopped and loosened cinch straps on their horses, letting them rest and blow and have a little water, but not too much; this was no time for a bloated horse.

  Smoke, Lujan, and Beans lay belly-down beside the little creek and drank alongside their horses, then sat down on the cool bank and rolled cigarettes, smoking and relaxing and unwinding. They had been very, very lucky this night, and they all knew it.

  Suddenly, Beans started laughing and the laughter spread. Soon all three were rolling on the bank, laughing almost hysterically.

  Gasping for breath, tears running down their tanned cheeks, the men gripped their sides and sat up, wiping their eyes with shirtsleeves.

  “Sabe Dios!” Lujan said. “But I will never see anything so funny as that we witnessed tonight if I live to be a hundred!”

  “Man,” Beans chuckled, “I never knew them fellers was so ugly. Did you ever see so many skinny legs in all your life?”

  “I saw Dooley blown slap out of the house,” Smoke said. “He looked like he was in one piece, but I couldn’t tell for sure. He was on a door, looked like to me. Landed on somebody, but I couldn’t tell who it was, ’cept he wasn’t wearing longjohns, had on one of those short-pants lookin’ things some men have taken to wearing. Come to think of it, it did sorta resemble Lanny Ball. He had his guns belted on over his drawers.”