William W. Johnstone (11 page)

Smith said nothing. There wasn’t very much left to say.

“Goddamn nesters should have stayed out this area,” Smoke heard one of the cattlemen in the bar say.

Smoke ignored him for the time being. The man had his own conscience to live with. Providing he had one at all.

“Are you ready, Mr. Smith?” Matthew asked, very politely.

“Smith,” one of the Bar V hands spoke softly. “Back away. I don’t like this. The kid’s too damn sure of hisself.”

“I ain’t backin’ up for no damn snot-nose pig farmer’s whelp!” He stared at Matt. “All right, boy. You’ve made your brags. Now do something ’sides talk!”

“After you, Mr. Smith.”

Smith hesitated. Something was terribly, awfully wrong here. He’d seen any number of two-bit, show-off, would-be gunhands in his time. At the last minute, they always backed down. And even before they backed down, they were nervous, their voices shrill, faces shiny with the sweat of fear. But not this kid. Kid, hell! He was just a
boy
—barely in his teens.

“My little sister suffered, Mr. Smith. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”

“Shut your mouth, damn you!” Smith screamed. “Draw, you punk!”

Matt waited, waited in his worn-out, low-heeled farmer’s boots. In his faded and patched old jeans and carefully mother-mended shirt. His eyes were calm behind his thick glasses.

Smith jerked iron. He just managed to clear leather as Man’s pistol belched and roared smoke and sparks. The first slug hit him in the belly, spinning him around in the
dirt. The second slug struck him in the side and knocked him down to one knee. The expression on his face was one of utter disbelief that this could be happening to him. The third slug hit him in the face, entering between nose and upper lip and making one Godawful mess. Smith trembled once and died.

The three remaining Bar V hands stood in open-mouthed shock, all of them knowing they were not nearly as fast as this fresh-faced, as-yet-to-shave farmer’s kid standing on the porch of the store, and all of them so very, very glad they had not tried to brace him.

Leroy stepped out of the store, his short-barreled .44-.40, hammer back, in his hands. The barrel of the carbine was pointed straight and rock-steady at the belly of a Bar V hand.

“I’m out of this, kid!” the hand said quickly.

“You interfere in the fight between Mr. Smoke and Noonan and you’ll be out of it forever,” Leroy told him, his young voice holding hard steel.

Matt had quickly reloaded and holstered the Peacemaker. His calm eyes, magnified behind the thick glasses, looked at the other Bar V hand.

“That goes for me, too, kid!” the hand said.

“Mr. Smoke?” Matt said.

“Matt?”

“If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I got to go behind the building and throw up!” “Go on, Matt.” The boy ran from the porch.

“I done the same thing my first man,” a Bar V rider admitted. “It ain’t nothin’ to be ’shamed of.” He didn’t know what else to do with his hands—only wanting to keep them as far away from his pistol as possible—so he stuck them into the back pockets of his jeans.

Noonan looked at the bulk of Smoke Jensen and swallowed hard. “Come on, boys!” he urged, panic in his
voice. “They’s three of us. We can take them two.”

The Bar V rider with his hands in his back pockets told Noonan what he could do with his suggestion, together with the same corncob they had originally had in mind for Matthew.

“That goes double for me,” the remaining Bar V rider added. “You wanted to fight Jensen, you just go right ahead, Noonan.” He removed his gun belt and hung it on his saddle horn.

The other hand thought that was a dandy idea, and did the same. Leroy shifted the muzzle of the .44-.40 to Noonan’s belly and the man let his gunbelt fall.

The shopkeeper, his wife, the barkeep, and the two cattlemen had walked out on the porch, to stand and stare. The body of Smith was, for the moment, being ignored. Matt walked around from behind the building, wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve.

Smoke took off his guns and laid them on the bench. He stepped off the porch, walked up to Noonan, and knocked the puncher down in the dirt with one very quick and unexpected hard left hook.

Noonan rolled and came to his boots, the side of his jaw beginning to bruise from the blow. He shook his head, clearing it of stars and chirping birdies, and backed up, lifting his fists.

He swung at Smoke. Smoke ducked the punch and busted the cowboy in the belly with a hard right. Noonan whoofed out air just as Smoke came around with another left which connected on the man’s ear, spinning him around and seriously impairing his hearing for a few moments.

Just as Noonan regained his balance, Smoke stepped in and blasted him in the mouth with another straight right punch. Noonan’s boots left the dirt and he sat down hard on his butt, his mouth bloody.

Smoke backed up. He wasn’t even breathing hard;
hadn’t even worked up a sweat yet.

Noonan wisely sat on the ground. He took another good long look at the gunfighter who stood above him, his fists balled, hanging at his sides, waiting. Smoke looked awesome. A big man, six feet or more, with a massive barrel chest and shoulders and arms that were packed with hard muscle.

Noonan came off the ground in a rush, a long-bladed knife in his right hand.

Smoke slipped the first swing of the knife, bending down as he parried the thrust, his left hand scooping up dust from the road. When Noonan closed with him, Smoke tossed the dirt into the man’s eyes, momentarily blinding the man.

Smoke kicked the man on the knee, bringing a howl of pain. Smoke hit the man twice in the face, a left and a right. The knife dropped from his hand just as Smoke’s right hand clamped down on the man’s fingers. Smoke bore down, using all his strength. Noonan began screaming as the bones in his fingers were crushed, the crunching sounds causing all the spectators to wince.

Still holding onto Noonan’s now ruined hand, Smoke began battering the man’s face with short, hard, chopping blows from his left fist. Within a minute, the man’s face had been turned into a bloody, misshapen mask. His nose was flattened, his lips smashed into bloody pulp, several teeth knocked out of his mouth. Both eyes were beaten closed.

Smoke let him drop to the dirt. Noonan was unconscious.

Smoke walked to the horse trough and washed his face and hands and buckled his gun belt around his lean waist. He looked up at Leroy.

“All the supplies loaded, Leroy?”

“Just about, sir.”

“I’ll get right on that, Mr. Jensen!” the store owner said.

He and his wife rushed back into the store.

Smoke looked at the now completely sober cattlemen. They were standing on the porch, faces pale under the tan, staring at the crippled Noonan.

Smoke pointed first at Smith, then to Noonan. “When you men decide to take a stand in this issue,” Smoke told them, “I would suggest that both of you keep this sight fresh in your minds.”

Smoke turned and swung into the saddle.

The news of the gunfight between the seasoned Smith and the nester’s kid, and the short but brutally crippling fight between Smoke and Noonan spread like unchecked wildfire throughout the southeastern corner of Idaho. Noonan would never regain the use of his right hand. The so-called badman drifted out of the country, sucking on a bottle of laudanum to ease the pain. He would drift far away, change his name, and work the remainder of his life as a cowboy with a crippled hand, his true identity hidden forever, even to the grave.

Jud Vale had been oddly silent after the shooting and the beating at the trading post. Smoke had a hunch all that would abruptly change as soon as Editor Argood left on his journey to Utah. And that was just about a week away.

At Smoke’s suggestion, the ranch house and the bunkhouse had been fortified against both attack and against siege—Smoke suspected the latter would be tried, with Jud Vale’s marksmen in carefully placed positions attempting to pick off the defenders one by one.

The remaining Box T herd had been moved to safer pastures; a huge valley with good grass and water, difficult for rustlers to get the cattle clear without being seen.

On a warm bright late spring morning, Smoke walked around the compound, inspecting the work that had been
done. He could not think of anything else they could do.

And Smoke was growing restless. Edgy, might be a better word for it. Calm it might be—for now—but he knew their position was lousy, and if Jud would just do a little thinking and planning, logically instead of emotionally, and then turn his rabid dogs loose, there was no way that Smoke and the defenders could hold back a well-planned and well-executed attack against them.

So what to do?

Cutting down the odds would certainly help. Perhaps a little night work? Like headhunting?

Smoke smiled a warrior’s smile, thinking: Why not?

He remembered Preacher’s words: “You’ll always be a fighter, boy—a warrior. You’ll take the quiet home life for a time, then the itch will git to where you cain’t jist sit at home and scratch it. And then you’ll head for the high lonesome, lookin’ for trouble. And knowin’ you, boy, you’ll find it.”

Smoke rounded up Cheyenne and Rusty and took them to one side. “I’ll be gone for a couple of days, maybe longer. I don’t like the odds, so I think I’ll do something about them.”

“You crave some company?” Cheyenne asked.

Smoke shook his head. “No. This is something that’s best left to one man. I’ll be pulling out at dusk.”

“You going to tell Walt and the wimmin what you’re up to?” the old gunfighter asked.

“I’ll tell Walt. If he wants to let the women in on it, that’s up to him.“

“If anybody can pull it off, you can, son. You had the best teacher in the world in Preacher.”

Smoke certainly agreed with that last sentence. There had been no finer night fighter in the world than Preacher. “I’ll start getting my gear together. Rusty, fix me up with a packet of food enough to last two days.”

The cowboy nodded and walked away. Smoke turned
back to Cheyenne. “My horse is too well known. put a rope on that steeldust for me, will you? He’s mean as hell but he’s mountain bred and quick as lightning and can go all day and still have bottom left.”

“He’s a good one. I’ll dob him for you.”

Smoke filled up all the loops in his gunbelt and filled up a bandoleer, slinging that around his shoulder. He slipped another box of .44’s into his saddlebags and made sure his moccasins were tucked into the leather. He would soon slip out of his boots and into the moccasins when it was time for the night stalking to begin. He sat down on his bunk and began putting a finer edge on his Bowie knife. That done, he walked to a stone building behind the barn and opened the locked door with a key he had found in a cabinet in the storeroom. He had a hunch what he would find, and his hunch was correct.

He filled a small sack with sticks of dynamite and caps and fuses. He might not be able to cut the head off the snake, but he was sure intending to tweak its tail.

Smoke talked to Jamie and Matthew before he pulled out into the night.

“Tell the boys to ride carefully and keep a sharp eye out. I’m going into the lion’s den, and there is no telling what Jud Vale will have his men do in retaliation after I’m through.”

“There used to be a lot more farmers in this area than there is now, Mr. Smoke,” Jamie said. “Women and girls has been tooken and misused by Vale and his riders. Men has been tarred and feathered and horsewhipped and killed. Killed outright if they was lucky. A deputy sheriff come in here once. He just disappeared. There ain’t been no more lawmen come around the Bear. Jud Vale is pure trash, Mr. Smoke. Trash livin’ in a big fancy house, with servants and such as that. When he can get them to stay, that is. He fancies young women all around, to wait on him. And he abuses them in ways we heard that would make you sick to your stomach, so they leave as soon as they can get a way out. You cain’t tell us nothin’ about Jud Vale and what he might decide to do.”

“The more I hear about this man the more I think the best thing to do would be to just go in and chop his head off, so to speak,” Smoke said.

“Ain’t gonna be that easy, Mr. Smoke. Not even for you. Jud ain’t never alone. He’s got half a dozen bodyguards with him all the time. Men that have been with him for years, my pa says.”

“We’ll see, boys. We’ll see. I might not be able to do much more than rattle the bars on his cage this time around. But, by God, he will know that his territory has been violated.”

Walt came out to the barn just moments before Smoke was to pull out. “Clint Perkins is in the area, Smoke, Don’t ask me how I know—I can’t explain the feelings I get when he’s close. I just know. You be careful.”

“Whose side is he on, Walt?”

“His own,” the old rancher said bluntly. “He’s like a goose; wakes up in a new world every day. I always knew he was about half nuts. Now I think he’s gone slap dab crazy.”

Smoke led the steeldust out of the barn and swung into the saddle. “I’ll see you in two or three days, Walt.”.

“Be careful, boy.”

Smoke rode slowly away from the ranch and into the night. He fought shy of the roads and well-traveled trails as he worked his way toward the range of the Bar V. Editor Argood had told him that there was not one single person on the Bar V payroll that was worth the gunpowder it would take to blow their brains out. To a man, Argood said, they were bullies and trash and petty criminals and all wanted by the law somewhere. The people in the area put up with them because Jud Vale kept them all on a tight leash. Jud had forbidden them to enter Montpelier, restricting their carousing to a few small towns and trading posts in the area around the Bar V range.

All in all, Smoke concluded as he rode through the night, a snake pit could best describe the Bar V ... and that included the owner.

With a tight smile on his face. Smoke thought that the next couple of days and nights should prove to be quite interesting.

Before leaving the Box T, Smoke had taken tape and silenced anything that might jingle. Only the clop of the steeldust’s hooves and the occasional creak of saddle leather could be heard. By midnight, he was on Bar V range. He would ride for a while, then dismount and stand listening for several moments. He began passing bunched and sleeping cattle and slipped his rope free, knowing he would soon make contact with a night herder. If his luck held, the night herder would think him one of the Bar V riders—at least long enough for Smoke to dab a loop over the man and cause a little mischief.