William W. Johnstone (19 page)

Boots and jingling spurs sounded on the porch of the trading post. The batwings squeaked open. Smoke did not turn around.

Blackjack paused at the bar and spoke to Smoke’s back. “Well, well, boys. Look what we done come up on here. The famous gunfighter, Smoke Jensen. You reckon we ought to bow down or something like that?”

His friends laughed. Smoke did not acknowledge the presence of any of them. He sipped at his beer and spoke to Bendel. “I thought I just heard a jackass bray, Bendel. You certainly do have a very strange clientele.”

Bendel got a sudden case of the jumps and moved to the end of the bar, carrying a couple of bottles of whiskey with him. He knew the drinking habits of Blackjack and Lassiter and could guess at the tastes of those with them. A tray of shot glasses were bottom’s up on a towel near the end of the bar.

“You callin’ me a jackass?” Blackjack demanded in a loud voice.

Smoke slowly turned to face the man. “Why ... it isn’t a jackass, after all. It’s Blackjack. Excuse me, Morgan. I must have been mistaken.”

“That’s the damnedest apology I ever heard,” Lassiter said.

“Who said I was apologizing.” Smoke cut his eyes to the gunfighter.

“What’ll it be, boys?” Bendel hollered.

“We ain’t deef,” one of the bounty hunters said sourly. “Whiskey.”

Blackjack still stood by the bar, facing Smoke. Smoke had noted that all the men wore their guns loose in leather, free of hammer thongs. And Blackjack wanted to try Smoke something awful; Smoke could read the challenge in the man’s dark eyes.

“Don’t do it. Blackjack,” Smoke spoke the words softly, so softly that only Morgan could hear them. “It isn’t worth it, friend.”

“Don’t give me orders, Jensen.” Blackjack’s returning words were equally soft, less than a whisper; a scant moving of the lips. “I want you before the Almond Brothers find you.”

Smoke had heard of the Almond Brothers. A trashy bunch of no-goods that had drifted out of the Midwest some years back. A pack of back-shooting scum who would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes. Jud was certainly scraping the bottom of the barrel by hiring that bunch.

“If they take me, Blackjack, it won’t be facing me.”

“They’ll still have the ten thousand and you’ll still be just as dead.”

Smoke smiled and turned his back to the man.

“Don’t you turn your backside to me!” Blackjack snarled, putting out his hand and dropping it to Smoke’s shoulder, spinning the man around.

Smoke hit him with a left to the belly and followed that with a beer mug to the side of Blackjack’s head, knocking the man to the floor.

Blackjack was up like a rubber ball, blood streaming down his cheek from the gash on his head. He swung a fist and Smoke ducked under it, again popping the man in the gut and bringing a grunt of pain.

Blackjack connected with a left to Smoke’s head that backed him up. Blackjack was no stranger to brawls and he could punch.

Smoke faked him with a left and Blackjack took the bait, grinning and dropping his guard. Smoke punched through the hole and erased the grin, as he connected with a right to the mouth that smashed Blackjack’s lips and loosened some teeth. Blackjack shook his head and came in swinging.

Smoke sidestepped and stuck out a boot, sending the man to the floor, clubbing him on the back of the neck as he went down.

With a curse, Blackjack got to his boots just in time to receive a left and right combination to both sides of his jaw that staggered and stunned the man. He fell back against the bar planking.

Smoke pinned him there and went to work, smashing at the man with big work-hardened fists. Smoke flattened Blackjack’s nose and ruined his mouth. One of the man’s ears was swollen and pulpy and the gunfighter’s eyes were
glazing
over.

Smoke stepped back and let Blackjack fall to the floor. The man did not move.

Lassiter chose that time to stand up. “By God, Jensen, you’ll not do that to another good man,” and went for his piece.

Smoke shot him.

He drew, cocked, and fired in less than a heartbeat, his slug striking Lassiter in the belly and knocking him back against a table, splitting the wood right down the middle. Lassiter was drawing iron as he was falling and managed to get off one shot, which dead-centered the painting of a nude female hanging on the wall behind the bar.

“Why, you sorry son!” Bendel hollered. “I paid good money for that.” He came up with a shotgun just as one of the bounty hunters was dragging iron.

Lassiter lifted his six gun as blood was leaking from his mouth.

Smoke shot him between the eyes just as Bendel’s shotgun roared, the buckshot creating a terrible mess at close range. The tom-apart bounty hunter was literally lifted off his boots and flung across the room. He bounced off a wall and fell to the floor, lying still in a bloody mess. Two of his buddies cursed and then tossed good sense and caution to the gods of fate as they grabbed for their six guns.

Bendel gave one the other barrel just as Smoke shifted the muzzle of his Colt and let the .44 bang, the slug taking the second man in the chest and dropping him to his knees.

The lone bounty hunter left alive lifted his hands out from his body and held them wide apart to show that he was out of this affair.

Walt stuck his gray head into the gunsmoke-filled barroom. He held a six gun in his hand, the hammer earred back.

“It’s over,” Smoke told him, just as Blackjack moaned on the floor and tried to sit up.

Smoke jerked the man to his boots and spun him around, so he could see the carnage in the saloon.

Blackjack’s eyes were swollen from the beating he’d just received, but he could see well enough to know that the best thing he could do would be to keep his mouth closed.

“Get on your horse and ride, Blackjack,” Smoke told him. “And if you have any sense at all you’ll keep going and not look back until you’ve cleared a couple of counties.”

Blackjack broke his silence. “Lassiter was a pal of mine, Jensen.”

“Was is right.”

“I’ll not let his death go unavenged.”

“Then you’re a fool. As crazy as Jud Vale.” Smoke shoved him toward the batwings. “Get out of here, Blackjack. If you’re in my sight ten seconds from now I’ll kill you.”

“And stay out of my saloon!” Bendel hollered. “All of you trash that work for the Bar V. I’m telling’ you now; pass the word: I’ll kill the first one of you that pass through those batwings. I’m tired of this.” He leveled his reloaded double-barrel, sawed-off express gun. “Move, damn you!”

Blackjack moved.

Smoke glanced at Walt. “Supplies loaded?”

“All on the wagon.”

“Let’s get back to the ranch. I suddenly got a bad feeling about this day.”

Jackson took one look at Jud Vale and struggled to contain his laughter. At the same time he was fighting to keep from busting out laughing, he was making up his mind about the Bear Lake Fight, as it was being called by some.

Jackson was switching sides.

Jackson was a gunfighter, and a good one, but he had had a bad taste in his mouth about this fight right from the git-go. He just didn’t think it was right to fight women and kids and old men. And now he had heard that Jud Vale and Old Walt were really brothers, and that didn’t set well with him at all. He didn’t have any trouble understanding how brothers could hate each other; he’d seen that many times before. But in this situation, there wasn’t any reason for it. Come to think of it, there wasn’t any reason for any of this, and there damn sure wasn’t even one ounce of reason roaming around in Jud’s crazy head.

And where in the hell did Jud come up with that costume he was struttin’ around in?

Man looked like the fool he really was.

Time to go, Jackson concluded, just about the time the lone hand come staggering in from the gunfight with Cheyenne and the kid.

Jackson listened, then slowly walked to the bunkhouse to get his kit together. He rode out without being noticed. He headed for Box T range, but in a very roundabout way, going by the way of the trading post and stopping in for a drink of whiskey.

That longing for a drink of whiskey just about cost him his life: when he stepped into the saloon he was looking down the barrels of a sawed-off shotgun.

“Whoa!” Jackson said. “I’m friendly, Bendel!”

“Not if you’re ridin’ for the Bar V, you ain’t.”

“I quit ‘um. Jud Vale is as crazy as a bessy-bug. All the wrappin’ done come plumb off him.” He grimaced, remembering the sight of Jud all dressed up in that silly-lookin’ outfit. “In a manner of speakin’, that is. I figured I’d toss my saddle on a Box T horse.”

Bendel lowered the express gun. “They need some help, for a fact. Have a whiskey, on the house.”

“Don’t mind if I do. Smells like gunsmoke in here, Bendel.”

Bendel told him what had gone down.

Jackson sipped his whiskey and mulled over that bit of information. He would have liked to seen Blackjack get the snot whipped out of him. If ever a man deserved a good butt-whippin’, Morgan did. Him and Lassiter and those others with that grand plan to ambush Jensen. That hadn’t set well with Jackson either, but by the time he’d learned of it, it had all blown over.

Jackson thanked Bendel for the whiskey, stepped into the general store for some tobacco and cartridges, then headed out for the Box T.

He was feeling better with every mile he put behind him.

“And I seen Jud sendin’ men out in all directions,” Jackson was wrapping it up for Smoke and Rusty and the others. “Ain’t no way we’re gonna bust Miss Doreen out of there with just two or three men and a handful of kids. I don’t think her life is in no danger. Don’t you ladies take this the wrong way now, ‘cause I think a man doin’ what Jud is gonna do against her will is wrong, but at least she’ll be alive.”

“And you say Jud has really gone around the bend?” Walt asked.

“Gone around the bend! Man, he is total loco. Walks around that big house with a gold crown on his head, all done up in diamonds and rubies and the like. And he wears a robe.”

“You mean he’s wearing something like a dressing gown?” Smoke asked.

“Hell, no! Excuse me, ladies. I mean one of them ear-mine robes that he had handsewn and all made up for him over in Russia.”

“Ear-mine?” Alice questioned. “You mean ermine fur?”

“Yes’um. That’s it. A white one. Comes all the way down to his ankles. He looks real stupid stompin’ around the house in that robe, wearing a crown on his head, and cowboy boots on his feet. I’m tellin’ y’all, it’s gettin’ to be awful weird around that place. Plumb spooky.”

“Are the men laughing at him?” Walt asked.

“Not to his face. He’s still totin’ a gun strapped around his waist. And that makes him look even dumber.”

“But still dangerous,” Rusty added.

“Even more dangerous,” Jackson told them. “ ‘Cause you don’t never know what a crazy man is goin’ to do.”

They all agreed with that.

Walt leaned back and scratched his head. “Well, let’s come up with some way to get Doreen out of that nuthouse. Anybody want to start?”

Those seated around the table fell silent as they looked at one another. Smoke finally broke the silence.

“I’ll gear up and leave tonight. We’ve got to know just where in the house she’s located and how many men Jud has on guard and where they are. I’ll find that out and then we can make some plans. But first we have to bury Cheyenne. Let’s do it at sunset. That was his favorite time of day.”

They all agreed that was a good suggestion.

“I just wish I knew if Doreen was all right,” Alice sighed the words.

“She ain’t all right, ma’am,” Jackson said, a grim note to his statement. “But she ain’t dead either.”

They buried Cheyenne just as the sun was going down, with Walt reading from the Good Book. Alice and Susie and Micky cried, and some of the other boys looked like they were having a tough time of it keeping the tears back. All but Matthew. The boy stood with a grim look on his face. Smoke knew the look well. He could read revenge clear on the boy’s face.

Smoke knew just how Matt felt. He’d been down that rocky path many times in his life.

After the words were read, one by one, they filed past the dark hole and tossed a handful of earth into the pit. The clods rattled against the rough pine box that Young Eli had built for Cheyenne that afternoon. Then each one of the other boys had solemnly driven a single nail into the coffin.

Moments after the funeral, Smoke saddled up and rode off into the gathering darkness. There was a hard look on his face. He was getting more than a little weary of Jud Vale and his hired guns.

Deep into Bar V range, about three miles from the mansion, he guessed, Smoke picketed his horse and slipped into moccasins, leaving his hat and taking his rifle. He had swung wide getting to the location where he had left his horse, taking a route that if he were in Jud’s place, would post the least number of guards.

He worked his way toward the mansion, hoping to find the location of just one of the guards. He wanted to talk to one of Jud’s men. Smoke didn’t think it would lake him long to get what information he needed ... and it didn’t.

The guard woke up with a raging headache from where Smoke had clubbed him on the back of the head. There was a bandana tied over his mouth and he was very cold from the waist down. He couldn’t understand that. Then he realized his britches were gone. He cut his eyes and fell even colder fear clutch at his heart as he looked at Smoke Jensen, squatting a few feet away, clear in the moonlight, a big-bladed knife in his hand.

“I’m going to ask you a few questions,” Smoke said, in a voice that made the hired gun want to go to the bushes to relieve himself something fierce. “And you’re going to give me correct answers. You know who I am?”

The man nodded his head.

“You’ve heard the story about what I did to one of the men who raped my first wife and then killed her and our baby son?”

The hired gun almost came unhinged.
Everybody
knew what Smoke Jensen had done to the gunfighter Canning. He had taken a knife—maybe the same damn knife Smoke was now holding—and turned Canning into a gelding—then cauterized the wound with a hot running iron.