William W. Johnstone (12 page)

He rode parallel to a series of ridges for a few moments, before finding a pass that would, hopefully, take them to the flats on the other side. He let the steeldust set his own pace and pick his way through the night. On the flats, reined up in the opening of the draw, Smoke spotted the night herder as the man worked his way around the herd, riding slowly so as not to spook the cattle, which was an easily done job. The cattle had, as usual, risen about midnight, grazed for a few moments, and then settled back down.

As the night herder passed Smoke’s position, the gunfighter let the loop fly and jerked the rider out of the saddle. The man hit the ground hard, knocking the wind out of him. Smoke was off and running as the loop settled and he further silenced the herder by a hard right fist to the side of the man’s jaw. He then tied him up, using cut-off sections from the Bar V rider’s own rope. He gagged the man with a dirty bandana taken from the man’s equally dirty neck and then squatted down beside him, waiting for him to regain consciousness.

The man’s eyes opened and widened as he recognized who he was looking at.

“You want to live?” Smoke asked softly.

The man nodded his head up and down vigorously.

“You know who I am?”

The rider nodded.

Smoke took out his long-bladed knife and laid the cold sharp steel against the man’s throat. “I’ve a good notion to cut your throat and just have done with it.”

The Bar V man made desperate choking sounds behind the gag, being careful not to move his head for fear the sharp blade would slice him.

“On second thought,” Smoke told him, “I think I’ll just strip you and tie you between two steers and then stampede the herd.”

More frantic choking sounds.

“Unless you agree to ride out and never show your face in this part of the state again.”

The muffled sound from behind the gag were definitely in agreement with Smoke’s last remarks.

Smoke very slowly moved the knife point, just scraping the man’s unshaven jaw, and the Bar V night herder looked like he was developing the first stages of a heart attack. With one flick of his wrist, Smoke cut the gag from the man’s mouth.

“Oh, Jesus!” the rider softly moaned.

Smoke grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back, exposing the softness of throat. He laid the blade against the man’s skin and the sharp odor of urine filled the night.

“If I see you again, I’ll kill you,” Smoke told him.

“Mr. Jensen, if you was to cut me aloose, I’ll be two counties away come the dawn.”

Smoke cut his bonds and stood up. “Ride. Ride like you’ve never ridden before. Forget your warbag back at the bunkhouse. Just get clear of this area.”

“I’m gone, mister!”

and swung into the saddle, wet drawers and all, and was gone into the night, heading west. Smoke had not disarmed the cowboy, but the man made no moves toward his six gun. The night became quiet as the rider got the hell gone from Smoke Jensen.

Smoke removed his spurs and stashed them in a saddlebag. Back in the saddle, he guided the steeldust out to the edge of the herd and began making the night herder’s rounds, working in a slow, rough circle. He soon spotted another night rider.

Smoke rode up to the man and just as the rider realized he was not looking at a Bar V hand, Smoke leaned over and knocked him clear out of the saddle. He was on the ground and standing over the man as the cowboy came up, fighting mad and cussing to beat sixty. He reached for his gun and Smoke knocked it out of his hand then proceeded to beat the man to an unconscious bloody pulp. Smoke tossed him belly-down across the man’s saddle, tied him securely, and slapped the horse on the rump, knowing the animal would head straight for the corral.

Smiling, Smoke swung back into the saddle and went in search of more night herders.

Long before first light, he had cleared the Bar V range of nighthawks. He had sent three packing, riding hell-bent for leather toward a more hospitable climate, and had either whipped with his fists or clubbed over the head four more, tying them across their saddles and sending the horses racing back to the corral, jumping and bucking under the strange load.

Smoke headed for the high country and some food and sleep. He was still smiling as he plopped his hat over his eyes and leaned back, his saddle for a pillow. The sun was just coming up. He was less than a mile from Jud Vale’s mansion.

around, cussing and hollering. “Get him!” he finally screamed, his face beet-red, spittle spraying over his lips. “Put a rope on him and drag that bastard back here! Ten thousand dollars to the man who brings him in, dead of alive!
Ride,
dammitl”

Forty riders hit their saddles and left the ranch complex in a cloud of dust, which was exactly what Smoke planned on them doing. He knew they would not expect him to be within ten miles of Jud Vale’s mansion, much less standing on a brush-covered ridge overlooking the estate.

Smoke had carefully picketed the steeldust over good graze and a small pool of collected water—water enough for a couple of days. If Smoke did not return, the steeldust could break free with little trouble and head back to Box T range.

Smoke took his time studying the ranch layout through field glasses, including ways to reach it and ways to get out once there. Jud had chosen his building site carefully, including a little creek that ran some three hundred yards behind the out of place mansion.

Smoke removed his boots and slipped on moccasins. He carefully checked his guns, wiping them free of any dust they might have collected. He removed his Winchester from the boot and checked it, making sure it was loaded full up. He patted the steeldust on the neck and spoke to it for a moment, then he started to move out.

Movement on the other side of the creek halted him. He squatted down and watched. He was sure he had seen movement. Or had he? He waited. There! He’d been right. Somebody, or something, was sure enough down there. He went back to his saddlebags and got his field glasses.

He moved several hundred yards closer to the mansion, adjusted the glasses for range and once more settled down to wait. Then he picked out the shape of a man. It startled him as the face of the man came into view. It was almost like looking into a mirror. There was some difference, of course, but the facial features of the man were startlingly similar to Smoke’s own.

Clint Perkins. It had to be. But what the devil was he up to?

He watched as the man left the creek and ran to one of several privies behind the house. The privies surprised Smoke. He thought Jud would have installed some of those new fangled indoor water closets he’d seen back East.

Clint began working his way closer to the mansion, finally ducking into a shed not far from the back porch. The call of a meadowlark drifted to Smoke, and Smoke could tell the call was not real. Within a moment, a young woman stepped out onto the porch, shaking out a small rug.

Someone must have said something from inside the house, for the girl turned her head. Smoke could see her lips move in reply. She had an angry expression on her face. Her reply must have satisfied the questioner for she moved off the porch and walked toward an outhouse.

She angled toward the privy just behind the shed; that move would effectively block the view of anyone watching from the house, but not from the ridge and Smoke’s magnified eyes.

The girl did not go into the outhouse. But she did disappear from view. So the shed either had a back door or a couple of loosened boards. Clint Perkins, the so-called Robin Hood of the West either had him a girlfriend, or was planning to rescue the lady from the sweaty evil clutches of Jud Vale. Probably a combination of both, Smoke thought. This Clint Perkins, as it was turning out, was quite the ladies’ man.

Smoke wondered just how many starry-eyed women Clint had loved and left and how many woods’ colts this dubious Robin Hood had in his back trail?

After only a few moments, a man wearing two guns
belted around his waist stepped onto the porch and, judging from the expression on his face, started yelling. The girl appeared, seeming to come from out of the privy. And from the expression on her face, she seemed to be yelling at the man. When she reached the porch, the man slapped her, staggering her, only the railing preventing her from falling off the porch. He grabbed her by the arm and hurried her into the house, slamming the door behind them.

Interesting, Smoke thought. Then he wondered how many more young ladies Jud Vale was keeping against their will in the huge mansion?

Smoke settled back in a more comfortable position, his back to a tree, his hat on the ground beside him and waited and watched. This might prove to be a very interesting morning.

And Smoke might not have to do anything for a change. Except enjoy the show.

Smoke shifted his attentions to the front of the mansion as Jud Vale stepped out onto the porch with a cup of coffee in his hand and took a chair. Smoke envied him that cup of coffee, for a fact. His had been a cold camp the night before, and he sorely missed his usual full pot of hot, strong, black cowboy coffee upon waking up.

He contended himself by chewing on a biscuit sandwich made with fried salt pork and chasing it down with sips of water from his canteen.

The girl Smoke had seen meeting with Clint Perkins came out onto the porch and began talking to Jud, gesturing with her hands.

Jud shook his head a couple of times and then, with an angry expression on his face, pointed toward the door. The girl, her shoulders slumped in defeat, walked back inside the house.

Jud stood up and hollered something; Smoke could see his lips move but could not make out the words. Three men stepped out of a bunkhouse and walked toward the house. Three more men, with the girl in tow, quite unwillingly, Smoke noted, by the way one held onto her arm, came out of the mansion to stand by Jud on the porch.

The man holding onto the girl nodded his head and the three went back into the mansion. Shifting his glasses. Smoke watched as Clint ran the short distance from shed to back porch and then disappeared into the mansion.

Gong to get interesting very soon, Smoke thought.

Jud’s horse was saddled and led to the porch, and Jud and three of his bodyguards rode off. Smoke finished his biscuit and salt meat and waited for something to start popping.

It wasn’t long in coming.

One man was suddenly hurled through a side window, the side of his head bloody. Gunfire shattered the early morning quiet and one of Jud’s bodyguards came staggering out onto the back porch. He fell over the railing and lay still.

More gunfire came from within the house and the third bodyguard fell out of the front door, on his back, on the porch. The front of his shirt was bloody.

Wisps of smoke began leaking out of an open window in the rear of the house as Clint and the girl ran out the back door and toward the creek. Several moments later, Smoke watched as two horses pounded away, the girl riding astride. They topped a hill and were gone.

“Robin Hood strikes again,” Smoke muttered, as he took out another biscuit and settled back, just as Jud Vale and his bodyguards came galloping back to the ranch.

The fire had been confined to the kitchen and had been extinguished in a few minutes. Jud was talking to the man who had been bashed on the noggin and tossed out the side window.

“So it wasn’t Jensen all along,” Jud said, standing up, his face tight with anger. “It was that damn Clint Perkins!”

“They look enough alike to be brothers,” Jason reminded his boss. “Be easy to mistake them in the dark.”

“Maybe they’re brothers?” a hand suggested. “And Smoke Jensen come in here to help him out?”

But Jud Vale rejected that on the spot. He’d been in the West for some years when the stories about Smoke Jensen first began surfacing. Jud knew that Jensen’s father had died and the mountain man, Preacher, took care of the boy’s raising after that. Smoke had always been a loner, with no family to speak of, certainly no brother.

He shook his head. “No. He doesn’t have a brother. Not anymore. His brother was killed in the war. Tortured and killed by a group headed by three men who later moved into Idaho. Jensen killed them all and detroyed the town.”

“Then what’s he doin’ here, Boss?” Jason asked.

“Exactly what he said he was dong,” Jud replied, bitterness in his voice. “He was just seeing the country when we braced him. That got his back up, and he stayed.” Jud shrugged. “We brought it on ourselves.”

“And we do what about it?” a gunslinger asked.

“Kill him.”

A Bar V hand had gotten close to Smoke’s hiding place while taking a shortcut to a search area. He now found himself flat on the ground looking up into the cold eyes of Smoke Jensen, with a knife blade across his throat. There were any number of questions he wanted to ask, but wisely kept his mouth shut, figuring if Jensen wanted him to talk, he’d tell him so.

“Who is in the house besides Jud Vale and his men?” Smoke asked.

“Nobody! I swear it!”

“The girl who got away—who is she?”

“Susie somebody-or-another. Nester’s kid from over Wyoming Territory.”

“She was the only servant?” Smoke moved the razor sharp knife blade and the man cringed in fear.

“If that’s what you want to call what she done. Yeah. She cain’t cook and don’t clean house. It’s like a boar’s nest in that house. There was two more girls. One run off— never seen her agin, and Jud kilt the other. But it was an accident, Jud said. He broke her neck whilst they were messin’ around. You know.”

“Sounds like a nice gentle fellow, this Jud Vale does.”

The hand didn’t know how to respond to that, so he kept his mouth closed.

“What’s Clint Perkins’s beef with Jud?”

“Lord, man, I don’t know! ‘Ceptin’ that Perkins is crazy, I reckon. He hates rich folks, I do know that.”

Smoke stared hard at the man. The Bar V hand was scared and sweating, even though the day was cloudy and cool, threatening rain. "Where are you wanted?"

The hand hesitated. Smoke moved the big blade. That loosened his mouth. “Kansas!” He blurted out.