William W. Johnstone (22 page)

“You seen Doreen, Smoke?” Rusty said.

“No. I expect she’ll be making her entrance just a tad after six. That’s the way the fashionable ladies do it, so I been told.”

“Why? Hell, she can tell time, cain’t she? She ain’t stupid.”

“No. I mean, yes, she can tell time. No, she isn’t stupid. Ladies do that so all the people will be present to look at them when they make their entrance.”

“I shore don’t know much about wimmen.”

“Rusty, after you’ve been married for five or six years, you’ll discover something.”

“What?”

“That you don’t know any more about women after all those years than you did when you got married.” “Well, ain’t that just something to look forward to?”

Smoke laughed at him and moved on, walking through the lower part of the mansion. He spoke to several of the farmers that he knew. Ralph’s father took his arm.

“I don’t know what you got planned in the way of gettin’ Miss Doreen out of this place, Smoke. But I’m with you all the way. Me, and about a half dozen other men.”

Smoke started to tell him to stay out of it, then changed his mind. Somebody had to be the first ones to stand up to Jud and his army of hired guns. If the cattlemen in the area wouldn’t, then maybe the farmers would shame them into joining them.

“All right, Chester. Here’s what you do: when you see Walt and Alice leave, you and the others follow them. I’ll tell Walt that you boys are with us.”

Chester smiled. “I put rifles in the wagon. The wife can shoot nearabouts as good as I can.”

“Good man!” Smoke gripped his arm and walked on. They stood a chance if he could just get Doreen out.

Smoke declined a glass of champagne being offered by the German gunfighter, Jaeger, who was minus the top part of an ear, thanks to Smoke. The German glared pure hate at Smoke.

“I ought to take off the other ear, Jaeger,” Smoke told him. “So you’d have a matched set. But then you’d have a hell of a time wearing a hat, wouldn’t you?”

Jaeger growled something at Smoke in German and moved on, toting his tray of drinks.

Smoke moved over to stand by Sheriff Brady’s side. The sheriff gave him a curious look.

“Have you decided whether this is in your county, or not, Sheriff?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t come here to arrest anyone. I didn’t bring any men with me. Why? Are you planning on starting something?”

“Me?” Smoke managed a shocked look. “Heavens no. Sheriff. I’m just here to have a good time.”

“Right,” the lawman’s reply was drily given. “Sure, you are.”

“Have you seen Jud, Sheriff?”

A pained look passed over the sheriff’s face. “Yes, unfortunately. But there is no law against a man wearing a fur robe and a jeweled crown.”

“Oh, I never said there was, Sheriff. But it might make a person question Jud’s sanity—right?”

“Like I said, Jensen: I’m not here in any official capacity.”

“Enjoy yourself, Sheriff.” Smoke moved on, snaking his way through the growing crowd. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed six o’clock.

He caught the eyes of several fanners; they gave him a slight nod and a wink. Chester had done his part; the men were with him. Smoke returned the nods and found a place next to a wall. Rusty soon joined him and with their backs to the wall, they waited.

At ten after the hour, the bugler started tooting, the guitar player started strumming, and the fiddler started sawing.

“Sounds like a cat fight to me,” Rusty said.

Then Doreen made her entrance, and the crowd oohhed and aahhed. She was dressed to the nines, all done up in silks and satins. She was playing her part to the hilt, acting like a queen as she moved through the crowd, smiling and offering her hand to the folks.

Jud stood to one side, a big grin on his big face. He looked like a damned idiot.

Walt and Alice offered their congratulations to Doreen and then Walt glanced at Smoke. Smoke nodded his head. The old rancher and his wife slipped unnoticed out the front door and climbed into their buggy, heading back toward Box T range.

In pairs, the farmers and their wives began slipping out of the mansion. At a quarter to the hour, all those who were on Smoke’s side had left. Smoke found Rusty.

“Start staying close to the Pecos Kid, Rusty. When I
make my move, you grab his guns and watch my back.”

The cowboy nodded and moved off into the milling crowds.

The band was doing their best to play a tune that Smoke could but vaguely recognize. Sounded to him like they were all in different keys.

Smoke moved over to a table near the hallway where the grandfather clock was located and took a glass of champagne just as the chimes donged out seven o’clock. He finished the glass then walked up to Jud and Doreen, jerked both Jud’s guns out of leather and placed the muzzle of one in the man’s ear. Jud’s bodyguards froze, not knowing what to do.

The band stopped playing; the milling crowds were still as the word spread throughout the ground floor of the mansion.

Rusty had clobbered the Pecos Kid with a silver platter of fried chicken and grabbed his guns. The Kid lay on the floor, his head on a pile of chicken.

Smoke said, “Tell your men to start tossing their guns out the windows, Jud. If just one of them tries anything, I’ll kill you where you stand.”

“See that they do it, Jason,” Jud managed the words out of his fricasseed brain and past his anger.

Six guns began sailing out the open windows.

“Get horses out front for Doreen and King Vale,” Smoke ordered.

Jason nodded at one of the bodyguards.

“Make your speech, Doreen,” Smoke told her.

Doreen spun around to face the crowd. “Jud Vale kidnapped me and brought me here against my will. I’ve been a prisoner in this house.” She looked straight at Sheriff Brady. “Do you hear me, Sheriff?”

“I hear you, girl.”

“I hate this man,” Doreen said, pointing to Jud. “I would sooner marry a grizzly bear. I planned this whole party so’s Smoke and the man I really love, Rusty, would come and rescue me.”

Rusty was grinning and blushing. He looked like a lit railroad lantern.

“I’m ashamed of you people!” Doreen yelled at the crowd of men and women. “Not a one of you would help Walt and Alice or Smoke and Rusty stand up to this nitwit!” She glared at Jud, standing with his crown tilted to one side of his big head. “To hell with you all!” Doreen shouted.

“Let’s go!” Smoke said, shoving Jud toward the door.

Outside, Doreen hiked up her expensive gown and showed Rusty bare legs as she stepped into the stirrup and mounted up. The cowboy did his best to look away, but the sight was just too tempting. One eye was going one way and the other was on a shapely leg.

“Settle down, Rusty,” Doreen whispered. “Your time is coming. I promise.”

“Have mercy!” Rusty said.

Smoke prodded Jud into the saddle. Jud hiked up his robe and showed some leg, too; but it was definitely not a scintillating experience for anyone. Especially the horse, who swung his head and tried to figure out what it was on his back.

Smoke stepped into the saddle. “Jud dies if anyone follows,” he warned the crowd. “Tell them, King Vale,” Smoke said sarcastically.

Some lucidity had returned to Jud. Having the muzzle of a .44 laid against one’s ear can do that. He twisted in the saddle. “Stay back. Our time will come. Just stay back.”

“Let’s go, King,” Smoke said. “Your royal procession is about to parade.”

The Pecos Kid woke up with a chicken leg stuck in one ear, wondering why the band had stopped playing.

“You’ll die hard for this,” Jud warned them all, as they clip-clopped along, Jud’s crown bouncing from one side of his head to the other. “Especially you, Doreen. I’ll turn you over to my men and let them have their way with you. And that’s a promise.”

Doreen turned in the saddle, balled her right hand into a fist, and busted Jud square on the nose. His crown flew off his head as the blood began to trickle, leaking down into his beard.

“You can pick your crown up on the way back,” Smoke told him. Jud cursed them all.

Smoke turned at the sounds of a single horse coming up fast behind them. It was the young reporter from the paper at Montpelier.

“I’m on my way to get this story written,” he shouted at them. “I’ll see that this is printed all over the state.”

He galloped on past and then cut north, toward the town.

“He’s dead, too,” Jud growled.

“Give it up, Jud,” Smoke advised the man. “Send your gun hands packing, break up your outlaw gangs, and settle down.”

Jud mouthed a few choice words at Smoke, none of them the least bit complimentary.

Smoke rode on for another mile and then twisted in the saddle and knocked Jud sprawling, on his butt, in the road. Smoke grabbed the reins of the riderless horse and shouted, “Let’s go, people!”

Jud sat in the dirt and squalled at them, shaking his fists and cussing.

“They’ll be coming after us now!” Doreen yelled over the pounding of hooves.

“We’ll make the crick,” Rusty told her.

Jud jumped to his feet and began loping up the road, back to his ranch. He reached the spot where his crown lay in the dust, the jewels twinkling under the starry light. Jud plopped his crown back on his head and stomped on, his anger and hate growing with each dusty step. A mile farther on, he met a large force of his men, hanging back a couple of miles.

“They’re heading for the creek!” Jud shouted, pointing. “Get them. Kill them! Kill them all.”

Jason rode up, leading a horse. “I figured they’d set you afoot, Boss.” He handed Jud a brace of six guns.

Jud swung into the saddle. “Somebody give me apiece of rawhide,” he ordered.

A piece of thin rawhide was found and handed him.

Jud made a chinstrap for his crown, tying it tightly under his square jaw. He rode to the head of the group and paused, looking back. At least sixty riders. He lifted his hand into the air. “Forward!” he shouted. “Slay the infidels!”

“What the hell’s an in-fidel?” Gimpy asked.

“Beats me,” Jake Hube told him. “Must be something like a Injun, maybe.”

The riders surged forward, with King Vale in the lead waving a six gun and shouting curses.

But many of the smarter gunfighters had either stayed
back at the ranch or were bringing up the rear of the force. They were too wise in the ways of Smoke Jensen to think Smoke would not have a backup plan in Doreen’s escape. Probably he had set up an ambush.

John Wills, who had been wrapped up in poison ivy by Smoke, and his buddies, Dave and Shorty and Lefty, trailed a good mile behind the main force. Jaeger and Chato Di Peso and Hammer, along with Blackjack and Highpockets and DePaul and about a dozen others had not even left the ranch area. They sat on the long front porch of the mansion, eating fried chicken dunked in caviar and drinking champagne. All of them had a very strong hunch that many of those chasing after Smoke this starry night would not come back at all. The rest would come straggling back in, all shot to hell and gone.

But that would be all right with them. They were professionals in this business, and hardened to the ways of their chosen profession. This night would probably see the end of many of the punks and two-bit gunslingers who had hired on, looking for a cheap and fast buck and a few quick thrills to take back home and boast about. What they would get is a shallow grave. If they were lucky.

The crowds had quickly departed after Smoke had made his move. All but the bugler; he was now drunk as a cooler and blowing cavalry calls into the night. Some of the gunslingers had dumped him, bugle and all, into a horse trough. But that had only slowed him down for a few moments. He had shaken the water out of his bugle and kept right on tooting.

Jaeger spread some caviar on a cracker and nibbled. “Only ting de damn Russians ever did dat vas any gut was make caviar,” he growled.

“What’s this stuff made of anyways?” Pike asked.

“Vish eggs.”

“What the hell’s a vish?” Highpockets paused in the lifting of a caviar-spread cracker to his mouth.

“A vish is a vish. Swim in wassar.”

About half of the men threw the caviar to the porch floor and stayed with the fried chicken.

“Here they come,” Jackson announced.

Smoke, Rusty, and Doreen had just made the creek in time to dismount and take positions. Alice and Doreen had told Walt and the others they were staying and to shut up about it. They had taken rifles and squatted down behind logs with the other farmer women.

Matthew stood by a cottonwood, Cheyenne’s long-barreled Colt in his right hand. The boy was calm as death, and his hand was steady.

Smoke earred back the hammer on his Winchester; he heard the sounds of others doing the same. As the charging riders came into range, Smoke lifted his rifle and took aim at Jud’s crown. He squeezed off a round and drilled the arch of the crown, blowing off the arms and the dangling pearls.

“Huugghh!” Jud croaked, as the chin strap momentarily lighted, cutting off air due to the force of the impacting slug.

Those on the Box T side of the creek began filling the night air with hot lead. The first volley cleared half a dozen saddles and wounded that many more.

Spooked horses began bucking and jumping, sending another half-dozen riders to the hard ground. One gunslinger, afoot, his hands filled with Colts, tried to ford the creek. Young Matt took careful aim and squeezed the trigger, dead-centering the man, putting the slug right between his eyes. The gunny pitched face-forward into the creek.

Rusty shot the punk Glen Regan just as the kid was turning. The rifle slug went right through both cheeks of Glen’s buttocks. Glen dropped squalling and crying to the
creek bank, losing his guns, both hands holding onto his injured backside.

“Fall back, men!” Jud yelled. “Regroup but don’t lose courage. They are but riffraff and swine who face us. You have the power of royalty on your side.”

Jackson put another dent in Jud’s crown, knocking it down to one side of the man’s head, giving the man a thunderous headache. Jud’s horse spooked and tossed him into a thorn bush and royalty’s bare legs and backside took the full brunt of long thorns.