William W. Johnstone (3 page)

The old rancher smiled. “The wife says the first thing we do is feed these boys.”

All the boys cheered at that.

Jud Vale balled the newspaper up and hurled it into the fireplace. “That no good—” He proceeded to cut loose with a stream of cuss words that almost turned the air blue.

When he had calmed down enough to try to catch his breath, his foreman said, "Boss, this is bad. If one of them kids gets hurt by a bullet, the governor will send the law in on us, that is, if some vigilantes from around here don’t hang us to the nearest tree first.”

“I know, Jason. I know. That damn Smoke Jensen!
Jesus God, why didn’t I recognize him right off and let him alone?”

“Didn’t none of us recognize him, Boss. But we should have, I reckon.” He wore a sheepish look. “Damn bunkhouse is full of them penny dreadfuls writ about him.”

“I better not see any of them around!” “I’ll pass the word.”

“Do that. Damn!” Jud yelled. “Pass the word, Jason: stay off of Box T range and don’t bother the boys. Don’t even go near them. Jensen can’t stay up here forever and them damn kids got to go back to school come fall. We can wait.”

“Them high-priced gunhands is about next to worthless when it comes to workin’ cattle, Boss. Most of ’em is just salivating to get a chance to brace Smoke Jensen.”

“I’ll give a thousand dollars to the man who kills Jensen. You pass that word along, Jason.”

“That ought to get something stirred up, for sure!”

While in Montpelier, Smoke had arranged for a wire to be sent to Sally, advising her where he was, and for a courier to bring any reply to the ranch.

One was forthcoming quickly.

Darling Smoke stop Doctors say baby must remain in a warm dry climate for at least two years stop Mother and Father arranged to stay with me stop Father bought a bank here in Prescott stop We are fine stop Miss you terribly stop Come when you are finished stop Love Sally stop.

“Bad news?” Doreen broke into his thoughts. He had not heard her come up.

The girl moved like a ghost.

“Yes and no. Our baby has to stay down in Arizona for quite a long time. Lung problems.”

“Then you’ll be leaving ...?” She let that trail off with
a catch in her voice.

“No. Sally knows I don’t go off and leave a job half-finished. I’ll see this through. If it hasn’t ended by midsummer, then I’ll finish it.”

She didn’t have to ask how he would do that. She knew. “That is very kind of you, Smoke.”

She moved closer. Doreen was a mighty comely lass. Smoke could smell the lilac water on her. Mayhaps, he thought, her middle name was Eve.

He moved back just a tad. “That is, I’ll make up my mind about staying when and if you people ever get around to telling me the truth.”

Her eyes turned frosty as an early morning chill. She spun around and stalked away, her rear end swaying like women’s rear ends have a tendency to do.

Mighty shapely lassie. And Smoke didn’t trust her any further than he could pick up his horse and toss him.

On the first full day of work, Smoke didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The boys were sure willing enough, but the trouble was that none of them knew diddly-squat about ranch work. They were farm boys, used to gathering eggs and slopping hogs and plowing and such as that.

Little Chuckie fell off his mount, and landed in a fresh horse pile. The only other britches he had were hanging on the line to dry. He had to work the rest of that morning dressed, from the waist down, in his longhandles. With a safety pin holding up one side of the flap.

Of the boys, Jamie was the oldest and the strongest. He was built like the trunk of a large tree. And he could ride and was a fair hand with a rope.

Matthew was a frail young man who wore glasses and was in dire need of boots.

Smoke was making a list of what the boys needed; and he was going to see to it that they got it. One way or the other.

Ed meant well and tried hard, but it was plain that he would never be a cowboy. Smoke put him to running errands and taking messages back and forth.

Leroy would do. He never complained, even after being
tossed a half-dozen times. He just got back up, dusted himself off, and climbed right back in the saddle and stayed there until he showed the bronc who was running this show.

Eli was the son of a carpenter and, like Ed, was no horseman. Smoke put him to work fixing up the place, and there was a lot of fixing up to do. A ranch starts to run down mighty quick, and this spread had been neglected for a long time.

Jimmy and Clark and Buster would do fine, Smoke concluded.

Cecil was fourteen, like Jamie, and solid and mature for his age. A fair horseman.

Alan was a grown-up thirteen, from a hardscrabble farm family. A good solid kid.

Roily, Pat and Oscar were all twelve and showed promise.

All in all, Smoke thought, a pretty good bunch of kids. But, he had to keep this in mind: they were kids. He could not chew on them like he would adults. He didn’t want them screwing up their faces and bawling like lost calves.

“All right, Cheyenne!” Smoke called, with Dagger under him. “Take the men to work!“

Smoke rode over to a three-building town located on Mud Lake, leading a pack animal. He would buy the boys as much clothing as possible here. May be all of it if he were lucky. And he could pick up any talk about how Jud Vale was taking this new twist.

As soon as he walked in, he could tell by the barkeep’s reaction that the name Smoke Jensen was known. Somebody had been talking about him, and fairly recently.

The barroom was separated from the general store by a partition, so the men could talk and cuss without
bothering any ladies who might be shopping in the store. The only door connecting the store and saloon was closed.

Smoke ordered a beer and leaned against the bar, observing the very nervous barkeep draw the suds. Three men were silting at a table in the back of the room. It was gloomy in the small saloon, and the men were shrouded in shadows, but Smoke could see well enough to recognize the men as pan of one of the groups who had chased him all over half of the southeastern part of Idaho days back.

And one of them was Sam Teller, a gunfighter from over Oregon way. Sam wasn’t known for his easy disposition and loving nature.

A local man, a farmer by the look of him, opened the door and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He stopped cold when he saw the tall man at the bar. His eyes cut to the three gunslicks sitting at the table. He swallowed hard, then walked on to the bar and ordered a beer.

“All of a sudden it smells like a hog pen in here.” one of the gunhawks commented.

The farmer’s face hardened but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

“What’ll it be, neighbor?” the barkeep asked.

“Beer.” The farmer took a position at the end of the bar, near the curve of the planks, so if matters deteriorated into gunplay, he could hit the floor and be out of the line of fire.

Smoke was a cattleman, so he could understand, at least to some degree, why ranchers disliked farmers. But Smoke Jensen was living proof that rancher and farmer could live side by side and be friends. And he knew that not all of the blame for the hard feelings could be laid at the doorstep of the ranchers. Some farmers flatly refused to work with the ranchers, fencing off the best water; homesteading in lineshacks that the ranchers had built and maintained; and sometimes rustling cattle, not always for food to feed hungry families. Sometimes just to aggravate the rancher.

The bartender had moved to the end of the bar, just as far away from Smoke Jensen as he could get.

Smoke sipped his beer and waited for the gunplay that he knew was just around the corner, lurking in those invisible shadows that drifted around and clung to those who lived by the gun.

“There ain’t much to that pig slop, Burt,” Sam Teller said. “Hell, he ain’t even packin’ no gun.”

Burt. Smoke searched his memory. Could be Burt Rolly. Smoke had heard of him. A gun fighter of very limited ability, so he’d been told. Usually a back-shooter.

“You’re a long ways from home, Jensen,” Sam said. “I figured you was still in Colorado, hidin’ under your wife’s dresstail.”

“You figured wrong on a lot of counts, Sam,” Smoke told him. “But then, the way I hear it, you never were very bright.”

“Huh?”

“I said you were stupid, Sam. Dumb. Ignorant. Slow. Mentally deficient. Am I making myself clear now?”

The farmer moved further away from Smoke and if the barkeep pressed any harder against the rear wall he was going to collapse the entire end of the store.

“I don’t think I like you very much, Jensen,” Sam said, finally realizing he was being insulted.

“I don’t like you at all, Sam. And I’m not real thrilled with those half-wits with you.”

Burt pushed back his chair and stood up, his hands at his sides. “You take that back, Jensen! I ain’t no half-wit.”

Smoke smiled at him. “You’re right, Burt. You’re not a half-wit.”

Burt relaxed.

“You’re all the way a fool,” Smoke finished. “The best thing you boys could do is pay for your drinks and ride out of this area of Idaho. Forget about Jud Vale and Walt Burden. And for damn sure, forget about trying to
brace me.”

The third man at the table slowly stood up and walked to another table. He sat down and placed both hands on the table.

Smoke recognized him. “Smart move, Jackson.”

“The timin’ ain’t right, Smoke,” the gunhand said “Man, you’re walkin’ around with your tail up in the air, huntin’ trouble. That ain’t like you. What’s got you on the prod?”

“I don’t like Jud Vale.” Smoke spoke to the man without taking his eyes off of Sam and Burt.

“Hell, I don’t like him either! But he’s payin’ top wages for fightin’ men.”

Smoke laughed. “To fight an old man and an old woman? To fight a young woman and her eight-year-old kid? For that, Jud Vale hires two dozen gunnies? He must be a mighty skittish man.”

“They’s a lot more to this than that, Smoke.”

“I figure so myself. One of these days somebody’s going to tell me the whole story.”

“I’m tired of all this jibber-jabber!” Burt shouted, just about scaring the pee out of the barkeep. “I’m a-gonna kill you, Jensen!”

Smoke stood tall and straight, facing the two men standing by the table. “No, you’re not, Burt. All you’re going to do is get buried. Think about it, man. I’ve faced more than a hundred gunhands, most of them better than you. They’re all dead, Burt. Every last one of them. Pike and Shorty. Haywood and Ackerman and Kid Austin. Canning and Poker and Grisson. Clark and Evans. Felter and Lefty and Nevada Sam. Big Jack and Phillips and Carson. Russell and Joiner and Jeff Siddons. Jerry and Skinny Davis and Cross. You want more names, Burt? All right. Simpson and Martin and Reese. Turkel and Brown and Williams and Rogers. Fenerty and Stratton and Potter and Richards. And a half hundred more whose names I
can’t recall or never even knew. They’re all dead and rotting in the ground. But I’m still here.”

“Listen to him, boys,” Jackson spoke the words softly. “I’m tellin’ you, the timin’ ain’t right just yet. Back off.”

“You could buy in!” Sam said hoarsely.

“Not just yet.”

“Then you jist yellow!”

“No. But I’ll be alive,” Jackson told him.

The farmer was on the floor, belly down. The barkeep had slipped down to his knees and was peering around a keg of beer.

“Make your play, damn you, Jensen!” Sam yelled.

“Your deal,” Smoke replied. “Bet or fold.”

Sam and Burt grabbed for iron. Smoke’s guns roared and belched fire and death. Sam stumbled back against the wall, his gun still in leather. Burt was plugged twice in the belly. He fell down on the floor and began squalling as the intense pain reached him. Sam cursed Smoke and managed to clear leather and level the pistol. Smoke shot him in the head. Burt tried to lift his pistol. He managed to cock it and fire, shooting himself in the foot, the slug tearing off his big toe. He dropped his gun to the floor and started yelling in pain.

Smoke glanced at Jackson. The man’s hands were still on the tabletop, palms down.

“Holy Hell!” the barkeep hollered.

The farmer was praying to the Almighty.

“Can’t say I didn’t warn ’em,” Jackson broke the silence.

“For a fact,” Smoke replied, punching out empty brass and reloading. “Is there a bounty on my head, Jackson?"

“Thousand dollars.”

“I don’t have to ask who put it there.”

“I ’spect you know.”

“I imagine the bounty is gong to go up on me after this.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me none.”

“What about them?” Smoke jerked his head at the dead and dying gunslicks.

“Don’t ask me, Smoke. Hell, I didn’t take ’em.to raise!”

“I’ll bury ’em iffen I can have what’s in they pockets!” the barkeep said.

“Suits me,” Smoke told him. He picked up his beer mug and drained it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He set the mug back on the plank. “Fill it up, barkeep.”

“Git it yourself! It’s on the house. I ain’t movin’ ’til I know all the lead’s through flyin’!”

Smoke walked around the bar just as the farmer was getting up off the floor. He looked at him. “You want another beer?”

“Hell, no!” The farmer hit the air and didn’t look back.

“I’m gonna stand up now, Smoke,” Jackson said.

“Go right ahead.”

“Then I’m gonna walk out the door and get my horse and go.” “See you around, Jackson.”

“Maybe. I ain’t made up my mind about this job. You showin’ up sorta tipped the balance some.”

“Whatever pops your corn, Jackson.”

The gunfighter nodded, turned, and left the smoky barroom. Within ten seconds, the sounds of his horse’s hooves echoed down the short silent street.

Burt started hollering something awful.

“Ain’t he gonna die?” the barkeep asked. “I’d lak to have them boots of his.”

“Sooner or later. Is there any hard candy for sale in the store?”

“Hard candy!”

“Yeah. I got some kids working for me. They all probably have a sweet tooth.”

“Hell, I don’t know!”