several of them were wearing two wooden guns in makeshift holsters, the leather tied down low.
Buck didn’t know whether he liked that or not. He didn’t want any young people aping his lifestyle. But he didn’t know what he could do about it.
Miss Sally Reynolds was dressed in gingham; a bright summer color with matching parasol. The light, bright color setting off her dark hair. She wore just a touch of rouge on her cheeks.
Dusk when they closed the gate to her picket fence and began their stroll to the hotel dining room. The crowd of boys had been called in to supper by their mothers, so Buck and Sally could walk in peace.
They had just left Sally’s house when two carriages, accompanied by half a dozen outriders, rolled stately past them.
“Wiley and Linda Potter in the first carriage,” Sally said. “Keith and Lucille Stratton in the second carriage. They’re going out to Josh Richards’s. He lives on the PSR Ranch. They have a monthly dinner and business meeting. The sheriff will be there too, I should imagine.”
“Same time, every month?” Buck asked.
“Oh, yes. Very punctual and predictable.”
Buck smiled at that. But his smile was only to hide his true inner feelings. And those thoughts were dark and dangerous.
For one hot, flashing instant, Buck’s thoughts were flung back in time.
La Plaza de los Leones—Square of the Lions, later to be renamed Walsenburg—was a major farming and ranching community in 1869, when Smoke and Preacher rode in from the west.
They were met by the town marshal and told to keep on riding.
They planned to do just that. But first they wanted to know about the Casey ranch.
“Southeast of here. On the flats. Casey’s got eight hands. They all look like gunnies.”
“You got an undertaker in this town?” Smoke asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“Tell him to dust off his boxes—he’s about to get some business.”
Ten miles out of town, they met two hands riding easy, heading into town.
“You boys is on the TC range,” one of the riders warned. “Get the hell off. The boss don’t like strangers and neither do I.”
Smoke smiled. “You boys been ridin’ for the brand long?”
“You deef?” the second hand asked. “You been told to git—now git!” “You answer my question and then maybe we’ll leave.”
“Since ’66. That’s when we pushed them longhorns up here from Texas. If that’s any of your damned business. Now git!”
“Who owns TC?”
“Ted Casey. Boy, are you plumb crazy or jist stupid?”
“My Pa knew a Ted Casey. Fought in the war with him—for the Gray.”
“Oh? What be your name?”
“Some people call me Smoke.” He grinned. “Jensen.”
Recognition flared in the eyes of the TC riders. They grabbed for their guns. They were far too slow. Smoke’s left-hand .36 belched flame and smoke as Preacher fired his Henry one-handed. Horses reared and snorted and bucked at the noise. The TC gunnies dropped from their saddles, dead and dying.
The one TC gunhand alive pulled himself up on one elbow. Blood poured from two chest wounds, the blood pink and frothy, one .36 ball having passed through both lungs, taking the rider as he turned in the saddle.
“Heard you was comin’,” he gasped. “You quick, no doubt ’bout that. Your brother was easy.” He smiled a bloody smile. “Potter shot him low in the back; took him a long time to die. Died hard. Hollered a lot.” The TC rider closed his eyes and died.
Smoke and Preacher burned the house down, driving the men from it after a prolonged gunfight. They took only Casey alive.
“What are you figurin’ on doin’ with him?” Preacher asked.
“I figure on going back to town and hanging him.”
“I don’t know how you got that mean streak, boy. Seein’ as how you was raised—partly—by a gentle old man like me.”
Despite the death he had brought and the destruction wrought, Smoke had to laugh at that. Preacher was known throughout the West as one of the most dangerous men ever to roam the high country and vast Plains. The old mountain man had once gone on the prowl, spending two years of his life tracking down and killing—one by one—a group of men who ambushed and killed a friend of his, stealing the man’s furs.
Smoke tied the unconscious Casey across a saddle. “’Course you never went on the hunt for anyone, right?”
“Well…mayhaps once or twice. But that was years back. I’ve mellowed a mite since then.”
“Sure.” Smoke grinned. Preacher was still as mean as a cornered puma.
By the banks of a creek outside of town, a crowd had gathered for the hanging. Marshal Crowell was furious as
