“I ain’t dead!” Joiner protested weakly.
“You ain’t far from it,” Burton told him.
“Get me a preacher!” Joiner said.
“He’d probably do you more good than a doctor,” Burton agreed.
Buck punched out the spent brass and slid a live round into the chamber. He dropped the empty brass to the dirt of the street just as the sounds of a carriage approaching rattled through the air. The carriage
“Oh, my word!” the woman seated in the carriage said.
“Help me, Miz Janey!” Joiner cried.
A group of Cornish miners, in town from their work at a nearby silver mine, gathered around, beer mugs in callused hands.
“The bloke’s nearly done,” one immigrant from Cornwall observed. “Shall we sing him a fare-thee-well, mates?”
“Aye. Let’s.”
A half-dozen voices were raised in song, drunkenly offering up a hymn.
A jig dancer from the hurly-gurly in front of which Joiner lay dying stepped out. “Can I have your pockets, love?” she asked Joiner.
“Get away with you!” Reverend Necker said, running up. “You filthy whore!”
“Careful, Bible-thumper,” the jig dancer said. “Or I’ll tell everybody where you was the other evenin’.”
Necker flushed and bent down over the dying Joiner.
“He kilt me!” Joiner said, pointing a trembling finger at Buck.
“Damn sure did,” Necker said.
Buck raised his eyes to look squarely at the woman seated in the fancy carriage.
Janey met the tall young man’s direct stare.
The elegantly dressed woman flushed as Buck’s eyes stared directly at her.
“Save me, Preacher!” Joiner groaned. “I don’t wanna go to Hell. I got a family to take care of.”
“Where are they, son?” Necker asked. He looked at the blood on his hands. Joiner’s blood. “Yukk!” Necker said.
“Damned if I know,” Joiner said. Then he closed his eyes and did the world the greatest favor men of his ilk could do. He died.
Janey stared at Buck. Her eyes widened as Buck smiled. She watched as Buck turned and walked away.
It couldn’t be! she thought. That was impossible. Kirby was back in Missouri, probably working that damned hardscrabble farm.
But she knew the man who had killed Joiner. She knew him. It was her brother.
14
Janey stood in her bedroom, absently gazing out the window. So Buck West was really Kirby Jensen, aka Smoke. She laughed, but the laugh was totally void of mirth. She suddenly remembered all the good times they’d shared as children, back in Missouri. It had been a hard life, but despite that, there had been plenty of love to go around. Never enough money for nice things, but none of them had gone hungry.
“Crap!” Janey said, turning away from the window. She didn’t know what to do. The gunfighter was blood kin, but Janey felt no warmth toward him. She looked around her. Damned if she was going to give all this up for a man she hadn’t seen since he was a snot-nosed kid tryin’ to farm forty rocky acres with a damned ol’ mule.
She walked downstairs, searching for Josh.
“Gone, ma’am,” the Negro houseman informed her.
“Gone, where?”
“Up to the north range to inspect the herds, ma’am. Won’t be back for several days.”
“Bull-droppings!” Janey blurted.
The houseman’s eyes widened.
“Thank you, Thomas,” Janey said. “That will be all.”
Now she sure didn’t know what to do.
MacGregor ceased his pacing, his mind made up. He would not leave Bury, as had been his original plan. He would stick it out here. If Buck West, aka Smoke Jensen, was successful in his plan, what a book that would make! And, the Scotsman smiled grimly, he could close the federal pages on Potter, Stratton, and Richards.
“He’s really the outlaw Smoke?” Flora asked Sally.
“He’s Smoke Jensen, but he’s no outlaw,” Sally told the gathering of joy-girls.
