“Don’t start braggin’,” Greybull said. “I been listenin’ to you bump them gums of yourn for fifty years. Sickenin’.”
“Hush up, you mule-ridin’ giant!” Preacher told him.
The other mountain men joined in.
They were still grousing and bitching and hurling insults at one another as they rode off.
“We’re spread thin,” Brown said to Richards. “Real thin.”
“But when they come,” Stratton said, “we’ll have them in a circle. All we have to do is close up the bottom of the pinchers and trap them.”
“
“He’s just a man,” Sheriff Reese said sourly.
“A hell of a man,” Richards said. “Janey’s brother.”
“What!” Potter shouted.
“Janey told me before I left the ranch. She knew all along that she’d seen him somewhere, but she didn’t put it together until a few days ago.”
“What’d she say do with him?” Stratton asked.
Richards shrugged. “Kill him.”
Dawn broke hot and red over the valley that Brown called his Double Bar B spread. During the night, Dupre and Deadlead had slipped into the ranch area and found it deserted except for the cook. They had put him on the road after he told them that all the men drawing fighting pay were out with the boss. Just punchers riding herd on the cattle. Give them a chance, and they’d haul their ashes quick.
That was what Smoke was now doing. Alone.
The punchers looked up as the midnight-black stallion with the tall rider approached their meager camp. They all knew, without being told, who they were facing.
“We’re cowboys, not gunhawks,” one puncher said. “We ain’t lookin’ for no trouble.”
“Then you won’t have any,” Smoke told him. “Get your gear, pack it up, and ride out.” He made them the same offer he had made the Crooked Snake cowboys.
“Sounds good to me,” a puncher said. “We gone, Mister Jensen.”
Smoke watched them ride out, leaving the herd without a backward glance.
He waved the mountain men in. Lobo inspected the main house.
“Place is a damned pigsty,” he reported back.
“Well, let’s roast some pigs,” Smoke said.
“That son of a bitch!” Brown shouted, jumping up, his eyes to the east. “He’s fired my ranch.”
Richards looked at the smoke pouring into the sky. There was a look of grudging admiration on the man’s cruel face.
“I’ve had it!” Morgan said. “Me and Burton and Hallen and some of the others been talkin’. We’re pullin’ out, headin’ west.”
The others looked at the rifles in the men’s hands. Potter stepped in before gunfire could start.
“All right!” he shouted. “How many of you are leaving?”
Nearly all the men from town were leaving, with the exception of Sheriff Reese and his so-called deputies.
“I gather you’re going to join your families?” Richards said with a smile on his face.
“That’s crap!” Reverend Necker said. “I don’t care if I ever see that old bat again.”
“Don’t any of you ever set a boot in this part of the country again,” Stratton warned.
“Don’t you worry,” Burton said.
The townspeople rode out without looking back.
Looking around them, the ranchers and gunhands could see where others had deserted them during the night. Quietly slipped away into the darkness. What remained were the hardcases.
“They wasn’t much help anyways,” a gunnie from the Crooked Snake said. “I never did trust none of them.”
“Rider comin’ hard,” another gunslick said, looking toward the southeast.
Simpson reined up, his horse blowing hard. “Miners quit!” he said. “All of ’em. Said they ain’t workin’ for none of you no more.”
Stratton started cursing. Potter and Richards let him curse until he ran down.
“Where’s all them townies goin’?” Simpson asked.
“Turned yeller and run,” Long told him.
“Let ’em go. They’s only in the way.” He looked at Richards. “That smoke back yonderways—that the Double Bar B?”
