flaming.
Some eight high-up and winding miles from the town, just as purple shadows were gathering in the mountain country, Smoke picked a spot for the night and began making his lonely camp. He did not have to picket Horse, for Horse would stay close, acting as watcher and guard.
Smoke built a small fire for coffee, and ate from what Sally had fixed for him. Some cold beef, some bread with a bit of homemade jam on it. He drank his coffee, put out the fire, and settled into his blankets, using his saddle for a pillow. In a very short time, he was deep in sleep.
In the still unnamed town, Utah Slim sat in a saloon and sipped a beer. Even though hours had passed since the shooting of Red, the saloon still hummed with conversation about Smoke Jensen. Utah Slim did not join in the conversations around the bar and the tables. So far, few knew who he was. And that was the way he liked it—for a time. When it was time for Utah Slim to announce his intentions, he’d do so.
He was under no illusions; he’d seen Smoke glance his way riding into town. Smoke recognized him. Now it was just a waiting game.
And waiting was something Utah was good at. Something any hired gun had better be good at, or he wouldn’t last long in this business.
Louis Longmont stepped out of his canvas bar and game room and glanced up and down the street. A lean, hawk-faced man, with strong, slender hands and long fingers, the nails carefully manicured, the hands clean, Louis had jet-black hair and a black pencil-thin mustache. He was dressed in a black suit, with white shirt and dark ascot—the ascot something he’d picked up on a trip to England some years back. He wore low-heeled boots. A pistol hung in tied-down leather on his right side; it was not for show alone. For Louis was snake quick with a short gun. A feared, deadly gunhand when pushed.
Louis was not an evil man. He had never hired his gun out for money. And while he could make a deck of cards do almost anything except stand up and sing “God Save the Queen,” Louis did not cheat at poker. He did not have to cheat. A man possessed of a phenomenal memory, Louis could tell you the odds of filling any type of poker hand; and he was also a card-counter. He did not consider that cheating, and most agreed with him that it was not.
Louis was just past forty years of age. He had come to the West as a mere slip of a boy, with his parents, arriving from Louisiana. His parents had died in a shanty-town fire, leaving the boy to cope the best he could.
Louis had coped quite well, thank you.
Louis had been in boom towns all over the West, seeing them come and go. He had a feeling in his guts that this town was going to be a raw bitch-kitty. He knew all about Tilden Franklin, and liked none of what he’d heard. The man was power-mad, and obviously lower class. White trash.
And now Smoke Jensen had made his presence known. Louis wondered why. Why this soon in the power- game? An unanswered question.
For a moment, Louis thought of packing up and pulling out. Just saying the hell with it! For he knew this was not going to be an ordinary gold-rush town. Powerful factions were at work here. Tilden Franklin wanted the entire region as his own. Smoke Jensen stood in his way.
Louis made up his mind. Should be a very interesting confrontation, he thought.
He’d stay.
Big Mamma O’Neil was an evil person. If one could find her heart, it would be as black as sin itself. Big Mamma stepped out in front of her gaming room and love-for-sale tent to look up and down the street. She nodded at Louis. He returned the nod and stepped back inside his tent.
Goddamned stuck-up card-slick! she fumed. Thought he was better than most everyone else. Dressed like a dandy. Talked like some highfalutin’ professor—not that Big Mamma had ever known any professor; she just imagined that was how one would sound.
Big Mamma swung her big head around, once more looking over the town. A massive woman, she was strong as an ox and had killed more than one man with her huge, hard fists. And had killed for money as well as pleasure; one served her interests as much as the other.
Big Mamma was a crack shot with rifle or pistol, having grown up in the raw, wild West, fighting Indians and hooligans and her brothers. She had killed her father with an axe, then taken his guns and his horse and left for Texas. She had never been back.
She had brothers and sisters, but had no idea what had ever become of any of them. She really didn’t care. The only thing she cared about was money and other women. She hated men.
She had seen Smoke Jensen ride in, looking like the arrogant bastard she had always thought he would be. So he had killed some puncher named Red—big deal! A nothing rider who fancied himself a gunhand. She’d heard all the stories about Jensen, and discounted most of them as pure road apples. The rumors were that he had been a Mountain Man. But he was far too young to have been a part of that wild breed.
As far as she was concerned, Smoke Jensen was just another overrated punk.
As the purple shadows melted into darkness over the no-name town that would soon become Fontana, Monte Carson stepped out of the best of the two permanent saloons and looked up and down the wide, dusty street. He hitched at the twin Colts belted around his waist and tied down low.
This town, he thought, was shaping up real nice for a hired gun. And that’s what Monte was. He had hired his guns out in Montana, in the cattle wars out in California, and had fought the sheep farmers and nesters up in Wyoming. And, as he’d fought, his reputation had grown. Monte felt that Tilden Franklin would soon be contacting him. He could wait.
On the now-well-traveled road beneath where Smoke slept peacefully, wagons continued to roll and rumble along, carrying their human cargo toward No-Name Town. The line of wagons and buggies and riders and walkers was now several miles long. Gamblers and would-be shop- owners and whores and gunfighters and snake-oil salesmen and pimps and troublemakers and murderers and good solid family people…all of them heading for No-Name with but one thought in their minds. Gold.
At the end of the line of gold-seekers, not a part of them but yet with the same destination if not sharing the same motives, rattled a half a dozen wagons. Ed Jackson was new to the raw West—a shopkeeper from Illinois with his wife Peg. They were both young and very idealistic, and had no working knowledge of the real West. They were looking for a place to settle. This no-name town sounded good to them. Ed’s brother Paul drove the heavily laden supply wagon, containing part of what they just knew would make them respected and secure citizens. Paul was as naive as his brother and sister-in-law concerning the West.
In the third wagon came Ralph Morrow and his wife Bountiful. They were missionaries, sent into the godless West by their Church, to save souls and soothe the sinful spirits of those who had not yet accepted Christ into their lives. They had been looking for a place to settle when they had hooked up with Ed and Peg and Paul. This was the first time Ralph and Bountiful had been west of Eastern Ohio. It was exciting. A challenge.
They thought.
