“I propose to notify your local police when we see them ride into town. Louis has alerted people along the way, people who work both sides of the law. Davidson is not going to ride all the way here from Colorado. Neither is Bothwell or Rycroft or Brute or any of the others. They’ll be coming in on trains, one by one, and pick up horses as close to here as possible. I got a hunch they’re going to try to tree this town.”
“Tree?”
“Hold it hostage. You can’t do that to a western town; folks there would shoot you so full of holes your mother wouldn’t recognize you. But an eastern town is different. You don’t have a loaded gun in this house and damn few others do, either. But I am about to correct that little problem.”
“How?” John asked, seemingly stunned by the news.
“I gave York some money this afternoon. He rode over to Brattleboro and picked up some weapons.”
“You are going to arm the boys and me?”
“No.” Smoked dashed that. “I’m going to arm Sally.”
Her father looked crestfallen.
“John,” Louis asked. “have you ever killed a man?”
“What? Why…no.”
“Any of your sons ever used a gun in anger?”
“Ah…no.”
“That’s why we’re not arming you, John,” Smoke told him. “It isn’t that we don’t believe you’re one hundred percent man. It’s just that you’d be out of your element. You, and ninety percent of the people in this town. Oh, a lot of men in this town fought in the War Between the States and were heroes, I’m sure. But that was war, John. I’d be very surprised if one of them could ambush a man and shoot him in cold blood.”
“Yes,” the lawyer agreed. “So would I.”
“There you have it, Mr. Reynolds,” York said. “You’d be thinkin’ about them bein’ human bein’s and all that. Well, these people ain’t worth a cup of puke.”
“How quaintly put,” John muttered. “And you have other officers coming in to assist you, right?
“What for?” Smoke asked.
“Well, how many outlaws will there be?”
“Oh…probably twenty or so. We’ll handle it.”
John jumped up. “Are you serious?” he shouted.
“Hell, Mr. Reynolds,” York said, “that ain’t but six or seven apiece. I recall the time down near the Painted Rock me and two other guys fought off a hundred or more ’paches. Kilt about forty of ’em.”
He turned his head and winked at Louis.
“But those were savages!” John protested, not sure whether he believed the ranger’s story or not.
Louis said, “Believe you me, John, Davidson and his bunch are just as savage as any Apache that ever lived.”
Then Smoke told the man about some of the methods of torture Rex and Dagget enjoyed at Dead River.
The lawyer left the room. A few seconds later, they could hear him retching in the water closet.
“I believe you finally convinced him,” Sally said.
John returned to the study, his face pale. “Son,” he said to Smoke, “I’ll start cleaning my shotguns and my rifle.”
21
The nights were cool and the days were pleasantly warm as autumn slipped into the northeast. Smoke, for the most part, stayed close to the Reynolds house; York and Louis spent their days riding around the countryside, ranging from the Vermont line to the west, up to Claremont to the north, over to Manchester to the east, and down to the state line to the south.
There was no sign of Davidson or any of his men, and Smoke began to wonder if he had figured wrong. But there was still that nagging suspicion in his gut that the outlaws were on their way and that they would make their move before the first snow. And the first possible snow, John had said, would probably come around the middle of November.
The twins were growing fast. They were fat and healthy babies, who laughed and gurgled and hollered and bawled and messed their diapers.
It was fascinating to John to watch the gunslinger with the big rough hands handle the babies with such gentleness. And the twins responded to the firm gentleness, apparently loving the touch of the big, rough-looking man who, or so it seemed to John Reynolds, never took off his guns.
The sheriff of the county and the chief of police of the town came to see Smoke, demanding to know what was going on: Why had the three come to town? What were they still doing in town?
Smoke answered that he had come to town to see his wife’s family, and that he was still in town waiting for the babies to get big enough to travel.
Neither the sheriff nor the chief believed Smoke’s explanation. But neither the sheriff nor the chief wanted to be the one to call him a liar.
For exercise, Smoke took a wagon out into the timber and spent the better part of several days chopping wood. He chopped enough wood to last the Reynolds family most of the winter, and he stacked it neatly.
On one cool and crisp afternoon in November, Louis rode over and chatted with Smoke, who was currying Drifter. York lounged nearby, the thongs off the hammers of his .44s. Only Smoke and Sally noticed that.
