of my church as possible myself. It’s…a personal thing.”
“I understand. I’m a pretty good hand with an axe myself. I’ll give you a hand later on.”
Ralph looked at the gunfighter. “I do not understand you, Mister Jensen.”
Before Smoke could reply, the hard sounds of drumming hooves filled the air. “Tilden Franklin,” Smoke said. “The king has arrived.”
“Pearlie!” Sally called. “Come take a break and have some coffee. And I made doughnuts.”
“Bearsign!” the young puncher shouted. “Yes, ma’am. I’m on my way.”
Sally smiled at that. She had learned that cowboys would ride a hundred miles for home-cooked doughnuts… something they called bearsign. It had taken Sally a time to learn why they were called bearsign. When she finally learned the why of it, she thought it positively disgusting.
“You mean!…” she had puffed to Smoke. “These people are equating my doughnuts to…that’s disgusting!”
“Bear tracks, Sally,” Smoke had told her. “Not what you’re thinking.”
She had refused to believe him.
And Smoke never would fully explain.
More fun letting her make up her own mind.
“My husband must have thought a lot of you, Pearlie,” she said, watching the puncher eat, a doughnut in each hand. “He’s not normally a trusting person.”
“He’s a fine man, Miss Sally,” Pearlie said around a mouthful of bearsign. “And got more cold nerve than any man I ever seen.”
“Can we win this fight, Pearlie?”
The cowboy pushed his battered hat back on his head. He took a slug of coffee and said, “You want a straight- out honest answer, ma’am?”
“That’s the only way, Pearlie.”
Pearlie hesitated. “It’ll be tough. Right off, I’d say the odds are slim to none. But there’s always a chance. All depends on how many of them nester friends of yourn will stand and fight when it gets down to the hardrock.”
“A few of them will.”
“Yes’um. That’s what I mean.” He stuffed his mouth full of more bearsign.
“Matlock will, and so will Wilbur. I’m pretty sure Colby will stand firm. I don’t know about the others.”
“You see, ma’am, the problem is this: them folks you just named ain’t gunhands. Mister Tilden can mount up to two hundred riders. The sheriff is gonna be on his side, and all them gun-slingin’ deputies he’ll name. Your husband is pure hell with a gun—pardon my language—but one man just can’t do ’er all.”
Sally smiled at that. She alone, of all those involved, knew what her husband was capable of doing. But, she thought with a silent sigh, Pearlie was probably right…it would be unreasonable to expect one man to do it all.
Even such a man as Smoke.
“What does Mister Franklin want, Pearlie…and why?”
“I ain’t sure of the why of it all, ma’am. As for me, I’d be satisfied with a little bitty part of what he has. He’s got so much holdin’s I’d bet he really don’t know all that he has. What does he want?” The cowboy paused, thinking. “He wants everything, ma’am. Everything he sees. I’ve overheard some of his older punchers talk about what they done to get them things for Tilden Franklin. I wouldn’t want to say them things in front of you, ma’am. I’ll just say I’m glad I didn’t have no part in them. And I’m real glad Mister Smoke gimme a job with ya’ll ’fore it got too late for me.”
“You haven’t been with the Circle TF long, then, Pearlie?”
“It would have been a year this fall, ma’am. I drifted down here from the Bitterroot. I…kinda had a cloud hangin’ over me, I guess you’d say.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Ain’t that much to say, ma’am. I always been mighty quick with a short gun. Not nearabouts as quick as your man, now, but tolerable quick. I was fifteen and workin’ a full man’s job down in Texas. That was six year ago. Or seven. I disremember exact. I rode into town with the rest of the boys for a Saturday night spree. There was some punchers from another spread there. One of ’em braced me, called me names. Next thing I recall, that puncher was layin’ on his back with a bullet hole in his chest. From my gun. Like I said, I’ve always been mighty quick. Well, the sheriff he told me to light a shuck. I got my back up at that, ’cause that other puncher slapped leather first. I tole the sheriff I wasn’t goin’ nowheres. I didn’t mean to back that sheriff into no corner, but I reckon that’s what I done. That sheriff was a bad one, now. He had him a rep that was solid bad. He tole me I had two choices in the matter: ride out or die.
“Well, ma’am, I tole him I didn’t backpaddle for no man, not when I was in the right. He drew on me. I kilt him.”
Pearlie paused and took a sip of coffee. Sally refilled his cup and gave him another doughnut.
“Whole place was quiet as midnight in a graveyard,” Pearlie continued. It seemed to Sally that he was relieved to be talking about it, as if he had never spoken fully of the events. “I holstered my gun and stepped out onto the boardwalk. Then it hit me what I’d done. I was fifteen years old and in one whale of a pickle. I’d just killed two men in less than ten minutes. One of them a lawman. I was on the hoot-owl trail sure as you’re born.
“I got my horse and rode out. Never once looked back. Over in New Mexico two bounty hunters braced me outside a cantina one night. I reckon someone buried both of them next day. I don’t rightly know, seein’ as how I didn’t stick around for the services. Then I was up in Utah when this kid braced me. He was lookin’ for a rep, I guess. He didn’t make it,” Pearlie added softly. “Then the kid’s brothers come a-foggin’ after me. I put lead in both of them. One died, so I heard later on.
