“I think he’ll stand,” Smoke said. “Way he talked to me the other day, he’ll stick. How’s your food supply?”
“Plenty. The old woman canned enough last summer to last us for a good long time. Potato bin’s half full. What’s your plans, Smoke?”
Smoke brought them both up to date. Then he said, “I’m staying close to home. Shifting my cattle to a different graze. But if I need something in the way of supplies, nothing or nobody will keep me out of Fontana.”
“When you decide to go in,” Colby said, “I’ll take my wagon and go in with you. The two of us can get supplies for everybody.”
“Sounds good. We don’t want to leave the whole area without menfolk. I’m going to talk with the others today. Get a better idea of where they stand. I’ll see you both later on.”
Velvet came out of the house and walked to the well. Smoke’s eyes followed her. She was a young girl, but built up like a grown woman. And that worried Smoke. Tilden was ruthless, might do anything. And some of the gunslicks riding for the TF brand were nothing more than pure white trash. They’d do anything Tilden ordered. While most Western men would not bother a good woman, there were always exceptions.
Colby had followed Smoke’s eyes. “I still think you’re wrong, Smoke. She’s just a child.”
“Tilden Franklin is a sorry son of a bitch,” Smoke told the men. “Don’t put anything past him.” He swung into the saddle. “See you boys later.”
Smoke rode hard that day, stopping in to see all the small outfits he thought might throw in with him and the others. And he had been correct in his thinking. Steve and Mike and Nolan and Ray all agreed to toss in, forming an alliance among all the small spreads. If one got hit, the others would respond.
Their lives and money were sunk deep into this land, and with many, some of their blood as well. They were not going to run.
“What’s this talk about Charlie Starr, Smoke?” Nolan asked.
“So far as I know, just that—talk.” He told the man what he knew about Starr. “I think, if he is in this area, he’s here to kill Tilden Franklin. Lots of bad blood between those two. Goes back years, so the story goes. I’m going to try to pin the rumor down. When I do, I’ll get back with you. Stay loose, Nolan, and keep an eye on your womenfolk. I have no way of knowing exactly what Tilden has in mind, but whatever it is, it’s bad news for us, that’s for sure.”
“I’m not going to put up with these miners tearing up my land, Smoke,” the rancher said. “If I have to shoot two or three of them, I will.”
“Check your land title, Nolan. You might not have mineral rights. Ever think about that?”
The farmer-rancher cursed. “I never thought about that. Could someone buy those rights without my permission?”
“I think so. The law is still kind of raw out here, you know that. I checked on my title last night. I own the mineral rights to my land.”
“I just didn’t think about it. I’ll do just that. See you, Smoke.”
Smoke spent a week staying close to home. He received no news about what might be happening in Fontana. Then, on a fine, clear, late spring day, Smoke decided to ride his valley. He found several miners’ camps high up, and told the men to clear out—right then.
“And if we don’t?” one bearded man challenged him.
“I’ll kill you,” Smoke told him, ice in the words.
“You talk big, mister,” another miner said. “But I’m wonderin’ if you got the sand to back up your words.”
“My name is Smoke Jensen.”
The miners cleared out within the hour.
With the sun directly over his head, Smoke decided to stop in a stand of timber and eat the lunch that Sally had prepared for him. He was just stepping down from the saddle when the smell of wood smoke reached him.
He swung back into the saddle and followed the invisible trail. It took him the better part of an hour to find the well-concealed camp, and when he found it, he knew he had come face to face with one of the most feared men in all the West.
Charlie Starr.
“Mind some company?” Smoke asked, raising his voice to be heard over the hundred yards or so that separated the men.
“Is this your land?” the man called.
“Sure is.”
“Light and sit then. You welcome to share what I got.”
“Thanks,” Smoke said, riding in and dismounting. “My wife fixed me a bait of food.”
Charlie Starr looked hard at Smoke, “Ain’t I seen you afores?”
“Yes,” Smoke told him, unwrapping the waxed paper Sally had used to secure his lunch. “Long time ago, up in Wyoming. I was with a Mountain Man called Preacher.”
“Well, I’ll just be damned if that ain’t the truth! You’ve growed a mite, boy”
There was a twinkle in his eyes as he said it. And Smoke knew that Charlie Starr knew all about him.
Charlie’s eyes flicked to Smoke’s guns. “No notches. That’s good. Only a tinhorn cuts his kills, and half of them are lies.”
Smoke thought of Colby’s boy, Adam. “I told that to a boy just the other day. I don’t think he believed me.”
