Colton looked at Velvet, looked at Smoke, and silently cursed. He ordered the girl taken into his examining room and called for his wife to be present.
“Tell me what happened,” he told Smokes. “As succinctly as possible.”
“As what?”
Colton sighed. “Make it short.”
Lawyer Hunt made his appearance, with his wife Willow. Mona asked her to assist her with Velvet. The women disappeared into the examining room.
Smoke had sent Billy for the sheriff as they passed the livery stable. For once, Sheriff Carson seemed genuinely concerned. He knew for an ironclad fact that nobody, but
With everyone present, Smoke told his story, handing the bloody, damning dime novel, autographed by Luke Nations, to Lawyer Hunt.
Nobody heard Louis Longmont enter the office. He stood off to one side, listening.
Lawyer Hunt read the message and looked at Monte. “Can you read, Sheriff?”
“Hell, yes!”
“Then read it and pick a side!” There was hard and genuine anger in the lawyer’s voice. God
“Hey!” Monte said. “I don’t pick sides. I’m the law around here.”
“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” Louis spoke from the darkness near the open door to the office.
Monte flushed and read the bloody words. Now, he thought, I
Doctor Spalding stepped out of the examining room. “The girl’s visible wounds will be easily treated. They’re mostly superficial. But her mental state is quite another matter. She is catatonic.”
Smoke lost his temper. He was tired, sore, hungry, disgusted, and could not remember when he wanted to kill anybody more than at this moment. “Now, what in the goddamn hell does all that jibber-jabber mean?”
“Settle down, Smoke,” Louis said. Then the gambler explained the doctor’s words.
Smoke calmed down and looked at Sheriff Carson. “You want a war on your hands, Monte?”
“Hell, no!”
“Somebody better hang for this, Monte,” Smoke warned, his voice low and menacing. “Or that is exactly what you’re going to have on your hands—a war.”
Smoke stepped out into the night and walked toward the best of the hotels.
“You ever heard the expression ‘caught between a rock and a hard place,’ Sheriff?” Louis asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“Because that’s where you are. Enjoy it.” The gambler smiled thinly.
2
The news swept through the town of Fontana fast. Sheriff Monte Carson found Judge Proctor and jerked him away from the bottle on the bar, leading the whiskered man out of the batwings to the boardwalk.
Monte pointed a finger at the judge. He told him what had gone down, shaking his finger in the judge’s face. “Not another drink until this is over,” he warned the highly educated rummy. “If you don’t think you can handle that, I can damn well put you in a cell and be shore of it.”
Judge Proctor stuck out his chest and blustered. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Try me,” Monte warned, acid in his voice.
Judge Proctor got the message, and he believed it. He rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re right, of course, Sheriff. Goddamn Tilden Franklin! What was he thinking of authorizing something of this odious nature?”
Sheriff Carson shrugged. “Be ready to go at first light, Judge. No matter how the chips fall, we got to play this legal-like, all the way.”
Judge Proctor watched the sheriff walk away into the night. “Should be interesting,” he muttered. “A fair hearing. How quaint!”
Louis Longmont sat in his quarters behind his gaming room and sipped hot tea. At first, the news of the money near where the girl was found puzzled him. Then his mind began working, studying all angles. Louis felt he knew the reason for the money. But it was a thin rope Tilden had managed to grab onto. The man really must be quite insane to authorize such a plan. Colby and Belle and their kids were all deeply religious folk—most farmers were. And the sheriff and judge were going to be forced to handle this right by the law books.
But, the gambler thought with a sigh, there was always the jury to consider. And money, in this case, not only talked, but cursed.
Big Mamma sat at the back of her bar and pondered the situation. In a case like this, wimmin oughta be allowed to sit on the jury…but that was years in the future. Even though Big Mamma was as cold-hearted and ruthless as a warlord, something like this brought out the maternal instinct from deep within her. She would have scoffed and cursed at the mere suggestion of that…but it was true.
She looked around her. It wouldn’t take near as long to tear all this down and get gone as it had to put it all up. Damned if she wanted to get caught up in an all-out shootin’ war. But sure as hell, that was what was gonna happen.
That Smoke Jensen…well, she had revised her original opinion of that feller. He was pure straight out of Hell, that one. That one was no punk, like she first thought. But one-hundred-and-ten-percent man. And even though Big Mamma didn’t like men, she could respect the all-man types…like Smoke Jensen.
Ralph Morrow lay beside his wife, unable to sleep. He was thinking of that poor child, and also thinking that he just may have been a fool where Tilden Franklin was concerned. After witnessing that fight in the gaming room
