An hour later, after she’d unpacked her luggage and paid Mamma Rogers for the first two weeks, she asked about a good place to eat.
“Well, you’re welcome to eat here most nights,” Mamma said, “but if you need a place to have a good home- cooked meal at lunch or breakfast, you can’t beat the Sunset Cafe over on Second Street.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said. “I think I’ll take a walk around town and get acquainted with my new home.”
After she left Mamma Rogers’s place, she stepped into the hotel where Carl had told her he was staying, and left a note with the desk clerk telling him where to meet her.
Thirty minutes later, after walking around doing some sightseeing, she joined Carl Jacoby and Daniel Macklin at the Sunset Cafe on Second Street. It was past lunchtime and before dinnertime, and so the place was practically deserted, which was just fine with Sarah because she didn’t want too many people to see her conversing with the two new men in town.
“Hello, Daniel,” she said as she approached their table, glad to see another familiar face from her hometown.
Daniel dipped his head. “Howdy, Sarah. I see you made the trip all right.”
Carl, who was bursting with curiosity about her earlier comments about Mrs. Jensen, butted in. “Now, what’s this about you an’ Smoke Jensen’s wife becomin’ such good friends on the train?”
“What?” Macklin said. Jacoby hadn’t told him of her comments about Mrs. Jensen.
Sarah smiled secretively as she waved the waitress over and told her she would have the lunch special and a cup of hot tea to drink.
Jacoby and Macklin had already ordered beefsteaks and fried potatoes.
After the waitress put her tea and food on the table and gave her a small jar of honey to use in her tea, Sarah told the two men what had happened on the train while she ate.
“You were taking an awfully big chance, talking to Mrs. Jensen like that,” Jacoby said as he picked at his steak, a worried expression on his face.
Macklin fixed him with a scornful glance as he said, “Our friend Carl here seems to have come up with a sudden lack of courage where it comes to Smoke Jensen,” he said, a sneer in his voice.
Sarah raised her eyebrows and gave Carl a questioning look as she sipped her tea. “Well, Carl, for your information, I didn’t know whose wife she was when we struck up a conversation, and after she told me she was married to Smoke Jensen, I couldn’t very well just get up and leave, now could I?” she said.
“I guess not,” he admitted, still not able to look at her.
“Now, what’s this Mac is saying about you being afraid of Smoke Jensen?” she asked, her voice getting hard.
Carl, flushing, argued back, “That’s not true!” He fussed with his steak for another moment. “It’s just that everything I see and hear about this man don’t fit the picture of a backshooter or a man who’d kill someone without giving them a fair chance.”
Sarah pursed her lips and slowly put her teacup down on the table. “So,” she said in a low voice, her eyes boring into Carl’s. “Now you’re an expert on Smoke Jensen and you think what he did when he shot my brother and your friend was all right?”
Carl shook his head. “That’s not what I’m tryin’ to say, Sarah,” he said, a pained expression on his face as he tried to make himself understood. “It’s just that I don’t think it went down like everybody in Pueblo seems to say it did.”
Macklin gave a short, harsh laugh. “Yeah, Sarah,” he said, his voice dripping with scorn. “Carl here thinks this Jensen is so quick with a handgun he could draw and put five or six slugs in Johnny an’ his friends ‘fore they could even get a shot off, even though they already had their guns out.”
Sarah shook her head and turned her gaze back to Carl. “Is that really what you think, Carl?”
He nodded, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table as if by getting closer to her he could make her believe what he was saying. “You got to see him draw to believe it, Sarah. The man is fast as greased lightning.”
“So was Johnny, Carl. You know that,” she said, her eyes beginning to tear up at all this talk about how her brother got shot and killed.
Carl shook his head, sorry he was making her sad but determined to make his point. “No, Johnny wasn’t in Jensen’s class, Sarah. Johnny was quick, all right, but Jensen is as fast as I’ve ever seen, bar none.”
Now it was Sarah’s face that flushed as she leaned across the table toward Carl until their faces were inches apart. “Well, it really doesn’t matter, does it?” she said in a bitter tone. “Whatever happened that day in Pueblo, Smoke Jensen put lead in my brother and then he walked away like it never happened, and for that we’re going to kill him!” She hesitated, and leaned back to take a sip of her tea before adding, “Unless you really have lost your nerve like Mac says you have.”
Macklin threw his napkin down on the table. “Now you’re talkin’, Sarah. I say we go look for him and get this over with right now.”
Jacoby didn’t answer her accusation; he just looked at her with lovesick eyes, knowing he’d probably lost any chance for her to ever think of him in a favorable way again.
Sarah sighed and shook her head, a thoughtful expression on her face. “No, Mac. I want this done right. When I put the fatal bullet in Smoke Jensen’s heart, I want to be looking in his eyes while I do it, and that is going to take some planning.”
Macklin’s eyes widened. “Sarah, you can’t be serious. Carl’s right about one thing. From what everybody around here says, Jensen is snake-quick on the draw. You wouldn’t have a chance goin’ up against a man like Jensen face- to-face.”
She smiled and took a delicate sip of her tea. Her eyes had a mischievous twinkle in them. “Not if he didn’t know I was coming after him,” she said softly.
After Sarah finished her meal
