agreed. Even a saddle was better than the hard boards of the wagon seat and the continual bouncing of the wagon.
“Sure, Jimmy. Show me the way.”
It didn’t take long to get Cletus and the other men awake and some fresh coffee brewed. Though Sarah much preferred hot tea, she gratefully accepted a tin mug of the strong brew to help ward off the chill of the frigid night air. She hadn’t realized how cold it was when she’d left town heading out to the Jensen spread, and now she was about frozen clear through.
She was about half through with her cup when Cletus finished checking out Smoke Jensen in the back of the buckboard and approached her next to the fire. Carl Jacoby was sitting next to her and Dan Macklin was on the other side. Neither had asked her how she’d managed to get Jensen in the back of the wagon, both figuring she’d tell them soon enough.
“Sarah, Jensen’s more dead than alive in the back of that wagon. What’d you hit him with, an anvil?” he asked as he squatted next to her and poured himself a cup of coffee.
She cast worried eyes in the direction of the wagon. “No, just that iron crowbar under the seat.”
Cletus blew on the coffee to cool it, and then took a deep swig. He glanced at her over the rim. “I’d say it’s ‘bout fifty-fifty whether he makes it through the night, what with the blood he lost and the fact that he’s not really dressed for this cold. The man’s ‘bout near froze to death.”
“Sarah, didn’t you think to cover him with a blanket or something?” Jacoby asked from beside her.
Angry with herself for not realizing how dangerous it would be to transport him the way she did, Sarah snapped back, “No, I didn’t, Carl! It’s not every day I kidnap a killer and have to drive him halfway across the country in the dead of night.” She shook her head. She’d put blankets in the back of the buckboard, but those were to cover him with if anyone approached, and she simply had been too miserable with her own discomfort to think much about his.
She glanced over at the buckboard, hoping she hadn’t inadvertently killed the man before she could tell him why she’d kidnapped him.
“Calm down, Sarah,” Cletus said in his usual unruffled tone of voice. Sarah reflected she couldn’t ever remember Cletus being riled up about anything in all the years she’d known him.
“I’m havin’ a couple of the boys carry him over here next to the fire, an’ I’m gonna see if we can wake him up enough to get some hot coffee down him.”
She felt her face flush with shame when she saw them carry Smoke Jensen’s pale, limp body over and lay it next to the fire. Cletus was right, she thought. He does look more dead than alive.
“But Clete,” she said, glancing back and forth from Smoke to him, “we’ve got to get moving. Come morning, his wife is going to wake up and realize he’s missing. We need to be as far away when that happens as we can be.”
Cletus took a deep breath and sipped more of his coffee. “Won’t matter none if we kill him in the takin’, Miss Sarah. If we don’t get him warmed up a little an’ some fluids down to replace the blood he lost, he won’t make it five miles in the back of that wagon.”
Just then, Smoke moaned and moved his head slightly, wincing at the pain the movement caused.
He looked around him at the campfire and the men gathered around it until his eyes landed on Sarah.
“Why?” he croaked, trying to make some sense of her attack on him.
Blushing, she got to her feet and moved to stand over him. “Does the name Johnny MacDougal mean anything to you?” she asked, venom dripping from her voice.
FOURTEEN
Smoke struggled up on one elbow and looked up at the angry young woman standing over him. His head felt like a blacksmith had been pounding on it, and his eyes kept blurring and trying to cross. He concentrated, pushing the pain and nausea aside and thought about her question. The name Johnny MacDougal did stir some memories, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on them just yet.
He started to shake his head in a negative reply, but he stopped when the movement caused a red-hot pain to shoot through his skull. He reached up and gingerly felt the back of his head. There was a large, squashy lump there with what felt like dried blood scabbing it over. Evidently someone, probably the very same young woman standing before him now, had hit him from behind. He’d have to get to feeling better to die, he thought.
In a hoarse voice, he croaked, “Sarah, the name is familiar to me, but I don’t quite remember just why.”
At her astonished glare, her eyes filled with even more hatred, he asked gently, “You want to tell me about it?”
She opened her mouth to speak, and he held up his hand, swaying slightly back and forth on his elbow as he lay there. “Just a minute, Sarah,” he said, coughing. “Could I first have some water or coffee? My throat feels as dry as the desert right now.”
Sarah glanced at Cletus without saying anything, and he got to his feet, poured some coffee into a tin mug, and handed it to Smoke. “Here ya go,” he said, “but drink it slow so it don’t come back up on ya.”
While Smoke drank, Sarah put her hands on her hips and stared down at him. “For your information, Mr. Smoke Jensen, Johnny MacDougal was my brother, and last year about this time you beat him up and knocked out his teeth and then you shot him and some friends of his down in cold blood in Pueblo.”
Smoke’s eyes widened over the rim of the cup. He slowly lowered it and struggled up to a sitting position, trying to move his head as little as possible, his face wincing at the pain the movement caused. “That was your brother, the one dressed all in black?”
Sarah nodded, her eyes as hard as flint. Smoke let his head fall into his hands and fought back nausea the coffee had caused as he thought back about that day the previous year when William Cornelius Van Horne had offered to take Smoke and his friends to lunch....
Van Horne pulled the head of his Morgan toward a dining place with a sign over the door that said simply THE FEEDBAG, and the others followed, tying their mounts and packhorses to a hitching rail in front of the building.
