SEVENTEEN
As they rode down the trail toward Pueblo and home, Sarah MacDougal struggled with her conscience. The more she was around Smoke Jensen, the less he seemed like a crazed gunfighter out to kill anyone who got in his way and the more he seemed like an honest, decent human being.
She thought back to when Sheriff Tupper had come to give her and her father the news of Johnny’s death. As she went over what he’d said on that visit, she realized that she and her father hadn’t really heard what he was trying to say.
He’d tried to tell them, in his own mealymouthed way, that it was Johnny’s fault he’d been shot. Of course, neither she nor her father had been willing to listen to that explanation, not when their kin was lying dead in the back of Tupper’s wagon, his teeth knocked out and his body full of a stranger’s lead.
“Missy,” Cletus called from the seat of the buckboard alongside her.
“Yes?”
“I think it’s time we took a noonin’ an’ rested our mounts. We keep goin’ at this pace, we’re gonna lose a couple of ‘em ‘fore too long.” He grinned. “An’ I don’t hanker to carry none of these boys on my back.”
“All right,” she agreed, pointing to a copse of trees off to the right about a hundred yards ahead. “Pull over there and we’ll fix up some grub for the men and give the horses some grain and water.”
She glanced down sideways at Smoke, who was riding in the back of the wagon. “Jensen, don’t you go getting any ideas about trying to make a break for it. My father wants you brought back alive, but he won’t quibble if you’re killed trying to escape.”
Smoke shrugged. “This is your party, Sarah. I’m just along for the ride.” He gingerly felt the large knot on the back of his head. “Besides, if I tried to run right now, I think my head would fall off.”
“You keep thinking like that and you may just survive this trip,” she said, blushing a little at his mention of the damage she’d done to his head.
He glanced up at her and smiled, no fear at all evident in his eyes. “What about the homecoming?” he asked. “Will I survive that too?”
Sarah’s face flushed even more, and she spurred her horse on up ahead to tell the men to ready the camp without trying to give him an answer.
While Cletus oversaw the cooking of fatback and beans and the heating of coffee, Sarah walked over to stand next to Smoke, who was sitting with his back to a tree while two men held pistols on him from a short distance away.
“You understand why I’m doing this, don’t you, Mr. Jensen?” she asked.
He glanced up at her. “Of course I do, Sarah. You’ve lost a brother, and your father has lost a son. Neither one of you wants to admit to yourselves that it might have been your fault for not making him grow up better, so you’re planning on taking it out on me.” He smiled, though there was no mockery in his expression. “It’s simple when you think about it. I’m to be a scapegoat for your dad’s failure as a parent and your failure as a sister.”
She flushed, angered by the way he was continually turning things around and trying to shift the blame to anyone but himself. “That’s not true. I’m taking you back because you must be punished for what you did.”
“Punished for defending myself?” he asked, the grin still on his face. “For doing what the law should have done a long time ago when your brother killed his first man?”
“Oh, you’re just impossible,” Sarah said, stamping her foot and walking quickly over to stand next to Cletus at the campfire.
“It’s not easy being judge, jury, and executioner, Sarah,” Smoke called to her back. “I don’t think you’re going to like the job much.”
Cletus glanced up at her as he poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her, noticing the redness of her eyes and her hunched-over shoulders and stiff neck. “He getting your goat, Missy?” he asked gently.
“Yes,” she said, taking the cup and blowing on it to cool it down enough to drink. “He twists everything around so you’d think he should get a medal for shooting Johnny, instead of . . . ” She paused, not wanting to put into words what was waiting for Smoke at her father’s ranch.
“Instead of being killed in cold blood by your daddy or you?” Cletus asked, getting to his feet.
“I didn’t say that!”
He shook his head. “No, but you know that’s what’s gonna happen, don’t you?” he asked. “You’re not fooling yourself into thinking anything different, are you?”
She hung her head. “I . . . I guess I know what’s going to happen,” she finally answered, her voice low.
“Good,” he said. “’Cause if you’re gonna do this, you better be able to live with it, or it’ll eat you alive. You’d better figure you’re right and it needs doin’. Otherwise, well, otherwise maybe you ought to ride on ahead and let me take him the rest of the way.”
“Don’t treat me like a baby, Clete.”
“I’m not, Missy. But I can see by lookin’ in your eyes you got some doubts ‘bout all this.” He sighed as he drank his coffee. “I’ve known men out on the trail did something that got one of their friends killed. Most of ‘em knew it comes with the job of cowboying, but a few never got over it. Their lives were plumb ruined by one little mistake that could’ve happened to anybody.” He stared hard at her. “I don’t want that to happen to you, Missy.”
“Yes, I do have some doubts, Clete,” she admitted. “What if what he says happened is the true story? What if he had no choice but to shoot Johnny in self-defense?”
Cletus shrugged. “What really happened don’t make no never mind to me,” he said. “I take my orders from your daddy, an’ he said to bring this man to him. Far as what happens then, it ain’t no concern of mine.”
“So, you won’t feel responsible when Daddy shoots this man you’re taking to him?”
Cletus looked surprised. “Responsible? Hell, no, not unless I pull the trigger myself.”
