“You leave me now, Clete, and you’ll never work in Colorado again!” Angus shouted at their backs.
As Cletus and Sarah swung up into their saddles, Cletus shook his head at the old man. “I wouldn’t make threats you ain’t gonna be able to carry out, Angus. For my money, I don’t think you got one chance in ten of riding off this mountain alive.”
“And just where do you think you’re going, young lady?” Angus growled at Sarah.
She sat up straight in her saddle. “I’m going home to pack my things. It’s about time I left home and made my own way in the world.”
“Well,” Angus snorted, “good riddance to the both of you. You’ll both come crawling back to me when you realize I’m right about all this.”
Cletus shook his head. “No, Angus, we won’t be back. And I don’t think you’ve been right about anything for a very long time.”
They jerked their reins and rode off alongside one another without looking back, leaving Angus staring after them as the darkness swallowed them up.
Smoke heard this exchange from where he stood in the darkness less than a dozen yards away. It had been no trouble for him to sneak near the camp, moving between the sentries as silent as a ghost in the pitch-black night. He could have snuck up to any of them and killed them before they knew what was happening, but he wanted to end this with as little loss of life as he could. There’d already been too much killing.
The knee-deep snow helped to cover any sounds he might make, but would show his tracks later in the morning light. He smiled to himself, unworried about that. He planned to give the men in the gang plenty of other things to be thinking about before the sun rose in the morning.
Moving slowly and staying out of the light of the campfire, Smoke snuck over to the string of horses where they were tethered along a rope stretched between two trees. He walked along the broncs, his hands lightly touching their rumps so they wouldn’t get nervous and whinny, until he came to the pack animals. Their packs had been removed and sat on the ground next to them, and he was lucky the men hadn’t bothered to take the boxes of supplies and ammunition and explosives up near the fire where they would have been safe.
It took Smoke five trips to carry all of the boxes of dynamite and gunpowder and extra cartridges a couple of hundred yards away from the camp. He needed them to be that far away for what he had planned. On his last trip, he used his clasp knife to cut the rope holding the horses, but made no effort to scatter them. That would come later.
When he was far enough away, he opened the boxes and took out fifteen or twenty of the sticks of dynamite, along with their fuses and detonators, and stuck them in a saddlebag. He then took a fuse, cut it two feet long, and stuck it and a detonator into a stick of dynamite. He took a can of gunpowder and, using his skinning knife, he opened the top, wincing at the scraping sound the knife made.
He set the can between the boxes of dynamite and gunpowder and cartridges and put the stick of dynamite in it, nestling it down into the powder. He struck a match and lit the fuse, and then ran as fast as he could around the edge of the camp until he was on the opposite side from where he’d set the supplies.
While he waited for the fuse, he took out one of the sticks of dynamite from his saddlebag and stuck a detonator and a very short two-inch fuse into the end of it.
Three minutes later, the dynamite and gunpowder and cartridges all went up with a tremendous bang. The fireball from the explosion rose fifty feet in the air, and set the top of one of the ponderosa pines on fire.
The force of the explosion blew men off their feet and tossed them about like rag dolls, causing several to suffer broken arms and lacerations from flying debris.
The extra cartridges in the pack were set off by the blast, and bullets flew through the air like a swarm of angry hornets, wounding two men. The rest of the gang threw themselves on the ground with their hands over their heads while they screamed in fright and terror as slugs whined past their ears.
Smoke kept his head down until things had quieted down. Men slowly got to their feet, shaking their heads and pulling their pistols from their holsters as they moved off in the direction of the explosion.
Suddenly, Daniel Macklin shouted, “Hey, Mr. MacDougal, the horses are all gone!”
Angus got to his feet and brushed himself off, his ears ringing and his nose running from all the dust and dirt in the air.
“Well, just don’t stand there, men. Round ‘em up!” he shouted, pointing with both hands as horses ran around in the forest, as frightened as the men were.
Once all of the men had stumbled out of the camp and out into the woods looking for horses, Smoke leaned over the boulder he was hiding behind and pitched his stick of dynamite into the campfire.
He’d managed to run only a dozen yards when the dynamite went off, exploding in the campfire and blowing what was left of the camp into smithereens.
At least half of the men’s saddles were destroyed, along with most of their sleeping blankets and ground covers. All of the rest of the food supplies were ruined, with the exception of several cans of Arbuckle’s coffee, which were smashed and dented but remained somehow intact.
As the bedraggled group of cowboys and gunslicks limped their way back into what was left of their camp, a light snow started to fall.
Angus gritted his teeth and glared at the skies above. “This is perfect,” he growled, “just perfect!”
By the time morning came, Angus’s men had managed to find about three quarters of the horses, and the injured and wounded had been patched up as best they could with what supplies they had remaining.
Another campfire had been built, and the men breakfasted on coffee made with melted snow. There wasn’t any food left that was worth eating.
The snow continued to fall, but at least the wind was not too strong, and the temperature actually seemed a bit warmer than it had been the night before.
All in all, the men counted themselves lucky there’d been no loss of life in the explosions of the night before.
