Dawes chuckled. “I expect you are right,” he said.
“Take a look at your friend,” Smoke said to Jason. “Is he dead?”
Jason bent over to look down at the body of Logan Taylor, then shook his head. “Looks to me like you killed him.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t have time not to.”
Dawes went to the storeroom, unlocked the door, and opened it. “It’s all right, ladies, you can come out now,” he said. “It’s all over.”
“Oh, thank God,” one of the lady customers said. “We heard the shots and were afraid you had been killed.”
“I might have been if Smoke hadn’t come along when he did,” Dawes said.
Stu, the robber Smoke had knocked out, was just getting to his feet then. When he saw Taylor dead and Jason with his hands up, he reached toward his empty holster.
“Are you looking for this?” Smoke asked.
Like his brother, Stu put his hands up.
“What are you going to do with us?” Jason asked.
“It’s up to you, mister,” Smoke replied.
“Up to us? How?”
“I’m either going to kill you, or take you down to the jail. It’s your choice.”
“You got no right to arrest us. Only a sheriff can do that.”
“Or a deputy,” another voice said as a new person came into the store. “I made Smoke my deputy a long time ago.”
Sheriff Monte Carson, having heard the shooting, had come into the store to see what was going on. When he saw that Smoke had everything in hand, he relaxed.
“You want to take charge of these fellas, Monte?” Smoke asked. “Sally asked me to pick up an iron skillet for her and if I forget, I’m going to be in trouble.”
Sheriff Carson chuckled. “Then by all means, you had better find that skillet. You don’t want to be in trouble with Sally.”
“Pick out any skillet you want, Smoke, it’s free,” Dawes said in gratitude.
“Well, I appreciate that, Eli,” Smoke said.
Looking back toward the two would-be robbers, Sheriff Carson made a motion with his pistol. “Come along, boys,” he said. “I’ve got a nice jail cell just waiting for you.”
“Wait a minute. Where is the other one?” Smoke asked.
“The other one? What other one?” Dawes answered. “Only three of them came in.”
“Yes, but I saw four of them riding into town,” Smoke said. “There’s another one somewhere.”
Across the street from the Mercantile, Emil Sinclair had seen Smoke go in, though he had no idea who he was. Then, hearing the shots fired, he waited no more than a couple of seconds for Taylor and his two brothers to come running out. When they didn’t, he tied off the three horses, then rode on up the street a little way so as not to be obvious. By the time the sheriff went into the store, Emil was all the way back to the blacksmith shop. He was watching when the sheriff came out of the store with Stu and Jason in front of him, both holding their arms in the air.
Emil noticed that Taylor wasn’t with them, and he had a pretty good idea what happened to Taylor.
Stu and Jason were actually Emil’s half brothers, all three of them sharing the same mother. Because their mother was a prostitute, not one of the three knew who their fathers were. Their mother, who was called Big Nose Mary by everyone, was actually Millie Sinclair, and she had given her last name to all three of her sons.
Emil and his brothers had met Logan Taylor while all four were in the Colorado State Prison. Taylor got out three months before the Sinclair brothers did, and it was he who set up this job.
Emil waited until the sheriff and his brothers were off the street; then he returned to the horses, untied them, and led them away. The sight of a single rider leading three horses wasn’t all that unusual, except that these three horses were saddled. Emil was sure that must be a very curious sight, but he rode slowly and kept his eyes straight ahead as if there was nothing at all unusual about what he was doing.
Taylor’s horse had a fancy saddle with some brass trim. As soon as he could, Emil planned to transfer that saddle to his own horse. After all, Taylor wouldn’t be needing it anymore. He could take the saddle and sell the horse.
He wondered how much the horse would bring. For that matter, how much would the fancy saddle bring? Then, as he thought about it, he decided he would sell not only the horse, but the saddle as well.
The closest town was Mitchell, which was about fifteen miles away. He made it there in an hour and a half.
“Wait a minute,” Peters asked. “You sold all the longhorns and bought Herefords?”
“Yes. That was our arrangement, wasn’t it?”
“How much did you get per head?”
“Two dollars.”
“Two dollars? I could have gotten five dollars! I thought the whole purpose of us putting our herds together
