Those same men owned ranches and mines around the town of Bury. In fact, one might say they owned Bury itself, including nearly every resident of the town. If ever there was a Sodom and Gomorrah in America, Sally thought, it was Bury, Idaho Territory.
And, like the Biblical cities of sin, Bury was destroyed, not by God, but by Smoke Jensen, who, after allowing the women and children to leave, killed the murderers and the gunmen, and then put the town to the torch. When Smoke, with Sally now by his side, set out en route to the “High Lonesome,” there was nothing remaining of Bury but the smoldering rubble of a destroyed town and the dead killers Smoke left behind him.
The rage that had burned in his soul was gone, and he had put Nicole and Arthur to rest in a private compartment of his heart. With the fire in his gut gone, Smoke was free to love once more, and to be loved, and Sally was there for him.
Sally knew that Smoke would always love Nicole—in fact, Sally was sure that she loved him the more because of that loyalty. And though she had never met Nicole, Sally had come to love her as well, as a sister that she’d never met.
The train rolled over a rough part of the track and the resultant jostling startled Smoke awake.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing, darling,” Sally said, taking his hand. “Go back to sleep.”
Smoke squeezed her hand, and she responded. Her life may have taken some unusual twists, but had she planned every twist and turn, she could not have hoped for anything more than she had right now.
For Sally Jensen, life could not be sweeter.
The New York Saloon had nothing to do with either the city or the state of New York. Rodney Gibson, the owner, was not a native New Yorker, and had never even been in New York. But the name appealed to him, so when he built his saloon in Santa Clara, shortly after the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad ensured the survival of the struggling little town, he named his saloon after the city he had only read about.
The saloon was well appointed, with two large, hanging chandeliers as well as light sconces all around the walls. The walls were covered with a rich red paper, which filled the space from baseboard to molding.
The most talked about item of the saloon, however, was the exceptionally lifelike, as well as nearly life-size, painting behind the bar. The painting, titled
It was just after seven P.M. and the saloon was at its busiest with cowboys, miners, freighters, store clerks, and the town’s few professionals filling the tables and lining the bar. At the back of the room the piano player, a young man who was barely out of his teens, was bent over the keyboard, playing music that could barely be heard over the laughter and conversation of the many patrons.
“The hell I can’t do the fandango!” Billy Ray Quentin shouted, his voice clearly heard above both the piano and the ambient sound. Standing up, Billy Ray reached down to the table, picked up a bottle of whiskey, and turning it to his lips, drained the rest of it in Adam’s-apple-bobbing swallows. After he finished the bottle, he tossed it carelessly over his shoulder, causing the people at one of the other tables to have to dodge quickly to avoid being hit.
“Billy Ray, you can’t no more do the fandango than I can,” one of the other three men at the table said. Billy Ray was the son of the most prominent rancher in Huereano County, and the men at the table with him were cowboys from the Tumbling Q which was Billy Ray’s father’s ranch.
“I’ll just by damn show you I can do it,” Billy Ray said. “And I’m willin’ to put money on it, too.”
“Hell, we ain’t got no money to bet, Billy Ray. You know that,” Jerry Kelly said. Kelly was not only the oldest of the three cowboys; he was also older than Billy Ray.
“The three of you together can come up with a dollar, can’t you? I tell you what, if I can do it, you three owe me one dollar. If I can’t do it, I’ll give each of you a dollar apiece. How is that for a bet?”
The three men looked at each other, then nodded.
“Reeves, I’ll take the bet if you will,” Kelly said.
“All right,” Reeves said. “Let’s do it. Let’s see ole Billy Ray here dance the fandango.”
Billy Ray wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then looked around the saloon until he saw one of the bar girls leaning against the piano, talking to the piano player.
“You!” he shouted, pointing toward the girl. “Come here. These here fellas have bet me that I can’t dance the fandango, and I need to prove to them that I can. But I can’t do it without a woman.”
“Oh, Billy Ray, I don’t know anything about dancing the fandango,” the girl replied.
“Hell, you don’t have to do anything more than just stand there, and sort of move back and forth,” Billy Ray said. “I’m the one that’s goin’ to be doin’ all the dancin’.”
The girl looked over toward the saloon owner, who was now behind behind the bar, helping Lloyd Evans, the bartender.
“What should I do, Mr. Gibson?” she asked.
“Go ahead, Mary Lou,” Gibson replied. “If it will keep him quiet.”
“All right, if you say so,” Mary Lou Culpepper replied nervously. She started toward Billy Ray.
“Hey, you, piano player!” Billy Ray shouted.
The piano player, who was in the middle of a rendition of “Buffalo Gals,” didn’t look around.
“Lenny, I’m talkin’ to you,” Billy Ray shouted. He drew his pistol and aimed toward the piano. Before anyone could stop him, he pulled the trigger. The suddenness of the gunshot quieted the room as everyone looked over to see what was going on. The bullet Billy Ray fired hit the glass bowl that sat on top of the piano, smashing it, and scattering the coins that patrons had dropped in from time to time. The piano player dived off the bench to the
