Smoke stepped to one side as soon as he spoke. The two men with guns turned toward the sound of Smoke’s voice and fired. Smoke returned fire, using the flame patterns of their pistols as his target. Even as the sound of gunfire faded, he heard a crash of glass and realized that the third man, the one with the knife, had jumped through the window. Moving quickly to the window, he got there just in time to see the third man get to his feet on the ground below, then run into the alley, disappearing into the darkness.
“Sally, are you all right?”
“Yes,” Sally’s muffled voice came from under the bed.
“You can come out now.”
“What is it? What’s going on?” someone shouted from down the hall.
“Was that gunshots?” another asked.
“What happened to the lanterns in the hall?”
“Someone go for the sheriff!”
Smoke lit the lantern in his room, then walked over to look down at the two men he had shot.
“Are they dead?” Sally asked. She was tying the waist of the silken robe she had just put on over her nightgown.
“Yes.”
“Hello? Is anyone alive in there?” someone called from the hotel hallway.
“It’s all over, folks,” Smoke called back.
One brave soul appeared in the doorway, carrying a pistol. Seeing him, Smoke aimed his pistol at him; then, from having met him at the dinner last evening, he recognized Tucker Phillips. Phillips was one of the men who would be bidding against him tomorrow. Smoke eased the hammer back down on his pistol and lowered it.
“Mr. Phillips, I’d be much obliged if you’d lower your pistol,” Smoke said.
“Right, right,” Phillips said. “I just thought—well, uh, right, I’ll put the gun down. Are you and Mrs. Jensen all right?”
“Yes, we’re fine, thank you,” Smoke answered.
As Smoke had done a moment earlier, Tucker Phillips looked down at the two men on the floor. Both were dead, but the fact that they were clutching guns in their hands and were fully clothed, whereas Smoke was wearing the long underwear he had been sleeping in, clearly told the story that Smoke was the innocent participant in the shooting.
By now, several others had gotten brave enough to venture down to the room and look inside.
“There’s two dead men in there,” someone said from just outside the door to Smoke’s room.
“Two dead men,” another said, and Smoke could hear the refrain repeated up and down the hallway as the crowd of hotel guests gathered.
It took about fifteen minutes for the deputy sheriff to arrive. He looked down at the men, prodding each of them with the toe of his boot to convince himself that both were dead.
“You’re Smoke Jensen, aren’t you?” the deputy asked. “Come to bid on the bull at the big auction?”
“Yes,” Smoke said.
“Well, then, there’s not much of a mystery here, is there? These two galoots probably found out who you are, and they come in here to rob you.”
“And maybe more,” Smoke said.
“What do you mean?”
“This one is Stu Sinclair, this one is Jason Sinclair,” Smoke said, pointing out the two men.
“You know them?”
“In a manner of speaking, I do.” Smoke told about his encounter with the two men who had tried to rob the Mercantile in Big Rock. “They broke out of jail on the first night,” he concluded.
“Ahh, then it was probably a little of both. Revenge, and to rob you.”
“And maybe more,” Smoke repeated.
“More? What more could there be?”
“Look in Jason’s shirt pocket,” Smoke said.
The deputy knelt beside the one Smoke had identified as Jason Sinclair, then reached into his shirt pocket. From the pocket, he extracted three one-hundred-dollar bills.
“I’ll be,” he said. “This is three hunnert dollars. Who would have thought that a galoot like this would have three hunnert dollars on him?”
“It’s not just three hundred dollars, it is three one-hundred-dollar bills,” Smoke said. “I believe that money was given to them tonight.”
“Well now, that’s kind of strange,” the deputy said. “Why do you suppose someone would give them three hundred dollars?”
“I think someone paid them to kill me.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to you last night,” Sheriff Walker said to Smoke the next day. “If I had known the Sinclair boys were in town, I would have had them in jail. There is paper out on them now.”
