the holster. He stepped out into the street and started walking toward Cates.
“Is Quentin paying you for this, Cates?” Smoke asked.
Cates’s tongue flicked out of his mouth a couple of times before he answered.
“Yeah,” Cates hissed. His lips spread into what might have been a smile. “Quentin paid me to kill the newspaper man, too. Don’t you be tellin’ him now, but this killin’ I would have done for free.”
“Really? And why is that?”
“You got ’ny idea how much money I’m goin’ to be able to charge for my services once I kill the great Smoke Jensen?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Smoke said.
Cates tongue flicked out a couple more times. “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”
“It doesn’t matter, because you aren’t going to get off this street alive.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said. “You’re a lot bigger target than I am.” Again, he smiled.
“My target will be the same size, no matter how big you are.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, Cates, that I’m going to shoot you right between the eyes,” Smoke said, his voice as calm as if he had just ordered a cup of coffee.
Suddenly, Cates went for his gun, but Smoke was ready for him, and his own pistol was out and booming before Cates could even bring his gun level. A black hole appeared between Cates’s eyes and he fell backward, sending up a puff of dust as he hit the street. His arms flopped out to either side, the unfired gun dangling from a crooked, but stilled, finger. It had all happened so quickly that many of those who had been watching through windows, or from around corners of the buildings, missed it.
Smoke stood there for a moment longer, the gun still in his hand, smoke curling up from the end of the barrel. He looked at Cates’s still form, lying on the dirt street. Already, flies from a nearby horse apple were drawn to the bloody hole between his open, but sightless, obsidian eyes.
“Shoot him! Shoot the son of a bitch!” Quentin shouted.
The voice came from the hayloft of the livery and when Smoke looked up, he saw the flash of two guns being fired. The bullets hit the ground close by, then ricocheted away with a loud whine. Smoke fired back, shooting twice into the dark maw of the hayloft. He ran to the water trough nearest the livery, and dived behind it as Quentin and Dawson fired again. Both bullets hit the trough with a loud thock.
Smoke left his position behind the water trough, and ran toward the door of the livery. He could hear the water gurgling through the bullet holes behind him. When he reached the big, open, double doors of the livery, he ran on through to the inside.
“Where’d he go? Dawson, do you see him? Where did the son of a bitch go?”
“He come through the doors,” Dawson replied. “He’s in here somewhere. Keep your eyes peeled.”
Smoke fired again into the hayloft, and the barn rang with the sound of his shot.
“He’s inside,” Quentin shouted. “He’s right below us!”
“Quentin, Cates told me you paid him to kill Elmer Brandon. That makes you as guilty of murder as he was, and I’m putting you under arrest,” Smoke called up.
“Ha!” Dawson said. “You are putting someone under arrest? Maybe you forgot, Jensen, but I’m the law here.”
“Not anymore, you aren’t,” Smoke replied. “Judge McCabe just removed you and Wilson from office and made me the law. Come to think of it, Dawson, I’m putting you under arrest, too.”
Dawson’s laugh was forced. “You ain’t arrestin’ nobody,” he said.
“Dawson!” Quentin called again. “Who are you talking to? Do you see him?”
“No,” Dawson answered.
With his pistol pointed up toward the loft above him, Smoke moved quietly through the barn itself, looking up at the hayloft just overhead. Suddenly, he felt little pieces of hay falling on him and he stopped, because he realized that someone had to be right over him. Then he heard it, a quiet shuffling of feet. Smoke fired twice, straight up. Then he heard a groan and a loud thump.
“Dawson! Dawson, are you hit?” Quentin called.
Smoke realized then that he had expended every shot, so he opened the gate and started poking the empty shell casings from the cylinder chambers of his pistol.
“Well, now, look here,” a calm voice said. Smoke glanced over to his left to see Quentin standing in the open, on the edge of the loft. He was holding a pistol pointed at Smoke, and from this range, it would be very hard for him to miss.
“You’re out of bullets, aren’t you, you son of a bitch.” He voice was confident, almost triumphant.
Smoke heard the pistol shot, then saw the expression on Quentin’s face change from triumph, to shock, then to pain. Quentin dropped his pistol, grabbed the hole in his chest, then pitched forward, turning over once on the way down to land on his back.
Looking toward the open doors, Smoke saw Sally standing there, holding a smoking pistol.
“What took you so long?” Smoke asked.
Sally smiled. “You know how we women are, Smoke. I didn’t want to come outside until I knew my hair looked all right.”
