“Mr. Poindexter, he got all upset and wanted to go over and have a few words with Mr. Norton, tell him he didn’t take to being accused of trying to sell a sick horse.”
“But Andy stopped him, and said it was probably just Mr. Norton’s way of backin’ out of the deal.” Again, all laughed.
“Andy rode that horse the rest of his life,” one of the others said quietly, and the laughter stopped. “Mr. Poindexter, he sent me in today to tell Gene Crenshaw that he would take care of all the expenses of buryin’ Andy, and he told me to bring back the horse.”
“It is a good horse.”
“Yeah. And Andy was a good man.”
“Let’s have a drink to Andy.”
“Not just us, ever’body,” one of the others said, and he turned and called out loud. “Ladies and gents! Ladies and gents!” After the second shout, all conversation in the saloon stopped.
“What is it?” someone asked.
The Poindexter rider held up his mug of beer. “I’d like for ever’one to have a drink to Andy Emerson,” he said.
“I ain’t goin’ to drink to the son of a bitch,” someone said. “Hell, we just had a fight last week.”
“It was a fair fight, warn’t it?” one of the other patrons asked.
The protestor thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Yeah, it was a fair fight. All right, I’ll drink to him.”
All in the saloon held their drinks high.
“To Andy,” the Poindexter rider said.
“To Andy,” the others repeated, and all drank the toast.
At that exact moment behind the jail, Smoke was looking at his watch when he saw the minute hand click onto the number one. He held the candle flame to the intertwined fuses of the two sticks of dynamite. As the fuses started sputtering, he ran back to Bloomberg’s Mercantile, then stepped around the corner. He just made it around the corner when the dynamite exploded, the flash of the detonation momentarily lighting up the entire alley.
The alley was instantly filled with flying shards of brick and billowing smoke, even as the sound of the initial explosion echoed back and reechoed, from both the Shoshone and Toiyabe mountain ranges.
The patrons of the Gold Strike Saloon had just finished drinking their toast to Andy when they heard the explosion. It was so loud that it caused all the bottles behind the bar to clink together.
“What the hell was that?”
“Someone blasting in the mines?”
“No, it’s too late for that and that was too close.”
The loud, stomach- shaking boom not only alerted those in the saloon, but awakened the entire town. Even before Smoke reached the three-foot-wide hole that was blasted in the rear of the jailhouse, he could hear people beginning to call out in surprise and alarm.
“What happened?”
“Hello?”
“What’s going on?”
Smoke reached the hole quickly, then stuck his head in. A dim light still emanated from the hall lantern, though the smoke was so thick that it was difficult to see. He could hear coughing.
“Bobby Lee, are you all right?”
“Yes,” Bobby Lee replied, and Smoke was pleased to hear that the young man’s voice was just beside him. Bobby Lee emerged from the haze, and sticking out his hand, grabbed Smoke’s hand. “Help pull me through,” he said.
“Hey! What’s going on back here!” Deputy Jackson shouted, coming from the front.
The deputy saw Bobby Lee escaping through the hole and he pulled his gun and fired, but by that time Smoke had already jerked Bobby Lee through, and out into the alley, so the bullets slammed harmlessly into the part of the wall not destroyed by the dynamite blast.
“Hurry,” Smoke said. “Our horses are down here.”
“Our horses? You mean mine too?”
“Yours too.”
“Wow, my horse too. When you do things, you don’t go halfway, do you?”
“You remember Preacher, don’t you, Bobby Lee?”
“Yes, of course I remember Preacher. ”
“Preacher told me a long time ago, if you are going to do something, do it right the first time, because you may never get a second time.”
By now, the town was alive with sound, from barking dogs, to screeching cats, to men and women shouting and calling out to each other.
“Was that a bomb?”
“It sounded like a bomb.”
“What would a bomb be doing in Cloverdale?”
