“Get to work! Stop complaining and start moving the wreckage aside!” Dodd ordered. “We don’t have all day!”
Smoke and Bobby Lee managed to work their way out of the last car by pushing through a large rent in the side. At first, the scene that greeted them was unbelievable, wreckage strewn about everywhere, men, women, and children lying dead, dying, or badly injured. The moans and cries created a terrible din in the night air.
Bobby Lee pointed to some men who were standing in a pile of wreckage that was once the express car. They were working intensely, throwing aside pieces of timber in a desperate attempt to get to something underneath. Smoke thought they must be trying to rescue someone and he started toward them, but Bobby Lee grabbed his arm.
“Smoke!” Bobby Lee said. “That’s Dodd and his gang!”
“Dodd!” Smoke shouted.
Upon hearing his name called, Dodd, without hesitation, pulled his gun and fired.
That was the opening shot of a deadly battle, with Smoke and Bobby Lee on one side, and Dodd, Clark, and the others on the opposite side. The surviving train passengers, dying, wounded, and unwounded, had orchestra seats while the muzzle flashes of rapidly firing pistols illuminated the faces of eight desperate men. For fully thirty seconds, the roar of pistol fire overcame even the wails and cries of the wounded.
Smoke and Bobby Lee stood side by side, exchanging fire with Dodd and the members of his gang. Gradually, the flashes grew fewer, and the exchange of gunfire slackened as, one by one, the would-be train robbers fell in their tracks from well-placed .44-caliber balls.
Errant pistol shots whizzed by Smoke’s ears, or hit the ground, sending up tiny fireballs before careening away with a high, keening sound, missiles of death in the darkness. Smoke felt, rather than saw or heard, Bobby Lee go down beside him, and he responded by shooting and killing yet another of Dodd’s gang.
Finally, the last of Dodd’s gang went down, and the shooting stopped. Smoke stood in place for a long moment afterward, holding a smoking pistol as the final echoes of gunfire rolled back from the nearby Excelsior Mountains. Now, even the cries of the injured had quieted, and as Smoke stood there, the only one doing so, it was as if someone had arranged a giant and very macabre tableau.
Suddenly, and totally unexpectedly, Dodd sat up and pointed his pistol at Smoke. Smoke reacted quickly by pulling the trigger on his own pistol, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber.
“Well, now,” Dodd said. “Look at this. Ain’t I the lucky one, though?”
The outlaw pulled the hammer back, but before he could fire, another shot rang out and a black hole appeared in his forehead as he fell back.
Thinking it might have been Bobby Lee, Smoke looked down at his brother-in-law, but saw only open and opaque eyes, looking up in their death stare. Bobby Lee was dead.
“I owed you that, Mr. Jensen.” The voice came from one of the outlaws with whom Smoke had just done battle. Looking toward the sound, he saw that one of the other outlaws had managed to raise himself up onto his elbows. It wasn’t until then that Smoke recognized him.
“Clark?” Smoke called out. “Emmett Clark?”
Clark coughed before he answered, and as he did, his cough spewed out blood.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said.
“You were riding with Dodd?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. If you were riding with him, why did you shoot him?”
“Like I said, I owed it to you. Call it a matter of honor,” Clark said, and with another spasm of coughing, he fell back with one final, gasping breath.
When Smoke returned to Sugarloaf, he learned that both Pearlie and Cal had won everything in their events at the rodeo. In addition, Pearlie had won “Most Outstanding Cowboy,” which came with a prize of a silver-studded saddle. Pearlie let it be known that he planned to give the saddle to Smoke. Smoke told Sally that he didn’t feel right taking the gift, but Sally convinced him that it was very important to Pearlie, so Smoke agreed. With great pomp and ceremony, Pearlie presented the saddle, and Smoke saw that Sally was right. There was genuine joy in Pearlie’s face when Smoke accepted it.
For the first several days after returning, Smoke was a bit pensive, thinking not only about the events of the previous few weeks, but also about the fact that Bobby Lee’s death had severed the last living connection to Nicole. At first, he found the thought rather melancholy, but the more he contemplated it, the more he was able to find peace with the idea.
The door to that part of his past was forever closed.
Smoke had been back at Sugarloaf for three weeks when he received a letter that had no return address, but was postmarked from St. Louis, Missouri. Not until he opened it did he see that the letter was from the young woman he had met in Cloverdale.
