The window above the cafe opened and Olga leaned out, a pistol with a barrel about a foot and a half long in her hand. She jacked back the hammer to show them all she knew how to use it. And would.
“All right, all right!” Cord shouted. “Hell’s bells! Nobody was going to hurt the kid. Come on, boys, I’ll buy the drinks.” He turned and bulled his way through his men.
At the far end of the street, Parnell stepped back from the open doorway and fanned himself vigorously.
Five
“Almost come a showdown in town this morning, Boss,” Dooley Hanks’s foreman said.
Hanks eyeballed the man. “Between who?”
Gage told his boss what a hand had relayed to him only moments earlier.
Hanks slumped back in his chair. “Smoke Jensen,” he whispered the word. “I never even thought about Fae and Parnell bein’ related to him. And the Moab Kid and Lujan sided with him?”
“Or vicey-versy.”
“This ain’t good. That damn Lujan is poison enough. But add Smoke Jensen to the pot ... might as well be lookin’ the devil in the eyeballs. I don’t know nothin’ about Ring, except he’s unbeatable in a fight. And the Moab Gunfighter has made a name for hisself in half a dozen states. All right, Gage. We got to get us a backshooter in here. Send a rider to Helena. Wire Danny Rouge; he’s over in Missoula. Tell him to come a-foggin’.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s them damn boys of mine?”
“Pushin’ cattle up to new pasture.”
“You mean they actually doin’ some work?”
Gage grinned. “Yes, sir.”
Hanks shook his head in disbelief. “Thank you, Gage.”
Gage left, hollering for a rider to saddle up. Hanks walked to a window in his office. He had swore he would be kingpin of this area, and he intended to be just that. Even if he bankrupted himself doing it. Even if he had to kill half the people in the area attaining it.
Cord McCorkle had ridden out of town shortly after his facedown with Smoke and Lujan and the others. He did not feel that he had backed down. It was simply a matter of survival. Nobody but a fool willingly steps into his own coffin.
His hands would have killed Smoke and Lujan and the others, for a fact. But it was also hard fact that Cord would have gone down in the first volley ... and what the hell would that have proved?
Nothing. Except to get dead.
Cord knew that men like Smoke and Lujan could soak up lead and still stay on their feet, pulling the trigger. He had personally witnessed a gunfighter get hit nine times with .45 slugs and before he died still kill several of the men he was facing.
Cord sat on the front porch of his ranch house and looked around him. He wanted for nothing. He had everything a man could want. It had sickened him when Dooley had OK’d the dragging of that young Box T puncher. Scattering someone’s cattle was one thing. Murder was another. He was glad that Jensen had come along. But he didn’t believe anyone could ever talk sense into Hanks.
Smoke, Ring, and Beans sat their horses on the knoll overlooking the ranch house of Fae and Parnell Jensen. Fae might well be a bad-mouthed woman with a double-edged tongue, but she kept a neat place. Flowers surrounded the house, the lawn was freshly cut, and the place itself was attractive.
Even at this distance, a good mile off, Smoke could see two men, with what he guessed was rifles in their hands, take up positions around the bunkhouse and barn. A woman—he guessed it was a woman, she was dressed in britches—came out onto the porch. She also carried a rifle. Smoke waved at her and waited for her to give them some signal to ride on in.
Finally the woman stepped off the porch and motioned for them to come on.
The men walked their horses down to the house, stopping at the hitchrail but not dismounting. The woman looked at Smoke. Finally she smiled.
“I saw a tintype of your daddy once. You look like him. You’d be Kirby Jensen.”
“And you’d be Cousin Fae. I got your letter. I picked up these galoots along the way.” He introduced Beans and Ring.
“Put your horses in the barn, boys, and come on into the house. It’s about dinnertime. I got fresh doughnuts; ‘bear-sign’ as you call them out here.”
Fae Jensen was more than a comely lass; she was really quite pretty and shapely. But unlike most women of the time, her face and arms were tanned from hours in the sun, doing a man’s work. And her hands were calloused.
Smoke had met Fae’s two remaining ranch hands, Spring and Pat. Both men in their early sixties, he guessed. But still leather-tough. They both gave him a good eyeballing, passed him through inspection, and returned to their jobs.
Over dinner-Sally called it lunch—Smoke began asking his questions while Beans skipped the regular food and began attacking a platter of bear-sign, washed down with hot strong western coffee.
How many head of cattle?
Started out with a thousand. Probably down to less than five hundred now, due to Hanks and McCorkle’s boys running them off.
