Would she have any objections to Smoke getting her cattle back?
She looked hard at him. Finally shook her head. No objections at all.
‘Ring will stay here at the ranch and start doing some much needed repair work,” Smoke told her. ”Beans and me will start working the cattle, moving them closer in. Then we’ll get your other beeves back. Tell me the boundaries of this spread.”
She produced a map and pointed out her spread, and it was not a little one. It had good graze and excellent water. The brand was the Box T; she had not changed it since taking over several years back.
“If you’ll pack us some food,” Smoke said, “me and Beans will head out right now; get the lay of the land. We’ll stay out a couple of days—maybe longer. This situation is shaping up to be a bad one. The lid could blow off at any moment. Beans, shake out your rope and pick us out a couple of fresh horses. Let’s give ours a few days’ rest. They’ve earned it.”
“I’ll start putting together some food,” Fae said. She looked at Smoke. “I appreciate this. More than you know.”
“Sorry family that don’t stick together.”
They rode out an hour later, Smoke on a buckskin a good seventeen hands high that looked as though it could go all day and all night and still want to travel.
The old man who had given the spread to Fae had known his business—Smoke still wondered about how she’d gotten it. He decided to pursue that further when he had the time.
About ten miles from the ranch, they crossed the Smith and rode up to several men working Box T cattle toward the northwest.
They wheeled around at Smoke’s approach.
“Right nice of you boys to take such an interest in our cattle, Smoke told a hard-eyed puncher. ”But you’re pushing them the wrong way. Now move them back across the river.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” the man challenged him.
“Jensen.”
The man spat on the ground. “I like the direction we’re movin’ them better.” He grabbed iron.
Smoke drew, cocked, and fired in one blindingly fast move. The .44 slug took the man in the center of his chest and knocked him out of the saddle. He tried to rise up but did not have the strength. With a groan, he fell back on the ground, dead. Beans held a pistol on the other McCorkle riders; they were all looking a little white around the mouth.
“Jack Waters,” Smoke said. “He’s wanted for murder in two states. I’ve seen the flyers in Monte’s office.”
“Yeah,” Beans said glumly. “And he’s got three brothers just as bad as he is. Waco, Hatley, and Collis.”
“You won’t last a week on this range, Jensen,” a mouthy McCorkle rider said.
Smoke moved closer to him and backhanded the rider out of his saddle. He hit the ground and opened his mouth to cuss. Then he closed his mouth as the truth came home. Jensen.
“All of you shuck outta them gun belts,” Beans ordered. “When you’ve done that, start movin’ them cattle back across the river.”
“Then we’re going to take a ride,” Smoke added. “To see Cord.”
While the Circle Double C boys pushed the cattle back across the river, Smoke lashed the body of Jack Waters across his saddle and Beans picked up the guns, stuffing guns, belts, and all into a gunny sack and tying it on his saddle horn. The riders returned, a sullen lot, and Smoke told them to head out for the ranch.
A hand hollered for Cord to come out long before Smoke and Beans entered the front yard. “Stay in the house,” Cord told his wife and daughter. “I don’t want any of you to see this.”
Beans stayed in the saddle, a Winchester .44 across his saddle horn. Smoke untied the ropes and slung Jack Waters over his shoulder, and Jack was not a small man. He walked across the lawn and dumped the body on the ground, by Cord’s feet.
Cord was livid, his face flushed and the veins in his neck standing out like ropes. He was breathing like an enraged bull.
“We caught Jack and these other hands on Box T Range, rustling cattle. Now you know the law out here, Cord: we were within our rights to hang every one of them. But I gave them a chance to ride on. Waters decided to drag iron.”
Cord nodded his head, not trusting his voice to speak.
“Now, Cord,” Smoke told him, “I don’t care if you and Hanks fight until you kill each other. I don’t think either of you remember what it is you’re fighting about. But the war against the Box T is over. Fae and Parnell Jensen have no interest in your war, and nothing to do with it.
Smoke’s last three words cracked like whips; several hardnosed punchers winced at the sound.
“You all through flappin’ your mouth, Jensen?” Cord asked.
“No. I want all the cattle belonging to Fae and Parnell Jensen rounded up and returned. I m not saying that your hands ran them all off. I’m sure Hanks and his boys had a hand in it, too. And I’ll be paying him a visit shortly. Get them rounded up and back on Box T Range.”
“And if I don’t—not saying I have them, mind you?”
Smoke’s smile was not pretty. “You ever heard of Louis Longmont, McCorkle?”
