“Of course, I have! What’s he have to do with any of this?”
“He’s an old friend of mine, Cord. We stood shoulder to shoulder several years back and cleaned up Fontana. Then last year, he rode with me to New Hampshire ... you probably read about that.”
Cord nodded his head curtly.
“He’s one of the wealthiest men west of the Mississippi, Cord. And he loves a good fight. He wouldn’t blink an eye to spend a couple of hundred thousand putting together an army to come in here and wipe your nose on a porcupine’s backside.”
From in the house, Smoke heard a young woman’s laughter and an older woman telling her to shush!
The truth was, Louis was in Europe on an extended vacation and Smoke knew it. But sometimes a good bluff wins the pot.
Cord had money, but nothing to compare with Louis Longmont ... and he also knew that Smoke had married into a a great deal of money and was wealthy in his own right. He sighed heavily.
“I can’t speak for Hanks, Jensen. You’ll have to face him yourself. But as for me and mine... OK, we’ll leave the Box T alone. I don’t have their cattle. I’m not a rustler. My boys just scattered them. But I’m damned if I’ll help you round them up. You can come on my range and look; any wearing the Box T brand, take them.”
Smoke nodded and stuck out his hand. Cord looked startled for a few seconds, then a very grudging smile cut his face. He took the hand and gripped it briefly.
Smoke turned and mounted up. “See you.”
Beans and Smoke swung around and rode slowly away from the ranch house.
“My back is itchy,” Beans said.
“So is mine. But I think he’s a man of his word. I don’t think he’ll go back on his word. Least I’m a poor judge of character if he does.”
They rode on. Beans said, “My goodness me. I plumb forgot to give them boys their guns back.”
“ Well, shame on you, Beans. I hate to see them go to waste. We’ll just take them back to Fae and she can keep them in reserve. Never know when she might need them. You can swap them for some bear-sign.”
“What about hands?”
“We got to hire some, that’s for sure. Fae’s got to sell off some cattle for working capital. She told me so. So we’ve got to hire some boys.”
“Durned if I know where. And there’s still the matter of Dooley Hanks.”
Fae would hire some hands, sooner than Smoke thought. But they would be about fifty years from boyhood.
Six
They made camp early that day, after rounding np about fifty head of Box T cattle they found on Cord’s place. They put them in a coulee and blocked the entrance with brush. They would push them closer to home in the morning.
They suppered on the food Fae had fixed for them and were rolled up in their blankets just after dark.
Smoke was the first one up, several hours before dawn. He coaxed life back into the coals by adding dry grass and twigs, and Beans sat up when the smell of coffee got too much for him to take. Beans threw off his blankets, put on his hat, pulled on his boots, and buckled on his gun belt. He squatted by the fire beside Smoke, warming his hands and waiting for the cowboy coffee to boil.
“Town life’s done spoiled me,” Beans griped. “Man gets used to shavin’ and bathin’ every day, and puttin’ on clean clothes every mornin’. It ain’t natural.”
Smoke grinned and handed him a small sack.
“What’s in here?”
“Bear-sign I hid from you yesterday.”
Beans quit his grousing and went to eating while Smoke sliced the bacon and cut up some potatoes, adding a bit of wild onion for flavor.
“The problem of hands has got me worried,” Beans admitted, slurping on a cup of coffee. “Ain’t no cowboy in his right mind gonna go to work for the Box T with all this trouble starin’ him in the face.”
“I know.” Smoke ladled out the food onto tin plates. “But I think I know one who just might do it, for thirty and found, just for the pure hell of it. I’ll talk to him this afternoon if I can. ”You got a lot of damn nerve, Jensen,” the foreman of the D-H spread told him. ”Mister Hanks don’t wanna see you.”
“You tell him I’m here and I’ll wait just as long as it takes.”
Gage stared into the cold eyes of the most respected and feared gunfighter in all the West. He sighed, shook his head, and finally said, “All right, mister. I’ll tell him you insist on seein’ him. But I ain’t givin’ no guarantees.”
Hanks and McCorkle could pass for brothers, Smoke thought, as he squatted under the shade of a tree and watched as Dooley left the house and walked toward him. Both of them square-built men. Solid. Both of them in their early to mid forties.
Dooley did not offer to shake hands. “Speak your piece, Jensen.”
Smoke repeated what he’d told Cord, almost word for word, including the bit about Louis Longmont. Grim- faced, Hanks stood and took it. He didn’t like it, but he took it.
“Maybe I’ll just wait you out, Jensen.”
“Maybe. But I doubt it. You’re paying fighting wages, Dooley. To a lot of people. You’re like most cattlemen, Dooley: you’re worth a lot of money, but most of it is standing on four hooves. Ready scratch is hard to come up
