“You ready?” Bob asked. “I been ready.”
Smoke and Bob started walking, their spurs softly jingling and their boots kicking up small pockets of dust with each step toward showdown.
“You boys watch this,” Lanny told the others. “I doubt they’s many of you ever seen Jensen in action. Don’t make no mistakes about him. He’s the fastest I ever seen. Some of you may want to change your minds about stayin’ once you seen him.”
“I do not have to watch him,” Diego boasted. “I am better.” He knocked back a shot of whiskey.
Several of the others in the saloon agreed.
Lanny smiled at their arrogance. Lanny might be many things, but he was not arrogant when it came to facing Smoke Jensen. He did not feel he was better than Smoke, but he did feel he was as good. When the time came for them to meet, as he knew it would, it would all come down to that first well-placed shot. Lanny knew that he would probably take lead when he faced Smoke, therefore he would delay facing him as long as possible.
“You shoulda heard that punk squall when we laid that hot runnin’ iron agin him!” Thomas yelled over the closing distance. “He jerked and hollered like a baby. Squalled and bawled like a calf.”
Neither Smoke nor Bob offered any comment in reply.
The loud silence and the artificial inner brightness consumed them both.
There was less than fifty feet between them when Rose made his move. He never even cleared leather. None of the four managed to get clear of leather before they began dancing and jerking under the impact of .44 slugs. Thomas took two .44 slugs in the heart and died on his feet. He sat down in the dirt, on his knees, his empty hands dangling in the bloody dirt.
Bob was nearly as fast as Smoke. His .44 Remington barked again and Stanford was turned halfway around, hit in the stomach and side just as Cliff experienced twin hammer-blows to his chest from Smoke’s Colt and his world began to dim. He fell to the dirt in a slack heap, seemingly powerless to do anything except cry out for his mother. He was still hollering for her when he died, the word frozen in time and space.
“Jesus Christ!” a gunslick spoke from the saloon window. He picked up his hat from the table and walked out the back door. He had a brother over in the Dakotas and concluded that this was just a dandy time to go see how his brother and his family was getting along. Hell would be better than this place.
Smoke and Bob turned and walked to the Pussycat, reloading as they walked. Inside the coolness of the saloon, they ordered beer and sat down at a table, with a clear view of the street.
Neither of them spoke for several minutes. When the barkeep had brought their pitcher of beer and two mugs and returned to his post behind the long bar, Bob picked up his mug and held it out. “For Hatfield,” he said.
“I’ll drink to that,” Smoke said, lifting his mug.
Parnell entered the saloon, walking gingerly, sniffing disdainfully at the beery odor. Smoke waved him over and kicked out a chair for him.
“You want something to drink?” the barkeep called.
“A glass of your best wine would be nice.” Parnell sat down.
“Ain’t got no wine. Beer and whiskey and sodee pop.”
Parnell shook his head and the bartender went back to polishing glasses, muttering under his breath about fancy-pants easterners.
Outside, in the bloody street, the barber and his helper were scurrying about, loading up the bodies. Business certainly had taken a nice turn for the better.
Smoke noticed that Parnell seemed calm enough. “Not your first time to see men die violently, Parnell?”
“No. I’ve seen several shootings out here. All of them as unnecessary as the one I just witnessed.”
“Justice was served,” Smoke told him, after taking a sip of beer.
Parnell ignored that. “Innocent bystanders could have been killed by a stray bullet.”
“That is true,” Smoke acknowledged. “I didn’t say it was the best way to handle matters, only that justice had been served.”
“And now you’ve taken a definite side.”
“If that is the way people wish to view it, yes.”
“I have a good notion to notify the army about this matter.”
“And you think they’d do what, Parnell? Send a company in to keep watch? Forget it. The army’s strung out too thin as it is in the West. And they’d tell you that this is a civilian matter.”
“What you’re saying is that this ... ugly boil on the face of civilization must erupt before it begins the healing process?”
“That’s one way of putting it, yes. Dooley Hanks has gone around the bend, Parnell. I suspect he was always borderline nuts. The beating and rape of his daughter tipped him the rest of the way. He’s insane. And he’s making a mistake in trusting those gunslicks he’s hired. That bunch can turn on a man faster than a lightning bolt.”
“And McCorkle?”
“Same with that bunch he’s got. Only difference is, Cord knows it. He’s tried to make peace with Hanks ... over the past few weeks. Hanks isn’t having any of it. Cord had no choice but to hire more gunnies.”
“And now ... ?”
“We wait.”
