radius, chances of death were slim. Injury, however, was another matter.
The first blast knocked Dooley out of bed and onto the floor. The second blast in the house went off just as he was getting to his feet, trying to find his boots and hat and gun belt. That blast went off directly over his bedroom and caved in the ceiling, driving the man to his knees and tearing out the button-up back flap in his longhandles. A long splinter impaled itself to the hilt in one cheek of his bare butt, bringing a howl of pain from the man.
One of his sons fell through the huge hole in the ceiling and landed on his father’s bed, collapsing the frame and folding the son up in the feather tick.
“Halp!” Bud hollered. “Git me outta here. Halp!”
Conrad came running, saw the hole in the ceiling too late, and fell squalling, landing on his father, knocking both men even goofier than they were already were.
Outside, Smoke leveled a six-shooter and fired almost point-blank at a gunny dressed in his longhandles, boots, and hat—with a rifle in his hands. Smoke’s slug took the man in the center of the chest and dropped him.
Dagger’s hooves made a mess of the man’s face as Smoke charged toward a knot of gunnies, both his guns blazing, barking and snarling and spitting out lead.
He ran right through and over the gunnies, Dagger’s hooves bringing howls of pain as bones were broken under the steel shoes.
Lujan knee-reined his horse into a mass of confused and badly shaken gunslicks. He fired into the face of one and the man s face was suddenly slick with blood. Turning his horse, Lujan knocked another gunslick sprawling and fired his left hand gun at another, the bullet taking the man in the belly.
Smoke was suddenly at his side, and both men looked around for Beans, spotting him, and with a defiant cry from Lujan’s throat, the two men charged toward the Moab Kid. They circled the Kid, holstering their pistols and pulling Winchesters from the boots. The three of them charged the yard, firing as fast as they could work the levers of their seventeen-shot Winchesters. In the darkness, they could not be sure they hit anything, but as they would later relate, the action sure solved blocked bowel-movement problems any of the gunnies might be suffering from.
The horses from the corral were long gone, just as Lujan had predicted, stampeding in a mad rush and tearing down the corral gates after the explosion of the first bomb.
“Gimme a bomb!” Smoke yelled over the confusion.
At a full gallop, Beans handed him a bomb and Smoke circled the house, screaming like a painted-up Cheyenne, while Lujan and Beans reined up and began laying down a blistering line of fire. Smoke lit the bomb and tossed it in a side window.
“Let’s go!” he yelled.
Screaming like young bucks on the warpath, the three men gave their horses full rein and galloped off into the dusty night. Smoke took one look back and grinned.
Dooley was getting to his feet for the third time when the bomb blew. The blast impacted with Dooley, turning him around and sending him, door, and what was left of his longhandles, right out the bedroom window. Dooley landed right on top of Lanny Ball, the door separating them, both of the men knocked out cold.
“Lemme out of here!” Bud squalled. “Halp! Halp!”
Eighteen
There had been no pursuit. It would take the gunnies hours to round up their horses. But come the dawning, all three men knew the air would be filled with gunsmoke whenever and wherever D-H riders met with Circle Double C men.
Several miles from the house, the men stopped and loosened cinch straps on their horses, letting them rest and blow and have a little water, but not too much; this was no time for a bloated horse.
Smoke, Lujan, and Beans lay bellydown beside the little creek and drank alongside their horses, then sat down on the cool bank and rolled cigarettes, smoking and relaxing and unwinding. They had been very, very lucky this night, and they all knew it.
Suddenly, Beans started laughing and the laughter spread. Soon all three were rolling on the bank, laughing almost hysterically.
Gasping for breath, tears running down their tanned cheeks, the men gripped their sides and sat up, wiping their eyes with shirt sleeves.
“Man,” Beans chuckled, “I never knew them fellers was so ugly. Did you ever see so many skinny legs in all your life?”
“I saw Dooley blown slap out of the house,” Smoke said. “He looked like he was in one piece, but I couldn’t tell for sure. He was on a door, looked like to me. Landed on somebody, but I couldn’t tell who it was,’cept he wasn’t wearing longjohns, had on one of those short-pants lookin’ things some men have taken to wearing. Come to think of it, it did sorta resemble Lanny Ball. He had his guns belted on over his drawers.”
That set them off again, howling and rolling on the ground while their horses looked at the men as if they were a bunch of idiots.
After a few hours’ sleep, Smoke rolled out of his blankets, noting that Lujan and Beans were already up. Smoke washed his face and combed his hair and was on his first cup of bunkhouse coffee—strong enough to warp a spoon—when Cord came in.
“I just got the word,” the rancher said. “You and the boys played Billy-Hell last night over to the D-H. Doc Adair was rolled out about three this morning. So far there’s four dead and two wounded who ain’t gonna make it. Several busted arms and legs and heads. Dooley took a six-inch-long splinter in one side of his butt. Adair said the man has gone slap-dab nuts. Just sent off a wire to a cattle buyer to sell off a thousand head for money to hire more gunslicks ... or rather, he sent someone in to send the wire. Dooley can’t sit a saddle just yet.” Try as he did, Cord could not contain his smile.
“Hell, Cord,” Smoke complained. “There
“Dad Estes,” Cord said, his smile fading.
