Johnny mumbled something.
“You’re diction is atrocious,” Parnell told him. He looked at Smoke and smiled. “My, Cousin, but for a few moments, it was quite exhilarating.”
Smoke grinned and shook his head. “Yeah, it was, Parnell. I’ll stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you anytime, Cousin.”
Mulroony had crawled from behind the bar and waved his photographer in. The man set up his bulky equipment and sprinkled the powder in the flashpan. “Smile, everyone!” he hollered, then popped his shot, adding more smoke to the already eye-smarting air.
Beans had cut his jeans open to inspect the wound, and it was a bad one. “Leg’s busted,” he said tightly. “Looks like I’m out of it.”
The flashpan popped again, the lenses taking in the bloody sprawl of bodies and the line of gunhawks standing against a wall, their hands in the air, their weapons piled on a table.
While Doc Adair tended to Charlie and Beans, Smoke faced the surrendered gunhandlers. His eyes were as cold as chips of ice and his words flint-hard.
“You’re out of it. Get on your horses and ride. If I see any of you in this area again, I’ll kill you! No questions asked. I’ll just shoot you. And no, you don’t pack your truck, you don’t get your guns, you don’t draw your pay—you ride! Now! Move!”
They needed no further instrucitons. They all knew there would be another time, another place, another showdown time. They rushed the batwings and rattled their hocks, leaving in a cloud of dust.
“You tore up my place!” a woman squalled, stepping out of a back room.
“Howdy, Harriet,” Beans called. “Right nice to see you again.
“You!” she hollered. “I might have known it’d be you, Moab.” Her eyes flicked to the Reno Kid. “You back gunhandlin’, Reno?”
“I reckon.”
She looked at Smoke. Took in his rugged good looks and heavy musculature. “Remember me, big boy? ”
“I remember you, Harriet. You were one of the smart ones who left Fontana early.”
“Did you kill Tilden Franklin?”
“I sure did.”
“Man ever deserved killin’, that one did. You gonna run me out of Gibson?”
“I didn’t run you out of Fontana, Harriet.”
“For a fact. See you around, baby.” She turned and pushed through a door.
“He can’t sit a saddle,” Adair said, standing up from working on Beans’s leg. “And I’d rather he didn’t for a few days.” The doctor pointed to Charlie.
“I’ll put some hay in the wagon,” Cal said, and left the saloon.
The undertaker and his helper, both of them trying very hard to keep from smiling, entered the saloon and walked among the dead and dying, pausing at each body to go through the pockets.
“Does I get my guns back?” Johnny pushed the words through mashed lips and broken teeth.
Parnell looked at Smoke. Smoke nodded his head. “Give them to the punk. He’d just find some more. One of us is gonna have to kill him sooner or later.”
The flashpan belched once again.
“What a story this will make!” Horace chortled, rocking back and forth on his feet. “I shall dispatch it immediately to New York City.”
“Do try to be grammatically correct,” Parnell reminded him. Horace gave him a smile. A very thin smile.
Sandi hollered and bawled and carried on something fierce when she saw Beans in the back of the wagon but then brightened up considerably when she realized he’d be laid up for several weeks and she could nurse him.
Reno had checked out of his room and rode back to the Circle Double C with the men. He had strapped on his other Peacemaker and was in the fight to the finish.
Charlie bitched about having to be bedded down in the main house so the ladies could take proper care of his wound. Hardrock told him to shet his mouth and think about what a relief it would be to the others not to have to look at his ugly face for a spell.
“It works both ways,” Charlie popped back, smiling as the ladies fussed over him.
Parnell had taken a slight bullet burn on his left arm. But the way Rita acted a person would have thought he’d been riddled. She insisted on spoon-feeding him some hot soup she fixed-just for him.
“What did we accomplish?” Cord asked Smoke.
“Damn little,” he admitted.“Seems like every time we run off or kill a gunhawk, there’s ten to step up, taking his place.”
Cord added some more numbers in his tally book and shook his head at the growing number of dead and wounded. “Why did the Reno Kid toss in with us, Smoke? Charlie says he’s married, with several children.”
“So am I,” Smoke reminded the man.
Something good did come out of the gunfight inside Harriet’s saloon: many of the hangers-on decided to pull out; the fight was getting too hot for many of the tin-horn and would-be gunfighters. They’d go back to their daddy’s farms and be content to milk the cows and gather the eggs, their guns hanging on a peg.
