Dooley saddled a horse and stuffed the saddlebags full of supplies. He hung the canteen and bag on the saddle horn and took off into the timber of the Little Belt Mountains. When his boys come back, they’d find that what they’d shot was only a bed, and they’d come lookin’ to kill their pa.
“Come on, you miserable whelps,” Dooley muttered, talking to his horse. His best horse. His favorite horse. Dooley could sleep in the saddle and his horse would never falter. The horse also knew where Dooley was going as soon as Dooley guided the way toward the old Indian trail that wound in a circuitous route to the base of Old Baldy, the highest peak in the Little Belts, which ran for some forty miles from southeast of Great Falls to the Musselshell. Dooley and his horse had come here often, just to think-to let the hate fester over the past few years.
“Goddamn you, Cord,” Dooley muttered. “You heped take my woman from me and now you done turned my sons agin me. I’m a-gonna kill ever’ one of you. Ever’ stinkin’ one of you!”
“Here they come!” the shout from Smoke was only seconds before the mass of riders entered the Circle Double C ranch complex. But it was enough to roust everybody out of bed.
Smoke’s shout was followed by a war whoop from Hardrock that echoed across the draws and hollows and grazing land of the ranch.
“Hep me clost to that winder.” Charlie told Parnell. “I’ll take it from there. I can shoot jist as good with my left hand as I can with my right.”
Across the hall, Beans told Sandi, “Get some help and shove my bed to that window and hand me my rifle. Then you and Rita get on the floor.”
The girls positioned the bed and reached for their own rifles.
“Cain’t you wimmin take orders?” Beans asked over the thunder of hooves.
“We stand by our men,” Sandi told him. “Now shut up and shoot!”
“Yes, dear,” Beans said, just as a bullet from an outlaw’s gun knocked a pane of glass out of the window.
Before Beans could sight the rider in, Parnell’s sawed-off blaster roared, the charge lifting the man out of the saddle and hurling him to the ground, his chest and throat a bloody mess.
“Give ’em hell, baby!” Rita shouted her approval.
“You curb that vulgar tongue, woman!” Parnell glared at her.
“Yes, dear,” Rita muttered.
From the bunkhouse, Ring was deadly with a rifle, knocking two out of the saddle before a round misfired and jammed the action. Ring turned just as a man was crawling in through a rear window. Reversing the Winchester, Ring used the rifle like a club and smashed the outlaw on the forehead with the butt. The sound of a skull cracking was evident even over the hard lash of gunfire. Ring grabbed up the man’s Colts and moved to a window. He wasn t very good with a pistol, but he succeeded in filling the night with a lot of hot lead and made the evening very uncomfortable for a number of outlaws.
Smoke and the Reno Kid had grabbed up rifles and bandoleers of ammunition and raced to the barn and corral, knowing that if the outlaws succeeded in stampeding their horses they were doomed. Reno climbed into the loft, with Jake and Corgill. Fitz, Willie, and 01’Cook stayed below, while Smoke and Gage remained outside, behind watering troughs by the corral.
The outlaw, Hartley, who was wanted for murder down in the Oklahoma Nations, tried to rope the corral gates and bring them down. Smoke leveled his pistol and the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Running to the man, Smoke jerked him off his horse and smashed the man in the face with a balled right fist, then a left to the man’s jaw. He jerked Hartley’s pistol from leather and rapped the outlaw on the head-bone with it. Hartley lay still in the dirt.
Smoke stuck both of Hartley’s pistols behind his belt, reloaded his own .44’s, and climbed onto Hartley’s horse, a big dun. He would see how the outlaws liked the fight taken to them.
Smoke charged right into the middle of the confusing dust-filled fray. He saw the young punk gunslick Twain and shot him out of the saddle, one of Twain’s boots caught in the stirrup. Twain’s horse bolted, dragging the wounded and screaming young punk across the yard. His screaming stopped when his head impacted against a tree stump.
Smoke stayed low in the saddle, offering as little target as possible for the outlaws’ guns. He slammed the horse’s shoulder into an outlaw’s leg. The gunny screamed in pain from his bruised leg and then began screaming in earnest as the horse lost its balance and fell on him, breaking the outlaw’s other leg. The horse scrambled to its feet, the steel-shod hooves ripping and tearing flesh and breaking the outlaw’s bones.
Cat Jennings rammed his big gelding into Smoke’s horse and knocked Smoke to the ground. Rolling away from the hooves of the panicked horse, Smoke jumped behind a startled outlaw, stuck a pistol into the man s side, and pulled the trigger. Shoving the wounded man out of the saddle, Smoke slipped into the saddle, grabbed up the reins, and put his spurs to the animal’s sides, turning the horse, trying to get a shot at Cat.
But the man was as elusive and quick as his name implied, fading into the milling confusion and churning dust. Smoke leveled his pistol at Ben Sabler and missed him clean as the man wheeled his horse. The bullet slammed into another outlaw. The outlaw was hard-hit, but managed to stay in the saddle and gallop out of the fight.
“Back! Back!” Lanny Ball screamed, his voice faint in the booming and spark-filled night. “Fall back and surround the place.”
Smoke tried to angle for a shot at Lanny and failed. Jumping off his horse, Smoke rolled behind a tree in the front yard of the main house, and with a .44 in each hand, emptied the guns into the backs of the fast-retreating outlaws. He saw several jerk in their saddles as hot lead tore into flesh and one man fell, the back of his head bloody.
Smoke ran to the house. Jumping on the front porch, he saw the body of Willie, draped over the porch railing. On the other side of the porch, Holman was sprawled, a bloody hole in his forehead.
“Damn!” Smoke cursed, just as Cord pushed open the screen door and stepped out.
Cord’s face was grim as he looked at the body of W illie. “Been with me a long time,” the rancher said. “He was a good hand. Loyal to the end.”
“Man can’t ask for a better epitaph,” Smoke said. “Cord, you take the barn and I’ll run to the bunkhouse. Tell the men to fortify their positions and fill up every canteen and bucket they can find.” He cut his eyes as Liz and Alice
