Silver Jim laughed. “Oh, it will be.” He jerked his thumb toward the hills. “For them out there.”
Twenty-Six
The sky darkened and lightning began dancing around the high mountains of the Little Belt, thunder rolling ominously. Then the sky opened and began dumping torrents of rain. With his rifle slung over his shoulder with a strap, hanging barrel down, and his buckskin shirt covering his six-guns and a long-bladed Bowie knife sheathed, Smoke slipped out into the rain on moccasin-clad feet. He kept low to the ground, utilizing every bit of natural cover he came to. He moved swiftly but carefully and made the timber and brush without drawing a shot.
Once in the brush, he paused, studying every area in his field of vision before moving out. He had shifted his long-bladed knife to just behind his right hand .44.
He froze still as a mighty oak at the sound of voices. Clad in buckskins, with the timber dark and gloomy as twilight, Smoke would be hard to spot unless he was right on top of a man.
And he was just about was!
“I shore wants me a crack at that Sandi McCorkle,” the voice came to him very clear, despite the driving rain and gusts of wind.
“We’ll use all them pretty gals ’fore we kill them,” a second voice was added. “You see anything movin’ down yonder?”
“Naw. They all shet up in the buildings.”
“I be back, Tabor. I got to ...” His words were drowned out by a clap of thunder.... Must have been somethang I et.”
Slowly Smoke sank down behind a bush as a red-and-white checkered shirt stood and began moving toward him. The pair must be Tabor and Park. Two thoroughly tough men. When Park passed the bush, Smoke rose up like a brown fog. His Bowie in his right hand. He separated Park’s head from his shoulders with one hard slash, catching the headless body before it could come crashing to the ground and alert Tabor.
Easing the body to the wet earth, Smoke picked up the head and placed it in a gunnybag he’d tucked behind his belt.
Then he went looking for Tabor.
Circling around to come in behind the Oklahoma outlaw, Smoke laid his bloody-bottomed sack down on a rock and Injuned up to Tabor, coming in slowly and making no sound.
Tabor never knew what happened. The big-bladed and heavy knife flashed in the stormy light and another head plopped to the earth. That went in the sack with Park’s head.
Smoke moved on through the rain and spots of fog that clung low to the ground, swirling around his moccasined feet, as silent as his footsteps.
Someone very close to him began firing—not at Smoke, for at the sound of the hammer being eared back, Smoke had bellied on the gound-but at the house. More guns were added to the barrage and Smoke added his .44 to the manmade thunder, his bullet striking a gunman in the head.
“Hey!” a man shouted, his voice just audible over the roar of rifles. “Pete’s hit!” He stood up, an angry look on his face, sure that someone on his side was getting careless.
Smoke shot him between the eyes and the man fell back with a thud that only Smoke could feel as he lay on the ground.
Smoke worked his way back into the timber, climbing up the hill as he moved. Behind a thick stand of timber, he paused for a break and squatted down, the bloody sack beside him. He hadn’t made up his mind what to do with the heads, but an idea was formed.
He ate a biscuit and cupped his hands for a drink of rainwater. He did not have one ounce of remorse or regret for what he was doing. He knew only too well that to fight the lawless, one must get down and wallow in the muck and the crud and the filth with them, using the same tactics, or worse, that they would use against an innocent. To win a battle, one must understand the enemy.
Rested, Smoke moved out, staying above the positions of the outlaws. He circled wide, wanting to hit them at widely separated spots, wanting them to know they had not been alone and had been attacked by someone who had walked among them with the stealth of a ghost.
A hard burst of gunfire came from the house, the bullets hitting the rocks and the rain-soaked earth several hundred feet below Smoke’s position. As the outlaws returned the fire, Smoke leveled his Winchester and counted more coup, his fire covered by the outlaw’s own noise. The lone outlaw-Smoke did not know his name and did not recall ever seeing him before-slumped forward, his rifle sliding from lifeless hands, a bloody hole in the man’s back.
Smoke slipped down to the man’s position and left the bloody bag of heads by the dead man s side. He added his ammunition to that he’d gathered from the others and moved on.
He had planned on sticking the heads up on poles but decided this way would be just as effective.
He continued his circling, which would eventually bring him out on the north end of the ranch complex. He caught just a glimpse of the Hanks boys. Bellying down, he started working his way to their position, freezing log- still as two gunslicks, wearing canvas ponchos, stepped out of the timber and headed in his direction. They were so sure of themselves they were not expecting any trouble and were not checking their surroundings. Smoke could catch only a few of the words that passed between them.
“... Never thought them boys would do it ...”
“... Didn’t like my old man, but I don’t think I’d have had the ... kill him with a shotgun.”
“... Be gettin’ripe layin’ up in that bed ... Sonny pulled the trigger, I reckon.”
“... All three of um’s crazy as a bessy-bug.”
The outlaws moved out of earshot and Smoke lay for a moment, putting some sense into what he’d heard. The Hanks boys had killed their father with a shotgun, probably as he lay sleeping in bed.
Smoke broke off his head-hunting and began making his way back to the ranch. If the news was true, and he
