Cord heard it. “I’ve got some lumber out in the shed. Rock, Troy, you boys fetch the lumber while we get some nails and hammers. We’ll board up windows we’re not shooting from. On both levels of the house.” He began ripping down curtains and drapes to lessen the fire hazard.
As the sounds of the muffled hammering began drifting to the outlaws on the ridges, the gunfire picked up, forcing the men to work more carefully, without exposing themselves. Those inside the house didn’t have to worry about breaking a window with all the hammering; all the windows were already shot out.
Those windows not being used as shooters’ positions boarded up, Smoke went to find Fae.
He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “I’m headin’ back outside, Fae. I like to be outside when the action goes down.” He looked at the other women. “You ladies watch your step this night. We’ll see you all in a couple of days.”
He shook hands with the men who were leaving that night. “You boys enjoy your stroll. As soon as it gets full dark, take off. And good luck.”
He walked back into the living room, leaving Cord to say his goodbyes to wife and daughter.
“I’m going to pull Ring and Hardrock, Silver Jim, and Pistol in the house with you and Cord and the boys,” he told Reno. “The rest of us will be in the bunkhouse and the barn.” He looked outside. “Be dark shortly. I’m heading out yonder. The others will be showing up one at a time about five minutes apart. Good luck tonight. ”
“Luck to you, Smoke.”
There was nothing left to say. The two famed gunhandlers looked at each other, nodded their heads, and Smoke slipped out onto the stone and wood porch. He knew the chances of his being seen from several hundred yards away were practically nonexistent, but he stayed low from force of habit.
Smoke darted off the porch and to a tree in the yard, then over the fence and a foot race to the corral. Then, as he got set for the run to the bunkhouse, a cold voice spoke from behind him.
“I’ll be known as the man who kilt Smoke Jensen. Die, you meddlin’ bastard!”
Twenty-Seven
Smoke threw himself to one side just as the pistol roared. He could feel the heat of the bullet as it passed his arm. He twisted his body in the air and hit the muddy ground with a .44 in his hand, the muzzle spitting fire and smoke and lead.
Hartley took the first slug in his chest and Smoke fired again, the force of his landing lifting his gun hand, the second slug striking the gunhawk in the throat. Hartley, with a knot plainly visible on his rain-slicked head, the hair matted down, leaned up against a corral rail and lifted his six-gun, savage all the way to the grave.
A .44-.40 roared from the bunkhouse and Spring’s aim was true. Hartley’s head ballooned from the impact of the slug and he pitched forward, into a horse trough.
Riflemen from the ridges and the hills opened up, not really sure what they were shooting at, but filling the air with lead. Smoke lay where he was, as safe there as anywhere in the open expanse between house and bunkhouse. When the fire from the outlaws slacked up, Smoke scrambled to the bunkhouse and dove headfirst into the building, rolling to his feet.
“Thanks, Spring,” he told the old hand. “Hartley must have laid out there in the corral all covered up with hay since I conked him on the noggin last night.”
“Hell, he was dead on his feet when I shot him,” the old hand said. “I just like some in’shorence in cases like that.”
He poured Smoke a cup of coffee and returned to his post by a window.
Smoke drank the strong hot brew and laid out the plans. One by one, the old gunfighters began leaving the bunkhouse, heading for the house. Ring was the last to stand in the door. He smiled at Smoke.
“You always bring this much action with you when you journey, Smoke?”
“It sure seems like it, Ring,” Smoke said with a laugh.
The big man returned the laugh and then slipped out into the rapidly darkening day, the rain still coming down in silver sheets.
“I got to thinkin’ a while back,” Spring said. “After Ring asked me how it was nobody come to our aid. Smoke, they’s sometimes two, three weeks go by don’t none of us go to town. Ain’t nobody comin’ out here.”
“And even if they did come out, what could they do? Nothing,” he ansered his own question. “Except get themselves killed. It’d take a full company of Army troops to rout those outlaws.”
There had been no fire from the ridges, so the men had safely made the house. Darkness had pushed aside the day. Those walking out would be leaving shortly, and they had a good chance of making it, for the move would not be one those on the ridges would be expecting. To try to bust out on horseback, yes. But not by walking out. Not in this weather.
When the wet darkness had covered the land for almost an hour, Smoke turned to Spring. He could just see him in the gloom of the bunkhouse.
“I don’t think they’ll try us on horseback this night, Spring. They’ll be coming in on foot.”
“You right,” Donny whispered from the far end of the bunkhouse. “And here they come. You want me to drop him now or let them come closer?”
“Let them come on. This rain makes for deceptive shooting. ”
A torch was lighted, its flash a jumping flame in the windswept darkness. The torch bobbed as the carrier ran toward the house. From the house, a rifle crashed. The torch stopped and fell to the soaked earth, slowly going out as its carrier died.
All around the compound, muzzle flashes pocked the gloom, and the dampness kept the gunsmoke low to the ground as an arid fog.
A kerosene bomb slammed against the side of the bunkhouse, the whiskey bottle containing the liquid smashing. The flames were slow to spread and those that did were quickly put out by the driving rain. Spring’s
