hammer at the man’s midsection with a battering ram combination of left’s and right’s. Smoke both felt and heard ribs break under the hammering. Jason’s eyes rolled back in his head and Smoke let him fall to the floor.
“You ought to go on and kill him, Smoke,” a man called from the crowd. “He ain’t never gonna forget this. Someday he’ll come after you.”
“I know,” Smoke panted the words. “But I’m tired of the killing. I don’t want to kill anybody else. Ever!”
“We’ll haul him over to the doc’s office for you, Smoke,” a man volunteered. “He ain’t gonna be ridin’ for a long time to come. Not with all them busted ribs. And I heard ’em pop and crack.”
“I’m obliged to you.” He looked at the bartender. “The tub around back.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get a boy busy with the hot water right away.”
“Keep anybody else off me, will you?”
Several men stood up. “Let us get our rifles, Mister Jensen. You can bathe in peace.”
“I appreciate it.” He looked down at Jason. “You should have kept ridin‘, Jason. You can’t say I didn’t give you a chance.’
Thirty-Two
Dagger was ready to go when Smoke saddled up the next morning. Not yet light in the east. He wanted to get gone, get on the trail home. He would stop down the road a ways and fix him some bacon to go with the bread he’d bought the night before. But he would have liked some coffee. He looked toward the town’s only cafe. Still dark. Smoke shrugged and pointed Dagger’s nose south. He had his small coffeepot and plenty of coffee. No trouble to fix coffee when he fixed the bacon.
About an hour after dawn, he stopped by a creek and made his fire. He fixed his bacon and coffee and sopped out the pan with the bread, then poured a cup of coffee and rolled a cigarette.
The creek made happy little sounds as it bubbled on, and the shade was cool. Smoke was reluctant to leave, but knew he’d better put some miles behind Dagger’s tail.
Jason’s words returned to him: “They scattered all around, from here to Colorado, just waitin’ for a shot at you.”
He thought back: Had there been a telegraph wire at that little town? He didn’t think so. And where would the nearest wire office be? One over at Laramie, for sure. But by the time he could ride over there and wire Sally to be on the lookout, he could be almost home.
He really wasn’t that worried. The Sugarloaf was very isolated, and unless a man knew the trails well, they’d never come in from the back range. If any strangers tried the road, the neighbors would be instantly alerted.
Smoke made sure his fire was out, packed up his kit, and climbed into the saddle. He’d make the northermost edge of the Medicine Bow Range by nightfall. And he’d stay in the timber into Colorado, doing his best to avoid contact with any of the outlaws. Ol’ Preacher had burned those trails into his head as a boy. He could travel them in his sleep.
Nightfall found him on the ridges of the Medicine Bow Range. It had been slow going, for he followed no well- traveled trails, staying with the trails in his mind.
He made his camp, ate his supper, and put out his fire, not wanting the fire’s glow to attract any unwanted gunslicks during the night. Smoke rolled up in his blankets, a ground sheet under him and his saddle for a pillow.
He was up before dawn and built a hat-size fire for his bacon and coffee. For some reason that he could not fathom, he had a case of the jumps this morning. Looking over at Dagger, he could see that the big horse was also uneasy, occasionally walling his eyes and laying his ears back.
Smoke ate his breakfast and drank his coffee, dousing the fire. He filled his canteens from a nearby crick and let Dagger drink. Smoke checked his guns, wiping them free of dust and then loaded up the chamber under the hammer, usually kept empty. He checked his Winchester. Full.
Then, on impulse, he dug out a bandoleer from the saddlebags and filled all the loops, then added a handful of cartridges to his jacket pocket.
He would be riding into wild and beautiful country this day and the next, with some of the mountains shooting up past twelve thousand feet. It was also no country to be caught up high in a thunderstorm, with lightning dancing all around you. That made a fellow feel very small and vulnerable.
And it could also cook you like a fried egg.
The farther he rode into the dark timber, the more edgy he became. Twice he stopped and dismounted, checking all around him on foot. He could find nothing to get alarmed about, but all his senses were working hard.
Had he made a mistake by taking to the timber? The outlaws knew—indeed, half the reading population of the States knew—that Smoke had been raised in the mountains by Preacher, and he felt more at home in the mountains.
He pressed on, slowly.
He came to a blow-down, a savage-appearing area of about thirty or forty acres—maybe more than that—that had suffered a ravaging storm, probably a twister touch-down. It was a dark and ominous-looking place, with the trees torn and ripped from the earth, piled on top of each other and standing on end and lying every which-a-way possible.
He had dismounted upon sighting the area, and the thought came to him that maybe he’d better picket Dagger and just wait here for a day, maybe two or three if it came to that. He did not understand the thought, but his hunches had saved his life before.
He found a natural corral, maybe fifty by fifty feet, with three sides protected by piled-up trees, the front easily blocked by brush.
He led Dagger into the area and stripped the saddle from him.
There was plenty of grass inside the nature-provided corral, so he covered the entrance with brush and limbs and left Dagger rolling; soon he would be grazing. There were pools where rainwater had collected, and that would
