Five of them. He had heard their names called out. Woody, Dalton, Lodi, Sutton, and Lanny Ball.
The outlaws had tried to bait Smoke, cursing him, voicing what they were going to do to his wife and kids. Filthy things, inhuman things. Smoke lay under the jumble of logs and kept his thoughts to himself. If he had even whispered them, the white-hot fury might have set the logs blazing.
After more than two hours, Sutton called, “I think he’s gone, Lanny. I think he suckered us and pulled out and set up a new position.”
“I think he’s right, Lanny,” Woody yelled. “You know his temper; all them things we been sayin’ about his wife would have brought him out like a bear.”
Sutton abruptly stood up for a few seconds, then dropped to the ground. Lodi did the same, followed by the rest of them, and cautiously, tentatively, the outlaws stood up and began walking toward each other. Lanny was the last one to stand up.
He began cursing the rotten luck, the country, the gods of fate, and most of all, he cussed Smoke Hensen.
Smoke emptied his rifle into Lodi, Sutton, Dalton, and Woody, knocking them spinning and screaming to the littered earth.
Lanny hit the ground.
Smoke had dragged Danny’s fancy rifle to him with a stick. Dropping his empty Winchester, Smoke ended any life that might have been left in the quartet of scum, then backed out of his hiding place and stretched his cramped muscles, protected by the huge pile of logs.
Smoke carefully checked his Colts, wiping them free of dirt with a bandana. “All right, Lanny!” he called. “You made your brags back in Gibson. Let’s end this madness right here and now. Let’s see if you’ve got the guts to face a man. You sure have been real brave telling me what you planned to do with my wife.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that to no good woman, Jensen. That was just to make you mad.”
“You succeeded, Lanny.”
“Let’s call it off, Smoke. I’ll ride away and you won’t see me no more.”
“All right, Lanny. You just do that little thing.”
“You mean it?”
“I’m tired of this killing, Lanny. Mount up and get gone.”
“You’ll back-shoot me, Jensen! ” There was real fear in the outlaw’s voice.
“No, Lanny. I’ll leave that to punks like you.”
Lanny cursed him.
“I’m steppin’ out, Lanny.” This was to be no fast draw encounter. Smoke knew Lanny was going to try to kill him any way he could. Smoke’s hands were full of Colts, the hammers eared back.
At the edge of the piled-up logs, Smoke started running. Lanny fired, missed, and fired again, the bullet burning Smoke’s side. He turned and began pulling and cocking, a thunderous roar in the savage blow-down.
Lanny took half a dozen rounds in his upper torso, the force of the striking slugs driving him back against a huge old stump. He tried to lift his guns. He could not. His strength was gone. Smoke walked over to him, reloading as he walked.
“You ain’t human,” Lanny coughed up the words. “You a devil.”
“You got any kin you want me to write?”
“You go to hell!”
Smoke turned his back to the man and walked away.
“You ain’t gonna leave me to die alone, is you?” Lanny called feebly.
Smoke stopped. With a sigh, he turned around and walked back to the outlaw’s side. Lanny looked up as the light in his eyes began to dim. Smoke rolled a cigarette, lit it, and stuck it between Lanny’s lips.
“Thanks.”
Smoke waited. The cigarette fell out of Lanny’s lips. Smoke picked it up and ground it out under the heel of his boot.
“Least I can go out knowin’ it wasn’t no two-bit tinhorn who done me in,” were Lanny’s last words.
Smoke returned to the natural corral and saddled up. He wanted no more of this blown-down place of death. And from Dagger’s actions, the big horse didn’t either. Smoke rode out of the Medicine Bow Range and took the easy way south. He crossed the Laramie River and made camp on the shores of Lake Hattie.
He crossed over into Colorado the next morning and felt he was in home territory, even though he had many, many hard miles yet to go.
He followed the Laramie down into the Medicine Bow Mountains, riding easy, but still with the smell of sudden and violent death seeming to cling to him. He wanted no more of it. As he rode he toyed with the idea of selling out and pulling out.
He rejected that almost as quickly as the thought sprang into his brain.
The Sugarloaf belonged to Smoke and Sally Jensen. Fast gun he might be, but he wasn’t going to let his unwanted reputation drive him away. If there were punks and crud in the world who felt they just had to try him ... well, that was their problem. He had never sought the name of Gunfighter; but damned if he was going to back down, either.
The West was changing rapidly. Oh, there would be a few more wild and woolly years, but probably no more than a decade before law and order settled in. Law and order was changing everything and everybody west of the
