With a curse, Blackjack got to his boots just in time to receive a left and right combination to both sides of his jaw that staggered and stunned the man. He fell back against the bar planking.
Smoke pinned him there and went to work, smashing at the man with big work-hardened fists. Smoke flattened Blackjack’s nose and ruined his mouth. One of the man’s ears was swollen and pulpy and the gunfighter’s eyes were
Smoke stepped back and let Blackjack fall to the floor. The man did not move.
Lassiter chose that time to stand up. “By God, Jensen, you’ll not do that to another good man,” and went for his piece.
Smoke shot him.
He drew, cocked, and fired in less than a heartbeat, his slug striking Lassiter in the belly and knocking him back against a table, splitting the wood right down the middle. Lassiter was drawing iron as he was falling and managed to get off one shot, which dead-centered the painting of a nude female hanging on the wall behind the bar.
“Why, you sorry son!” Bendel hollered. “I paid good money for that.” He came up with a shotgun just as one of the bounty hunters was dragging iron.
Lassiter lifted his six gun as blood was leaking from his mouth.
Smoke shot him between the eyes just as Bendel’s shotgun roared, the buckshot creating a terrible mess at close range. The tom-apart bounty hunter was literally lifted off his boots and flung across the room. He bounced off a wall and fell to the floor, lying still in a bloody mess. Two of his buddies cursed and then tossed good sense and caution to the gods of fate as they grabbed for their six guns.
Bendel gave one the other barrel just as Smoke shifted the muzzle of his Colt and let the .44 bang, the slug taking the second man in the chest and dropping him to his knees.
The lone bounty hunter left alive lifted his hands out from his body and held them wide apart to show that he was out of this affair.
Walt stuck his gray head into the gunsmoke-filled barroom. He held a six gun in his hand, the hammer earred back.
“It’s over,” Smoke told him, just as Blackjack moaned on the floor and tried to sit up.
Smoke jerked the man to his boots and spun him around, so he could see the carnage in the saloon.
Blackjack’s eyes were swollen from the beating he’d just received, but he could see well enough to know that the best thing he could do would be to keep his mouth closed.
“Get on your horse and ride, Blackjack,” Smoke told him. “And if you have any sense at all you’ll keep going and not look back until you’ve cleared a couple of counties.”
Blackjack broke his silence. “Lassiter was a pal of mine, Jensen.”
“Was is right.”
“I’ll not let his death go unavenged.”
“Then you’re a fool. As crazy as Jud Vale.” Smoke shoved him toward the batwings. “Get out of here, Blackjack. If you’re in my sight ten seconds from now I’ll kill you.”
“And stay out of my saloon!” Bendel hollered. “All of you trash that work for the Bar V. I’m telling’ you now; pass the word: I’ll kill the first one of you that pass through those batwings. I’m tired of this.” He leveled his reloaded double-barrel, sawed-off express gun. “Move, damn you!”
Blackjack moved.
Smoke glanced at Walt. “Supplies loaded?”
“All on the wagon.”
“Let’s get back to the ranch. I suddenly got a bad feeling about this day.”
Jackson took one look at Jud Vale and struggled to contain his laughter. At the same time he was fighting to keep from busting out laughing, he was making up his mind about the Bear Lake Fight, as it was being called by some.
Jackson was switching sides.
Jackson was a gunfighter, and a good one, but he had had a bad taste in his mouth about this fight right from the git-go. He just didn’t think it was right to fight women and kids and old men. And now he had heard that Jud Vale and Old Walt were really brothers, and that didn’t set well with him at all. He didn’t have any trouble understanding how brothers could hate each other; he’d seen that many times before. But in this situation, there wasn’t any reason for it. Come to think of it, there wasn’t any reason for any of this, and there damn sure wasn’t even one ounce of reason roaming around in Jud’s crazy head.
And where in the hell did Jud come up with that costume he was struttin’ around in?
Man looked like the fool he really was.
Time to go, Jackson concluded, just about the time the lone hand come staggering in from the gunfight with Cheyenne and the kid.
Jackson listened, then slowly walked to the bunkhouse to get his kit together. He rode out without being noticed. He headed for Box T range, but in a very roundabout way, going by the way of the trading post and stopping in for a drink of whiskey.
That longing for a drink of whiskey just about cost him his life: when he stepped into the saloon he was looking down the barrels of a sawed-off shotgun.
“Whoa!” Jackson said. “I’m friendly, Bendel!”
“Not if you’re ridin’ for the Bar V, you ain’t.”
