Walt and Alice were already climbing up the steps to the porch. Shorty DePaul was there, standing by the door, collecting invitations, looking very uncomfortable in his stiff new black suit.
Smoke grinned at him. “You do look awfully cute, Shorty.”
Shorty told Smoke where to go, how to get there, and what to do with his comment along the way.
“Feller’s plumb testy, ain’t he?” Rusty said.
Shorty had a few words for Rusty, too.
Smoke and Rusty followed Walt and Alice inside the mansion.
It was a grand place, Smoke noted, no doubt at all about that. Imported chandeliers and French furniture and all sorts of knickknacks and assorted gewgaws scattered all over the place.
“What’s all this stuff good for anyways?” Rusty questioned.
“Looks junky and sissy to me.”
Smoke grinned at him. “Your mind will change after you’re married,” Rusty blushed at the thought.
The punk gunfighter who called himself the Pecos Kid walked up, carrying a tray of little crackers and a bowl of dark-looking stuff. “Gentlemen,” he said, speaking the word as if it hurt his mouth. “Some whore-derves?”
“What the hell is a whore-derve!” Rusty said, leaning over to take a sniff.
“That is Russian caviar,” Smoke told him. “Louis Longmont used to keep some on hand at all times. Try it, it’s good.”
“How do you eat it?”
“Take a cracker and use that little spoon to dab some caviar on the cracker.”
Rusty spooned a glob on a cracker. “Well, ain’t I the fancy one, though? My, my.” Rusty took a nibble and grimaced. “You got any ket-chup, Pecos?”
Smoke thought Rusty and Pecos were going to tie up right then and there, and if they had, Rusty would have shoved that whole bowl of caviar up the nose of the Pecos Kid. He pulled Rusty away and told him to behave himself; they had a more important mission that came first.
One of the ranchers who had been in the trading post when Matthew shot it out with Smith walked up to him. His face was ashen.
“What’s the matter with you?” Smoke asked.
“Have you seen Jud?”
“No.”
“He’s walking around with a crown on his head and all dressed in a fur robe. He’s carryin’ a stick that looks like a good-sized saplin’. The man is insane!”
That’s what some folks have been trying to tell you people for months. Don’t you people even care that he took Doreen by force and is holding her here against “I heard that but I didn’t believe it.” He sighed. “All right, gunfighter. I believed it. But what could I have done?”
“Join in the fight against Jud?”
But the man shook his head. “No. He has too many hired guns on the payroll. He’d roll over us like stepping on a bug.”
There was contempt in his eyes and scorn in his voice when Smoke replied. “Do you look under the bed at night for ghosts and goblins before you blow out the lamp?”
The rancher flushed but wisely contained his sudden anger and kept his mouth closed.
Smoke turned his back to the man and then stopped short when he spotted Jud. Rusty was standing with his mouth open, staring at the man as if he was sure his eyes were deceiving him.
Jud was quite a sight. He looked to Smoke like he’d just stepped out of a Russian opera. Jud cut his eyes to Smoke and hate filled them. He snarled at Smoke and walked away.
“You seen Doreen, Smoke?” Rusty said.
“No. I expect she’ll be making her entrance just a tad after six. That’s the way the fashionable ladies do it, so I been told.”
“Why? Hell, she can tell time, cain’t she? She ain’t stupid.”
“No. I mean, yes, she can tell time. No, she isn’t stupid. Ladies do that so all the people will be present to look at them when they make their entrance.”
“I shore don’t know much about wimmen.”
“Rusty, after you’ve been married for five or six years, you’ll discover something.”
“What?”
“That you don’t know any more about women after all those years than you did when you got married.” “Well, ain’t that just something to look forward to?”
Smoke laughed at him and moved on, walking through the lower part of the mansion. He spoke to several of the farmers that he knew. Ralph’s father took his arm.
“I don’t know what you got planned in the way of gettin’ Miss Doreen out of this place, Smoke. But I’m with you all the way. Me, and about a half dozen other men.”
Smoke started to tell him to stay out of it, then changed his mind. Somebody had to be the first ones to stand
