“I hate this man,” Doreen said, pointing to Jud. “I would sooner marry a grizzly bear. I planned this whole party so’s Smoke and the man I really love, Rusty, would come and rescue me.”
Rusty was grinning and blushing. He looked like a lit railroad lantern.
“I’m ashamed of you people!” Doreen yelled at the crowd of men and women. “Not a one of you would help Walt and Alice or Smoke and Rusty stand up to this nitwit!” She glared at Jud, standing with his crown tilted to one side of his big head. “To hell with you all!” Doreen shouted.
“Let’s go!” Smoke said, shoving Jud toward the door.
Outside, Doreen hiked up her expensive gown and showed Rusty bare legs as she stepped into the stirrup and mounted up. The cowboy did his best to look away, but the sight was just too tempting. One eye was going one way and the other was on a shapely leg.
“Settle down, Rusty,” Doreen whispered. “Your time is coming. I promise.”
“Have mercy!” Rusty said.
Smoke prodded Jud into the saddle. Jud hiked up his robe and showed some leg, too; but it was definitely not a scintillating experience for anyone. Especially the horse, who swung his head and tried to figure out what it was on his back.
Smoke stepped into the saddle. “Jud dies if anyone follows,” he warned the crowd. “Tell them, King Vale,” Smoke said sarcastically.
Some lucidity had returned to Jud. Having the muzzle of a .44 laid against one’s ear can do that. He twisted in the saddle. “Stay back. Our time will come. Just stay back.”
“Let’s go, King,” Smoke said. “Your royal procession is about to parade.”
The Pecos Kid woke up with a chicken leg stuck in one ear, wondering why the band had stopped playing.
22
“You’ll die hard for this,” Jud warned them all, as they clip-clopped along, Jud’s crown bouncing from one side of his head to the other. “Especially you, Doreen. I’ll turn you over to my men and let them have their way with you. And that’s a promise.”
Doreen turned in the saddle, balled her right hand into a fist, and busted Jud square on the nose. His crown flew off his head as the blood began to trickle, leaking down into his beard.
“You can pick your crown up on the way back,” Smoke told him. Jud cursed them all.
Smoke turned at the sounds of a single horse coming up fast behind them. It was the young reporter from the paper at Montpelier.
“I’m on my way to get this story written,” he shouted at them. “I’ll see that this is printed all over the state.”
He galloped on past and then cut north, toward the town.
“He’s dead, too,” Jud growled.
“Give it up, Jud,” Smoke advised the man. “Send your gun hands packing, break up your outlaw gangs, and settle down.”
Jud mouthed a few choice words at Smoke, none of them the least bit complimentary.
Smoke rode on for another mile and then twisted in the saddle and knocked Jud sprawling, on his butt, in the road. Smoke grabbed the reins of the riderless horse and shouted, “Let’s go, people!”
Jud sat in the dirt and squalled at them, shaking his fists and cussing.
“They’ll be coming after us now!” Doreen yelled over the pounding of hooves.
“We’ll make the crick,” Rusty told her.
Jud jumped to his feet and began loping up the road, back to his ranch. He reached the spot where his crown lay in the dust, the jewels twinkling under the starry light. Jud plopped his crown back on his head and stomped on, his anger and hate growing with each dusty step. A mile farther on, he met a large force of his men, hanging back a couple of miles.
“They’re heading for the creek!” Jud shouted, pointing. “Get them. Kill them! Kill them all.”
Jason rode up, leading a horse. “I figured they’d set you afoot, Boss.” He handed Jud a brace of six guns.
Jud swung into the saddle. “Somebody give me apiece of rawhide,” he ordered.
A piece of thin rawhide was found and handed him.
Jud made a chinstrap for his crown, tying it tightly under his square jaw. He rode to the head of the group and paused, looking back. At least sixty riders. He lifted his hand into the air. “Forward!” he shouted. “Slay the infidels!”
“What the hell’s an in-fidel?” Gimpy asked.
“Beats me,” Jake Hube told him. “Must be something like a Injun, maybe.”
The riders surged forward, with King Vale in the lead waving a six gun and shouting curses.
But many of the smarter gunfighters had either stayed back at the ranch or were bringing up the rear of the force. They were too wise in the ways of Smoke Jensen to think Smoke would not have a backup plan in Doreen’s escape. Probably he had set up an ambush.
John Wills, who had been wrapped up in poison ivy by Smoke, and his buddies, Dave and Shorty and Lefty,
