trailed a good mile behind the main force. Jaeger and Chato Di Peso and Hammer, along with Blackjack and Highpockets and DePaul and about a dozen others had not even left the ranch area. They sat on the long front porch of the mansion, eating fried chicken dunked in caviar and drinking champagne. All of them had a very strong hunch that many of those chasing after Smoke this starry night would not come back at all. The rest would come straggling back in, all shot to hell and gone.
But that would be all right with them. They were professionals in this business, and hardened to the ways of their chosen profession. This night would probably see the end of many of the punks and two-bit gunslingers who had hired on, looking for a cheap and fast buck and a few quick thrills to take back home and boast about. What they would get is a shallow grave. If they were lucky.
The crowds had quickly departed after Smoke had made his move. All but the bugler; he was now drunk as a cooler and blowing cavalry calls into the night. Some of the gunslingers had dumped him, bugle and all, into a horse trough. But that had only slowed him down for a few moments. He had shaken the water out of his bugle and kept right on tooting.
Jaeger spread some caviar on a cracker and nibbled. “Only ting de damn Russians ever did dat vas any gut was make caviar,” he growled.
“What’s this stuff made of anyways?” Pike asked.
“Vish eggs.”
“What the hell’s a vish?” Highpockets paused in the lifting of a caviar-spread cracker to his mouth.
“A vish is a vish. Swim in wassar.”
About half of the men threw the caviar to the porch floor and stayed with the fried chicken.
“Here they come,” Jackson announced.
Smoke, Rusty, and Doreen had just made the creek in time to dismount and take positions. Alice and Doreen had told Walt and the others they were staying and to shut up about it. They had taken rifles and squatted down behind logs with the other farmer women.
Matthew stood by a cottonwood, Cheyenne’s long-barreled Colt in his right hand. The boy was calm as death, and his hand was steady.
Smoke earred back the hammer on his Winchester; he heard the sounds of others doing the same. As the charging riders came into range, Smoke lifted his rifle and took aim at Jud’s crown. He squeezed off a round and drilled the arch of the crown, blowing off the arms and the dangling pearls.
“Huugghh!” Jud croaked, as the chin strap momentarily lighted, cutting off air due to the force of the impacting slug.
Those on the Box T side of the creek began filling the night air with hot lead. The first volley cleared half a dozen saddles and wounded that many more.
Spooked horses began bucking and jumping, sending another half-dozen riders to the hard ground. One gunslinger, afoot, his hands filled with Colts, tried to ford the creek. Young Matt took careful aim and squeezed the trigger, dead-centering the man, putting the slug right between his eyes. The gunny pitched face-forward into the creek.
Rusty shot the punk Glen Regan just as the kid was turning. The rifle slug went right through both cheeks of Glen’s buttocks. Glen dropped squalling and crying to the creek bank, losing his guns, both hands holding onto his injured backside.
“Fall back, men!” Jud yelled. “Regroup but don’t lose courage. They are but riffraff and swine who face us. You have the power of royalty on your side.”
Jackson put another dent in Jud’s crown, knocking it down to one side of the man’s head, giving the man a thunderous headache. Jud’s horse spooked and tossed him into a thorn bush and royalty’s bare legs and backside took the full brunt of long thorns.
“Yowee!” Jud hollered, jumping to his feet. Holding his ermine robe waist high, he beat a hasty retreat up the bank and jumped over the crest.
“Let’s get gone from here!” Cisco Webster shouted, just as Walt put a slug into the man’s saddlehorn, tearing the horn from the saddle and knocking it spinning. Cisco’s horse panicked and went snorting and racing into the night. Unfortunately for Cisco, the horse stampeded the wrong way, taking him right across the creek. “Whoa, goddammit!” Cisco yelled.
Rusty reversed his Winchester and knocked Cisco slap out of the saddle, the butt of the rifle catching the man on the jaw. Cisco was unconscious before he hit the ground, landing amid what was left of his broken teeth.
The fight was gone from Jud and his men. Jud screamed in pain as he was lifted into a saddle. He was still yelling and cussing and waving his arms as what was left of his army rode back toward the mansion.
The night fell quiet, broken only by the moaning of the wounded.
“What do we do with them?” Alice asked, listening to the pleadings for help.
“Leave them!” Chester’s wife said, bitterness making her voice hard. “Would they help us if the situation was the other way around?”
Smoke booted his Winchester and swung into the saddle. He turned his horse’s head toward the Box Tranch house and his back to the wounded bounty hunters.
That ended any further discussion as to the fate of those who chose to take fighting wages from Jud Vale.
Smoke stepped out of his room the next morning and stood in the pre-dawn quiet, drinking his first cup of coffee. He had an odd feeling, a premonition, that matters would be coming to a head very soon. Why that jumped into his mind, he didn’t know—only that he felt it to be true.
Jackson walked out of the bunkhouse, a mug of coffee in his hand. He joined Smoke on the bench by the side of the barn and built him a cigarette, passing the makings to Smoke.
“I got a funny feelin’,” Jackson said. “Come on me sudden-like; woke me up.”
