“Rats? Where’d you see five rats?”
“I’m lookin’ at one of them,” Rusty told him, just as Smoke pushed open the batwings and stepped out on the porch. Walt was right behind him, holding Bendel’s double-barreled express gun.
eyes did not leave Smoke. “I seen you work once, Jensen. You’re fast, all right. I’ll give you that much. So I reckon some of us, including me, will probably take some lead. But they’s five of us ag’in you, that ugly redhead, and one stove-up old man.”
“Ugly!” Rusty blurted. “Me! Why, you so ugly you ought to wear a sack over your head! And I ain’t real sure them brothers of yours is even human. I’ve seen bears that was better lookin’ than them.”
“I’ma-gonna kill that freckle-faced puncher, Barry,”an Almond brother said.
“You can sure have him, Race,” Barry said. “But Jensen is all mine.”
Smoke had stepped off the porch to stand in the street. He didn’t want Dagger to catch a bullet. And there was something else: the stallion was alert to trouble, and he had sensed the situation building. If Cal Almond, who was standing next to the big horse, put a hand on him, Dagger was going to kick him into the next county.
Cal shoved roughly at Dagger. “Git the haleoutta the way, horse!” he said, stepping around to Dagger’s rear.
Dagger let him have it. Both rear hooves lashed out, one steel-shod hoof catching the killer in the groin, the other in the belly. Cal went sailing out into the middle of the street, screaming in agony.
“One down,” Walt said.
Leo drew on the old man. But Leo never really knew the mettle of the men who came to the West when it was really raw. And he had failed to notice that Walt had earred back both hammers of the 12 gauge.
Walt shot the bounty hunter in the belly. Really, he shot him all over the place as rusty nails and ballbearings and other assorted bits of hand-loaded metal tore his body apart.
Rusty stepped out and leveled the Winchester just as Max turned, drawing. Max caught a slug in the belly that trigger and shot himself in the knee. He tumbled to the street, screaming rage and hate and pain.
Smoke palmed both Colts and began putting lead into Barry and Race. The .44 slugs dotted the trail-dusty dusters, pocking them with blood as the slugs tore into flesh.
Race went down first, sinking to his knees in the dirt, dropping his guns as life left him.
Smoke felt a bullet tear his cheek and another slug rip a narrow gouge on the outside of his left thigh. Smoke and Barry Almond faced each other, guns belching fire and death. Smoke had known that Barry was going to be hard to put down, and the bounty hunter was livng up to his reputation.
As the fourth slug from Smoke’s .44 ’s hit Barry, the man went down to one knee, cursing as he slumped to the dusty and rutted road. Using all his strength, he lifted his left hand .44.
Smoke shot him between the eyes just as Cal managed to work his way past his terrible pain to lift his guns. Smoke turned and fired twice just as Rusty’s Winchester barked and Walt’s express gun roared. The last of the Almond Brothers died on his belly in the dirt, torn to bloody bits by the three guns.
The silence was shatteringly loud for a moment. Then Smoke broke the stillness as he ejected empty brass and began reloading. The spent brass tinkled as it struck small rocks in the road. Loaded up, Smoke holstered his Colts and turned to face Walt, still standing on the porch of the trading post.
“Thanks, Walt.”
“Felt good,” the old rancher said. “In more ways than one. I knew that night back at the crick I’d misplaced my backbone for too long.”
Max groaned and cursed as he lay in the dirt, his blood staining the earth under him.
of the dying man’s reach. “He ain’t got long,” the puncher said, glancing at Smoke.
Max looked up at him and cussed the redhead.
“If I was a-goin’ where you’re goin’, partner,” Rusty told him, “I believe I’d try to clean up my mouth some.”
The last words to pass the bounty hunter’s lips were curses.
“You boys put them down,” Bendel said, coming out of his saloon with several shovels. “You can damn well help me plant them.”
They looked up at the sounds of hooves clip-clopping up the road. Several gun hands from the Bar V were riding out, bedrolls lied behind the saddle and their saddlebags bulging full.
“We ain’t huntin’ no trouble,” one told Smoke, eyeballing the carnage sprawled in the dirt. “We’re pullin’ out.”
Smoke knew the man and knew he was no coward. Something had happened at the Bar V. “What’s the problem, Jake?”
“The mainest thing is you, Smoke. This here poker game has done got too rich for my blood. I’ll hire my guns out to whoever pays the price, and you know that. But I ain’t no thief. I ain’t never stole nothin’ in my life.” That curious moral streak that so many men who lived by the gun surfaced in Jake. “That damn Luddy Morgan and his bunch of no-goods come in. Rim Reynolds and Perry Simmons and that crazy Phil What’s-His-Name is due in anytime. I ain’t havin’ no truck with that trash.”
“If we’re lucky, Jake, we’ll never see each other again,” Smoke told him.
“You’re gonna have to ride clear over to Oregon if you want to see me, Smoke. And since I ain’t on Vale’s payroll no more, I can tell you this much without be-trayin’ no confidence: Jud’s gonna attack the Box T—I don’t know when or I’d tell you. He’s gonna burn the place to the ground, kill ever’body there, and then bury the bodies deep…”
