“I ain’t promisin’ that. But I will get gone from wherever you is.”
Smoke walked on. He stopped when he spotted Pete Akins, a gunhand he had met down in Arizona about six months back. “You going to stay on Huggins’s payroll, Pete?”
“Yep.” Pete put the finishing touches on a windowpane. It was so clean it squeaked under the rag.
“There’s going to be a lot of blood spilled before this is over, Pete.”
“For shore.”
“Sorry to hear you’re staying. You’ve never done me a harm. But if you stay, you’re my enemy. I just wanted you to know that, Pete.”
“You could pull out, Jensen.”
“Not likely. I never leave a job unfinished.”
“Me neither. Now get on out of here and leave me alone. I got winders to wash.”
Chuckling, Smoke walked on. He didn’t really dislike Pete Akins. But that wouldn’t prevent him from gunning Pete if push came to shove.
He crossed the wide street and stopped by the side of a young man probably still in his late teens. The boy still had a few pimples on his face.
“You better haul your ashes out of here, boy,”Smoke told him. “Straighten up while you’ve got the time.”
“I’ll see you in hell, Jensen,” the punk told him.
“You’ll be there long before I pass by, son,” Smoke replied, and walked on.
He stopped by Ben Webster, who had finished his windows and was sitting on the boardwalk, smoking a cigarette. “You hire your guns, Ben, but I never knew of you working for someone as low as Big Max Huggins.”
“He pays good, Smoke. ’Sides, the man who finally drops you can write his own ticket.”
“You intend to be that man?”
“Yep.”
“Make your will out. Ben. ’Cause when you pull iron on me, I’m gonna kill you.”
Ben looked up at him. “That’s a risk we take in this business, ain’t it, Smoke?”
Smoke stared at the man hard. Ben finally dropped his eyes. “I don’t hire my gun, Ben. Not for money.”
Ben looked up. “Why then, Smoke? Why do you do it?”
“Because I have a conscience, Ben. And I’ve got to live with myself.”
Ben spat in the street. “I don’t have a bit of trouble sleepin’ at night. Or in the daytime, for that matter.”
“That’ll make it easier when you decide to brace me, Ben.”
Ben tossed his cigarette into the street and looked away.
Smoke walked on. “Sid,” he spoke to Sid Yorke.
“Smoke. I ain’t gonna forget this damn winder-washin’.”
“Least it got your hands clean, Sid. That’s probably the first time they’ve been clean since your mother stopped takin’ a belt to your butt.”
“There’s always a day of reckonin‘, Jensen. My day’s comin’.”
Smoke crossed the street and sat on the bench beside Max. Now that he knew he’d live through this day, Max was beginning to see the humor in some of the toughest men in the territory washing windows and mopping up the boardwalk.
He saw Smoke watching him. “Yes, Jensen, I can see the humor in it. But have you thought about this: You’ve made some rough boys awfully angry at you. And they’re going to be sore about this for a long time.”
“They’ll either get over it or come hunting me. If they come hunting me, they’ll be over it permanently.”
Max stared at him. “You’re that sure of yourself, aren’t you, Jensen?”
“I’ve put more than a hundred men in their graves, Max. I’m still standing.”
“How many men have you killed, Jensen?”
“I honestly don’t know. I would be very happy if I never had to kill another human being.”
“Then quit.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because of people like you.”
That stung the big man. His face darkened with color. He took several deep breaths, calming himself. “I never thought of myself as a bad person, Jensen. And that’s the God’s truth.”
“You have any plans to change, Max?”
“No. And that’s the truth, too. Why should I? You won’t stay around here long. So I pull in my horns for a summer. So what? What have I lost? No, Jensen. Unless you kill me now, right now, in cold blood, I’ll survive.
