Jim belched loudly. “There’s your apology, big-mouth. Catch it and carry it back acrost the room with you.”
Murtaugh cursed and swung a big fist at Jim’s head. But Jim anticipated the punch and ducked it, coming out of the chair and driving his fist into the bigger man’s stomach. Murtaugh bent over, gagging. Jim grabbed the man by his hair and slammed his forehead onto the tabletop. Turning the stunned Murtaugh around, and grabbing him by the collar and the seat of his britches, Jim propelled him across the room, dumping him onto the table he had just exited.
“You boys best look after him,” Jim told Murtaugh’s buddies. “He can’t seem to take care of hisself atall.”
Sonny looked around him. Smith was holding the Greener, hammers back, pointed at him.
Jim walked bak to his table and looked at the spilled stew. “Get the money for this from Murtaugh,” he told Smith. “It was his head that spilt it.”
“I’ll be damned!” Murtaugh said, and charged across the room at Jim, both fists whipping the air.
Jim picked up a chair and hit the rampaging Murtaugh in the face with it. The firebug hit the floor, on his back, and did not move. His face was bloody and several teeth had departed his mouth to take up residence on the floor.
“That does it,” Sonny said, rising from his chair. He looked at Smith. “You gonna take a side in this?”
Smoke stood up, brushing back his coat, exposing his .44’s. “Stay out of it, Smith. We’re deputy sheriffs from down Barlow way. These men are wanted for arson and destruction of livestock. Any damage to your place will be taken care of.”
“That’s fair. I know Jim and you look familiar to me. Who you be, mister?”
“Smoke Jensen.”
Sonny suddenly looked sick. And so did the other four with him.
“Have mercy!” Smith said.
“We ain’t done nothin’ to nobody and we ain’t destroyed no livestock,” Sonny said.
Murtaugh groaned on the floor and sat up. He blinked a couple of times and wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his hand. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”
“You’re under arrest,” Jim told him.
“Your aunt’s drawers, I am!” Murtaugh’s hand dropped to the butt of his gun at just about the same time Jim kicked him in the face. Murtaugh hit the floor again and this time he was out for the count.
Sonny grabbed for his gun and Smoke shot him in the belly. The outlaw stumbled backward and sat down hard on the floor, both hands holding his .44-caliber-punctured belly. He started hollering.
One of his buddies jerked iron and Jim took him out of the game with a slug to the shoulder.
The trading post erupted in gunsmoke and lead. The booming of .44’s and .45’s rattled the windows and shook the glasses behind the bar. Things really got lively when Smith leveled his Greener and blew one outlaw clear out of the barroom, the charge of rusty nails, ball bearings, tacks, and whatever else Smith could find to load his shells nearly tearing the man in two, picking him off his boots, and tossing him out a window.
One outlaw, gut-shot and screaming in pain, dropped his pistols and went staggering out into the other room. He died underneath the table holding five-cent bottles of Dr. Farrigut’s elixir for the remedying of paralysis, softening of the brain, and mental imbecility.
When the dust and bird-droppings from the ceiling and gunsmoke began to clear the room, three arsonists were dead, one was not long for this world, and Murtaugh was again trying to sit up, blood from his broken nose streaming down his chin. The punk Jim had shot through the shoulder was leaning up against a wall, moaning in pain.
“My, my,” Smith said, picking out the empties from his Greener and loading up. “I ain’t seen such a sight in two ... three years. Things was gettin’ plumb borin’ around here. Them no-goods really burn some folks out?”
“Five families,” Smoke told him, punching out his empty brass and reloading. “All good people. I suspect Big Max Huggins paid them to do it.”
“111 talk,” the shoulder-shot outlaw hollered. “It was Big Max who paid us to do it. III testify in court. I’ll tell ...”
Murtaugh palmed a hide-out gun and shot the man between the eyes, closing his mouth forever.
Smoke slammed the barrel of his .44 against Murtaugh’s head, and for the third time in about three minutes, the outlaw went to sleep on the floor.
“Gimme ten dollars for the winder and you give whatever else is in their pockets to them folks that was burnt out,” Smith said. “That fair?”
“Plenty fair,” Jim said. “The families will thank you.”
Smoke tied Murtaugh’s hands behind his back with rawhide and straightened up. “We’ll help you bury this trash, Smith. Then I’ll get a signed statement from you attesting to the fact that you heard that one”—he pointed to the man with a hole beween his eyes—“confessing as to who paid them. You won’t have to appear in court.”
“Good enough,” Smith said. “Shovel’s in the back. I’ll get my old woman to sing a death chant for them. She’s Flathead. Does a nice job of it, too. Right touchin’, some folks say.”
Smoke put all the guns in a sack and tied it to a saddle horn, while Jim readied the horses for travel back to Barlow. The guns and horses and saddles they would give to the farmers who were burned out. The men had about five hundred dollars between them. That would go a long way toward rebuilding the homes and barns and smokehouses.
Morning Dove was still chanting her death song as they rode away.
18
Judge Garrison read the signed statement from Smith.
“Will that hold up in a court of law, Judge?” Smoke asked.
