“Huh? Why? Why what, Jensen?”
“Why do you want to kill me?”
“That’s a stupid question! ’Cause there’s money on your head, that’s why.”
“What good is it going to do you dead?” Smoke took another few steps.
“Huh? Dead? You’re the one gonna be dead, Jensen. Not me. Now you’re crowdin’ me, Jensen. You just stand still. Back up and drink your beer.”
Smoke took another step. He was almost within swinging distance. “You got a mother somewhere, Dek?”
“Naw. She’s been dead. Now, dammit, Jensen, you stand still, you hear me?”
“No wife for me to write to?”
“Naw. Why the hell would you want to write to my wife even if I had one?”
“To tell her about your death, that’s why.” Smoke took two more steps.
“Jensen, you’re crazy! Y ou know that? You’re as nutty as a road lizard. You ...”
Smoke hit him in the mouth with a right that smashed the man’s lips and knocked him spinning. Smoke jerked the man’s guns from leather and tossed them behind the bar. He stepped back, raising his fists.
“Now, Dek. Now we’ll see how much courage you have. Come on, Dek. You think you’re such a bad man. Fight me. Stand up, Dek. I don’t think you know how. I don’t think you have the guts to fight me.”
Dek cussed him.
Smoke took the time to pull riding gloves from behind his gunbelt and slip them on. He laughed at Dek. “Oh, come on, Dek. What’s the matter? You afraid I might kick your big tough butt all over this town in front of God and everybody? You afraid somebody might see and laugh at you?”
“That’ll be the day,” Dek snarled, raising his fists. “You ain’t about man enough to put me down.”
“We’ll sure see, Dek. But there is one thing that puzzles me.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you trying to talk me to death?”
Cursing, Dek charged Smoke. Smoke ducked a wild swing and tripped him. Grabbing Dek by the collar and by the seat of his pants, Smoke propelled him through the batwings and out into the street, Dek hollering and cussing all the way. On the boardwalk, Smoke gave a mighty heave and tossed Dek into the dirt.
Dek landed on his face and came up spitting dirt and cussing and waving his arms.
Smoke stepped in and gave Dek a combination, left and right, both to the face, which staggered the gunfighter and backed him up, shaking his head and spitting blood.
A crowd began gathering, grinning and watching the fun. The women tried to frown and pretend they didn’t like it, but from the gleam in their eyes, they were very much enjoying watching one of Max Huggins’s men get the tar knocked out of him.
“Knock his teeth down his throat, Smoke!” Mrs. Marbly hollered.
“Yeah,” the minister’s wife shouted. “Smite him hip and thigh and bust his mouth, too, Marshal.”
Dek looked wildly around him. He looked back at Smoke just in time to catch a big right fist smack on his nose. The nose crunched and Dek squalled as the blood flew. Dek backed up, trying to clear his vision.
Jensen didn’t give him much chance to do that. Smoke waded in, both big fists working. He busted Dek in the belly and connected with a left to the man’s ear that guaranteed him a cauliflower for a long time ... not to mention impairing his hearing for the rest of his life.
Dek connected with a punch that bruised Smoke’s cheek and seemed only to make him stronger.
Dek suddenly realized that Smoke was going to cripple him; was going to forever end his days as a gunfighter, and was going to do it with his fists, not his guns. He looked for a way out. But several hundred people had formed a wide circle around them. There was no way out. He was trapped.
“Gimme a break, Jensen,” he panted the plea. “I ain’t never done nothin’ to you to deserve this.”
Smoke almost laughed at him. The man had been hired to kill him and was now asking for a break. Dek Phillips had killed women and children and brought untold grief and suffering to many, many others. And he was asking for a break.
Smoke gave him a break. He stepped in close and with one powerful fist broke several of Dek’s ribs.
Dek yelped in pain and involuntarily lowered his guard. Smoke knocked him down with a left to the jaw.
Smoke stood over him and said, “You know what I’m going to do, Dek. Are you going to lay there like a whipped coward while I kick you to death, or get up and fight?”
Dek slowly got to his boots. “You’re a devil, Jensen,” he panted, blood dripping from his face. “You got to come from hell.” He flicked a fake at Smoke but Jensen wasn’t buying it. Dek swung a looping right that Smoke ducked under and danced away.
“Stand still, damn you, Jensen!”
Smoke’s reply was a right to the jaw. Even those in the rear of the crowd heard Dek’s jaw break.
Smoke began to deliberately and methodically ruin the man. He gave him his overdue punishment for all the good lives he had taken over the years, and for all the misery and heartbreak he had caused.
The crowd no longer cheered. They stood in silence and watched with satisfaction in their eyes as Max Huggins’s man was beaten half to death in front of their eyes. Vicky Turner stood in silence, shocked by the brutality
