Smoke stayed off the road, keeping to the mountain trails, enjoying the aloneness of it all. He rested and ate an early lunch above a peaceful valley, exploding with summer colors. Deer fed below him, and once he spotted a grizzly ambling along, eating berries and overturning logs, looking for grubs. Squirrels chattered and birds sang their joyful songs all around him.
Then suddenly it all stopped and the timber fell as silent as a tomb. The deer below him raced away and the grizzly reared up on his hind legs, testing the air. The bear dropped down to all fours and skedaddled back into the timber.
Smoke had picked a very secure position to noon, with Star well hidden. He did not move; movement would attract attention faster than noise.
Soon the horsemen came into view, about a dozen of them, riding through the valley. Smoke moved then, getting his field glasses out of the saddlebags and focusing in on the men, being careful not to let the sun glint off the lenses.
He knew some of them—or had seen them before. They were hired guns—hired by Max Huggins. The men were riding heavily armed, carrying their rifles across the saddle horns. Smoke could see where many of them had shoved extra six-shooters behind their belts.
The route they were taking would lead them straight to the farm complex of Brown and Gatewood and the others. Those families had taken enough grief from Huggins and Red Malone and their ilk, Smoke thought, returning to Star and stowing the binoculars.
He decided he’d trail along behind the hired guns and add a little spice to their lives as soon as he was sure what they were up to.
Smoke decided not to wait when he saw the men reach into their back pockets and pull out hoods. They reined up and slipped the hoods over their faces.
They were about three miles from the farm complex. No man elects to wear a hood over his face unless he’s up to no good; but still Smoke held his fire. He was looking down at a pack of trash, that he knew. But so far they had done nothing wrong.
He left them, riding higher into the timber and getting ahead of the gunslingers. On a ridge overlooking the valley where Brown and the others were rebuilding, Smoke swung down from the saddle and shucked the Sharps .56 from its boot. He got into position and waited.
He didn’t have long to wait. The raiders came at a gallop, riding hard and heading straight for Brown’s farm, guns at hand.
Smoke leveled the Sharps and blew one outlaw from the saddle, the big slug taking the man in the chest and flinging him off his horse, dead as he hit the ground.
Brown, his wife, and their two sons had been working with guns close by. The four of them, upon hearing the booming of the .56, dropped their hammers and shovels and grabbed their rifles, getting behind cover. They emptied four saddles during the first charge, and that broke the attack off before it could get started. The outlaws turned around and headed back north. They had lost five out of twelve, and that had not been in their plans.
They were about to lose more.
They headed straight for Smoke’s position, at a hard gallop. Smoke leveled the S harps, sighted in, and squeezed the trigger. Another hooded man screamed and fell from the saddle, one arm hanging useless by his side, shattered by the heavy .56 caliber slug. He stood up and Smoke finished him.
The hooded raiders were riding in a panic now, not knowing how many riflemen were hidden along the ridges. Smoke lifted the Sharps and sighted in another, firing and missing. He sighted in another man and this time he did not miss. The raider pitched forward, both hands flung into the air, and toppled from the saddle.
Smoke walked back to his horse, booted the rifle, and mounted up, riding down to see if any of the outlaws on the ground were still alive. Two of them were, and one of them was not going to make it. The second man had only a flesh wound.
Smoke jerked the hoods from them and glared down at the men. “You’ll live,” he told the man with the flesh wound. He cut his eyes to the other man. “You won’t. You got anything you’d like to say before you die?”
Brown and his family had gathered around. The sound of the galloping horses of the farmer’s neighbors coming to their aid grew loud. Soon the men of the entire complex had gathered around the fallen raiders.
“How’d you know?” the dying man gasped out the question, his eyes bright with pain, his hands holding his .56 -caliber-punctured belly.
“I didn’t,” Smoke told him. “I was having lunch on the ridges when you crud came riding along.”
“What’d you gonna do with me?” the other outlaw whined.
“Shut up,” Smoke said. “You get on my nerves and I might just decide to hang you.”
“That ain’t legal!” the man hollered. “I got a right to a fair trial.”
Cooter snorted. “Ain’t that something now? They come up here attackin’ us, and damned if he ain’t hollerin’ about his right to a fair trial. I swear I don’t know where our system of justice is takin’ us.”
“Wait a few years,” Smoke told him. “I guarantee you it’ll get worse.”
“I need a doctor!” the gut-shot outlaw hollered.
“Not in ten minutes you won’t,” Gatewood told him.
“What’d you mean, you hog-slop?” the outlaw groaned the words.
“ ’Cause in ten minutes, you gonna be dead.”
He was right.
23
Smoke helped gather up the weapons from the dead raiders. Brown and the others in the farming complex now had enough weapons and ammo to stand off any type of attack, major or minor.
