man to the ground. Smoke rolled and came up on his boots before Max could get to his feet and apply the boots to him.
For a full minute the men stood toe to toe and slugged it out, with each of them giving and receiving about the same amount of damage. But Smoke could tell the bigger man was losing some of his power. Max was fighting with his mouth open now, sucking in air in great gasping gulps. Smoke had known nothing but hard work all his life. Max had spent the last fifteen years either sitting behind a desk, planning his evil, or sitting at a poker table, cheating those who played the game of chance with him.
Smoke sent a crashing right fist through Max’s guard, a punch that knocked the big man to the ground. Smoke stepped in and kicked the man in the butt just as he was trying to get to his feet. The butt-kick knocked Max sprawling, sliding facedown in the dirt and the grass.
“You know what I’m going to do, don’t you, Max?” Smoke asked, standing over the man. Max tried to get to his feet and Smoke kicked him in the butt again, knocking the big man down to the ground.
“I’m going to rearrange your face, Max.” Smoke walked around to the front of the struggling giant of a man. “When I get tired of hitting you, I’m going to kick your face in.”
Max knew he was whipped, knew Smoke was going to stomp him into the ground. “I’ve had enough,” the big man said, blood dripping from his mouth.
“I imagine Aggie said something along those lines, didn’t she, Max?”
“She was trash! Nester trash.”
Smoke kicked him in the belly with all the power he could get behind the boot. Max’s body arched upward off the ground and he screamed in pain.
Smoke backed away and let the man struggle to his feet. Big Max stood before him, swaying slightly. “Fight, you sorry bastard,” Smoke told him.
Max lumbered forward and walked into a straight right that he felt all the way down to his toenails. Smoke followed that with a left that turned Max’s head and loosened teeth. Smoke didn’t let up. He began to work on Max’s belly, driving hammer blows to the man’s guts. Max backed up, unable to throw a punch that would stop Smoke Jensen. He landed several punches, but they had no power behind them.
Smoke shifted his area of punishment. He began working on Max’s face. The face of Big Max now began to resemble a raw side of beef that someone had worked over with a sledgehammer. His nose was flattened, one ear was swollen and pulpy, his mouth was a ruined mess, and both eyes were closing. Still Smoke Jensen continued to punish the man.
Max searched frantically around him for a weapon—a club, a rock, anything! He found nothing. Smoke had carefully cleared the area. He tried to run and Smoke pursued him, leaping onto his back and riding the man around the area like some sort of beast of burden. It was the most humiliating thing that Big Max Huggins had ever been forced to endure.
Max finally collapsed onto the ground, his strength gone. Smoke stood over him. The smaller man had taken his licks. One eye was almost closed, and blood was leaking from his nose and mouth. But he was on his boots and ready to fight.
Max heard the words: “You got a choice, Big Man,” Smoke told him. “You either get up and fight, or as God is my witness, I’ll kick you to death.”
Max struggled up. He turned and faced Jensen, lifting his fists. Max charged in a last-ditch effort to grab the smaller man and break his back.
Smoke stepped to one side and buried his fist into Max’s belly, doubling the man over and bringing a painful retching sound from his mouth. Smoke’s fist struck the man on his ear and Max experienced a roaring in his head. Another fist came up, seemingly from the ground, and slammed into his battered face. That was followed by a right fist that crashed into his nose. Smoke’s fist hammered his lower back and smashed into his rib cage, sending waves of pain through the man as his kidneys took the brunt of the blows.
Max was beyond mere pain. This was an agony new to him. He had been moved into a sea of solid hurt. It was nothing like he had ever experienced before. His shirt had been torn from him sometime during the fight, and his upper torso was bruised and bloody.
Still Smoke Jensen would not back off. Big Max Huggins stood like a giant oak that was being battered by the elements, his huge arms hanging by his sides. He could not find the strength to lift them.
Smoke knocked him down and Max painfully climbed to his boots to face his tormentor. He turned in time to catch another huge right fist to his already ruined and swollen mouth.
Through eyes that were now nothing more than swollen slits, Max could see Jensen smiling at him. He had never seen a smile that savage on Smoke’s face. Jensen’s eyes were cold, killing cold. Max watched as Jensen measured him. He knew with a soaring feeling of relief the fight was soon to be over.
Smoke started his punch somewhere down around his ankles, and when the gloved fist exploded against his head, Max’s world turned black.
The big man lay stretched out on the ground. Unconscious.
24
Smoke muscled Big Max across his saddle and tied him there. He looped Max’s gunbelt on the saddle horn and slapped the horse on the rump, sending it on its way back to Hell’s Creek.
Smoke packed up and headed for the high country, making camp not five miles from Hell’s Creek. He had plans for that town. Smoke ached all over and his hands were swollen. He looked for and found the plants he sought, carefully picking them and boiling them in water, then soaking his hands. He stayed snug in the camp for two days, resting and eating and treating his hands until the swelling had gone down and he was ready to go.
Smoke had spent the time in the hidden camp not only resting and treating his hands and the cuts on his face, but also capping and fusing the dynamite, tying them into three-stick bombs. Star was rested and restless and eager to hit the trail.
At dawn of the third day after the fight on the flats, Smoke swung into the saddle and pointed Star’s head toward Hell’s Creek. He had it in his mind to destroy that town and as many people in it as possible.
The startled gun hands who watched as Big Max’s horse walked slowly up the muddy and rutted main street of
