had measured the distance between stone stumps and trees from where he now lay to the crest of the ridge. He had ample brush to help along the way and in addition, a cut in the earth several feet deep that led to the crest and curved with one wall facing those below him.
Gary paused to catch his breath and it was his last one. Smoke’s .44-.40 boomed and Gary went down.
“Goddamnit!” Roy yelled, diving for cover. “I knowed it was a trap.”
Al Hayre exposed part of his body from behind a stone and Smoke drilled him clean through the shoulder. Al dropped his rifle and began a fast roll down the ridge toward the valley below, hollering and yelling and cussing until his head hit a rock and shut him up.
Smoke slung his pack and rolled to another, better protected area, angling toward the cut. Pride Anderson stepped out from cover and dropped to one knee and fired, the slug howling off stone and sending chips into Smoke’s face. Smoke wiped off the blood and moved to the other side of the huge fallen tree, slipping behind a mass of brush and stone. Pride made the mistake of trying for a second shot at Smoke. He would never get another shot at anything.
Smoke quick-sighted him in and pulled the trigger. Pride took the .44-.40 slug in the center of his forehead. The force of the bullet snapped his head back and Pride tumbled, rolling lifeless down the ridge.
Smoke sent several rawhide bound sticks of dynamite down the ridge and everybody hit the earth. Everybody except Smoke. He scrambled for the cut and ran to the top of the ridge just as the dynamite blew. Once again, horses panicked and ran off down the hill.
Smoke found him a good spot behind a small stand of trees on the crest, punched more cartridges into his rifle then chewed on a biscuit and waited.
“A couple of you men work your way over to the timber in that direction,” von Hausen ordered. “Two more to that side,” He pointed. “Try to box him in.”
“You’ll never do it, your majesty,” Walt said, safely behind a petrified log.
Smoke had pulled away from the ridge and worked his way some two hundred yards back from the crest. It put him that much closer to his horses and in better cover should von Hausen order men to attempt to flank him.
On the hill, Andrea and Marlene and Maria looked with horror and disgust in their eyes-more disgust than horror—at the smear of blood and hair and brains that Pride had left on the side of a stone stump.
“Al’s stirring down there,” Angel said, sitting beside Walt behind the huge log.
“If he’s smart, he’ll find his horse and get the hell gone from here.”
“One arm’s hanging limp by his side,” Angel said. “He looks sort of confused.”
“Busted his head on the way down. There’s another walkin’ wounded for us to tend to. We’re gonna look like a hospital ’fore this trip gets over.”
Marty Boswell’s daddy had always told him he had sawdust for brains. Marty got tired of listening to his daddy and shot him dead one day back in Nebraska. Smoke proved Marty’s daddy wrong when Marty stuck his ugly face out from behind a large rock for a look-see. He had some brains. But they were now several feet behind the gunslinger, on the ground, due to the impacting of a .44-.40 slug with Marty’s head.
Gil Webb wisely decided not to move from his position.
Smoke said to hell with it and made his way back to his horses. He was saddled up and riding out ten minutes later. Gil Webb left his hidey-hole only after long moments of silence had passed. He made his way carefully to Smoke’s last position, checking out all possibilities along the way. He found where Smoke had left the ridge, his moccasin-clad feet digging into the soft earth, heading for the timber behind the ridge. Gil motioned for the two men on the other flank to check it out, then called down the ridge for the others to stay put. Of course, von Hausen and those in his immediate party ignored that.
The men scrambled up the ridge to squat panting beside a stone tree. “Marty?” von Hausen asked.
“Dead. Jensen put one right in the center of his forehead.”
“That’s three dead and one wounded,” Hans said. “I don’t know how badly wounded Hayre is.”
“He’s out of it,” Cat Brown said, coming over the crest of the ridge. “Hit high and pretty hard. He wants his money and wants to get gone from this fight.”
Von Hausen nodded his head. “Pay him off, Gunter. Wounded as he is he’d be of no further use to us. He’d only be a hindrance. Have Walt and Angel tend to his wounds and then send him on his way.”
Gunter was gone back down the steep hill.
“He’s gone,” came the shout from the timber. “Headin’ west.”
Von Hausen paced the distance between Smoke’s last defensive position over to where Marty lay dead, a hole in his head. Von Hausen reluctantly admitted-to himsetf—that Smoke was one of the best marksman he had ever seen.
“What type of weapon is he using?” he asked John T.
“.44-.40. It’s got an extra rear sight for better accuracy. Jensen’s good,” he grudgingly conceded.
The German looked at the gunfighter. “That’s like saying trains run on tracks. I measured the distance. Smoke made this shot from two hundred and ten paces.”
John T. whistled softly. “That’s some shootin’.”
“To say the least,” von Hausen added very drily. “Have the men dig some graves, John T.”
“Yes, sir. And have Walt fetch his Bible?”
“Yes. This is becoming a routine.”
Smoke rode west. He put a few miles behind him, knowing that by the time von Hausen and party rounded up their horses, buried their dead, and tended to the wounded, it would be dark. There would be no further pursuit this day.
