“She probably weighs three hundred pounds and has a head like a hog.”
Smoke laughed at her.
“You find me amusing?” she flared at him.
“I find you dangerous, Andrea. Vicious and unfeeling and very dangerous.”
“It was only a game, Mister Jensen,” she said softly.
“Lady, you people were going to kill me.”
“When this started, we thought of it as the ultimate hunt. You are depicted as a notorious gunfighter. A killer. We assumed there would be arrest warrants on you. That no one would care if you got killed. We ...”
“Stop it, Andrea. You’re lying. Stop lying. You found out about me before the hunt started. You could have stopped it before you left Dodge. And you killed that Army patrol. A cold-blooded ambush. So stop lying and making excuses for yourself and your lousy damn friends. And Andrea, I buried your husband. We talked at length before he died. You shot him with that little hide-out gun I took from you. And he didn’t die easy.”
She refused to meet his eyes. “If you turn me over to the police, I won’t be prosecuted.”
“I know that. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. But believe this, Andrea, if you believe nothing else: if you try to kill me, I’ll hurt you.”
“Big brave man, aren’t you?” she sneered the words at him.
“No. Just a man who is trying to survive. Now shut your mouth and go to sleep.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll stuff a gag in your big mouth.”
She lay down and closed her eyes.
“He’s leadin’ us back into the mountains,” Roy Drum said. “Just as sure as hell that’s what he’s doin’.”
“And then? ...” Gunter asked wearily.
“He’ll start killin’ us,” John T. said, his voice flat. “That’s why he grabbed Andrea. So’s we’d follow him.”
“Heading back to the mountains,” von Hausen said, scratching his unshaven chin. “And he’ll make his final stand there, won’t he?”
“You better believe it,” Utah said. “Howlin’ and snarlin’ and spittin’ and scratchin’ and shootin’.” He looked back at the group. “If any of you boys feel you’re comin’ down with a case of the yeller belly, git gone now. ’Cause once we git up in the high lonesome, there ain’t gonna be no runnin’.”
No one left. They sat their saddles and stared at the man, defiance in their eyes.
“Don’t say you wasn’t warned,” John T. told them. “Let’s ride.”
Smoke rode through Powder River Pass and took a deep breath of the cool clear air. He smiled, smelling the fragrance of the high country; he was home. Halfway between there and Cloud Peak, he set up his first ambush point, after securing Andrea’s mouth so she could not scream and warn her blood-thirsty friends.
She tried to bite him and kick him, but he was expecting that and got her secured with only a small bruise on his shin.
“Now you be a sweet girl now,” he told her, after stepping out of kicking range.
She bugged her eyes and fought her bonds and tried to kick him again.
“Relax, Andrea. You’re making your bonds tighter.”
She soon realized he was right and ceased her frantic struggling. She fell back on the ground and glared hate at him.
“Hans was probably glad to die after being married to you,” Smoke muttered. He picked up his rifle and moved to a spot several miles away.
Smoke watched the long, single-file column come up the old trail, Roy Drum watching the ground, tracking Smoke like the expert he was. Roy passed within ten feet of Smoke.
Ed Clay was the last man in the column. When the rider in front of him had rounded the sharp bend in the trail—a place Smoke had deliberately chosen—Smoke leaped from the ledge and knocked Ed out of the saddle, clubbing him with a big fist on the way to the ground. He threw Ed across his shoulder, grabbed his rope from his saddlehorn, and slapped the horse on the rump, sending it back down the trail. Smoke slipped into the brush and climbed back up to the ledge.
There, he hog-tied Ed and gagged him with the hired gun’s own filthy bandana and picked up his rifle, slipping back into the brush, paralleling the trail.
“I sure will be glad to get shut of this damn mule, Ed,” Sandy said. “You wouldn’t like to trade off for a spell, would you?”
He got no reply as they rode further into the dimness of thick timber and brush.
“Did you hear me, Ed?” Sandy asked, twisting in the saddle.
Ed wasn’t there.
“We got trouble!” Sandy called. He looked up in time to see a stick of dynamite come sputtering out of the ridge above him. “Oh, hell!” he yelled.
The charge blew, the mule walled its eyes and bowed up, and Sandy’s butt left the saddle and he went flying through the air. He landed on the west side of the trail and went rolling down the slope, hollering and cussing all the way down. He landed in a creek and banged his head on a rock, knocking him silly.
Marlene’s horse reared up at the huge explosion and threw her off. She landed hard and immediately started
