his hat on top of the stick, then raised it slightly above the rock.
A rifle boomed, and the hat flew off the end of the stick.
“Ha! You got ’im, Cruise!” Hayes shouted.
“Whoa, I guess you two boys weren’t really serious about giving me all that money, were you?” Matt called out.
“Son of a bitch, I missed!” Cruise said.
“Mister, you know what I said about givin’ you that money? Well, you can forget about it, we ain’t goin’ to give you nothin’,” Hayes said. “Except maybe a bullet right between your eyes.”
Hayes’s shout was punctuated with another rifle shot, this one hitting the top of the rock, then whining off into the valley.
After that there was silence.
The silence stretched into several long minutes.
“Hayes? Cruise? You still up there?” Matt called.
There was another rifle shot, and this time the bullet hit the rock, not on the side facing away from Matt, but just to the right of him. One of them, the one with the rifle, had improved his position, and even as Matt scooted around to put the rock between himself and the shooter, there was a second shot.
This time, Matt saw the puff of smoke from the rifle, so he aimed at the spot and waited. Seconds later he was rewarded by seeing Cruise’s face raise up.
Matt pulled the trigger, and Cruise fell forward, sliding belly-down until his face wound up in the stream. Matt watched for a moment longer to make certain Cruise was dead. Then suddenly, he heard the sound of a horse’s hooves. Looking around he saw that Hayes had used the opportunity to get mounted, and was now galloping toward him. Hayes had his pistol in his hand and he was firing at Matt as he rode.
When Matt fired back, he saw a puff of dust rising from Hayes’s vest, followed by a tiny spray of dust and blood. Hayes pitched backward out of his saddle, but one foot hung up in the stirrup and his horse continued to run, raising a plume of water as the outlaw was dragged through the stream. When the horse reached the other side of the stream and started up the bank, Hayes’s foot disconnected from the stirrup and he lay, motionless, half in the water and half out, not more than ten feet from where the body of his partner lay.
Matt ran over to them, his gun still drawn, but the gun wasn’t necessary. Because both men were dead.
Chapter Three
Hayes and Cruise were not the first outlaws Matt had ever tracked down. He was neither a lawman, nor someone who hunted other men for any reward the government paid for them, but he was always on the side of law and order, and sometimes, like this time, going after an outlaw just seemed to be the right thing to do.
He never sought trouble, but somehow, trouble had a way of finding him. As a result, Matt Jensen was one of a select company of men in the West whose very name could evoke fear among the outlaws and evildoers.
Matt took the bag of bank money from Hayes’s saddle and started back to Pueblo, but just after noon, his horse stepped into an unseen prairie dog hole. The horse broke a leg and Matt had to shoot him. It was a hard thing to do; Spirit was only the second horse he had ever owned. Indeed, this horse had carried with him the spirit of his first horse, who was also named, not coincidentally, Spirit. There was nothing Matt could do now but take shanks mare, so, throwing his saddle, saddlebags, and the money bag over his shoulder, he began walking.
Matt Jensen dropped his saddle with a sigh of relief, then climbed up the berm to stand on the ballast between the railroad tracks. Just before him, the clear tracks of the Denver and New Orleans lay like twin black ribbons across the landscape, stretching north to south from horizon to horizon. For the moment, they were as cold and empty as the barren sand, rocks, and mountains that surrounded him, but Matt knew that a train would be passing through here sometime before sundown.
Since putting his horse down, Matt had walked for two hours, carrying his saddle with him, thus bringing him to his current position. He was, at the moment, standing alongside the railroad tracks some thirty miles south of Pueblo. Now all that was left for him to do was catch the train, so, using his saddle as a pillow, he lay down beside the tracks to wait. As he waited, he couldn’t help but think of the horse he had just put down, and in order to combat the grief that threatened to consume him, he turned his thoughts to his first horse named Spirit, and particularly, to how he had come by him.
Right after the war, while still a boy named Matt Cavanaugh, the man now known as Matt Jensen made the trip west from Missouri with his father, mother, and sister. On the trail west, their wagon was attacked by outlaws, and all were killed but Matt. Matt escaped, managing to kill one of the outlaws in the process. The incident left Matt an orphan and shortly thereafter, he wound up in the Soda Springs Home for Wayward Boys and Girls. Rather than providing a refuge, though, the orphanage was so evilly run that eventually Matt escaped from the home.
A few days later, Matt, nearly dead from hunger and the cold, was found in the mountains by the legendary Smoke Jensen. Smoke took the boy in and raised him to adulthood. Out of respect and appreciation, Matt Cavanaugh changed his name to Matt Jensen, and though there was no blood relationship between the two men, they regarded each other as brothers. When it was time for Matt to go out on his own, Smoke surprised him with an offer.
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