Jessie stiffened. “The son of a bitch said he was gonna kill me?” he asked in a voice that boomed all over the clearing where the cow camp was hidden. “You mean that arrogant son of a bitch had the nerve to say that?”
“
Jessie glanced over at Pickett. “Who the hell is Smoke Jensen?”
“Never heard of the bastard,” Pickett replied. “I’ll go saddle a horse an’ we’ll see if he’s as tough as he says he is.”
“Where did this happen?” Jessie asked Billy.
“North of the Chisurn ranch by maybe ten miles.”
“An’ you claim Roy took off runnin’ when it happened?”
“Yessir. That’s sure the way it looked. Roy jumped on his horse and rode east as fast as that pony could travel. Last we saw of him, he was headed for the Pecos River .”
“That ain’t like Roy. Maybe he was gonna ride a circle around ’em.”
“It sure as hell didn’t look that way, boss. Soon as Raul an’ Jorge got killed, Roy took off. He never fired a shot at this Jensen feller.”
“Roy ain’t no coward.”
Billy shrugged. “Maybe he just knowed it when he was outgunned. That Jensen never wasted a bullet. He killed Raul so quick it was like they was standin’ two feet apart. Then he shot Carlos an’ Jorge, all of ’em from the back of a runnin’ horse. I took off right after that, when I seen there wasn’t no stoppin’ this Jensen. He ain’t no ordinary man.”
Jessie scowled. “You ain’t nothin’ but a yellow son of a bitch, Barlow. Get your gear an’ clear out of here. I’ll have your wages ready.”
Pickett lifted his shotgun and started down the porch steps two at a time. “I’ll saddle a horse an’ round up Ignacio, Billy, an’ Tom. Let’s see if this Jensen is as tough as he claims to be.”
Jessie gazed across the corrals. “Tell those boys from up in Arkansas to ride along with us. Chisum may have hired himself a fancy shooter, only we’ll see how good he is when the odds are against him. That one-eyed feller from Arkansas says he can hit a sparrow on the fly with a Sharps rifle. We’ll let him show us how good he is.”
Pickett ambled off toward the corrals, in no apparent hurry to get things started. Jessie looked at Billy. “Get your gear out of the bunkhouse, Barlow. You’re finished with this outfit, an’ if I ever lay eyes on you again, I’ll kill you myself.” He turned his attention to Victor. “Have somebody fix you a bandage for that scratch. Then get mounted on a fresh horse so you can show us where all this happened. Jensen could be dead by now, if Roy caught up with him. One thing you can bet on—Roy Cooper didn’t run from no kind of fight.”Twenty-one
Smoke heard horses corning up the hill as he wiped blood off his Bowie knife on the dying man’s pants leg. Standing out in plain view, he knew Chisum and his cowboys could see him now, and they were riding up to see what had brought him here… He’d only said to wait for him until he took care of a little unfinished business, without telling them a man was lying in ambush for them on this hilltop, just out of rifle range. Again, he’d seen a flash of polished metal in the sun as they were riding out of the valley, and he knew what it meant. There wasn’t time to explain.
“What happened, Mr. Jensen?” Chisum asked just before his horse snorted, scenting blood as it trotted toward Smoke.
“We had another surprise waiting for us,” Smoke replied as he sheathed his Bowie, “another gent who thought we’d ride right past his hiding place so he could shoot us down.”
Now Chisum saw the body lying in a patch of tall, bloody grass near Smoke’s feet. “Damn,” he said, swinging off his red sorrel to get a better look.
One of Chisum’s cowboys said, “That’s Roy Cooper, another one of Dolan’s hired guns. A feller told me Cooper had a real bad disposition, that he was a sure enough professional killer.”
Smoke took a last look at Cooper. “He should have chosen another line of work. It’s just one man’s opinion, but it don’t seem he was all that good at it.”
Chisum was staring at Smoke with a bit of slack in his jaw. “You killed him with a knife. How come you didn’t use a gun?” he asked. “You must have slipped up behind him.”
Smoke walked over to the bay a Chisum cowboy brought up the hill, taking its reins. “He was real busy watchin’ what was in front of him. It’s a mistake a lot of men make before they wind up on Boot Hill.”
Chisum watched Smoke mount his horse, still not quite ready to believe what he’d seen or heard. “For a big man, you sure as hell get around mighty quiet. It’s hard to slip up on a man from behind like that. And all you had to do was shoot him. You’d have been within your rights, seeing as he was trying to kill us with a rifle.”
Smoke was far more interested in the beefy carcasses of Chisum’s crossbred Hereford steers right then, the incident with Cooper already pushed from his mind, even though the gunman was still alive, still breathing shallowly. Smoke gazed across the valley, thinking of cattle like these carrying a Sugarloaf brand. “I’ve got no choice but to agree with you, Mr. Chisum. Herefords represent the future of the cattle business out west. A longhorn’s tough, and they can get by on poor pastures, but they don’t carry the meat these crosses do. In a couple of years, I hope to have steers like those yonder ready for market.”
Chisum shook his head and mounted his horse. “You’re quite a puzzlement, Mr. Jensen. On the one hand you seem like a very knowledgeable cattleman, but when the shooting starts, you behave like a seasoned Indian fighter, or a trained soldier.”
Smoke turned his horse toward the valley floor. “Sometimes a man has got to be a little of both,” he said, “if he aims to hold on to what’s his.”
The night was clear and chilly, near forty degrees, as Smoke and Pearlie and Johnny and Bob Williams stood at the corral fence examining Chisum’s Hereford bulls in the light of the moon. Cal and Cletus and Duke were inside the house enjoying another piece of Maria’s chocolate pie.
