Bill Pickett offered his opinion. “You worry too much, Tom. Dolan ain’t payin’ us to sit an’ whittle on a stick.”
They came to the trees and dismounted, taking rifles and a few extra boxes of cartridges along. Pickett carried a Winchester and his shotgun, one in each hand, as they began a slow walk through the darkness toward Chisum’s house, hunkered down to keep from being outlined against a night sky full of stars, in case Chisum had posted any guards.
“No dogs,” Pickett said as they neared the house. “Means I can get close enough to use ol’ Ten-Gauge Betsy.”
Jessie felt his pulse begin to race. Like Pickett, he was looking forward to a killing spree. His men had been idle too long, and until today, when this Jensen started killing a few of his
Smoke lay asleep beside an open bunkhouse window when something he couldn’t identify disturbed his slumber. Several men across the room were snoring and for a moment he wondered what it was that had awakened him. Cletus Walker and Bob Williams were at the main house talking with Chisum over drinks, talking about the cattle market and some of Chisum’s troubles with the Santa Fe Ring and L.G. Murphy and Jimmy Dolan. Smoke had retired early, preferring sleep to conversation after so many days on the trail. But now something had interrupted his sleep, something beyond the window above his bunk.
He sat up slowly, peering out at a moonlit ranch yard and the hills beyond. A vague uneasy sensation warned him something was amiss, yet he was unable to see or hear anything out of the ordinary.
Swinging his legs off the bed, he put on his boots and took his gunbelts from a bedpost, and as an added precaution, he picked up his Winchester, after strapping both cartridge belts around his waist.
He crept to the back door and opened it softly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He was startled when he heard a soft whisper behind him.
“What is it?” Pearlie asked, sitting up.
The pockmarked gunfighter named Buck Andrews said, “I heard somethin’ too, like horses.” He swung his legs off the bunk beside Pearlie’s to nudge a gunman named Curly Tully, who was in a deep sleep, snoring in the next bunk. “Wake up, Curly. I’d take an’ oath I heard somethin’ outside. Git up and fetch yer guns.”
Tully raised his head off the pillow and shook it. “Maybe you was only drearnin’,” he said sleepily.
“Wasn’t no dream,” Andrews told him. “It was horses.”
Smoke let his gaze roam back and forth looking for a shape that didn’t belong. It was too dark to be sure of anything at a distance. “Might be a good idea if you woke everybody up,” he said a moment later, when it appeared something scurried across the crest of a hill behind the bunkhouse, perhaps only a wolf or a coyote. “If this is part of that bunch we tangled with today, they’ll be lookin’ for revenge. Get these men out of the bunkhouse and have ’em spread out around the corrals and barns. I’ll go warn Mr. Chisum that something ain’t right out yonder. First of all, it’s too damn quiet. That’s damn near always a bad sign in my experience. Make sure nobody shoots unless we get shot at first. I’ll see if I can find out who it is, or if it’s anything at all.”
Andrews got up while Pearlie pulled on his boots. He woke Cal up and whispered, “Git dressed, young ’un. Smoke says he thinks we may have us some company.”
Andrews went down the rows of cots, awakening cowboys, while Smoke edged out the rear doorway, his senses keened. He could almost smell trouble coming on a soft night wind blowing across the ranch.
Moving quietly in the shadow of the eaves, where the bunkhouse roof ended, he made his way to a corner and waited, hidden by the shadow until he crossed the ranch yard to a windmill tower and a water trough, crouching down, unable to shake the feeling that someone was out there in the hills. He could hear sleepy men stirring in the bunkhouse.
He stepped lightly along the front porch and tapped on the door, watching the moonlit hills.
“Who is it?” a deep voice belonging to Chisum inquired, a note of concern in his question.
“Smoke Jensen. I think we’ve got some night visitors off to the west. Maybe north of us too.”
Chisum swung the door open. “I’ll get my rifle and wake up the men.”
“Buck Andrews is already gettin’ ’em up. I told ’em to spread out around the corrals and barns. I’ll slip out there to see if it’s just my imagination. I told everybody to hold their fire unless someone shoots at us first. And it’d be a good idea to douse that lantern.”
Cletus appeared behind Chisum and Smoke was about to leave the porch to scout around.
“What is it, Smoke?” Cletus asked.
“I ain’t sure it’s anything yet. Just grab a rifle in case we got company.”
The lantern inside went out as Smoke crept off the porch to make his way to a split rail fence around ranch headquarters, an open stretch of ground that could be dangerous to cross, yet he was without choices. Hunkered down, he raced across the yard in the bright moonlight, knowing an experienced gunman would see the gleam of metal from his rifle.
A booming shot from a large-bore gun thundered from a grassy hilltop, the wink of a muzzle flash pinpointing the shooter’s location. A split pine iog on the top rail of the fence in front of Smoke most certainly saved his life from a heavy rifle slug, probably a .52 caliber, as the bullet splintered wood only a few inches from Smoke’s face, splitting the dry log almost in half.
He dove to the ground, crawling beneath the bottom rail as fast as he could toward clumps of foot-high prairie grass that would hide him.
“Mr. Evans got my message, no doubt,” Smoke hissed between gritted teeth, feeling his mind-set change suddenly, back to the savagery that had been a part of his nature in years past. Now, with a single-mindedness he could never fully explain to Sally, he would become a manhunter on a killing rampage. Something even he wasn’t able to comprehend took control of him, his thoughts, his actions, a lust for killing in any way possible, after someone made an attempt to take his life. Until it was over, his mind was a blank, his conscience without a voice, focused only on finding and killing his enemies. Afterward, he sometimes pondered on what it was that overtook
