“I’ll go to Sheriff Pat Garrett over in San Miguel County with this,” Dolan said.
“I hope you do,” Smoke hissed, barely able to control his rage over Dolan’s arrogance. “I’ll tell him how your boys came gunning for us at Chisum’s the other night, and how I killed six of the yellow bastards while they were shootin’ at the ranch in the dark. Then I’ll tell him how the big-talkin’ Mexican by the name of Ignacio Valdez tried to ambush me earlier today, only I killed him too, an’ it was easy. Notify this sheriff if you want, Dolan. But remember what I said… if just one more bullet comes at us, you’ll be as dead as Valdez an’ all the rest of your gunslicks.”
Dolan swallowed now, and Smoke saw the first hint of fear in his eyes. His message delivered, Smoke wheeled and walked out of the office.
“You may regret this,” Dolan warned as Smoke was leaving the store.
Smoke paused in the doorway. “I doubt it. You’ll be the one to regret your actions if you ain’t been listening to what I said.”
“One man can’t be all that good, that tough.”
Smoke smiled a humorless smile. “One way to find out. Send Evans and some of his men gunning for me.”
“I may just do that,” Dolan retorted, sounding like some of his nerve had returned.
Smoke kept smiling. “I’ll enjoy it, if you do. It’s been a long time since I killed more than a handful of men at one time. But I’ll enjoy killin’ you more than any of ’em, Dolan, because you’re a yellow son of a bitch who has to pay to get his dirty work done. Send your boys after me, if you’ve got the guts for it. But if you do, I’d check on the price of a good casket right after that, and a cemetery plot, ’cause you’re gonna need ’em both. And you’ll have to hire somebody to dig the hole ahead of time. You won’t be alive to attend to your final arrangements.”
He slammed the door and mounted his Palouse as the sun was setting on Lincoln. Dolan could have it any way he wanted now, after being warned of the consequences.Thirty-one
Cal and Pearlie and Johnny were saddling fresh horses at a stream the next afternoon as Smoke returned from Lincoln. Smoke could see the cow herd grazing along peacefully, and that all was well. He waved as he rode up to the creek, just in time to see Cal pull his saddle cinch and step aboard the back of a gray colt they’d brought along to season it to cow work. Smoke’s experienced eye saw the hump in the three-year-old colt’s back which Cal had apparently overlooked. Before Cal could get his leg over the cantle of his saddle, the gray downed its head and began to buck.
Cal was dislodged from his saddle during the first unexpected jump… He went sailing over the colt’s head as if he’d sprouted wings. Arms and legs wind-milling, Cal was propelled into the air, suspended above the stream for a moment before he fell headfirst into the water, sending up a shower of spray.
Pearlie was the first to burst out laughing, just as Cal came sputtering to the surface. Smoke chuckled, knowing it was a lesson Cal needed, to watch for a slight rise in a horse’s back before he mounted, a warning that the animal intended to buck as soon as it felt a man’s weight.
“What happened?” Cal cried, scrambling to his feet in the shallow water without his hat, blinking to clear his vision. His hat floated slowly downstream, unnoticed for now.
“You got your young ass bucked off,” Pearlie replied as he held his belly between fits of laughter. “You looked fer all the world like you was tryin’ to fly, young ’un, up there with them sparrows an’ blue jays. When I seen you way up yonder, I thought I’d just laid eyes on the ugliest buzzard on this earth!” He broke into another series of hee-haws, clutching his ribs.
“It ain’t all that funny,” Cal mumbled, staggering across slippery stones in the stream bottom to retrieve his Stetson before it floated away. “I just wasn’t ready, is all it was. That gray’s got a mean streak in him.”
Johnny North was grinning. “Wasn’t that gray’s fault, Cal. You shoulda noticed that hump in his back.”
“Wasn’t no hump there,” Cal insisted, shaking water from his hat, his young cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “It was that damn colt’s nasty disposition, is what it was.” Cal stumbled out of the creek, his boots full of water, unable to look directly at Smoke or Pearlie for the moment, so deep was his humiliation over being thrown.
“Hell, young ’un, you was needin’ a bath anyways,” Pearlie said, again breaking into a guffaw or two. “If I’d had a bar of lye soap, I’d have tossed it up in the air whilst you was testin’ your wings. That way, you coulda scrubbed clean soon as you landed. You done one of the prettiest dives I ever saw in my life just now. Damn near a perfect landin’.”
As Pearlie started laughing again, Smoke swung down from the saddle, exhausted by a long night ride to reach the herd as soon as he could, resting his Palouse more often on the return trip to spare it any bog spavins or other lameness. “It was a right pretty landing, son,” he said to Cal, knowing how the boy must feel with an audience for his mistake.
Pearlie fell quiet all of a sudden. He looked at Smoke for a time. “How did things go in Lincoln?” he asked. “Did you have to shoot Jimmy Dolan? Or was he ready to listen?”
Smoke loosened the cinch on his tired colt, “He didn’t pay all that much attention. I warned him what would happen if one more shot got fired at us. He figures I’m bluffing.”
“Then he don’t know you at all,” Pearlie said, serious now. “If he knowed anythin’ about Smoke Jensen, he’d know you don’t never run no bluff on nobody.”
“I’m expectin’ more trouble,” Smoke told Pearle. “Dolan is the type who thinks his money will get him everything he’s after. He talks big.”
“How come you didn’t kill him?” Pearlie asked, “Or slap him plumb silly with the barrel of a gun?”
“I’m giving him a chance to think it over. It was probably a waste of time talking to him, telling him what I’d do if Evans and his boys come back. I’m betting they will.”
Pearlie shook his head, glancing over to Cal as the boy was pulling off his boots to drain the water out. “Won’t be much sleepin’ fer this crew from now on,” he said. “I can damn near feel it comin’ in my bones, like when a blue norther is headed our way.”
Smoke cast a lingering look at the herd before he spoke again. “I’m of the opinion your bones are telling you the truth this time, Pearlie,” he said, leading his Palouse colt away from the creek to saddle a fresh horse.Thirty-two
