“He can’t be all that clever,” Pickett assured him. “A man makes mistakes now an’ then. The biggest mistake Jensen made was comin’ to Lincoln County at the wrong time. Now he’s gonna pay for it with his life.”
Jessie reined his horse for the top of the ridge. There was no point in discussing it with Pickett any farther. If Pickett was as good as his reputation, and what Jessie had seen of him in action during several attacks on Chisum’s cow camps, all their troubles with Mr. Smoke Jensen would soon be over.
Tom rode up beside Jessie as they were trotting up the ridge to look for water and a campsite.
“This is liable to be one helluva mistake,” Tom said under his breath. “I’ve got a real bad feelin’ about it.”
“You worry too much, Tom,” Jessie said, although he shared some of the same nagging doubts about Pickett’s planned ambush.
Tom looked up at a clear spring sky. “I worry when a man’s already proved he’s hard to kill, an’ I’m sidin’ the bunch who aims to kill him. Pickett ain’t never seen Jensen close before. When he gits a good look, he may change his mind.”
“That’s damn sure a fact,” Billy Morton said, riding along Jessie’s left side. “If I live to be a hundred years old, I won’t forgit what it was like when Jensen jumped up from behind that bush with both pistols spittin’ fire. It was the same as facin’ the devil himself.”
“Bill Pickett’s a proven killer,” Jessie argued.
It was Tom who said, “So’s this feller Smoke Jensen. I’ve never heard of him before he came here, but I’ll tell you one thing fer sure… he’s about as mean as they come, and this job ridin’ for Jimmy Dolan don’t pay enough to be worth gettin’ killed. If Pickett don’t kill him when he crosses that river, I’m quittin’ this outfit fer good. There’s gotta be easier ways to make money, an’ live long enough to spend it.”
Billy didn’t say anything, but Jessie was sure he was of the same mind. “Give Pickett a chance to prove himself before you start quittin’ a good-payin’ job with Dolan,” said Jessie. “There ain’t all that much work to be had for a shootist in this part of the West, an’ I’m sure as hell not askin’ to be taken off the payroll till I know there ain’t no other choice.”Thirty-eight
Cattle were strung out for half a mile when Smoke turned to look back at the herd. As they had from the beginning, the short Herefords brought up the rear. Cal and Cletus were riding drag at the back of the bunch. Bob and Johnny held the flank positions, keeping wandering strays driven back, while Pearlie and Duke rode point on either side, aiming lead cows in the right direction. A peaceful day had passed, with no sign of the Evans gang. Smoke had been reading their tracks every now and then, counting horses when the prints crossed barren ground. Between fifteen and twenty men were a day’s ride ahead of the herd, judging by the freshness of the tracks, the edges of the clear prints that were still sharp before wind and time had made the dirt crumble.
According to a crudely drawn map he carried in his saddlebags, they were a couple of days’ drive from old Fort Sumner, an abandoned army post turned into a small community where sheep men and Mexican goatherds lived in empty army barracks. The herd was managing fifteen or twenty miles a day, slower because of the short-legged bulls.
Smoke swung his horse away from the trees, where he’d been keeping an eye on the herd’s progress. He was staying closer to the cows than before, in part because the tracks left by Evans and his men continued due north, with no sign any of them had turned off to launch another attack or take up snipers’ positions when they came to high ground.
Still, Smoke was nagged by the dull certainty that Evans would try again. Arrogant men with high opinions of themselves rarely ever gave up completely, not until someone convinced them they had no other choice.
It appeared to be a small fork leading to the main body of the Pecos River a few miles to the east. Lined with cottonwoods and jumbles of limestone boulders swept aside by previous floods, it looked to be shallow, easy to cross. Smoke sat his Palouse on a high bluff above the river, watching things carefully from a considerable distance before he rode down to test the river bottom for treacherous sand pits and bogs.
Examining the branches of each tree, he was troubled when he found no birds perched on any of the leafy limbs near the crossing. As with most of his experience, reading this sort of sign had been taught to him by Preacher. Most all types of wildlife exhibited behavior that was as good as a signpost, if a man knew how to read it. The sudden flight of birds from a particular spot was a warning to knowledgeable men. The direction a deer ran when it was frightened, sensing danger, was as meaningful as the angry charge of a grizzly protecting her newborn cubs. Even a lowly cricket gave off excellent warnings in the dark, simply by suddenly growing silent when it felt another presence close to its hiding place. The absence of sparrows or blue jays in trees beside the river alerted Smoke to the possibility of danger,
He reined his Palouse around and tied it off in a thicket where it could graze, pulling his rifle, taking a single thin blanket from his bedroll, and wrapping it around his forearm. The sun was almost directly overhead. A soft breeze came from the west, thus he began his approach to the crossing from the east, upwind, in the fashion of all seasoned mountain men stalking prey. He had a possible use for the blanket, a trick, just in case someone was down there gunning for him.
Pickett had grown bored with all the waiting. Last night, as he rested on thin blankets with a pint of tequila for company, his impatience had lessened somewhat. But today his nerves were on edge more than usual… It was this damn waiting, even though he fully understood the necessity of it. If Smoke Jensen was the trained killer everyone else believed he was, he’d be smart and cautious.
He checked the loads in his pistol, a Colt Peacemaker, for what seemed the hundredth time, then he holstered it and after he took off his flat-brim Stetson, he peered above the rocks, where shadows from nearby cottonwoods covered his hiding place. Again there was no sign of a horseman approaching the river. He then clamped his jaw in frustration and ducked back down.
“I’ll bet the gutless son of a bitch headed another direction,” he said softly, angrily. “He’s liable to ride plumb to Nebraska to get back home.” Pickett took another swallow of tequila, listening closely for the sound of a horse in the distance.
He’d gone over what he meant to do a thousand times, not raising his head at all when the rider got close, waiting until he heard a horse in the river. Jensen would be looking for any kind of movement, and there would be none until he was in the water. Then he might catch a split-second glimpse of two shotgun barrels flashing in the sunlight just before they exploded, too late for any man to draw and shoot.
“C’mon, you yellow bastard,” Pickett whispered, resting his head against a rock, his shotgun held loosely in his left fist with both hammers cocked… he didn’t want the click of metal to alert Jensen just before he killed him.
He wondered what was keeping Jensen. According to what the Apache told Jessie, they should be nearing the river by now. He took a bite of jerky and washed it down with tequila. “Hard on a man’s nerves, all this
