“He lives with a Ute woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Go on.”
“Jake lives in Cortez. When he’s not riding with the gang, he’s a saddle maker.”
“Single or married?”
“Married! He’s even got kids, dammit. Are you gonna shoot them down too?”
“Of course not. That’s your style, not mine. Now, what about the Marble brothers?”
“I never been to their place.”
“Where is it?”
“Arizona. Right … right in the corner.”
“In a town or on a ranch?”
Hank threw his eyes about and moaned. “Kill me, please. I’m suffering!”
“House or ranch?”
“I don’t know,” Hank whimpered. “Ranch, I think. They … they move around a lot. You must know that.”
“Anyone else responsible for the deaths of my wife and son?” Smith asked, his voice almost pleasant.
“No!”
Smith climbed to his feet and looked around the room. “This cabin is a shit-house,” he said more to himself than the dying man. “It stinks.”
Hank began to drag himself across the rough plank floor, leaving a wide, crimson trail of blood. Smith waited until he reached the door, then walked over and grabbed Hank’s boots and dragged him back across the room.
The man began to cry.
“All right,” Smith finally told him. “I guess that you’ve suffered enough. Not as much as I have since you and your friends murdered my innocent family, but enough.”
Hank was almost gone. He managed to raise his head. “Are you gonna shoot me? I hurt so bad!”
“No,” Smith said, reaching into his pocket for a match. “I’m going to set this place on fire and let you burn when you go to hell.”
“No!” Hank screamed. “No!”
But Smith paid the dying man no attention. He went over and grabbed the kerosene lamp, then hurled it to the floor. Some of the fuel splashed over Hank, who once again began to crab toward the door, cursing and wheezing.
Smith lit a match, pitched it onto the wet floor, and whirled for the door feeling the sudden and intense heat and hearing Hank’s tortured screams. He slammed the door and propped it shut with a broken board.
He went out to the corral and calmed the nervous livestock. Night turned almost to day as the flames grew higher and higher. Fortunately, the cabin was in a clearing so that there was little danger of setting the forest afire, unless one of the rising embers landed in some dry brush. Smith didn’t think that very likely. He smoked one more cigarette, then spread his blankets under the stars by the corral and watched the cabin burn and slowly collapse into a smoking funeral pyre. Smith supposed it might be a good idea to drag the old man’s body over and throw it into the embers so that it would burn as well, but the idea was so distasteful that he rejected it and eventually fell asleep.
The sun was well up on the eastern horizon when he awoke the following morning. The cabin was a pile of smoking rubble. Smith was hungry and used hot coals from the cabin fire to cook a big breakfast. Afterward, he saddled his horse and prepared to ride on over to South Park, where he would find Red Skoal and his Ute woman.
He had heard a lot about Red Skoal and knew that the man was far smarter and more dangerous than the Trabert family. Smith also realized that he would have to be wary of the Ute woman too. Indian women had a strong loyalty for their men and they weren’t squeamish or slow to kill.
Yes, Smith thought as he rode away with the taste of smoke heavy in the crisp morning air, I might have to kill the squaw too.
Chapter 8
Target threw a shoe and went lame about ten miles east of Leadville. Cussing over his bad luck, Longarm walked the palomino into a bustling mining town named Jasper Rock and immediately began to search for a blacksmith who could solve his problem.
“All right,” he wearily said to himself, spying a blacksmith’s shop. “I’ll see if we can get Target shod and then find us a place to rest tonight. But tomorrow, I’m on my way to Leadville come hell or high water.”
The blacksmith watched as Longarm slowly led his fine but limping palomino up the busy street careful to avoid being run down by the heavy flow of wagon traffic. When Longarm came to a stop and nodded a tired greeting, the blacksmith laid down his hammer and frowned.
“Looks like you got a big problem, mister. What’d that handsome palomino horse do, bow a tendon?”
“He tossed a shoe about four miles out on that rocky wagon track you folks call a road. I’m hoping that he’ll be sound once you tack on a new shoe and we give him a night’s rest.”
“We’ll see about that,” the blacksmith said, wiping his rough hands on his leather apron before coming over to gently run his hand down Target’s leg.
