Sally picked out a mean-eyed blue steele that bared its teeth when the man tried to put a rope around it. Sally walked out into the corral, talked to the big horse for a moment, and then led it back to the barn. She fed him a carrot and an apple she’d picked up at the store, and the horse was hers.
“That there’s a stallion, ma’am!” Silva bellered. “He ain’t been cut. You can’t ride no stallion!”
“Get out of my way,” she told him.
“It ain’t decent, ma’am!”
“Shut up and take that pack animal around to the back of the store.”
“Yes’um,” Silva said. “Whatever you say, ma’am.” While Sally was saddling up, he turned to the hostler. “Send a boy with a fast horse to Rio. Tell them deputies of mine down there that Sally Jensen is pullin’ out Within the hour and looks like she’s plannin’ on joinin’ up with her husband. Tell them to do something. Anything!”
“Sheriff,” the hostler said, horror in his voice.
“Don’t look. She’s a-fixin’ to ride that hoss astride!”
“Lord, have mercy! What’s this world comin’ to?”
“Looking for me, boys?” Smoke called.
Crocker and Graham spun around, dropping their coffee cups, and grabbing for iron.
But Smoke was not playing the gentleman’s game. His hands were already filled with .44s. He began firing, firing and cocking with such speed the sounds seemed to be a continuous roll of deadly thunder. Crocker literally died on his feet, two slugs in his heart. Graham was turned completely around twice before he tumbled to the earth. He died with his eyes open, flat on his back and staring upward.
Smoke reloaded, listened for a moment, and then walked to the fire, eating the lunch and drinking the coffee the outlaws had fixed and no longer needed.
He drank the pot of coffee, kicked out the fire and left his tired horse to roll and water and graze, throwing a saddle on a fresh horse that was tied to a picket pin. He took what was left of a chunk of stale bread, sopped out the grease in the frying pan to soften it up, and finished off his lunch.
He looked at Crocker and Graham. “Nothing personal, boys. You just took the wrong trail, that’s all.” He swung into the saddle and put the camp of the dead behind him. Ray’s group came upon the bodies of Crocker and Graham and sat their horses for a time, looking around the silent camp.
“I’d like to think they et a good meal ’fore Jensen or that damned ol’ Charlie Starr come up on them,' Keno said. “But if I was to bet on it, I’d wager that Jensen kilt ’em and then sat down an’ et their food.”
He shook his head. “We’re gonna lose this fight, boys. Somebody is shore to get lead in Jensen, least the odds lean thataway, but in the end, we’ll lose.”
Sonny shook his head. “It just ain’t possible what he’s a-doin’. By rights, we should have kilt him the first day or two. This makes nearabouts ten of us he’s kilt—and half a dozen or more bounty hunters—and we ain’t got no clear shot at him yet. I just ain’t likin’ this, boys.”
Jerry nodded his head in agreement. “I got me a bad feelin’ in my guts about this fight. But, hell, way I see it, we ain’t got no choice ’cept to go on with it.”
Ray swung down from the saddle. “Let’s give the boys a buryin’. Stoke up that far, McKay, make some coffee.”
“We got no quarrel with you, Charlie,” Luttie told the old gunfighter. “It’s Jensen we’re after.”
Charlie had stepped out of the timber, blocking the trail. His hands were by his side, by the butts of his guns, and his eyes were hard and unblinking. “You got a quarrel with Smoke, you got a quarrel with me. That’s the way it is. So I hope you made your peace with God.” He jerked iron and opened the dance.
Two of Luttie’s hands went down before anyone could react to the sudden gunfire. Horses were rearing and screaming in fright; several of the riders were dumped from the saddle. Charlie shot Nick Johnson between the eyes, and he fell over against Luttie, knocking the man from the saddle and falling on top of him in the brush.
Charlie took a round in his side, flinched from the painful impact, jerked out two spare six-guns from behind his gunbelt and kept on throwing lead.
A young hand who fancied himself a gunslick pulled iron and jacked the hammer back. One of Charlie’s slugs caught him in the chest and knocked him to the ground. He died calling for his mother.
Charlie’s left leg folded under him as a .45 hit him in the thigh. He went down rolling into the brush. Just as he got to his boots and staggered off into the timber, toward his horse, he turned and blew another of Luttie’s hired guns out of the saddle. Ted Danforth took the slug in the belly and hit the ground. He died on his knees.
Charlie managed to get into the saddle and point his horse’s head south, toward Rio.
“No need to chase after him, Luttie,” Jake said, after the spooked and screaming horses had been settled clown. “He’s had it. I seen him take at least three slugs. He’s dead in the saddle by now.”
Luttie looked around him at the carnage. “That old bastard just jumped out and killed five of my men. I ain’t believin’ this!' He was rubbing the bump on his head where his noggin hit a rock. “I started out with sixteen top guns, and my people has been cut damn near a third in less than a minute and a half. Jesus Christ!”
“But now Smoke is alone up here,” One-Eyed Jake pointed out.
“Wonderful,” Luttie said sourly.
* * *
Blackjack reined up when he spotted the ground-reined horse. That wasn’t the horse Smoke had been riding, but he could have changed horses somewhere along the way. Blackjack stepped down from the saddle and took cover behind a tree, his eyes sweeping the area in front of him. He should have been looking behind him.
Blackjack was so mad he wasn’t thinking straight. His head ached where Smoke had kicked him, and his nose and mouth hurt, too. All he could think about was killing Smoke Jensen. And he didn’t want to do it quick, neither. He wanted Jensen to suffer. He had plans for Smoke Jensen. Painful plans.
But a higher power had already checked off Blackjack’s name in the book of life.
“You should have stayed where I left you, Blackjack,” Smoke said from behind the outlaw.
Blackjack whirled around, a curse on his lips and his right hand filled with a .45. Smoke shot him twice, in the belly and the chest as the .44 rose in recoil.
Blackjack sighed once and fell back against the tree he’d thought was giving him cover. The .45 fell from his numbed hand. “Damn you, Jensen!” he gasped.
“Sometimes the cards just don’t fall right,” Smoke told him.
The light was fading around Blackjack.
“Any family?” Smoke asked.
“None that would give a damn about me dyin’.”
“Too bad.”
“You’re a .. . devil, Jensen! You musta . . . come here from somewhere’s outta hell.” His legs would no longer support him. He slumped to the ground.
Smoke kicked the .45 far from Blackjack’s reach and walked toward his horse, reloading as he walked. Blackjack’s voice stopped him.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Stay with me ’til I’m gone, Jensen—please?”
“All right,” Smoke said.
Smoke walked to him, reached down, and took the .41 derringer Blackjack had slipped from behind his big silver beltbuckle. Blackjack let his hand fall to his side.
“Damn you!” the outlaw moaned. “How’d you know?”
“I didn’t. But people like you never change.” He broke open the derringer and checked the loads. Full. He slipped the tiny gambler’s back-up behind his belt.
“I’ll see you in hell, Jensen!”
“Maybe. I’ve done some things that probably qualify me for that place.”
Blackjack fell over on his side. We was all so shore about this. Fifty, sixty . . . of us. One of you. I just cain’t understand it.” He shuddered and grabbed the ground in his pain. “What is it that . . . makes you so damn hard to kill?”
