“Maybe it’s because I’m right, and you boys are wrong.”
Blackjack laughed bitterly.
“You got any money you want me to give to a church or an orphanage, Blackjack?”
Blackjack sneered past bloody lips and said some pretty terrible things about churches, orphans, the public in general and Smoke in particular.
He died with a curse on his lips.
“I don’t understand it either, Blackjack,” Smoke said to the dead outlaw.
Smoke stripped the saddle and bridle from Blackjack’s horse and turned the gelding loose. “Run free for a time, boy. You earned it.”
The last mountain man walked to his horse and swung into the saddle. “Let’s go meet what I was born to meet, boy,” he said. “No point in prolonging this.”
Chapter Seventeen
“What?” Earl almost lost his English cool. “That’s what the sheriff said,” the young man told him. “Missus Sally Jensen is headin’ into the mountains.”
Louis took off his badge and handed it to Earl. “I hereby resign my commission,” he told him. “The rest of you stay here. I’ve got to get into the mountains and head her off.”
“Look!” a citizen said, pointing up the muddy street.
“That’s Charlie!” Johnny shouted, running toward the man who appeared to be unconscious in the saddle.
“Get the doctor!” Cotton yelled, running after Johnny.
They gently took Charlie from the blood-soaked saddle and laid him down on the boardwalk. Charlie’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m hard hit, boys.”
“You’ll make it, you old war-hoss,” Johnny told him.
“I put about five or six of ’em down Tore they plugged me,” the old gunfighter said. “Seven Slash bunch.”
“Don’t talk, Charlie,” Lilly LaFevere said, kneeling down beside him.
“Hello, baby,” Charlie grinned up at her. “I ain’t seen you in ten years.”
“Nine,” she corrected him. “We was down on the border. Now hush your mouth.”
“Tired,” Charlie whispered. “Awful tired.”
“Take him to my quarters and put him in my bed,” Lilly told the men. “Move him gentle like. I count three bullet holes in his ornery old hide.”
She looked around her. “Where’s that goddamn sawbones?”
“He’s on the way,” a citizen said. “Is that really Charlie Starr?”
“Yeah,” Lilly said. “Now get the hell outta the way and give the man room to breathe.”
“I’m gone,” Louis said. “See you boys later.”
“You got enough grub?” Cotton asked.
“They’ll be food in the saddlebags of the outlaws,” Louis told him. “I’ll have a week’s supply fifteen minutes after I hit the mountains.”
He lifted the reins and was gone.
With his knife and strips of rawhide, Smoke made a pack out of two saddlebags, then carefully repacked all the supplies he’d taken from several dead men. He had a good five days’ food and plenty of ammo.
He tried not to think about when his luck was going to run out.
But he knew it would, sooner or later. The odds were just too great against him.
He was only a few miles away from where he’d left his horses—as the crow flies—but he didn’t want to head there, just yet. He stripped saddle and bridle from his borrowed horse and turned it loose to roll and water and graze. Then he picked up his pack and rifle and headed into the deep timber, to a place he remembered when roaming the country with old Preacher.
“You may get me, boys,” he said to the sighing winds and the soaring eagles high above him. “But you’ll pay a fearful price before you do.”
“Scum,” Louis said to the two riders.
“Huh?” one asked.
“I said you’re scum,” Louis repeated.
Stan and Glover had gotten separated from Noah’s group. They’d been wandering around in circles when they came upon the tall, well-built man dressed all in black. Kind of a dudey lookin’ fellow—except for those guns of his. They looked well-used. And his coat was brushed back to give him free access to the Colts. He was just standing in the middle of the trail, smiling sort of strange-like. Now he was insulting them.
“Git out of the way, fancy-pants!” Glover told him.
“I like it here.”
“Well, you about a stupid feller, then. I might decide to just run you down with this here horse. What do you think about that?”
Louis smiled. “I think your blow-hole is overloading your mouth, punk.”
Glover and Stan exchanged glances. It just seemed like nothin' had worked out right since they’d left the West coast and come to Colorado. All them hayseeds and hicks out in the rural areas of the coast states knowed who the Lee Slater gang was, and they kowtowed and done what they was told. But it seemed like that ever since they’d come to Colorado, all that was happenin’ was they was gettin’ the crap shot out of them. And nobody seemed to be afraid of them.
“You a bounty hunter, mister?” Stan asked.
“You might say that. I hunt punks. And it looks like I found me a couple.”
“I’m gettin’ tarred of you insultin’ me!” Glover popped off.
“Yeah,” Stan flapped his mouth. “We’re lookin’ for Smoke Jensen so’s we can collect the reward money.”
“You dumb clucks,” Louis said with a chuckle. “You’re part of the Lee Slater gang. You’re all wanted men, with bounties on your own heads. How in the devil do you think you’re going to collect any reward money?”
Stan and Glover exchanged another look. That hadn’t occurred to either of them.
“Uhhh . . .” Glover said.
“Well . . .” Stan said.
“Get off your horses, throw your guns in the bushes, and start walking,” Louis told them.
Stan told him what he could do with his orders. Sideways.
Louis shot him. His draw was like a blur and totally unexpected. Stan pitched from the saddle, and Louis turned his gun toward Glover just as the outlaw was jerking iron. Louis waited; a slight smile on his lips as the man cursed and jacked back the hammer.
That was as far as he got before Louis drilled him dead center in the chest, the slug knocking the outlaw out of the saddle, dead before he hit the ground. Quite unlike him, Louis twirled his six-shooter twice before dropping it back in leather.
“Punks,” he said scornfully.
He went through their saddlebags and took, out bacon, potatoes, bread, onions, and coffee. Fortunately, he did have with him his own coffee pot and small frying pan. The one he took from Stan’s saddlebag was so coated with old grease and other odious and unidentifiable specks it was probably contagious just by touch. With a grimace of disgust, Louis tossed it into the bushes.
He stripped both horses of saddle and bridle and turned them loose, then swung back into the saddle and headed out. He did not look back at the dead outlaws lying sprawled on the trail.
It was nearing dusk when Al Martine and his bunch spotted Smoke high up near the timber line in the big lonesome.
“We got him, boys!” Al yelled, and put the spurs to his tired horse.
A rifle bullet took Al’s hat off and sent it spinning away. The mountain winds caught it, and it was gone forever.
