He talked to the horse for a moment before saddling up, and the horse seemed eager to ride. He wondered if Louis had gone back and gotten his horses. He would soon know.
He had traveled about three miles, he reckoned, when the sounds of galloping horses reached him, coming up fast behind him. He pulled off into timber and waited.
The Lee Slater gang, Luttie with them, along with One-Eyed Jake and his bounty hunters. Smoke wanted them to get into town and have one good drink of whiskey before he threw clown the challenge.
He stopped to water his horse, and as he knelt down to drink, he was shocked at the reflection staring back at him. His face was bloody and cut and swollen. His hair was matted with dried blood from where the slug had grazed him—on both sides. He looked like something out of Hell.
Which was fine with him. The gunhands better get used to Hell, ’cause that’s where Smoke intended to send them.
Chapter Twenty-two
Smoke reined up and dismounted at the edge of town. He looked up at the sun. Directly overhead High noon. He pulled saddle and bridle off the horse and turned it loose to water and roll and graze.
Smoke loosened his guns in leather, then stuck the extra .44s behind his gun belt, the fifth .44 jammed down into his legging, right side. He waved a burly, bearded man over to him “Yeah?” the man asked, walking over to him. He took a long second look, his mouth dropping open. “Holy Christ!” the man whispered.
“Clear the streets,” Smoke told him.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Smoke. Ever’body said you was dead!”
“Well, I’m not. I just look it. Move.”
The miner ran toward the marshal’s office and threw open the door, and almost got himself shot for that rash act. “Whoa!” he cried, as Johnny,
Louis, Earl, and Cotton jerked iron “I ain’t even carryin’ no sidearm. Smoke Jensen just rode into town. He’s up yonder. He pointed. “He looks like death warmed over. But he said to clear the streets. He’s all muddy and bloody and mean clear through. Got guns a-hangin’ all over him.”
“Hot damn!” Earl said.
“I’ll run tell Charlie!” Mills said. “Sharp, take the men and clear the streets of people and horses.”
Louis pointed a finger at Cotton. “Go to Sally. Tell her the news.”
“I’m gone!” Cotton ran from the office.
“This is Smoke’s fight,” Louis said. “But we can keep a eye out for ambushers and back-shooters.”
The men took down sawed—off shotguns, stuffed their pockets with shells and stepped out of the office. The main street was already deserted. Luttie was lifting his second glass of rye to his lips when the wild scream of an enraged panther cut the still, hot air. He spilled half his drink down his shirt-front.
“Jesus Christ!” Tom said.
“It can’t be!” Pecos shouted, frantically brushing at his crotch where he’d dropped his cigarette. “He fell off a damn mountain.”
Rod and Randy giggled.
Dan Diamond looked at One-Eyed Jake, disbelief in his eyes.
Frankie Deevers loaded up his guns full.
Martine’s fingers were trembling as the cry of a panther changed to the howling of a lobo wolf. He crossed himself and stood up.
Charlie Starr chuckled in his bed and propped a couple of pillows behind him, then lifted the canvas and tied it back. He pulled out his long-barreled six-guns and checked them.
Sally smiled and put on a pot of coffee. Smoke would want a good strong cup of coffee when this was over. She knew her man well.
Larry Tibbson loaded up a sawed-off express gun and took a position near the center of the boom town.
The stage rolled in, the driver and guard taking a quick look at the deserted street. “Oh, my God!” the driver said, his eyes touching on the tall bloody man standing at the end of the long street. He threw the strongbox and mail pouch to the ground and yelled at his horses to get gone.
Mills tore open the mail pouch and jerked out a letter, quickly scanning it. With a yell of excitement, he jumped up and said, “Here it is! The warrants against Smoke Jensen have been dropped. It’s signed by the President of the United States!”
“Damn that President Arthur!” Luttie said.
Morris Pattin stepped out of the barber shop where he’d just had a haircut and a bath. He brushed back his new coat, freeing his guns, and walked up the street toward Smoke Jensen. He was shocked at the man’s appearance. Jensen looked like something out of hell.
“I’ll take you now, Jensen,” he called.
“You’ll kiss the devil’s behind before you do,” Smoke told him, then lifted his rifle in his left hand and drilled the bounty hunter from a hundred yards out.
The slug hit the manhunter in the center of his chest, and Morris was down and dying without ever having a chance to pull iron—not that it would have done him a bit of good at that distance.
Sally moved the coffee pot off the griddle and decided she would wait a few minutes before dumping in the coffee. She wanted Smoke to have a good hot fresh cup of coffee.
Charlie caught movement by the edge of a building and jacked back the hammer on his old six-gun. It would be a good shot for him, but he figured he could do it. He smiled as he recognized the gunfighter from down Yuma way. Couldn’t think of his name. Didn’t make no difference; the gravedigger could just carve “Yuma” on the marker.
Yuma lifted his rifle and sighted Smoke in. Charlie took him out with a neck shot at seventy-five yards.
“Damn good shootin’,” Charlie complimented himself, as Yuma slumped to the dirt. “I’d a not done ’er with one of them new short-barreled things.”
Photographers had quickly set up their boxy equipment, filled the flash-trays, and were ready to record it all for posterity.
Smoke stepped out of the street and ducked into an alley.
Tom Post looked up and down and all around. “Where’d he go?” He asked Lopez. The men were in the general store, pricing new suits of clothes they planned to buy with the reward money. Or steal them, now that the shopkeeper and his woman had locked themselves in the storeroom.
“Right behind you,” Smoke said calmly.
Tom and Lopez turned, jerking iron.
They were far too slow.
Smoke had leaned the rifle up against a counter and stood with both hands filled with Colts, the Colts spitting lead and belching lire and gunsmoke.
Lopez took two rounds in the chest, dropped his guns, staggered backward, and fell out one of the big storefront windows. He crashed to the boardwalk and lay amid the broken glass, kicking and cursing his life away.
Tom was doubled over with two slugs in his belly. He fell to the floor and lay moaning. Smoke kicked the man’s gun away and reloaded his own. He took a sawed—off shotgun from the rack and broke it open, shoving in shells and filling his pockets from the open box.
“You a no good sorry son!” Post groaned.
“Don’t lose any sleep over it,” Smoke told him, then stepped out to the back of the store.
The young punk Bull, from Pecos’ gang, was running up the alley, wild-eyed, cussing, and both hands full of guns. Smoke let him have both barrels of the sawed-off twelve gauge. The buckshot lifted the punk off his boots and sent him crashing into an open-doored outhouse. The punk died sitting on the hole, crapping into his pants.
Smoke punched fresh rounds into the Greener and walked on, pausing when he heard the sounds of someone running.
Curt Holt rounded a corner, running as hard as he could, his hands full of six-guns. He slid to a halt and lifted them. Smoke blew what was left of him—after the man took two rounds of buckshot at pointblank range in the guts—through a window of someone’s living quarters behind a saddleshop.
“Good Jesus Christ!” he heard someone shout from inside. “What a mess.”
