“Smoke Jensen!” the shout came. “You’re a coward, Jensen. A dirty little boot-lickin’ coward.”
Smoke slipped the hammer thong from his guns.
“There’ll be none of this!” Mills said.
“There’s no law against it,” the local marshal shut him up. Momentarily. “This ain’t back East where you kiss every punk’s butt that comes along. So why don’t you just close your mouth and see how we do it in the West.”
Smoke stepped out onto the boardwalk. “I don’t have any quarrel with you, boy,” he told the young man in the street. “So why don’t you just go on home, and we’ll forget you calling me out.”
“Big tough man!” Mathers sneered. “I always knowed you was yellow.”
“He’s givin’ you a chance to live, boy,' the local marshal told him, standing well to one side. “Take it. You’ll never get another one after this day.”
“You shut up,” Mathers told him, without taking his eyes from Smoke. “Make your play, gunfighter.”
Smoke just stood and looked at him.
“I said draw, damn you!” Mathers screamed.
“I got nothing against you, boy. Far as I know, the marshal has no charges against you. So you’re not wanted. Go get your horse and ride on out of here.”
“He’s giving him every chance,' Albert said, watching from the hotel lobby’s right front window.
“Yes, he is,” Mills agreed. “He’s a tough man, but seems to be a fair one.”
“I’ll kill you where you stand, Jensen!” Mathers shouted. His hands hovered over his guns. “Draw.”
“I’ll not sign your death certificate, boy,” Smoke told him. “You’ll have to draw on me.”
“Are you ready to die, Jensen?” Mathers shouted.
“No man is ever ready to die, boy.”
Mills grunted, arching an eyebrow at the philosophical uttering from the mouth of the West’s most famous gunhandler. He just didn’t understand these Western men. They could be incredibly crude, then turn about and quote Shakespeare. They could brand cattle and endure the squalls of pain from the cow, then turn right around and shoot somebody who tried to hurt their pet dog.
Mills reluctantly concluded that he just might have a lot to learn about the West and the people who lived here.
“Now!” Mathers yelled, and grabbed for iron.
Smoke’s right hand Colt seemed to leap into his hand. Mathers felt the slug strike him. His own gun was still in leather. The bullet shattered his breast bone and sent bone splinters into his heart. The young man looked up at the clear blue of the sky. He was on his back and could not understand how he got in that position.
“Holy Mother of God!” Albert muttered. “He’s fast as a snake.”
Townspeople began gathering around the fallen young man.
“I’ll pray for you, young man,” the local minister said, clutching his Bible and leaning over Chris Mathers.
But he was talking to a corpse.
Smoke punched out the empty and let it drop to the boardwalk. It bounced and rolled off into the dirt.
“I didn’t come into your town to cause trouble,
Marshal.”
“I know that. What you probably done was save me a lot of trouble. Mathers was born to it and had a killing coming.”
Sm0ke’s smile was a grim one. A hundred years from now, that very statement will come back into the minds of a lot of good, decent, law-abiding people, Marshal.” He walked back into the hotel.
Mills Walsdorf had stepped out onto the boardwalk. He cocked his head to one side and had a puzzled expression on his face upon hearing Smoke’s words.
“Now . . . what in the world did he mean by the?”
“I could try to explain it to you, Mills,” the local marshal said. “‘But people like you never seem to understand until it’s Just too damn late.
Chapter Three
Smoke lingered over his coffee after breakfast, pondering his next move. He didn’t want to pull out and have Mills Walsdorf and his Eastern U.S. Marshals tagging along behind him. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why the government would send men from the big cities out West to catch Western born and reared outlaws. It just didn't make any sense.
Of course, there were a lot of things the federal government did that didn’t make any sense to Smoke.
Like sending seven U.S. Marshals out to round up a gang of fifty or sixty outlaws. That wasn’t a dumb move; that was just plain ignorant. Especially when the marshals didn’t know the country, weren’t familiar with Western ways, and rode their horses like a bunch of English lords and dukes out on a fox hunt.
“May I join you?” Mills broke into his musings.
Smoke pointed to a chair.
“I can’t get used to having no menu,” Mills said.
“It’s on the chalkboard over there,” Smoke replied, cutting his eyes.
“I know where it is! I’m not blind.” He paused, then said, “I’m afraid we got off on the wrong foot yesterday afternoon, Mr. Jensen. I should like to make amends and offer you some employment.”
“The first part is fine with me. Forget the job offer.”
“You would be doing your country a great service by joining us and helping to bring an end to this reign of terror put upon the land by Lee Slater and his men.”
“I intend to put an end to it, Mills. Permanently.”
“The men deserve a fair trial.”
“They deserve a bullet, and that is what they’re going to get.”
“You’re going to force me to stop you, Mr. Jensen.”
Smoke’s eyes were amused as he gazed at the man. “I’d be right interested in knowing how you plan on doing that, Mills.”
“By arresting you for obstruction of justice, that’s how.”
Smoke chuckled. “First you better get yourself a federal warrant for my arrest. Nearest telegraph station is south of here, across the San Juan Mountains. The federal judge is in Denver. I know him. You’ll play hell getting him to sign a warrant against me. And if you get another to sign it, I’ll get the judge in Denver to cancel it. But that’s only part of your problem. The biggest problem facing you would be trying to arrest me.”
“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you, Mr. Jensen?”
“The name is Smoke. And yes, I am. You ever heard of the Silver Camp Shootout?”
“Yes. That was the setting in one of those Penny Dreadfuls written about you. Pure fiction, of course.”
“Wrong, Mills. Pure fact. There were fifteen salty outlaws in that town when I went in. There were fifteen dead men when I rode out. I wasn’t much more than a boy—in age. You ever seen a cornered puma, Mills?”
“No.”
“You ever try to brace me, Mills, and you’ll see one”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Nope. just telling you the way it’ll be.”
“I can have a hundred U.S. Marshals in here in a week, Smoke.”
“You’ll need them. I was raised by mountain men, Mills. I know areas in this country that still haven’t been viewed by white men. I’ll get you so damn lost you’ll have a beard a foot long before you find your way out. I know where to ride, and where not to ride. And that last part is far more important than the first. And as far as you and your boys taking me in, forget it. You’d have to pay too terrible a price. I’ve had as many as five slugs in me, and stayed on my feet shooting. The men who put those slugs in me are rotting in the grave. I’m sitting here drinking coffee. I’d think about that if was you.”
“I don’t think you’d draw on an officer of the law, Smoke.”
“I wouldn’t want to do it. I surely wouldn’t. Most of them just get out of my way and leave me alone. They know I’m not a criminal; they know I work hard and try to live right. Western lawmen also know that you got to put a rabid animal down. There is no cure for what they’ve got.”
“Men are not animals, Smoke.”
“You’re right. Many men aren’t nearly as good as animals. Animals don’t kill for no reason. They kill to protect
