CHAPTER 16
It looked like they would be staying another night in Sacramento, which would make the time remaining to reach Reno before Christmas that much shorter. But finding enough reliable, sturdy horses to make up two stagecoach teams was a lengthy process, even with the help of Fred Davis and Salty Stevens, and it had to be done.
Smoke’s wealth helped, because he wound up having to buy all the livestock. Fred Davis could sell them for him once Salty got back to Sacramento with the coach.
The stock included a couple of good saddle mounts for Smoke and Denny. They might need those mounts if any of the coach horses got scattered for some reason and had to be rounded up.
Smoke could tell that Denny wouldn’t really mind if that happened. She was always on the lookout for some sort of adventure.
She came by that honestly, too.
During the busy afternoon, Smoke managed to swing by the telegraph office and send a wire to Sally explaining the plan and asking her to meet him in Reno for Christmas.
When he got back to the hotel that evening, after making all the arrangements to have the horses brought to Fred Davis’s house first thing the next morning, he found her reply waiting for him.
Some wives would have chided their husbands for coming up with such a scheme, would have called them reckless, foolhardy, even harebrained. Sally Jensen had never been a typical wife.
A GRAND AND DARING JOURNEY STOP WILL SEE YOU IN RENO STOP LOVE TO DENISE LOUIS AND MY DARLING HUSBAND STOP MERRY CHRISTMAS STOP
Smoke grinned as he read the telegram. He knew that if Sally said she would be there in Reno, he could count on it. Now all he had to do was complete his part of the trip.
He was having dinner in the hotel’s dining room with Denny and Louis that evening when one of the waiters approached him with a folded piece of paper.
“A boy just delivered this message for you, Mr. Jensen,” the man said as he held out the paper.
Smoke took it and reached for his pocket to pull out a coin, but the man shook his head and gestured for him not to do that.
“Not necessary,” the waiter said. “My boy is a loyal reader of the dime novels about you. I hate to think about how many coins he’s put in the pockets of Mr. Beadle and Mr. Adams!”
“And those publisher fellas keep those dimes and don’t give a penny to me,” Smoke responded with a grin. “Doesn’t hardly seem fair, does it?”
“No, indeed. But I was wondering . . . perhaps I could prevail upon you to sign one of them for him . . . ?”
“You know I don’t write them, don’t you?”
“Of course, sir. But you are the dashing hero whose exploits fill their pages.”
Smoke chuckled. “Sure, I’ll sign one of them. First time I ever recall anybody asking me to do that.”
“I’ll stop by your room later this evening, if that’s all right.”
“Sure,” Smoke said.
With that taken care of, the waiter left and Smoke unfolded the paper. A frown creased his forehead as he read the scrawled words.
“What’s wrong, Father?” Denny asked. When they were out on the range, or when she was excited or upset about something, she called Smoke “Pa.” In more elegant, genteel surroundings like this hotel dining room, however, he was “Father.”
Smoke tapped a fingertip against the paper and said, “This note is from Salty. Says he needs to see me. Some problem with the stagecoach.”
“Oh, no,” Denny said. “Once I got used to the idea, I started looking forward to this trip.”
Louis said dryly, “You’re just hoping for some excitement.”
Smoke said, “Getting across the Sierra Nevadas in a stagecoach in the middle of winter will be enough excitement all by itself. Salty says for me to pick him up at the Rusty Hinge and we’ll go on out to Davis’s place.”
“Are you going to?” Denny asked.
“Reckon I’d better see what it’s all about,” Smoke replied with a shrug.
He had finished his supper anyway, so he laid his napkin aside and stood up.
“You two take your time,” he told his children. “If I don’t see you later tonight, be ready to leave early tomorrow morning. We can’t afford to lollygag around here in Sacramento any longer than we have to.”
“We’ll be ready,” Denny promised.
Smoke had left his hat and the Colt up in the room when he came down to supper, so he made a quick trip up there to retrieve them and his sheepskin jacket before he left the hotel.
He hadn’t expected to need a saddle mount again tonight, so he had left the horse he’d rented at the livery stable. When he stopped there now, he found that the same horse was in its stall, so he paid the hostler to use the animal again.
He rode to the Rusty Hinge. The streets in this part of town were hard-packed dirt, not cobblestone or brick, and enough snow remained on the ground to muffle the horse’s hoofbeats as Smoke approached the Rusty Hinge.
His eyes narrowed as he saw a flash of movement up ahead. Someone had leaned out of the dark mouth of an alley beside the saloon, then pulled back quickly into the shadows.
Several thoughts flashed through Smoke’s mind in rapid succession. Plenty of times in his life, enemies had tried to ambush him. The warning bells going off in his brain told him this might well be another of those bushwhack attempts.
He was here tonight only because of that note from Salty he had received. Maybe the note was genuine, but more than likely it wasn’t. Smoke knew he could trust Salty, but it was possible the old-timer had been forced into being the bait in a trap. If that was the case, it meant Salty was probably in danger.
The rented horse had drawn even with the alley mouth while Smoke was thinking these things. Earlier, when he had shrugged into the sheepskin jacket in the hotel room, he had tucked the Lightning into the waistband at the front of his jeans, where it would be easy to get to. His hand closed around the revolver’s butt.
The alley was to his left. Smoke heard shoe leather scrape on the ground from that direction and flung himself out of the saddle to the right as he yanked the gun free.
A shotgun boomed from the alley, along with the crash of a couple of revolvers. Garish orange muzzle flame bloomed in the darkness.
The rented horse screamed and bolted ahead. Smoke hit the ground and put his left hand down to catch himself and power into a roll. He came up on one knee, facing the alley, with the Lightning thrust out in front of him.
More Colt flame spurted from the shadows. Smoke felt the wind-rip of a slug passing close to his face. He triggered a return shot. Another muzzle flash. A bullet thudded into the ground just to his left. He fired again.
Echoes of the gunfire filled the street, but Smoke’s keen ears heard a familiar clank and recognized it as the sound of a double-barreled shotgun being closed after reloading. He aimed toward that sound and blasted two more rounds into the alley.
The shotgun clattered to the ground before the man wielding it could pull the triggers. Its twin barrels poked from the shadows. A man yelled a curse as he emerged from the alley, scooped the shotgun from the ground, and lunged toward Smoke.
With only a split second to save himself from a deadly blast, Smoke put a bullet in the man’s head. In the bad light, it was a remarkable shot, but no more impressive than many other shots Smoke Jensen had made.
The would-be killer’s head jerked back. He dropped the shotgun and spun off his feet.
Smoke had one bullet remaining in the gun. He waited to see if he needed to use it.
But the alley was dark and silent now as the gun thunder gradually faded away.
Then a raspy voice called thickly, “Smoke! Smoke, you all right, boy?”
That was Salty. The words came from farther back in the alley. Smoke straightened to his feet and took a step in that direction, the Colt still ready in his right fist.
“Are they all down, Salty?” he asked.
“Yeah, you plumb ventilated the whole bunch. But be careful! I ain’t sure all the skunks are dead. Lord have mercy, that was some shootin’, Smoke!”
As he stepped into the alley past the body of the man he had shot in the head, Smoke used his left hand to take a match from the shirt pocket where he usually carried several of them. He struck it on the wall and held it up so the yellow glare filled the narrow passage.
Three more bodies littered the dirty ground. None of them moved. Two were lying facedown. The other man was on his back. Smoke recognized him as Thad Stoermer, the one who had taken offense to losing at roulette and accused Eloise of cheating.
That meant the other three were the remaining Stoermer brothers. Smoke held the Colt ready and used the toe of his boot to roll them onto their backs. The eyes of all three men glittered lifelessly in the light from the match.
Satisfied that the ambushers were no longer a threat, Smoke went quickly to Salty, who sat with his back propped up against the wall of the building that housed the Rusty Hinge.
The old-timer’s ankles were tied, and judging by the way his arms were pulled back in what had to be a painful position, his wrists were lashed together behind him.
A rolled-up bandanna was around Salty’s neck, and a wadded-up piece of cloth lay on the old-timer’s chest. Smoke figured the Stoermer brothers had gagged Salty to prevent him from shouting a warning about the ambush, after taking him prisoner and tying him up.
The match was about to burn down to Smoke’s fingers, so he dropped it and lit another one before he knelt beside Salty.
The old man said in a miserable voice, “Lord, I’m sorry, Smoke! You don’t know how sorry I am. The damn sorry buzzards didn’t give me no choice!”
By now the gunfire had drawn people from the saloon. Several of them clustered at the alley mouth. A man called, “What the hell’s going on here?”
Another exclaimed, “It’s the Stoermer brothers! They’re all dead!”
Smoke ignored them and said to Salty, “Are you hurt?”
“Naw. They pushed me around a mite, but they didn’t do any real damage. They said they was gonna cut my throat, though, once they’d bushwhacked and killed you. No good sons o’ bitches couldn’t stand the thought that we’d whipped ’em. They . . . they grabbed me and said if I didn’t write that note to you, they’d kill Eloise. I couldn’t let that happen, Smoke!”
“Of course you couldn’t,” Smoke said as he put the gun away and pulled a Barlow knife from his pocket. He opened it with his teeth and used the razor-sharp blade to cut the ropes around Salty’s ankles. Then the old-timer leaned forward and Smoke cut the bonds around his wrists as well.
The glow from a lantern filled the alley. A uniformed policeman held up the light and came toward Smoke and Salty as Smoke helped the jehu to his feet. A couple more officers examined the bodies of the Stoermer brothers.
“Ye gads, what a massacre,” the policeman with the lantern said. He put his other hand on the butt of his holstered revolver as he glared at Smoke. “Are you responsible for this, mister?”
“Hold on there!” Salty said. “This here is Smoke Jensen, and those varmints tried to bushwhack him!”
“This ain’t the Wild West anymore, old-timer,” the officer said. “We don’t have gunfights in the streets.”
“And I don’t cotton to doing nothing while somebody tries to kill me,” Smoke said coolly. “Those men assaulted and kidnapped my friend here, threatened to murder a woman, and very nearly shot me. So I think whatever happened to them, they had it coming.”
“Wait a minute. There are four of them and just one of you. Are you sayin’ you gunned down all of them while they were shooting at you?”
“I told you,” Salty said, “he’s Smoke Jensen.”
“Well, I never heard of . . . Wait a minute. There used to be some famous gunfighter named Jensen.”
Salty crossed his arms over his chest, nodded emphatically, and said, “Durned tootin’. This is him.”
The policeman sighed and said, “All right, Jesse James. Come along, both of you. There’s going to be lots of questions that need answering, so we might as well get started.”