CHAPTER 17
A meeting was held that evening at Rufus Spencer’s livery barn. Forty-seven men were there, not counting Smoke and Windy. They were the ones Windy had talked with during the day, advising them that more trouble might be on its way to Salt Lick and asking if they would be willing to join the fight against it, although he hadn’t gone into details about what—or who—that trouble might be.
To a man, every one of them had said yes.
When Smoke looked around, he saw men of all shapes and ages, ranging from fresh-faced youngsters barely in their twenties to leathery old-timers who had been around the frontier for a long time.
Two such veterans, Shug Russell and Enoch Jones, were still atop the bank, standing guard over the town. Smoke had told them about Snake Bishop, so they would know what they were getting into and what they needed to look out for.
Russell, a tall, lanky man with a tuft of gray beard, blind in his left eye from a knife wound suffered in a fight with another buffalo hunter at Adobe Walls several years earlier, had responded by saying, “I’ll take my Sharps up there with me, and if that Bishop scoundrel comes within a mile of Salt Lick, I’ll give him a Big Fifty welcome!”
Jones, rotund and a little softened up from town living but still keen-eyed, had expressed a similar sentiment. Even though Smoke had just met the two men, he immediately liked and had confidence in them.
A low hum of conversation filled the barn this evening. These men were aware that something was wrong but knew just enough to be worried.
Smoke stepped up on a bale of hay and raised his hands. “Men, if I could have your attention . . . Thanks for coming this evening. I want to thank you, too, for trusting me to fill in for the marshal. Most of you don’t know me, but my name is Smoke Jensen, and I’m an old friend of Jonas Madigan.”
Edward Warren said, “I believe most, if not all, of us know who you are, Mr. Jensen, even the ones who haven’t met you personally. And we’re very glad that a man with your reputation is in Salt Lick right now to give us a hand in our time of trouble.”
A general mutter of agreement went through the crowd, and one man called, “Damn right!”
“I appreciate that, fellas,” Smoke said with a smile. “Windy Whittaker, who’s agreed to serve as my deputy for the time being, has spoken to all of you today and let you know that the town may soon be facing even worse trouble than that attempted bank robbery last night. Those two outlaws who were killed were members of the Snake Bishop gang.”
Stunned silence greeted that blunt announcement and gripped the group of men for a long moment. Then a flood of exclamations, curses, and questions broke out.
Smoke let it continue for several seconds before he raised his hands for quiet again. When he didn’t get it right away, Sarge Shaw said, “Settle down!” and his commanding tone got immediate results.
“We don’t know for sure that Bishop and his men are headed this way,” Smoke went on. “But they could be, and we need to be ready for them if they show up.”
“They’ve raided a bunch of towns,” Rufus Spencer rumbled, “and they’ve killed a bunch of folks in every one of them. Some of those settlements were burned to the ground!”
Smoke nodded and said, “That’s right. He took those places by surprise, and folks weren’t able to put up much of a fight. But we’re not going to let that happen here, are we?”
For a second there was no response, then an angry, defiant roar welled up.
In the silence that followed that, however, a man said, “Wouldn’t it be better if we . . . well, if we just packed up our families and got out of town, while there’s still time?”
“And abandon everything you’ve built and worked for?” Shaw asked. “I don’t know about any of you boys, but I’m sure not prepared to do that!”
“You don’t have kids, Sarge,” another man said. “I do.”
Smoke said, “I understand that. Of course, all of you want what’s best for your families. But it’s just not practical for everybody to leave, especially when we’re not sure Bishop is even headed this way.”
Windy spoke up. “Besides, you don’t want to be headin’ anywhere else right now, not with that bad weather fixin’ to set in.”
“What bad weather?” a man asked. “It’s about as nice as it ever is at this time of year.”
“Yeah, but that ain’t gonna last. Sometimes these blue northers are even worse when the weather’s nice right before they get here.”
Several looks of derision were cast toward Windy, but he ignored them, obviously supremely confident in his ability to know what the weather was going to do.
One of the men said, “What do you think would be best, Mr. Jensen? Or Marshal Jensen, I reckon I should say.”
“We have a plan to defend the town that’s been put together by Colonel Appleton—”
“Who?”
Shaw barked, “Don’t interrupt the marshal that way.”
Smoke went on, “Colonel, would you step up here?”
He hopped off the hay bale and, with some effort, Apple Jack took his place. At the sight of the heavyset saloonkeeper climbing onto the bale, laughter came from several of the men.
“Colonel?” one of them repeated. “That’s just Apple Jack.”
“Colonel Appleton to you, mister,” Shaw said, “and to all the rest of you, too. You may not know it, but the colonel here was the commander of an artillery brigade during the late war, and a fine officer, to boot!”
It was hard not to be impressed by that endorsement from the former sergeant. Shaw hadn’t mentioned which side Apple Jack fought on, but no one asked.
Apple Jack began, “You fellas all know me—”
“Not as well as we thought we did!”
“Quiet down.” Despite the natural squeak in Apple Jack’s voice, the words had a tone of authority to them, as well. He reached inside his coat and drew out several folded papers. “Sergeant Shaw and I have drawn up a plan of the town and marked the best positions for defending it in case of an attack. We need volunteers to man those positions. If you have your own weapons and ammunition, that’s fine, but if you don’t, we’ll requisition some from the general stores. We want men who can shoot, but more than that, we need men who can keep a cool head and not panic in the face of trouble. We don’t know exactly how many enemies we’ll be facing, if it comes to that, but this group here . . .” He waved a hand to encompass all of them. “I know good and well we can take on those outlaws and beat ’em!”
Those words, calm but forceful and then building in intensity, got through to the doubters. A cheer went up from the men when Apple Jack clenched one pudgy hand into a fist and thrust it into the air in front of him. Only a few still appeared skeptical.
Shaw looked over at Smoke, gave him a curt nod, and said quietly, “They’ll come around.”
“I think so, too.”
Apple Jack went on, “Now, I’m gonna climb down from here, and if you fellas will gather around, we can figure out who’s going to be assigned to which position . . .”
While they were doing that, with Shaw assisting, Smoke and Windy stepped back to give them room. The old-timer scratched at his whiskers and said, “I know we’re doin’ the right thing, but I ain’t sure these fellas will ever be a match for Bishop’s gang. They’re the meanest bunch this side of a rattlesnake den!”
“I don’t know what else we can do,” Smoke said. “Jonas is sending a letter to the governor when the stagecoach comes through tomorrow, but it’ll take a while for any help to get all the way up here from Austin.”
“Yeah, that’s one thing about Texas . . . ever’where is way the hell an’ gone away from ever’where else!” Windy shook his head dolefully. “Wiped out by outlaws or froze by a blue norther. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another!”
* * *
Salt Lick was the end of the run for the stage line that ran north from Amarillo. When the stagecoach reached the settlement, it turned around and retraced its route southward.
Luther Blassingame was the regular jehu on this route and had been for several years. J.J. Hanesworth normally rode shotgun. Both men were on the driver’s seat the next morning as the coach rolled northward toward Salt Lick.
They had been making this run for several years and had never encountered much trouble. Renegade Comanches had chased them a couple of times, but on both occasions, Hanesworth’s deadly accurate fire with a Winchester had knocked some of the warriors off their ponies, and the rest had given up the pursuit.
Outlaws had also tried twice to hold up the stage. It wasn’t a very tempting target, except for the rare occasions when it carried a money shipment bound for the bank in Salt Lick. Blassingame and Hanesworth had blasted their way through one of the attempted holdups, Hanesworth blazing away with the Winchester and then cutting loose with a double-barreled coach gun, Blassingame handling the team with one hand while firing his Colt with the other.
The second time, the masked varmints had killed both leaders in the team, so Blassingame didn’t have any choice but to stop. The outlaws had taken the mail pouch and what valuables they could find on the passengers. It wasn’t much of a haul, but still, it rankled the driver and guard that the bandits had gotten away with it. At least they hadn’t killed anybody other than the horses, so there was that to be thankful for.
But Blassingame’s resentment meant that he was in no mood to stop for road agents after that. He had sworn many times that they’d have to shoot him off the seat to get him to stop.
He wasn’t thinking about that today as the coach rocked along the trail. The weather was still pleasant, although the breeze from the south had died down to nothing and the air was still. The dust kicked up by the team’s hooves and the coach’s wheels went almost straight up in the air and hung there in a slowly moving column.
Blassingame looked off to the northwest, blew a breath through his drooping walrus mustaches, and said, “You see that up yonder, J. J.?”
“See what?” Hanesworth asked. His mustache was a match for Blassingame’s, but that was the only physical similarity between them. Blassingame was short and built like a barrel. Hanesworth was taller and one of those fellas who could turn sideways behind a fence post and practically disappear.
“I’m talkin’ about those clouds to the northwest.”
“I don’t see any clouds. Sky’s clear all the way down to the horizon.”
“No, it ain’t,” Blassingame insisted. “Look down really close to the ground. See that thin blue line?”
Hanesworth squinted for a moment, then shook his head and said, “No, I don’t. What do you reckon you’re seein’?”
“That’s a blue norther. I’d bet a new hat on it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t. And I’ve been around the Panhandle and seen as many blue northers as you have, Luther. I think that’s one of those, what do you call ’em, mirages.”
“A mirage is what you see when you’re out in the desert and it’s really hot.”
“Yeah, but it’s somethin’ that ain’t really there, even though you see it, right?”
Blassingame shook his head and said, “I ain’t gonna argue with you. Anyway, if we just keep goin’ toward Salt Lick, we’ll find out, won’t we? Because it’ll get here, sooner or later.”
“If it really is anything.”
Blassingame glared for a second, then shook his head and concentrated on his driving. The trail ran flat and mostly straight through miles and miles of prairie dotted with clumps of hardy grass and occasional thickets of scrub brush. Stunted, gnarled trees were even rarer. Here and there, shallow, rocky ridges thrust up and the trail swung wide around them. In another ten miles or so, they would pass the little salt flat to the west of the trail that gave the settlement of Salt Lick its name. Blassingame had seen much bigger salt flats out in West Texas, but this one was large enough to attract the cattle from various spreads in the area. A good number of critters could be found around the flat most of the time.
“Ain’t nothin’ between the Panhandle and the North Pole except a slat fence,” Blassingame mused.
Hanesworth grunted. “What?”
“Just somethin’ I heard a fella say once. Ain’t nothin’ between the Panhandle and the North Pole except a slat fence. The North Pole is where all the cold air is.”
“I know what the North Pole is.”
Blassingame went on as if he hadn’t heard. “So when one of those blue northers blows through, there ain’t nothin’ to stop all that cold air from pourin’ in, because there’s nothin’ between here and there.”
“Nothin’ except part of Indian Territory and Kansas and Nebraska and—”
“It’s just a sayin’, for Pete’s sake! You don’t have to take it so damn literal—”
A fist-sized chunk of J.J. Hanesworth’s skull flew off, spraying blood, brain matter, and shards of bone into the side of Blassingame’s face. Hanesworth jerked back, dropped his rifle, and then toppled forward, landing on the edge of the floorboards and rolling off to the side.
Just like that, not much more than the blink of an eye, he was dead and gone, and a stunned Luther Blassingame was left alone on the rocking, swaying stagecoach seat, staring straight ahead as some of his old friend’s brain slid down his cheek and dripped off his jaw.
Then Blassingame’s own shocked brain started working again. He grabbed the whip from its holder, leaned forward, popped the lash over the team’s heads, and slashed at their rumps with it as he yelled at them. The six horses lunged forward, picking up speed. The coach began to jolt even more on the broad leather thoroughbraces that ran underneath it.
Blassingame hadn’t heard the shot that killed Hanesworth. That didn’t surprise him. The hoofbeats from the team and the clank and rattle of the coach itself created quite a racket. The two men had had to almost shout to hear each other, and they had been sitting side by side. A single gunshot from a distance easily could have gone unnoticed.
For that matter, they could be shooting at him right now, Blassingame realized, and he wouldn’t know it until one of the bullets smashed into him. He hunched lower on the seat, trying to make himself as small a target as possible.
He faintly heard a shout from inside the coach but couldn’t tell which of the three passengers it came from. The coach was carrying three men today, a couple of drummers headed to Salt Lick to get orders from regular customers there and a lawyer from Amarillo who had a meeting with one of his clients, a rancher who owned a spread up along the border with Indian Territory.
Blassingame didn’t figure any of the three would be worth much when it came to putting up a fight against outlaws.
So their only real chance, especially with Hanesworth gone, was for him to outrun the bandits.
He risked raising up enough to cast a glance back over his shoulder. What he saw made terror well up inside him.
At least two dozen riders were pursuing the stagecoach. It was like he had a damn army on his tail, Blassingame thought wildly. There might be even more riders back there; the dust made it difficult to tell.
But the leaders in the bunch were less than fifty yards behind the coach . . . and gaining steadily. Even though Blassingame had caught only a glimpse of him, the driver had seen the man who seemed to be the leader.
The man was galloping just ahead of the others and popping a whip like a crazy man. Who would do such a thing?
And then Blassingame remembered rumors he had heard and realized who was after him, and he let out a groan of despair.
That was Snake Bishop back there, closing in on him!