CHAPTER 29
Smoke didn’t know what time it was when he got back to the bank, but judging by the emptiness in his belly and the heaviness of his legs from trudging around in the snow, he had been gone for a long time. It had to be well after the usual hour of nightfall—and supper time!—by now, although with the blizzard still roaring, that didn’t mean much.
He thought there might be a few hopeful glimpses, though. It seemed like there were more lulls in the wind than there had been earlier, and when the gusts did die down, they stayed that way a little longer each time. That made it easier for him to find his way around town.
Maybe this storm was blowing itself out.
In addition to those tiny signs of improvement in the weather, Smoke regarded it as a mixed omen that he hadn’t run into any more of Snake Bishop’s gang as he moved around the town. Most folks would see that as a good thing, he mused. He wasn’t sure about that, however. To Smoke, the lack of action meant that he hadn’t been able to kill any more of the outlaws and continue whittling down the odds.
He had been gone long enough, though, that he wanted to check on the folks at the bank before he did anything else.
He was on his way there when a bulky figure loomed up in front of him. A high-pitched, unmistakable voice rose over the wind.
“Hold it right there, mister, or I’ll blast you!”
“Don’t shoot, Apple Jack,” Smoke called back. “It’s me, Smoke Jensen.”
“Smoke!” Apple Jack emerged more clearly from the waving curtains of snow. “Damned if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes! I hadn’t seen you since the storm hit, and I was starting to worry that Bishop’s men might’ve done for you!”
“No such luck for them,” Smoke said with a grin. “I was kind of worried about the same thing where you were concerned. Where have you been?”
“Well, at first me and a few other fellas stuck at the barricade where we were supposed to hold out. This monster of a blizzard kind of ruined that plan, though.”
“It surely did,” Smoke agreed.
“We traded a few shots with Bishop’s bunch when they galloped into town,” Apple Jack went on. “Poor Al Nelson was killed, blast it. But those outlaws just kept going, and there was nothing else to shoot at. I told the boys to head for either their homes or the bank, wherever they wanted to fort up. And ever since, I’ve been going around town trying to check on folks and not get lost in the storm! I never saw anything like it, Smoke.”
“That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing,” Smoke said. “Have you run into any more of Bishop’s gang?”
“No, I reckon I’ve been lucky. I know they’ve got to be around somewhere.”
“They are,” Smoke said grimly. “I’ve tangled with half a dozen of them.”
“So I suppose that’s six of the buzzards we don’t have to worry about?”
Smoke grunted. “Only the burying, when it thaws out. I think I’ve heard some other shots, too, so those skirmishes I was mixed up in weren’t the only ones.”
“Dang, I hope too many of our folks haven’t been hurt or killed. What now?”
“We were both headed for the bank. Let’s see if we can find it in this mess.”
As they made their way through the snow, Apple Jack said, “I don’t think the wind is blowing as hard now as it was a while ago.”
“I agree. It’s blowing almost as hard, but not quite.”
“I’ve seen a lot of blue northers. I think the wind will lay down by morning. It might even stop snowing. But if it does . . .”
Apple Jack’s voice trailed off. Smoke knew what the saloonkeeper was thinking.
If the storm eased off enough, then Snake Bishop and his men would emerge from wherever they were denned up . . . and Salt Lick would have an even more deadly danger facing it.
They reached the bank a few minutes later. As they approached the door, Smoke held out a hand to stop his companion.
“Maybe we’d better hail them before we go in,” he said. “They’re liable to be on edge inside, and we don’t want anybody getting trigger-happy.”
“No, sir, we sure don’t.” Apple Jack raised his voice. “Hey, there, inside the bank! Anybody hear me?” He turned his head to grin at Smoke. “If they do, they’ll know who’s out here. Nobody in Salt Lick’s got a more distinctive voice than I do, except for maybe that newspaper fella’s youngster. Just looking at the two of us, you’d think we ought to swap voiceboxes.”
There was no response from inside the bank. Smoke slapped his palm against one of the doors a couple of times and called, “Hello, inside! It’s Smoke Jensen and Colonel Appleton!”
He tried the door. It was locked.
From the other side, Edward Warren asked, “Are you and Apple Jack alone, Marshal?”
“That’s right.”
Warren must have unlocked the door. It opened slightly. He called, “Come on in, easy-like.”
“They’re being careful,” Smoke said to Apple Jack. “That’s good.”
“I reckon folks learn pretty quick when there’s a whole gang of killers breathing down their necks.”
Smoke and Apple Jack stepped into the bank and stopped just inside the entrance. At least a dozen rifles and shotguns were pointing at them from fairly close range. Smoke closed the door behind them and smiled.
“If there had been any kind of trickery going on, I reckon you would have filled us full of lead just now,” he said. “That’s good.”
Warren looked relieved as he lowered his shotgun and stepped forward, but his face and voice still revealed a lot of strain as he said, “We’ve tried to be careful.” His jaw tightened. “But not careful enough.”
“What’s wrong?” Smoke asked, instantly alert.
Windy Whittaker stepped forward, too, and raked his fingers through his whiskers in agitation.
“That Spencer gal is gone,” he said.
“You mean Bishop’s men got her somehow?” Smoke asked sharply.
Warren shook his head. “No, we think she slipped out on her own after she found out that Bishop himself and one of his men are holed up at the livery stable. She thought her father was probably there and in danger.”
“You’d better tell me about it,” Smoke said.
They did, with Windy providing the details of his brief encounter with Snake Bishop and one of the other outlaws in front of the livery stable.
“I believed we had convinced Tommy to wait here instead of charging off and putting herself in danger,” Warren said, “but then later, we realized she was gone and we found an open window on the second floor where she must have climbed out.”
“If she jumped from the second floor, she could be hurt.”
“That’s the first thing we thought of. Some of the men formed a human chain, so no one would get lost, and we went out through the back door into the alley to look for her. I’m convinced she’s not back there, Marshal, so she must have been in good enough shape to leave.”
“Of course, with the wind blowin’ the way it is, there wasn’t no sign,” Windy put in. “It had all blowed away.”
Warren said, “She must have gone to the livery stable. There’s no other reason she would have left like that.”
“You didn’t run into her pa anywhere while you were out roamin’ around, did you, Smoke?” Windy asked.
Smoke shook his head. “No, I didn’t see him. What about you, Apple Jack?”
“Never saw hide nor hair of him,” the saloonkeeper replied.
“He could have gone to the stable, all right,” Smoke mused, “and if Bishop showed up there . . . You’re sure you saw Bishop, Windy?”
“Sure as can be. I got a good look at him before the varmint started shootin’ at me.”
“How long has Tommy been gone?”
“We don’t know,” Warren said. “An hour or more, at least.”
“She’s had time to make it to the stable . . . or to get lost. Either way, I need to go find her.”
“You ain’t goin’ by yourself,” Windy declared. “I’m comin’ with you. If I hadn’t come in here yammerin’ about how Bishop was down at the stable, she wouldn’t have got so worked up that she snuck out like that.”
“I’m coming, too,” Warren said.
“No, you’re not,” Smoke told him. “You need to stay here, Ned, and you, too, Apple Jack.” He had been able to tell that the saloonkeeper was about to volunteer. “This bank will still be the main target if the gang gets back together and decides to continue the raid. I’m counting on you two and the other men here to hold the fort, so to speak. Windy and I will see if we can find Tommy and her father.”
Warren and Apple Jack both looked like they wanted to argue, but neither would go against Smoke’s decision.
“You’re the marshal,” Warren said. “You’re still in charge. So we’ll continue looking after things here.”
“You’re doing a good job so far.”
Warren shook his head and said, “I don’t know about that. We managed to lose a young woman.”
“The gal should’ve had better sense than to go out in that weather and face down a couple o’ owlhoots,” Windy said. “I reckon she was just too worried about her pa to leave it alone.”
“Maybe we’ll find the two of them together,” Smoke said.
* * *
The explanation of how the outlaws had known Tommy was in the loft was simple. Snake Bishop explained it in gloating fashion.
“As soon as I saw the flame in that lantern bend over and flicker, I knew there had to be more of a draft blowing through here, and that was the only place it could come from,” he said as he stood in front of the two captives. “Good thing I woke up from my little nap in time to notice that.”
He had found another rope and tied Tommy the same way her father was trussed up. With the other outlaw holding a gun on her pa, she had no choice except to go along with them . . . for now.
“I figured there was a door in the loft,” Bishop went on. “I’ve seen set-ups like that before in barns. So I went up the ladder and waited for whoever it was.” A grin split the boss outlaw’s cruelly handsome face. “I didn’t expect it to be a pretty girl, I’ll admit that. I’m glad you didn’t break your neck when I tossed you down from there. That would have been a damned shame . . . and a waste, too.”
Tommy looked away from him. The very sight of him made her sick . . . but she was also disgusted with herself for letting him capture her so easily.
Her father looked utterly miserable as he lay there with a bandana crammed in his mouth. Bishop had used it to keep him from calling out a warning, which he would have done, even if it had caught him a bullet for his trouble.
Bishop got tired of his gloating and returned to sit on the crate next to the other outlaw.
“What are we going to do now?” the man asked. His name was O’Shannon, even though he looked Mexican. Tommy knew that because she had heard Bishop use the name.
“This business with the girl changes nothing,” Bishop replied without hesitation. “We wait for morning. I think the storm will be over by then. The wind doesn’t sound as bad out there now. We’ll round up the rest of the boys and get what we came for, starting with that bank.”
“Can’t burn the town down, like we normally would,” O’Shannon commented. “Not with snow all over everything.”
“You’d be surprised how much will burn, even in the snow. And anything that won’t burn, we’ll use dynamite to blow it to hell.” A vicious grin pulled Bishop’s lips back. “One way or another, I don’t want one damn building left standing in Salt Lick when we get done with the place.”
* * *
Smoke and Windy pressed their backs against the front wall of the livery stable. The wind still blew hard and whipped snow around them, but this was just a normal blizzard now, instead of a once-in-a-century monster of a storm. Smoke could even see faint outlines of the buildings across the street.
“There’s a light in there,” he said quietly to Windy, confident that the words couldn’t be heard inside. “You can see it around the doors.”
“Yeah, but is it Bishop and that other fella? Do they have Rufus and the gal?”
“We need to find out. If we bust in there shooting, Mr. Spencer or Tommy could get in the way of a bullet.”
Windy tugged at his beard in thought, then said, “You know, I’ve seen ’em loadin’ hay bales into the loft through a door up there in the back. There’s a rope that hangs down, and Tommy shinnies up and down it like a dang monkey. I couldn’t climb it, but I reckon a young fella like you might be able to, Smoke.”
Smoke considered the idea and nodded. “Sounds like it might be worth a try. Let’s go take a look and see if we can find it.”
They slipped around the building and located the knotted, dangling rope in a matter of minutes. Smoke looked up at the little door into the hayloft. His keen brain was still working.
“It’ll create a draft when I open that door,” he told Windy. “If Bishop and his man are still in there, they might notice that. So we’re going to have to distract them.”
“I can handle that part, sure enough,” the old-timer said. “I’ll let you get started up the rope, then I’ll hurry around front and start yellin’ at Bishop. If, by some chance, the varmints are gone and it’s just Rufus and Tommy in there, I reckon they’ll open the door and want to know what I’m caterwaulin’ about.”
“If Bishop is in there, he’s liable to start shooting at you again.”
Windy chuckled. “I’m too spry for him, and the light ain’t good. He won’t hit me.”
“You’ve already been wounded once tonight,” Smoke pointed out.
“That little scratch on my side? Shoot, I’d plumb forgot about it already, until you done reminded me.”
Smoke doubted that, but he knew the breed of man Windy Whittaker was: tough as whang leather and able to ignore any aches and pains as long as there was a job that needed to be done.
“So don’t you worry,” Windy went on. “I can handle the job of distractin’ those two polecats.”
“All right,” Smoke said. He gripped the rope, using the knots tied in it for handholds. “Let me get most of the way up before you head around to the front. Then maybe shoot in the air a couple of times when you start raising a racket.”
“Done and done,” Windy promised.
Smoke started climbing. Even though Windy had called him a young fella, he wasn’t as young as he once was. A climb like this required some effort. But Smoke was still in the prime of life, so he didn’t have much trouble making the ascent. As he neared the little hatch, he glanced back down at the ground. He thought Windy was gone, but he couldn’t be sure.
He reached the door and hung on to the rope with one hand, his feet braced against the wall, while he felt around for the catch. The door was pushed up, held in place by the wind, but it wasn’t actually fastened, he discovered. He got his fingers in the crack and waited for Windy’s signal. The arm and shoulder supporting his weight began to ache, but he knew he could hang on for as long as he needed to.
He just hoped it wasn’t too long . . .
Windy’s old revolver boomed, then boomed again, clearly audible even over the wind. Smoke heard the old-timer start yelling. He couldn’t make out the words, but whatever Windy was saying, Smoke was sure it would get the attention of whoever was in the stable.
He pulled the door open, swung himself closer on the rope, and practically dived into the dark hayloft.