Smoke pushed open the batwings and stepped out onto the porch. “I’ll take these two so-called gunslicks on the right, Matthew.”
“And I’ve got that ugly, skinny, bow-legged one on the far left in rifle sights!” Leroy called from inside the store.
“I guess that leaves you and me, doesn’t it?” Matt told Smith.
The Bar V riders looked sick at the appearance of Smoke Jensen. This was not something they had counted on.
“You got no call to interfere in this, Jensen!” Smith hollered. “This ain’t none of your concern.”
“It is when four of you gang up on one boy, you sorry piece of buffalo droppings.” Smoke then proceeded to hang a cussing on the Bar V riders, and having been jerked up, so to speak, by the old mountain man, Preacher, Smoke could let the cuss words fly when he had a mind to. And today was one of those days.
The riders took it for a time, and then pride got the best of them.
“I’ve had it, Jensen!” one yelled at him. “You don’t cuss me like some saddle bum!”
“Then make your play, damn you!” Smoke lost his temper and started to push.
The puncher held his hands away from his side. “No way, Jensen. I ain’t no match for you with guns. But I’ll tear your damned head off with my fists if you’ve got the belly for it.”
“I’ll take you up on that, partner. Whatever your name is.”
“Larry Noonan.”
“Oh, yeah!” Smoke said, his voice filled with scorn. “I know enough about you to know you’re a yellow little two-bit punk. You killed an unarmed sheepherder. Shot him in the back, so I recall reading on the dodger.”
Noonan flushed but did not deny the damning charges.
“I still got something to settle with this loud-mouthed, sassy pig-farmer’s kid!” Smith said. “You gonna interfere with that, Jensen?”
“No. I’m as aware as you concerning a fair shoot out between two armed men. In this case a man and a boy. But I’ll kill any of your buddies who try to step in.”
“You ready, punk?” Smith sneered at the boy.
Matt had stepped to the edge of the porch. Smoke glanced at him. There was no fear to be seen about the boy. His face was impassive and his hands were steady. He stared at Smith through his thick spectacles.
“Too bad, boy,” Smith tried to rattle Matt. “You got about ten seconds left to live.”
“I have a whole lifetime ahead of me, Mr. Smith. Let’s just say this is payback time for you.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you remember that time you and those other hooligans rode your horses over my mother’s garden? Ruined it. We didn’t eat very good that winter, Mr. Smith. It was too late to replant. I remember it very well.”
“You gonna bawl about it, kid?” Smith sneered at him.
“No, sir. But I am going to kill you.”
Smith stared at the boy while something crawled slowly across his face. He wanted to brush away the invisible sensation, for he knew what it was. Fear.
“My baby sister died that winter, Mr. Smith. I won’t say it was all because of what you done, even though you did kill our milk cow. She needed milk bad. You had a hand in her dying.”
Smith said nothing. There wasn’t very much left to say.
“Goddamn nesters should have stayed out this area,” Smoke heard one of the cattlemen in the bar say.
Smoke ignored him for the time being. The man had his own conscience to live with. Providing he had one at all.
“Are you ready, Mr. Smith?” Matthew asked, very politely.
“Smith,” one of the Bar V hands spoke softly. “Back away. I don’t like this. The kid’s too damn sure of hisself.”
“I ain’t backin’ up for no damn snot-nose pig farmer’s whelp!” He stared at Matt. “All right, boy. You’ve made your brags. Now do something ’sides talk!”
“After you, Mr. Smith.”
Smith hesitated. Something was terribly, awfully wrong here. He’d seen any number of two-bit, show-off, would-be gunhands in his time. At the last minute, they always backed down. And even before they backed down, they were nervous, their voices shrill, faces shiny with the sweat of fear. But not this kid. Kid, hell! He was just a boy—barely in his teens.
“My little sister suffered, Mr. Smith. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”
“Shut your mouth, damn you!” Smith screamed. “Draw, you punk!”
Matt waited, waited in his worn-out, low-heeled farmer’s boots. In his faded and patched old jeans and carefully mother-mended shirt. His eyes were calm behind his thick glasses.
Smith jerked iron. He just managed to clear leather as Man’s pistol belched and roared smoke and sparks. The first slug hit him in the belly, spinning him around in the dirt. The second slug struck him in the side and knocked him down to one knee. The expression on his face was one of utter disbelief that this could be happening to him. The third slug hit him in the face, entering between nose and upper lip and making one Godawful mess. Smith trembled once and died.
The three remaining Bar V hands stood in open-mouthed shock, all of them knowing they were not nearly as fast as this fresh-faced, as-yet-to-shave farmer’s kid standing on the porch of the store, and all of them so very, very glad they had not tried to brace him.
Leroy stepped out of the store, his short-barreled .44-.40, hammer back, in his hands. The barrel of the carbine was pointed straight and rock-steady at the belly of a Bar V hand.
“I’m out of this, kid!” the hand said quickly.
“You interfere in the fight between Mr. Smoke and Noonan and you’ll be out of it forever,” Leroy told him, his young voice holding hard steel.
Matt had quickly reloaded and holstered the Peacemaker. His calm eyes, magnified behind the thick glasses, looked at the other Bar V hand.
“That goes for me, too, kid!” the hand said.
“Mr. Smoke?” Matt said.
“Matt?”
“If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I got to go behind the building and throw up!” “Go on, Matt.” The boy ran from the porch.
“I done the same thing my first man,” a Bar V rider admitted. “It ain’t nothin’ to be ’shamed of.” He didn’t know what else to do with his hands—only wanting to keep them as far away from his pistol as possible—so he stuck them into the back pockets of his jeans.
Noonan looked at the bulk of Smoke Jensen and swallowed hard. “Come on, boys!” he urged, panic in hisvoice. “They’s three of us. We can take them two.”
The Bar V rider with his hands in his back pockets told Noonan what he could do with his suggestion, together with the same corncob they had originally had in mind for Matthew.
“That goes double for me,” the remaining Bar V rider added. “You wanted to fight Jensen, you just go right ahead, Noonan.” He removed his gun belt and hung it on his saddle horn.
The other hand thought that was a dandy idea, and did the same. Leroy shifted the muzzle of the .44-.40 to Noonan’s belly and the man let his gunbelt fall.
The shopkeeper, his wife, the barkeep, and the two cattlemen had walked out on the porch, to stand and stare. The body of Smith was, for the moment, being ignored. Matt walked around from behind the building, wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve.
Smoke took off his guns and laid them on the bench. He stepped off the porch, walked up to Noonan, and knocked the puncher down in the dirt with one very quick and unexpected hard left hook.
Noonan rolled and came to his boots, the side of his jaw beginning to bruise from the blow. He shook his head, clearing it of stars and chirping birdies, and backed up, lifting his fists.
He swung at Smoke. Smoke ducked the punch and busted the cowboy in the belly with a hard right. Noonan whoofed out air just as Smoke came around with another left which connected on the man’s ear, spinning him around and seriously impairing his hearing for a few moments.
Just as Noonan regained his balance, Smoke stepped in and blasted him in the mouth with another straight right punch. Noonan’s boots left the dirt and he sat down hard on his butt, his mouth bloody.
Smoke backed up. He wasn’t even breathing hard; hadn’t even worked up a sweat yet.
Noonan wisely sat on the ground. He took another good long look at the gunfighter who stood above him, his fists balled, hanging at his sides, waiting. Smoke looked awesome. A big man, six feet or more, with a massive barrel chest and shoulders and arms that were packed with hard muscle.
Noonan came off the ground in a rush, a long-bladed knife in his right hand.
Smoke slipped the first swing of the knife, bending down as he parried the thrust, his left hand scooping up dust from the road. When Noonan closed with him, Smoke tossed the dirt into the man’s eyes, momentarily blinding the man.
Smoke kicked the man on the knee, bringing a howl of pain. Smoke hit the man twice in the face, a left and a right. The knife dropped from his hand just as Smoke’s right hand clamped down on the man’s fingers. Smoke bore down, using all his strength. Noonan began screaming as the bones in his fingers were crushed, the crunching sounds causing all the spectators to wince.
Still holding onto Noonan’s now ruined hand, Smoke began battering the man’s face with short, hard, chopping blows from his left fist. Within a minute, the man’s face had been turned into a bloody, misshapen mask. His nose was flattened, his lips smashed into bloody pulp, several teeth knocked out of his mouth. Both eyes were beaten closed.
Smoke let him drop to the dirt. Noonan was unconscious.
Smoke walked to the horse trough and washed his face and hands and buckled his gun belt around his lean waist. He looked up at Leroy.
“All the supplies loaded, Leroy?”
“Just about, sir.”
“I’ll get right on that, Mr. Jensen!” the store owner said.
He and his wife rushed back into the store.
Smoke looked at the now completely sober cattlemen. They were standing on the porch, faces pale under the tan, staring at the crippled Noonan.
Smoke pointed first at Smith, then to Noonan. “When you men decide to take a stand in this issue,” Smoke told them, “I would suggest that both of you keep this sight fresh in your minds.”
Smoke turned and swung into the saddle.
The news of the gunfight between the seasoned Smith and the nester’s kid, and the short but brutally crippling fight between Smoke and Noonan spread like unchecked wildfire throughout the southeastern corner of Idaho. Noonan would never regain the use of his right hand. The so-called badman drifted out of the country, sucking on a bottle of laudanum to ease the pain. He would drift far away, change his name, and work the remainder of his life as a cowboy with a crippled hand, his true identity hidden forever, even to the grave.
Jud Vale had been oddly silent after the shooting and the beating at the trading post. Smoke had a hunch all that would abruptly change as soon as Editor Argood left on his journey to Utah. And that was just about a week away.
At Smoke’s suggestion, the ranch house and the bunkhouse had been fortified against both attack and against siege—Smoke suspected the latter would be tried, with Jud Vale’s marksmen in carefully placed positions attempting to pick off the defenders one by one.
The remaining Box T herd had been moved to safer pastures; a huge valley with good grass and water, difficult for rustlers to get the cattle clear without being seen.
On a warm bright late spring morning, Smoke walked around the compound, inspecting the work that had been done. He could not think of anything else they could do.
And Smoke was growing restless. Edgy, might be a better word for it. Calm it might be—for now—but he knew their position was lousy, and if Jud would just do a little thinking and planning, logically instead of emotionally, and then turn his rabid dogs loose, there was no way that Smoke and the defenders could hold back a well-planned and well-executed attack against them.
So what to do?
Cutting down the odds would certainly help. Perhaps a little night work? Like headhunting?
Smoke smiled a warrior’s smile, thinking: Why not?
He remembered Preacher’s words: “You’ll always be a fighter, boy—a warrior. You’ll take the quiet home life for a time, then the itch will git to where you cain’t jist sit at home and scratch it. And then you’ll head for the high lonesome, lookin’ for trouble. And knowin’ you, boy, you’ll find it.”
Smoke rounded up Cheyenne and Rusty and took them to one side. “I’ll be gone for a couple of days, maybe longer. I don’t like the odds, so I think I’ll do something about them.”
“You crave some company?” Cheyenne asked.
Smoke shook his head. “No. This is something that’s best left to one man. I’ll be pulling out at dusk.”
“You going to tell Walt and the wimmin what you’re up to?” the old gunfighter asked.
“I’ll tell Walt. If he wants to let the women in on it, that’s up to him.“
“If anybody can pull it off, you can, son. You had the best teacher in the world in Preacher.”
Smoke certainly agreed with that last sentence. There had been no finer night fighter in the world than Preacher. “I’ll start getting my gear together. Rusty, fix me up with a packet of food enough to last two days.”
The cowboy nodded and walked away. Smoke turned back to Cheyenne. “My horse is too well known. put a rope on that steeldust for me, will you? He’s mean as hell but he’s mountain bred and quick as lightning and can go all day and still have bottom left.”
“He’s a good one. I’ll dob him for you.”
Smoke filled up all the loops in his gunbelt and filled up a bandoleer, slinging that around his shoulder. He slipped another box of .44’s into his saddlebags and made sure his moccasins were tucked into the leather. He would soon slip out of his boots and into the moccasins when it was time for the night stalking to begin. He sat down on his bunk and began putting a finer edge on his Bowie knife. That done, he walked to a stone building behind the barn and opened the locked door with a key he had found in a cabinet in the storeroom. He had a hunch what he would find, and his hunch was correct.
He filled a small sack with sticks of dynamite and caps and fuses. He might not be able to cut the head off the snake, but he was sure intending to tweak its tail.