BOOK THREE
CHAPTER 24
1870
An icy wind clawed at Luke through the sheepskin coat he wore as he brought his horse to a stop in front of the squat roadhouse. Settlers’ homes and most businesses on the almost treeless Kansas plains were built of sod because it was too expensive to have lumber freighted in. Any grass on the thatched roofs was dead. It was late autumn.
He was glad he’d found the place perched on the bank of a narrow creek with ice forming along its edges. No other human habitation was in sight for miles around on the open plains. At least he’d have somewhere to spend the night out of the frigid weather.
His legs sometimes gave him trouble when it was cold. Usually he got around just fine, as if he’d never been injured, although it had taken months to regain his full strength. The wound in his shoulder was minor and had healed quickly, but his legs had given him trouble for a long time. Every so often the old ache was there, deep in his muscles, and it was worse when the temperature dropped.
Other old aches bothered him more, like the knowledge that he had failed the Confederacy and his friends, and the fact that he had ridden away without saying good-bye to Emily.
At least he knew she and her grandfather were all right.
A few months after leaving Georgia, he’d been tending bar in a little East Texas town when none other than Sheriff Royce Wilkes had walked into the saloon where Luke worked. Former Sheriff Royce Wilkes was more accurate, because as it turned out, Wilkes had been run out of town, just like when he’d been a deputy.
Luke dismounted and tied his horse at the rack with half a dozen others. He glanced at the gray sky. Sleet or snow would probably fall later, but for now there was just the cold wind and the fading light. He shuttered in the cold, remembering that long ago meeting with Wilkes.
As he came up to the bar, his eyes widened in shock as he recognized Luke. “Smith!” His hand dropped toward the gun on his hip.
Luke reached under the bar and rested his hand on the stock of the sawed-off shotgun the owner kept on a shelf there. “I wouldn’t do that, Sheriff. There’s a Greener pointing at you under here.”
Wilkes moved his hand well away from his gun and muttered, “Sorry. And I ain’t a sheriff no more. Haven’t been since not long after you left Dobieville.”
“What happened?”
Wilkes’ mouth twisted bitterly. “Everybody in the damned county raised hell with Judge Blevins and Colonel Morrison about how Wolford tried to have Linus Peabody killed. That old man’s well-liked around those parts. Morrison and the judge tried to brush it off. Blevins swore out a warrant for your arrest on murder charges. But I said I wasn’t gonna go after you, so they booted me from the job.”
“That’s a shame,” Luke said. “A man shouldn’t lose his job for doing the right thing . . . for once.”
“You don’t know what it was like back there when the Yankees came in.” Wilkes scowled and shrugged. “Or I reckon maybe you do, since you were there. Anyway, the Yankees didn’t want me anymore, and the townsfolk didn’t have any use for me to start with, so I thought I might as well come on out here to the frontier and see what I was missin’. So far it ain’t been a hell of a lot.”
Luke asked, “Do you know how Emily is?”
“She was fine when I left. She wasn’t hurt bad that night. In fact, she started lettin’ Thad Franklin’s boy Jess start courtin’ her.”
Luke drew in a breath. Hearing that hurt, but at the same time he was glad Emily wasn’t sitting around and pining away. He wasn’t worth her being unhappy.
“What about those murder warrants?”
Wilkes shrugged again. “They’re still in effect, I guess, but nobody’s gettin’ in any hurry to serve them. I reckon there’s a good chance that if you stay out of Georgia, nobody’s even gonna bother lookin’ for you.”
Luke hoped that was true. He had spent the first three months looking over his shoulder, even as he worked his way west, taking whatever odd jobs he could find.
“I see you’re still up and walkin’ around,” Wilkes went on.
“Yeah, my legs are a lot better.”
“You’re a lucky man. How about a beer?”
Luke nodded and reached for a mug. “I can do that.”
Wilkes had his drink and left. Luke was relieved, knowing Emily was all right. Maybe she would marry the Franklin boy and settle down to have a long, happy life, Yankees or no Yankees.
It was still on Luke’s mind when he left the saloon that night and started back to the shabby little room he rented a block away.
The soft scrape of a footstep behind him was all the warning he had . . . or needed. As he twisted, his hand streaked to the Colt Navy tucked in his waistband. He never went anywhere without being armed. One of his revolvers was always in easy reach, even when he was sleeping.
The gun came out with blinding speed. The muzzle flash from the other man’s gun bloomed in the darkness. Luke’s revolver crashed. A man cried out and reeled from the mouth of the alley Luke had just passed, collapsing in the muddy street.
He knew, even before he snapped a lucifer to life with his thumbnail, the man he’d just killed was Royce Wilkes. He’d been nursing a grudge against Luke ever since leaving Georgia, and when fate had brought the two of them together again, the moment was inevitable.
And it was a damned shame, Luke thought. Back in Dobieville, Wilkes had acted like a real lawman for a moment, but ultimately, doing the right thing had brought him to a violent end.
The former sheriff was responsible for bushwhacking him, though, so Luke wasn’t going to lose any sleep over killing the man. Nor was he going to stay around. He didn’t need the attention or the trouble. Before anyone came to see what the shooting was about, he hustled to his room, rounded up what little gear he had, got his horse from the shed behind the boarding house, and lit a shuck, heading west again.
In the years since, he had continued to drift, never staying in one place for too long. He had driven a freight wagon, worked as a shotgun guard on a stagecoach run, tended bar, and even worked as a clerk in a store more than once, although he hated that job. Sometimes he sat in on a poker game and usually came out ahead. He had made enough money to send some back to Thad Franklin for the horse, a mount he had traded in on a better one in San Antonio. He owned a decent saddle, a Winchester rifle, and a gun belt and holster in which he carried the Colt Navy. He kept the Griswold and Gunnison either in his saddlebags or tucked in his waistband. He picked up books wherever he could find them and spent most of his nights reading.
It wasn’t much of a life, but it was what he had.
The vague idea of going to Denver had struck him, and the way he lived, he didn’t spend much time thinking about what he was doing next. He just did it. So he’d set out across Kansas, not figuring on the late autumn storm that was sweeping down across the plains from Canada. He might have to hole up at the roadhouse for a while before continuing his endless journey.
The first thing that struck him as he stepped inside the sod building was the silence. He’d expected some talk and raucous laughter from the patrons, maybe the clatter of coins tossed onto a table as somebody anted up in a poker game, or the clink of a whiskey bottle against a glass.
Instead, once he swung the door closed behind him and cut off the long, hard sigh of the wind, he didn’t hear anything.
Then the sound of harsh breathing came to his ears.
The low-ceilinged, windowless room was lit only by a couple dim and flaring lamps, and the air was thick with smoke and shadows. Luke’s eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom, and took in the scene before him.
A couple young men who looked like they might be cowboys up from Texas sat at one of the crude, rough-hewn tables scattered around on the hard-packed dirt floor. Another man in an overcoat with a flashy but well-worn suit underneath it sat alone at another table. Luke pegged him as a gambler.
Three men in shaggy, buffalo hide coats had a woman pinned up against the bar, which consisted of planks laid across several whiskey barrels. Long-haired and unshaven, they were about as shaggy as the buffalo that had provided their coats. They turned their heads to glare at Luke.
A few feet away, on the other side of the bar, a skinny, bald-headed man stood, looking nervous. He probably owned the place, Luke thought.
The young cowboys looked a little scared, too. The gambler’s face was impassive, but that didn’t mean much. Tin-horns made their living by not letting their faces give anything away.
To the room at large, Luke said in a mild voice, “Don’t mind me. I’m just looking for a place to get out of that blue norther that’s blowing in.”
One of the hardcases shrugged and started to turn away, and Luke thought that was the end of it. But the woman said, “I know you.”
Luke hadn’t gotten a good look at her. He’d seen enough soiled doves in his travels, taking what comfort he could from them when he had to. She tried to step out of the half circle of men around her, and the lamplight hit her face, revealing the curly blond hair, the face that was still pretty despite the hard lines settling in around the eyes and mouth, and the little dark beauty mark near the corner of that mouth.
Luke stiffened. He remembered her, too. It was hard for him to forget somebody who had pointed a shotgun at him. The most vivid memory was of her standing in a shallow creek in wet, skimpy undergarments, but it was followed closely by the mental image of her threatening him and his companions with that scattergun. “Tennessee. Or maybe Georgia.”
Before the woman could respond, one of the hardcases put a grimy hand on her chest and shoved her back against the bar. “Mind your own business, mister,” he snarled.
“Oh, I intend to,” Luke said. “But I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t treat the lady quite so rough, friend.”
The blonde said, “They’re gonna do a lot worse than that.” Her voice rose a little as she tried to control the fear she obviously felt. “They’re going to kill us all, once they’re through having their fun. These are the Gammon brothers.”
The name didn’t mean anything to Luke, but he said, “I see.”
One of the hardcases said, “Hey, Cooter, you think this fella could be that U.S. marshal who’s been on our trail?”
“I don’t know, Ben.” The man squinted across the room at Luke. “But it don’t really matter, does it?”
As soon as the hardcase said that, Luke knew the woman was right. The three of them planned to kill everybody and loot the place before they rode off. They’d probably keep the blonde alive the longest, figuring she could help keep them warm until the storm blew over.
Luke didn’t take his eyes off the outlaws, but he asked the cowboys, “You fellas from Texas taking a hand in this?”
“Mister, all we got are rifles, and they’re outside on our horses,” one of the young punchers said.
“We just came in for a drink,” the other added miserably. “Now we’d just like to get out of here alive.”
“How about you, Ace?” Luke asked the gambler.
“The deck was stacked against me . . . until now.”
The hardcase who had spoken first yelped, “Hellfire, Cooter, they’re gonna draw on us!”
Luke told the Texans, “You boys hit the floor now!”
CHAPTER 25
Moving fast but not rushing, Luke palmed the Colt smoothly from its holster. At the same time, his left hand twisted at the wrist, grasped the butt of the Griswold and Gunnison sticking up from his waistband, and pulled that gun, too.
He wished the blonde wasn’t standing right by the bar where a stray bullet could hit her, but most of the time a man couldn’t choose the fights that came to him. All he could do was try to stay alive.
The outlaws swept aside the long buffalo coats and grabbed for their guns. They were fast, but Luke was faster. They had just cleared leather when his guns began to roar.
He shot the one called Ben first, triggering the Colt twice and slamming the slugs into the man’s body, hoping two shots would be enough to put the big man down.
The bullets slammed Ben back against the bar and knocked some of the planks loose. Luke fired his left-hand gun at Cooter and saw the man stagger.
To Luke’s left, the gambler’s pistol cracked, but the third outlaw had his gun leveled and jerked the trigger twice, sending return shots at the tinhorn.
Luke pivoted and used the Griswold and Gunnison on the third brother while he sent two more slugs from the Colt into Cooter’s slumping form. The third man was hit, but he still stood tall and straight and fired at Luke, who felt the hot breath of the bullet as it whipped past his ear.
Something flashed in the lamplight, and the third Gammon brother made a gurgling, gasping sound. Bright red blood flooded from his neck, which the blonde had opened almost from ear to ear with a single backhanded swipe of the straight razor she held in her hand. The man dropped his gun and pawed at his neck, but there was nothing he could do to stop the bleeding. He collapsed onto his knees and then pitched forward on his face to lie motionless as a crimson puddle formed on the dirt floor beneath his head.
Cooter and Ben were both down. So was the gambler, and so were the two cowboys, although they lifted frightened faces to look around as the shooting ended. Luke saw the proprietor peeking out from behind one of the whiskey barrels where he had taken cover.
Luke said to the blonde, “Why don’t you step away from those men, ma’am, so I can make sure they’re dead?”
“The one I cut is, you can count on that. Looks like just about all the blood he had in him has leaked out.”
“It never hurts to make sure.” Luke approached the fallen outlaws with both hands still filled with revolvers and toed them over onto their backs. In all three cases, sightless eyes stared up emptily at the low ceiling.
“Told you,” the blonde said.
One of the cowboys had gotten up to check on the gambler. “This fella’s hurt bad.”
Luke tucked away the Griswold and Gunnison but kept the Colt in his other hand as he went over and knelt beside the gambler. The man’s white shirt was dark with blood under his once-fancy vest.
“Sorry,” Luke said.
“D-don’t be,” the gambler managed to say. “I knew it was . . . a game of chance . . . when I took cards . . . It’s just the way they were . . .” He wasn’t able to finish as his eyes went glassy.
“That’s right,” Luke said, even though the tinhorn couldn’t hear him anymore. “It’s just the way they were dealt.” He looked up at the blonde. “You know his name?”
“I don’t have any earthly idea. He just rode in a while ago, like the rest of you. Those cowboys were first, then him, then the Gammons. Then you.”
Luke stood up, reloaded the Navy, and introduced himself. “Luke Smith.”
“I’m called Marcy.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance . . . again.” He noticed the razor she had used to cut the throat of the third Gammon brother was nowhere to be seen. She’d probably slipped it back into a hidden pocket in her dress. “I take it these are some of the local bad men?”
“They’re bad, all right. They’ve robbed, raped, and murdered their way across half of Kansas and Nebraska.”
“Then the world’s better off with them dead.”
“I reckon. The world really would’ve been better off if they’d been put in gunnysacks and drowned when they were babies.”
Luke couldn’t help smiling. “A bit bloodthirsty, aren’t you?”
“Men like that deserve it,” Marcy said, prodding one of the bodies with the toe of her boot.
Luke turned to the Texas cowhands. “How about giving me a hand dragging them out?”
The proprietor spoke up from behind the bar. “As cold as it is, there’s liable to be wolves around tonight. If you put the bodies outside—”
“Then these three will finally serve a purpose in nature, won’t they?” Luke looked at the gambler. “We’ll put this fellow in the shed where the wolves can’t get at him. Maybe the ground won’t be frozen too hard in the morning to dig a rave.”
* * *
The proprietor told Luke his money wasn’t any good as long as he was there. Since Luke’s funds were running a little low, he didn’t argue, and enjoyed the beer, the bowl of stew, and the chunk of hard bread the man brought to his table once the bodies of the dead men had been tended to.
Marcy came over and sat down at the table with him, bringing a glass of whiskey with her. “What happened to those fellas who were with you the last time I saw you?”
“Four of them are dead,” Luke said. “I don’t know about the other four.”
He had kept his eyes and ears open while he was drifting, hoping he might run across something or somebody who could put him on the trail of Potter and the others, but so far he hadn’t had any luck. He had no idea where to start searching, so he asked questions about them and waited and hoped. “You haven’t seen any of the others since then, have you?”
She shook her head. “You’re the first one, Luke.”
He swallowed some of the beer from his mug and smiled. “I appreciate you not shooting me that day.”
“Don’t think I didn’t think about it,” she said solemnly. Then a faint smile tugged at her lips, too.
“You’re about as hardboiled as a lady can be, aren’t you?”
“Who the hell said I’m a lady? And do you know any other way for a woman to survive out here? We’ve got to be tougher than all you men. We just can’t let you see it.”
Luke grinned and lifted his beer. “To toughness.”
She clinked her glass against his and nodded. “To toughness.”
After they drank, he said, “What happened to the other women who were with you that day?”
“Turnabout’s fair play on that question, eh?” She shrugged. “Damned if I know. Some of them are dead, and the others are scattered. Just like your friends, I reckon.”
“The ones who are left alive aren’t my friends,” Luke said, his smile disappearing.
Marcy regarded him shrewdly for a moment and then nodded. “It’s like that, is it?”
“It is.”
“Well, then, I don’t know whether to hope you find them or not.”
“Why’s that?” Luke asked.
“Because there’s four of them and one of you, and I hate to see any man I let into my bed without payin’ get himself killed.”
Luke’s eyebrows rose a little. “You’re going to let me into your bed without paying?”
“Let me finish this drink”—Marcy lifted her glass—“and then we’ll see.”
* * *
Luke and Marcy spent the night in one of the small rooms partitioned off at the back of the roadhouse. Wrapped up in blankets and each other, they stayed warm enough despite the icy wind howling outside.
When Luke woke up in the morning, she was gone, but he smelled coffee brewing and hoped he would find her in the main room. He sat up and dressed quickly. Pushing the curtain aside, he stepped out of the tiny room and saw Marcy standing at the stove fully dressed with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Even inside the roadhouse, it was cold.
She looked up at him and smiled. “How do you feel?”
“Not bad.” As he walked over to her his gait was a little awkward. His muscles had stiffened up some while he was asleep.
She noticed, and asked, “Something wrong?”
“Just an old injury. Nothing to worry about.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I know all about those old injuries. The world’s got a way of knock in’ folks around, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does,” Luke agreed.
“Well, sit down somewhere. Coffee will be ready soon, and then I’ll whip up some breakfast.”
“You’re the cook here, too?”
“That’s right.” Her smile was wry. “I have lots of different jobs.”
While Luke was sitting there, the two young cowboys came in from outside. They had spent the night at the roadhouse, too, and Luke figured they’d been out to check on the horses, all of which had been put in the shed behind the building along with the body of the gambler.
“Mornin’, Mr. Smith,” one of the youngsters greeted him. “Got something here for you.” He lifted a gun belt with double holsters. The walnut grip of a revolver stuck up from each holster.
“We took ’em off one of those Gammon brothers when we dragged the carcasses outside last night,” the other puncher explained. “Didn’t see any point in armin’ the wolves that were gonna drag ’em off.”
“I see.” Luke took the gun belt from the first cowboy. The holsters were reversed for a cross draw. He slid one of the guns from leather and recognized it as a Remington. Fine weapon, he thought. “What about the other two brothers?”
The cowboys grinned and pulled back their coats to reveal that they had taken the gun belts from those bodies, too.
“Those looked like the best guns, so we figured you deserved to have them, Mr. Smith. And the horses, too, if you want ’em.”
“I’ll take one horse as an extra mount,” Luke said. “You fellows can get some good use out of the other two, I expect.”
The punchers exchanged grins.
“We sure can,” one of them said. “We was just about broke last night, ’cept for our saddles and our hosses. Now we got good guns and extra mounts. Reckon we’re plumb rich!”
Luke wasn’t sure he had ever been as young and carefree as those two Texas cowboys. If he had been, he couldn’t remember it.
Marcy came over with the coffeepot. “You two sit down,” she told the punchers. “Breakfast will be ready in a little bit.”
They were all eating a short time later when the door opened again. Luke glanced up and saw a bulky figure silhouetted against the gray light of the overcast day. The first things he noticed were the rifle in the man’s hand and the tin star pinned to his coat. He recognized it as a United States marshal’s badge.
The man wore a thick sheepskin coat and had a broad-brimmed brown hat pulled down tight on his head so the wind wouldn’t blow it away. His face was red, either from the cold, a close acquaintance with whiskey or both, and a close-cropped blond beard stuck out on his cheeks and chin.
Luke took a deep breath. He was still wanted on murder charges back in Georgia.
CHAPTER 26
“Good morning,” the man said as he came into the roadhouse and swung the door closed behind him. “Mighty chilly out there to go with the dusting of snow.”
“We have coffee if you want it, Marshal,” Marcy said. “And grub.”
The lawman slapped gloved hands together to warm them and grinned. “That sounds fine, ma’am. Nothing like hot food and drink to warm a man up.”
Marcy stood and motioned with her head toward one of the empty tables. “Have a seat. I’ll get you a cup and a plate.”
“Much obliged.”
The marshal went over to the table, set his rifle on it, pulled off his gloves, and dropped his hat next to them. He smiled at Luke and the two cowboys. “Morning, gents.”
The punchers muttered greetings, but Luke said, “Good morning, Marshal.”
“Deputy Marshal,” the lawman corrected him. “Name’s Jasper Thornapple.”
When a man introduced himself, it was only polite to return the favor, and despite the rough environments in which he spent his life, Luke had come to pride himself on his manners. “I’m Luke Smith.”
Thornapple didn’t seem to recognize the name, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he was just good at covering up his reactions.
“Teddy Young,” one of the cowboys said.
“Burt Tuttle,” the other puncher added.
“Pleased to meet you,” Thornapple said.
Marcy set a cup of steaming coffee in front of Thornapple. “What brings you out here in the middle of nowhere, Marshal?”
Thornapple nodded his thanks for the coffee. “Well, I’m trailing some men.”
Luke wasn’t surprised by the answer.
“Cooter, Ben, and Carl Gammon. Reckon you’ve probably heard of them,” the marshal added.
“I sure have.” Marcy went back and sat down next to Luke.
“Or rather, I should say I was trailing them,” Thornapple went on. “Came across a wolf pack about a mile east of here, having themselves a feast in a dry wash. There wasn’t much left of the fellas they’d been after, but I’m pretty sure one of them was Cooter Gammon. He had a streak of white in his hair hard to miss. Since there were two men about the same size with him, I feel confident my boss can close the books on the Gammon brothers.”
“Bad luck for them, being caught by a pack of wolves like that,” Luke commented.
Thornapple took a sip of his coffee and nodded. “Especially when those wolves were carrying guns,” he said with a shrewd smile.
The two cowboys couldn’t stop themselves from flinching guiltily. Luke’s face was like stone, though. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean one of those skulls had a bullet hole smack-dab in the middle of its face. Somebody shot that Gammon brother before the wolves got at him. A well-deserved fate, I might add.” Thornapple took another sip of coffee. “You folks have anything you want to tell me? Bear in mind I’m a federal lawman who doesn’t cotton to being lied to.”
“Mr. Smith didn’t have any choice!” one of the punchers burst out. “He didn’t have any choice at all. Those Gammons were worse ’n hydrophobia skunks. They were gonna kill us all!”
As soon as the words stopped tumbling out of the youngster’s mouth, he turned a stricken face to Luke. “I’m sorry, Mr. Smith. I shouldn’t ’ve said nothin’—”
Luke lifted a hand to stop the apology. “That’s all right. I have a feeling Marshal Thornapple already had a pretty good idea what happened. He strikes me as a man who’s been to see the elephant.”
“There and back again,” Thornapple agreed with a smile. “You killed all three of them, Mr. Smith?”
“Two of them, anyway, and I contributed to the third.”
“I cut his throat,” Marcy put in. “He probably would have died anyway, but I didn’t see any harm in hurrying him along to hell.”
“Nor would I, ma’am,” Thornapple said. “In that case, I suppose the two of you will have to come to some sort of equitable arrangement concerning the division of the reward money.”
“Reward money!”
“That’s right, ma’am. Each of the Gammons had a thousand dollar bounty on his head.”
Marcy leaned back in her chair, her eyes wide with amazement. “Three thousand dollars!”
“That’s right. Come with me to Wichita, and I’ll authorize payment. You can collect from the bank there.”
Marcy looked over at Luke. “My God, we’re rich! I never saw three thousand dollars in my life!”
Luke hesitated to say anything. He didn’t fully trust Thornapple. Maybe the lawman was trying to trick him into going along to Wichita, where he would promptly place him under arrest.
Giving it more thought, that didn’t seem likely. Luke could tell by looking at Thornapple the badge-toter had plenty of bark on him. If Thornapple wanted to make an arrest, he’d just do it instead of trying some fancy trick.
More than likely, Thornapple had never seen any of the wanted posters charging Luke with murder that had circulated back in Georgia.
“There’s just one thing,” Luke said slowly. “I’m not a bounty hunter.”
“You killed three men with a price on their heads,” Thornapple offered. “It’s not like you have to file papers ahead of time or anything. That money is yours by rights, Mr. Smith.”
Marcy looked even more excited. “We’ve got to do it, Luke. We’ve got to claim that reward.”
He understood then how much it meant to her. She had spent her life struggling just to get by, enduring hardship and degradation. The tough times were starting to take a real toll on her.
Yet there was still a spark of dignity inside her, and a sense of determination that might allow her to make something better of her life if she just got the chance. The bounty money could give her that chance.
“All right,” Luke finally agreed. “We’ll go to Wichita with the marshal.”
She threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you, Luke! You don’t know what this means to me.”
It meant he had inadvertently done something good for somebody. That wasn’t enough to make up for past failures . . . but it was a start.
Thornapple nodded toward the holstered Remingtons and coiled shell belt still laying on the table where Luke and Marcy sat. “Nice looking guns. Whose are they?”
“They’re mine.” Luke reached out and pulled a gun out of the holster. One more bit of bounty for killing the Gammon brothers, he thought.
* * *
They split the reward money down the middle, fifteen hundred apiece. Marcy didn’t think that was fair. She wanted to take five hundred for her part and give the rest to Luke, but he refused and insisted she take half.
They set aside an equal amount from each share, and got a room in the finest hotel in Wichita. For a week they ate in the best restaurants the town had to offer, drank champagne they had sent up from one of the saloons, and spent long hours together in bed.
After that week, pleasant though it was, Luke was so restless he couldn’t stand it anymore.
He left the room early one morning while Marcy was still sleeping and walked to the livery stable where he was keeping his horses. He had just thrown his saddle on one of the animals when a voice asked, “Going somewhere, Mr. Smith?”
Luke looked around to see Marshal Jasper Thornapple standing in the open double doors of the livery barn with his shoulder propped casually against one of the jambs.
“Thought I might take a ride,” Luke answered, assuming as casual an attitude as Thornapple.
“Did you tell the young lady good-bye?”
“Who said I wasn’t coming back?”
Thornapple chuckled. “I’ve seen plenty of fiddlefoots in my time, Smith. Hell, I’ve been one. I know the look of a man who feels the call of distant trails.”
Luke shrugged. “Marcy and I aren’t really the sort for sentimental farewells.”
“I have a hunch you might be wrong about how she feels . . . but it’s none of my business, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“That’s right, my business is hunting down lawbreakers. That line of work has given me a healthy curiosity about the people I meet.”
Luke turned a little so he could move faster if he needed to reach for the Remingtons. He had started wearing the cross-draw rig, and wished he’d had more time to practice getting those irons out in a hurry. “Out here on the frontier, curiosity’s generally considered to be not that healthy,” he commented.
“Maybe not, but it’s my job. So I sent some wires and did some checking. I wasn’t surprised to find out that Luke Smith is a pretty common name.”
“Lots of Smiths around,” Luke said, his voice tight.
“The only one I came across that might be of some interest to a man like me was from Georgia. He was wanted for killing a land speculator and some hired guns about five years ago. Was wanted, Smith. That’s important. The charges were dropped last year.”
Luke’s heart suddenly slugged hard in his chest. He wanted to believe what Thornapple was telling him, but it didn’t seem possible it could be true. He managed to ask, “Why would they drop the charges in a case like that?”
“Because once the Reconstruction government was forced to let go of some of its power, the facts of the case came out. Turns out the land speculator was nothing but a carpetbagging thief, and evidence indicated he’d had men killed in order to grab their land. That particular Luke Smith can go back to Georgia without having to worry about the law anymore.”
Luke drew in a deep breath. “That’s a lucky break . . . for him.”
The excitement he’d felt for a second had vanished. There was nothing waiting for him back in Georgia. Emily was probably married to Jess Franklin and raising a couple kids. Even if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t want to see him again. Not after he’d ridden off that night and never come back.
“I just thought you might be interested in hearing about that before you rode off,” Thornapple went on. “Which way do you plan to head? West . . . or east?”
“I set out to go to Denver a while back,” Luke said. “I suppose I still will.”
Thornapple straightened and nodded. “Have a safe journey, then.” He turned to head out of the livery.
Something occurred to Luke. “Marshal.”
Thornapple stopped and turned back to Luke. “Yes?”
“Can I ask you if you’ve heard of some other men? While in your line of work, I mean.”
Thornapple’s brawny shoulders rose and fell. “Sure, go ahead.”
“Wiley Potter. Keith Stratton. Josh Richards. Ted Casey.”
For a long moment, Thornapple frowned in thought. Then he shook his head. “None of those names ring a bell, Smith. Should they?”
“I don’t know. Thought it was possible.”
“Well, I haven’t heard of them. Sorry.”
“That’s all right. I’ll catch up to them one of these days.”
Thornapple lingered. “What do you plan to do with yourself?”
Luke thought about it for a second, then grunted. “Seems like there’s good money in bounty hunting.”
“Well . . . there’s money in it. Some wouldn’t call it good. Some folks call it blood money. And going after it is a good way to get yourself killed.” Thornapple shrugged again. “But you saw that for yourself. Not every owlhoot has a price on his head as big as the bounties on the Gammon brothers. But some are even bigger.”
“That’s what I thought.” Luke tightened the cinch on his saddle. “I’ll be seeing you, Marshal.”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Thornapple said.
Luke didn’t wave or even look back as he rode out of Wichita. He hoped Marcy was still asleep, snug and warm in that hotel room bed, dreaming of the new life she could make for herself with her share of the money. He hoped that when she woke up and found him gone, she wouldn’t hate him.
But either way, he was going.
CHAPTER 27
Blood money, Thornapple had called it, and that turned out to be true.
As the years passed, Luke Smith saw a veritable lake of blood.
From the Rio Grande to the Canadian border, from New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta to San Francisco, Luke roamed, always on the trail of men with a price on their heads. Whether the bounty was big or small didn’t really matter. Kill enough penny-ante owlhoots, as long as somebody was willing to pay for the carcasses, and the money added up.
Sometimes there were big kills, too, high-dollar rewards netting Luke enough cash that he wouldn’t have to track down any more outlaws for a while if he didn’t want to.
But what else was he going to do?
The face looking out at him from the mirror when he shaved became craggier, more weathered. The ordeal he had suffered at the end of the Civil War made him look older than his years, and the life he lived after that certainly didn’t make him appear any younger. Those deep-set eyes had seen too much death and suffering to ever be innocent again.
His only consolation was the men he killed had it coming. They were robbers, rapists, arsonists, murderers.
He wasn’t arrogant enough to consider himself some sort of avenging angel delivering justice. If he was working for any higher power, it was Lucifer, reaping more souls to be plunged, screaming, into the depths of Hades.
Luckily, there were a few moments of humanity here and there, or he might have gone insane.
Deadwood, 1877
The gold rush that had caused the town to spring into existence a year earlier had dwindled away as mining syndicates and corporations moved in and, for the most part, replaced the individual prospectors who had sunk shafts in the sides of the gulches all around the settlement. It still had its rough edges, though, and enough vice to attract men from all over, including those on the run from the law.
Luke rode in on the trail of a man named Robert Fescoe, who had killed a bank teller during a robbery down in Yankton. Fescoe was reported to be heading west, and Luke hoped the fugitive paused long enough in Deadwood to get drunk and find himself a whore.
Those two things didn’t sound that bad to Luke, either, although he wasn’t one to indulge his baser appetites indiscriminately. However, a man couldn’t just sit and read during all his spare time.
He stopped at a livery stable, and as he turned his horse over to the hostler, he asked, “Have you seen a tall, skinny fellow with a half-moon-shaped scar on his chin?” Luke was grateful for the outlaw’s scar because it made him easy to describe.
The hostler frowned in thought and shook his head. “Can’t say as I have, mister.”
“He would have ridden in within the last day or two,” Luke added.
“Nope. Sorry.”
“Is this the only livery stable in town?”
The hostler chuckled. “I wish it was. I’d make a lot more money that way. No, there are three or four more. Maybe the hombre you’re lookin’ for left his hoss at one of them.”
“Maybe so.” Luke flipped a five-dollar gold piece to the man, who caught it deftly. “That ought to cover my bill for a while . . . and buy your discretion if you happen to see the man I’m looking for.”
“If you mean I won’t say nothin’ to him about you lookin’ for him, you’re danged right about that. I’ll even come see if I can find you.”
“I’d be much obliged,” Luke told him. “Meanwhile, what’s the best place in town to get a drink?”
The hostler scratched his beard-stubbled jaw. “Well, there’s the Bella Union. It’s pretty nice. Or the Gem, which ain’t as nice, but their whiskey is good and they got some fine whores. Folks tend to get shot there from time to time, though.”
“An all-too-common occurrence.”
“Or there’s a new place you could try. It’s called the Buffalo Butt.”
Luke had to laugh. “What a name for a saloon!”
“Yeah, I don’t know why the gal who owns it decided to call it that. She don’t look like a buffalo’s hind end, I can tell you that for dang sure. She’s one of the prettiest gals in Deadwood, I’d say.”
“Well, that certainly sounds intriguing. I’ll give it a try.” Luke lifted a hand in farewell and left the livery stable.
It didn’t take him long to find the Buffalo Butt Saloon. Despite the crude name, it appeared to be a well-furnished and successful establishment, sitting at an intersection with its bat-winged entrance right at the corner so it was easily visible from both streets.
Luke pushed the batwings aside and stepped in with his usual caution. A man in his line of work never knew when he might run into an old enemy, although most of the men Luke tried to take into custody put up a fight and wound up dead.
A long mahogany bar ran down the left side of the room, with gambling layouts to the right and tables in between. At the far end of the room was an open area where people could dance and a small stage for performers, which was empty at the moment. Men sat at about half the tables, drinking, and the bar was pretty busy, too, although there were plenty of open spots. A couple poker games were going on, and the click and clatter of a roulette wheel mixed with the sounds of talk and laughter. Luke liked the looks of the Buffalo Butt, inelegant moniker and all.
A staircase next to the stage led up to the second floor. If the place was like most saloons, the girls who worked downstairs delivering drinks also worked upstairs delivering something else. Luke glanced at the women moving around the room. Unlike some saloon girls, they were fully dressed in nice gowns cut low enough to reveal the swells of their breasts. Luke might have tried to single out one of them for his attentions later, but a man at a nearby table tilted his head back to look up and said, “Lord have mercy, who’s that?”
Luke instinctively followed the direction of the man’s gaze. His breath caught in his throat and he stiffened as he saw a woman standing at the railing on the second floor balcony, looking down at the room. She wore a dark red dress tight enough to reveal her splendid figure, and a thick mass of curly blond hair spilled around her shoulders.
Luke knew her instantly. Marcy hadn’t changed much in the seven years since he’d ridden away from Wichita, leaving her in that hotel room.
He saw her suddenly clutch the railing and knew she had recognized him, too. He started toward the stairs, weaving among the tables, as she came along the balcony. He went up the stairs as she came down, and they met halfway, embracing with a desperate urgency as their mouths met.
“Aw, hell!” That disappointed exclamation came from the man who Luke had heard speak when he entered the saloon. “Looks like she’s already took.”
Luke and Marcy kissed for a long moment, and Luke felt the dull emotional pain that dogged his steps flow out of him. The unexpected reunion was like being plunged into a clean, icy mountain stream.
Then Marcy pulled back a little, lifted her hand, and pressed the barrel of a derringer against the side of his head. “Damn you, Luke Smith. I ought to put a bullet in your brain.”
Most of the time, if somebody pointed a gun at him, he reacted violently. He suppressed that urge and smiled instead. “You’d probably be justified. I knew you’d be upset that I left you in Wichita. On the other hand, you appear to be doing well for yourself.”
He remembered what the liveryman had said about the owner of the Buffalo Butt being one of the prettiest women in Deadwood. Wherever Marcy was, she would fall into the category. “This is your saloon, isn’t it?”
“What if it is?”
“You wouldn’t be the owner of a successful business if you hadn’t gotten a start from your half of that reward money, would you?”
She let out a snort. “That shows what you know. I used that money to buy an interest in a whorehouse in Wichita. Then it burned down and I lost everything. I had to start over. But by then I’d learned I was pretty good at running things. It took me a while, but I’m doing all right again.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Luke said. “Now, if you’re not going to pull the trigger on that popgun, I’d appreciate it if you took it away from my head. It might go off by accident.”
“I don’t do anything by accident.”
As Marcy lowered the derringer and let its hammer down carefully, Luke became aware the saloon had gone deathly quiet. He supposed someone had noticed her holding a gun to his head and pointed it out, and as the news spread, everyone stopped what they were doing to watch.
Marcy kissed Luke again, and someone let out a cheer, breaking the silence. Customers returned to their drinking and gambling, filling the saloon with noise once more.
Marcy took Luke by the hand and led him upstairs so they could get reacquainted properly.
* * *
That evening, Luke sat with Marcy at her private table in the rear corner of the saloon’s main room. One of her bartenders had brought supper over from the dining room of the Grand Central Hotel. It was the best food in the Black Hills, she had explained, and Luke had to admit she was probably right. The roast beef was as good as any he’d had in a long time.
As they ate, washing down the food with sips of fine wine, they talked about everything that had happened since they’d seen each other last.
“I don’t have much to tell,” Luke told her. “I’m a bounty hunter, have been ever since that run-in with the Gammon brothers.”
“I know. I’ve heard talk about you from time to time. You have quite a reputation.” Marcy smiled. “Did you know I named this place after the Gammons?”
“I wondered how come you called it the Buffalo Butt.”
“In those buffalo coats, they were as ugly and smelly as buffalo rumps.”
“I can’t disagree with that,” Luke said.
“Even though I didn’t want to admit it to you this afternoon, I reckon that was when my life started to change for the better. So I felt like I ought to commemorate the occasion.”
Luke thought about it and decided the name was appropriate after all. He lifted his wineglass. “To the good that can come from ugly, inelegant things.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Marcy clinked her glass against his, and he thought her eyes had a meaningful, mischievous twinkle in them as she looked at him.
He was ugly and inelegant, he thought. He had so much blood on his hands he could never wash it off, even if he tried.
But he had done some good in his life, too. He had saved Emily and her grandfather from Vincent Wolford. If the carpetbagger had lived, he wouldn’t have stopped going after them until he got what he wanted.
And Luke had helped Marcy escape a life that would have eventually killed her if she hadn’t gotten out of it. Some people might consider owning a saloon in a frontier town like Deadwood to be pretty disreputable, but those folks just didn’t know how low people really could sink. Marcy was better off. He was sure of it.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“I thought I’d have another glass of this surprisingly good wine,” he replied with a smile.
“No, I mean with your life. Blast it, Luke, you know that.”
He poured the wine and set the bottle aside. “I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing. I don’t see any reason to change now. I’m not sure I could change, even if I wanted to.”
“I did,” Marcy said.
“You wanted to.”
“Wouldn’t you like to have a normal life? Maybe a business? Like . . . half interest in a saloon?”
He saw the hope in her eyes and knew it would be kinder to dash it right away, rather than letting it linger and grow. He shook his head. “I’m not going to settle down. I can’t. Now that I know you’re here, I might try to drift this way more often—”
“Don’t put yourself out on my account.” Her expression turned cold, like a blue norther blowing down across the plains.
“You don’t understand. I can’t be who you want me to be, Marcy, but knowing that I have a friend somewhere . . . well, it might make those cold nights out on the prairie a little easier to bear.”
She wasn’t going to give in easily. “I’ll think about it.” Her voice and body remained stiff with disappointment and anger.
Luke lifted his glass to her. “That’s all I can ask.”
* * *
She came to him that night seemingly as passionate as ever, but he sensed she was holding something back. His declaration that he would be riding on had changed whatever had been between them.
And how could it fail to do so? he asked himself, regretting it had happened.
Later, as Luke was dozing off with Marcy’s head pillowed on his shoulder, he heard her whisper, “If you run out on me in the morning without saying good-bye again, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
He laughed softly and promised, “I’ll be here.”
He was sound asleep when his instincts took over and warned him. Maybe it was the faint creak of a floorboard, but whatever the reason, his eyes snapped open and caught a flicker of movement in the shadows of the room.
Reacting with the speed that had saved his life many times, Luke shoved a startled Marcy out of bed and rolled the other way. With a boom like a crash of thunder, a shotgun went off, twin gouts of flame erupting from its barrels.
Luke snatched up the Remington he had left lying on a chair right beside the bed and thumbed two shots just above the muzzle flash from the scattergun. Momentarily deaf from the shotgun’s roar, he couldn’t hear if his target cried out or dropped the weapon.
Keeping himself low to the ground, he crept forward. After only a couple steps, Luke tripped on something and stumbled. He put his left hand out to catch himself and it landed on something hot and sticky. He pulled it back and lashed out with the revolver, thudding against something soft.
“Get a light on,” Luke told Marcy, hoping none of the buckshot had winged her.
A lucifer flared to life. He squinted against the glare, his eyes adjusting as she lit a lamp on the table beside the bed. Light filled the room and revealed Luke kneeling beside a gaunt man with a scar shaped like a half-moon on his chin. The would-be killer’s chest was a bloody mess from the two slugs that had torn through it.
“Who is he?” Marcy asked. “Do you know him?”
Luke heard the question, indicating his hearing had come back. He shook his head. “We never met, but I know who he is. His name’s Fescoe. I’ve been on his trail for a while. Somebody must have told him I was in town looking for him, so he asked around until he figured out where he could find me. Thought he’d get me off his trail permanently.”
Luke was going to have a talk with that liveryman, who had obviously double-crossed him.
Marcy put her hands on her hips. “My bed’s ruined from that shotgun blast, and he’s getting blood on the rug, too.”
Luke stood up. “I’ll send you money for the damages once I’ve gotten the reward. I’ll have to ride back down to Yankton to collect.”
“But you won’t be coming back?”
“Not for a while. Not after this.”
“I’ve seen men die before, you know. I’ve even had them try to kill me.”
“Death doesn’t follow you around, though. Not like it does with me.”
Marcy sighed as one of the bartenders pounded on the door and called out to see if she was all right.
“I can’t decide if you’re the best man I know, Luke Smith, or just a sorry SOB.”
Luke walked to the chair by the side of the bed and slipped the Remington back into the holster. “It’s a good question. I don’t know the answer myself.”
CHAPTER 28
Even though his visit to Deadwood had a more bittersweet ending than he would have preferred, Luke took some good memories away from there. He knew Marcy was not only still alive but thriving, and that eased one of the worries he had carried around with him for years. He made himself a promise to drift up to the Black Hills every now and then to visit her and hoped the next time they met, she would still be glad to see him.
* * *
The next year, in the summer of 1878, he was in Santa Fe when he saw another familiar face across a crowded cantina. He picked up his mug of beer and made his way across the room until he reached the table where a thick-bodied man with graying fair hair and beard sat nursing a glass of tequila.
“Hello, Marshal,” Luke said to Jasper Thornapple.
The two of them had crossed trails several times over the years. Luke had turned over to Thornapple a few fugitives he’d captured and sometimes it was sheer coincidence how they met. The frontier, for all its vastness, could sometimes seem like a small place.
The lawman looked up with a pleased smile. “Luke! I was hoping I’d run into you again one of these days. I’ve got some news for you.” Thornapple gestured for Luke to have a seat at the table. “Heard about it from another deputy marshal.”
Luke settled down into the chair. “What kind of news?”
“Remember a long time ago, the first time we met up in Kansas, you asked me about four men?”
Luke stiffened. “You mean Potter, Stratton, Richards, and Casey?”
“Those are the ones. You never found them, did you?” Luke frowned but didn’t say anything. His mind was too full of bitter memories. He had looked for the four men who had betrayed him, betrayed their country, murdered his friends, nearly killed him, and stolen the gold. As much as he roamed, as many people as he met during his travels, he had thought it was inevitable that he would pick up their trail.
But instead he had run into stone wall after stone wall. Nobody knew the men he was looking for. Maybe they were all dead already, he often told himself, but never really believed that. It was as if fate had conspired with those four no-good deserters to keep them safe from his vengeance.
Finally, in a quiet voice, he told Thornapple, “No, I never found them. To tell you the truth, after a while I quit looking so hard.” He looked at the marshal, his pulse quickening. “Do you know where they are?”
“I do,” Thornapple said, then dashed Luke’s hopes. “They’re in the ground. They’re all dead, Luke.”
A strange feeling washed through Luke. It wasn’t disappointment, really, or even relief, but rather an odd, hollow mixture of the two. He wanted them dead, but he took no real satisfaction from knowing that they were.
“What happened to them?” he asked Thornapple, although he didn’t really care.
“They were killed up in Idaho Territory a while back, at a settlement called Bury. The name turned out to be fitting. They started the town and ran everything in the area. Ran roughshod over everybody in those parts, too. A gunfighter calling himself Buck West rode in and raised hell. Wound up killing all of them. Turns out that wasn’t really West’s name at all. He was really a fella named Smoke Jensen.”
The surprise Luke had felt at hearing his enemies were dead was nothing compared to the shock that went through him upon hearing his family name. It had been so long since he’d used the name Jensen it seemed like he had always been Luke Smith.
Despite that, he had never forgotten his family. Sometimes it was hard to remember what his ma and pa had looked like. They might both be dead. Probably were. And Janey and Kirby would be grown. He might pass them on the street and never know them.
But who in blazes was Smoke Jensen?
Luke shook his head. “I haven’t heard of him.”
“No reason you would have,” Thornapple said. “There were wanted posters out on him for a while, especially while he was calling himself Buck West, but from what I hear there are no charges against him now.”
“Did you ever see him?”
Thornapple shook his head. “Nope. Supposed to be a big, sandy-haired fella who’s really fast with his guns. He’d have to be, because from what I’ve heard, not only did he kill those men you were looking for, but he and some old mountain man friends of his wiped out a small army of hired killers who worked for Potter and the others, too. It was a full-fledged war up there.”
Kirby had ash-blond hair, Luke recalled. If he’d grown big enough, he might fit the description of Smoke Jensen. But why in the world would he have taken that name?
Why not? That wry thought crossed Luke’s mind. I took a different name, and for a good reason, didn’t I? Maybe Kirby did, too.
“You know where he is now?”
“Jensen?” Thornapple shook his head. “No idea. The way I heard it, he rode away from Bury with some good-looking gal he met up there, and they never came back. Do you want to find him?”
“I thought I might look him up. Thank him for doing my job for me.”
“I had a feeling you had a score to settle with those hombres you asked about,” Thornapple said. “Well, it’s done, so you can forget about it now.”
“I suppose so.” Luke drank down the rest of his beer and set the empty mug on the table. Inside he felt as empty as that mug.
* * *
He continued to ride, drifting from one place to another. Over time that feeling faded. Glad Potter and the others were dead, Luke would have liked to have been the one to pull the trigger and send them to hell, but nobody ever said life was fair. Justice had caught up to them, and he had to be satisfied with that. He had other killers to hunt down and bring in. But as he went about it, he kept his ears open and learned everything he could about the man called Smoke Jensen.
Smoke was said to be fast with a gun, mighty fast. Maybe the slickest on the draw in the entire West. Luke heard stories about some of the battles Smoke had had with a wide assortment of outlaws and cold-blooded killers, and Smoke always emerged triumphant.
But those who had met him, without fail, said Smoke Jensen was no arrogant, vicious gunman, but rather a stalwart friend, a decent man, and a loving husband to his wife Sally. They had a successful ranch somewhere in Colorado called Sugarloaf, and judging by all the stories Luke heard about the man, Smoke wanted to live a peaceful life and never went out looking for trouble.
He sure didn’t back down from it, though, and just about the worst mistake anybody could ever make was to threaten one of Smoke’s friends or relatives. That was a mighty quick way to wind up dead.
Yes, Smoke Jensen sounded like the sort of man Luke would be proud to know, but despite what he had told Thornapple, he never made any attempt to find Jensen. Maybe the famous gunfighter really was his little brother Kirby, or maybe he wasn’t, but either way, he figured Smoke wouldn’t want a bloody-handed bounty hunter showing up on his doorstep claiming to be kinfolk. Luke felt sure if any of his family had even thought about him during the long years since the end of the Civil War, they must have assumed he was dead.
Because of that, whenever Luke was in Colorado, he was always careful to steer well clear of the Sugarloaf Ranch and the nearby town of Big Rock, the same way that he had never returned to the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri. It was entirely possible there weren’t any Jensens left back there, but he didn’t want to take that chance.
It was better for Luke Jensen to just stay dead.
He was in northern New Mexico Territory, in the town of Raton, with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and Raton Pass looming to the north, when he heard a rumor that Solomon Burke and his gang had been spotted in the area.
Luke had been trailing Burke for a couple weeks, so he took a keen interest in what he heard and finally located the old-timer who was the source of the rumor. He bought the man a drink in the High Hat Saloon and asked him about Burke.
The garrulous old man was glad to talk. “I seen ’em while I was out huntin’ one day. I got me some diggin’s up there, so I keep a pretty close eye on all the comin’s and goin’s thereabouts.”
Luke didn’t figure the old-timer’s mining claim amounted to much, but that wouldn’t stop him from being fiercely protective of it.
“I heard riders comin’ and took cover in some trees,” the wizened, bearded oldster continued. “Seen ’em ride right past me, no more ’n fifty yards away. I seen ree-ward dodgers on Burke with his picture on ’em before, so I recognized him right away. Had a couple o’ big Mexicans with him, so I figured they had to be Hernandez and Cardona. I’ve heard mighty bad stories about them two. Don’t know who all the other hombres were, but they was prob’ly Burke’s regular bunch of owlhoots.”
Luke didn’t doubt that. “Could you tell where they were going?”
The old prospector hesitated, licking his lips, and Luke signaled for the bartender to bring another round. That got the old-timer talking again.
“I don’t know for sure, no, but they rode on outta the valley where my diggin’s are and over the pass into the next valley. They’s an old abandoned cabin over there they could be usin’ as a hideout, right on the banks of Bluejay Creek. I can tell you how to get there”—a shrewd look appeared on the man’s whiskery face—“And I will, if you swear to give me a cut of the bounty you collect on ’em.”
“How do you know I’m a bounty hunter?” Luke wanted to know.
“Well, you don’t really look like a star packer, and I can’t think of nobody else who’d be trailin’ a bunch of hydrophobia skunks like Solomon Burke and his gang. Gimme your word you’ll cut me in?”
Luke nodded his agreement and then added, “If I come back alive, that is.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a sucker bet on my part, ain’t it? But here’s how to get to that cabin . . .”
Luke had followed the old-timer’s directions. The valley was a two-day ride from Raton. He thought he was still in New Mexico Territory, but up in the high country it was difficult to be sure. He might have crossed over into Colorado without realizing it.
Colorado . . . the place where Smoke Jensen lived. It wouldn’t take but a few days to reach Big Rock, Luke mused as he trailed the Burke gang. He might be able to get a look at Smoke without having to introduce himself. Would he recognize his own brother, if that’s who Smoke turned out to be?
That question still lurked in the back of Luke’s mind as he dismounted and crept forward through some trees to spy on the old cabin where he thought the outlaws might be hiding.
Then bad luck cropped up again, as José Cardona, out hunting or taking a leak or just looking around, stumbled on him, tackled him, and tried to kill him. Nothing could ever just be easy. Not for Luke Smith.
He’d wiped out the gang, but he’d taken three bullets in return. His efforts to patch himself up hadn’t done much good. He wound up passing out and crashing to the floor in the cabin.
Just like fifteen years earlier, when he’d been left for dead on the banks of a shallow river in Georgia, as blackness claimed Luke he was sure he would never wake up again, that it was the end.