The men shook hands all the way around. All but Baylis. He rode out alone right after lunch. Nobody missed him until he couldn’t be found and a drover told them he saw him ridin’ out toward the northwest.
“I hope he keeps on riding,” Walt said. “Baylis is a troublemaker. Runs a little rawhide spread not far from here. There is a mean streak in the man that I never could cotton to. Shame too, ’cause he came from good stock. I knew both his parents ’fore they died.”
“How’s he live?” Smoke asked. “That was a good horse and a fancy rig.”
“Lot of us have wondered that,” another association member told Smoke. “I ain’t sayin’ he’s crooked, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out he was.”
“Maybe he’s headin’ back to Montana,” yet another suggested. “He worked up there for years. Say! I think he worked for the Circle 45, come to think of it.”
The herd pushed on and for a time they had nothing but beautiful weather. The boys were turning into good hands, and it surprised everybody to see how closely they watched the remuda and how well they took to accepting responsibility.
The days began to blend together as they pushed north. The herd was stopped several times by cattlemen association members, and by curious ranchers, but the letter Walt had given Smoke quickly brought smiles and offers of meals and a chance to take a real bath in a tub, something Sally jumped at.
“I’ve heard about you for years, Smoke,” a rancher said, over a fine meal of fried chicken and potatoes and gravy. “I figured you’d be a much older man.”
“I got started young,” Smoke said with a smile.
“Oh?”
“After my pa was killed, an old mountain man name of Preacher took me in…”
“Why, say! Preacher’s famous. He took the first wagon train over the Oregon Trail, didn’t he?”
“Something like that. Preacher was the first to do a lot of things out here. My teenage years were spent in the company of old mountain men. I got a pretty good education.”
The rancher’s kids, ranging in age from about twelve to twenty, sat at the long table, eyes bright with excitement. Smoke Jensen, the gunfighter who’d killed about a zillion bad hombres was really here and eating fried chicken just like everybody else.
“And you and Sally have been married…how long?” a teenage girl asked.
“Well,” Smoke said. “Ah…”
“You’d better get it right,” Sally warned and everybody laughed.
“We’ve been married, ah…ten years,” Smoke said.
“That’s close,” Sally said.
“Your first wife was…” The boy closed his mouth at a hard glance from his father.
“It’s all right,” Smoke said. “Her name was Nicole. We were married, sort of. Had a bent nail for a wedding ring. We had a son. Named him Arthur, that was Preacher’s name. Outlaws came one day while I was gone. They killed the baby and then raped and killed Nicole. I tracked them down and called them out in a mining town.”
“How many of them were there, Mr. Smoke?” a girl asked.
“Fourteen.”
“Jesus,” the rancher whispered.
“Did you get them all, Smoke?” the oldest boy asked.
“I got them all.”
“How old were you, Smoke?” the rancher’s wife asked in a soft voice.
“I think I was twenty-one. I’m not real sure how old I am,” ma’am.
The father put a stop to it. “No more questions.”
The young kids were off to bed; the women went to the parlor—much to Sally’s disgust—while the rancher, his oldest son, and Smoke, went into the den for whiskey and cigars. Smoke waved off the cigar and rolled a cigarette.
“What do you know about a man named Clint Black?” Smoke asked.
The rancher’s eyebrows lifted as he was lighting his cigar. When he had the tip glowing just right, he said, “He’s a bad one, Smoke. I’d say he’s probably in his mid-to-late forties. Ruthless and dangerous and powerful. He took country that was untamed and built an empire out of it. He’s big and strong as a bull. And there is no backup in him. It’s his way, or no way at all.”
“Nobody is right but him.”
“That’s it. Anybody gets in his way, he just rides right over them.”
“Would he hurt a boy? Those boys I have with me, for instance?”
“Oh…I wouldn’t think so. But with a man like that, hell, you never know. I know he’s run off nesters, but I never heard of him or his men ever harming a child. Hell, I ran off nesters, ’til I got tired of it and learned to live with them.”
“You know anything at all about T. J. Duggan and the Double D ranch?”
The rancher shook his head. “Can’t say as I’ve ever heard of him or his brand. T. J. Duggan. Don’t ring a bell with me.”
The herd slowly put the miles behind them. They crossed rivers, pulled cattle out of quicksand and fought the heat and ate the dust and endured the loneliness of the trail, with the older men remembering how it was years back, when there were no towns along the way. When there was nothing except an empty, seemingly never-ending vastness and then screaming Indians that came out of nowhere.
It was bad now, but it was worse back then.
About fifty miles after crossing the North Platte, they hit a vast grassland, and the cattle slowly ate their way across, regaining the few pounds lost on the way north.
Holding the herd outside of a small town in northern Wyoming, Smoke and several other riders accompanied the wagon in for supplies.
It wasn’t much of a town, even by Western standards. A large general store, a blacksmith, a saloon. The stage stopped twice a week. The town had sprung up out of nowhere, had lasted a few years, now was dying. Another couple of years and it would join the many other towns that failed in the West.
Not too many miles to the west, there was another settlement called Donkey Town, although some were trying to get its name changed to Rocky Pile.
While the supplies were being loaded, Smoke walked the short distance to the saloon. If there was any news worth hearing, he would learn of it at the saloon. There were half a dozen horses at the hitchrail and two wagons in the street. Smoke pushed open the batwings and the buzz of conversation slowed, then stopped as he ordered a beer and leaned against the bar.
He was used to that. Nearly everyone in the rural west carried a gun; few carried two guns; almost no one wore his guns the way Smoke wore his. It branded him. Smoke moved to the shadows at the far end of the bar. He hadn’t had time to lift the mug to his lips when the batwings flew open and two young men stomped in.
“Hell of a herd outside of town,” one said. “And, boy you ought to see the cook. She’s a looker, let me tell you.’
“Wears men’s britches,” the second one said. “Rob here like to have fell off his horse starin’.”
“Got a bunch of snot-nosed kids wranglin’,” Rob said. “Might be fun to go out there and hoo-rah ’em some. What’d you say, Carl?”
“Kids?” a man questioned. He sat at a table with three other men. “What kind of a damn fool outfit hires kids as drovers?”
The pair obviously had not seen any hands except the boys at the remuda. Smoke sipped his beer and waited and listened. Talk was one thing, but hoo-rahing the herd was quite another.
The batwings were shoved open and a young man rushed in, his face flushed. “You heard the news?” The words rushed out of his mouth. “That herd outside of town belongs to Smoke Jensen!”
“You’re crazy!” Carl told him. “Who told you that?”
“One of them kids at the remuda.”
“Aw, he’s just sayin’ that so’s no one will bother ’em. Smoke Jensen ain’t got no herd. I don’t even think there is such a person noways. I think all that’s made-up stuff.”
Rob hitched at his gun belt. “Oh, he’s a real person, all right. My brother seen him a couple of years ago. Backed him down, too, my brother did. Jensen ain’t much. I’d like to see Jensen in action. I think I’m faster.”