Boots thudded on the old boards. “Jensen! You better make your peace with the Lord. ’Cause I’m shore gonna kill you for what you done to my brother.”
Rocky slammed open the batwings and charged inside. Smoke hit him flush in the mouth. Rocky’s boots went out from under him and he sailed right back out into the street, landing on his butt. The dust flew.
Smoke stepped out and kicked the gun from Rocky’s hand. He reached down and slapped the man hard, twice across the face, addling him, and then jerked out his other Colt and tossed it into a horse trough. Then he hauled Rocky up and proceeded to beat the snot out of him.
Rocky didn’t get a chance to land a single punch. All he did was receive them, and he received a goodly number of them, divided about equally between ribs and face.
When Smoke finally let the would-be gunslinger fall, he was pretty sure that Rocky’s jaw was broken in at least two places and he had numerous broken ribs. Rocky would not be riding for a long time.
Smoke swung up into the saddle and faced the crowd of men and women. “Give him a message from me. Tell him I gave him his life. This time only. Explain to him that Carl and Rob crowded Al and me. Not the other way around. Try to get it through Rocky’s head that if I ever see him again, and he’s wearing a gun, I fully intend to kill him. On the spot.” He turned his horse and rode out of town.
“I do like a feller who knows his mind and speaks it,” a man said. “And Jensen can sure enough speak it plain. Well, come on. Let’s drag Rocky over to Ed’s. Most excitement we’ve had in this town in ten years.”
At the herd, Sally walked to her husband’s side. “Any trouble in town?”
“Not to speak of. Saw Al Jacobs and we had a beer together. He’s ranching and married now. I forgot to ask if he had any kids. He looked real good.”
Sally looked at the blood splattered on Smoke’s shirt. “It must have been a lively conversation. Get out of that shirt so I can soak it before the blood sets. What in the world did you two talk about?”
Smoke stripped off his shirt and handed it to her, then rummaged around in his bedroll for a fresh shirt. “We saved some lives there in the town. Al and me, we put two young fellows back on the right road. You might say we read to them from the scriptures.”
She patted his arm. “I’m sure it was quite a sermon. Do we stay here for the night?”
“I think it would be best if we moved on for a few more miles. No point in wasting good weather.”
Sally put hazel eyes on her husband. “Someday you must tell me about your impromptu Bible reading.”
“Oh, I will. When we get a few more miles up the road.”
They experienced no more trouble as the herd moved slowly north. The drovers pushed them into Montana, and after three days drive they turned the herd west. Now the real test began, for they were on no known trail. That meant that Smoke stayed busy all day, seeking a right of way for the herd and being careful not to damage the property of other ranchers and farmers. And the drovers had to work twice as hard in order to keep the herd together and not pick up anyone else’s cows.
Hands from other ranches willingly pitched in to help. They did it for many reasons, including the chance to pick up news and to taste some of Sally’s cooking, for the word had spread before them.
Many of them also wanted the chance to size up Smoke Jensen. The majority of the hands and ranchers who met him quickly found themselves liking the man, for they found in him a man who worked just as hard as his hands and who told it the way he saw it, pulling no punches. That was the Western way.
And the story of the shoot-out back in that little Wyoming town, and the fistfight that followed, had already spread, to be told and retold around the campfires of the West.
The boys in the drive got their wish, and they met some Indians. They were not hostile and appeared to be starving. But there was no way they were going to beg. They had been defeated on the battlefields, and now were not much of a threat to anyone. But beg they would not. Smoke could see that. He could also see hungry children and he couldn’t stand that. Smoke gave them ten of his own cattle and wished them well.
“What kind of Injuns were those, Mr. Smoke?” Young Guy asked.
“Cheyenne. Proud people.”
“They didn’t look like very much to me.”
“Some of the fiercest warriors that ever lived,” Smoke told the boy. “Back when I was not much older than you, I lived with them part of one winter. Me and old Preacher. Indians are good people…in their own way. Their ways are just not like ours, that’s all.”
Smoke cut north for several days, to avoid the Indian reservations, then again pointed the herd west. They had one hell of a time crossing the Yellowstone, almost losing a hand when his horse panicked and floundered. They saved the hand, but the horse was swept downstream and the cowboy lost his horse, saddle, saddlebags, and Winchester.
Then they hit days of hot, dry weather before they reached the Sweet Grass River. The cattle almost stampeded when they smelled the water. One old mossyhorn bull who had joined the herd a few days back charged a horse and gored it so badly, the horse had to be shot. When the horse fell, Harris was pinned under the saddle. The bull took out his anger on Harris before Smoke could kill it. Harris was buried beside the trail. He wasn’t the first to have been killed on a cattle drive, and certainly would not be the last.
Smoke made a short talk after the body was lowered and covered, saying a few good things about Harris, and Denver read words from the Bible. Some of the boys had a hard time keeping back the tears.
When Sally sang “What A Friend We Have In Jesus,” several of the boys and more than one of the men could no longer contain themselves and even old Denver had to horn his nose a couple of times. The whole affair just about did Smoke in, too, and he was glad to be back in the saddle and moving. It wasn’t the first lonely grave he’d helped dig.
Smoke led them south of the Crazy Mountains and then led them north and west across the Sixteenmile River, keeping the Big Belt Mountains to the north. Smoke told his people they could visit Helena after the herd was delivered and have a rip-roarin’ good time. Right now, the herd needed to be delivered.
Mountains towered all around them as Smoke wound the herd through valleys lush with summer vegetation. These were not yet the towering peaks that lay farther north, but they were respectable mountains just the same.
Smoke halted the herd in a long, wide, beautiful valley and told his people to let them graze. “This is where Duggan said he’d meet us,” he told his crew. “So make camp and relax. We’re a couple of days early.” He smiled. “Give or take a week or so.”
“This is puzzling,” Sally told her husband, snuggled next to him that night. “Why didn’t this Duggan want the herd taken straight to his range?”
“I don’t know. Unless he doesn’t want Clint Black to know about it, just yet.”
“That must be it.”
The next morning, Nate came fogging his horse into camp. “Two women comin’, boss. Ridin’ sidesaddle an’ all. They some duded up, too. Funniest lookin’ hats I ever did see.”
“Two women?” Smoke asked. “Here?”
“There they come, boss. See for yourself.”
The women were twins, and identical twins at that. They were elegantly dressed, in the very latest Eastern riding habits. Their hats were huge things, with what looked to Smoke like mosquito netting tied under their chins. They walked their horses over to a natural rise and stepped daintily from the saddle, handing the reins to a dumbstruck young Rabbit, who was bug-eyed staring at the pair.
“Which one of you is Mr. Jensen?” one twin asked.
“Right here, ma’am.” Smoke walked toward them and took off his hat. “And you two would be…?”
“I am Toni and this is my sister, Jeanne. Duggan.”