“You’ve got a bit of food in your saddlebags,” Smoke told him. “I’ve taken your pistols and left you your rifle. If you think it’s worth your life to ride back and collect what wages are due you, then do so. But I would advise against it. The best thing you can do is put some miles behind you.”
“I’m gone, Mr. Jensen. I swear on the Bible, I’m gone like the breeze.”
“Get up and get gone!”
Fifteen seconds later, the hand was in the saddle and riding. Montana would not see him again.
Smoke stayed on the fringe of Circle 45 range, whenever possible staying in timber and never skylining himself. The smell of food cooking drifted to him. He picketed his horse, slipped on moccasins. and taking the .44-40 from the boot, began stalking the source of the smells. He quietly walked to within a hundred feet of the camp. Four men sat drinking coffee and frying bacon. A pot of beans hung over the fire. Smoke injuned his way closer and smiled at the laxness of the men. They obviously believed that since they were on Circle 45 range they were in no danger. Rifles were in saddle boots and only one of the men was wearing a gun. The others had tossed their gun belts onto rumpled blankets. Smoke rose as silently as any Apache and stood for a moment, staring at the men. He knew one of them would spot him.
One did, his eyes taking in the rifle pointed right at him. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Morris,” he finally said. “Boys. Don’t none of you do nothin’ itchy.”
“What are you talkin’ about, Granville?”
“Smoke Jensen.”
“What about him?”
“He’s standin’ ’bout fifty feet behind you with a rifle in his hands.”
“Sit right where you are,” Smoke told the group. “Or die right where you are. The choice is yours.”
“We’re calm,” Granville said.
Smoke walked into the camp site and placed the muzzle of the .44-40 against the head of the only one who was armed. He reached down and took the man’s pistol. Smoke backed off a dozen feet and sat down. “Turn that bacon and stir those beans,” he told the group. “Then dish me up a plate. I’m hungry. We’ll talk while we eat and then you boys can saddle up and drift on out of the territory.”
“Huh?” Morris said.
Smoke thumbed back the hammer on the .44-40 and the Circle 45 hands tensed. “You ride or you die,” he said simply. “It’s that easy. I’m tired of this war. I’m tired of the likes of Clint Black. And I’m tired of the likes of men such as you. I don’t want to have to look at your ugly faces again.”
“You ain’t got no call to insult us,” one said.
Smoke smiled. “There is nothing I could say about you that should insult you. You’re murderers, thieves, and God only knows what else. But your lives are about to take a turn for the better. I think you boys are about to see the light.”
“I don’t think you’d shoot an unarmed man,” one of them said.
“Then you’re a fool,” Smoke told him. “The only rules I play by are my own. I was raised by mountain men, boys. Preacher and Nighthawk and Cherokee Jack and Dupre and Powder Pete and Lobo, just to name a few. I put my first man in the grave long before I had to shave. I’ll shoot every damn one of you then sit amid your bodies while I eat your food and then I’ll leave you for the buzzards and the critters. And don’t you ever think for one second that I won’t. You crap and crud killed my men and killed young boys and tried to kill my wife and me. Put yourself in my boots and think about that.”
The four men were beginning to sweat as Smoke’s words sank in. The one called Granville was pale, his eyes shining with fear. He said, “I can’t talk for the others, but you let me, and I’ll drift. You’ll never see me again, Jensen.”
“I won’t,” the one called Morris said. He looked at Smoke and his lips moved in an evil smile. “I’ll hunt you down and kill you and then have my way with your wife. See how she likes a real man. What do you think about that, Jensen?”
Smoke shot him. The slug took the gunhand in the center of the chest and he was dead before he fell back on the ground.
“Dish up the food,” Smoke said. “And then you boys can saddle up and ride out of here.”
“You damn shore got that right,” Granville said.
19
“We’re short one hand,” Jud reported to Clint. “He should have been in a long time ago. And that ain’t all. Fatso rode out to the boys’ camp this afternoon to see if they needed anything, what with them hidin’ out after the jailbreak. The camp was deserted, except for Morris’s dead body.”
Clint came out of the chair. “What?”
“That’s right. He was shot right through the heart.” He held out the brass. “Forty-four-forty at close range. Didn’t none of those boys carry a forty-four-forty.”
“Jensen?”
“Has to be. Camp wasn’t churned up with boot prints. Just the prints of the boys and one set of moccasin tracks. And one hell of a big man wearin’ ’em.”
“He is actually on my range, attacking my people?” That anyone would be so bold as to openly declare war on Clint Black was astonishing to the man. “Well…I won’t have that. I will not tolerate it.”
“Boss, don’t order the boys out at night. That’s what Jensen wants.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’ll attack the house if you pull the men away.”
“One man will attack this house? Jud, you’re turning into an old woman. Jensen isn’t a fool. He’s just stupid. He’s up in the high country. Miles from here.”
Actually, Smoke was standing by the front porch, listening to every word. Since Clint hated dogs, and shot everyone he saw, there were no dogs around to sound the warning. The corral was too far away for the horses to act as sentries. Smoke had been busy around the Circle 45 headquarters, having more fun than a half a dozen schoolboys. And more fun should start at any moment.
A scream came from one of the outhouses behind the bunkhouse. Smoke smiled, thinking: let the fun begin.
“What the hell’s the matter over there?” Jud hollered.
“They’s a goddamn rattlesnake in the shifter!” a hand bellered.
“Well, shoot the damn thing,” Jud yelled. “Jesus! Act like a bunch of women sometimes.”
Jud stalked off the porch and stepped on a rake that had just been placed on the path, placed in a manner that was tantamount to sabotage.
The handle flew up and smacked the foreman right in the face, almost knocking him down. Clint ran off the porch to see about his friend and foreman. “You all right, Jud? Jesus, your nose is busted. Come on back to the porch. I’ll get a wet cloth.” He started hollering for the cook.
Smoke ran around to the back of the house where he had placed a jug of kerosene he’d swiped from Clint’s storeroom. He poured the kerosene all over the back porch and waited until it soaked into the dry boards.
A Circle 45 hand started hollering for someone to let him out of the outhouse, the door was jammed. It sure was. Just as soon as the hand had stepped inside and closed the door, Smoke had wedged a stick in tight.
Before leaving the house, Smoke had found a long string of old firecrackers someone had left behind. He had taken them along. He lit a match, started the porch burning from underneath and slipped to the bunkhouse. He lit the fuse to the firecrackers and tossed them through an open window. Then he decided he’d better get the hell gone from that immediate area.
“Let me out of this damn crapper!” the hired gun hollered.
“Fire!” another yelled.
The fuse burned down to the firecrackers and pandemonium took over as what appeared to be an attack on the bunkhouse opened up. The hand trapped in the outhouse was rocking the entire structure back and forth in his frantic attempts to get out. He turned it over. Backwards.
The hands in the bunkhouse began shooting all over the place at imaginary foes.