TWENTY-EIGHT
As they sat by the fire next to each other, Angus told Cletus that he was taking over the hunt for Jensen.
“You’re welcome to it, Angus,” Cletus said, relieved that he wouldn’t be in charge any longer. “I got no more stomach for this anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?” Angus asked around a mouthful of bacon and beans.
Cletus drank his coffee, staring over the rim at the fire without looking at Angus. “I just don’t think Jensen is the killer you make him out to be, Angus.”
Angus swallowed his food. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean you don’t believe he killed my Johnny?” he asked.
Cletus turned to look at him. “No, I know he killed Johnny, Boss. It’s just that I think Johnny probably didn’t give him no choice in the matter, that’s all.”
“Bullshit!” Angus growled. “He shot my boy down in cold blood.”
Cletus shook his head. “First off, Angus, Johnny weren’t no boy, he was a full-growed man, though I got to admit he often didn’t act like it.”
Angus glared at Cletus, hate in his eyes at this desecration of his son’s memory.
Cletus went on. “Not only that, but on the ride back here, after Sarah betrayed him and took him prisoner, Jensen risked his own life to save hers.”
Angus opened his eyes wide in disbelief. “What?”
Cletus told him the story of Smoke and the rattlesnake and how he’d thrown himself in front of Sarah.
Angus clamped his jaws shut. “That don’t make no never mind. Fact is, he killed Johnny and for that he’s gonna die, no matter what he did for Sarah.”
From the other side of Angus, Sarah interjected, “Daddy, I think you ought to listen to Clete. He’s right about Jensen. He isn’t a cold-blooded killer like you say.”
Angus’s face twisted up in hatred and he swung a backhand, slapping Sarah across the face.
“Don’t you dare say nothing against your brother, girl,” he snarled. “He was worth two of you.”
As Sarah’s hand went to her face, Cletus reached across Angus and grabbed his wrist, twisting hard until Angus groaned in pain. “That tears it, Angus. I’m through with you and your little gang of killers. And if I ever hear of you laying another hand on Sarah”—Cletus paused and looked over at her—“I’ll personally come out there and beat the living shit out of you!”
Cletus got to his feet and helped Sarah to hers. He put a palm against the side of her face, his eyes sad. “I’m sorry, Missy.”
She glanced from Cletus back down to her father. “Me too, Clete. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
The two walked over to the string of horses and began to saddle their mounts.
“You leave me now, Clete, and you’ll never work in Colorado again!” Angus shouted at their backs.
As Cletus and Sarah swung up into their saddles, Cletus shook his head at the old man. “I wouldn’t make threats you ain’t gonna be able to carry out, Angus. For my money, I don’t think you got one chance in ten of riding off this mountain alive.”
“And just where do you think you’re going, young lady?” Angus growled at Sarah.
She sat up straight in her saddle. “I’m going home to pack my things. It’s about time I left home and made my own way in the world.”
“Well,” Angus snorted, “good riddance to the both of you. You’ll both come crawling back to me when you realize I’m right about all this.”
Cletus shook his head. “No, Angus, we won’t be back. And I don’t think you’ve been right about anything for a very long time.”
They jerked their reins and rode off alongside one another without looking back, leaving Angus staring after them as the darkness swallowed them up.
Smoke heard this exchange from where he stood in the darkness less than a dozen yards away. It had been no trouble for him to sneak near the camp, moving between the sentries as silent as a ghost in the pitch-black night. He could have snuck up to any of them and killed them before they knew what was happening, but he wanted to end this with as little loss of life as he could. There’d already been too much killing.
The knee-deep snow helped to cover any sounds he might make, but would show his tracks later in the morning light. He smiled to himself, unworried about that. He planned to give the men in the gang plenty of other things to be thinking about before the sun rose in the morning.
Moving slowly and staying out of the light of the campfire, Smoke snuck over to the string of horses where they were tethered along a rope stretched between two trees. He walked along the broncs, his hands lightly touching their rumps so they wouldn’t get nervous and whinny, until he came to the pack animals. Their packs had been removed and sat on the ground next to them, and he was lucky the men hadn’t bothered to take the boxes of supplies and ammunition and explosives up near the fire where they would have been safe.
It took Smoke five trips to carry all of the boxes of dynamite and gunpowder and extra cartridges a couple of hundred yards away from the camp. He needed them to be that far away for what he had planned. On his last trip, he used his clasp knife to cut the rope holding the horses, but made no effort to scatter them. That would come later.
When he was far enough away, he opened the boxes and took out fifteen or twenty of the sticks of dynamite, along with their fuses and detonators, and stuck them in a saddlebag. He then took a fuse, cut it two feet long, and stuck it and a detonator into a stick of dynamite. He took a can of gunpowder and, using his skinning knife, he opened the top, wincing at the scraping sound the knife made.
He set the can between the boxes of dynamite and gunpowder and cartridges and put the stick of dynamite in it, nestling it down into the powder. He struck a match and lit the fuse, and then ran as fast as he could around the edge of the camp until he was on the opposite side from where he’d set the supplies.
While he waited for the fuse, he took out one of the sticks of dynamite from his saddlebag and stuck a detonator and a very short two-inch fuse into the end of it.
Three minutes later, the dynamite and gunpowder and cartridges all went up with a tremendous bang. The fireball from the explosion rose fifty feet in the air, and set the top of one of the ponderosa pines on fire.
The force of the explosion blew men off their feet and tossed them about like rag dolls, causing several to suffer broken arms and lacerations from flying debris.
The extra cartridges in the pack were set off by the blast, and bullets flew through the air like a swarm of angry hornets, wounding two men. The rest of the gang threw themselves on the ground with their hands over their heads while they screamed in fright and terror as slugs whined past their ears.
Smoke kept his head down until things had quieted down. Men slowly got to their feet, shaking their heads and pulling their pistols from their holsters as they moved off in the direction of the explosion.
Suddenly, Daniel Macklin shouted, “Hey, Mr. MacDougal, the horses are all gone!”
Angus got to his feet and brushed himself off, his ears ringing and his nose running from all the dust and dirt in the air.
“Well, just don’t stand there, men. Round ‘em up!” he shouted, pointing with both hands as horses ran around in the forest, as frightened as the men were.
Once all of the men had stumbled out of the camp and out into the woods looking for horses, Smoke leaned over the boulder he was hiding behind and pitched his stick of dynamite into the campfire.
He’d managed to run only a dozen yards when the dynamite went off, exploding in the campfire and blowing what was left of the camp into smithereens.
At least half of the men’s saddles were destroyed, along with most of their sleeping blankets and ground covers. All of the rest of the food supplies were ruined, with the exception of several cans of Arbuckle’s coffee, which were smashed and dented but remained somehow intact.