As the bedraggled group of cowboys and gunslicks limped their way back into what was left of their camp, a light snow started to fall.
Angus gritted his teeth and glared at the skies above. “This is perfect,” he growled, “just perfect!”
By the time morning came, Angus’s men had managed to find about three quarters of the horses, and the injured and wounded had been patched up as best they could with what supplies they had remaining.
Another campfire had been built, and the men breakfasted on coffee made with melted snow. There wasn’t any food left that was worth eating.
The snow continued to fall, but at least the wind was not too strong, and the temperature actually seemed a bit warmer than it had been the night before.
All in all, the men counted themselves lucky there’d been no loss of life in the explosions of the night before.
TWENTY-NINE
As the bedraggled group of men sat around the campfire drinking their coffee, Angus got to his feet. “I’m not gonna let that bastard Smoke Jensen get away with making Angus MacDougal look like a fool,” he said in a loud voice.
Off to one side, George Jones whispered to Sam Jackson, “Don’t seem to me like the old man got much choice. The deed’s done been done.”
Angus glared at the men for interrupting his speech, though he couldn’t hear what they’d said. “As I started to say, Jensen ain’t gonna get away with this. I’m offering five hundred dollars to the man what puts a bullet in Jensen.”
Carl Jacoby glanced at Mac Macklin, sitting next to him. He shook his head and stood up. “But Mr. MacDougal, that makes us no better’n bounty hunters.”
“So what, Jacoby?” Angus asked belligerently. “You got a problem with that?”
“Yeah, I do,” Jacoby answered. “Me and most of the boys here signed on to help you get Jensen ‘cause we knew he’d killed your boy and thought he deserved to be punished.” He paused. “Now a lot of us ain’t all that certain of the facts of what happened in Pueblo last year, and we damn sure didn’t sign on as hired killers.”
Angus’s face turned beet red and he shouted, “You keep your mouth shut, Jacoby, or you’ll be fired.”
Jacoby shrugged. “That’s all right, Mr. MacDougal. I don’t think I want to work for you any more anyway.” He turned to the group of men sitting around the fire. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but Mac Macklin and me, along with Sarah MacDougal and Cletus Jones, all think Jensen wasn’t at fault for killing Johnny MacDougal. Now maybe that don’t matter to some of you, but I ain’t gonna hunt down and kill a man what don’t deserve it, no matter how much money Angus offers.” He turned back to Angus. “I quit.”
“Go on, you coward!” Angus shouted. “None of the rest of the men are going with you.”
“I don’t know about that, Mr. MacDougal,” Macklin said as he got to his feet. “I ain’t no bounty hunter, and I sure as hell ain’t no killer neither. Wait up, Carl, I’m coming along too.”
Slowly, almost all of the men around the campfire got to their feet and made their way over to the few remaining horses, some looking at MacDougal with disgust, others with pity, but none looking afraid of him as they used to be.
Jacoby looked back over his shoulder. “We’ll take the buckboard for the injured men and try and double up on the mounts so we can leave you enough to get back to the ranch on,” he said as they began to hitch up a couple of horses to the wagon and put blankets on the backs of a few others.
By the time the men had all gone, Angus realized he only had four men staying with him. Jason Biggs and Juan Gomez from his ranch, and Jack Dogget and Joshua Stone from the group that Wally Tupper had gotten from town.
He nodded and rubbed his hands in front of the fire to get them warm. “You men won’t regret staying,” he said, his eyes gleaming with madness. “I’m gonna make you rich.”
After the men and Angus had gathered up as much ammunition as they could find that hadn’t been destroyed, they climbed up on their horses and began to follow the tracks Smoke had left when he bombed the camp.
Angus was in the lead, riding up a narrow trail that skirted the edge of a precipice along the side of the mountain. He could look to the side and see a drop of four hundred feet over the side.
Suddenly, his horse stumbled, its legs falling into the hole Smoke had filled with sharpened stakes. The horse screamed in pain as the wooden stakes pierced its legs, and it bucked and jumped to the side, falling off the cliff.
Luckily, Angus had been thrown from the saddle, and fell on the edge of the cliff, his arms wrapped around a cluster of small pine trees and holding on for dear life. Dogget and Stone jumped off their mounts and pulled Angus up and over the edge until he was standing on firm ground.
Angus looked down into the hole and saw the stakes, slapping his thigh and cursing. “That tricky son of a bitch!”
Dogget and Stone got back on their horses and walked them around the hole and up the trail, ignoring Angus standing there.
As Biggs and Gomez rode by, Biggs leaned over and offered his hand. Angus took it and swung up on the horse’s back behind him. “Don’t you worry none, Mr. MacDougal,” Biggs drawled “We’ll get that bastard for you.”
Angus nodded, but he was beginning to have his doubts. So far, Jensen seemed much smarter than the men he’d hired to go after him.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea for him to come up here and lead the group himself.
Thirty minutes later, as they continued to follow Jensen’s tracks in the snow of the trail along the edge of the cliff, going slow so as not to fall into any more holes, Jack Dogget’s horse tripped a rope stretched across the trail and hidden just under the snow. As the rope was tripped, it let go of a large branch that had been pulled back and tied in place. The branch whipped forward, catching Dogget full in the chest. The force of the blow slammed him backward off his horse and over the cliff in an instant.
The men riding behind him barely had time to blink before he was out of sight, and all they could hear was his screams as he fell four hundred feet to his death.
“Sweet Mary Mother of God!” Juan Gomez whispered, crossing himself as his face broke out in a heavy sweat. “Jensen is el Diablo!”
“What’d you say, Juan?” Angus asked.
“He said Jensen is the devil,” Biggs answered, his eyes wide, “and I don’t know as what but I agree with him.”
Suddenly, from up ahead, Gomez whispered, “Madre de Dios!”
“Now what are you saying?” Angus asked, until he saw where Juan was staring.
Up ahead, standing in the middle of the trail, was a man dressed in buckskins. He had a pistol in a holster tied down low on his right leg, and another pistol stuck in his belt facing his left hand. He was standing in the trail as cool and composed as if he were out for a walk.
“Jensen!” Angus hissed as he looked over Biggs’s shoulder at the man.
“That’s right, Mr. MacDougal. Now that the odds are fair, I’m ready to face you and your men headon.”
“Odds fair?” Josh Stone asked incredulously. “But it’s four to one.”
Smoke shrugged. “That’s about right, I ’spect. I want to give you men at least a fighting chance.”
“Holy shit!” Biggs whispered.
“Now, you can hook and draw, or you can turn tail and ride on off and live to enjoy another beautiful day in the High Lonesome,” Smoke said, seemingly unconcerned about their decision. “It’s your choice.”
“Son of a bitch!” Stone yelled and went for his gun, as did Biggs and Gomez.
Angus had never seen anything like it. One minute Jensen was standing there, as cool as a cucumber; the next his eyes were on fire and his hands were full of iron and he was blazing away at them.