“I was just remembering some tales my husband told me of his first days out here in the wilderness, back when he was no more than a child.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Things were very different then, and Smoke had to learn to use both his wits and his guns at a very young age.” Sally laughed softly. “Thank goodness we’re much more civilized nowadays and things are different.”
Not so different as you think, Sally, not so different at all, Sarah thought, struggling to keep the hatred she felt for Smoke from showing in her eyes or in her voice.
FIVE
Sarah decided it would be best if she could find out all she could about this man she planned to kill, this man who went by the unlikely name Smoke. She didn’t like taking advantage of a nice woman like Sally, but it wasn’t her fault the lady had married a monster and didn’t seem to realize it. Perhaps if she could get her to talk about him, she would find out how best to get close to him and then take him out.
“Please, Sally,” she said, “if you’re not too tired, tell me some of those tales about your husband’s early days out here and how he got such an unusual name as Smoke.”
“Well,” Sally said, hesitating, “I wouldn’t want to bore you.”
“Oh, you won’t,” Sarah promised. “My father used to tell my brother and me about how he got started years ago, back when things were very different in Colorado Territory, and his stories always fascinated us.”
Sally smiled. “We’re a lot alike, Sarah,” she said. “I too have always been interested in the history of the Old West.”
The only difference is my father is a respectable rancher and your husband is cold-blooded killer and gunman, Sarah thought.
Sally settled back in her seat and closed her eyes, letting the memories of the stories Smoke had told her come to the front of her mind....
Smoke was sixteen years old when his father returned to their hardscrabble farm in Missouri from fighting for the Gray in the Civil War. When young Kirby told his father that his mother, Emmett’s wife, had died the previous spring, Emmett put the farm up for sale and he and Kirby moved off headed west.
They rode westward, edging north for several weeks, moving toward country controlled by the Kiowa and Pawnee Indians. When they arrived at the Santa Fe Trail, they met up with a mountain man who called himself Preacher. He was dressed entirely in buckskins, from his moccasins to his wide-brimmed hat. Young Kirby thought him the dirtiest man he’d ever seen; even his white beard was so stained with tobacco as to be almost black.
Soon after their meeting, the three men were ambushed by a group of Indians that Preacher said were Pawnees, and took refuge in a buffalo wallow just behind a low ridge.
Suddenly the meadow around them was filled with screaming, charging Indians. Emmett brought one buck down with a .44 slug through the chest, flinging the Indian backward.
The air had changed from the peacefulness of summer quiet to a screaming, gun-smoke-filled hell. Preacher looked at Kirby, who was looking at him, his mouth hanging open in shock, fear, and confusion.
“Don’t look at me, boy!” he yelled. “Keep them eyes in front of you!”
Kirby jerked his gaze to the small creek and the stand of timber that lay behind it. His eyes were beginning to smart from the acrid powder smoke, and his head was aching from the pounding sound of the Henry .44 and the screaming and yelling. The Spencer rifle Kirby held at the ready was a heavy weapon, and his arms were beginning to ache with the strain.
His head suddenly came up, eyes alert. He had seen movement on the far side of the creek. Right there! Yes, someone was over there.
Kirby was thinking to himself that he really didn’t want to shoot anyone when a young brave suddenly sprang from the willows by the creek and lunged into the water, a rifle in his hand.
As the young brave thrashed through the water toward him, Kirby jacked back the hammer of the Spencer, sighted in on the brave, and pulled the trigger. The .52-caliber pounded his shoulder, bruising it, for there wasn’t much spare meat on Kirby. When the smoke blew away, the young Indian was facedown in the water, his blood staining the stream.
Kirby stared at what he’d done, then fought back waves of sickness that threatened to spill from his stomach.
The boy heard a wild screaming and spun around. His father was locked in hand-to-hand combat with two knife-wielding braves. Too close for the rifle, Kirby clawed out the .36-caliber Navy Colt from leather. He shot one brave through the head just as his father buried his Arkansas Toothpick to the hilt in the chest of the other.
And as abruptly as they came, the Indians were gone, dragging as many of their dead and wounded with them as they could. Two braves lay dead in front of Preacher, two braves lay dead in the shallow ravine with the three men; the boy Kirby had shot lay facedown in the creek, arms outstretched, the waters a deep crimson. The body slowly floated downstream.
Preacher looked at the dead buck in the creek, then at the brave in the wallow with them . . . the one Kirby had shot. He lifted his eyes to the boy.
“Got your baptism this day, boy. Did right well, you did.”
“Saved my life, son,” Emmett said, dumping the bodies of the Indians out of the wallow. “Can’t call you a boy no more, I reckon. You’re a man now.”
A thin finger of smoke lifted from the barrel of the Navy .36 Colt Kirby held in his hand. Preacher smiled and spit tobacco juice.
He looked at Kirby’s ash-blond hair. “Yep,” he said. “Smoke’ll suit you just fine. So Smoke hit’ll be.”
“Sir?” Kirby finally found his voice.
“Smoke. That’s what I’ll call you now on. Smoke.”1
Sarah’s face was flushed and she was fanning herself with a small handkerchief as Sally finished her tale of how her husband came to be called Smoke and of his introduction to the Wild West.
The story had been very exciting, and somehow it reminded Sarah of the stories Cletus and her father had told her as she was growing up, about how they’d had to hold off Indian attacks and bandit attacks while still trying to raise crops and cattle and babies.
“My, my, Sally,” Sarah said, taking a deep breath. “That was quite a story.”
Sally smiled as she patted Sarah’s thigh next to her on the seat. “Things were quite different in those days, Sarah. The Indians were still around and hated the intrusion of the white man, and there was no law to call upon when you got in trouble. People had to learn to take matters into their own hands, and they became very tough in the doing.”
Kind of like me, Sarah thought as she turned her face to stare out of the window. Since the law is unable to do what is right, I’m taking matters into my own hands, and I’m going to kill Smoke Jensen for what he did to my brother.
After a moment spent composing herself and forcing her face into an expression of friendship, Sarah turned back around and faced Sally. “And did this country make your husband tough, Sally?” she asked, trying to keep the venom out of her voice and her expression pleasant.
Sally pursed her lips as she thought about the question. She didn’t quite know how to answer it. True, Smoke was as tough a man when provoked as she’d ever met, but with her he was invariably gentle and kind, and she knew that there was no man more loyal to his friends than her husband, or more fearsome to his enemies. So, she guessed Smoke was tough when he needed to be and gentle and kind when he was allowed to be.
Unable to put all this into words without sounding like a fool, she just shrugged. “I suppose Smoke became as tough as he needed to be to survive in those days, but thankfully, those days are gone now and he has little need for that ability nowadays.” She smiled at Sarah. “Nowadays, he spends his time with me on our ranch just outside of Big Rock, raising cattle and horses and being a boring old homebody.”