“Expecting trouble, Smoke?”
“Not around here. Just getting used to wearing them again. I’ve got to take a trip, Haywood. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Probably most of the spring and part of the summer. I know Sheriff Carson is out of town, so I’d be beholden if you’d d ask him to check in with Sally from time to time. I’m not expecting any trouble out there; Preacher Morrow and Bountiful are right over the ridge and my hands would fight a grizzly with a stick. I’d just feel better if Monte would drop by now and then.”
“I’ll sure do it, Smoke.” He had a dozen questions he’d like to ask, but in the West, a man’s business was his own.
Smoke stuck out his hand. “See you in a few months, Haywood. Give Dana my best.”
Haywood watched the tall, broad-shouldered, ruggedly handsome man stroll up the boardwalk toward the general store. Smoke Jensen, the last mountain man. The hero of dozens of dime novels. The fastest gun in the West. A man who never wanted the title of gunfighter, but who at sixteen years of age was taken under the tutelage of an old he-coon named Preacher. The old mountain man had taught the boy well, and the boy had grown into one of the most feared and respected men in the West.
No one really knew how many outlaws and murderers and gunslingers and highwaymen had fallen under Smoke’s thundering .44’s. Some said fifty, others said two hundred. Smoke himself didn’t really know for sure.
But Haywood knew one thing for a fact: if Smoke Jensen had strapped on his guns, and was going on a journey, it would darn sure be interesting when he reached his destination.
Interesting and deadly.
The next morning Smoke saddled a tough mountain-bred horse named Dagger—the outline of a knife was on the animal’s left rump—checked his canvased and tied-down supplies on the pack horse, and went back into the cabin.
The twins were still sleeping as their father slipped into their rooms and softly kissed each child’s cheek. He stepped back out into the main room of the cabin—the den, as Sally called it.
“Sally, I don’t know what I’m riding into this time. Or how long I’ll be gone.”
She smiled at him. “Then I’ll see you when you get back.”
They embraced, kissed, and Smoke stepped out the door, walking to the barn. With the pack horse rope in his left hand, Smoke lifted his right hand in farewell, picked up the reins, and pointed Dagger’s nose toward the north.
Sally watched him until he was out of sight, then with a sigh, turned and walked into the cabin, quietly closing the door behind her.
Smoke had dressed warmly, for it was still early spring in the high lonesome, and the early mornings and nights were cold. But as the sun touched the land with its warming rays, he would shed his heavy lined jacket and travel wearing a buckskin jacket, made for him by the squaws of Indian friends.
He traveled following a route that kept the Rocky Mountains to his left and the Medicine Bow Mountains to his right. He crossed the Continental Divide and angled slightly west. He knew this country, and loved it. Preacher had first shown this country to him, back in the late sixties, and Smoke had fallen in love with it. The columbine was in early bloom, splashing the countryside in blue and lavender and white and purple.
Smoke’s father, Emmett Jensen, was buried at Brown’s Hole, up near the Utah line, in the northwest corner of Colorado. Buried lying atop thousands and thousands of dollars in gold. No one except Smoke and Preacher knew that, and neither one of them had any intention of spreading it about.
Old Preacher was in his early eighties, at least, but it had filled Smoke with joy and love to learn that he was still alive.
Cantankerous old billy-goat!
On his third night out, Smoke made camp halfway between Rabbit Ears Pass and Buffalo Pass, in the high-up country of the Rockies. He had caught some trout just before dusk dropped night on the land and was frying them in a dollop of lard when he saw Dagger’s ears come up.
Smoke set the frying pan away from the flames, on a part of the circle of stones around the flames, and slipped back a few feet from the fire and put a hand on his Winchester .44.
“Hallo, the fire!” the voice came out of the darkness. “I’m friendly as a little wolf cub but as hongry as a just woke-up bar.”
Smoke smiled. But his hand did not leave his Winchester. “Then come on in. I’ll turn no hungry man away from a warm fire and a meal.”
The stranger came out of the brush, keeping one hand in view, the other hand tugging at the lead rope which was attached to a reluctant donkey. “I’m aheadin’ for the tradin’ post on the Illinois,” he said, stripping the gear from the donkey’s back and hobbling the animal so it could graze and stay close. “Ran slap out of food yesterday and ain’t seen no game atall.”
“I have plenty of fish and fried potatoes and bread,” Smoke told him. “ Spread your blanket and sit.” Smoke poured him a tin cup of coffee.
“Kind of you, stranger. Kind. I’m called Big Foot.” He grinned and held up a booted foot. “Size fourteen. Been up in Montana lookin’ for some color. Got snowed in. Coldest damn place I ever been in my life.” He hooked a piece of bread and went to gnawing.
“I run a ranch south of here. The Sugarloaf. Name’s Jensen.”
Big Foot choked on his bread. When he finally got it swallowed, he took a drink of coffee. “Smoke Jensen?” he managed to gasp.
“Yes.”
“Aunt Fanny’s drawers!”
Smoke smiled and slid the skillet back over the flames, dumping in some sliced potatoes and a few bits of some early wild onions for flavor. “Where’bouts in Montana?”
“All around the Little Belt Mountains. East of the Smith River.”
“Is that anywhere close to Gibson?”
“Durn shore is. And that’s a good place to fight shy of, Smoke. Big range war goin’ on. Gonna bust wide open any minute. ”
“Seems to me I heard about that. McCorkle and Hanks, right?”
“Right on the money. Dooley Hanks has done hired Lanny Ball, and McCorkle put Jason Bright on the payroll. I reckon you’ve heard of them two?”
“Killers. Two-bit punks who hire their guns.”
Big Foot shook his head. “You can get away with sayin’ that, but not me. Them two is poison fast, Smoke. They’s talk about that Mex gunhawk, Diego, comin’ in. He’s ’pposed to be bringing in half a dozen with him. Bad ones.”
“Probably Pablo Gomez is with him. They usually double-team a victim.”
“Say! You’re right. I heard that. They gonna be workin’ for Hanks.”
Smoke served up the fish and potatoes and bread and both men fell to it.
When the edges had been taken off their hunger, Smoke asked, “Town had to be named for somebody ... who’s Gibson?”
“Well, it really ain’t much of a town. Three, four stores, two saloons, a barber shop, and a smithy. I don’t know who Gibson is, or was, whatever. ”
“No school?”
“Well, sort of. Got a real prissy feller teachin’ there. Say! His name’s Jensen, too. Parnell Jensen. But he ain’t no kin to you, Smoke. Y‘all don’t favor atall. Parnell don’t look like nothin’!”
Parnell was his uncle’s middle name.
“But Parnell’s sister, now, brother, that is another story.”
Smoke dropped in more lard and more fish and potatoes. He sopped up the grease in his tin plate with a hunk of bread and waited for Big Foot to continue.
“Miss Fae would tackle a puma with a short switch. She ain’t no real comely lass, but that ain’t what’s keepin’ the beaux away. It’s that damn temper of her’n. Got her a tongue you could use for a skinnin’ knife. I seen and heared her lash out at that poor brother of her’n one time that was plumb pitiful. Made my old donkey draw all up. He teaches school and she runs the little ranch they got. Durnest mixed-up mess I ever did see. That woman rides astraddle! Plumb embarrassin‘!”