“You got any folks you want me to write?” Smoke asked the dying man.
The gunslick spat at Smoke, the bloody spittle landing close to his boot.
“Suit yourself.” Smoke stood up, favoring his wounded leg. He limped back to the bar and leaned against it, just as the batwings pushed open and Doc Adair and the undertaker came in.
Both of them stopped short. “Jesus God!” Adair said, looking around him at the body-littered and blood-splattered saloon.
“Business got a little brisk today, Doc,” Smoke told him, accepting a shot glass of tequila from Lujan. “Check Cord here first.” He knocked back the strong mescal drink and shuddered as it hit the pit of his stomach.
The doctor, not as old as Smoke had first thought—of course he’d been sober now for several weeks, and was now wearing clean clothes and had gone back to shaving daity—knew his business. He cleaned out the shoulder wound and bandaged it, rigging a sling for Cord out of a couple of bar towels. He then turned his attention to Lujan, swiftly and expertly patching up the arm.
Smoke had cut open his jeans, exposing the ugly rip along the outside of his leg. “It ought to be stitched up, Adair said. ”It’ll leave a bad scar if I don’t.”
“Last time my wife Sally counted, Doc, I had seventeen bullet scars in my hide. So one more isn’t going to make any difference.”
“So young to have been hit so many times,” the doctor muttered as he swabbed out the gash with alcohol. Smoke almost lifted himself out of the chair as the alcohol cleaned the raw flesh. Adair grinned. “Sometimes the treatment hurts worse than the wound.”
“You’ve convinced me,” Smoke said as his eyes went misty, then went through the same sensation as Adair cleaned the wound in his ear.
“How ’bout us?” a gunfighter on floor bitched. “Ain’t we get no treatment?”
“Go ahead and die,” Adair told him. “I can see from here you’re not going to make it.”
Charlie and his friends had walked around the room, all the guns and gun belts, from both the dead and living.
“Always did want me a matched set of Remingtons,” Silver Jim said. “Now I got me some. Nice balance, too.”
“I want you to lookee here at this Colt double-action,” Charlie said. “I’ll just be hornswoggled. And she’s a .44-.40,
Got a little ring on the butt so s a body could run some twine through it and not lose your gun. Ain t that something, now. Don’t have to cock it, neither. Just point it and pull the trigger.” He tried it one-handed and almost scared the doctor half to death when Charlie shot out a lamp. ”All that trigger-pullin’ -the-hammer-back does throw your aim off a mite, though. Take some gettin’ used to, I reckon.”
“Maybe you ’pposed to shoot it with both hands,” Hardrock suggested.
“That don’t make no sense atall. There ain’t no room on the for two hands. Where the hell would you put the other’n?”
“I don’t know. Was I you, I’d throw the damn thing away. They ain’t never gonna catch on.”
“I’m a hurtin’ something fierce!” a D-H gunhawk hollered.
“You want me to kick you in the head, boy?” Pistol asked him. “That’d put you out of your misery for a while.”
The gunhawk shut his mouth.
Adair finished with Beans and went to work on the fallen gunfighters. “This is strictly cash, boys,” he told them. “I don’t give no credit to people whose life expectancy is as short yours.”
Twenty
All was calm for several days. Smoke imagined that even in Dooley’s half-crazed mind it had been a shock to lose so many gunslicks in the space of three minutes, and all that following the raid on Dooley’s ranch. So much had happened in less than twenty-four hours that Dooley was being forced to think over very carefully whatever move he had planned next.
But all knew the war was nowhere near over. That this was quite probably the lull before the next bloody and violent storm.
“Dad Estes and his bunch just pulled in,” Cord told Smoke on the morning of the fourth day after the showdown in the saloon. “Hans sent word they came riding in late last night.”
“He’ll be making a move soon then.”
“Smoke, do you realize that by my count, thirty-three men have been killed so far?”
“And about twenty wounded. Yes. I understand the undertaker is putting up a new building just to handle it all.”
“That is weighing on my mind. I’ve killed in my lifetime, Smoke. I’ve killed three white men in about twenty years, but they had stole from me and were shooting at me. I’ve hanged one rustler.” He paused.
“What are you trying to say, Cord?”
“We’ve got to end this. I’m getting where I can’t sleep at night! That boy dying back yonder in the saloon got to me.”
‘I’m certainly open to suggestions, Cord. Do you think it didn’t bother me to write that boy’s mother? I don’t enjoy killing, Cord. I went for three years without ever pulling a gun in anger. I loved it. Then until I got Fae’s letter, I hadn t even worn both guns. But you know as well as I do how this little war is going to be stopped.”
Cord leaned against the hitchrail and took off his hat, scratching his head. “We force the issue? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Do you want peace, Cord?”
“More than anything. Perhaps we could ride over and talk to ... ?” He shook his head. “What am I saying? Time for that is over and past. All right, Smoke. All right. Let me hear your plan.”
“I don’t have one. And it isn’t as if I haven’t been thinking hard on it. What happened to your sling?”
“I took it off. Damn thing worried me. No plan?”
“No. The ranch, this ranch, must be manned at all times. We agreed on that. If not, it’ll end up like Fae’s place. And if we keep meeting them like we did back in town, they’re going to take us. We were awfully lucky back there, Cord.”
“I know. So ... ?”
“I’m blank. Empty. Except for hit and run night fighting. But we’ll never get as lucky as we did the other night. Count on that. You can bet that Dooley has that place heavily guarded night and day.”
“Wait them out, then. I have the cash money to keep Gage and his boys on the payroll for a long time. But not enough to buy more gunslicks ... if I could find any we could trust, that is.”
“Doubtful. Must be half a hundred range wars going on out here, most of them little squabbles, but big enough to keep a lot of gunhawks working.”
“I’ve written the territorial governor, but no reply as yet.”
“I wouldn’t count on one, either.” Smoke verbally tossed cold water on that. “He’s fighting to make this territory a state; I doubt that he’d want a lot of publicity about a range war at this time.”
Cord nodded his agreement. “We’ll wait a few more days; neither one of us is a hundred percent yet...” He paused as a rider came at a hard gallop from the west range.
The hand slid to a halt, out of the saddle and running to McCorkle. “Saddle me a horse!” he yelled to several punchers standing around the corral. “The boys is bringin’ in Max, Mister Cord. Looks like Dooley done turned loose that back-shootin’ Danny Rouge. Max took one in the back. He’s still able to sit a saddle, but just barely. I’ll ride into town and fetch Doc Adair.” He was gone in a bow-legged run toward the corral.
Cord’s face had paled at the news of his oldest son being shot. “I’ll have Alice get ready with hot water and bandages. She’s a good nurse.” He ran up the steps to the house.
Smoke leaned against the hitchrail as his eyes picked up several riders coming in slow, one on either side helping to keep the middle rider in the saddle. Smoke knew, with this news, all of Cord’s willingness to talk had gone right out the window. And if Max died ... ?
Smoke pushed away from the hitchrail and walked toward the bunkhouse. If Max died there would be open warfare; no more chance meetings between the factions involved. It would be bloody and cruel until one side killed off the other.