“Nice of you,” Pistol said. “Thankee kindly.”
The men turned, spurs jingling, and were gone.
The silver-haired man pulled off his boot and looked at the hole in the sole. He stuck some more paper down into the boot. “Hardrock, today is my birthday. I just remembered.”
“How old are you, about a hundred?”
“I think I’m sixty-seven. And I know you two year older than me.”
“Happy birthday.”
“Thankee.”
“I ain’t got no present. Sorry.”
Silver Jim laughed. “Hardrock, between the two of us we might be able to come up with five dollars. Tell you what. Let’s drift up to Montana Territory. I got a friend up in the Little Belt Mountains. Got him a cabin and runs a few head of cattle. Least we can eat.”
“Silver Jim ... he died about three years ago.”
“Ummm ... that’s right. He did, didn t he. Well, the cabin’s still there, don’t you reckon?”
“Might be. I thought of Smoke this mornin’. Wonder how that youngster is?”
“Did you now? That’s odd. I did, too.”
“I thought about Montana, too.”
The two old gunfighters exchanged glances, Silver Jim saying, “I just remembered I had a couple of double eagles I was savin for hard times.”
“Is that right? Well ... me, too.”
“We could ride back to that little town we come through this morning and send a message through the wires to Big Rock.”
The old gunslingers waited around the wire office for several hours until they received a reply from Monte Carson in Big Rock.
“Let’s get the hell to Montanee!” Silver Jim said.
Four
“I thought you would be a much older man,” Ring remarked after they had made camp for the evening.
It was the first time Smoke’s real identity had been brought up since leaving the little village.
Smoke smiled and dumped the coffee into the boiling water. “I started young.”
“When was you gonna tell us?” Beans asked.
“The same time you told me that you was the Moab Gunfighter.”
Beans chuckled. “I wasn’t gonna get involved in this fight. But you headin’ that way... well, it sorta peaked my interest.”
“My cousin is in the middle of it. She wrote me at my ranch. You can’t turn your back on kin.”
“Y’all must be close.”
“I have never laid eyes on her in my life. I didn’t even know she existed until the letter came.” He told them about his conversations with Big Foot.
“This brother of hers sounds like a sissy to me,” Beans said.
“He does for a fact,” Smoke agreed. “But I’ve found out this much about sissies: they’ll take and take and take, until you push them to their limits, and then they’ll kill you.”
The three of them made camp about ten miles outside of Gibson, on the fringes of the Little Belt Mountains.
“There is no point in any of us trying to hide who we are,” Smoke told the others. “As soon as Park and the others get in town, it would be known. We’ll just ride in and look the place over first thing in the morning. I’m not going to take a stand in this matter unless the big ranchers involved try to run over Fae ... or unless I’m pushed to it.”
The three topped the hill and looked down at the town of Gibson. One long street, with vacant lots separating a few of the stores. A saloon, one general store, and the smithy was on one side of the street, the remainder of the businesses on the other side. Including a doctor’s office. The church stood at the far end of town.
“We’d better be careful which saloon—if any—we go into,” Beans warned. “For a fact, Hanks’s boys will gather in one and McCorkle’s boys in the other.”
“I don’t think I’ll go into either of them,” Ring said. “This is the longest I’ve been without a drink in some time. I like the feeling.”
“Looks like school is in session.” Smoke lifted the reins. “You boys hang around the smithy’s place while I go talk to Cousin Parnell. Let’s go.”
They entered the town at a slow walk, Ring and Beans flanking Smoke as they moved up the wide street. Although it was early in the day, both saloons were full, judging by the number of horses tied at the hitchrails. A half a dozen or more gunslicks were sitting under the awnings of both saloons. The men could feel the hard eyes on them as they rode slowly up the street. Appraising eyes. Violent eyes; eyes of death.
“Ring,” they heard one man say.
“That’s the Moab Kid,” another said. “But who is that in the middle?”
“I don’t know him.”
“I do,” the voice was accented. Smoke cut his eyes, shaded by the wide brim of his hat. Diego. “That, amigos, is Smoke Jensen.”
Several chair legs hit the boardwalk, the sound sharp in the still morning air.
The trio kept riding.
“Circle C on the west side of the street,” Beans observed.
“Yeah.” Smoke cut his eyes again. “That’s Jason Bright standing by the trough.”
“He is supposed to be very, very fast,” Ring said.
“He’s a punk,” Smoke replied.
“Lanny Ball over at the Hangout,” Beans pointed out.
“The Pussycat and the Hangout,” Ring said with a smile. “Where do they get the names?”
They reined up at the smith’s place; a huge stable and corral and blacksmithing complex. Beans and Ring swung down. Smoke hesitated, then stepped down.
“Changed my mind,” he told them. “No point in disturbing school while it’s in session. We’ll loaf around some; stretch our legs.”
“I’m for some breakfast,” Ring said. “Let’s try the Cafe Eats.”
Smoke told the stable boy to rub their horses down, and to give each a good bait of corn. They’d be back.
They walked across the wide street, spurs jingling, boots kicking up dust in the dry street, and stepped up onto the boardwalk, entering the cafe.
It was a big place for such a tiny town, but clean and bright, and the smells from the kitchen awakened the taste buds in them all.
They sat down at a table covered with a red-and-white checkered cloth and waited. A man stepped out of the kitchen. He wore an apron and carried a sawed-off double-barreled ten gauge express gun. “You are velcome to eat here at anytime ve are open,” he announced, his German accent thick. “My name is Hans, and I own dis establishment. I vill tell you what I have told all the rest: there vill be no trouble in here. None! I operate a nice quiet family restaurant. People come in from twenty, terty miles avay to eat here. Start trouble, und I vill kill you! Understood?”
“We understand, Hans,” Smoke said. “But we are not taking sides with either McCorkle or Hanks. I do not hire my guns and neither does Beans here.” He jerked his thumb toward the Moab Kid. “And Ring doesn’t even carry a short gun.”
“Uummph!” the German grunted. “Den dat vill be a velcome change. You vant breakfast?”
“Please.”
“Good! I vill start you gentlemen vith hot oatmeal vith lots of fresh cream and sugar. Den ham and eggs and fried potatoes and lots of coffee. Olga! Tree oatmeals and tree breakfasts, Liebling.”
“What’d he call her?” Beans whispered. “Darling,” Ring told him.
Smoke looked up. “You speak German, Ring?”
“My parents were German. Born in the old country. My last name is Kruger.”
The oatmeal was placed before them, huge bowls of steaming oatmeal covered with cream and sugar. Ring looked up. “Danke.”
The two men then proceeded to converse in rapid-fire German. To Beans it sounded like a couple of bullfrogs with laryngitis.
Then, to the total amazement of Smoke and Beans, the two big men proceeded to slap each other across the face several times, grinning all the time.
Hans laughed and returned to the kitchen. “Y’all fixin’ to fight, Ring?” Beans asked.
Ring laughed at the expression on their faces. “Oh, no. That is a form of greeting in certain parts of the old country. It means we like each other.”