“That is certainly a good thing to know,” Smoke remarked drily. “In case I ever take a notion to travel to Germany.”
The men fell to eating the delicious oatmeal. When they pushed the empty bowls away, Hans was there with huge platters of food and the contest was on.
“Guten appetit, gentlemans.”
“What’d he say. ” Beans asked Ring.
“Eat!” He smiled. “More or less.”
Olga stepped out of the kitchen to stand watching the men eat, a smile on her face. She was just as ample as Hans. Between the two of them they’d weigh a good five hundred pounds. Another lady stepped out of the kitchen. Make that seven hundred and fifty pounds.
When they had finished, as full as ticks, Ring looked up and said, “Prima! Grobartig!” He lifted his coffee mug and toasted their good health. “Auf Ihre Gesundheit!”
Olga and the other lady giggled.
“I didn’t hear nobody sneeze.” Beans looked around.
Ring stayed in the restaurant, talking with Hans and Olga and Hilda and drinking coffee. Beans sat down in a wooden chair in front of the place, staring across the street at the gunhawks who were staring at him. Smoke walked up to the church that doubled as a schoolhouse. The kids were playing out front so he figured it was recess time.
The children looked at him, a passing glance, and resumed their playing. Smoke walked up the steps.
Smoke stood in the open doorway, the outside light making him almost impossible to view clearly from the inside. He felt a pang of ... some kind of emotion. He wasn’t sure. But there was no doubt: he was looking at family.
The schoolteacher looked up from his grading papers. “Yes?”
“Parnell Jensen?”
“Yes. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Smoke had to chew on that for a few seconds. “I reckon I’m your cousin, Parnell. I’m Smoke Jensen.”
Parnell gave Smoke directions to the ranch and said he would be out at three-thirty. And he would be prompt about it. “I am a very punctilious person,” Parnell added.
And a prissy sort too, Smoke thought. “Uh-huh. Right.” He’d have to remember to ask somebody what punch-till-eous meant.
He was walking up the boardwalk just as the thunder of hooves coming hard reached him. The hooves drummed across the bridge at the west end of town and didn’t slow up. A dozen hard-ridden horses can kick up a lot of dust.
Smoke had found out from Parnell that McCorkle’s spread was west and north of town, Hanks’s spread was east and north of town. Fae’s spread, and it was no little spread, ran on both sides of the Smith River; for about fifteen miles on either side of it. McCorkle hated Hanks, Hanks hated McCorkle, and both men had threatened to dam up the Smith and dry Fae out if she didn’t sell out to one of them.
“And then what are they going to do?” Smoke asked.
“Fight each other for control of the entire area between the Big Belt and the Little Belt Mountains. They’ve been fighting for twenty years. They came here together in ’62. Hated each other at first sight.” Parnell flopped his hand in disgust. “It’s just a dreadful situation. I wish we had never come to this barbaric land.”
“Why did you?”
“My sister wanted to farm and ranch. She’s always been a tomboy. The man who owned the ranch before us, hired me—I was teaching at a lovely private institution in Illinois, close to Chicago—and told Fae that he had no children and would give us the ranch upon his death. I think more to spite McCorkle and Hanks than out of any kindness of heart.”
Smoke leaned against a storefront and watched as King Cord McCorkle—as Parnell called him—and his crew came to a halt in a cloud of dust in front of the Pussycat. When the dust had settled, Jason Bright stepped off the boardwalk and walked to Cord’s side, speaking softly to him.
Parnell’s words returned: “I have always had to look after my sister. She is so flighty. I wish she would marry and then I could return to civilization. It’s so primitive out here!” He sighed. “But I fear that the man who gets my sister will have to beat her three times a day.”
Cord turned his big head and broad face toward Smoke and stared at him. Smoke pegged the man to be in his early forties; a bull of a man. Just about Smoke’s height, maybe twenty pounds heavier.
Cord blinked first, turning his head away with a curse that just reached Smoke. Smoke cut his eyes to the Hangout. Diego and Pablo Gomez and another man stood there. Smoke finally recognized the third man. Lujan, the Chihuahua gunfighter. Probably the fastest gun—that as yet had built a reputation—in all of Mexico. But not a cold-blooded killer like Diego and Pablo.
Lujan tipped his hat at Smoke and Smoke lifted a hand in acknowledgment and smiled. Lujan returned the smile, then turned and walked into the saloon.
Smoke again felt eyes on him. Cord was once more staring at him.
“You there! The man supposed to be Smoke Jensen. Git down here. I wanna talk to you.”
“You got two legs and a horse, mister!” Smoke called over the distance. “So you can either walk or ride up here.”
Pablo and Diego laughed at that.
“Damned greasers!” Cord spat the words.
The Mexicans stiffened, hands dropping to the butts of their guns.
A dozen gunhands in front of the Pussycat stood up.
A little boy, about four or five years old, accompanied by his dog, froze in the middle of the street, right in line of fire.
Lujan opened the batwings and stepped out. “We—all of us—have no right to bring bloodshed to the innocent people of this town.” His voice carried across the street. He stepped into the street and walked to the boy’s side. “You and your dog go home, muchacho. Quickly, now.”
Lujan stood alone in the street. “A man who would deliberately injure a child is not fit to live. So, McCorkle, it is a good day to die, is it not?”
Smoke walked out into the street to stand by Lujan’s side. A smile creased the Mexican’s lips. “You are taking a side, Smoke?”
“No. I just don’t like McCorkle, and I probably won’t like Hanks either.”
“So, McCorkle,” Lujan called. “You see before you two men who have not taken a side, but who are more than willing to open the baile. Are you ready?”
“Make that three people,” Beans’s voice rang out.
“Who the hell are you?” McCorkle shouted.
“Some people call me the Moab Kid.”
“Make that four people,” Ring said. He held his Winchester in his big hands.
“Funf!” Hans shouted, stepping out into the street. He held the sawed-off in his hands.
The window above the cafe opened and Olga leaned out, a pistol with a barrel about a foot and a half long in her hand. She jacked back the hammer to show them all she knew how to use it. And would.
“All right, all right!” Cord shouted. “Hell’s bells! Nobody was going to hurt the kid. Come on, boys, I’ll buy the drinks.” He turned and bulled his way through his men.
At the far end of the street, Parnell stepped back from the open doorway and fanned himself vigorously. “Heavens!” he said.
Five
“Almost come a showdown in town this morning, Boss,” Dooley Hanks’s foreman said.
Hanks eyeballed the man. “Between who?”
Gage told his boss what a hand had relayed to him only moments earlier.
Hanks slumped back in his chair. “Smoke Jensen,” he whispered the word. “I never even thought about Fae and Parnell bein’ related to him. And the Moab Kid and Lujan sided with him?”
“Or vicey-versy.”
“This ain’t good. That damn Lujan is poison enough. But add Smoke Jensen to the pot ... might as well be lookin’ the devil in the eyeballs. I don’t know nothin’ about Ring, except he’s unbeatable in a fight. And the Moab Gunfighter has made a name for hisself in half a dozen states. All right, Gage. We got to get us a backshooter in here. Send a rider to Helena. Wire Danny Rouge; he’s over in Missoula. Tell him to come a-foggin’.”