“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s them damn boys of mine?”
“Pushin’ cattle up to new pasture.”
“You mean they actually doin’ some work?”
Gage grinned. “Yes, sir.”
Hanks shook his head in disbelief. “Thank you, Gage.”
Gage left, hollering for a rider to saddle up. Hanks walked to a window in his office. He had swore he would be kingpin of this area, and he intended to be just that. Even if he bankrupted himself doing it. Even if he had to kill half the people in the area attaining it.
Cord McCorkle had ridden out of town shortly after his facedown with Smoke and Lujan and the others. He did not feel that he had backed down. It was simply a matter of survival. Nobody but a fool willingly steps into his own coffin.
His hands would have killed Smoke and Lujan and the others, for a fact. But it was also hard fact that Cord would have gone down in the first volley ... and what the hell would that have proved?
Nothing. Except to get dead.
Cord knew that men like Smoke and Lujan could soak up lead and still stay on their feet, pulling the trigger. He had personally witnessed a gunfighter get hit nine times with .45 slugs and before he died still kill several of the men he was facing.
Cord sat on the front porch of his ranch house and looked around him. He wanted for nothing. He had everything a man could want. It had sickened him when Dooley had OK’d the dragging of that young Box T puncher. Scattering someone’s cattle was one thing. Murder was another. He was glad that Jensen had come along. But he didn’t believe anyone could ever talk sense into Hanks.
Smoke, Ring, and Beans sat their horses on the knoll overlooking the ranch house of Fae and Parnell Jensen. Fae might well be a bad-mouthed woman with a double-edged tongue, but she kept a neat place. Flowers surrounded the house, the lawn was freshly cut, and the place itself was attractive.
Even at this distance, a good mile off, Smoke could see two men, with what he guessed was rifles in their hands, take up positions around the bunkhouse and barn. A woman—he guessed it was a woman, she was dressed in britches—came out onto the porch. She also carried a rifle. Smoke waved at her and waited for her to give them some signal to ride on in.
Finally the woman stepped off the porch and motioned for them to come on.
The men walked their horses down to the house, stopping at the hitchrail but not dismounting. The woman looked at Smoke. Finally she smiled.
“I saw a tintype of your daddy once. You look like him. You’d be Kirby Jensen.”
“And you’d be Cousin Fae. I got your letter. I picked up these galoots along the way.” He introduced Beans and Ring.
“Put your horses in the barn, boys, and come on into the house. It’s about dinnertime. I got fresh doughnuts; ‘bear-sign’ as you call them out here.”
Fae Jensen was more than a comely lass; she was really quite pretty and shapely. But unlike most women of the time, her face and arms were tanned from hours in the sun, doing a man’s work. And her hands were calloused.
Smoke had met Fae’s two remaining ranch hands, Spring and Pat. Both men in their early sixties, he guessed. But still leather-tough. They both gave him a good eyeballing, passed him through inspection, and returned to their jobs.
Over dinner-Sally called it lunch—Smoke began asking his questions while Beans skipped the regular food and began attacking a platter of bear-sign, washed down with hot strong western coffee.
How many head of cattle?
Started out with a thousand. Probably down to less than five hundred now, due to Hanks and McCorkle’s boys running them off.
Would she have any objections to Smoke getting her cattle back?
She looked hard at him. Finally shook her head. No objections at all.
‘Ring will stay here at the ranch and start doing some much needed repair work,” Smoke told her. ”Beans and me will start working the cattle, moving them closer in. Then we’ll get your other beeves back. Tell me the boundaries of this spread.”
She produced a map and pointed out her spread, and it was not a little one. It had good graze and excellent water. The brand was the Box T; she had not changed it since taking over several years back.
“If you’ll pack us some food,” Smoke said, “me and Beans will head out right now; get the lay of the land. We’ll stay out a couple of days—maybe longer. This situation is shaping up to be a bad one. The lid could blow off at any moment. Beans, shake out your rope and pick us out a couple of fresh horses. Let’s give ours a few days’ rest. They’ve earned it.”
“I’ll start putting together some food,” Fae said. She looked at Smoke. “I appreciate this. More than you know.”
“Sorry family that don’t stick together.”
They rode out an hour later, Smoke on a buckskin a good seventeen hands high that looked as though it could go all day and all night and still want to travel.
The old man who had given the spread to Fae had known his business—Smoke still wondered about how she’d gotten it. He decided to pursue that further when he had the time.
About ten miles from the ranch, they crossed the Smith and rode up to several men working Box T cattle toward the northwest.
They wheeled around at Smoke’s approach.
“Right nice of you boys to take such an interest in our cattle, Smoke told a hard-eyed puncher. ”But you’re pushing them the wrong way. Now move them back across the river.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” the man challenged him.
“Jensen.”
The man spat on the ground. “I like the direction we’re movin’ them better.” He grabbed iron.
Smoke drew, cocked, and fired in one blindingly fast move. The .44 slug took the man in the center of his chest and knocked him out of the saddle. He tried to rise up but did not have the strength. With a groan, he fell back on the ground, dead. Beans held a pistol on the other McCorkle riders; they were all looking a little white around the mouth.
“Jack Waters,” Smoke said. “He’s wanted for murder in two states. I’ve seen the flyers in Monte’s office.”
“Yeah,” Beans said glumly. “And he’s got three brothers just as bad as he is. Waco, Hatley, and Collis.”
“You won’t last a week on this range, Jensen,” a mouthy McCorkle rider said.
Smoke moved closer to him and backhanded the rider out of his saddle. He hit the ground and opened his mouth to cuss. Then he closed his mouth as the truth came home. Jensen. Smoke Jensen.
“All of you shuck outta them gun belts,” Beans ordered. “When you’ve done that, start movin’ them cattle back across the river.”
“Then we’re going to take a ride,” Smoke added. “To see Cord.”
While the Circle Double C boys pushed the cattle back across the river, Smoke lashed the body of Jack Waters across his saddle and Beans picked up the guns, stuffing guns, belts, and all into a gunny sack and tying it on his saddle horn. The riders returned, a sullen lot, and Smoke told them to head out for the ranch.
A hand hollered for Cord to come out long before Smoke and Beans entered the front yard. “Stay in the house,” Cord told his wife and daughter. “I don’t want any of you to see this.”
Beans stayed in the saddle, a Winchester .44 across his saddle horn. Smoke untied the ropes and slung Jack Waters over his shoulder, and Jack was not a small man. He walked across the lawn and dumped the body on the ground, by Cord’s feet.
Cord was livid, his face flushed and the veins in his neck standing out like ropes. He was breathing like an enraged bull.