“Then that makes you a fool, Kirby!”
He shrugged. “One hour, Janey. That’s all the time I’m giving you. Pack up and clear out.”
She nodded and turned her back to him. She stopped and turned around. She gave him an obscene gesture, spat on the porch, and walked into the house.
“You rat sure there wasn’t some mixup in babies when she were birthed?” Preacher asked. “You sure she’s your sis?”
“I’m sure.”
Janey left riding like a man and holding the rope of the pack animal.
“Aren’t you the least bit worried about your man?” Smoke had asked her.
“Shoot the son of a bitch as far as I’m concerned,” had been her reply. She had spurred her horse and ridden off without looking back.
“What a delightful young woman,” Audie said, the crust about an inch thick in his voice.
Smoke watched his only living relative—that he knew of—ride away. He knew he should feel something—but he didn’t.
Yes, he did, he corrected.
Relief in the fact that he had found her alive and had offered her a chance to live and she had taken it.
He shook his head.
So he still felt something for her.
But damn little.
“Burn the house to the ground,” he said. He looked around him. Deadlead and Matt were gone. His eyes met Preacher’s gaze.
“They gone to buy us some time,” the mountain man said. “They won’t be back.”
Smoke nodded his head.
“I tole ’em not to kill Stratton, Potter, or Richards,” Preacher said. “You wanted them yourself.”
“I do. Thanks.”
“Think nuttin’ of it. I give ’em to you fer your birthday. Rest of us be takin’ off shortly. You know what I mean.”
Smoke knew.
Two riders left their saddles before the sounds of the rifle fire reached the column of outlaws. The two men were dead before they hit the ground.
“What the hell?” Reese yelled.
“Ambush!” Stratton screamed.
Two more men were flung backward and to the ground, dead and dying.
“There they are!” Rogers hollered, pointing to a ridge. “Come on, let’s get ’em!”
A dozen riders looked at each other, nodded minutely, and slowly wheeled their horses, riding in the opposite direction.
“Come back here, you cowards!” Potter screamed.
“Let them go,” Richards said calmly. “Nobody fire at them.”
His partners looked at him strangely.
“It’s over,” Richards said. “We’re walking-around dead men and don’t even know it.”
“What do you mean?” Stratton’s scream was tinted with hysteria.
“Look,” Richards said, pointing toward his ranch house.
A huge cloud of black smoke was filling the air.
“The PSR house!” Reese yelled.
“Yeah,” Richards said. He smiled. “And you can bet my darling Janey has taken all the cash in the house—which was considerable; she’d need a pack animal to carry it off—and is gone. Her brother wouldn’t kill her.”
“Well, you’re taking it damned calm,” Potter said.
“No reason to get upset. What is done is done.”
One of the dying gunhawks on the ground moaned.
“Hosses comin’ at us,” a gunnie said. “Holy crap!” he yelled. “We’re being charged!”
Deadlead and Matt were in the middle of the riders before the gunhands could really believe it was all taking place. With the reins in their teeth and their fists wrapped about the butts of .44s and .45s, the old mountain men emptied their pistols and had shucked their rifles before anyone else could fire a shot. Richards had trotted his horse off a few hundred yards and was sitting quietly, watching it all, Potter and Stratton with him. Stratton’s face was ashen, his hands trembled, his once fine clothes were torn and dirty.
Eight more riders had joined the four on the ground before the mountain men were blasted from their saddles. Matt rose to his boots, roaring as his blood poured from his wounds.
“Somebody kill that damned nigger!” a gunslick yelled.
Matt shot the man between the eyes with a pistol he’d grabbed from off the ground.
Deadlead jerked a gunhawk off his horse and snapped his neck as easily as wringing the neck of a chicken.
Twenty guns roared. The riddled bodies of the mountain men fell to the already-blood-soaked dust.
Deadlead lifted his bloody head and looked at Sheriff Dan Reese. “Thank you, boys.” He fell to the ground, dead, beside his lifelong friend.
“He thanked me!” Reese said, horror in his voice. “Thanked me? For what?” he screamed.
“If you don’t understand,” Richards said, “there is no point in my trying to explain it to you.” He looked around him. “Long! Take a couple of boys. Get over to that woman’s cabin Sam is sweet on. Kill her and them snot-nosed brats.”
“With pleasure,” the short, stocky gunhand said with a grin. “I just might get me a taste of that gal ’fore I do.”
“Your option,” Richards said.
Long took Deputy Weathers and rode toward the nester cabin. They were, despite all that had happened, in high spirits. Becky was a one fine-lookin’ piece of woman. They rode arrogantly into the front yard, scattering chickens and trampling the flower garden.
“You in the house!” Long called. “Get your tail out here, woman.”
The door opened and Nighthawk stepped out, his big hands wrapped around .44s. He blew Long and Weathers clean out of their saddles. He tied the dead men to the saddles and slapped the horses on the rump, sending them home.
“Those two won’t bother me again,” Becky said.
“Ummm,” Nighthawk replied.
23
The ever-shrinking band of outlaws and gunhands looked toward the west. Another cloud of black smoke filled the air.
Lansing began cursing. “How in the hell are them old men doin’ it?” he yelled. “We’re fightin’ a damned bunch of ghosts.”
“Are you stayin’ or leavin’?” Stratton asked.
“Might as well see it through,” the man said bitterly. Those were the last words he would speak on this earth. A Sharps barked, the big slug taking the rancher in the center of his chest, knocking him spinning from his saddle.
“I’ve had it!” a gunhand said. He spun his horse and rode away. A dozen followed him. No one tried to stop them.
“Look all around us,” Brown said.
The men looked. A mile away, in a semicircle, ten mountain men sat their ponies. As if on signal, the old mountain men lifted their rifles high above their heads.
Turkel, one of the most feared gunhawks in the territory, looked the situation over through field glasses. “That there’s Preacher,” he said, pointing. “That’un over yonder is the Frenchman, Dupre. That one ridin’ a mule is Greybull. That little bitty shithead is the midget, Audie. Boys, I don’t want no truck with them old men. I’m tellin’ you all flat-out.”
The old men began waving with their rifles.
“What are they tryin’ to tell us?” Reese asked.
“That Smoke is waiting in the direction they’re pointing,” Richards said. “They’re telling us to tangle with him—if we’ve got the sand in us to do so.”
Potter did some fast counting. Out of what was once a hundred and fifty men, only nineteen remained, including himself. “Hell, boys! He’s only one man. There’s nineteen of us!”
“There was about this many over at that minin’ camp, too,” Britt said. “They couldn’t stop him.”
“Well,” Kelly said. “Way I see it is this: we either fight ten of them ringtailed-tooters, or we fight Smoke.”
“I’ll take Smoke,” Howard said. But he wasn’t all that thrilled with the choices offered him.
The mountain men began moving, closing the circle. The gunhands turned their horses and moved out, allowing themselves to be pushed toward the west.
“They’re pushing us toward Slate,” Williams said. “The ghost town.”