“Is that reporter really going to sue you, Father?” Sally asked John.
The lawyer laughed. “He says he is.”
“You want me to take care of it, John?” Smoke asked with a straight face.
“Oh, no, Son!” John quickly spoke up. “No, I think it will all work out.”
Then Smoke smiled, and John realized his son-in-law was only having fun with him. John threw back his head and laughed.
“Son, you have made me realize what a stuffed shirt I had become. And I thank you for it.”
Smoke opened his mouth and John waved him silent. “No, let me finish this. I’ve had to reassess my original opinion of you, Son. I’ve had to reevaluate many of the beliefs I thought were set in stone. Oh, I still believe very strongly in law and order. And lawyers,” he added with a smile. “But I can understand you and men like you much better now.”
York was out sparking Miss Martha, and Louis was arranging a private railroad car to transport them all back to Colorado. His way of saying thank you for his namesake.
“I’d like nothing better than to see the day when I can hang up my guns, John,” Smoke said after a sip of strong cowboy coffee. “But out where I live, that’s still many years down the road, I’m thinking.”
“I’d like to visit your ranch someday.”
“You’ll be welcome anytime, sir.”
John leaned forward. “You’re leaving soon?”
“Probably day after tomorrow. Louis says he thinks he can have the car here then. About noon.”
“And this Rex Davidson and Dagget; the others who got away?”
“We’ll meet them down the road, I’m sure. But me and Sally, we’re used to watching our backtrail. Used to keeping a gun handy. Don’t worry, John, Abigal. If they try to take us on the Sugarloaf, that’s where we’ll bury them.”
“I say,” Jordan piped up. “Do you think your town could support another attorney? I’ve been thinking about it, and I think the West is in need of more good attorneys, don’t you, Father?”
His father probably saved his son’s life when he said, “Jordan, I need you here.”
“Oh! Very well, Father. Perhaps someday.”
“When pigs fly,” John muttered.
“Beg pardon, sir?” Jordan asked.
“Nothing, Son. Nothing at all.”
They pulled out right on schedule, but to Smoke’s surprise, the town’s band turned up at the depot and were blaring away as the train pulled out.
Louis had not arranged for one private car but for two, so the ladies could have some privacy and the babies could be tended to properly and have some quiet moments to sleep.
“Really, Louis,” Sally told him. “I am perfectly capable of paying for these amenities myself.”
“Nonsense. I won’t hear of it.” He looked around to make sure that Smoke and York were not watching or listening, then reached down and tickled his namesake under his chin.
“Goochy, goochy!” the gambler said.
Louis Arthur promptly grabbed hold of the gambler’s finger and refused to let go.
They changed engines and crews many times before reaching St. Louis. There, all were tired and Louis insisted upon treating them to the finest hotel in town. A proper nanny was hired to take care of the twins, and Louis contacted the local Pinkerton agency and got several hard-looking and very capable-appearing men to guard the babies and their nanny.
Then they all went out on the town.
They spent two days in the city, the ladies shopping and the men tagging along, appearing to be quite bored with it all. It got very un-boring when York accidentally got lost in the largest and most expensive department store in town and wound up in one of the ladies’ dressing rooms…with a rather matronly lady dressed only in her drawers.
Smoke and Louis thought the Indians were attacking from all the screaming that reverberated throughout the many-storied building.
After order was restored, York commented. “Gawddamndest sight I ever did see. I thought I was in a room with a buffalo!”
The train chugged and rumbled across Missouri and into and onto the flat plains of Kansas. It had turned much colder, and snow was common now.
“I worry about taking the babies up into the high country, Smoke,” Sally expressed her concern as the train rolled on into Colorado.
“Not to worry,” Louis calmed her. “I can arrange for a special coach with a charcoal stove. Everything is going to be all right.”
But Louis knew, as did Smoke and York, that the final leg of their journey was when they would be the most vulnerable.
But their worry was needless. Smoke had wired home, telling his friends when they would arrive in Denver. When they stepped out of the private cars, he knew that not even such a hate-filled man as Rex Davidson would dare attack them now.
Monte Carson and two of his men were there, as were Johnny North and Pearlie and a half dozen others from the High Lonesome; all of them men who at one time or another in their lives had been known as gunslingers.
York was going to head south to Arizona and officially turn in his badge and draw his time, then come spring he’d drift back up toward the Sugarloaf. And toward Martha.
This was the end of the line for Louis. He had many business appointments and decisions to make, and then he would head out, probably to France.
“Oh, I’ll be back,” he assured them all. “I have to check on my namesake every now and then, you know.”
Smoke stuck out his hand and the gambler/gunfighter shook it. “Thanks, Louis.”
“Anytime, Smoke. Just anytime at all. It isn’t over, friend. So watch your back and look after Sally and the kids.”
“I figure they’ll come after me come spring, Louis.”
“So do I. See you, Smoke.”
And as he had done before, Louis Longmont turned without another word and walked out of their lives.
Christmas in the high country and it was shut-down-tight time, with snow piled up to the eaves. For the next several months, taking care of the cattle would be back-breakingly hard work for every man able to sit a saddle.
Water holes would have to be chopped out daily so the cattle could drink. Hay would have to be hauled to them so they would not starve. Line cabins would have to be checked and restocked with food so the hands could stay alive. Firewood had to be stacked high, with a lot of it stacked close to the house, for the temperature could drop to thirty below in a matter of a few hours.
This was not a country for the fainthearted or for those who did not thrive on hard brutal work. It was a hard land, and it took hard men to mold it and make it liveable.
It was a brutal time for the men and women in the high country, but it was also a peaceful time for them. It was a time when, after a day’s back-breaking and exhausting work, a man could come home to a warm fire and a table laden with hot food. And after supper, a man and woman could sit snug in their home while the wind howled and sang outside, talking of spring while their kids did homework, read or, as in Smoke and Sally’s case, laid on the floor, on a bearskin rug in front of the fire, playing with toys their father had carved and shaped and fitted and pegged together with his own strong hands. They could play with dolls their mother had patiently sewn during the long, cold, seemingly endless days of winter.
But as is foretold in the Bible, there is a time for everything, and along about the middle of March, the icy fingers of winter began to loosen their chilly grip on the high country of Colorado.
Smoke and Sally awakened to the steady drip-drop of water.
Martha, who had spent the winter with them and had been a godsend in helping take care of the babies, stuck her head inside their bedroom, her eyes round with wonder.
“Raining?” she asked.
Smoke grinned at her. He and Sally had both tossed off the heavy comforter some time during the night, when the temperature began its steady climb upward.