“I’ve know about the vein for a long time, Louis. I never wanted gold.”
A quick flash of irritation crossed Louis’s face. “It is well and good to shun wealth while one is young, Smoke. But one had best not grow old without some wealth.”
“One can have wealth without riches, Louis,” Smoke countered.
The gambler smiled. “I believe Preacher’s influence was strong on you, young man.”
“There could have been no finer teacher in all the world, Louis.”
“Is he alive, Smoke?”
“I don’t know. If so, he’d be in his eighties. I like to think he’s still alive. But I just don’t know.”
Louis knew, but he elected to remain silent on the subject. At least for the time being.
Boots and jangling spurs sounded on the raw boards in front of Louis’s place. And both Louis and Smoke knew the time for idle conversation had passed.
They knew before either man sighted the wearers of those boots and spurs.
The first rider burst into the large tent.
“I don’t know him,” Louis said. “You?”
“Unfortunately. He’s one of Tilden’s gunhands. Calls himself Tay. I ran into him when I was riding with Preacher. Back then he was known as Carter. I heard he was wanted for murder back in Arkansas.”
“Sounds like a delightful fellow,” Louis said drily.
“He’s a bully. But don’t sell him short. He’s hell with a short gun.”
Louis smiled. “Better than you, Smoke?” he asked, a touch of humor in the question.
“No one is better than me, Louis,” Smoke said, in one of his rare moments of what some would call arrogance; others would call it merely stating a proven fact.
Louis’s chuckle held no mirth. “I believe I am better, my friend.”
“I hope we never have to test that out of anger, Louis.”
“We won’t,” Louis replied. “But let’s do set up some cans and make a small wager someday.”
“You’re on.”
The gunfighter Tay turned slowly, his eyes drifting first to Louis, then to Smoke.
“Hello, punk!” Tay said, his voice silencing the piano player and hushing the hubbub of voices in the gaming tent.
“Are you speaking to me, you unshaven lout?” Louis asked.
“Naw,” Tay said. The leather thongs that secured his guns were off, left and right. “Pretty boy there.”
“You’re a fool,” Smoke said softly, his voice carrying to Tay, overheard by all in the gaming room.
“I’m gonna kill you for that!” Tay said.
Those men and women seated between Tay and Smoke cleared out, moving left and right.
“I hope you have enough in your pockets to bury you,” Smoke said.
Tay’s face flushed, both hands hovering over the butt of his guns.
He snarled at Smoke.
Smoke laughed at him.
“A hundred dollars on the Circle TF rider,” a man seated at a table said.
“You’re on,” Louis said taking the wager. “Gentlemen,” he said to Smoke and Tay. “Bets are down.”
Tay’s eyes were shiny, but his hands were steady over his guns.
Smoke held his beer mug in his left hand.
“Draw, goddamn you!” Tay shouted.
“After you,” Smoke replied. “I always give a sucker a break whenever possible.”
Tay grabbed for his guns.
9
“Your behavior the other day was disgusting!” Ralph Morrow would not let up on his wife. “Those men are dead because of you. You do realize that, don’t you?”
Bountiful tossed her head, her blond curls bouncing around her beautiful face. Her lips were set in a pout. “I did nothing,” she said defending her actions.
“My god, I married an animal!” Ralph said, disgust in his voice. “Can’t you see you’re a minister’s wife?”
“I’m beginning to see a lot of things, Ralph. One of which is I made a mistake.”
“In coming out West? Did we have a choice, Bountiful? After your disgraceful behavior in Ohio, I’m very lucky the Church even gave me another chance.”
She waved that off. “No, Ralph, not that. In my marrying such a pompous wee-wee!”
Ralph flushed and balled his fists. “You take that back!” he yelled at her.
“You take that back!” she repeated mimicking him scornfully. “My God, Ralph! You’re such a flummox!”
Man and wife were several miles from the town of Fontana. They were on the banks of a small creek. Ralph sat down on the bank and refused to look at her. A short distance away at their camp, the others tried without much success not to listen to their friends quarrel.
“They certainly are engaged in a plethora of flapdoodle,” Haywood observed.
“I feel sorry for him,” Dana said.
“I don’t,” Ed said. “It’s his own fault he’s such a sissy-pants.”
All present looked at Ed in the dancing flames of the fire. If there was a wimp among them, it was Ed. Ed had found a June bug in his blankets on the way West and, from his behavior one might have thought he’d discovered a nest of rattlers. It had taken his wife a full fifteen minutes to calm him down.
Haywood sat on a log and puffed his Meerschaum. Of them all, Haywood was the only person who knew the true story about Ralph Morrow. And if the others wanted to think him a sissy-pants…well, that was their mistake. But Haywood had to admit that, from all indications, when Ralph had fully accepted Christ into his life, he had gone a tad overboard.
If anyone had taken the time to just look at Ralph, they would have noticed the rippling boxer’s muscles; the broad, hard, flat-knuckled fists; the slightly crooked nose. It had always amazed Haywood how so many people could look at something, but never see it.
Haywood suppressed a giggle. Come to think of it, he mused, Ralph did sort of act a big milquetoast.
But it should be interesting when Ralph finally got a belly full of it.
Smoke cleared leather before Tay got his pistols free of their holsters. Smoke drew with such blinding speed, drawing, cocking, firing, not one human eye in the huge tent could follow the motion.
The single slug struck Tay in the center of the chest and knocked him backward. He struggled up on one elbow and looked at Smoke through eyes that were already glazing over. He tried to lift his free empty hand; the hand was so heavy he thought his gun was in it. He began squeezing his trigger finger. He was curious about the lack of noise and recoil.
Then he fell back onto the raw. rough-hewn board floor and was curious no more.
“Maybe we won’t set up those tin cans,” Louis muttered, just loud enough for Smoke to hear it.
“Tie him across a saddle and take him back to Tilden Franklin,” Smoke said, his voice husky due to the low-hanging cigarette and cigar smoke in the crowded gaming tent. “Unless some of you boys want to pick up where Tay left off.”
The riders appeared to be in a mild state of shock. They were all, to a man, used to violence; that was their chosen way of life. They had all, to a man, been either witnesses to or participants in stand-up gunfights, back-shoots, and ambushes. And they had all heard of the young gunslick Smoke Jensen. But since none had ever seen the man in action, they had tended to dismiss much of what they had heard as so much pumped-up hoopla.
Until this early evening in the boom town of Fontana, in Louis Longmont’s gaming tent.
“Yes, sir, Mister Jensen,” one young TF rider said. “I mean,” he quickly corrected himself, “I’ll sure tie him across his saddle.”
Until this evening, the young TF rider had fancied himself a gunhawk. Now he just wanted to get on his pony and ride clear out of the area. But he was afraid the others would laugh at him if he did that.
Smoke eased the hammer down with his thumb. A very audible sigh went up inside the tent with that action. There was visible relaxing of stomach muscles when Smoke holstered the deadly Colt.