Pivoting, Smoke poured on the steam and hit Tilden in the gut with every ounce of strength he could muster. The right fist caught Tilden just above the belt buckle, and the wind whooshed out of the man as he involuntarily doubled over. Smoke stepped in close and grabbed Tilden’s head and hair with both hands and brought the head down at the same time he was bringing a knee up. The knee caught Tilden smack on the nose and the nose crunched under the impact. Tilden was flung back against the bar.
The big man hung there, his eyes still wild but glazed over. Smoke stepped in close and went to work on the kingpin.
Smoke hammered at the man’s belly and face with work-hardened fists. In seconds, Tilden’s face was swollen and battered and bloody.
Clint stepped in to break up the fight and found himself suddenly lying on the barroom flour, hit on the back of the head by The Apache Kid’s rifle stock. Clint moaned once and then lay still, out cold.
Smoke went to work on Tilden’s belly, concentrating all his punches there, and they were thrown with all his strength. It was a savage, brutal attack on Smoke’s part, but Smoke knew, from having the old Mountain Man Preacher as his teacher, that there was no such thing as a fair fight. There was only a winner, and a loser.
He hammered at Tilden’s mid-section, working like a steam-driven pile-driver.
Twice, Tilden almost slumped to the floor. Twice, Smoke propped him back up and went to work on him. He shifted his attention to Tilden’s face, his punches ruining the man’s once-handsome features. Smoke’s flat-knuckled fists knocked out teeth and loosened others. His fists completely flattened Tilden’s nose. One punch to the side of Tilden’s head ripped loose an ear, almost tearing it off the man’s head. Still Smoke did not let up. His fists smashed into Tilden’s sides and kidneys and belly and face.
Smoke was fighting with a cold, controlled, dark fury. His fists battered the man; this man who had boasted he would take Smoke’s wife; this man who had sworn to run Smoke and the others out of this part of Colorado; this man who dared impose his will on all others.
Then Smoke realized he was battering and smashing an unconscious man. He stopped his assault and stepped back, his chest heaving and his hands hurting. Tilden Franklin, the bully of the valley, the man who would be king, the man who would control the destiny of all those around him, slipped to the floor to lie among the cigarette and cigar butts. His blood stained the trash on the floor.
He was so deep in his unconsciousness he did not even twitch.
“I’d have never believed it,” Big Mamma O’Neil was heard to whisper. “But I seen it. Lord have mercy, did I ever see it.”
“That’s a hundred dollars you owe me, Big Mamma,” Louis said. “You can give it to Billy over there.”
Louis looked at the Tilden riders. “You TF riders can pay Big Mike.”
“I have some medication at the office that will ease those swelling hands, Smoke,” Colton said, “I’ll be waiting for you.”
Smoke leaned against the bar and nodded his head.
“Ain’t you gonna see to Mister Franklin?” a TF rider asked.
“At the office,” Colton said shortly. “I’ll prepare a bed for him.”
Smoke belted his guns around him and began working his fingers, to prevent them from stiffening any worse than he knew they would.
“Drag that cretin from my premises,” Louis said, pointing at the prostrate Tilden Franklin.
Big Mamma O’Neil laid five twenty-dollar gold pieces on the table in front of Billy.
Billy looked up at her with a bit of egg sticking to his upper lip…
…and grinned!
BOOK TWO
Now this is the law of the jungle—as old and as true as the sky. And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
—Kipling
1
Twice, Adam thought he heard something back in the timber behind the Colby house. He lifted his head and concentrated. Nothing. He returned to his reading of the dime novel about the adventures of Luke Nations.
He was just getting to the part about where Luke rides into the Indian camp, both six-guns blazing, to rescue the lovely maiden when he heard kind of a muffled, cutoff scream from in the timber.
“Velvet!” he called.
Only the silence greeted his call. And then it came to him. The silence. The birds and the small animals around the place were used to Velvet’s walking through the woods. They seldom stopped their singing and chattering and calling simply because she came gently walking through.
The boy picked up his single-shot .22-caliber rifle and put his dime novel in the hip pocket of his patched and faded work pants. “Velvet!” he shouted.
Nothing.
Not the singing of a bird, not the calling or barking of a squirrel.
Something was wrong.
Adam hesitated, started to go back to the house for Mister Wilbur. Then he shook his head. It would take too long, for Velvet had strayed a pretty good piece from the house.
There was movement from his left. Adam turned just as something hard slammed into the back of his head and sent him spinning into darkness. The darkness blotted out the sunlight filtering through the trees.
When he awakened, the first thing he noticed was that the sunlight through the limbs had changed somewhat, shifting positions. Adam figured he’d been out a good thirty to forty-five minutes. Painfully, he got to a sitting-up position. His head was hurting something fierce and things were moving around like they shouldn’t oughta.
He sat very still for a few moments, until his head began to clear and settle down. He thought he heard some sort of grunting sounds. Adam couldn’t figure out what they might be.
He got to his feet, swaying for a moment. When things settled down, he looked around for his .22 rifle. He checked it, brushing the dirt from it, and checked the load. He kept hearing that grunting sound. Slowly, cautiously, the boy made his way through the timber toward that odd sound.
He came to a little clearing—must be two miles from the house—and paused, peering through the branches.
What he saw brought him up short and mad.
It was Velvet, and she didn’t have no clothes on; her dress was torn off and tossed to one side. And a bunch of them TF riders was standing around, some of them bare-assed naked, some in their long-handles.
And there was money all over the ground. Adam couldn’t figure out what all them greenbacks and silver dollars was doing on the ground.
But he knew what them men was doing. He’d never done it with no girl hisself, but he wasn’t no fool.
It looked like to him that Velvet wasn’t having no good time of it. It looked like to him she was out cold. He could see bruises on her face and her…on her chest. And there was dark marks on her legs where them riders had gripped at her with hard hands. Like that one was doing now. Pokin’ at her. From behind. Like an animal.
Adam lifted his rifle and sighted in. It was not going to be a hard shot, but he had the rifle loaded with little shorts for squirrels. He sighted in and pulled the trigger.
It was a good shot, the little chunk of lead striking the rapist in his right eye. The rapist just fell backward, off Velvet, and lay on his back, his privates exposed.