Velvet sort of rolled off the log they’d had her bent over and lay real still.
Adam quickly reloaded and sighted in again. But before he could pull the trigger, a short gun barked and something hard struck him in the chest. The slug knocked him backward. He lost his grip on his rifle. Adam knew he was bad hit, maybe going to die, but he lay still as the men ran up to him.
“Let’s get outta here!” he heard one say.
“What about Steve?”
“Take him with us. We’ll bury him proper.”
“Little son of a bitch kilt him with a lousy .22,” another spoke.
“Let’s ride.”
When the sounds of their horses had faded, Adam tried to reach his sister. He could not. The pain in his chest was getting worse and he was having a hard time seeing. He pulled his dime novel out of his pocket and took his worn stub of a pencil. Slowly, with bloody fingers, he began to print out a message.
A few minutes later, the boy laid his head down on the cool earth and closed his eyes. A moment later he was dead.
Smoke and the others arrived back a few hours before dark. They had pushed their horses hard. Colby and Charlie were about two hours behind.
Belle Colby met the men in the front yard.
“I can’t find Velvet or Adam,” she told Smoke. She had been crying, her eyes red-rimmed.
“Bob met us, Belle,” Smoke said. “Charlie stayed with Colby just in case. They’re a couple of hours behind us. Any idea where they might have gone?”
“No. The girl has her—what she calls her secret places in the timber where she goes to be alone.”
The men dismounted. Smoke turned to The Apache Kid. “Apache, Preacher once told me you could track a snake over a flat rock.”
“I’ll find her trail,” the old gunfighter said.
He moved out with a swiftness that belied his age. “Stay behind me,” he called to the others. “Jist stay back till I locate some sign. And don’t come up to me when I do find it. I don’t want none of it all mucked up.”
He began moving in a criss-cross manner, looking to anyone who did not understand tracking like a man who had lost his mind. In less than five minutes, he called out. “I got it. Stay behind me.”
Apache was following the girl’s sign, not Adam’s, so they found the girl first.
“Good Jesus Christ!” Silver Jim said. He peeled off his duster and wrapped it around the girl. She was conscious, but in some sort of shock. She seemed unable to speak.
“What’s all this money doing piled up here?” Moody asked. “I don’t understand none of this.”
“Twenty-one dollars,” Smoke said, counting the coin and greenbacks. “This isn’t making any sense to me.”
Then Apache found the body of Adam and called out. The men gathered around.
“They’s words writ on this page here,” Apache said. “My readin’ ain’t good enough to make ’em out.” He handed the dime novel to Smoke.
Smoke looked at the bloody, printed words. “IT WAS TF RIDERS WHO DONE IT TO SIS. TF RIDERS WHO SHOT ME. GET THEM FOR ME LUKE. LUKE, GET”
Smoke read the message and then folded the book.
Luke Nations stood stony-faced. But there were tears running down his tanned, lined, leathery face.
“We play it legal-like, Luke, boys,” Smoke said. “When that fails, then we go in shootin’.”
“You play it legal-like, Jensen,” Luke said, his words like chipped stone. “Me, I’ll play my way.”
He turned to go.
Smoke’s hard voice stopped the old gunfighter. “Luke!”
The gunfighter turned slowly.
“Charlie told me when you signed on, you rode for the brand.”
“I do.”
“It’s my brand.”
That stung Luke. He stood for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. “Right. Boss. We play it legal-like. But you know damned well how it’s gonna come out in the long haul.”
“Yes, I do. Or at least suspect. But when all the shooting is over and the dust settled, we’re going to have United States marshals in here, plus all sorts of lawyers and other big-worded people. I don’t want anyone to point the finger at us and be able to prove that we started a damn thing. That make sense to you?”
“Put that way, I reckon it do.”
“Fine. I hate to ask any of you boys to ride back to town. But we need the sheriff out here first thing in the morning.”
Wilbur Mason had walked up. “I’ll go,” he said quietly.
Smoke nixed that. “You’d be fair game, Wilbur. And you’re no hand with a gun. No, I’ll go. I’ll take the book and give it to Lawyer Brook and tell him the story in the presence of Sheriff Carson. Damn!” he said.
“What’s wrong?” Silver Jim said.
“I’ll have to take the girl into town to Doctor Spalding. She’s in bad shape. Wilbur, hitch up a wagon and fill the back with hay for her comfort. Luke, ride like hell for my place and tell some other men to come hard. They can catch up with me on the way in.”
Luke nodded and ran, in his odd, bowlegged, cowboy way, back to his horse.
“I’ve borrow a horse from Colby’s stable and pick up mine on the way back. You boys tell Sally I’ll be back when she sees me.”
“You take ’er easy, Smoke,” Silver Jim warned. “Them hands of yourn won’t be fit for no quick draw for several days yet.”
Smoke nodded and left.
Tilden Franklin had tried to sit a saddle. He fell off twice before he would allow himself to be taken back to his ranch in the back of a buckboard. If he was not blind crazy before, he was now. He knew it would be a week, maybe longer, before he was fit to do anything. He was hurt had, and he had enough sense to know it.
He also had enough sense to know, through waves of humiliation, that since he had started the fight, in front of witnesses, there was not a damn thing, legally, he could do about it.
Except lay in the back of the buckboard and curse Smoke Jensen.
Which he did, wincing with every bounce and jar along the rutted road.
Smoke had met Colby and Charlie on the trail and broken the news to the father. Colby and Wilbur had exchanged wagons and rolled on. Charlie had insisted on returning with Smoke. He didn’t say it, but Smoke was glad the gunfighter was wth him, for his own hands were in no shape for any standup gunfight.
It was long after dark when they rolled into Fontana and up to the doctor’s office. Velvet still had not spoken a word. Nor uttered any sound.
Colton looked at Velvet, looked at Smoke, and silently cursed. He ordered the girl taken into his examining room and called for his wife to be present.
“Tell me what happened,” he told Smokes. “As succinctly as possible.”
“As what?”
Colton sighed. “Make it short.”
Lawyer Hunt made his appearance, with his wife Willow. Mona asked her to assist her with Velvet. The women disappeared into the examining room.
Smoke had sent Billy for the sheriff as they passed the livery stable. For once, Sheriff Carson seemed genuinely concerned. He knew for an ironclad fact that nobody, but nobody, messed with a good woman and came off easy. Monte Carson was a hired gun, true, but he respected good womanfolk.
With everyone present, Smoke told his story, handing the bloody, damning dime novel, autographed by Luke Nations, to Lawyer Hunt.
Nobody heard Louis Longmont enter the office. He stood off to one side, listening.
Lawyer Hunt read the message and looked at Monte. “Can you read, Sheriff?”
“Hell, yes!”
“Then read it and pick a side!” There was hard and genuine anger in the lawyer’s voice. Goddamn people who would do this to a girl.
“Hey!” Monte said. “I don’t pick sides. I’m the law around here.”
“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” Louis spoke from the darkness near the open door to the office.