Monte flushed and read the bloody words. Now, he thought, I am in a pickle.
Doctor Spalding stepped out of the examining room. “The girl’s visible wounds will be easily treated. They’re mostly superficial. But her mental state is quite another matter. She is catatonic.”
Smoke lost his temper. He was tired, sore, hungry, disgusted, and could not remember when he wanted to kill anybody more than at this moment. “Now, what in the goddamn hell does all that jibber-jabber mean?”
“Settle down, Smoke,” Louis said. Then the gambler explained the doctor’s words.
Smoke calmed down and looked at Sheriff Carson. “You want a war on your hands, Monte?”
“Hell, no!”
“Somebody better hang for this, Monte,” Smoke warned, his voice low and menacing. “Or that is exactly what you’re going to have on your hands—a war.”
Smoke stepped out into the night and walked toward the best of the hotels.
“You ever heard the expression ‘caught between a rock and a hard place,’ Sheriff?” Louis asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“Because that’s where you are. Enjoy it.” The gambler smiled thinly.
2
The news swept through the town of Fontana fast. Sheriff Monte Carson found Judge Proctor and jerked him away from the bottle on the bar, leading the whiskered man out of the batwings to the boardwalk.
Monte pointed a finger at the judge. He told him what had gone down, shaking his finger in the judge’s face. “Not another drink until this is over,” he warned the highly educated rummy. “If you don’t think you can handle that, I can damn well put you in a cell and be shore of it.”
Judge Proctor stuck out his chest and blustered. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Try me,” Monte warned, acid in his voice.
Judge Proctor got the message, and he believed it. He rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re right, of course, Sheriff. Goddamn Tilden Franklin! What was he thinking of authorizing something of this odious nature?”
Sheriff Carson shrugged. “Be ready to go at first light, Judge. No matter how the chips fall, we got to play this legal-like, all the way.”
Judge Proctor watched the sheriff walk away into the night. “Should be interesting,” he muttered. “A fair hearing. How quaint!”
Louis Longmont sat in his quarters behind his gaming room and sipped hot tea. At first, the news of the money near where the girl was found puzzled him. Then his mind began working, studying all angles. Louis felt he knew the reason for the money. But it was a thin rope Tilden had managed to grab onto. The man really must be quite insane to authorize such a plan. Colby and Belle and their kids were all deeply religious folk—most farmers were. And the sheriff and judge were going to be forced to handle this right by the law books.
But, the gambler thought with a sigh, there was always the jury to consider. And money, in this case, not only talked, but cursed.
Big Mamma sat at the back of her bar and pondered the situation. In a case like this, wimmin oughta be allowed to sit on the jury…but that was years in the future. Even though Big Mamma was as cold-hearted and ruthless as a warlord, something like this brought out the maternal instinct from deep within her. She would have scoffed and cursed at the mere suggestion of that…but it was true.
She looked around her. It wouldn’t take near as long to tear all this down and get gone as it had to put it all up. Damned if she wanted to get caught up in an all-out shootin’ war. But sure as hell, that was what was gonna happen.
That Smoke Jensen…well, she had revised her original opinion of that feller. He was pure straight out of Hell, that one. That one was no punk, like she first thought. But one-hundred-and-ten-percent man. And even though Big Mamma didn’t like men, she could respect the all-man types…like Smoke Jensen.
Ralph Morrow lay beside his wife, unable to sleep. He was thinking of that poor child, and also thinking that he just may have been a fool where Tilden Franklin was concerned. After witnessing that fight in the gaming room this very day, and seeing the brutal, calculating madness in Tilden’s eyes, the preacher realized that Tilden would stop at nothing to attain his goals.
Even the rape of a child.
Hunt sat in his office, looking at the bloody dime novel. Like the gambler, Louis Longmont, Hunt felt he knew why the money had been left by the raped child. And, if his hunch was correct, it was a horrible, barbaric thing for the men to do.
But, his lawyer’s mind pondered, did Tilden Franklin have anything to do with it?
“Shit!” he said, quite unlike him.
Of course he did.
Colton dozed on his office couch. Even in his fitful sleep he was keeping one ear out for any noise Velvet might make. But he didn’t expect her to make any. He felt the child’s mind was destroyed.
He suddenly came wide awake, his mind busy. Supplies! He was going to have to order many more supplies. He would post the letter tomorrow—today—and get it out on the morning stage.
There was going to be a war in this area of the state—a very bad war. And as the only doctor within seventy-five miles, Colton felt he was going to be very busy.
Ed Jackson slept deeply and well. He had heard the news of the raped girl and promptly dismissed it. Tilden Franklin was a fine man; he would have nothing to do with anything of that nature. Those hard-scrabble farmers and small ranchers were all trash. That’s what Mister Franklin had told him, and he believed him.
There had been no rape, Ed had thought, before falling asleep. None at all. The money scattered around the wretched girl proved that, and if he was chosen to sit on the jury, that’s the way he would see it.
Sleep was elusive for Smoke. And not just for Smoke. In the room next to his, he could hear Charlie Starr’s restless pacing. The legendary gunfighter was having a hard time of it too. Mistreatment of a grown woman was bad enough, but to do what had been done to a child…that was hard to take.
War. That word kept bouncing around in Smoke’s head. Dirty, ugly range war.
Smoke finally drifted off to sleep…but his dreams were bloody and savage.
Not one miner worked the next day…or so it seemed at least. The bars and cafes and hotels and streets and boardwalks of Fontana were filled to overflowing with men and women, all awaiting the return of Judge Proctor and Sheriff Monte Carson from the sprawling TF spread.
Luke Nations had stayed at the Sugarloaf with Sally and most of the other gunslicks. Early that morning, however. Pistol Le Roux, Dan Greentree, Bull Flagler, Hardrock, Red Shingletown, and Leo Wood had ridden in.
And the town had taken notice of them very quickly. The aging gunhawks made Monte’s deputies very nervous. And, to the deputies’ way of thinking, what made it all even worse was that Louis Longmont was solidly on the side of Smoke Jensen. And now it appeared that Johnny North had thrown in with Smoke too. And nobody knew how many more of them damned old gunfighters Smoke had brought in. Just thinkin’ ’bout them damned old war-hosses made a feller nervous.
Just outside of town, Monte sat his saddle and looked down at Judge Proctor, sitting in a buckboard. “I ain’t real happy about bringin’ this news back to Fontana, Judge.”
“Nor I, Sheriff. But I really, honestly feel we did our best in this matter.”
Monte shuddered. “You know what this news is gonna do, don’t you, Judge?”
“Unfortunately. But what would you have done differently, Monte?”
Monte shook his head. He could not think of a thing that could have been done differently. But, for the first time in his life, Monte was beginning to see matters from the other side of the badge. He’d never worn a badge before, never realized the responsibilities that went with it. And, while he was a long way from becoming a good lawman, if given a chance Monte might some day make it.