“Can’t tell yet,” the gunslinger called. “But there’s a woman in a buckboard, I can tell that much.”
Tilden heaved himself up and out of his chair. For a moment, the big man swayed unsteadily on his booted feet. He stumbled to a water basin and washed his face. Lifting his dripping face, he stared into a mirror. He was shocked at his appearance. A very prideful man, Tilden had always been a neat dresser and almost fastidious when it came to washing his body.
He could smell his own body odors wafting up to assail his nostrils. With a grimace, he called to Luis.
“Tell them I’ll be out in fifteen minutes, Luis.”
“Si, Boss.”
Hurriedly, Tilden washed himself best he could out back of the great house and toweled himself dry. He had water on the stove heating for shaving. He shaved, very carefully, noting his shaking hands. Somehow, he managed not to nick his face.
For some reason, his crazed mind felt that the woman in the buckboard was Sally Jensen, coming to see him.
Tilden splashed Bay Rum on his face and sprinkled some on his body, then dressed in clean clothes. He was shocked when he stepped out onto the porch and saw it was not Sally Jensen.
The woman was Belle Colby. With her was Johnny North, the lawyer Hunt Brook, Sheriff Monte Carson, and someone Tilden had never seen before. A man dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and string tie. His face was tanned and his eyes were hard. A drooping moustache.
He cleared up who he was in a hurry. “My name is Mitchell,” he said. “United States Marshal. I don’t know who started the war in this part of the country, Franklin, and I don’t much care. But I’m delivering two messages today. One to you, another to Smoke Jensen. The war is over. If I have to come back in here, I’ll bring the Army with me and declare a state of martial law. You understand all that?”
“Yes…sir,” Tilden said, the words bitter on his tongue. He glared at Carson.
“Fine,” Mitchell said. “Now then, Lawyer Brook is here representing Mrs. Colby. Me and Sheriff Carson will just sit here and see that the lady gets her due.”
“Her…due?” Tilden questioned.
Briefly, Hunt Brook explained. He further explained that the papers given Belle Colby were now part of court records.
“I want to see your books, Mister Franklin,” Hunt told Tilden. “When that is done, I shall determine how much is owed Mrs. Colby. She has confided in me that she is willing to sell her ten percent back to you. Once a fair price is determined. By me. Shall we get to it, Mister Franklin?”
Speaking through an almost blind rage, Tilden started to choke out his reply. Then some small bit of reason crept into his mind. He did not want these people inside his smelly house. That would not look good, and the word would get around.
“I’ll get my books. We’ll go over them on the porch. All right?”
“Fine, Mister Franklin,” the lawyer said.
Luis Chamba had discreetly disappeared into the bunk house. He had known who Mitchell was at first sighting. And while the Mexican gunfighter felt he could best him, no one in their right mind killed a federal marshal. He told his men to stay low and out of sight.
Chamba felt, along with many of the other gunhands, that Tilden Franklin had just about come to the end of his string. But as long as he could pay the money, they would stay. Anyways, Luis wanted his chance at Smoke Jensen. Now that the elusive gunfighter had finally surfaced, a lot of gunslicks wanted to try their skills against his.
Tilden was seething as the lawyer went over his books. As far as the money went, the money to buy out Belle Colby, Tilden had that much in his safe inside the house. It wasn’t the money. It was the fact that Clint had given his percentage to this trashy nester woman. Husband not even cold in the grave and she was probably hunchin’ and bumpin’ the gunslinger Johnny North. Trash, that’s all she was.
Tilden listened as the lawyer quoted an absurdly high figure. But Tilden wasn’t going to quibble about it. He just wanted his holdings intact, and this hard-eyed U.S. marshal out of the area. Mitchell was damn sure wrong on one count, though: the war was not over. Not by a long shot.
“All right,” Tilden said, agreeing to the figure.
The lawyer reached into his case and handed Tilden what the man knew was a binding note. He signed it, Belle signed it, and then Mitchell and North both witnessed it. Belle Colby was now a woman of some means.
Tilden Franklin sat in a chair and watched them leave. Slowly, the gunfighters began to once more gather around the porch.
“Play it close to the vest for a time,” Tilden said. “Let that damned marshal get clear of this area. Then you’ll all start earning your wages. I don’t care who you have to kill in order to get to him, but I want Smoke Jensen dead. Dead, goddamnit…dead!”
U.S. Marshal Mitchell looked at the legendary gunfighter Smoke Jensen. He was even younger than Mitchell had been led to believe. The man was still a ways from thirty.
“If I tried real hard, Jensen, I probably could come up with half a dozen arrest warrants for you. You know that, don’t you?”
Smoke grinned boyishly. “But findin’ people to stand up in court, look me in the eyes, and testify against me might give you some problems.”
Smart too, Mitchell thought. The marshal returned Smoke’s smile. “There is always that to consider, yes.”
“The war is not over, Marshal. You must know that.”
“I mean what I say, Jensen. If I have to, I’ll bring the Army in here. The Governor of the State of Colorado is tired of hearing about this place. In terms of blood.”
“Tilden Franklin is a crazy man, Marshal. I don’t know why he hates me, but he does. He will never rest until one of us is dead.”
“I know that,” Mitchell said. “But don’t sell him short, Jensen. Not even Luis Chamba is as fast as Tilden Franklin. He’s poison with a short gun.”
“He thought he was poison with his fists too,” Smoke replied, again with that boyish grin.
“So I heard.” The marshal’s reply was very dry. “That beating you gave him didn’t help matters very much.”
“It gave me a great deal of satisfaction.”
“I really hope I never see you again, Jensen. But somehow I feel I will.”
“I didn’t start this, Marshal. But if it comes down to it, I’ll damn sure finish it.”
The marshal looked at Smoke for a moment. “Other than Tilden Franklin, you know anyone else who might pay a lot of money to have you killed?”
Smoke thought about that for a moment. Then he shook his head. “No, not right off hand.”
Time took him winging back more than three years, back to the ghost town of Slate, where Smoke had met the men who had killed his brother and his father, then raped and killed his wife Nicole, and then killed Nicole and Smoke’s son Arthur.
Mitchell, as if sensing what was taking place in Smoke’s mind, stood motionless, waiting.
“Them old mountain men is pushin’ us toward Slate,” a gunhand said.
The one of the Big Three who had ordered all the killing, Richards, smiled at Smoke’s choice of a showdown spot. A lot of us are going to be ghosts in a very short time, he thought.
As the old ghost town loomed up stark and foreboding on the horizon, located on the flats between the Lemhi River and the Beaverhead Range, a gunslick reined up and pointed. “The goddamn place is full of people.”
“Miners,” another of the nineteen men who rode to kill Smoke said. “Just like it was over at the camp on the Uncompahgre.”
The men checked their weapons and stuffed their pockets full of extra shells and cartridges.
They moved out in a line toward the ghost town and toward the young gunfighter named Smoke.
“There he is,” Britt said, looking up the hill toward a falling-down store.
Smoke stood alone on the old curled-up and rotted boardwalk. The men could just see the twin .44s belted around his waist. He held a Henry repeating rifle in his right hand, a double-barreled express gun in his left hand. Suddenly, Smoke ducked into the building, leaving only a slight bit of dust to signal where he once stood.