Smoke reloaded the 10-gauge sawed-off and stepped into the stable. He heard a rustling above him and lifted the twin muzzles. Pulling the triggers, blowing a hole the size of a bucket in the boards, Smoke watched as a man, or what was left of a man, hurled out the loft door to come splatting onto the shit-littered ground.
Smoke let the shotgun fall to the straw as the gunfighter Valentine faced him.
“I’m better,” Valentine said, his hands over the butts of his guns.
“I doubt it,” Smoke said, then shot the famed gunfighter twice in the belly and chest.
With blood streaking his mouth, Valentine looked up from the floor at Smoke. “I…didn’t even clear leather.”
“You sure didn’t,” the young man said. “We all got to meet him, Valentine, and you just did.”
“I reckon.” Then he died.
Listening, Smoke cocked his head. Something was very wrong. Then it came to him. No gunfire.
Cautiously, Smoke stepped to the stable door and looked out. Gunsmoke lay over the town like a shroud. The dusty streets were littered with bodies, not all of them TF gunhands.
Smoke was conscious of his friends looking at him, standing silently.
Louis pointed with the muzzle of his pistol.
Smoke looked far up the street. He could make out the shape of Tilden Franklin. Smoke stepped out into the street and faced the man.
Tilden began walking toward him. As the man came closer, Smoke said, “It’s over, Tilden.”
“Not yet,” the big man said. “I gotta kill you, then it’s over.”
“Make your play,” Smoke said.
Tilden grabbed for his guns. Both men fired at almost the same time. Smoke felt a shock in his left side. He kept earing back the hammers and pulling the triggers. Dust flew from Tilden’s chest as the slugs slammed into his body. The big man took another step, staggered, and then slumped to his knees in the center of the street.
Blood leaking from his wounded side, Smoke walked up to the man who would be king.
“You had everything a man could ask for, Tilden. Why weren’t you satisfied?”
Tilden tried to reply. But blood filled his mouth. He looked at Smoke, and still the hate was in his eyes. He fell forward on his face, in the dust, his guns slipping from his dead fingers.
It was over.
Almost.
16
They all heard the single shot and whirled around. Luke Nations lay crumpled on the boardwalk, a large hole in the center of his back.
Lester Morgan, a.k.a. Sundance, stepped out of a building, a pistol in his hand. He looked up and grinned.
“I did it!” he hollered. “Me. Sundance. I kilt Luke Nations!”
“You goddamned backshootin’ punk!” Charlie Starr said, lifting his pistol.
“No!” Smoke’s voice stopped him. “Don’t, Charlie.” Smoke walked over to Lester, one hand holding his bleeding side. He backhanded the dandy, knocking him sprawling. Lester-Sundance landed on his butt in the street. His mouth was busted, blood leaking from one corner. He looked up at Smoke, raw fear in his wide eyes.
“You gonna kill me, ain’t you?” he hissed.
The smile on Smoke’s lips was not pleasant. “What’s your name, punk?”
“Les…Sundance. That’s me, Sundance!”
“Well, Sundance.” Smoke put enough dirt on the name to make it very ugly. “You wanna live, do you?”
“Yeah!”
“And you wanna be known as a top gunhand, right, Sundance?”
“Yeah!”
Smoke kicked Lester in the mouth. The punk rolled on the ground, moaning.
“What’s your last name, craphead?”
“M…Morgan!”
“All right Les Sundance Morgan. I’ll let you live. And Les, I’m going to have your name spread all over the West. Les Sundance Morgan. The man with one ear. He’s the man who killed the famed gunfighter Luke Nations.”
“I got both ears!”
Before his words could fade from sound, Smoke had drawn and fired, the bullet clipping off Lester’s left ear. The action forever branded the dandy.
Lester rolled on the dirt, screaming and hollering.
“Top gun, huh, punk?” Smoke said. “Right, that’s you, Sundance.” He looked toward Johnny North. “Get some whiskey and fix his ear, will you, Johnny?”
Lester really started hollering when the raw booze hit where his ear had been. He passed out from the pain. Ralph took that time to bandage the ugly wound.
Then Smoke kicked him awake. Lester lay on the blood- and whiskey-soaked ground, looking up at Smoke.
“What for you do this to me?” he croaked.
“So everybody, no matter where you go, can know who you are, punk. The man who killed Luke Nations. Now, you listen to me, you son of a bitch! You want to know how it feels to be top gun? Well, just look around you, ask anybody.”
Lester’s eyes found Charlie Starr. “You’re Charlie Starr. You’re more famouser than Luke Nations. But I’m gonna be famous too, ain’t I?”
Charlie rolled a cigarette and stuck it between Lester’s lips. He held the match while Lester puffed. Charlie straightened up and smiled sadly at Lester.
“How is it, punk? Oh, well, it’s a real grand time, punk. You can’t sit with your back to no empty space, always to a wall. Lots of backshooters out there. You don’t never make your fire, cook, and then sleep in the same spot. You always move before you bed down, ’cause somebody is always lookin’ to gun you down…for a reputation.
“You ain’t never gonna marry, punk. ’Cause if you do, it won’t last. You got to stay on the move, all the time. ’Cause you’re the man who kilt Luke Nations, punk. And there’s gonna be a thousand punks just like you lookin’ for you.
“You drift, boy. You drift all the time, and you might near always ride alone, lessen you can find a pard that you know you can trust not to shoot you when you’re in your blankets.
“And a lot of towns won’t want you, punk. The marshal and the townspeople will meet you with rifles and shotguns and point you the way out. ’Cause they don’t want no gunfighter in their town.
“And after a time, if you live, you’ll do damn near anything so’s people won’t know who you are. But they always seem to find out. Then you’ll change your name agin. And agin. Just lookin’ for a little peace and quiet.
“But you ain’t never gonna find it.
“You might git good enough to live for a long time, punk. I hope you do. I hope you ride ten thousand lonely miles, you backshootin’ bastard. Ten thousand miles of lookin’ over your back. Ten thousand towns that you’ll ride in and out of in the dead of night. Eatin’ your meals just at closin’ time…you can find a eatin’ place that’ll serve you.
“A million hours that you’ll wish you could somehow change your life…but you cain’t, punk. You cain’t change, ’cause they won’t let you.
“Only job you’ll be able to find is one with the gun, punk. ’Cause you’re the man who kilt Luke Nations. You got your rep, punk. You wanted it so damned bad, you got ’er.” He glanced at Johnny North.
Johnny said, “I had me a good woman one time. We married and I hung up my guns, sonny-boy. Some goddamned bounty-hunters shot into my cabin one night. Killed my wife. I’d never broke no law until then. But I tracked them so-called lawmen down and hung ’em, one by one. I was on the hoot-owl trail for years after that. I had both the law and the reputation-hunters after me. Sounds like a real fine life, don’t it, punk? I hope you enjoy it.”
Smoke kicked Lester Sundance Morgan to his boots. “Get your horse and ride, punk! ’Fore one of us here takes a notion to brace the man who killed Luke Nations.”
Crying, Lester stumbled from the street and found his horse, back of the building that once housed a gun shop.
“It ain’t like that!” the gunfighters, the gambler, the ranchers, and the minister heard Lester holler as he rode off. “It ain’t none at all like what you say it was. I’ll have wimmin a-throwin’ themselves at me. I’ll have money and I’ll have…”