“You and Miss Sally both gonna go away?” Billy asked, his voice full of gloom.
“For a time, Billy. Sally thought about taking you back east with her, but you’re in school here, and doing well. So Reverend Ralph and Bountiful are going to look after you. You’ll stay here at the ranch with Pearlie and the hands. We might be gone for the better part of a year, Billy, so it’s going to be up to you to be the man around the place.”
Pearlie was leaning up against a hitch rail and Smoke winked at his friend and foreman.
“If I hadn’t a-been out with the hands the other night…” Billy said.
Smoke cut him off. “And if your aunt had wheels, she’d have been a tea cart, Billy. You and the hands were doing what I asked you to do—pushing cattle up to the high grass. Can’t any of you blame yourselves for what happened.”
“I don’t think my aunt had no wheels, Smoke,” Billy said solemnly. Then he realized that Smoke was funning with him and he smiled. “That would be a sight to see though, wouldn’t it?”
Pearlie walked up to the man and boy. “We’ll be all right here, Billy. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re a top hand.”
Billy grinned at the high compliment.
When the foreman and the boy had walked away, Smoke stepped back into the house and fixed breakfast for Sally, taking it to her on a tray. He positioned pillows behind her shoulders and gently eased her to an upright position in the bed.
He sat by the bed and watched her eat; slowly she was regaining her strength and appetite. But she was still very weak and had to be handled with caution.
She would eat a few bites and then rest for a moment, gathering strength.
“I’m getting better, Smoke,” she told him with a smile. “And the food is beginning to taste good.”
“I can tell. At first I thought it was my cooking,” he kidded her. “Your color is almost back to normal. Feel like telling me more about what happened?”
She ate a few more bites and then pushed the tray from her. “It’s all come back to me. The doctor said it would. He said that sometimes severe traumas can produce temporary memory loss.”
Colton had told Smoke the same thing.
She looked at him. “It was close, wasn’t it?”
“You almost died, honey.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them, saying, “I remember the time. Nine o’clock. I was just getting ready for bed. I remember glancing at the clock. I was in my gown.” Her brow furrowed in painful remembrance, physically and mentally. “I heard a noise outside, or so I thought. But when it wasn’t repeated, I ignored it. I walked in here, to the bedroom, and then I heard the noise again. I remember feeling a bit frightened….”
“Why?” he interrupted. He was curious, for Sally was not the spooky or flighty kind. She had used a rifle and pistol several times since settling here, and had killed or wounded several outlaws.
“Because it was not a natural sound. It was raining, and I had asked Billy, when he came in to get lunch packets for the crew, to move the horses into the barn, to their stalls for the night. Bad move, I guess. If Seven or Drifter had been in the corral, they would have warned me.”
“I would have done the same thing, Sally. Stop blaming yourself. Too much of that going on around here. It was nobody’s fault. It happened, it’s over, and it’s not going to happen again. Believe me, I will see to that.”
And she knew he would.
“When the noise came again, it was much closer, like someone brushing up against the side of the house. I was just reaching for a pistol when the front door burst open. Three men; at least three men. I got the impression there was more, but I saw only three. I heard three names. I did tell you the names, didn’t I? That part is hazy.”
“Yes.”
“Dagget, Lapeer, and Moore. Yes. Now I remember telling you. The one called Dagget smiled at me. Then he said”—she struggled to remember—“‘Too bad we don’t have more time. I’d like to see what’s under that gown.’ Then he lifted his pistol and shot me. No warning. No time at all to do anything. He just lifted his gun and shot me. As I was falling, the other two shot me.”
Smoke waited, his face expressionless. But his inner thoughts were murderous.
Sally closed her eyes, resting for a moment before once more reliving the horrible night. “Just as I was falling into darkness, losing consciousness, I heard one say, ‘Now the son of a bitch has us all to deal with.’”
And I will deal with you, Smoke thought. One by one, on a very personal basis. I will be the judge, the jury, and the executioner.
Smoke started to roll and light one of his rare cigarettes, then thought better of it. The smoke might cause Sally to cough and he knew that would be harmful.
“Do you know any of the men I mentioned, Smoke?”
“No. I can’t say that I’ve even heard of them.” There was a deep and dangerous anger within him. But he kept his voice and his emotions well in check. He hated night riders, of any kind. He knew those types of people were, basically, cowards.
He kept his face bland. He did not want Sally to get alarmed, although he knew that she knew exactly what he was going to do once she was safely on the train heading east. He also knew that when she did mention it—probably only one time—she would not attempt to stop him.
That was not her way. She had known the kind of man he was when she married him.
He met her eyes, conscious of her staring at him, and smiled at her. She held out a hand and Smoke took it, holding it gently.
“It’s a mystery to me, honey,” she said. “I just don’t understand it. The valley has been so peaceful for so many months. Not a shot fired in anger. Now this.”
Smoke hushed her, taking the lap tray. He had never even heard of a lap tray until Sally had sent off for one from somewhere back east. “You rest now. Sleep. You want some more laudanum?”
She minutely shook her head. “No. Not now. The pain’s not too bad. That stuff makes my head feel funny.”
She was sleeping even before Smoke had closed the door.
He scraped the dishes and washed them in hot water taken from the stove, then pumped a pot full of fresh water and put that on the stove, checking the wood level that heated the back plate and checking the draft. He peeled potatoes for lunch and dropped them into cold water. Then he swept the floor and tidied up the main room, opening all the windows to let the house cool.
Then the most famous and feared gunfighter in all the west washed clothes, wrung them out, and hung them up to dry on the clothesline out back, the slight breeze and the warm sun freshening them naturally.
He walked around to the front of the cabin and sat beside the bedroom window, open just a crack, so he could hear Sally if she needed anything.
Lapeer, Moore, and Dagget. He rolled those names around in his mind as his fingers skillfully rolled a cigarette. He had never heard of any of them. But he knew one thing for certain.
They were damn sure going to hear from him.
3
Smoke did not leave the Sugarloaf range for weeks. If supplies were needed, one of the hands went into town for them. Smoke did not want to stray very far from Sally’s side.
The days passed slowly, each one bringing another hint of the summer that lay lazily before them. And Sally grew stronger. Two weeks after the shooting, she was able to walk outside, with help, and sit for a time, taking the sun, taking it easy, growing stronger each day.
Smoke had spoken with Sheriff Monte Carson several times since the posse’s return from a frustrating and fruitless pursuit. But Monte was just as baffled as Smoke as to the why of Sally’s attack and the identity of the attackers.
Judge Proctor had been queried, as well as most of the other people around the valley. No one had ever heard of the men.