“I have an idea, Sally.”
“What?”
“All the hands are gone. The place is all ours. But it might hurt the baby.”
“I bet it won’t.” She smiled impishly at him.
She was right.
Smoke stood watching until the caboose was out of sight. Dr. Spalding had walked back into the station house. Spalding and his wife, Mona, along with Sally, had ridden the stage into Denver. Smoke had ridden Drifter. He had not brought a pack animal; he’d buy one in the city.
There were already laws in parts of Denver about carrying guns, so Smoke had left his twin Colts back in the hotel room. He carried a short-barreled Colt, tucked behind his belt, covered by his coat.
Smoke turned away from the now-silent twin ribbons of steel that linked the nation. “See you soon, Sally,” he muttered. He walked back into the station house.
“Are you going to stay in town for a time and see some of the shows?” Colton asked.
Smoke shook his head. “No. I’m going to gear up and pull out.” He held out his right hand and Colton shook it. “You’ll stay in touch with the doctors in Boston?”
“Yes. I’ll have progress reports for you whenever you wire Big Rock.”
“Check on Billy every now and then.”
Colton nodded. “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine. You take care, Smoke.”
“I’ll be in touch.” Smoke turned and walked away.
He bought three hundred rounds of .44s. The ammo was interchangeable between rifle and pistols. He bought a tent and a ground sheet, a coffee pot and a skillet. Coffee and beans and flour and a small jug of lard. Bacon. He walked around the store, carefully selecting his articles, choosing ones he felt a back-east dandy come west might pick up to take on his first excursion into the wilds.
He bought lace-up boots and a cap, not a hat. He bought a shoulder holster for his short-barreled Colt. He bought a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun and several boxes of buckshot shells.
“Have this gear out back on the loading dock in two hours,” Smoke instructed the clerk. “That’s when I’ll be coming for it. And I’ll pay you then.”
“Yes, sir. That will be satisfactory. I shall see you in two hours.”
“Fine.”
Smoke inspected several packhorses and chose one that seemed to have a lot of bottom. Then he took a hansom to a fancy art-house and bought a dozen sketch pads and several boxes of charcoal pencils.
He had not shaved that morning at the hotel and did not plan on doing anything other than trimming his beard for a long time to come.
At a hardware store, he picked up a pair of scissors to keep his beard neat. An artist’s beard. He would cut off his beard when it came time to reveal his true identity.
When it came time for the killing.
Smoke had a natural talent for drawing, although he had never done much with it. Now, he thought with a smile, it was going to come in handy.
At the art store, the clerk was a dandy if Smoke had ever seen one, prissing around like a peacock, fussing about this and that and prancing up one aisle and down the other.
Smoke told him what he wanted and let the prissy little feller fill the bill.
Smoke studied the way the clerk walked. Wasn’t no damn way in hell he was gonna try to walk like that. Some bear might think he was in heat.
He went to a barbershop and told the barber he wanted his hair cut just like the dandies back east were wearing theirs. Just like he’d seen in a magazine. Parted down the middle and greased back. The barber looked at him like he thought Smoke had lost his mind, but other than to give him a queer look, he made no comment. Just commenced to whacking and shaping.
Smoke did feel rather like a fop when he left the barber chair, and he hoped that he would not run into anyone he knew until his beard grew out. But in a big city like Denver—must have been four or five thousand people in the city—that was unlikely.
Smoke checked out of the hotel and got Drifter and his packhorse from the stable, riding around to the rear of the store, picking up and lashing down his supplies. His guns were rolled up and stored in a spare blanket, along with the sawed-off express gun.
He was ready.
But he waited until he got outside of the city before he stuck that damn cap on his head.
He rode southeast out of Denver, taking his time, seeing the country—again. He and old Preacher had ridden these trails, back when Smoke was just a boy. There were mighty few trails and places in Colorado that Smoke had not been; but oddly enough, down south of Canon City, down between the Isabels and the Sangre de Cristo range, was one area where Preacher had not taken him.
And now Smoke knew why that was. The old man had been protecting him.
But why so much hate on the part of this Rex Davidson? And was Sally right? Was this Dagget the same man who had molested her as a child? And how were he and Davidson connected—and why?
He didn’t know.
But he was sure going to find out.
And then he would kill them.
Smoke spent a week camped along the West Bijou, letting his beard grow out and sketching various scenes, improving upon his natural talent. He still didn’t like the silly cap he was wearing, but he stuck with it, getting used to the damned thing. And each day he combed and brushed his hair, slicking it down with goop, retraining it.
Damned if he really wasn’t beginning to look like a dandy. Except for his eyes; those cold, expressionless, and emotionless eyes. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about that.
Or was there? he pondered, smiling.
Oh, yes, there was.
Allowing himself a chuckle, he swiftly broke camp and packed it all up, carefully dousing his fire and then scattering the ashes and dousing them again. He mounted up and swung Drifter’s head toward the south and slightly west. If he couldn’t find what he was looking for in Colorado City, he’d head on down to Jim Beckworth’s town of Pueblo—although some folks tended to spell it Beckwourth.
Smoke stopped in at the fanciest store in town and browsed some, feeling silly and foppish in his high-top lace-up boots and his city britches tucked into the tops like some of them explorer people he’d seen pictures of. But if he was gonna act and look like a sissy, he might as well learn the part—except for the walk—cause he damn sure was gonna look mighty funny if he could find him a pair of those tinted eyeglasses.
He found several pairs—one blue-tinted, one yellow-tinted, and one rose-tinted.
“Oh, what the hell,” he muttered.
He bought all three pairs and a little hard case to hold them in, to keep them from getting broken.
Smoke put on his red-tinted eyeglasses and walked outside, thinking that they sure gave a fellow a different outlook on things.
“Well, well,” a cowboy said, stepping back and eyeballing Smoke and his fancy getup. “If you jist ain’t the purtiest thing I ever did see.” Then he started laughing.
Smoke gritted his teeth and started to brush past the half-drunk puncher.
The puncher grabbed Smoke by the upper arm and spun him around, a startled look on his face as his fingers gripped the thick, powerful muscles of Smoke’s upper arm.
Smoke shook his arm loose. Remembering all the grammar lessons Sally had given him, and the lessons that the urbane and highly educated gambler, Louis Longmont, had taught him, Smoke said, “I say, my good fellow, unhand me, please!”
The cowboy wasn’t quite sure just exactly what he’d grabbed hold of. That arm felt like it was made of pure oak, but the speech sounded plumb goofy.
“What the hell is you, anyways?”
Smoke drew himself erect and looked down at the smaller man. “I, my good man, am an ar-tist!”
“Ar-tist? You paint pitchers?”
“I sketch pic-tures!” Smoke said haughtily.
“Do tell? How much you charge for one of them sketchies?”