“Good Lord,” Chris blurted. “Where was your husband while this tragedy was unfolding?”
Sally thought about that. “Well, I think he was in Fontana, in the middle of a gunfight. I believe that’s where he was.”
They all looked at her as if she had suddenly grown horns and a tail.
Smiling, Sally reached into her bag and brought out a newspaper, a copy of Haywood’s paper, which detailed the incident at the Sugarloaf, where she and young Bob Colby had fought off the attackers.
“Incredible!” her father muttered. “My own daughter in a gunfight. And at the trial, dear, you were, of course, acquitted, were you not?”
Sally laughed and shook her head. They still did not understand. “Father, there was no trial.”
“An inquest, then?” John asked hopefully, leaning forward in his chair.
Sally shook her head. “No, we just hauled off the bodies and buried them on the range.”
John blinked. He was speechless. And for an attorney, as he and his sons were, that was tantamount to a phenomenon.
“Hauled off the…bodies,” Robert spoke slowly. “How utterly grotesque.”
“What would you have us do?” Sally asked him. “Leave them in the front yard? They would have attracted coyotes and wolves and buzzards. And smelled bad, too.” Might as well have a little fun with them, she concluded.
Robert turned an ill-looking shade of green.
And Sally was shocked to find herself thinking: what a lily-livered bunch of pansies.
Abigal covered her mouth with a handkerchief.
“Did the sheriff even come out to the house?” Walter inquired.
“No. If he had, we’d have shot him. At that time, he was in Tilden Franklin’s pocket.”
John sighed with a parent’s patience.
Penny was reading another copy of Haywood’s newspaper. “My God!” she suddenly shrieked in horror. “According to this account, there were ten people shot down in the streets of Fontana in one week.”
“Yes, Sister. Fontana was rather a rowdy place until Smoke and the gunfighters cleaned it up. You’ve heard of Louis Longmont, Father?”
He nodded numbly, not trusting his voice to speak. He wondered if, twenty-odd years ago, the doctor had handed him the wrong baby. Sally had always been a bit…well, free-spirited.
“Louis was there, his hands full of Colts.”
Sally’s nieces and nephews were standing in the arch-way, listening, their mouths open in fascination. This was stuff you only read about in the dime novels. But Aunt Sally—and this was the first time most of them could remember seeing her—had actually lived it! This was exciting stuff.
Sally grinned, knowing she had a captive audience. “There was Charlie Starr, Luke Nations, Dan Greentree, Leo Wood, Cary Webb, Pistol LeRoux, Bill Foley, Sunset Hatfield, Toot Tooner, Sutter Cordova, Red Shingletown, Bill Flagler, Ol’ Buttermilk, Jay Church, The Apache Kid, Silver Jim, Dad Weaver, Hardrock, Linch—they all stayed at our ranch, the Sugarloaf. They were really very nice gentlemen. Courtly in manner.”
“But those men you just named!” Jordan said, his voice filled with shock and indignation. “I’ve read about them all. They’re killers!”
“No, Jordan,” Sally tried to patiently explain, all the while knowing that he, and the rest of her family, would never truly understand. “They’re gunfighters. Like my Smoke. A gunfighter. They have killed, yes; but always because they were pushed into it, or they killed for right and reason and law and order.”
“Killed for right and reason,” John muttered. His attorney’s mind was having a most difficult time comprehending that last bit.
Abigal looked like she might, at any moment, fall over from a case of the vapors. “And…your husband, this Smoke person, he’s killed men?”
“Oh, yes. About a hundred or so. That’s not counting Indians on the warpath. But not very many of them. You see, Smoke was raised by the mountain man, Preacher. And we get along well with the Indians.”
“Preacher,” John murmured. “The most famous, or infamous, mountain man of the West.”
“That’s him!” Sally said cheerfully. “And,” she pulled an old wanted poster out of her bag and passed it over to her father, “that’s my Smoke. Handsome, isn’t he?”
Under the drawing of Smoke’s likeness, was the lettering:
WANTED
DEAD OR ALIVE
THE OUTLAW AND MURDERER
SMOKE JENSEN
$10,000.00 REWARD
“Ye, Gods!” her father yelled, “the man is wanted by the authorities!”
Sally laughed at his expression. “No, Father, That was a put-up job. Smoke is not wanted by the law. He never has been on the dodge.”
“Thank God for small favors.” John wiped his sweaty face with a handkerchief.
Walter said, “And your husband has killed a hundred men, you say?”
“Well, thereabouts, yes. But they were all fair fights.”
The kids slipped away into the foyer and silently opened the front door, stepping out onto the large porch. Then they were racing away to tell all their friends that their uncle, Smoke Jensen, the most famous gunfighter in all the world, was coming to Keene for a visit.
Really!
Sally passed around the newspapers she had saved over the months, from both Fontana and Big Rock. The family read them, disbelief in their eyes.
“Monte Carson is your sheriff?” John questioned. “But I have seen legal papers that stated he was a notorious gunfighter.”
“He was. But he wasn’t an outlaw. And Johnny North is now a farmer/rancher and one of our neighbors and close friends.”
They had all heard of Johnny North. He was almost as famous as Smoke Jensen.
“Louis Longmont is a man of great wealth,” Jordan muttered, reading a paper. “His holdings are quite vast. Newspaper, hotels, a casino in Europe, and a major stockholder in a railroad.”
“He’s also a famous gunfighter and gambler,” Sally informed them all. “And a highly educated man and quite the gentleman.”
Shaking his head, John laid the paper aside. “When is your husband coming out for a visit, Sally?”
“As soon as he finishes with his work.”
“His work being with his guns.” It was not put as a question.
“That is correct. Why do you ask, Father?”
“I’m just wondering if I should alert the governor so he can call out the militia!”
9
On the morning he set out for Dead River, Smoke dressed in his most outlandish clothing. He even found a long hawk feather and stuck that in his silly cap. He knew he would probably be searched once inside, or maybe outside the outlaw town, and what to do with his short-barreled .44 worried him. He finally decided to roll it up in some dirty longhandles and stick it in his dirty clothes bag, storing it in his pack. He was reasonably sure it would go undetected there. It was the best idea he could come up with.
He adjusted the bonnets on Drifter and his packhorse, with Drifter giving him a look that promised trouble if this crap went on much longer. Smoke swung into the saddle, pointing Drifter’s nose north. A few more miles and he would cut west, into the Sangre de Cristo range and into the unknown.
About two hours later, he sensed unfriendly eyes watching him as he rode. He made no effort to search out his watchers, for a foppish gent from back east would not have developed that sixth sense. But White Wolf had told him that there were guards all along the trail, long before one ever reached the road that would take him to Dead River.
Smoke rode on, singing at the top of his lungs, stopping occasionally to admire the beautiful scenery and to make a quick sketch. To ooh and aah at some spectacular wonder of nature. He was just about oohed and aahed out, and Drifter looked like he was about ready to throw Smoke and stomp on him, when he came to a road. He had no idea what to expect, but this startled him with its openness.