“Aunt Sally,” a redheaded, freckle-faced boy said. “Will you tell us about Uncle Smoke?”
“I certainly will.” She winked at Martha. “I’ll tell you all about the High Lonesome and the strong men who live there.”
They pulled out at first light. Three men who wore their guns as a part of their being. Three men who had faced death and beaten it so many times none of them could remember all the battles.
Louis had chosen a big buckskin-colored horse with a mean look to his eyes. The horse looked just about as mean as Smoke knew Drifter really was.
Before leaving Denver, Smoke had wired Jim Wilde and asked for both York and Louis to be formally deputized as U.S. Marshals. The request had been honored within the day.
So they were three men who now wore official badges on their chests. One, a millionaire adventurer. One, a successful rancher. One, a young man who was only weeks away from meeting the love of his life.
They rode east, veering slightly south, these three hard-eyed and heavily armed men. They would continue a southerly line until reaching a trading post on the banks of the Big Sandy; a few more years and the trading post would become the town of Limon.
At the trading post, they would cut due east and hold to that all the way across Kansas. They would stay south of Hell Creek, but on their ride across Colorado, they would ford Sand Creek, an offshoot of the Republican River. They would ride across Spring Creek, Landsman, East Spring, and cross yet another Sand Creek before entering into Kansas.
Kansas was still woolly but nothing like it had been a few years back when the great cattle herds were being driven up from Texas, and outlaws and gunfighters were just about anywhere one wished to look.
But the three men rode with caution. The decade had rolled into the eighties, but there were still bands of Indians who left the reservation from time to time; still bands of outlaws that killed and robbed. And they were riding into an area of the country where men still killed other men over the bitterness of that recent unpleasantness called by some the Civil War and by others the War Between the States.
The days were warm and pleasant or hot and unpleasant as the men rode steadily eastward across the plains. But the plains were now being dotted and marred and scarred with wire. Wire put up by farmers to keep ranchers’ cattle out. Wire put up by ranchers to keep nesters out of water holes, creeks, and rivers. Ranchers who wished to breed better cattle put up wire to keep inferior breeds from mixing in and to keep prize bulls at home.
But none of the men really liked wire, even though all could see the reasons—most of the time—behind the erecting of barbed wire fences.
They did not seek out others as they rode toward the east and faraway New Hampshire. Every third or fourth day, late in the afternoon, if a town was handy, they would check into a hotel and seek out a shave and a bath. If not, they would bathe in a handy stream and go unshaven until a town dotted the vast prairie.
“Ever been to this New Hamp-shire, Louis?” York asked the gambler.
“Never have, my friend. But it is an old and very settled state. One of the original thirteen to ratify the Constitution. The first settlement—I can’t recall the name—was back in 1623. But I can assure you both, if we ride in like this, armed to the teeth and looking like buccaneers on horseback, we are,” he smiled, “going to raise some eyebrows.”
“How’s that?” York asked. “We don’t look no different than anybody else?”
Louis laughed pleasantly and knowingly. “Ah, but my young friend, we are much different from the folks you are about to meet in a few weeks. Their streets are well-lighted with gas lamps. A few might have telephones—marvelous devices. The towns you will see will be old and settled towns. No one carries a gun of any type; many villages and towns have long banned their public display except for officers of the law. And thank you, Smoke, for commissioning us; this way we can carry firearms openly.
“No, York, the world you are only days away from viewing is one that you have never seen before. Smoke, my suggestion would be that we ride the trains well into Massachusetts and then head north on horseback from our jumping-off place. I would suggest Springfield. And get ready for some very strange looks, gentlemen.”
“I’m beginnin’ not to like these folks and I ain’t even met none of ’em yet,” York groused. “Don’t tote no gun! What do they do if somebody tries to mess with ’em?”
“They are civilized people,” Louis said, with more than a touch of sarcasm in his statement. “They let the law take care of it.”
“Do tell,” York said. “In other words, they ain’t got the sand to fight their own fights?”
“That is one way of putting it, York,” the gambler said with a smile. “My, but this is going to be a stimulating and informative journey.”
Louis cantered on ahead.
“Smoke?” York asked.
“Huh?”
“What’s a telephone?”
18
“They’re in Salina,” Sally read from the wire. “Smoke, York and Louis Longmont.”
“The millionaire?” John sat straighter in his chair. “Mr. Longmont is coming east by horseback!”
Sally put eyes on her father. She loved him dearly, but sometimes he could be a pompous ass. “Father, Louis is an adventurer. He is also one of the most famous gunfighters in all the West. He’s killed a dozen men on the Continent, in duels. With sword and pistol. He’s killed—oh, I don’t know, twenty or thirty or maybe fifty men out west, with guns. He’s such a gentleman, so refined. I’ll be glad to see him again.”
John wiped his face with a handkerchief. In one breath, his daughter spoke of Louis killing fifty men. In the next breath, she spoke of him being so refined.
Not normally a profane man, John thought: What kind of goddamned people are going to be staying in my house!
Louis lay on his blankets and watched Smoke unroll a warbag from the pack animal. He laughed aloud when he saw what his friend was unpacking: a buckskin jacket, one that had been bleached a gray-white and trimmed ornately by a squaw.
“You have a touch of the theatrical in you, my friend,” Louis observed.
“I got to thinking we might as well give the folks a show. I had it stored in Denver.”
“Going to be interesting,” Louis smiled, pouring another cup of coffee and turning the venison steaks.
York returned from his bath in the creek, his trousers on but shirtless. For the first time, Smoke and Louis noticed the old bullet scars that pocked the young man’s hide.
“You’ve picked up a few here and there,” Louis noted.
“Yeah.” York slipped into his shirt. “Me and another ranger, name of McCoy, got all tangled up with some bad ones down in the Dos Cabezas mountains; I hadn’t been with the Rangers long when it happened. McCoy got hit so bad he had to retire from the business. Started him up a little general store up near Prescott. But we buried them ol’ boys where they fell. I was laid up for near’bouts a month. ’Nother time I was trackin’ a bank robber up near Carson Mesa. He ambushed me; got lead in me. But I managed to stay in the saddle and rode on up into Utah after him. I nailed him up near Vermillion Cliffs. Picked up a few other scratches here and there.”
And Louis knew then what Smoke had already learned: York was a man to ride the river with. There was no backup in the Arizona Ranger.
York looked up from the cooking steaks. “Where you plannin’ on us pickin’ up the steam cars, Smoke?”
“I’ll wire Sally from Kansas City and see how she’s doing. If she’s doin’ all right and doesn’t feel like the baby’s due any day, we’ll ride on to St. Louis and catch the train there.”
The three waited in Kansas City for two days. Sally felt fine and the baby was not due for a month. She urged him to take his time.