“My father and I disagree on many things, Mr. West, but I love him,” Robin said. “I won’t let that stand in the way of helping someone I think has been treated unfairly.” She paused. “If I just wanted to annoy Father I’d make sure he knew what I was doing, but to tell the truth, I’d prefer he didn’t find out about this. He’s so wrapped up in his businesses he never comes near the school, so I don’t think there’s much chance he’ll know.”
Something about the whole setup rubbed Smoke the wrong way, but at least it was an answer to his problem. He could have camped somewhere out of town—he had spent the vast majority of his nights sleeping on the ground the past few years—but if he did he wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Sandor as well.
So he said, “All right. I appreciate it, Miss Garrard. I’ll get my gear from the hotel. Where’s the school?”
“On the northern end of town, set back to the left from the trail. I’ll go up there now and light a lantern, so you’ll be able to find it without any trouble.”
“I’m not sure a lady should be wandering around after dark by herself like that.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said with a crisp note in her voice. “I’m used to taking care of myself.”
“All right,” Smoke agreed. It was her business, not his.
They parted company, Smoke heading up the street toward the hotel while Robin crossed it at an angle. When he reached the hotel, Smoke holstered the Colt and buckled on the gunbelt again. He took the dagger, which he had tucked behind his belt, and replaced it in the sheath sewed into his boot top.
The clerk greeted him by saying, “Hello, Mr. West. Did you find the livery stable all right?”
“Yeah, but I won’t be stayin’,” Smoke replied. “I’ll have to ask you for my money back.”
The man looked surprised. “I’m not sure we can do that…” he began. The look in Smoke’s eyes made him swallow, nod, and go on, “But of course since you didn’t make use of our accommodations, it wouldn’t be fair to charge you.”
He returned the money Smoke had given him earlier. As Smoke put it away, he said, “I’ll go upstairs and get my saddlebags and rifle, then I won’t trouble you anymore.”
“It’s no trouble, Mr. West, I assure you.”
Smoke nodded and went up the stairs. He collected his Henry rifle and saddlebags from room 3, then went back down to the lobby.
The clerk indulged his obvious curiosity by asking, “Are you leaving town so soon?”
“Nope, just got a better offer on a place to stay.” Smoke left it at that. He was sure the clerk would report his conversation to Garrard later. Let Garrard wonder where that better place was.
As he stepped out onto the porch, his instincts warned him, and the sound of a gun being cocked somewhere nearby confirmed the danger. He dropped the saddlebags and threw himself forward, landing on his belly at the edge of the porch as a revolver roared on his left. Smoke rolled away from the shot, even as another blast sounded and a slug chewed splinters from the planks near him. He worked the Henry’s lever as he rolled, and when he came to a stop he fired at the spot where he’d seen muzzle flashes, aiming a little to the left and below them.
A rifle cracked from the entrance alcove of a darkened building across the street. Smoke heard the bullet whistle past his head and thud into the hotel’s front wall. He swung the Henry in that direction and fired twice, squeezing the trigger as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever. The large pane of glass in the building’s door shattered in a million pieces as a body hurtled back into it.
Smoke rolled again, under the elevated railing that ran along the edge of the porch, dropping to the street between the hitch rail and the porch. Seven and a couple other horses tied there gave him some cover. Not wanting to endanger the animals by staying where he was, he powered to his feet and raced to the corner where a water trough stood. A six-gun roared a couple times, somewhere in the night, but the bullets didn’t find him. He threw himself down behind the water trough, confident that its thick walls would stop any slugs that came his way.
He was sure he had wounded at least one of the bushwhackers, and since their attempt to kill him had failed, he didn’t think they would hang around for very long. Already people were starting to venture cautiously out of some nearby buildings and shout questions as they tried to determine what all the shooting was about.
Smoke stayed where he was. The gunfire had stopped, which didn’t surprise him. After a couple minutes, he heard Marshal Thad Calhoun’s loud, angry voice demanding, “What the hell’s goin’ on here? Who’s doin’ all that shootin’?”
Smoke spotted the lawman coming along the street, a shotgun clutched tightly in his hands. Without rising from behind the water trough, he called, “Over here, Marshal. Take it easy with that Greener. The ruckus seems to be over.”
Calhoun swung the double-barrel in the direction of Smoke’s voice. “Who’s there? Speak up, damn it, or I’ll dust your hide with buckshot!”
“It’s Buck West, Marshal.” That new name of his was getting quite a workout this evening, Smoke thought.
“Who?”
“The fella from Hammond’s store this afternoon.”
“The one who stuck up for that redskin?”
“That’s right.”
“What kind of trouble are you causin’ now, West?”
Smoke kept a tight rein on his temper. “I’d just stepped out of the hotel when a couple of hombres started shootin’ at me, Marshal. I don’t think it was exactly me who caused the trouble.”
“You hit?”
“No, but you might look in the doorway of that building across the street. I think the fella who was over there went through the glass in the door when I tagged him with my Henry.”
“Stand up where I can see you,” Calhoun ordered.
Smoke did so. Even if one or both of the bushwhackers were still lurking close by, he doubted if they would try to kill him with the marshal standing right there. Though he could be wrong about that, he thought as he remembered Calhoun worked for Jason Garrard more so than he did for the town. Smoke kept his rifle ready in case he needed it.
Calhoun trained the twin muzzles of his shotgun on the doorway across the street as he walked toward it. When he got there, he called over his shoulder, “Glass is busted out, all right. Scattered all over the boardwalk. I don’t see no wounded bushwhacker, however.”
“I guess he wasn’t hurt bad enough to keep him from crawling away,” Smoke said.
Calhoun lowered the Greener and thumbed a match to life. “Blood on the floor inside,” he announced. “Some of that might be from gettin’ cut up by the broken glass. Guess he could have gone out the back.”
Smoke walked in front of the hotel toward the spot where the other man had lain in wait for him. As he passed the front window he saw the clerk looking goggle-eyed at him. Smoke gave the man a grim smile.
He fished out a match and lit it like the marshal had, then used the light from it to study the ground at the corner of the building. He saw a number of footprints in the dust, but dozens of people had walked along there during the day. The tracks were just a muddled mess. Smoke didn’t see any blood on the ground, so he assumed the hurried shot he’d sent in that direction had missed.
It seemed to have come close enough to make the bushwhacker take off for the tall and uncut, though.
Calhoun came over to Smoke and said, “I’d ask you if you knew who took those shots at you, West, but you’re such a troublesome gent it probably could have been anybody.”
“Or maybe it was Gus Harley and Earl Ballew,” Smoke snapped.
“Couldn’t have been. Those boys were with me just a little while ago when the shootin’ started.” Calhoun smirked in the light that came through the hotel’s big front window. “They were filin’ a report about how you assaulted them and tried to kill Mitch Thorn with a knife. I’d be justified in takin’ you in and lockin’ you up right now for attempted murder.”
“So
that’s how it is, is it?”
“Yeah.” Calhoun shifted the shotgun a little, and Smoke knew the marshal would use it if he gave the lawman an excuse. “That’s how it is.”
“Well, then,” Smoke said quietly, “you just go ahead and try to arrest me, Marshal.”
He was sick and tired of it. If he had to kill the corrupt badge-toter, so be it. Calhoun was just another of Garrard’s hired gunmen, and the badge on his vest didn’t change that. Maybe it did in the eyes of the law, but at the moment Smoke was too fed up to care about that.
After a few tense seconds, Calhoun said, “Those fellas ain’t said for sure yet if they want to press charges, so we’ll let it go for now. Might be a wise thing for you to get out of town while the gettin’s good.”
“Folks keep telling me that,” Smoke said, “and I keep on not paying any attention to it.”
Calhoun grunted. “Suit yourself. Whatever happens is on your head.”
“That’s fine with me,” Smoke said.
The marshal turned and stomped off down the street toward his office. Smoke watched him go, then turned to the hitch rail and jerked Seven’s reins loose. He swung up into the saddle and rode north. Anyone keeping an eye on him might think he was leaving town.
When he reached the outskirts of the settlement, he turned to look for the lamp that Robin Garrard had said she would light for him. Spotting a yellow glow in some trees, he headed for it and came up to a long, whitewashed building in a clearing. The door was open, letting the lamplight spill through it, and in its glow Smoke saw a large bell hung from an iron post. That would be the school bell, he thought with a faint smile. Robin would ring it every morning to summon her students to class.
He dismounted, wrapped the reins around the post, and went up the two steps to the open door. As he looked through it, he saw that two people were in the school at the moment, both of them standing by the desk at the front of the room. They were so engrossed in what they were doing they must not have heard him ride up, he thought.
They were in each other’s arms, mouths pressed together in a passionate kiss.
Smoke cleared his throat, and the couple broke the kiss and sprang apart guiltily. He got his first good look at Robin Garrard, who was in her early twenties and very pretty, with waves of red hair around her head and a dusting of freckles across her nose.
Smoke got a good look at the man who’d been kissing her, but it wasn’t the first time he had seen the hombre. Sandor/Little Bear stared at Smoke in surprise and said, “Buck! What are you doing here?”
Chapter 16
“Oh, Sandy,” Robin said. “I hadn’t had a chance to tell you yet.”
Smoke chuckled. “Sandy,” he repeated. “That’s a good name for you.”
The young man flushed a darker red than his usual coppery hue. “Tell me what?” he said to Robin.
“That Mr. West is going to stay here tonight, too,” she said.
“He is? Why?”
“Because he got in a big fight with Mitch Thorn and his cronies, and then my father threatened him. You can’t blame Mr. West for not wanting to stay at the hotel.”
“No, I suppose not,” Sandy said. He looked at Smoke and went on, “You had trouble with those three again?”
“Again?” Robin echoed.
Sandy nodded. “Buck here is the one who stepped in when Thorn and the others threw me out of Mr. Hammond’s store this afternoon. I thought there was going to be a gunfight then and there, but Thorn backed down.”
“That must have stuck in his craw,” Smoke said. “He and the other two caught up to me later on at the livery stable.”
“Father set all three of them on Mr. West,” Robin said, frowning in disapproval. “He told them to give him a good beating. But it was them who wound up taking the beating!”
Sandy looked like he had a hard time believing that, but Smoke was standing right there in front of him as proof. “You should be careful,” the young man said. “They will want to settle the score with you.”
“Reckon they already tried that,” Smoke said.
Robin’s hand went to her mouth as she gasped in alarm. “Those shots a little while ago! They tried to kill you!”
“I figure Harley and Ballew did, anyway. Thorn’s gun arm was hurt during that fight at the stable. I don’t think he could have even handled a rifle.”
“But you weren’t hurt?”
Smoke shook his head. “No. I’m pretty sure I winged one of the men who bushwhacked me outside the hotel and may have wounded the other one, too, but they both got away. Marshal Calhoun claims it couldn’t have been Harley and Ballew because they were with him when the shooting started, but I don’t think he’s telling the truth.”
“You’re right to feel that way,” Robin said. “He’s a terrible excuse for a lawman. He just does whatever my father tells him and lets Thorn and the others get away with doing anything they want.”
Sandy turned to Robin and put his hands on her shoulders. “You should come back east with me,” he told her. “This is no place for you, whether your father is here or not.”
His words obviously affected her. She looked emotionally torn as she said, “He’s all the family I have left, Sandy. I…I can’t just desert him. Anyway, if I left Buffalo Flat, who would teach the children?”
“The town could get another teacher! If you came with me, we wouldn’t have to hide the way we feel about each other.” Sandy shot a wary glance at Smoke. “You probably disapprove, too.”
“It’s none of my business one way or the other,” Smoke said with a shrug. “The best friend I ever had was an old mountain man who had plenty of Indian wives and a passel of kids by them. I don’t see anything wrong with it bein’ the other way around.”
“I don’t want a lot of Indian husbands.” Robin smiled. “Only one. A big family might be nice, though.”
“We can talk about that after I’ve gotten my education,” Sandy said stiffly. “I want to be able to provide properly for you.”
“I’d go and live in the Crow village with you, if that’s what you wanted. I’ve told you that.”
Sandy shook his head. “No, you deserve better than that.”
“What could be better than being with the man I love?”
A bitter taste rose in the back of Smoke’s throat. Seeing the two of them like that, so obviously in love, reminded him too much of the all-too-brief time he and Nicole had shared. They had barely even gotten to know their son when tragedy struck.
He hoped Sandy and Robin never had to go through something like that, but given the opposition bound to plague their marriage, they might have all sorts of trouble.
Smoke was a long way from being their guardian angel. They would have to work out their problems for themselves, like everybody else. The one thing he could do was see to it that Sandy didn’t get killed before he left Buffalo Flat for the east.
“Might be wise for the two of you not to do your courting in a well-lit room with an open door,” he advised. “You’d better blow that lamp out before you leave, Sandy.”
“I’m not leaving,” the young man replied. “Robin said I could stay here at the school until the stagecoach arrives day after tomorrow.”
Smoke looked at Robin and raised an eyebrow.
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. When I asked you to stay here, Mr. West, I didn’t think about the fact that I’d already promised the cot to Sandy.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Smoke told her with a wry smile. “You said there’s a shed out back?”
“That’s right.”
“Has it got any hay in it?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Then that’s where I’ll spread my bedroll. It’ll still be more comfortable than the hard ground.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“It’ll be fine,” Smoke told her. “I’ve slept in plenty worse places.”
“All right. I am sorry, though.” She turned to Sandy. “I have to go.
Father will be getting home soon, and he’ll wonder where I am. We don’t want him coming down here to look for me.”
“No, we don’t,” he agreed. He glanced at Smoke.
Trying not to chuckle, Smoke shifted his saddlebags on his shoulder and said, “I’ll take my horse and go on around back. Good night, you two.”
He went back out the front door of the school, pulling it closed behind him. As he led the Appaloosa toward the rear of the building, he said, “Looks like we’ll be bunkin’ together tonight, as usual, Seven. Far be it from me to stand in the way of young love.”
The first part of the night Smoke’s dreams were haunted by images of blood and death. Eventually he fell into a deep sleep, and if he dreamed any after that, he didn’t remember it when he awoke the next morning. As he stretched, he heard rustlings in the hay on which he had spread his blankets and knew the rats that had spent the night with him were scurrying back into their hidey-holes.
He would rather spend the nights with furry, long-tailed rats than human ones like Garrard, Thorn, Harley, and Ballew, he reflected as he sat up. At least the four-legged ones were honest about being vermin.
He hated to think of Robin’s father like that, since she seemed like a nice young woman, but facts were facts. Garrard had already seized a lot of power in the town and intended to have more before he was through. Smoke hadn’t forgotten Garrard’s comment about forcing Luther Hammond’s general store out of business. Once he’d succeeded in doing that, Garrard would move on to whatever struck his fancy next and try to close his iron fist around that as well. He would keep going until someone stood up to him and tried to stop him.
When that day came, Smoke wondered, would Garrard have Thorn and the other gunmen kill whoever opposed him? Smoke didn’t think it was beyond the realm of possibility.
He got to his feet. As was his habit, he had woken early. The sun wasn’t up yet, although the eastern sky was rosy with its approach. He saw a pump behind the school with a bucket hanging on its handle. It would feel good to dump a bucket of cold water over his head. Nothing like it to wake a fella up properly in the morning, he thought.
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