“Courage has nothing to do with it,” Smoke told him. “But time is of the essence.”
He pulled the triggers on the express gun, and the foreman’s earthly cares and woes were a thing of the past.
Smoke walked up the alley to stand in the cool shadows, looking out into the street.
In the saloon, Luttie looked at Lee. “It’s been a good, long run, Lee. Now it’s over.”
Lee swore. “It may be over for you, but it ain’t over for me. I’m gonna kill that damn Jensen oncest and forever.”
“I wish you luck,” his brother said, lifting a shot glass in salute.
Lee walked out the back of the saloon.
“You’re a fool, brother. But then, I’ve always known that.” Luttie drank his whiskey and turned around, his back to the bar, facing the batwings.
Smoke heard the hammer cocking behind him and dropped to his knees in the alley just as the slug hammered the pine boards above his head. Smoke leveled the shotgun, and gave Curly a gut-full of buckshot. Curly’s boots flew out from under him, and he smashed down to earth, lying on his back; the charge had nearly cut him in two.
Smoke was out of shotgun shells. He laid the Greener down and pulled his Colts, jacking the hammers back. He scanned the street for trouble. He couldn’t see it, but knew it was there, waiting for him.
Smoke eased back down the alley, a .44 in both hands. He was facing south, the sun just beginning its dip toward the west. A thin shadow fell across the end of the alleyway. Smoke paused, pressing against the outside wall of the building.
“You see him, Milt?” someone called in a hoarse, softly accented whisper.
“Naw,” the voice came from just around the corner, back of the building, belonging to the shadow that was still evident on the weedy ground.
Milt stepped out and Smoke drilled him, the slug snapping his head back as it hit him in the forehead.
Smoke hit the ground and rolled under the building.
Pedro jumped out, a puzzled look on his face. Smoke shot him twice in the belly, and the puzzled look was replaced by one of intense pain. The outlaw fell to his knees, both .45s going off, blowing up dirt and dust and rocks. He cursed for a moment, then fell over, still alive, but for how long was something that only God could answer.
Dan Diamond and One-Eye were walking boldly down the boardwalk, toward the sounds of shooting when Cotton stepped out of a doorway and faced them.
“I told you it’d be someday, One-Eye,” Cotton said. “Why not now?” He jerked iron and shot the manhunter in the belly.
Dan fired just as Cotton stepped to one side, the slug knocking a chunk out of the building. He missed but Cotton didn’t. Dan folded and sat down heavily on the boardwalk for a moment. He looked up at Cotton.
“Is Pickens really your last name?”
“That it is.”
“Cotton Pickens,” Dan said, then died with a smile on his lips.
Smoke was standing in the alley when the manhunters Davy and Val rode out. He nodded at them and they nodded at him and then were gone. Smoke let them go. They just came after the wrong man, that’s all.
Smoke stepped out and walked up the steps to the boardwalk. The town was eerily quiet. Most of the citizens were either inside looking out of windows, or had locked themselves behind doors. The reporters and photographers were the only ones other than the combatants on the street, crouching behind horsetroughs and peeking out of open alleyways. Smoke had always figured that reporters didn’t have a lick of sense.
A man stepped out of the shadows. Lee Slater. His hands were wrapped around the butts of Colts, as were Smoke’s hands. “I’m gonna kill you, Jensen!” he screamed.
A rifle barked, the slug striking Lee in the middle of his back and exiting out the front. The outlaw gang leader lay dead on the hot dusty street.
Sally Jensen stepped back into Louis’ gambling hall and jacked another round into her carbine.
Smoke smiled at her and walked on down the boardwalk.
“Looking for me, amigo?” Al Martine spoke from the shadows of a doorway. His guns were in leather.
“Not really. Ride on, Al.”
“Why would you make such an offer to me? I am an outlaw, a killer. I hunted you in the mountains.”
“You have a family, Al?”
“Si. A father and mother, brothers and sister, all down in Mexico.”
“Why don’t you go pay them a visit? Hang up your guns for a time.”
The Mexican smiled and finished rolling a cigarette. He lit it and held it to Smoke’s lips.
“Thanks, Al.”
“Thank you, Smoke. I shall be in Chihuahua. If you ever need me, send word, everybody knows where to find me. I will come very quickly.”
“I might do that.”
“Adios, compadre.” Al stepped off the boardwalk and was gone.
Smoke finished the cigarette, grateful for the lift the tobacco gave him. His eyes never stopped moving, scanning the buildings, the alleyways, the street.
He caught movement on the second floor of the saloon, the hotel part. Sunlight off a rifle barrel. He lifted a .44 and triggered off two fast rounds. The rifle dropped to the awning, a man following it out. Zack fell through the awning and crashed to the boardwalk. He did not move.
Rich Coleman and Frankie stepped out of the saloon, throwing lead, and Smoke dived for the protection of a water trough.
“I got him!” Frankie yelled.
Smoke rose to one knee and changed Frankie’s whole outlook on life – what remained of it.
Rich turned to run back into the saloon, and Smoke fired, the slug hitting him in the shoulder and knocking him through the batwings. He got to his boots and staggered back out, lifting a .45 and drilling a hole in the water trough as he screamed curses at Smoke.
Smoke finished it with one shot. Rich staggered forward, grabbing anything he could for support. He died with his arms around an awning post.
The thunder of hooves cut the afternoon air. Sheriff Silva and a huge posse rode up in a cloud of dust.
“That’s it, Smoke,” the sheriff announced. “It’s over. You’re a free man, and all these other yahoos are gonna be behind bars.”
“Suits me,” Smoke said, and holstered his guns.
Luttie Charles stepped out of the saloon, a gun in each hand, and shot the sheriff out of the saddle. The possemen filled Luttie so full of lead the undertaker had to hire another man to help tote the casket.
“Damnit!” Sheriff Silva said, getting to his boots. “I been shot twice in my life and both times in the same damn arm!”
“No, it ain’t over!” the scream came from up the street.
Everybody looked. Pecos stood there, his hands over the butts of his fancy engraved .45s.
“Oh, crap!” Smoke said.
“Don’t do it, kid!” Carbone called from the boardwalk. “It’s over. He’ll kill you, boy.”
“Hell with you, you greasy son of a bitch!” Pecos yelled.
Carbone stiffened. Cut his eyes to Smoke.
“Man sure shouldn’t have to take a cut like that, Carbone,” Smoke told him.
Carbone stepped out into the street, his big silver spurs jingling. “Kid, you can insult me all day. But you cannot insult my mother.”
Pecos laughed and told him what he thought about Carbone’s sister, too.
Carbone shot him before the kid could even clear leather. The Pecos Kid died in the dusty street of a town that would be gone in ten years. He was buried in an unmarked grave.
“If you hurry, Carbone,” Smoke called, “I think you could catch up with Martine. Me and him smoked a cigarette together a few minutes ago, and he told me he was going back to Chihuahua to visit his folks.”
Carbone grinned and saluted Smoke. A minute later he was riding out of town, heading south.
Chapter Twenty-three
Smoke soaked in a hot tub of water for a hour before he would let the doctor tend to his wounds.
“You’re a
lucky man,” the doctor told him, after shaking his head in amazement at the old bullet scars that dotted Smoke’s body. “That side wound could have killed you.”
“What happened to John Seale and the others?” Smoke asked the sheriff, who was lying on the other table in the makeshift operating room.
“I gave them an option: a ride or a rope. They chose to take a ride. What are you going to do about all those reporters gathered outside like a gaggle of geese?”
“What I’ve always done. Ignore them.”
“You plan on staying around here for any length of time?”
“Two days and I’m gone.”
“Good. Maybe then this county will settle down.”
“You can’t ride in two days!” the doctor protested.
“Watch me,” Smoke told him.
* * *
Two days later, Smoke and Sally rode out with Johnny North. Smoke on Buck, Sally on the blue steele stallion.
Charlie Starr stood with Lilly and Earl and Louis on the boardwalk and watched them leave. Cotton and Mills and Larry stood with them.
“That’s a hell of a man there,” Larry said, looking at Smoke Jensen.
Louis smiled. “The last mountain man.”
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 1991 by William W Johnstone
ISBN: 978-0-7860-3694-3
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