Smoke Jensen, the Beginning

by William W. Johnstone

  Janey shrugged. “You can tell him anythin’ you want. I won’t be here.”

  “What do you mean, you won’t be here?”

  “Paul’s been tryin’ to get me to run off with ’im. The only reason I ain’t done so before now is because of Ma. But what with she bein’ dead ’n all, I don’t see nothin’ to keep me here any longer.”

  “You can’t go, Janey. You’re my sister. With Ma gone, I need to look after you.”

  “Yeah, and you did such a good job of it, didn’t you?” Janey asked sarcastically.

  “I—” Kirby hung his head. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t do such a good job of it, did I?”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Like I said, there wasn’t nothin’ you coulda done, anyhow.”

  “But what will I tell Pa when he comes back and finds you’re gone?”

  “Tell him anything. Tell him I ran off with a peddler.”

  “Will you at least stay here till I get Ma buried?” Kirby asked.

  “Where you goin’ to bury her?”

  “Up on the hill, I reckon,” Kirby said, pointing. “She always liked it up there. She’d go up there to watch the sunsets.”

  “All right. You go dig her grave, and I’ll get her changed into her best dress. I wouldn’t want to see her buried in that old work dress.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Soon as she’s buried, I’m leavin’. I’d like you to drive me into town, but if you don’t, I’ll walk. ’Cause believe me, brother, I am leaving.”

  It took Kirby the better part of an hour to dig the grave, but he threw himself into the work to keep from being overwhelmed by grief. He tried to hold back the tears that welled up in his eyes. His father would not have cried. Kirby would not, either. Still, he could not get the horrific image out of his mind of his mother being slaughtered. The woman had given him life, had loved him and his brother and sister with all her heart.

  Halfway through the digging, Janey came up to stand beside him. She was still in a state of shock, Kirby knew.

  “I got her nice dress on her, but I was thinkin’ that if we don’t have a box to put her in, the dress will get all messed up when you start throwin’ the dirt back into the hole.”

  “I was thinkin’ about that as well, and I got it all figured out,” Kirby said.

  “What are you goin’ to do?”

  “The trough we put the hay in to feed the mules is big enough for her. I’ll put her in that, then I’ll find somethin’ to close off the top. It won’t be nothin’ fancy, but it’ll make a passable coffin.”

  Janey nodded. “Yes. Yes, it will. But, once we get Ma in it, how will we get it up here? I think it’ll be too heavy, even for the both of us to handle.”

  “Soon as I get her into it, I’ll hook Ange up to it and let him pull her uphill.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  Kirby saw tears in Janey’s eyes.

  Forty-five minutes later, the feeding-trough-cum-coffin, its top closed with a door from the tack room, had been dragged up the hill, lowered in the grave, and covered.

  “All right. Let’s go,” Janey said.

  Kirby raised a hand. “Hold on a moment. Don’t you think we ought to say a few words?”

  “What for? There ain’t neither one of us preachers.”

  “No, but she was our ma. Seems to me, the least we could do is say a few words over her grave.”

  ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Go ahead. Say somethin’.”

  Kirby took off the hat he’d been wearing to protect him from the sun and held it in front of him as he looked down at the grave. “You was a good ma. You done what you could with us, and I appreciate it, an’ loved you for it. I know that I didn’t tell you that I loved you as much as I should have, but I never was much for speakin’ a lot of words. I reckon I just thought that you always knew.

  “Listen, Ma. I ain’t goin’ to tell Pa how it is that you died. I mean, gettin’ killed ’n all. I don’t figure it’s somethin’ he needs to know right away. The time’s goin’ to come when you ’n him will be together again an’ I reckon if you want to, you can tell ’im then, how it was that you died.”

  Kirby quit speaking, and after a moment of silence, he glanced across the grave at Janey. Tears were rolling down her face.

  “You goin’ to say somethin’?”

  Janey nodded. “Ma, I don’t know as I’ll ever have any children. I know that I don’t want to . . . ’cause I could never be as good a ma as you was. I know I was always a big disappointment to you, and I reckon that while you’ll be lookin’ down on me, I’ll be even more of a disappointment. But, all I can say about that is that I’m sorry.” Janey grew quiet then.

  Kirby waited for a moment before he spoke again. “That was real good, Janey. I know Ma heard you.”

  “Will you take me into town now?”

  Kirby nodded. “Yeah, I’ll take you to town.”

  It was as if Janey had dropped off the face of the earth. Kirby never heard another word from her, and when he checked on Paul Garner, he learned that he was gone, too. He didn’t want to ask around town about his sister, figuring it was nobody else’s business that he had lost track of her.

  With his mother dead and his sister gone, Kirby was all alone. That didn’t actually bother him all that much. On the contrary, he learned to appreciate the solitude.

  As he was sitting out on the front porch one day, wondering if he should get a dog, he heard the sound of galloping horses. His first thought was to hide, but he decided not to. It was his farm, and he’d be damned if he would be run off his own property.

  Twelve mounted men followed a rider carrying a dark blue flag—the Kansas state flag. Kirby had seen it when the Jayhawkers killed his ma. The riders didn’t stop, but continued on at a full gallop.

  As it turned out, they were being pursued. No more than fifteen minutes later, another group came riding through, carrying a black flag with a blood red cross. Kirby knew they were part of Bloody Bill Anderson’s group.

  They stopped when they saw Kirby standing on his front porch. Three of the riders rode toward him. One was wearing a hat with a long, sweeping feather, one was in buckskins, and the third was a young rider who couldn’t have been more than a year older than Kirby.

  “Boy, did you see a bunch of riders comin’ this way?” Anderson asked.

  “Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes ago. Headin’ west, they were,” Kirby replied.

  “Jayhawkers?”

  “That’s what I figure.”

  “Where’s your pa?”

  “He’s away fightin’. Him ’n my brother.”

  “Which side is he fightin’ for?”

  “They’s fightin’ for the Gray. Same as you.”

  “What about your ma?”

  “She was killed by Angus Shardeen.”

  “You’re runnin’ this place all by yourself, are you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s quite a responsibility for a boy no older ’n you,” said the one in buckskins.

  Kirby stood tall. “I’m old enough.”

  Anderson chuckled. “He’s got you there, Gleason.”

  “I reckon he does, seein’ as he’s doin’ it. Tell me, boy, is it all right if we water our horses, here?”

  “Sure. Go right ahead.”

  Anderson and Gleason went back to water their horses, but the young man who had ridden up with him, hung back. He spoke for the first time. “What’s your name?”

  “Jensen. Kirby Jensen.”

  “You got a gun, Jensen?”

  “I got a shotgun.”

  “That ain’t good enough. You need a gun you can tote.” The young man had two pistols, one in a holster, and a second stuck down in his belt. He pulled the gun from his belt, and tossed it down to Kirby. Then, reaching into his pocket, he grabbed an extra cylinder and tossed it down to him, as well.

  “The gun and the cylinder are already loaded. When it comes time for you to have more ammunition, it takes
a .36 caliber. You think you can remember that?”

  Kirby held out the pistol to examine it. The initials JJ were carved into the handle.

  “I reckon I can remember that. You’re givin’ me this pistol, are you?”

  “I am.”

  “These initials, JJ. What do they stand for?”

  “They stand for my name. Jesse James.”

  “Dingus, get on back over here ’n get your horse watered. We ain’t goin’ to spend the night here,” another man called, only slightly older than Jesse.

  “Dingus?” Kirby asked.

  “That’s my brother, Frank. He took to callin’ me that when we was kids, and it sort of stuck.”

  With a nod of his head, Jesse James rode over to the nearby stream to water his horse.

  Kirby watched them ride off. He looked at the pistol for a moment longer, then he aimed it at a nearby tree and pulled the trigger. The pistol boomed, he felt the recoil, and he saw a chip of bark fly away. He had hit his target.

  When Janey left Missouri with Paul Garner, she thought she knew him. She found out quickly that she knew virtually nothing about him. The investments and the financial risks he spoke of were nothing but wagers. Paul Garner was a gambler . . . a card shark.

  “This”—he smiled a huge smile, holding up the two thousand dollars Janey had given him to invest—“is going to make us very rich.”

  “Not just us,” Janey replied. “As soon as we can, I want to replace that money. Kirby doesn’t know I took it. He doesn’t even know that I knew where he had hidden it.”

  She’d also expected Garner to marry her, but it hadn’t happened.

  “You’ll be a lot more valuable to me if we aren’t married,” Garner had said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, just think about it, Janey. If you are my wife, nobody is going to want to flirt with you. But if you aren’t married, why every drover, driver, clerk, and soldier will think you are fair game, and they’ll all believe they have a chance to crawl into bed with you. And that’s going to make us a lot of money.”

  “Paul! Are you telling me that you want me to be a prostitute for you?”

  “No, you don’t understand. You won’t have to lie with any man. In fact, I don’t want you to.” Garner had reached out to put his fingers on her cheek. “You’re my woman, and I don’t want to share you with anyone else. I just want you to make the others think you are available.”

  Garner gave her lessons on how to act as a distraction. She would wait for his signal and then, at an opportune time, approach a table, making certain that the player Garner had picked out would be paying more attention to her than to the game at hand.

  The dresses she wore were cut so low that they left little to the imagination and though she had made friends with some of the bar girls, she wasn’t one of them. At first, the other girls were a little resentful, but when they learned that she wasn’t in competition with them in any way, they actually welcomed her presence. Having one more, very seductively dressed girl in the saloon increased the business traffic for all of them. They also learned that she had her own reason for being there, dressed as she was.

  Neither Janey nor the others knew that Garner wasn’t using her just to prevent a man from playing his best game. He was using her as a diversion in order to allow him to cheat his mark. The best plans often went awry, however. Despite Janey’s most seductive attire and actions, the two thousand dollar poke they had was steadily diminishing.

  “I thought you said you could double the money!” Janey had cried, concerned at how fast the money was dwindling. “We’ve got less than a thousand dollars left! I have to get this money back. Don’t you understand? I stole it from my own father and brothers!”

  Garner had been unconcerned. “Relax. In any game of chance, you are going to have your ups and downs. The secret to success is not to panic. We’ll recover this sooner than you think. Then we can go on to make some real money.”

  At the moment, Janey was sitting at a table in the back of the Red Bull Saloon, playing a game of solitaire.

  A bar girl named Callie approached the table. “Janey, would you be a dear and take this beer to that man sitting by the piano? He just ordered it, but I have to go upstairs for a while.”

  “Sure, I’ll take it to him,” Janey replied. Folding up the deck of cards she took the beer to the man Callie had pointed out.

  “I was hoping you’d stop by to see me sometime,” the man said. “You aren’t like the other girls. You don’t seem to get around to all the men.”

  “I don’t work here,” Janey replied. “I just come here as a customer, the same as you.”

  “Really? Well that’s—”

  “You cheatin’ son of a—” someone shouted, followed by the sound of a gunshot.

  Janey looked toward the table where Garner was playing cards and saw him sitting in his chair with a pained expression on his face. His hands were clasped across his chest and blood was spilling through his fingers.

  “Paul!” she shouted, rushing across the room to him.

  “Where were you?” Garner asked accusingly. “I gave you the sign and you weren’t there. Now I’ve been—”

  He was unable to finish his sentence.

  Kirby bought several boxes of .36 caliber cartridges. He didn’t have a holster, so he carried the pistol Jesse James had given him stuck into his waistband. With no holster, he wasn’t able to practice drawing, but he was able to practice shooting. He quickly became exceptionally adept in the use of a pistol.

  He had always been good with a rifle and a shotgun, and had proven that skill as a hunter almost from the time he was five. However, he had no basis of comparison as far as shooting a pistol was concerned. He knew only that he was consistently hitting anything he shot at.

  Not long after an afternoon of target practice, he heard the approach of a group of riders, and quickly climbed up into the loft of the barn. He would stay out of sight, but if he was discovered and their intention was hostile, he was determined to shoot as many as he could before they got him.

  When he saw that they were carrying a Confederate flag, he called out to them, then climbed down.

  “Where is everyone else?” the leader of the group asked.

  “There ain’t nobody else.”

  “You’re here all alone?”

  “My ma was killed by Jayhawkers, my sister run away to I don’t know where, and my pa and brother are off fighting in the war.”

  “For which side?”

  Kirby pointed to the flag. “That’s the flag they’re fightin’ for.”

  The leader nodded. “If your ma was killed by Jayhawkers, that’s who I would expect them to be fighting for. The name is Asa Briggs.”

  Kirby nodded. “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Briggs, and I thought this might be you.”

  “I see you’ve got a pistol. What were you planning on doing with it?”

  “If you had been Jayhawkers, I figured to shoot as many as I could before you got me.”

  Briggs chuckled. “Did you now? Can you shoot?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How well can you shoot?”

  Kirby shrugged. “I don’t know. Pretty good, I reckon.”

  “You want to show me?”

  “All right.”

  Kirby picked up a pecan and handed it to him.

  “That’s a pretty small target. You sure you don’t want to pick something a little larger?”

  “No, this is big enough. Put it on that fence post over there.”

  “Boy, that’s got to be more ’n a hundred feet,” Briggs said. “You sure you don’t want it a little closer?”

  “No, put it there.”

  The other riders realized what was going on, and all conversation and watering stopped as they turned to watch the shooting demonstration.

  “I got a dollar says he misses,” someone said.

  When nobody took the bet, Briggs spoke up. “I’ll take the bet.” He put the peca
n on the post Kirby had pointed out to him.

  Kirby raised the pistol to eye level, aimed, and pulled the trigger. Pieces of the pecan flew off the post.

  The riders gasped and shouted in disbelief.

  “Damn,” Briggs said, a wide smile spreading across his face. “Damn! Who taught you to shoot? I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that.”

  “I just sort of taught myself,” Kirby said, pleased by the accolades.

  “Tell me, boy. Do you want to stay here and break dirt, and maybe get burned out again? Or would you like to go after Shardeen and take a little revenge?”

  “I can’t leave my mules.”

  “All right.”

  “But I’m pretty sure Mr. Byrd will look after them for me.”

  “Then grab your mules, and let’s go.”

  Paul Garner had been caught cheating, so every cent he had on him—five hundred and seventeen dollars—was divided evenly among all the men who had been playing with him at the time he was killed. That represented the rest of the money Janey had brought to their partnership, which meant she was left virtually penniless . . . except for Garner’s pearl stick pin and gold money clip, which she took.

  She was forced to leave Ft. Worth but had money enough to go only as far as Dallas.

  She tried for a little while to earn an honest living, working in a boardinghouse, but the treatment was brutal, and the pay was barely enough to keep body and soul together. Then one day she saw a woman driving a surrey. The woman was attractive, well dressed, and heavily made up. She didn’t recognize the woman, but she did recognize the woman’s profession.

  “They call her Chicago Sue,” explained one of the other women who worked at the boardinghouse. “They say she’s a”—in her early fifties, the speaker was clearly embarrassed by the subject of the conversation, and she lowered her voice before completing her sentence—“an immoral woman. But I think she is somebody that immoral girls work for. She’s very brazen, the way she promenades around town in her fancy dresses and her surrey. None of the other girls do that.”