She was, Smoke realized, an exceptionally pretty woman.
They stood for several long heartbeats, gazing at each other, neither of them speaking.
“What’s your name?” he finally asked.
“Nicole. Nicole Woodward. Are they . . . is everyone dead?”
“I’m afraid so.” Smoke knew the news was harsh, but he spoke as softly as he could, trying to break it to her gently.
Nicole put her face in her small hands and began crying. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any family to go back to. I don’t have anyone.”
Smoke put his arms around her and pulled her to him. He quickly became aware of two things—he felt intensely protective of her, and she felt soft and vulnerable in his arms. “Sure you do, Nicole. You have us.”
She pulled away after a long moment of being in his embrace and saw the deputy marshal’s star on his chest. “You’re a sheriff? Where were you? Why weren’t you here before? Why weren’t you here when we needed you?”
“I’m not a sheriff. I’m a deputy U.S. marshal. And believe me, Nicole, I would give anything to have been here earlier when you needed me.”
Preacher cleared his throat. “We best be gettin’ a move on.”
She shook her head at Smoke. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m just so . . . so—” She was unable to finish the sentence.
“I know,” Smoke said. “You don’t have to apologize. Come on. Let’s go back to the wagons and see what we can find for you.”
“Are they . . . I mean . . .” Nicole put her hands over her eyes. “I don’t want to see anyone.”
“You won’t,” Preacher promised. “We already buried ’em. Come on. Nothing to see now but burned wagons and scattered goods.”
Rummaging around in the debris, Smoke found a few garments, including a lace corset, which a red-faced Nicole quickly snatched from him. He also found a saddle that had suffered only minor damage. Everything else was lost.
“You can ride Seven,” Smoke said. “He’ll be gentle with you if I tell him. I’ll throw this saddle on one of our trade mounts.”
“Now, how you figure she’s gonna set that saddle?” Preacher demanded. “What with all them skirts and pretty thingees she’s more’n likely wearin’ underneath?”
“She won’t be wearin’ that. She found a pair of men’s trousers that belonged to her uncle. She can put them on and ride astride.”
“Ridin’ astride ain’t fittin’ for no decent woman to do. Nobody except a soiled dove would do that.”
“Well, Preacher, just what the hell do you suggest we do with her? Build a travois and drag her?” Smoke grumbled.
Preacher walked away muttering to himself as the girl came to Smoke’s side.
“I can sit a saddle. I rode as a child in Illinois.”
“Is that what you’re from?”
“No. I’m from Boston. My parents died when I was just a little girl, and I moved to Illinois to live with my uncle and aunt. What’s your name?”
“Smoke.” He jerked his thumb. “That’s Preacher. Don’t pay him any never-mind. He always talks gruff, but he doesn’t really mean it.”
“I already had that figured out.” She smiled.
Smoke swallowed. She was beautiful.
“Your name is Smoke?”
“That’s what I’m called.”
“At the trading post, we heard talk of a gunfighter called Smoke. Is that you?”
“I guess so.”
“They say you killed fifty men.” There was no fear in her eyes as she said it.
Smoke laughed. “I reckon I’ve killed more than my share, but I don’t think I’ve killed fifty. And the ones I did kill were all trying to kill me. They were fair fights.”
“You’ve had a lot of people try to kill you?”
“Yes.”
“You must piss a lot of people off.”
The answer was so unexpected that Smoke laughed out loud. He laughed so hard that his sides began to ache.
“What in Sam Hill is so damn funny?” Preacher asked, coming back to them.
“Nothing,” Smoke said, still laughing. “There’s nothing funny at all.”
“Well?” Nicole asked, innocently unaware of how funny her response had been. “Do you?”
“I seem to have a habit of running into people who are doing things they shouldn’t be doing, especially since I’ve put on this badge.” Smoke indicated the star on his shirt. “People like that do tend to get angry with me, and then they try to shoot me. I’ve been fortunate enough to be faster and more accurate than them.”
“You don’t look like a gunfighter.”
Smoke frowned. “I don’t?”
“No, not at all.”
“What does a gunfighter look like?”
“Mean and menacing, like this.” Nicole squinted her eyes, and turned the corner of her lips down, trying to snarl, but she couldn’t hold it and broke into a laugh.
She was joined by Smoke.
“I swear, the way you two is carryin’ on is like a couple o’ schoolkids,” Preacher said. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I don’t expect the Injuns to come back, but I got no desire to test that thought out, neither.”
CHAPTER 18
“Now that you found her, what do you aim to do with her?” Preacher asked later, when he and Smoke were alone for the moment beside their campfire.
Nicole was nearby in the bushes tending to personal business, close enough to sing out if anything—or anybody—bothered her.
“Well, I thought maybe we’d take her back to the cabin after we deliver these horses,” Smoke said.
Preacher shook his head. “That cabin ain’t fittin’ for no woman, and you know it.”
“Well then, what do you propose?”
“I think we should build a cabin for the two of you,” Preacher said.
Smoke looked startled. “The two of us?”
“Yeah, the two of you. You don’t plan on just leavin’ her in a cabin all by her lonesome, do you?”
“No, but—”
“Don’t get yourself all in a fret. I’ll help you build the cabin, and I’ll stay there with the both of you till things gets comfortable betwixt the two of you.”
“What do you mean by get comfortable?”
“Boy, here I think I’ve larnt you near ’bout all I can larn you, and the next thing I know you up and say somethin’ so damn foolish I figure I ain’t larnt you near ’bout nothin’ at all.”
“What about the horses?” Smoke asked.
“What about ’em? We won’t sell ’em just yet. They’re all yourn now. You’ll need somethin’ to get your ranch started, won’t you?”
Gradually, Smoke began to realize what Preacher was saying to him. “Yeah,” he mused. “Yeah, I reckon I will.”
“Well, then let’s get started and find a good place. You’ll want the cabin all built up and chinked in, and a goodly supply of wood afore the winter sets in. And that ain’t goin’ to be too much longer.”
High in the mountains, Colorado Territory
The house they built was of adobe and logs and rocks, with rough planking and sod for a roof. Smoke wouldn’t settle for a dirt floor. He carefully smoothed and shaped logs, which had to be dragged from the forest. Nicole joined in with the construction and proved to be a very good worker.
The work was hard and backbreaking, but no one complained except for Preacher, who crabbed all the time about almost everything, just on general principles. Neither Smoke nor Nicole paid any attention to him, knowing it was his way and he was not going to change.
Nicole never spoke of leaving, and Smoke never brought it up.
Preacher just grinned at them both.
They finished the house just before the first snowfall, then Smoke and Preacher spent some time hunting for food and carving and curing the meat for the harsh winter ahead of them. It had been too late to start a garden, but they found some cattail, wild asparagus, dandelion, fireweed, and edible mushroo
ms to augment the meat.
With the house up and food to last the winter, Preacher saddled his horse one morning and readied the packhorse. “I’m headin’ east,” he told them. “Over to the Springs, maybe. Maybe beyond. I’ll prob’ly winter in the mountains with some old cronies that’s still up there, so more’n likely I won’t be back until spring. See you younguns then.”
He rode off, well aware that he was leaving a young man and a young woman alone together in a snug cabin during a long, cold winter. He had decided the young folks needed some time to themselves and was giving it to them.
Nicole touched Smoke’s arm. “When will he be back?”
“When he feels like it. With Preacher, there’s just no telling.”
“Why did he leave like that? Without even a fare-thee-well?”
“Lots of reasons. He knows he doesn’t have that many winters left, and he wants to be alone some. That’s the way he’s lived all his life. And he wants us to have some time alone together.”
Nicole smiled self-consciously at Smoke. “Doesn’t he know that we’ve found the time to be . . . alone?”
Smoke put his hand under her chin and tipped her face up toward him, raising her lips to his. “I reckon he knows,” he mumbled as he closed the distance between them with a kiss.
Spring 1872
One day, Nicole told Smoke that they needed to talk.
Smoke chuckled. “What do you mean, we need to talk? We talk all the time.”
“We don’t just talk all the time,” Nicole said with a twinkle in her eye. “And that’s what we have to talk about.”
“I swear, Nicole, you aren’t making any sense at all.”
“We’ve got to get married, Smoke.”
Smoke chuckled. “You don’t have to propose to me, Nicole. I’ve already proposed to you, remember? We’re going to be married as soon as Preacher comes back, don’t you remember?”
“We can’t wait.”
“What?”
Nicole smiled at him. “We can’t wait, Papa.”
“Papa?”
“Smoke, are you that thickheaded? What I’m saying is, I’m going to have a baby. No, we are going to have a baby.”
Smoke sat stunned in one of the chairs at the roughhewn table. “Nicole, you can’t have a baby! Don’t you know we’re better than a hundred miles from the nearest doctor?”
Nicole laughed again. “Darling, you can’t just say I can’t have a baby as if I can change my mind. It’s already started. We’re going to have a baby, but don’t worry about a doctor. I went to nursing school, and believe me, the baby is going to get here, with or without a doctor. All I want is for us to be married. I want the baby to have a legal name.”
“Preacher told me there was a little settlement of Mormons a ways west of here over in Utah territory. We can probably find someone to marry us there. But it will be nearly a week there and a week back. Can you stand the ride?”
She smiled and kissed him.”You just watch.”
* * *
On the eighth day of their travel, Smoke figured they were in Utah territory, probably had been all day. The settlement of Mormons should be in sight. But all they found were rotting, tumbledown cabins, and no signs of life.
“Preacher said they were here in fifty-five,” Smoke said. “I wonder where they went?”
Nicole’s laughter rang out over the deserted collection of falling down cabins. “Honey, that was almost twenty years ago.” Her eyes swept the land, spotting an old graveyard overgrown with weeds. “Let’s look over there.”
They examined all the rotting markers, and the latest date they could find was fourteen years old.
“There is no preacher, and I don’t have any idea where one might be from here,” Nicole said, obviously disappointed.
“We’re going to be married today, Nicole,” Smoke declared, “preacher or no preacher.”
“How?”
“I’ll show you.”
Smoke built a fire and spent an hour heating and hammering a nail into a perfect circle. When it was cooled, he slipped it on her third finger, left hand. “Before God, I take you, Nicole Woodward, as my wife.”
Nicole looked into his eyes. “Before God, I take you, Smoke Jensen, as my husband.”
Smoke kissed her then smiled. “Now let me ask you something. Would you feel any more married if a preacher that neither of us had ever met had married us?”
Nicole smiled. “Not at all. As far as I’m concerned, we are married. Come on, husband, let’s go home.”
Smoke’s cabin
Preacher was sitting on the rough bench in front of their cabin when Smoke and his new bride rode into the yard. He was spitting tobacco juice and whittling on a piece of wood. “Howdy.” He greeted them as if he had been gone only a day instead of months. “Where you two been?”
“What do you mean where have we been?” Smoke replied. “You’re the one that rode off. Where have you been?”
“I’ve been around,” Preacher replied as if that was all the answer that was needed. “I told you I’d be back, come spring.”
“We got married,” Nicole said proudly, showing him her ring.
“You with child, girl?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I figured if I left you two alone, you’d get into mischief.”
Nicole grinned. “I’ll go fix supper.” She left the two men alone.
When she had closed the door to the cabin, Preacher turned to Smoke. “You can’t be going looking for those men anymore, boy. You’re married now, and you’ve got responsibilities to that woman who is carrying your child.”
“If they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone.”
“It ain’t goin’ to work that way, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I figure they already know that you’ve been after ’em, and more ’n likely they found some people who will come after you. They’ll be payin’ them to do it, bounty hunters mostly, because a damn bounty hunter don’t really care who he’s after as long as he gets his blood money.”
“I’m through with all that now, Preacher. I’m hanging up my guns. I want to raise horses, maybe run some cattle. You, me, and Nicole.We’re going to raise a family and our children will need a grandfather. That’s where you come in, you old goat.”
“Much obliged. Reckon that’s the nicest thing you said to me in months.”
“I haven’t seen you in months,” Smoke pointed out, but Preacher’s grin told him the old mountain man already knew that.
Preacher grew solemn again as he asked, “When is the girl gonna give birth?”
“November, she thinks.”
“Just like a woman. Don’t never know nothin’ for sure.”
* * *
The summer passed uneventfully with Smoke tending to their large garden and looking after his growing herd of horses. He also hunted for game, curing some of the meat, making pemmican out of the rest. Nicole had sent him down to Schemerhorn’s to get canning jars, and soon she had canned enough beans, corn, okra, tomatoes, and beets to last them through the winter.
The baby was born just after the first snow, and Smoke enjoyed sitting in front of the fireplace in one of the two rocking chairs he had made, warm and content as he watched Nicole nurse little Art.
“What do you mean you named him after me?” Preacher asked. “You mean you’re gonna call him Preacher?”
Smoke and Nicole laughed.
“No, we’re naming him Arthur and we’re going to call him Art. That is your name, isn’t it?” Smoke asked.
Preacher frowned. “Oh. Yeah, I guess you’re right. My name is Art, only I ain’t been called that by nobody in so long I sometimes near ’bout forget. Seems to me like I been called Preacher near ’bout my whole life.”
PSR Ranch, office, Spring 1873
Richards, Stratton, and Potter sat in chairs surrounded by killers. Felter, Poker, and Canning were on the sofa. Stoner and Evans had each found a hard-bottom, straight-bac
k chair, while Clark, Grissom, and Austin were sitting on the fireplace hearth.
“We’ll give you eight thousand dollars,” Richards said. “There are eight of you, so that works out to a thousand dollars apiece.”
“You’re givin’ the eight of us a thousand dollars apiece, to kill one man?” Felter asked.
“Yeah, well, he’s not just any man, and I want to be sure the job is done,” Richards said. “I’ve been followin’ him for some time now. I don’t know how the hell he ever found out that we was the ones that kilt his ol’ man, but he ain’t let up since then. Word has reached me that he’s askin’ ever’where about us. If he keeps at it long enough, he’s goin’ to find out where we are.”
“There are three of you,” Felter said. “Are you saying that one man is better than all three of you put together?”
“No, I’m not saying that,” Richards replied. “But there’s somethin’ you’ve got to understand. Muley, Wiley, and I are important people in this town. Hell, we are important people all over the West now. It wouldn’t do for us to get involved in some shooting scrape with Smoke Jensen. Even if we killed him, and I’m sure we would, it wouldn’t look good for us. That’s why we’re hiring the eight of you to do it. Eight of you to kill one man. It shouldn’t be that hard.”
“Do you know where he is?” Felter asked.
Richards smiled. “I know exactly where he is. He’s down in Colorado, livin’ with some woman he found out on the trail. Word is that she’s whelped by now, and that should give you men an edge. Not that you would need one.”
“A thousand dollars apiece?” Felter said.
“That’s a lot of money. I expect you to produce.”
“We want half of it now,” Felter said.
“I figured you would. Before my woman went into town, I had her write out eight bank drafts. You can cash them at the bank in Bury before you leave.”
Richards nodded at Stratton, who walked over to the desk and picked them up from where Janey had left them.
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