This Violent Land

by William W. Johnstone

  * * *

  On the morning of his third day out, Smoke began to have a prickly awareness of something being wrong. A feeling of dread was building up within him, and some primitive warning called on him to cut the roundup short. He left the cow, the steer, and the horses, which for the last two days had been so important to him, and headed for home, pushing Seven as fast as he dared.

  As he came closer to the cabin he made a wide circle, staying in the timber on the opposite side of the creek that ran behind the house. If anyone was there who shouldn’t be, he could slip up on them, unseen.

  If Smoke had come one day earlier, he might have been able to save his wife, but he was too late.

  Nicole was dead.

  He ground tethered Seven. Taking the big Sharps buffalo rifle that Preacher had carried for years, Smoke crept closer. Seeing no one, he cautiously made his way to the woodpile.

  Inside the cabin, the brutality that was still going on made Kid Austin sick to his stomach. He raced out the back door, stopping quickly and turning left to puke on the ground.

  At least one, Smoke thought as he turned quietly around the back corner of the cabin.

  Grissom walked out the front door of the cabin, sure Smoke would return from the south—the same direction his tracks had indicated when the gunmen first arrived. And why not? He had no reason to suspect that anything was amiss.

  But even as Grissom stood there in the front doorway, he began to feel a little uneasy. His years on the owlhoot trail told him that something was wrong. “Felter?” he called over his shoulder.

  Felter was rolling a quirly and stepped outside. “Yeah?”

  “I got me a feelin’ there’s somethin’ here that ain’t quite right.”

  “Yeah. I got me that feelin’, too. But what is it?”

  “I don’t know, but I do have this feelin’.”

  Felter stepped back into the house and looked at the dead woman lying on a blood-soaked bed. He wished she wasn’t dead. He had enjoyed his times with her, and if they hadn’t killed her, he could be with her again.

  Grissom’s feeling that something was wrong intensified, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. He started to call out for Felter again, when he sensed a movement behind him. Even as he was turning, he reached for his pistol and saw the tall young man standing at the corner of the cabin, Colt in hand.

  The young man fired, and Grissom felt a numbing blow in his chest. Hearing the pistol shot, Felter ran from the cabin, firing at the corner.

  But Smoke was gone.

  “Behind the house!” Felter yelled. Gun in hand, he ducked behind the water trough.

  Smoke dived behind the woodpile.

  In the outhouse, Poker made the foolish mistake of opening the door to see what was going on. Smoke shot him twice, leaving him to die on the outhouse floor.

  Still leaning against the back of the cabin, Kid Austin, who had insisted many times over that he wanted to face Smoke down, ran for the banks of the creek, panic driving his legs. Smoke shot at him, the ball hitting him in the right buttock and traveling through the left cheek, tearing out a sizable hunk of flesh. Austin screamed, then fainted from the pain, falling into a rolling sprawl.

  The men in the cabin were firing wildly in all directions.

  “Where the hell is he?” Evans shouted.

  “I don’t know!” Canning cried.

  “Well, keep looking!” Clark ordered.

  The shooting stopped, and moments ticked by in silence. Smoke wiped the sweat from his face and waited, knowing without having to be told that Nicole was dead. He also knew that, for the moment, he had the advantage.

  Something came sailing out the back door to bounce on the grass, and when he saw it, he fought back the urge to vomit from pure anger. It was the body of his son, and the boy had been dead for some time.

  “You want to see what’s left of your woman?” Canning called from near the back door. “I got her hair hangin’ on my belt. If you’d like, I’ll throw it out to you, just so’s you can have a keepsake.

  “I’ll tell you this! She sure was a good one all right, near ’bout the best I ever had. We all took a time or two with her. And you know what? I think she liked it. No, I don’t just think she liked, I know she liked it. Why do you think that was, Jensen? You think maybe that was because you wasn’t man enough for her? You wasn’t able to take care of her like a man should?”

  Rage charged through Smoke, but he remained still behind the thick pile of wood, forcing himself to control his fury. It wasn’t by happenstance that when he left the corner of the house he had taken shelter behind the woodpile. Before the shooting started, he’d left Preacher’s buffalo rifle behind the woodpile. It could drop a two-thousand-pound buffalo from six hundred yards away. It could also punch a hole through a small log.

  The voices from the cabin continued to call out, mocking him, trying to draw him out. But Smoke remained quiet, refusing to give in to the urge to hurl curses at them. He looked around. To his right was the meadow, which was totally devoid of cover. To his left was the shed. He knew it was empty of men because it was still barred from the outside. The man he shot in the butt was to his right, and the man in the outhouse was either dead or passed out and dying, because his screaming had ceased.

  Smoke aimed the Sharps at a chink in the log wall where he thought he had seen a man move, just to the left of the rear window. He squeezed the trigger and the weapon boomed, the planking shattered, and a man began screaming in pain.

  Canning ran out the front door of the cabin, sliding down beside Felter behind the water trough.

  “This ain’t working out,” Canning panted. “Grissom, Stoner, and Poker are dead, Clark is wounded, and Evans is either dead or dying. The slug from that buffalo gun ’bout blew his arm off.”

  Felter had been thinking the same thing. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “What about Austin?” Canning asked.

  “Austin is a growed man. He can either join us or he can go to hell.”

  “Let’s ride. There’s always another day. We’ll hide up in the mountains, see which way Jensen runs out, then bushwhack him. Let’s go.”

  The two men rushed for the horses hidden in the bend of the creek, behind the bank. They kept the cabin between themselves and Smoke until they were deep in the meadow and could belly down without him seeing them.

  In the creek, the water red from the wounds in his butt, Kid Austin crawled upstream, crying in pain and humiliation. His pistols were forgotten, but they were useless anyway. The powder was wet. All he wanted to do was get away.

  Left in the house, the two wounded men looked at each other.

  “Help me,” Evans said, his voice weak. “Help me get out of here.”

  Clarke frowned. “What for? You’re hit a lot worse than me. You’ll more’n likely be dead soon. Besides, I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I plan to kill Jensen and take the rest of the reward money for my ownself.”

  Outside and some distance from the cabin, Kid Austin finally managed to reach his horse hidden in the woods. Looking around, he realized that Smoke had not seen him.

  He was getting away!

  He stepped into the stirrups, hoisted himself in the saddle, and cried out in pain as his wound hit the saddle.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Looks like me and you’s the only ones left now,” Clark said, looking over at Evans.

  The man was dead, having bled to death from the wound inflicted by the buffalo gun.

  “I guess it’s just me,” Clark corrected with a pained chuckle of grim humor. “Hey, Jensen! What if I was to come outta here with my hands up in the air? Could maybe me and you just call this fight off, and go our own ways? I ain’t after you no more. It ain’t worth it.”

  Smoke didn’t answer.

  “Jensen, what do you say? How ’bout I give myself up? We could just shake hands, and have us a truce between us.”

  When there was still no answer, Clark realized he wasn’t go
ing to get far with that tactic. Angry, and knowing that he had lost the battle, he changed tactics, and began venting his hate and anger. “Hey, Jensen. Your wife don’t look so good now. Not after one of our boys got through workin’ her over with his knife!”

  Clark’s taunts had replaced the gunfire. Smoke had seen the others ride off but he remained still, his eyes burning with rage as he stared at the still form of his son.

  “Yes, sir,” Clark goaded him. “Me and the others had our way with that woman of yours. She was real good at it, too. Where at did you find her, anyhow? Did she used to work in one of them special kinda houses somewhere? ’Cause let me tell you, she sure knowed how to please a man.”

  Without replying, Smoke backed slowly away, keeping the woodpile in front of him. Carefully working his way around to the front, he looked in through the open door and grinned.

  Clark was crouched in the back doorway, looking out. He held a pistol in his hand. The outlaw was still talking to the woodpile, to the muzzle of the Sharps that Smoke had left sticking out between the logs.

  Smoke could have killed him easily, but that wasn’t his intention. He took aim and shot the pistol out of Clark’s hand.

  The outlaw howled in pain and grabbed his numbed and bloodied hand as he fell to his knees. Smoke stepped over Grissom’s body, then glanced at Evans.

  Still on his knees, Clark looked up at the tall young man staring down at him with burning eyes. “You’ve near ’bout kilt us all. We was give a thousand dollars apiece to kill you, and it warn’t worth it.”

  “Who paid you to kill me?”

  “What makes you think I’m goin’ to tell you that?”

  “Actually, you don’t have to tell me. I know who it was. It was Potter, Stratton, and Richards.”

  “Then what for did you ask? And if you know that, then you also got to know that if we didn’t get the job done, they’ll just hire more people. You’re a dead man, Jensen.” Clark cackled a demonic laugh. “You’re a dead man.”

  “So are you.” Smoke kicked Clark in the side of the head, dropping him unconscious to the floor.

  When Clark came to his senses several minutes later, it took him a moment to figure out where he was and what had happened to him. He was no longer in the cabin. He was outside lying on the ground a couple hundred yards away, spread-eagled and staked to the ground. He was also naked and could feel the irritation of something crawling on him. “What the hell? Where am I? What’s going on here?”

  “You’ll figure it out, soon enough.” Smoke began pouring something on Clark’s naked body.

  “What is that? What are you doing?”

  “This is honey. And as you can see, I’m pouring it on you.”

  “What? Are you crazy? Why would you do that?”

  “Turn your head and look beside you,” Smoke said.

  “What?” Clark turned his head and saw a huge mound of ants.

  “No! My God, no! Jensen, you can’t do that! I’m a white man,” Clark screamed. “You can’t do this to me.” Slobber sprayed from his mouth. “What are you, half Apache? How can you do something like this to a white man? Shoot me, Jensen. God have pity on me. Just shoot me!”

  Smoke glared. “Do you really think God could possibly have any pity on you after what you and the others did to my wife and my son? Not even God could, and I’m sure not Him.”

  “It warn’t only me! Please, Jensen, I beg of you! Shoot me! Shoot me now!”

  “No. You need time to think about what you did. This will give you an opportunity to make your peace.” Smoke mounted his horse and rode away with Clark’s terror-filled screams behind him.

  “Shoot me, For God’s sake, shoot me!” Clark pleaded. “It’ll take me days to die like this. You’re a devil, Jensen! You are a devil!”

  Smoke blocked the screaming from his mind as he rode back to the cabin across the plain, so lovely with its profusion of wildflowers. Nicole had loved the wildflowers and often picked a bouquet of them to brighten the table for their meals.

  Once he returned to the cabin, he went through the pockets of the four dead outlaws and Clark, the effort garnering him almost twenty-five hundred dollars. He dragged the bodies of Stoner, Grissom, and Poker into the cabin and left them lying in the middle of the floor beside Evans.

  Smoke found a shovel and began a slow digging of two graves, one smaller than the other. He wasn’t worried about whoever had gotten away. His horse would warn him if anyone was approaching. He paused often to wipe the tears from his eyes.

  When Nicole and the baby were buried, Smoke took off his hat and stood alongside the graves, remembering having stood beside the graves of his ma and his pa. He thought of them.

  “Ma, Pa. This is your daughter-in-law and your grandson. I didn’t do any better keepin’ them alive than I did with you two. I want you to look after ’em when they get there, though most likely you’ve already met them.”

  His words spoken, Smoke began dousing the cabin with kerosene. The entire structure was enveloped in flames as he rode away.

  But no blaze could ever burn out the hatred in his heart.

  * * *

  “Felter, we got to go back for ’im,” Canning said as he and his companions watched from a distance. They could hear Clark’s faint, weakening screams. “We can’t just leave ’im staked out like that.”

  “You really want to go back there and face Jensen? It would be bad enough facin’ ’im any which way, but after what you done to his woman . . .”

  “Here now, don’t you be puttin’ all that off on me. You had your turn with her just like ever’one else did,” Canning said.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t cut her up like you did,” Felter said.

  “She was already dead when I done that, and you know it.”

  “You want to go down there and explain that to Jensen?”

  “No.” Canning shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

  “Then leave Clark ascreamin’. We all took the same chance in comin’.”

  “I’m hurtin’,” Kid Austin whined. “I’m hurtin’ bad. You got to get me to a doctor.”

  “Tighten the cinch on your horse, Kid,” Felter said. “If your saddle don’t move so much, it won’t hurt you as much.”

  Austin turned his back to Felter and started to adjust the cinch.

  Felter stepped up behind him, put his hand around Kid Austin’s head, and drew his knife blade across the Kid’s neck.

  Austin collapsed, bleeding profusely and making a gurgling sound.

  “What did you do that for?” Canning cried, shocked by what he had just seen.

  “We have to ride, Canning. He woulda just slowed us down. Get his money. He won’t be needin’ it no more. I wish we had got the money from Stoner and the others.”

  After a ride of some twenty miles, Felter and Canning wound up in a miners’ camp—one long street with tents and roofed shacks on both sides. Seeing that one of the tents served as a saloon, they went inside and stepped up to the bar. Blood splattered their clothes—Kid Austin’s blood on Felter, Nicole’s on Canning.

  The bartender approached them, then stopped and stepped back. “Lord almighty, where have you two been? What happened to you?”

  It wasn’t until Felter saw the shocked look on the man’s face that he realized just how much blood was on them. Ignoring the questions, he said, “Whiskey. The strongest you got. If you’d been where we been, and seen what we seen, you’d be wantin’ a whiskey, too.”

  “Yeah.” Canning didn’t know what Felter had in mind, but he was prepared to follow him, whatever it was.

  Felter tossed the drink down in one gulp as if he were on the verge of shock. “I’m tellin’ you the truth. It was about the most awfulest thing I ever seen. Them murderin’ Utes raped a white woman, then they kilt her and her baby. They scalped her too, and done other things to her that I don’t even want to talk about.”

  “Yeah,” Canning agreed, picking up on it. “We was just lookin’ around, seein’ if we co
uld track the Injuns that done it, when the next thing you know some crazy feller come up on us and commenced ashootin’. He kilt Stoner and Grissom and Poker and Evans right away. He shot Austin in the back, and we tried to bring ’im with us and done all we could for ’im, but he died on the way here.”

  “Then,” Felter said, continuing the story, “this here feller took one of our wounded, a good man he was too, his name was Clark, and he staked him out over an anthill. Stripped him nekkid and poured honey over ’im. Well, you can imagine how poor ol’ Clark suffered. We seen it from a distance, and we tried to go back to rescue him, but we knowed that this feller was usin’ Clark as bait. He was hid out and he woulda kilt us both iffen we had tried. Why, there warn’t nothin’ we could do.”

  “Was this here feller you’re atalkin’ about a white man?” one of the miners asked.

  “He were white, all right,” Felter said.

  “Why do you reckon he attacked you like that?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” Canning said. “Could be that he just went crazy, is all.”

  “Mayhaps he thought it was us that done the killin’ o’ that poor white woman. I could see how a feller might get mad iffen he was to think that,” Felter said. “But the thing is, he didn’t even give us a chance to explain what happened.”

  “Not at all,” Canning added. “He just showed up and commenced ashootin’ without so much as a fare thee well. Why, Stoner and Poker and Evans and Grissom was all four kilt afore we even knew what was goin’ on.”

  The miners listened to the story, but the glances they exchanged with each other indicated that they didn’t quite believe what they were being told by the two blood-soaked men.

  PSR Ranch, office

  “Jensen is still alive!” Richards told his partners. “Story I’ve heard is that he killed all but two of them we hired.”

  “What kind of man is he?” Potter asked. “Who can be faced down by eight men and kill six of them?”