The Violent Land

by William W. Johnstone

  The redhead was Conn Wheeler, from Texas originally, but he had made his reputation in the New Mexico range wars. And the reputation was that of a cold-blooded back-shooter who was fast enough to gun a man down from the front if he had to.

  As far as Smoke knew, Wheeler and Wilkes had never ridden together before. He couldn’t help but wonder what had brought the two gunmen together in an out-of-the-way place like Hawk Creek Station.

  The answer probably wasn’t anything good.

  But Smoke didn’t want trouble, so he just nodded and said, “Howdy, boys. This is Hawk Creek Station, isn’t it?”

  “It surely is,” Wheeler replied, still grinning. His next words echoed what Smoke had been thinking. “What brings you fellas here, Jensen?”

  “Reckon that’s our business.”

  Wilkes said, “Maybe he don’t know who we are.”

  “Oh, I know who you are,” Smoke said. “I recognized both of you.”

  “Then the only one who’s got an advantage here is that fella beside you,” Wheeler said.

  “My name’s Matt Jensen,” Matt introduced himself. His flat, hard tone told Smoke that he knew what sort of hardcases these two men were. He was as ready for trouble as Smoke was.

  “Matt Jensen,” Wheeler repeated. “Matt Jensen his own self. I’ve heard of you, Matt. They say you’re pert near as fast on the draw as ol’ Smoke there. Is that true?”

  “I don’t bother worrying about such things,” Matt said.

  “Well, we do,” Wheeler said as he sat up straighter. “It plumb annoys Tyrone and me when we hear folks talkin’ about the Jensens and how fast they are. Yes, sir, them damn Jensens are just faster’n greased lightnin’, everybody says. Makes me want to puke. You know why?”

  Smoke was sick and tired of this. He had seen and heard it all before, too many times. He said in a harsh voice, “Because the two of you think you’re faster than us, when all you really are is just road agent trash.”

  Wheeler and Wilkes both looked surprised, but that didn’t last long. Their shocked expressions were replaced a heartbeat later by furious glares. Wheeler came up out of his chair like a striking snake, and Wilkes was only a fraction of a second behind him, sweeping the buffalo coat aside so he could reach for the low-slung gun on his hip.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Both men cleared their holsters, but only because Smoke and Matt waited an instant before slapping leather.

  Then guns appeared in their hands as if by magic, spouting flame and lead.

  Smoke’s Colt drove two slugs into Wilkes’s chest, knocking him backwards. The buffalo coat flared out around him as he collapsed onto the chair where he had been sitting. Wilkes was a big man, and his weight made the chair legs snap and splinter. He crashed to the porch amidst the debris.

  Matt’s shots roared out only a shaved fraction of a second behind Smoke’s. He fired twice, as well, and both bullets ripped through Conn Wheeler’s body. One bullet perforated Wheeler’s left lung while the other pulped his heart. Their impact made him spin halfway around. Even though he was dead, he stayed on his feet for a second or two before his muscles finally slackened enough to make him pitch forward on his face.

  Smoke and Matt swung their guns toward the front door as it burst open. Heavy footsteps thudded on the porch planks as several men rushed out. They stopped abruptly when they saw that they were covered by the two grim-faced riders.

  “What the hell!” one of the men exclaimed, followed by a volley of colorful obscenities. “You killed Conn and Tyrone!”

  “They drew on us,” Smoke said in a flinty voice.

  One of the other men said, “These fellas must be pretty fast, Yancy, because Conn and Tyrone were slick on the draw!”

  Yancy was the barrel-chested man who had spoken first. His jaw was like a belligerent wedge as he glared at Smoke and Matt and demanded, “Who are you?”

  They didn’t have to answer, because the third man, with the dark, narrow, haggard face of a consumptive, said, “The older one’s Smoke Jensen. Somebody pointed him out to me down in Taos a couple of years ago. The man with him is his brother, Matt.”

  Yancy’s glare didn’t lessen any, but he moved his hand a little farther away from the butt of the gun on his hip, just so there wouldn’t be any mistake.

  “We got no quarrel with you, Jensen,” he snapped. “Either of you.”

  “You don’t want to settle the score for your friends?” Matt goaded.

  Yancy snorted.

  “I don’t recollect sayin’ that Wheeler and Wilkes were my friends. We rode together, that’s all, and not for very long, neither.”

  Another man stepped out of the door of the trading post in time to hear this. He said coldly, “I thought you all rode for the brand, Yancy.”

  “We do, Mr. Kane,” Yancy said, his face darkening and his jaw jutting out even more with anger. “But I ain’t in the mood to get killed because a couple of hotheads decided to brace Smoke and Matt Jensen. In case you ain’t noticed, they got the drop on us.”

  The man called Kane studied Smoke and Matt speculatively. He was below medium height but built like a tree stump, broad and hard to budge. The fabric of his brown tweed suit coat bulged with ridges of muscle along his shoulders and arms. His derby hat was pushed back to reveal a mostly bald head.

  “My name is Jethro Kane,” he said. “Those two men you just killed rode for my spread.”

  “They drew on us,” Smoke said again. “A man does that, he’s got to expect the other fella to fight back.”

  “I suppose so.” Moving slowly, Kane reached up and withdrew a cigar from his vest pocket. He bit off the end, spat it out, and then clenched the cylinder of tobacco tightly between strong brown teeth, asking around it, “Did either of them even get a shot off?”

  “No,” Smoke said. “But they cleared leather.”

  Kane grunted, and it took Smoke a second to realize that the man had just laughed.

  “Your name’s Jensen?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you looking for work?”

  Before Smoke could answer, Yancy said, “That’s Smoke Jensen, Mr. Kane. He’s not a hired gun. Fact is, I’ve heard that he’s got a ranch of his own down in Colorado.”

  “Is that so?” Kane mused. “What brings you up here Wyoming way, Jensen?”

  There was no point in concealing the truth. Folks around these parts would know about the immigrants soon enough, no matter what Smoke said here and now.

  “We rode along with a wagon train that was bound in this direction,” he told Kane. “Wanted to make sure it got where it was going safely.”

  Kane’s somewhat bushy eyebrows lifted.

  “A wagon train,” he repeated. “Bound for here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why the hell are a bunch of immigrants coming here? This is ranching country. We don’t need a bunch of damn sodbusters around here!”

  “No offense,” Smoke said, “but you don’t strike me as a Western man.”

  “I’m from New York, originally,” Kane snapped. “What’s that got to do with anything? I’m a rancher now. The Boxed JK is my spread.”

  “The hombre leading the wagon train is going to be a rancher, too,” Smoke explained. “He bought the Rafter Nine.”

  Kane stared at him for a second, then grunted again. Then he let out an actual laugh. The other men on the porch laughed, too. Of course, since they worked for Kane, they would be expected to, but it seemed to Smoke that they were genuinely amused.

  “The Rafter Nine, eh?” Kane said. “Has this gent ever seen the place?”

  “I don’t think so,” Smoke allowed.

  “Then the damn fool bought a pig in a poke! The Rafter Nine failed years ago when a bad winter killed off the cattle its owner was running on it. He tried to build it back up, but bad luck did him in. The place is cursed.”

  “It’s got a hoodoo on it,” one of the other men said. “Bad water, not enough graze ... A man
who tries to make a go of it is bound to fail.”

  Smoke and Matt exchanged a quick glance. Smoke didn’t know if these men were lying, but their words had the ring of truth. From the sound of it, Baron von Hoffman had been hoodwinked.

  “I reckon we’ll have to see the place for ourselves,” Smoke said.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” Kane said. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d put those guns away. You’re starting to make me nervous. Nobody else is going to try to draw on you or bother you in any other way.”

  He looked hard at his men as he spoke that last sentence, as if to make sure they understood that was the way he wanted it.

  Smoke and Matt pouched their irons. Matt said, “What about your spread, Kane? Is it as bad as you make the Rafter Nine out to be?”

  “Of course not,” Kane replied. “I have several good springs and plenty of grass. The Rafter Nine has waterholes that have dried up and taken the graze with them.”

  That sounded pretty bad. Smoke had seen things like that happen before. It sounded like a run of bad luck had ruined the previous owner of the Rafter 9, all right.

  Whether Friedrich von Hoffman could turn that luck around was still open to question, but he would be facing an uphill climb, Smoke thought. And he’d have to worry about Klaus Berger and his enemies from the old country, too.

  “Sorry about offering you a job a minute ago, Jensen,” Kane went on. “I didn’t know you were a cattleman, too. That was pretty nice of you, coming along with those pilgrims. Too bad it was a waste of everybody’s time.”

  “We don’t know that,” Matt said.

  “Oh, but we do,” Kane said. His smug smile just added to Smoke’s instinctive dislike of the man. “There’s no chance in hell anybody’s going to make a success of the Rafter Nine, especially not a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears pilgrims.”

  That was a pretty arrogant thing for an hombre from New York to be saying, Smoke thought, especially a man who had two of his riders lying dead practically at his feet.

  Yancy spoke up again, saying, “Boss, you reckon we ought to get Wilkes and Wheeler out of here?”

  “Put them over their saddles and take them back to the ranch,” Kane ordered curtly. “You can bury them there.”

  “Yes, sir,” Yancy said. He motioned for his companions to give him a hand.

  Kane jerked his head toward the door and said to Smoke and Matt, “Come inside and let me buy you boys a drink?”

  “Thanks, but we need to get back to the wagon train,” Smoke said.

  “Yeah, somebody needs to break the news to those folks that they came all this way for nothing,” Kane said. He nodded. “So long.”

  Smoke and Matt sat their saddles until Kane had gone to the buggy, climbed into it, and driven off to the north, using the whip on the two horses pulling the vehicle. Yancy and the two men with him followed on horseback, leading the two horses carrying the bodies of Tyrone Wilkes and Conn Wheeler.

  “I don’t like those fellas, especially that hombre Kane,” Matt said quietly.

  “Neither do I,” Smoke agreed. He started to dismount. “Let’s go inside.”

  “I thought we were heading back to the wagon train.”

  “Preacher can guide the wagons here. I want to talk to whoever these other horses belong to.”

  Smoke had already checked out the brands. One of the horses still tied at the hitch rack carried a Double Diamond brand. The other two had 7B4 burned into their hides.

  “Seven before,” Matt commented. “Before what, I wonder?”

  “No telling,” Smoke said.

  They stepped up on the porch and went inside the trading post. The main room was shadowy and cavernous, with all sorts of goods hanging on the walls and packing shelves and counters. The saloon was off to the left, with a flimsy-looking wall between it and the rest of the building. A door was cut into that wall, and through the opening Smoke could see three men in range clothes leaning on a hardwood bar, nursing beers.

  There was a counter in the back of the trading post, but nobody was behind it. In fact, that part of the building was empty. Smoke walked toward the saloon with Matt right behind him. Their boot heels rang loudly against the floorboards.

  The cowboys at the bar had to hear Smoke and Matt approaching them, but they didn’t turn around.

  The three of them weren’t packing iron, Smoke noted, although there were sheathed Winchesters on the saddles of the horses outside.

  A balding man with a big gut and handlebar mustaches was behind the bar. He asked, “Something I can do for you fellas?”

  “You’re the owner?” Smoke asked.

  “That’s right. Clarence Fisher.”

  “My name’s Smoke Jensen. This is my brother Matt. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Fisher.”

  The proprietor was about to respond when one of the cowboys said, “No need to get friendly with these fellas, Clarence. They’re not gonna be alive long enough for it to matter.”

  “What makes you say that?” Matt asked sharply.

  The man turned to give him and Smoke a bleak look.

  “You don’t think Jethro Kane’s gonna let you live after you killed two of his pet gun-wolves, do you?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Smoke and Matt looked at the young cowboy for a long moment, then Matt said, “Kane didn’t seem too upset. In fact, he offered us jobs.”

  The puncher shook his head.

  “That was just for show. He didn’t want a gunfight where he might get in the way of a stray bullet. When there’s killin’ to be done, Kane’s always a long way from it, even when it’s on his orders.”

  “Especially when it’s on his orders,” another of the three cowboys said.

  “And Wynn’s right,” the third man added. “Kane’s got to have you killed now. He can’t afford to have anybody stand up to him and get away with it. His own crew wouldn’t like it, and it might give other folks around here too many ideas.”

  Smoke was starting to understand now. He said, “Kane’s the big skookum he-wolf in these parts, is he?”

  “You got that right,” said the cowboy called Wynn.

  “You boys don’t need to be talking that way,” Fisher said from behind the bar. “You’re gonna give these strangers the wrong idea.”

  “You mean the idea that Kane’s a land-hoggin’ son of a bitch who means to own the whole Medicine Bow range and everything around it?” Wynn laughed. “Sounds to me like that’s the right idea, Clarence. The exact right idea.” He extended a hand to Smoke. “I’m Wynn Courtland. The Double Diamond is my spread ... for now. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jensen. I’ve heard of you and your brother both.”

  Smoke shook with the man, and so did Matt. Wynn introduced his companions as Hank Jimson and Dusty Barnes.

  “They ride for the 7B4,” Wynn continued. “Hank’s the foreman.”

  “Yeah, but when you consider the fact that Dusty and me are the only crew left, it ain’t that big of a deal,” Hank drawled. “In fact, I was thinking maybe we oughta start swappin’ out, week to week.”

  Smoke felt a natural liking for these easygoing cowmen. He would have hired any of them in a second to ride for him on the Sugarloaf.

  “Case Plowright owns the 7B4,” Wynn said. “One of the finest old men you’ll ever meet, Mr. Jensen. But he’s bein’ crowded out by Kane, just like I am. Just like all the other small spreads around here were. The Double Diamond and the 7B4 are about the only ones left.” He smiled thinly. “And now the Rafter Nine, I reckon, if this fella you brought up here really does take it over.”

  “We didn’t bring him, we just came along with him,” Smoke said. “And he’s not going to turn around and go back where he came from. He can’t. He doesn’t have any choice but to settle here.”

  “Sunk everything he has into the spread, did he? Well, that’s a shame, because Kane was right about one thing. The Rafter Nine is one sorry outfit and has been ever since he saw to it that the waterholes dried up.”

>   Matt said sharply, “Kane did something to the waterholes?”

  Looking more nervous by the second, Fisher said, “You shouldn’t be spreading wild rumors, Wynn. It’s not gonna do anybody any good—”

  “Relax, Clarence,” Wynn said. “I know you’re gonna tell Kane everything we said here. It doesn’t matter how much you suck up to him. He’s already gunnin’ for us. That’s why he came in here today draggin’ those hired killers with him. He thought he finally had his chance for them to prod us into a fight and be done with us.”

  “That’s why you’re not wearing handguns,” Smoke guessed. “You knew you might run into Kane’s men here.”

  All three of the cowboys nodded.

  “He’s had men keepin’ an eye on us, just waitin’ for the right time,” Wynn explained. “But we needed some supplies, so we decided to all ride in together.”

  Matt said, “I’m surprised he hasn’t just had you bushwhacked before now.”

  “It may come to that,” Hank said with a wry grin. “Kane’s got political ambitions, though. Figures he might be governor someday. So he wants things to look legal. That’s why he won’t let his men draw on a fella who’s unarmed.”

  “But one of these days,” Wynn said, “he’s gonna get tired of waitin’, and then we’ll all catch a bullet in the back. Case’ll be trapped in his house while it burns down around him. He’s been in a wheelchair for the past ten years, since a mustang threw him and busted his back.”

  “What’s this about the waterholes?” Smoke asked. He was intrigued by that, just like Matt was.

  “Kane hired some smart scientific fella to figure out where the underground river that feeds the springs comes down out of the mountains. Don’t ask me how he did it, but after he poked around the foothills for a while, he pointed to a spot and told Kane to dig there. It was on Kane’s land, so nobody could stop him. He dug it up, set off some dynamite down there, and the Rafter Nine’s waterholes all went dry, while Kane’s springs are running better than ever.”

  Smoke nodded. He’d never had much book learning, but he had a wealth of practical experience. He knew that Kane had diverted the course of that underground stream to strengthen his springs and dry up everybody else’s.