Lucky’s luck had run out.
The band had stopped playing and the singers ceased their singing and everyone had sought better cover. The temperance parade was over for that day.
Barrie’s wound was not a serious one, and Smoke got him back on his feet while Jenny stopped the bleeding with a compress.
“Get in here!” Smoke called to Wolf and Bad Dog. “This thing is far from over.”
The men dashed for the cover of the solidly built store.
“They got us cold, Smoke,” Bad Dog said. “Must be fifty or sixty men still on their feet out there. They’re all around the place.”
The storekeeper and his wife had fled for the safety of another part of town.
“Are we trapped, Uncle Smoke?” Jenny asked.
Smoke’s eyes had found several wooden crates stacked off to one side of the store. He smiled. “They think we are,” he said.
Eighteen
“Out the back way, quickly!” Major said. “We can end this today if we seize the moment.”
The three men behind the drive to kill Jenny Jensen and lay claim to her ranch and the gold that was in the mountains gathered a few of their most trusted hired guns and laid out their plans.
Inside the general store, every available rifle, pistol, and shotgun in stock was loaded up full and placed close to hand. Clemmie Feathers had gathered up her Soiled Doves and barricaded them on the second floor of the Golden Plum. They were armed with the rifles and pistols Moses had picked up from the fallen gunhands. Moses and Clemmie remained on the first floor of the saloon, along with Jeff the bartender and a few citizens who had the nerve to come out against Cosgrove, Biggers, and Fosburn.
The Red Light, Montana, Temperance League had wisely decided to give up their plans for a parade that day. When the shooting stopped, they had left their rather precarious cover and taken refuge in the livery, just down the twisty street from all the action.
In the general store, the small band of defenders had erected barricades of barrels and sacks of feed and Smoke had told everyone to grab something to eat while they had time. He was sitting on the sack of feed, calmly eating from a can of peaches.
Wolf Parcell shifted his wad of chewing tobacco and said, “This reminds me of the time me and Frenchy Ladue and Lobo and Powder Pete and Preacher was trapped in a cabin with about two hundred angry Kiowas outside. It got right chancy there for a time, but we held ’em off to a standstill. We had plenty of powder and shot and vittles. But we did get on each other’s nerves there toward the end.”
“How long were you trapped in there?” Jenny asked.
“Five days, as I recall,” Wolf replied. “Them Kiowas finally just give up in disgust and rode off. We must have kilt a hundred of ’em.”
Smoke tossed his empty peach can into a garbage barrel and stood up. Barrie and Bad Dog were defending the rear of the store. Smoke, Jenny, and Wolf stood by at the front.
“I can’t believe they’ll try a charge,” Jenny said.
“They’ll try one,” Wolf said. “We ain’t dealin’ with the most intelligent folks in the world. Them’s hired guns out yonder. Too damn lazy to work and too stupid to realize that ridin’ the outlaw trail is harder work than near ‘bouts anything else they might do. They’re cowards, most of ’em. Almost all bullies is. But what worries me is, ain’t none of us seen hide nor hair of that back-shooter, Hankins. He could be out at the ranch right now, worryin’ the fool out of our people.”
“I have a hunch that’s exactly where he is,” Smoke said, earing back the hammer on his Winchester and pulling the stock to his shoulder. “But that house is a fort, and he can’t get much closer than five or six hundred yards. Besides, we’ll be out of this bind in a few hours and back at the ranch an hour later.” He sighted in and gently took up slack on the trigger. The Winchester barked and a man screamed a second after the slug shattered his ankle.
“You got a plan, Smoke?” Barrie carried, a bloody bandage around his head.
“Ten cases of dynamite over yonder in the corner,” Smoke replied. “Plenty of caps and fuses. The street is narrow, and that makes for an easy toss. We’ll liven up their day when the time is right and then make our break for it. One man with a rifle can hold off an army at the curve of the mountain road coming into town.” He smiled. “Then I’ll blow it closed and catch up with you before you reach the ranch.”
Bad Dog chuckled his approval. “It is a good plan. But no,” he contradicted. “I shall hold off the men and blow the pass. You need to be with Jenny and the wagons.”
“He’s right, Smoke,” Barrie called.
“Suits me.” Smoke listened for a moment. The street had grown very quiet.
“They’re gettin’ ready to make a charge,” Wolf said. “They’ll come all at once, front and back. Get set.”
Smoke looked at Jenny. The teenager had tossed her hat to one side and tied a bandanna around her forehead. Her face was sooty from the gunsmoke, but her hands were steady holding the short-barreled carbine. A bandolier of cartridges was slung across her chest and she had belted a second gun-belt around her slender waist.
Wolf caught Smoke’s eyes and grinned and nodded his shaggy head. Then he spat a stream of brown juice, stopping a scurrying roach cold on the floor, pulled his rifle to his shoulder, and said, “Here they come.”
The men charged with a roar, and with a roar ten times as deadly, those inside the store fired, working the levers on their Winchesters as fast as they could. Smoke dropped his empty rifle and filled his hands with deadly .44s. Twelve rounds sounded as one long booming. When the shooting stopped, a dozen men lay dead, dying, or badly wounded in the street.
Reloading, Jenny asked, “Uncle Smoke? What will happen to Moses and Miss Clemmie and the girls once we leave?”
“Nothin’, child,” Wolf said. “All they’ve done so far is protect their interests. Right now, if news of them out yonder attackin’ you was to reach the outside, they’d be five hundred Montana cowboys in here ’fore the week was over, all with knotted hang-ropes in their hands, lookin’ for Biggers and Cosgrove and Fosburn. And not even the U.S. Army could stop ’em from stringin’ them men up. Western justice is harsh at times and unfair at times. But out here, you lay anything but a gentle hand and a kind word on a woman, you’re most likely dead.”
“But they’re Soiled Doves,” Jenny said.
“That doesn’t make any difference,” Smoke said. “You own the establishment, so that makes it a war against you. They’ll be all right.”
“Let us drag our wounded in to tend to them!” the shout came from across the street.
“Go ahead,” Smoke called out. “And while you’re at it, check the buildings close by and make sure no women or kids are in danger, and then clear the street of any stray horses.”
Several hired guns exchanged glances at that and silently came to the conclusion that that was a fair man over there in the general store. They holstered their guns and slipped away, heading for the livery. They wanted no more of this.
The others watched them go and thought them fools. But they kept their opinions to themselves.
While the street was being cleared of the wounded, Smoke and Wolf took that time to charge the sticks of dynamite.
“This is gonna come as a right nasty surprise to them ol’ boys acrost the street,” the old mountain man proclaimed, a wicked glint in his eyes.
“That’s what I’m counting on. How about the wagons and the supplies?”
“We got nearly all of it loaded,” Barrie called. “The horses are still hitched up and all right. They’re in the alley to my left.”
“You mean we’re actually going to take the wagons?” Bad Dog asked.
“Damn right,” Smoke told him. “We came into town for supplies, didn’t we?”
Wolf laughed in anticipation. “When we start tossing this giant powder, they’ll be so much dust and confusion and crashin’ of ruined buildin’s and hollerin’ and moanin’ and groanin’ it’l
l take those varmits over yonder ten minutes to figure out what the hell happened. By that time, we’ll be clear of the pass and home free.”
“Bad Dog, you and me to the second floor with the dynamite. We can get a better angle from up there. Jenny, to the back.”
Bad Dog grabbed up a case of capped and fused dynamite and was gone up the stairs. Smoke turned to Wolf. “When I tap on the floor three times, you get the hell gone from the front of the store, Wolf. Just as soon as the dynamite blows, open up with rifle fire and get to the wagons. We’ll blow the rear on our way out.”
Wolf nodded and grinned.
Upstairs, Smoke went to work passing out the tied-together dynamite. Three sticks to a bundle.
“The street’s all clear, Jensen,” a man shouted. “No women or kids or animals close by.”
Smoke did not reply, not wanting to give away his new position overlooking the street. He tapped three times on the floor as he and Bad Dog were lighting the first bundles of dynamite.
“Clear,” Wolf called.
Smoke and Bad Dog hurled the sputtering lethal charges. Just seconds before the center part of town started blowing up, someone yelled, “Jesus God! That’s dynamite!”
In the rear of the store, four rifles started barking.
Then the mayor’s office, a keno joint, one empty building, and Major Cosgrove’s office erupted in a million pieces of mud, dust and dirt, splinters, bits of paper, busted spittoons, broken coffee pots, pieces of glass, the ragged remnants of four or five pairs of dirty long handles, shredded boots and shoes, and no small amount of various body parts.
Lester Laymon jumped up in the livery and flung out his hands. “It’s the mighty hand of God!” he cried. “Bringing retribution to this earthly Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Violet jabbed him in the butt with a pitchfork and Lester shrieked and jumped. “Sit down, you fool!” she admonished him. “That’s Smoke Jensen blowing the crap out of the place with dynamite.”
One entire wall had collapsed on Biggers and Cosgrove and Fosburn. They weren’t badly hurt, just scared to the point of peeing in their underwear.
The dust was so thick it was like a foggy night on the Barbary Coast. The dust was swirling around like whirlwinds. Smoke and Bad Dog each hurled another bundle of explosives, then got gone from the second floor of the general store, each carrying a bundle of dynamite to give to those hired guns out back.
But there was no need for that. Wolf and Barrie and Jenny had each tossed a charge and the back alley was a thick cloud of smoke and dust and hired guns lying unconscious on the ground.
The only building left intact in the center of the east side of the second block was Chung Lee’s laundry. And Chung Lee was now, for the very first time, giving serious thought to returning to China. He was sure that feeling would pass … but not if this kept up.
Smoke and his party did not have to worry about blowing the pass. No one even heard them leave, much less pursued them as they rode and rattled down the back alleys and out of town. They came to the pass and Smoke signaled them on, staying behind for a moment or two. He sat his saddle and looked down at the town. The entire town was enveloped in a cloud of dust and smoke from a dozen small fires started by overturned lanterns and cook-stoves.
Chuckling at the chaos that must now be reigning in the center of Red Light, he turned his horse and headed after the wagons.
Jack Biggers had been blown out of one boot. He was staggering and limping around, and looked down, certain he had been crippled forever by the loss of a foot.
Fosburn’s pants had caught on fire and he just managed to put out the flames before they reached a critical part of his body. He was now standing outside the ruin of what had been his office, clad in very short pants and a shirt with no sleeves, wearing a very dazed look on his face.
Major Cosgrove crawled out of the rubble, his clothes sooty rags. He sat on the edge of what remained of the boardwalk in front of one of his several offices. He looked around him at all the carnage. He had never seen anything like it. There were men with broken arms and broken legs and busted heads and hands, and men lying dead in grotesquely twisted positions.
He felt like crying.
Then he saw Biggers limping around with a worried look on his face, and Fosburn standing in the middle of the street in short pants.
“Fosburn,” he called. “Will you, for Christ’s sake, put on some damn pants?”
Lonesome Ted Lightfoot staggered out of the dress shop, holding his aching head, the knot on his noggin compliments of Miss Alice and her flatiron. He pulled up short at the smoke and dust and fire and devastation before him. He thought for a moment he was dead and had gone to Hell.
Patmos sat down on the busted boardwalk beside Major. “Nineteen dead and twelve wounded,” he told the man.
“How many of the wounded expected to live?” Cosgrove asked.
“Not very many.”
“Make that twenty dead,” Kit Silver said, walking up and sitting down. He took out the makings and started building a cigarette.
“What other wonderful news do you have to tell me?” Cosgrove asked bitterly.
“Five men pulled out during the lull in the fightin’. They were top guns, too.”
“Why did they pull out?”
“A personal opinion?” Kit said, thumbing a match into flame and lighting up.
“Go ahead.”
“I can send out the word and have you a hundred men in here in a week’s time …”
“Do it!” Cosgrove said savagely.
“… But no more than ten or twelve of them will be top-notch men,” Kit went on as if the man had not spoken. “Fightin’ Smoke Jensen has become known as a losin’ proposition. And if you’re half as smart as you think you are, you know why after this.”
“He’s just a man, goddamnit! He’s just a flesh-and-blood man. That’s all!”
“Sure,” Kit said sarcastically. “Sure. Just a man who can crawl up into a wolves’ den and go to sleep cuddled up against a big ol’ mama wolf. A man who had pumas for pets as a kid. A man who can call eagles to him. A man who when he lays down to rest has wild hawks guardin’ him …”
“That’s nonsense!” Cosgrove snapped.
“Some of it is, some of it isn’t, believe me. I’ve been west of the Missouri all my life. I ain’t never seen no human man like Smoke Jensen. And to tell the truth, neither has nobody else, either. I’ll get your men in here for you, Cosgrove. But if you think this last bunch was scabby and no-’count, just wait until you see what’ll come in now. Hiders and bounty hunters and wore-out buffalo hunters, all of them stinkin’ and with fleas jumpin’ on them.”
“I don’t care what they look like, just as long as they can do the job.”
“Has anybody seen my pants?” Fosburn asked.
And in the valley, Smoke pushed open the door and smiled at Sally. “I told you I’d be back in time for supper.”
Nineteen
“We have to move fast,” Major Cosgrove said, one day after the fight on Main Street. “Several families have moved out of Red Light. They’re sure to talk about this situation, and that will attract the attention of the territorial governor. He’ll send people in here. We can’t have that.”
“We’ve already confirmed that Jensen is a real U.S. Marshal,” Fosburn said. “He could legally arrest all of us for attempted murder, extortion, and God only knows what else. Why hasn’t he done so?”
Biggers smiled grimly, a cruel twisting of the lips. “Jensen doesn’t want to do this the legal way, that’s why. Jensen doesn’t pay much attention to written law. He wants us dead. All of us.” He mumbled an obscenity.
“Kit says he can have gunhands in here,” Cosgrove said. “I told him to go ahead. He left yesterday, right after the fight. By now he’s sent the wires out and men are on the way. My God!” The man stood up from behind his new desk in his new office. “We’re losing a fight against nine men, one woman, and two teenagers. To date our combined losse
s are about twenty-five dead and just about twenty wounded. Tough, top gunslingers are pulling out of this fight. Most didn’t even wait around to get paid.”
“I say we hit the ranch,” Biggers said.
Club Bowers looked at the man, but offered no comment. Hitting the ranch would be suicide, in his opinion. One of his deputies had ridden out that way and reported back that the ranch looked more like a heavily fortified Army post than a working ranch complex. The land around the complex had been cleared and burned for hundreds of yards. Peter Hankins had finally checked back in after several days in the field and said there was no way he could get a shot at anyone on the ranch. Time was on the side of Smoke Jensen and family, and Club knew it.
Maybe it was time to pull out … he’d been giving that some serious thought.
“You have an opinion on any of this, Club?” Cosgrove asked.
“Yeah,” the sheriff said. “Give it up and live and let live.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Biggers almost shouted the words. “We can’t give it up. We’ve got too much money invested in this fight. The gold in those mountains is worth a fortune!”
Club stood up and walked to the door. He put his hat on his head and turned to look at the men. “Is it worth your lives?” He stepped outside and walked to his office. There, he sat on the bench on the boardwalk and looked at the work crews clearing out the wreckage from the dynamite. Cosgrove had sent men from the mines to clear the mess and they were almost through. Now all that was left of very nearly a block was a great empty space in the center of town.
The man and woman who owned the general store had flatly told Cosgrove that either he paid for repairing the store and replacing the damaged goods or they would sue him and make certain every newspaper west of the Mississippi knew about it. At the prompt advice of Lawyer Dunham, Cosgrove told his men to go to work and told the store owner to order replacement goods and send the bill to him.
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