Live by the West, Die by the West Read online

  Smoke agreed with that. “You born out here, Ring?”

  “No. Born in Pennsylvania. I killed a man there and done time. He was a no-good man. Mean-hearted man. He cheated my mother out of her farm through some legal shenanigans. Put her on the road with nothin’ but the clothes on her back. I come home from the mines to visit and found my mother in the poor farm, dying. After the funeral, I looked that man up and beat him to death. The judge gimme life in prison.”

  “You get pardoned?” Beans asked.

  “No. I got tired of it and jerked the bars out of the bricks, tied the guard up, climbed over the walls and walked away one night.”

  “Your secret is safe with us,” Smoke assured him.

  “I figured it would be.”

  They forded the Yellowstone and were in Montana Territory, but still had a mighty long way to go before they reached Gibson.

  Smoke and Beans had both figured out that Ring was no great shakes when it came to thinking, but he was an incredibly gentle man—as long as you kept him away from the whiskey. Birds would come to him when he held out his arms. Squirrels would scamper up and take food from his fingers. And he almost cried one day when he shot a deer for food. He left the entrails for the wolves and the coyotes and spent the rest of the journey working on the hide, making them all moccasins and gloves.

  Ring was truly one of a kind.

  He stood six feet six inches and weighed three hundred pounds, very little of it fat. He could read and write only a little, but he said it didn’t matter. He didn’t have anyone to write to noways, and nobody ever wrote to him.

  At a small village on the Boulder, Smoke resupplied and they all had a hot bath. Ring was so big he made the wooden tub look like a bucket.

  But Smoke had a bad feeling about the village; not about the village itself, but at what might be coming at them if they stayed. Smoke had played on his hunches before; they had kept him alive more than once. And this one kept nagging at him.

  After carefully shaving, leaving his mustache intact, he went to his packhorse and took out his .44s, belting them around his lean hips, tying down the right-hand gun. He carefully checked them, wiping them clean with a cloth and checking the loads. He usually kept the chamber under the hammer empty; this time he loaded them both up full. He stepped out from behind the wooden partition by the wooden tubs and walked into the rear of the store, conscious of the eyes of Beans and Ring on him; they had never seen him wear a short gun, much less two of them, one butt-forward for a cross draw.

  “Five boxes of .44s,” Smoke told the clerk.

  “You plannin’ on startin’ a war?” the clerk said, sticking his mouth into something that didn’t concern him.

  Smoke’s only reply was to fix his cold brown eyes on the man and stare at him. The clerk got the message and turned away, a flush on his face.

  He placed the ammunition on the counter and asked no more questions. Smoke bought three cans of peaches and paid for his purchases. He walked out onto the shaded porch, Ring and Beans right behind him. The three of them sat down and opened the peaches with their knives, enjoying a midmorning sweet-syruped snack.

  “Don’t see too many people wearin’ twin guns thataway,” Beans observed, looking at Smoke’s rig.

  “Not too many,” Smoke agreed, and ate a peach.

  “Riders coming,” Ring said quietly. “From the south.”

  The men sat on the porch, eating peaches and watching the riders come closer.

  “You recognize any of them?” Smoke tossed the question out.

  Beans took it. “Nope. You?”

  “That one on the right is Park. Gunfighter from over in the Dakotas. Man next to him is Tabor. Gunhawk from Oklahoma. I don’t know the others.”

  “They know you?” Ring asked.

  “They know of me.” Smoke’s words were softly spoken.

  “By the name of Kirby?”

  “No.”

  The five dusty gunhands reined up and dismounted. A ferret-faced young man ducked under the hitchrail and paused by the porch, staring at Smoke. His eyes drifted to Smoke’s twin guns.

  The other gunhawks were older, wiser, and could read sign. They were not being paid to cause trouble in this tiny village, therefore they would avoid trouble if at all possible.

  The kid with the acne-pocked face and the big Colts slung around his hips was not nearly so wise. He deliberately stepped on Smoke’s boot as he walked past.

  Smoke said nothing. The four older men stood to one side, watching, keeping their hands away from the butts of their guns.

  Ferret-face laughed and looked at his friends, jerking a thumb toward Smoke. “There ain’t much to him.”

  “I wouldn’t bet my life on it,” Park said softly. To Smoke, “Don’t I know you?”

  Smoke stood up. At the approach of the men, he had slipped the leather hammer-thongs from his guns. “We’ve crossed rails a time or two. If this punk kid’s a friend of yours, you might better put a stopper on his mouth before I’m forced to change his diapers.”

  The kid flushed at the insult. He backed up a few yards, his hands hovering over the butts of his fancy guns. “They call me Larado. Maybe you’ve heard of me?”

  “Can’t say as I have,” Smoke spoke easily. “But I’m glad to know you have a name. That’s something that everybody should have.”

  “You’re makin’ fun of me!”

  “Am I? Maybe so.”

  “I think I’ll just carve another notch on my guns,” Larado hissed.

  “Yeah? I had you pegged right then. A tinhorn.”

  “Draw, damn you!”

  But Smoke just stood, smiling at the young man.

  Two little boys took that time to walk by the store; perhaps they were planning on spending a penny for some candy. One of them looked at Smoke, jerked a dime novel out of the back of his overalls, and stared at the cover. He mentally shaved off Smoke’s mustache. His mouth dropped open.

  “It’s really him! That’s Smoke Jensen!”

  All the steam went out of Larado. His sigh was audible. He lifted his hands and carefully folded them across his chest, keeping his hands on the outside of his arms.

  Beans and Ring sat in their chairs and stared at their friend.

  “You some distance from Colorado, Smoke,” Tabor said.

  “And you’re a long way from Oklahoma,” Smoke countered.

  “For a fact. You headin’ north or south?”

  “North.”

  “I never knowed you to hire your guns out.”

  “I never have. It isn’t for sale this trip, either.”

  “But you do have a reputation for buttin’ in where you ain’t wanted,” Park added his opinion.

  “I got a personal invitation to this party, Park. But if you feel like payin’ the fiddler, you can write your name on my dance card right now.”

  “I ain’t got nothin’ agin you, Smoke. Not until I find out which side you buckin’ leastways. McCorkle or Hanks?”

  “Neither one.”

  The gunslicks exchanged glances. “That don’t make no sense,” one of the men that Smoke didn’t know said.

  “You got a name?”

  “Dunlap.”

  “Yeah, I heard of you. You killed a couple of Mexican sheepherders and shot one drunk in the back down in Arizona. But I’m not a sheepherder and I’m not drunk.”

  Dunlap didn’t like that. But he had enough sense not to pull iron with Smoke Jensen.

  “You was plannin’ on riding in with nobody knowin’ who you were, wasn’t you?” Tabor asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Next question is why?”

  “I guess that’s my business.”

  “You right. I reckon we’ll find out when west to Gibson.”

  “Perhaps.” He turned to Beans and Ring. “Let’s ride.”

  After the three men had ridden away, toward the north, one of the two gunhands who had not spoken broke his silence.

  “I’m fixin’ to have me a drin
k and then I’m ridin’ over to Idaho. It’s right purty this time of year.”

  Larado, now that Smoke was a good mile away, had reclaimed his nerve. “You act like you’re yeller!” he sneered.

  But the man just chuckled. “Boy, I was over at what they’s now callin’ Telluride some years back, when a young man name of Smoke Jensen come ridin’ in. He braced fifteen of the saltiest ol’ boys there was at that time. Les’ see, that was back in, oh, ’72, I reckon.” He looked directly at Larado. “And you bear in mind, young feller, that he kilt about ten or so gettin’ to that silver camp. He kilt all fifteen of them so-called fancy gunhandlers. Yeah, kid, he’s that Smoke Jensen. The last mountain man. Since he kilt his first Injun when he was about fifteen years old, over in Kansas, he’s probably kilt a hundred or more white men—and that’s probably figurin’ low. There ain’t nobody ever been as fast as he is, there ain’t never gonna be nobody as fast as he is.

  “And I know you couldn’t hep notice that bear of a man with him? That there is Ring. Ring ain’t never followed no man in his life afore today. And that tells me this: Smoke has done whipped him fair and square with his fists. And if I ain’t mistaken, that young feller with Smoke and Ring is the one from over in Utah, round Moab. Goes by a half a dozen different names, but one he favors is Beans.

  “Now, boys, I’m a fixin’ to have me a drink and light a shuck. ’Cause wherever Smoke goes, they’s soon a half a dozen or more of the randiest ol’ boys this side of hell. Smoke draws ’em like a magnet does steel shavin’s. I had my say. We partin’ company. Like as of right now!”

  * * *

  Down in Cheyenne, two old friends came face-to-face in a dingy side-street barroom. The men whoopped and hollered and insulted each other for about five minutes before settling down to have a drink and talk about old times.

  Across the room, a young man stood up, irritation on his face. He said to his companion, “I think I’ll go over there and tell them old men to shut up. I’m tared of hearin’ them hoot and holler.”

  “Sit down and close your mouth,” his friend told him. “That’s Charlie Starr and Pistol Le Roux.”

  The young man sat down very quickly. A chill touched him, as if death had brushed his skin.

  “I thought them old men was dead!” he managed to croak after slugging back his drink.

  “Well, they ain’t. But I got some news that I bet would interest them. I might even get to shake their hands. My daddy just come back from haulin’ freight down in Colorado. You wanna go with me?”

  “No, sir!”

  The young man walked over to where the two aging gunfighters were sitting and talking over their beers. “Sirs?”

  Charlie and Pistol looked up. “What can I do for you?” Le Roux said.

  The young man swallowed hard. This was real flesh-and-blood legend he was looking at. These men helped tame the West. “You gentlemen are friends with a man called Smoke Jensen, aren’t you?”

  “You bet your boots!” Charlie smiled at him.

  “My daddy just come home from haulin’ freight down to a place called Big Rock. He spoke with the sheriff, a man called Monte Carson. Smoke’s in trouble. He’s gone up to some town in Montana Territory called Gibson to help his cousin. A woman. He’s gonna be facin’ forty or fifty gunhands; right in the middle of a range war.”

  Pistol and Charlie stood up as of one mind. The young man stared in astonishment. God, but they were both big and gray and gnarled and old!

  But the guns they wore under their old jackets were clean and shiny.

  “I wish we could pay you,” Charlie said. “But we’re gonna have to scratch deep to get up yonder.”

  The young man stuck out his hand and the men shook it. Their hands were thickly calloused. “There’s a poke of food tied to my saddle horn. Take it. It’s all I can do.”

  “Nice of you,” Pistol said. “Thankee kindly.”

  The men turned, spurs jingling, and were gone.

  * * *

  The silver-haired man pulled off his boot and looked at the hole in the sole. He stuck some more paper down into the boot. “Hardrock, today is my birthday. I just remembered.”

  “How old are you, about a hundred?”

  “I think I’m sixty-seven. And I know you two year older than me.”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Thankee.”

  “I ain’t got no present. Sorry.”

  Silver Jim laughed. “Hardrock, between the two of us we might be able to come up with five dollars. Tell you what. Let’s drift up to Montana Territory. I got a friend up in the Little Belt Mountains. Got him a cabin and runs a few head of cattle. Least we can eat.”

  “Silver Jim . . . he died about three years ago.”

  “Ummm . . . that’s right. He did, didn’t he. Well, the cabin’s still there, don’t you reckon?”

  “Might be. I thought of Smoke this mornin’. Wonder how that youngster is?”

  “Did you now? That’s odd. I did, too.”

  “I thought about Montana, too.”

  The two old gunfighters exchanged glances, Silver Jim saying, “I just remembered I had a couple of double eagles I was savin’ for hard times.”

  “Is that right? Well . . . me, too.”

  “We could ride back to that little town we come through this morning and send a message through the wires to Big Rock.”

  The old gunslingers waited around the wire office for several hours until they received a reply from Monte Carson in Big Rock.

  “Let’s get the hell to Montanee!” Silver Jim said.

  FOUR

  “I thought you would be a much older man,” Ring remarked after they had made camp for the evening.

  It was the first time Smoke’s real identity had been brought up since leaving the little village.

  Smoke smiled and dumped the coffee into the boiling water. “I started young.”

  “When was you gonna tell us?” Beans asked.

  “The same time you told me that you was the Moab Gunfighter.”

  Beans chuckled. “I wasn’t gonna get involved in this fight. But you headin’ that way . . . well, it sorta piqued my interest.”

  “My cousin is in the middle of it. She wrote me at my ranch. You can’t turn your back on kin.”

  “Y’all must be close.”

  “I have never laid eyes on her in my life. I didn’t even know she existed until the letter came.” He told them about his conversations with Big Foot.

  “This brother of hers sounds like a sissy to me,” Beans said.

  “He does for a fact,” Smoke agreed. “But I’ve found out this much about sissies: they’ll take and take and take, until you push them to their limits, and then they’ll kill you.”

  * * *

  The three of them made camp about ten miles outside of Gibson, on the fringes of the Little Belt Mountains.

  “There is no point in any of us trying to hide who we are,” Smoke told the others. “As soon as Park and the others get in town, it would be known. We’ll just ride in and look the place over first thing in the morning. I’m not going to take a stand in this matter unless the big ranchers involved try to run over Fae . . . or unless I’m pushed to it.”

  The three topped the hill and looked down at the town of Gibson. One long street, with vacant lots separating a few of the stores. A saloon, one general store, and the smithy were on one side of the street, the remainder of the businesses on the other side. Including a doctor’s office. The church stood at the far end of town.

  “We’d better be careful which saloon—if any—we go into,” Beans warned. “For a fact, Hanks’s boys will gather in one and McCorkle’s boys in the other.”

  “I don’t think I’ll go into either of them,” Ring said. “This is the longest I’ve been without a drink in some time. I like the feeling.”

  “Looks like school is in session.” Smoke lifted the reins. “You boys hang around the smithy’s place while I go talk to Cousin Parnell. Let’s go.”
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  They entered the town at a slow walk, Ring and Beans flanking Smoke as they moved up the wide street. Although it was early in the day, both saloons were full, judging by the number of horses tied at the hitchrails. A half a dozen or more gunslicks were sitting under the awnings of both saloons. The men could feel the hard eyes on them as they rode slowly up the street. Appraising eyes. Violent eyes; eyes of death.

  “Ring,” they heard one man say.

  “That’s the Moab Kid,” another said. “But who is that in the middle?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “I do,” the voice was accented. Smoke cut his eyes, shaded by the wide brim of his hat. Diego. “That, amigos, is Smoke Jensen.”

  Several chair legs hit the boardwalk, the sound sharp in the still morning air.

  The trio kept riding.

  “Circle C on the west side of the street,” Beans observed.

  “Yeah.” Smoke cut his eyes again. “That’s Jason Bright standing by the trough.”

  “He is supposed to be very, very fast,” Ring said.

  “He’s a punk,” Smoke replied.

  “Lanny Ball over at the Hangout,” Beans pointed out.

  “The Pussycat and the Hangout,” Ring said with a smile. “Where do they get the names?”

  They reined up at the smith’s place; a huge stable and corral and blacksmithing complex. Beans and Ring swung down. Smoke hesitated, then stepped down.

  “Changed my mind,” he told them. “No point in disturbing school while it’s in session. We’ll loaf around some; stretch our legs.”

  “I’m for some breakfast,” Ring said. “Let’s try the Café Eats.”

  Smoke told the stable boy to rub their horses down, and to give each a good bait of corn. They’d be back.

  They walked across the wide street, spurs jingling, boots kicking up dust in the dry street, and stepped up onto the boardwalk, entering the café.

  It was a big place for such a tiny town, but clean and bright, and the smells from the kitchen awakened the taste buds in them all.

  They sat down at a table covered with a red-and-white checkered cloth and waited. A man stepped out of the kitchen. He wore an apron and carried a sawed-off double-barreled ten-gauge express gun. “You are velcome to eat here at anytime ve are open,” he announced, his German accent thick. “My name is Hans, and I own dis establishment. I vill tell you what I have told all the rest: there vill be no trouble in here. None! I operate a nice quiet family restaurant. People come in from twenty, terty miles avay to eat here. Start trouble, und I vill kill you! Understood?”