to give the money to the poor, after holding up rich folks.
But what connection did Clint Perkins have with the Box T?
Well, he might find out ... providing he didn’t get shot first.
He swung into the saddle, leaned down and opened the gate, and rode on in, carefully closing the gate behind him. He walked Dagger toward the house. Smoke stopped at the hitchrail and sat his saddle. Damned if he was going to get down until invited.
“What’s your name?” the voice came from inside the house, speaking from behind the open but curtained window.
“Mamma,” a child’s voice said excitedly. "I seen him on the cover of a book. That’s Smoke Jensen!”
After a lot of apologies and much embarrassment on the part of those in the house, Smoke was invited to sit down and eat. A small boy took Dagger to the barn. Children could handle the big mean-eyed stallion, but Dagger would kill a grown man who tried to mess with him.
Smoke tried to put some family resemblance between the young woman and the old couple. He could not see any. And he didn’t ask; none of his business.
Smoke put away a respectable bit of food and started working on his third cup of coffee.
“I like to see a man eat well,” Alice Burden said. “Our boy used to eat like that.”
Walt gave his wife a warning look that closed her mouth.
Smoke picked up on the glance but said nothing.
“Just passin’ through?” Walt asked, lighting his pipe.
“Something like that,” Smoke sugared his coffee. “Til I had a run-in with a loudmouth name of Jud Vale. I busted him in the mouth and put him on a barroom floor.”
“I’d sure like to have seen that,” Walt said with a sigh. “That man has sure caused us some problems.” “Why?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “He wants our land. Jud Vale wants everything he sees. Including her.” He cut his eyes to Doreen, a slim but very shapely woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties.
Got to be more to it than that, Smoke thought. “What has Clint Perkins got to do with all this?”
Walt looked at his coffee cup. His wife busied herself at the sink, washing dishes. Doreen met Smoke’s eyes. “He’s my husband. Sort of.”
Odd reply, Smoke thought. “Father of the boy?”
“Yes.”
“Clint is from this area, right?”
“Not too far from here,” she replied. “It’s a long story, but I’ll make it short. When Clint was just a boy he saw his father and mother killed by greedy cattlemen who wanted their land and didn’t like farmers. The boy took to the high country and raised himself. He hates rich people to the point of being a fanatic about it. But he has a few good points. More than a few. I married him, but it just didn’t work. He refuses to stop his outlawing. I just couldn’t live like that.”
“So you took the boy and left?”
“Yes.”
Smoke didn’t believe her. She was lying through her teeth, but damned if he knew why.
“This is a big spread, Mr. Burden. Where are your hands?”
“Don’t have none no more. Jud’s men run them off; killed a couple. They’re buried on that crest to the east.”
Smoke had seen the graveyard. More than two crosses there. “And Jud’s men cut your fence?”
“Yep.”
“Tell me about this Clint Perkins?”
“What is there to say?” Walt said. “Nobody ’ceptin’ Doreen has seen his face in fifteen years.”
“You two look alike,” Doreen said. “I can see where someone might think you were him.”
What to do? Smoke thought. All three of these people were lying to him. But why? What were they hiding? Walt and Alice Burden were too old for Clint Perkins to be their son. So that was out. So where was the connection? There had to be one.
“How’d you get here?” he asked Doreen.
“Runnin’ from Jud Vale,” she answered simply. “Walt and Alice took me and Micky in and let us stay.”
Why? Had they known Doreen that well? Had they been neighbors? What? Too many unanswered questions. It made Smoke uneasy. Very uneasy.
“You have any idea how many head of cattle you have?” Smoke asked the old man.
“Not no more. Jud and his gunhands been runnin’ ’em off for a year or more. The one herd they can’t get to without a lot of fuss is west of here, next to the Bear River.”
“How are you getting your food?”
The question seemed to make all three of them nervous. Walt finally said, “Friends slip food to us.”
Smoke nodded, not satisfied with the reply but sensing he wasn’t going to get much more out of the trio. Micky was outside, playing. Smoke figured the boy to be about eight years old.
“There is no point in my trying to restring the wire,” Smoke said. “Without hands to ride fence, Jud’s people would just cut it again come night.”
“True.”
“Do you have the money to pay hands, providing I could find some who’d work for you?”
“Oh, sure. I got money up in Montpelier. That’s a Mormon town. Jud ain’t gonna mess with them folks.”
Smoke knew that for an iron-clad fact. Mormons tended to stick together, and folks who thought they wouldn’t fight because they were so religious soon learned how wrong they were—providing they lived through it.
Wall was saying, “... You ain’t gonna find no one to work for me, anyways, Mr. Smoke. Jud’s got the folks around here buffaloed.”
“You let me think on that for a few hours. You just might be wrong.” He smiled. “However, the hands I get might not be the type you’re used to seeing.”
Smoke stowed his gear in the bunkhouse and fired up the old potbelly stove in the center of the room. Dagger was warm and content and chomping away on corn in a hay-filled stall in the big barn.
Smoke had noticed that at one time—not too long ago—the Box T had been a money-making spread. So why the sudden downfall? Was it just because Jud Vale wanted the land? Smoke didn’t believe that for a minute. There was more to it than that; a lot more.
Smoke hated bullies. If it were just a simple matter of Jud Vale’s greed, the problem could be easily solved—with a gun. Smoke wanted the whole story, though, before it came to that, if it came to that. And he sincerely hoped it would not. He, however, had a hunch that it would.
