“Then you’ll be leaving ...?” She let that trail off with a catch in her voice.
“No. Sally knows I don’t go off and leave a job half-finished. I’ll see this through. If it hasn’t ended by midsummer, then I’ll finish it.”
She didn’t have to ask how he would do that. She knew. “That is very kind of you, Smoke.”
She moved closer. Doreen was a mighty comely lass. Smoke could smell the lilac water on her. Mayhaps, he thought, her middle name was Eve.
He moved back just a tad. “That is, I’ll make up my mind about staying when and if you people ever get around to telling me the truth.”
Her eyes turned frosty as an early morning chill. She spun around and stalked away, her rear end swaying like women’s rear ends have a tendency to do.
Mighty shapely lassie. And Smoke didn’t trust her any further than he could pick up his horse and toss him.
3
On the first full day of work, Smoke didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The boys were sure willing enough, but the trouble was that none of them knew diddly-squat about ranch work. They were farm boys, used to gathering eggs and slopping hogs and plowing and such as that.
Little Chuckie fell off his mount, and landed in a fresh horse pile. The only other britches he had were hanging on the line to dry. He had to work the rest of that morning dressed, from the waist down, in his longhandles. With a safety pin holding up one side of the flap.
Of the boys, Jamie was the oldest and the strongest. He was built like the trunk of a large tree. And he could ride and was a fair hand with a rope.
Matthew was a frail young man who wore glasses and was in dire need of boots.
Smoke was making a list of what the boys needed; and he was going to see to it that they got it. One way or the other.
Ed meant well and tried hard, but it was plain that he would never be a cowboy. Smoke put him to running errands and taking messages back and forth.
Leroy would do. He never complained, even after being tossed a half-dozen times. He just got back up, dusted himself off, and climbed right back in the saddle and stayed there until he showed the bronc who was running this show.
Eli was the son of a carpenter and, like Ed, was no horseman. Smoke put him to work fixing up the place, and there was a lot of fixing up to do. A ranch starts to run down mighty quick, and this spread had been neglected for a long time.
Jimmy and Clark and Buster would do fine, Smoke concluded.
Cecil was fourteen, like Jamie, and solid and mature for his age. A fair horseman.
Alan was a grown-up thirteen, from a hardscrabble farm family. A good solid kid.
Roily, Pat and Oscar were all twelve and showed promise.
All in all, Smoke thought, a pretty good bunch of kids. But, he had to keep this in mind: they were kids. He could not chew on them like he would adults. He didn’t want them screwing up their faces and bawling like lost calves.
“All right, Cheyenne!” Smoke called, with Dagger under him. “Take the men to work!“
Smoke rode over to a three-building town located on Mud Lake, leading a pack animal. He would buy the boys as much clothing as possible here. May be all of it if he were lucky. And he could pick up any talk about how Jud Vale was taking this new twist.
As soon as he walked in, he could tell by the barkeep’s reaction that the name Smoke Jensen was known. Somebody had been talking about him, and fairly recently.
The barroom was separated from the general store by a partition, so the men could talk and cuss without bothering any ladies who might be shopping in the store. The only door connecting the store and saloon was closed.
Smoke ordered a beer and leaned against the bar, observing the very nervous barkeep draw the suds. Three men were silting at a table in the back of the room. It was gloomy in the small saloon, and the men were shrouded in shadows, but Smoke could see well enough to recognize the men as part of one of the groups who had chased him all over half of the southeastern part of Idaho days back.
And one of them was Sam Teller, a gunfighter from over Oregon way. Sam wasn’t known for his easy disposition and loving nature.
A local man, a farmer by the look of him, opened the door and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He stopped cold when he saw the tall man at the bar. His eyes cut to the three gunslicks sitting at the table. He swallowed hard, then walked on to the bar and ordered a beer.
“All of a sudden it smells like a hog pen in here.” one of the gunhawks commented.
The farmer’s face hardened but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
“What’ll it be, neighbor?” the barkeep asked.
“Beer.” The farmer took a position at the end of the bar, near the curve of the planks, so if matters deteriorated into gunplay, he could hit the floor and be out of the line of fire.
Smoke was a cattleman, so he could understand, at least to some degree, why ranchers disliked farmers. But Smoke Jensen was living proof that rancher and farmer could live side by side and be friends. And he knew that not all of the blame for the hard feelings could be laid at the doorstep of the ranchers. Some farmers flatly refused to work with the ranchers, fencing off the best water; homesteading in lineshacks that the ranchers had built and maintained; and sometimes rustling cattle, not always for food to feed hungry families. Sometimes just to aggravate the rancher.
The bartender had moved to the end of the bar, just as far away from Smoke Jensen as he could get.
Smoke sipped his beer and waited for the gunplay that he knew was just around the corner, lurking in those invisible shadows that drifted around and clung to those who lived by the gun.
“There ain’t much to that pig slop, Burt,” Sam Teller said. “Hell, he ain’t even packin’ no gun.”
Burt. Smoke searched his memory. Could be Burt Rolly. Smoke had heard of him. A gun fighter of very limited ability, so he’d been told. Usually a back-shooter.
“You’re a long ways from home, Jensen,” Sam said. “I figured you was still in Colorado, hidin’ under your wife’s dresstail.”
“You figured wrong on a lot of counts, Sam,” Smoke told him. “But then, the way I hear it, you never were very bright.”
“Huh?”
“I said you were stupid, Sam. Dumb. Ignorant. Slow. Mentally deficient. Am I making myself clear now?”
The farmer moved further away from Smoke and if the barkeep pressed any harder against the rear wall he was going to collapse the entire end of the store.
“I don’t think I like you very much, Jensen,” Sam said, finally realizing he was being insulted.
“I
