and tents and wagons. Even from where he sat above the town he could hear the shrill and false laughter of hurdy-gurdy girls, busy separating miners from their gold dust and nuggets, and behind it all the banging of tinny-sounding pianos.
Smoke had deliberately not shaved his upper lip since leaving the ranch, and his mustache was nearly grown out, since he had a naturally heavy beard. The mustache made him look several years older and a hell of a lot meaner. The mustache was beginning to droop down toward his chin and made Smoke look like he’d just come off the hoot-owl trail.
“All right, Buck,” Smoke said. “Let’s go check out this dump.”
The livery was on the edge of town and Smoke reined in and swung down. A young boy of about thirteen came out and pulled up short at the sight of the huge, mean-eyed horse.
“I got a stall for you, mister, but you’re gonna have to handle that hoss yourself.”
“What’s the matter, Jimmy?” a loudmouth hollered from a boardwalk so new some of the boards had not yet lost their sawmill color. “You want me to show you how to handle a hoss?”
“Nick Norman,” Jimmy whispered. “He’s a really bad one, mister. A bully.”
“Tell him if he thinks he’s man enough to handle this horse, come on and try,” Smoke returned the whisper. “Don’t worry about him coming back at you. He’ll be so stove-up he won’t be able to walk for six months. If he lives.”
“Well, why don’t you come show me, then, Nick,” Jimmy called.
“I’ll do that,” the loudmouth said, stepping off the boardwalk. “And then I’ll give you a thrashing for being smart-mouthed with me.”
Nick looked at Smoke and said, “Get out of the way. I’ll larn your horse some manners.”
Smoke smiled and pointed at the dangling reins.
Nick jerked up the reins hard and said, “Come on, you ugly son-of-a-jerk.”
Buck bit him, clamping down with his big teeth. Nick screamed as the arm was lacerated and the blood flowed. Nick jerked out a pistol to shoot the horse and Buck butted him, knocking the man to the ground, the pistol sliding away in the mud. Nick grabbed up a heavy board and got to his feet. He reared back to strike Buck and Buck reared up and came down with both shod feet. One hoof made a terrible mess of Nick’s face and the other smashed a shoulder, the sound of the breaking bones clearly audible. Nick lay in the mud, badly hurt and unconscious.
A man came running up, pushing through the gathering crowd. He wore a star on his chest.
Smoke pointed to the bloody and broken Nick and said, “You’d better get your resident loudmouth to a doctor, deputy. He’s hurt pretty bad.”
The deputy started to say something about the best thing to do would be to shoot the damn horse. But he bit back the words and closed his mouth. He didn’t like the look in this big stranger’s eyes. And to make matters worse, that damn big horse was looking at him, too, ears all laid back and walleyed mean. The deputy had seen a few killer horses in his time, and this was definitely one of them.
Smoke petted Buck for a few seconds and then picked up the reins, starting inside the huge barn.
“Where do you think you’re goin’?” the deputy called.
“To stable my horse,” Smoke called over his shoulder. “You have any objection?” Before leaving town, Smoke had wired a friend of his, a judge down in Denver, and asked if his Deputy U.S. Marshal’s commission was still valid.
“That was a lifetime appointment, Smoke. You think you might need that badge soon?” he’d asked him.
“Maybe,” Smoke wired back.
“You have the full weight of the United States Government behind you, my boy,” the judge had wired.
“All the weight I need I carry on my hip,” Smoke closed the key.
“By God, I might!” the deputy hollered, losing his temper. “I don’t like your attitude, mister.”
Smoke dug in his saddlebags and pinned on the badge before stripping off saddle and bridle and pouring grain into a feed trough.
“Did you hear me, damn it?” the deputy yelled, as the crowd outside the livery swelled, the small mob making no effort to assist the unconscious Nick Norman. “I said,” the deputy shouted, “do you hear me, you damn saddlebum?”
Smoke hesitated for a moment, then took off the U.S. Marshal’s badge and put it in his pocket. Might be more fun without it, he thought.
“Git out here and look at me!” the deputy shouted, now reenforced by two other badge-toting men.
Smoke made sure his second gun was hidden by his coat and then he walked out of the gloom of the livery to face the three so-called lawmen.
“All right,” Smoke said, as the mob of men and painted women fell silent. “I’m looking at you. But if I have to look at you for very long, I’ll lose my appetite.” He glanced at the other two. “And that includes you, too.”
The three men looked at each other, not quite sure how to handle this situation. As deputies under Sheriff Bowers, they were accustomed to bullying their way around the area, and having people kowtow to them. But this stranger didn’t seem a bit impressed by their badges.
They didn’t realize that Smoke immediately knew that the three of them combined wouldn’t make a pimple on a good lawman’s butt.
“We’re deputies,” one of the three said.
“Wonderful,” Smoke told them. “Go get a lost cat out of a tree.”
Jimmy the stableboy could not hide his grin.
One of the deputies noticed it and flushed. “I’ll slap that smirk offen your face, boy.”
“You’ll do it when Hell freezes over,” Smoke told him.
The deputy cut his eyes to the big stranger. “You don’t talk to me lak ’at, mister. I got me a notion to put you in jail.”
“Why don’t you try?” Smoke said softly.
“All right!” a voice shouted from behind the crowd. “Get out of the damn way and let me through.”
The crowd parted and a big man stepped into the small clearing in front of the livery. He was about the same size as Smoke and did not appear to have an ounce of fat on him. He was clean-shaven and smelled of cologne. He wore a very ornate star pinned to his coat and at first glance appeared to be a man used to getting his own way. He wore two guns, low and tied down.
“I’m Sheriff Bowers,” the man said, fixing his gaze on Smoke. “What’s going on here? What happened to Nick?”
“Nick got rough with my horse,” Smoke told him. “My horse didn’t like him or the treatment and let him know about it. Then this loudmouth piece of crap wearing a badge showed up and I don’t like him. He threatened this boy here.” He pointed to Jimmy. “That tells me what type of sorry trash he is.
