LITMIR.BIZ

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sky. He took up slack on the trigger and the butt-plate slammed his shoulder. A saddle emptied just as gunfire from the house and bunkhouse roared, shattering the night and emptying half a dozen more saddles.

      He heard Jud’s voice, hollering for his men to fall back to the ridges.

      Smoke fired again, and saw a man jerk in the saddle. He managed to stay on his horse, but one arm was hanging useless and flopping by his side.

      The attackers had been able to fire no more than half a dozen shots before they were beaten back.

      One man struggled to his boots in the road and began staggering and lurching toward the gates. The defenders held their fire and let him go. Just before he reached the gates, he collapsed face down in the hard-packed dirt and did not move.

      That sight must have done it for the riders. Someone shouted, “Hell with this! The luck ain’t with us this night.”

      The attackers rode off, heading back for the friendlier range of the Bar V. They left their dead and wounded behind them.

      Smoke and the others waited a reasonable length of time, to see if it was a trick, and then slowly and cautiously gathered in the yard.

      Smoke and Cheyenne roamed about, checking on the men sprawled on the ground.

      They found several alive. “What do we do with those still alive?” Cheyenne questioned.

      “Patch them up and get word to Jud to come and get them,” Smoke told him. “Maybe pile them in a wagon and send them back to Jud. We’ll see.” He was kneeling down beside a man who was alive, but not for long. He had been shot in the center of the chest.

      “He’ll never quit, Jensen,” the dying man gasped. “Vale’s a crazy man.”

      “Why is he doing it?”

      The man ignored that. “As long as he’s got a dime in his jeans he’ll hire fighting men.” “Why?” Smoke persisted.

      “King. To be king. Wants to control everything from the state line to Preston. Everything and everybody.”

      “Shut up, Slim!” another wounded man growled, mercenary and loyal to the gun right to the end.

      “You go to hell, Lassiter!” Slim told him. He cut his eyes to Smoke. The light was slowly fading from them. “Vale’s got gunhands comin’ in on the train. This is shapin’ up to be the biggest range war in ... the state. He’ll overpower you just by ... numbers, Jensen. And he’s just about reached... the point where he don’t give a damn if the kids git hurt.”

      Slim groaned and closed his eyes. He did not open them again.

      Smoke rose to his boots and took the blanket that Doreen handed him, spreading it over the dead gun-fighter. Cheyenne had taken all the guns and ammo from the dead and wounded men. They would be added to the arsenal of the Box T. Smoke felt sure they would be needed before all this was over.

      He knelt down beside Lassiter. The man had a bullet-burn on the side of his head and a slight shoulder wound. Painful but not serious. “I ought to call the U.S. Marshals in here and file charges against all of you, Lassiter...”

      The gunfighter sneered at him.

      “... But that would take weeks and we’d have to keep you prisoner and look at your ugly face every day. It just isn’t worth it.”

      “You better kill me, Jensen,” Lassiter warned. "Davidson was a friend of mine."

      “You should choose your friends more carefully, Lassiter. No, I’m not going to kill you. Not like this, anyway. Not at this time.”

      “Then you’re a damn fool, Jensen!”

      “Maybe. But I can sleep at night, and I don’t make war against kids and women and old people.”

      “Who gives a damn what happens to a bunch of snot-nose brats!”

      Smoke was a hard man in a harsh time and environment, and he had killed many, many men. But he had to shake his head at the cold-blooded callousness of Lassiter.

      “Back away and let me finish him,” Cheyenne said, walking up. “We got it to do sooner or later.”

      Doreen stood looking at it all through wide and scared eyes.

      Smoke had no doubts about the old mountain man’s ability to do just what he suggested. And he knew the old man was right: they would have it to do sooner or later. But he just couldn’t kill the wounded man that way.

      He shook his head. “Get him patched up, Doreen. We’ll put him in a wagon.”

      He walked over to where a young man lay, gut shot. The young gunfighter, no more than a couple of years out of boyhood, lay with both hands clutching his belly. The blood seeped darkly through his fingers, glistening wetly under the light of the hunter’s moon.

      “You got a mamma you want me to write, boy?”

      He shook his head, wincing with the painful movement. "They throwed me out of the house a long time ago. I wasn’t about to spend the rest of my life ... sloppin’ hogs and milkin’ cows.”

      “Beats what you got now,” Smoke coldly and bluntly informed him.

      The young man cussed him. Smoke watched as his right hand slipped toward his large belt buckle. Smoke reached down and pulled a derringer from behind the buckle before the gunhand could reach it. The young gunfighter cursed him even more.

      “How much was Jud Vale paying you, boy?”

      “A hundred a month and found!” He moaned the words as the pain reached higher levels in his bullet-shattered belly.

      “Maybe you can buy something in Hell.”

      “They’ll kill you, Jensen! This is one fight you ain’t gonna win. Your reputation ... ain’t gonna hep you none this time around. Jud Vale’s better than you. His real name is ... is ...”

      “Shet your mouth, you bastard” Lassiter shouted at the young man.

      But the admonition fell on dead ears. The young gunny’s eyes rolled back in his head as his soul went winging to a fiery, smoky eternity. His boot heels and spurs drummed and jangled against the ground and then he was still.

      Smoke walked over to Walt. “How long has Jud been in this area, Walt?”

      “’Bout twenty-five years. He just appeared one day with that damn Jason fellow.”

      “He doesn’t look that old to me.”

      “He’s older than he looks. But he’s one hell of a man still. Don’t sell him short none. I’d peg him in his late forties. He might be fifty even. Hard to tell with a man like that.”

      “No idea where he came from?” Smoke got the strong impression that Walt was lying. But why? “Not a clue.”

      Cheyenne walked up, hearing the last of the conversation. “He come up here by way of Texas,” the old mountain man told them “But I doubt he was Texas born. I ’member when he got here. Like all them hands of his, I think he’s runnin’ from the law somewheres.”

      “And you would guess ...?”

      Cheyenne shrugged. “Back East. But that’s just a guess. It’d be hard to read his backtrail after all these years.”

      “What’s the count on those still alive, Cheyenne?”

      “Four dead and three wounded. None of them hurt too bad.”

      “Can one of them drive a wagon?” “Oh, yeah.”

      “Let’s hitch up a team and get them on their way. We’ll pile the dead in with them.”

      “Beats the hell outta diggin’ a hole,” Cheyenne said with a wicked grin.

      Walt, Smoke, and Cheyenne took turns standing guard that night, but as it turned

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