LITMIR.BIZ

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kin you sell ’urn if you cain’t mention um?” Cheyenne asked him.

      The drummer looked startled for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh, that’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that.” He stared at the old mountain man. “Are you somebody famous?”

      “I have been a time or two,” Cheyenne grumbled.

      “That’s Cheyenne O’Malley,” Smoke informed the drummer.

      “No kidding! You once fought off a hundred hostile savages.”

      “More like fifteen,” Cheyenne told him. “And they wasn’t savages or hostile. They was just mad at me ’cause I bedded down with the chief’s oldest daughter. She was due to marry the war chief who led the band who come after me. Never could make no sense out of that. I enjoyed it and so did she. I went back about ten years later and looked her up. Sorry I did that. She was about the size of a tipi. Hit me up side the head with a rock and called me all sorts of vile names. Damned if I didn’t have to fight the same bunch all over again. But this time that war chief was mad ’cause I hadn’t toted her off ten years back. I don’t think they got along too well.”

      “That’s incredible!” the drummer said.

      Cheyenne belched. “Damn squaw follered me from the Sun River all the way over to the Bitterroot. Hollerin’ and cussin’ and raisin’ hell. I finally lost her around Lolo Pass. Things like that tend to take some of the joy out of messin’ with wimmin.”

      “What stories I’ll have to tell when I get back to St. Louis!” He looked out the window. “Bunch of riders coming.”

      Smoke walked to the batwings and looked out. “Gunhands,” he said.

      “Is there going to be a Wild West shoot-out?” the drummer questioned.

      “I hope not.”

      “Oh, that would be so exhilarating!”

      “Not for them that gits shot,” Cheyenne said, slipping the hammer thong from his pistol. “All they git is plugged.”

      Half a dozen Bar V hands began crowding into the barroom. They pulled up short and fell silent when they saw Smoke.

      Smoke knew two of them. Blackjack Morgan and Gus Fall. The others might well be hell on wheels with a short gun, but they just hadn’t made a name for themselves as yet. And if they decided to brace Smoke Jensen and Cheyenne O’Malley, the only name they were going to get would be carved on their gravestones.

      “Jensen,” Blackjack said, walking past him, his spurs jingling.

      Smoke nodded his head.

      Gus stopped by the bar and stared at Smoke. He shifted his chew around in his mouth and spat toward a spittoon near Smoke’s boot. He missed the cuspidor, the tobacco juice striking Smoke’s boot.

      Gus grinned at him. “You can get the boy out front to come lick it off.”

      His grin was wiped off his face in a bloody smear as Smoke swung the beer mug, hitting Gus’s jaw and knocking a couple of teeth slap out of his mouth. Gus was propelled backward, his boots slipping on the fresh-mopped floor. He slammed through the batwings, tearing one off, and fell into the dusty street, on his back, out cold.

      Micky sat on the bench and stared, mouth open, eyes wide.

      Smoke tossed the handle of the mug onto the plank. “Another beer, please.”

      “There wasn’t no call to do that,” one of the young so-called gunslicks told Smoke. “’Sides, Gus is my friend. I feel obliged to take up for him.”

      Cheyenne laid the barrel of his Colt against the young man’s head and he dropped to the floor like a rock.

      One of the young man’s buddies thought it was a dandy time to grab for iron. He changed his mind as Cheyenne eared back the hammer on his Colt and put those cold old eyes on the kid.

      “Boy,” Cheyenne warned him, “I’ll blow a hole in your gawddamn belly a horse could ride through.”

      “That’s Cheyenne O’Malley!” the drummer blurted out as warning.

      The young man’s face turned gray and shiny with sweat. He let his eyes slide away from the eyes of death staring at him from the face of the mountain man. Slowly, very slowly, he let his hands drop to his sides, as far away from the butts of his guns as humanly possible. He would have grabbed the boards on the floor if his reach had been long enough.

      Cheyenne eased the hammer down and holstered the Colt. He turned his attentions back to his shot glass.

      “See about Gus,” Blackjack told one of the men. He cut his eyes to Smoke. “You’re right touchy today, Smoke. Who twisted your tail?”

      “Two-bit gunhands have a tendency to annoy me.” Smoke lifted his fresh mug of beer with his left hand and took a sip.

      “When Gus gets up from the dirt, he’s gonna kill you, Smoke.”

      “He’ll try.” Smoke turned his back to the gunfighter and sipped his beer.

      Blackjack moved to a table and sat down, ordering a bottle.

      The drummer was scribbling frantically in a notebook; he wanted to be sure to get all this down. He might write a book about this.

      Gus was helped back into the barroom, his mouth bloody and his eyes wild with hate and fury. Smoke turned to watch him, his right hand by his side.

      Gus shook himself away from the men on each side of him and faced Smoke. He was so mad he was trembling.

      “Gus,” Blackjack warned. ”Back off, son. This is not the time.”

      “Go to hell!” Gus said, without taking his eyes off of Smoke.

      “You better do what he says, boy,” Cheyenne told him. “You’re just about to step off into where the waters is deep . and dark.”

      “You go to hell, too, old man!”

      Cheyenne shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody can ever say I didn’t try to warn you about the currents.”

      “You ready, Jensen?” Gus asked.

      “I’m not finished with my beer, Gus. I would suggest you get you a cool one and calm down some.”

      “You, by God, don’t tell me what to do, Smoke.”

      “I’m just trying to save your life, Gus.”

      Gus cussed him. "Here or in the street, Jensen?”

      “It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me, Gus.” Smoke sat his beer mug down on the plank.

      Gus reached for his guns.

      5

      Smoke’s left-hand Colt roared and bucked as his cross-draw flashed.

      The slugs hit Gus in the chest and belly, doubling him over. He stumbled back and grabbed onto a table’s edge for support. He finally managed to drag iron just as Smoke fired again, the .44 slug slamming into his chest. The light began to fade around him as the men in the barroom took on a ghostly appearance, drifting into double images as the sounds of the pale rider grew louder in his ears.

      Gus looked down at his hands. What had happened to his guns? His hands were empty. But he had drawn them. He was sure of that.

      Gus sat down heavily in a chair and the legs broke under the sudden weight, spilling him to the floor. The last thing he would hear was the sounds of the pale rider’s horse galloping closer. And finally, the feel of that cold and bony hand reaching down to touch his shoulder.

      “Did anybody even see Jensen draw?” the drummer asked, his voice filled with awe. “Jesus God, I didn’t.”

      The young man whom Cheyenne had

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