Blood, Guts, and Glory

Book 0: Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

One of the greatest characters in Western fiction. Two of the wildest tales of frontier vengeance from William Johnstone’s classic bestselling saga. This is how Smoke Jensen became a legend. REVENGE OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN They came in the dead of night like a pack of wolves. They invaded Smoke Jensen’s ranch. They destroyed Smoke Jensen’s dream. Then they finished the job by putting three bullets in Smoke Jensen’s wife. By the time Smoke arrived on the scene, it was too late to save her. Now he lives for revenge. Ruthless, righteous, merciless revenge. . . . VENGEANCE OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN With his darkest days behind him, Smoke Jensen hopes to return to a normal life. Unfortunately, he can’t escape his past. A vicious young gunfighter named Sundance holds an all-consuming grudge against the mountain man. He’s got backup from Mexico, bullets to spare, and bloodlust in his eyes. Tonight, the past is coming for Smoke Jensen. With a vengeance. . . . Live Free. Read Hard.

Release date: March 30, 2021

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 512

Sample

They had struck as cowards usually do, in a pack and at night. And when the man of the house was not at home. They had come skulking like thieving foot-padders; but instead of robbery on their minds, their thoughts were of a much darker nature.

Murder.

And they had tried to kill Smoke Jensen’s wife, Sally. When Smoke and Sally had married, just after Smoke almost totally wiped out the small town of Bury, Idaho, Smoke had used another name; but later, during the valley war around Big Rock and Fontana, he had once more picked up his real name, and be damned to all who didn’t like the fact that he had once been a gunfighter.

It had never been a reputation that he had sought out; rather, it had seemed to seek him out. Left alone as a boy, raised by an old mountain man called Preacher, the young man had become one of the most feared and legended gunslingers in all the West. Some say he was the fastest gun alive. Some say that Smoke Jensen had killed fifty, one hundred, two hundred men.

No one really knew for certain.

All anyone really knew was that Smoke had never been an outlaw, never ridden the hoot-owl trail, had no warrants out on him, and was a quiet sort of man. Now married, for several years he had been a farmer/rancher/horse breeder. A peaceful man who got along well with his neighbors and wished only to be left alone.

The night riders had shattered all that.

Smoke had been a hundred miles away, buying cattle, just starting the drive back to his ranch, called the Sugarloaf, when he heard the news. He had cut two horses out of his remuda and tossed a saddle on one. He would ride one, change saddles, and ride the other. They were mountain horses, tough as leather, and they stood up to the hard test.

Smoke did not ruin his horses on the long lonely ride back to the Sugarloaf, did not destroy them as some men might. But he rode steadily. He was torn inside, but above it all Smoke remained a realist, as old Preacher had taught him to be. He knew he would either make it in time, or he would not.

When he saw the snug little cabin in the valley of the high lonesome, the vastness of the high mountains all around it, Smoke knew, somehow, he had made it in time.

Smoke was just swinging down from the saddle when Dr. Colton Spalding stepped out of the cabin, smiling broadly when he spied Smoke. The doctor stopped the gunfighter before Smoke could push open the cabin door.

“She’s going to make it, Smoke. But it was a close thing. If Bountiful had not awakened when she did and convinced Ralph that something was the matter . . .” The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it would have been all over here.”

“I’m in their debt. But Sally is going to make it?”

“Yes. I have her sedated heavily with laudanum, to help her cope with the pain.”

“Is she awake?”

“No. Smoke, they shot her three times. Shoulder, chest, and side. They left her for dead. She was not raped.”

“Why did they do it? And who were they?”

“No one knows, except possibly Sally. And so far, the sheriff has not been able to question her about it.”

“Bounty hunters, maybe. But there is no bounty on my head. I’m not wanted anywhere that I’m aware of.”

“Nevertheless, Sheriff Carson believes it was bounty hunters. Someone paid to kill you. Or to draw you out, to come after them. The sheriff is with the posse now, trying to track the men.”

“I’ll just look in on her, Colton.”

The doctor nodded and pushed open the cabin door. Smoke stepped past him.

The doctor’s wife, Mona, a nurse, was sitting with several other women in the big main room of the cabin. They smiled at Smoke as he removed his hat and hung it on a peg by the door. He took off his gunbelt and hung it on another peg.

“Doc said it was all right for me to look in on her.”

Mona nodded her head.

Smoke pushed open the bedroom door and stepped quietly inside, his spurs jingling faintly with each step. A big man, with a massive barrel chest and arms and shoulders packed with muscle, he could move as silently as his nickname implied.

Smoke felt a dozen different emotions as he looked at the pale face of his wife. Her dark hair seemed to make her face look paler. In his mind, there was love and hate and fury and black-tinged thoughts of revenge, all intermingled with sorrow and compassion. Darker emotions filled the tall young man as he sat down in a chair beside the bed and gently placed one big rough hand on his wife’s smaller and softer hand.

Did she stir slightly under his touch? Smoke could not be sure. But he was sure that somehow, in her pain-filled mind, Sally knew that he was there, beside her.

Now, alone, Smoke could allow emotions to change his usually stoic expression. His eyes mirrored his emotions. He wished he could somehow take her pain and let it fill his own body. He took the damp cloth from her head, refreshed it with water, wrung it out, and softly replaced it on her brow.

All through the rest of that day and the long, lonely night that followed, the young man sat by his wife’s bed. Mona Spalding would enter hourly, sometimes shooing Smoke out of the room, tending to Sally’s needs. Doc Spalding slept in a chair, the two other women, Belle North and Bountiful Morrow, Smoke and Sally’s closest neighbors, slept in the spare bedroom.

Outside, the foreman, Pearlie, and the other hands had gathered, war talk on their lips and in the way they stood. Bothering a woman, good or bad, in this time in the West, was a hangin’ matter . . . or just an outright killin’.

Little Billy, Smoke and Sally’s adopted son, sat on a bench outside the house.

Just as the dawn was breaking golden over the high mountains around the Sugarloaf, Sally opened her eyes and smiled at her husband.

“You look tired,” she said. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“No.”

“Have you been here long?”

“Stop worrying about me. How do you feel?”

“Washed out.”

He smiled at her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” he said gently. “I go off for a time and you get into a gunfight. That isn’t very ladylike, you know? What would your folks back east think?”

She winked at him.

“Doc says you’re going to be all right, Sally, But you’re going to need lots of rest.”

“Three of them,” she whispered. “I heard them talking. I guess they thought I was dead. One was called Dagget . . .”

“Hush now.”

“No. Let me say it while I still remember it. I heard one call another Lapeer. He said that if this doesn’t bring you out, nothing will.”

She closed her eyes. Smoke waited while she gathered strength.

Doc Spalding had entered the room, standing in the doorway, listening.

He met Smoke’s eyes and inwardly cringed at the raw savagery he witnessed in the young man’s cold gaze. Spalding had seen firsthand the lightning speed of Smoke’s draw. Had witnessed the coldness of the man when angered. Fresh from the ordered world back east, the doctor was still somewhat appalled at the swiftness of frontier justice. But deep inside him, he would reluctantly agree that it was oftentimes better than the ponderousness of lawyers jabbering and arguing.

Sally said. “The third one was called Moore. Glen Moore. South Colorado, I think. I’m tired, honey.”

Spalding stepped forward. “That’s all, Smoke. Let her sleep. I want to show you something out in the living room.”

In the big room that served as kitchen, dining, and sitting area, the doctor dropped three slugs into Smoke’s callused palm.

He had dug enough lead out of men since his arrival to be able to tell one slug from another. “.44s, aren’t they?”

“Two of them,” Smoke said, fingering the off-slug. “This is a .44-40, I believe.”

“The one that isn’t mangled up?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the one I dug out of her chest. It came close to killing her, Smoke.” He opened his mouth to say something, sighed, and then obviously thought better of it.

“You got something else to say, Doc?”

He shook his head. “Later. Perhaps Sally will tell you herself; that would be better, I’m thinking. And no, she isn’t going to die. Smoke, you haven’t eaten and you need rest. Mona agrees. She’s fixing you something now. Please. You’ve got to eat.”

“You will eat, and then you will rest,” Belle said, a note of command in her voice. “Johnny is with the posse, Smoke. Velvet is looking after the kids. You’ll eat, and then sleep. So come sit down at the table, Smoke Jensen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Smoke said with a smile.

“I was waiting to be certain,” Sally told him the next morning. “Dr. Spalding confirmed it the day before those men came. I’m pregnant, Smoke.”

A smile creased his lips. He waited, knowing, sensing there was more to come.

Sally’s eyes were serious. “Colton is leaving it all up to me, isn’t he?”

“I reckon, Sally. I don’t know. I do know that your voice is much stronger.”

“I feel much better.”

Smoke waited.

“You’re not going to like what I have to say, Smoke. Not . . . in one way, that is.”

“No way of knowing that, Sally. Not until you say what’s on your mind.”

She sighed, and the movement hurt her; pain crossed her face. “I’m probably going to have to go back east, Smoke.”

Smoke’s expression did not change. “I think that might be best, Sally. For a time.”

She visibly relaxed. She did not ask why he had said that. She knew. He was going after the men who attacked her. She expected that of him. “You’re not even going to ask why I might have to go back east?”

“I would think it’s because the doctor told you to. But you won’t be going anywhere for weeks. You were hard hit.” He smiled. “I’ve been there, too.” He kissed her mouth. “Now, you rest.”

Mona and Belle stayed for three days; Bountiful lived just over the hill and could come and go with ease. On the morning of the fourth day, Sally was sitting up in bed, her color back. She was still in some pain and very weak, and would be for several more weeks.

Smoke finally brought up the subject. “The Doc is sure that you’re with child?”

“Both of us are,” she smiled with her reply. “I knew before the doctor.”

Discussion of women’s inner workings embarrassed Smoke. He dropped that part of it. “Now tell me why you think you might have to go back east.”

“I have several pieces of lead in me, Smoke. Colton could not get them all. And he does not have the expertise nor the facilities to perform the next operation. And also, I have a small pelvis; the birth might be a difficult one. There is a new—well, a more highly refined procedure that is being used back east. I won’t go into detail about that.”

“Thank you,” Smoke said dryly. “’Cause so far I don’t have much idea of what you’re talking about.”

She laughed softly at her husband. A loving laugh and a knowing laugh. Smoke knew perfectly well what she was saying. He was, for the most part, until they had married, a self-taught man. And over the past few years, she had been tutoring him. He was widely read, and to her delight and surprise, although few others knew it, Smoke was a very good actor, with a surprising range of voices and inflections. She was continually drawing out that side of him.

“Mona’s from back east, isn’t she?”

“I’m way ahead of you, Smoke. Yes, she is. And if I have to go—and I’m thinking it might be best, and you know why, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the baby or the operation—Mona will make all the arrangements and travel most of the way with me.”

“That’ll be good, Sally. Yes. I think you should plan on traveling east.” She knew the set of that chin. Her leaving was settled; her husband had things to do. “You haven’t seen your folks in almost five years. It’s time to visit. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll come out for you when it’s time for you and the baby to return.”

This time her laugh was hearty, despite her injuries. “Smoke, do you know the furor your presence would arouse in Keene, New Hampshire?”

“If fu-ror means what I think it does, why should people get all in a sweat about me coming east?”

“For sure, bands would play, you would be a celebrity, and the police would be upset.”

“Why? I ain’t wanted back there, or anywhere else for that matter.”

She could but smile at him. If he knew, he had dismissed the fact that he was the most famous gunfighter in all of the West; that books—penny dreadfuls—had been and still were being written about his exploits—some of them fact, many of them fiction. That he had been written up in tabloids all over the world, and not just in the English-speaking countries. Her mother and father had sent Sally articles about her husband from all over the world. To say that they had been a little concerned about her safety—for a while—would be putting it mildly.

“People don’t really believe all that crap that’s been written about me, do they? Hell, Sally, I’ve been reported at fourteen different places at once, according to those stories.”

“If they just believed the real things you’ve done, Smoke, that is enough to make people very afraid of you.”

“That’s silly! I never hurt anybody who wasn’t trying to hurt me. People don’t have any reason to be afraid of me.”

“Well, I’m not afraid of you, Smoke. You’re sort of special to me.”

He smiled. “Oh, yeah? Well, I’d have to give it a lot of thought if someone was to offer to trade me a spotted pony for you, Sally.”

Smoke Jensen and Sally Reynolds, gunfighter and schoolteacher, had met several years back, in Idaho. Just before Smoke had very nearly wiped out a town and all the people in it for killing his first wife and their child, Nicole and Baby Arthur; the boy named after Smoke’s friend and mentor, the old mountain man, Preacher.

Smoke and Sally had married, living in peace for several years in the high lonesome, vast and beautiful mountains of Colorado. Then a man named Tilden Franklin had wanted to be king of the entire valley . . . and he had coveted Smoke’s wife, making it public news.

Gold had been discovered in the valley, and a bitter, bloody war had ensued.

And in the end, all Tilden Franklin got was a half-a-dozen slugs in the belly, from the guns of Smoke Jensen, and six feet of hard cold ground.

That had been almost two years back; two years of peace in the valley and in Smoke and Sally’s high-up ranch called the Sugarloaf.

Now that had been shattered.

On the morning of the first full week after the assault on Sally, Smoke sat on the bench outside the snug cabin and sipped his coffee.

Late spring in the mountains.

1880, and the West was slowly changing. There would be another full decade of lawlessness, of wild and woolly days and nights; but the law was making its mark felt all over the area. And Smoke, like so many other western men, knew that was both good and bad. For years, a commonsense type of justice had prevailed, for the most part, in the West, and usually—not always, but usually—it worked. Swiftly and oftentimes brutally, but it worked. Now, things were changing. Lawyers with big words and fancy tongues were twisting facts, hiding the guilt to win a case. And Smoke, like most thinking people, thought that to be wrong.

The coming of courts and laws and lawyers would prove to be both a blessing and a curse.

Smoke, like most western men, just figured that if someone tried to do you a harm or a meanness, just shoot the son of a bitch and have done with it. ’Cause odds were, the guilty party wasn’t worth a damn to begin with. And damn few were ever going to miss them.

Smoke, like so many western men, judged other men by what they gave to society as opposed to what they took away from it. If your neighbor’s house or barn burned down or was blown down in a storm, you helped him rebuild. If his crops were bad or his herd destroyed, you helped him out until next season or loaned him some cows and a few bulls. If he and his family were hungry through no fault of their own, you helped out with food and clothing.

And so on down the line of doing things right.

And if a man wouldn’t help out, chances were he was trash, and the sooner you got rid of him, the better.

Western justice and common sense.

And if people back east couldn’t see that—well, Smoke thought . . . Well, he really didn’t know what to think about people like that. He’d reserve judgment until he got to know a few of them.

He sipped his coffee and let his eyes drift over that part of his land that he could see from his front yard. And that was a lot of land, but just a small portion of all that he and Sally owned . . . free and clear.

There was a lot to do before Smoke put Sally on the steam trains and saw her off to the East—and before he started after those who had attacked her like rabid human beasts in the night.

And there was only one thing you could do with a rabid beast.

Kill it.

Billy stepped out of the house and took a seat on the bench beside his adopted father. The boy had been legally adopted by the Jensens; Judge Proctor had seen to that. Billy was pushing hard at his teen years, soon turning thirteen. Already he was a top hand and, even though Smoke discouraged it, a good hand with a gun. Uncommon quick. Smoke and Sally had adopted the boy shortly after the shoot-out in Fontana, and now Billy pulled his weight and then some around the Sugarloaf.

“You and Miss Sally both gonna go away?” Billy asked, his voice full of gloom.

“For a time, Billy. Sally thought about taking you back east with her, but you’re in school here, and doing well. So Reverend Ralph and Bountiful are going to look after you. You’ll stay here at the ranch with Pearlie and the hands. We might be gone for the better part of a year, Billy, so it’s going to be up to you to be the man around the place.”

Pearlie was leaning up against a hitch rail and Smoke winked at his friend and foreman.

“If I hadn’t a-been out with the hands the other night . . .” Billy said.

Smoke cut him off. “And if your aunt had wheels, she’d have been a tea cart, Billy. You and the hands were doing what I asked you to do—pushing cattle up to the high grass. Can’t any of you blame yourselves for what happened.”

“I don’t think my aunt had no wheels, Smoke,” Billy said solemnly. Then he realized that Smoke was funning with him and he smiled. “That would be a sight to see though, wouldn’t it?”

Pearlie walked up to the man and boy. “We’ll be all right here, Billy. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re a top hand.”

Billy grinned at the high compliment.

When the foreman and the boy had walked away, Smoke stepped back into the house and fixed breakfast for Sally, taking it to her on a tray. He positioned pillows behind her shoulders and gently eased her to an upright position in the bed.

He sat by the bed and watched her eat; slowly she was regaining her strength and appetite. But she was still very weak and had to be handled with caution.

She would eat a few bites and then rest for a moment, gathering strength.

“I’m getting better, Smoke,” she told him with a smile. “And the food is beginning to taste good.”

“I can tell. At first I thought it was my cooking,” he kidded her. “Your color is almost back to normal. Feel like telling me more about what happened?”

She ate a few more bites and then pushed the tray from her. “It’s all come back to me. The doctor said it would. He said that sometimes severe traumas can produce temporary memory loss.”

Colton had told Smoke the same thing.

She looked at him. “It was close, wasn’t it?”

“You almost died, honey.”

She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them, saying, “I remember the time. Nine o’clock. I was just getting ready for bed. I remember glancing at the clock. I was in my gown.” Her brow furrowed in painful remembrance, physically and mentally. “I heard a noise outside, or so I thought. But when it wasn’t repeated, I ignored it. I walked in here, to the bedroom, and then I heard the noise again. I remember feeling a bit frightened. . . .”

“Why?” he interrupted. He was curious, for Sally was not the spooky or flighty kind. She had used a rifle and pistol several times since settling here, and had killed or wounded several outlaws.

“Because it was not a natural sound. It was raining, and I had asked Billy, when he came in to get lunch packets for the crew, to move the horses into the barn, to their stalls for the night. Bad move, I guess. If Seven or Drifter had been in the corral, they would have warned me.”

“I would have done the same thing, Sally. Stop blaming yourself. Too much of that going on around here. It was nobody’s fault. It happened, it’s over, and it’s not going to happen again. Believe me, I will see to that.”

And she knew he would.

“When the noise came again, it was much closer, like someone brushing up against the side of the house. I was just reaching for a pistol when the front door burst open. Three men; at least three men. I got the impression there was more, but I saw only three. I heard three names. I did tell you the names, didn’t I? That part is hazy.”

“Yes.”

“Dagget, Lapeer, and Moore. Yes. Now I remember telling you. The one called Dagget smiled at me. Then he said”—she struggled to remember—“‘Too bad we don’t have more time. I’d like to see what’s under that gown.’ Then he lifted his pistol and shot me. No warning. No time at all to do anything. He just lifted his gun and shot me. As I was falling, the other two shot me.”

Smoke waited, his face expressionless. But his inner thoughts were murderous.

Sally closed her eyes, resting for a moment before once more reliving the horrible night. “Just as I was falling into darkness, losing consciousness, I heard one say, ‘Now the son of a bitch has us all to deal with.’”

And I will deal with you, Smoke thought. One by one, on a very personal basis. I will be the judge, the jury, and the executioner.

Smoke started to roll and light one of his rare cigarettes, then thought better of it. The smoke might cause Sally to cough and he knew that would be harmful.

“Do you know any of the men I mentioned, Smoke?”

“No. I can’t say that I’ve even heard of them.” There was a deep and dangerous anger within him. But he kept his voice and his emotions well in check. He hated night riders, of any kind. He knew those types of people were, basically, cowards.

He kept his face bland. He did not want Sally to get alarmed, although he knew that she knew exactly what he was going to do once she was safely on the train heading east. He also knew that when she did mention it—probably only one time—she would not attempt to stop him.

That was not her way. She had known the kind of man he was when she married him.

He met her eyes, conscious of her staring at him, and smiled at her. She held out a hand and Smoke took it, holding it gently.

“It’s a mystery to me, honey,” she said. “I just don’t understand it. The valley has been so peaceful for so many months. Not a shot fired in anger. Now this.”

Smoke hushed her, taking the lap tray. He had never even heard of a lap tray until Sally had sent off for one from somewhere back east. “You rest now. Sleep. You want some more laudanum?”

She minutely shook her head. “No. Not now. The pain’s not too bad. That stuff makes my head feel funny.”

She was sleeping even before Smoke had closed the door.

He scraped the dishes and washed them in hot water taken from the stove, then pumped a pot full of fresh water and put that on the stove, checking the wood level that heated the back plate and checking the draft. He peeled potatoes for lunch and dropped them into cold water. Then he swept the floor and tidied up the main room, opening all the windows to let the house cool.

Then the most famous and feared gunfighter in all the west washed clothes, wrung them out, and hung them up to dry on the clothesline out back, the slight breeze and the warm sun freshening them naturally.

He walked around to the front of the cabin and sat beside the bedroom window, open just a crack, so he could hear Sally if she needed anything.

Lapeer, Moore, and Dagget. He rolled those names around in his mind as his fingers skillfully rolled a cigarette. He had never heard of any of them. But he knew one thing for certain.

They were damn sure going to hear from him.

Smoke did not leave the Sugarloaf range for weeks. If supplies were needed, one of the hands went into town for them. Smoke did not want to stray very far from Sally’s side.

The days passed slowly, each one bringing another hint of the summer that lay lazily before them. And Sally grew stronger. Two weeks after the shooting, she was able to walk outside, with help, and sit for a time, taking the sun, taking it easy, growing stronger each day.

Smoke had spoken with Sheriff Monte Carson several times since the posse’s return from a frustrating and fruitless pursuit. But Monte was just as baffled as Smoke as to the why of Sally’s attack and the identity of the attackers.

Judge Proctor had been queried, as well as most of the other people around the valley. No one had ever heard of the men.

It was baffling and irritating.

Not even the legended Smoke could fight an enemy he could not name and did not know and could not find.

Yet.

But he was going to find them, and when he did, he was going to make some sense out of this.

Then he would kill them.

It was midsummer before Dr. Colton Spalding finally gave Sally the okay to travel. During that time, he had wired the hospital in Boston several times, setting up Sally’s operation. The doctor would use a rather risky procedure called a caesarean to take the baby—if it came to that. But the Boston doctor wanted to examine Sally himself before he elected to use that drastic a procedure. And according to Dr. Spalding, the Boston doctor was convinced a caesarean was necessary.

“What’s this operation all about?” Smoke asked Dr. Spalding.

“It’s a surgical procedure used to take the baby if the mother can’t delivery normally.”

“I don’t understand, but I’ll take your word for it. Is it dangerous?”

Colton hesitated. With Smoke, it was hard to tell exactly what he knew about any given topic. When they had first met, the doctor thought the young man to be no more than an ignorant brute, a cold-blooded killer. It didn’t take Colton long to realize that while Smoke had little formal education, he was widely read and quite knowledgeable.

And Colton also knew that Smoke was one of those rare individuals one simply could not lie to. Smoke’s unblinking eyes never left the face of the person who was speaking. Until you grew accustomed to it, it was quite unnerving.

Before Colton could speak, Smoke said, “Caesar’s mother died from this sort of thing, didn’t she?”

The doctor smiled, shaking his head. Many of the men of the West were fascinating with what they knew and how they had learned it. It never ceased to amaze the man to see some down-at-the-heels puncher, standing up in a barroom quoting Shakespeare or dissertating on some subject as outrageous as astrology.

And knowing what he was talking about!

“Yes, it is dangerous, Smoke. But not nearly so dangerous as when Caesar was born.”

“Let’s hope not. What happens if Sally decides not to have this operation?”

“One of two things, Smoke. You will decide whether you want Sally saved, or the baby.”

“I won’t be there, Doc. So I’m telling you now—save my wife. You pass the word along to this doctor friend of yours in Boston town. Save Sally at all costs. You’ll do that, right?”

“You know I will. I’ll wire him first thing in the morning.”

“Thank you.”

Colton watched as Smoke helped Sally back to bed. He had not fully leveled with the young man about the surgical procedure. Colton knew that sometimes the attending physician had very little choice as to who would be saved. And sometimes, mother and child both died.

He sighed. They had come so far in medicine, soaring as high as eagles in such a short time. But doctors still knew so very little . . . and were expected to perform miracles at all times.

“Would that it were so,” Colton muttered, getting into his buggy and clucking at the mare.

As the weather grew warmer and the days grew longer, Sally grew stronger . . . and was beginning to show her pregnancy. Several of the women who lived nearby would come over almost daily, to sew and talk and giggle about the damndest things.

Smoke left the scene when all that gabble commenced.

And he was still no closer to finding out anything about the men who attacked his wife.

Leaving Sally and the women, with two hands always on guard near the cabin, Smoke saddled the midnight-black horse with the cold, killer eyes, and he and Drifter went to town.

The town of Fontana, once called No Name, which had been Tilden Franklin’s town, was dying just as surely as Tilden had died under Smoke’s guns. Only a few stores remained open, and they did very little business.

It was to the town of Big Rock that Smoke rode, his. 44s belted around his lean waist and tied down, the Henry rifle in his saddle boot.

Big Rock was growing as Fontana was dying. A couple of nice cafés, a small hotel, one saloon, with no games and no hurdy-gurdy girls. There was a lawyer, Hunt Brook, and his wife, Willow, and a newspaper, the Big Rock Guardian, run by Haywood