Cletus took a deep breath and sipped more of his coffee. “Won’t matter none if we kill him in the takin’, Miss Sarah. If we don’t get him warmed up a little an’ some fluids down to replace the blood he lost, he won’t make it five miles in the back of that wagon.”
Just then, Smoke moaned and moved his head slightly, wincing at the pain the movement caused.
He looked around him at the campfire and the men gathered around it until his eyes landed on Sarah.
“Why?” he croaked, trying to make some sense of her attack on him.
Blushing, she got to her feet and moved to stand over him. “Does the name Johnny MacDougal mean anything to you?” she asked, venom dripping from her voice.
FOURTEEN
Smoke struggled up on one elbow and looked up at the angry young woman standing over him. His head felt like a blacksmith had been pounding on it, and his eyes kept blurring and trying to cross. He concentrated, pushing the pain and nausea aside and thought about her question. The name Johnny MacDougal did stir some memories, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on them just yet.
He started to shake his head in a negative reply, but he stopped when the movement caused a red-hot pain to shoot through his skull. He reached up and gingerly felt the back of his head. There was a large, squashy lump there with what felt like dried blood scabbing it over. Evidently someone, probably the very same young woman standing before him now, had hit him from behind. He’d have to get to feeling better to die, he thought.
In a hoarse voice, he croaked, “Sarah, the name is familiar to me, but I don’t quite remember just why.”
At her astonished glare, her eyes filled with even more hatred, he asked gently, “You want to tell me about it?”
She opened her mouth to speak, and he held up his hand, swaying slightly back and forth on his elbow as he lay there. “Just a minute, Sarah,” he said, coughing. “Could I first have some water or coffee? My throat feels as dry as the desert right now.”
Sarah glanced at Cletus without saying anything, and he got to his feet, poured some coffee into a tin mug, and handed it to Smoke. “Here ya go,” he said, “but drink it slow so it don’t come back up on ya.”
While Smoke drank, Sarah put her hands on her hips and stared down at him. “For your information, Mr. Smoke Jensen, Johnny MacDougal was my brother, and last year about this time you beat him up and knocked out his teeth and then you shot him and some friends of his down in cold blood in Pueblo.”
Smoke’s eyes widened over the rim of the cup. He slowly lowered it and struggled up to a sitting position, trying to move his head as little as possible, his face wincing at the pain the movement caused. “That was your brother, the one dressed all in black?”
Sarah nodded, her eyes as hard as flint. Smoke let his head fall into his hands and fought back nausea the coffee had caused as he thought back about that day the previous year when William Cornelius Van Horne had offered to take Smoke and his friends to lunch....
Van Horne pulled the head of his Morgan toward a dining place with a sign over the door that said simply THE FEEDBAG, and the others followed, tying their mounts and packhorses to a hitching rail in front of the building.
The Feedbag was set up similarly to Longmont’s Saloon back in Big Rock. It consisted of a large room with eating tables on one side, and a bar and smaller tables for the men who just wanted to drink their meals on the other side. It was about three quarters full. Most of the men wore the canvas trousers of miners, but there was a smattering of men dressed in chaps and flannel shirts and leather vests who were obviously cowboys from nearby ranches.
Van Horne pushed through the batwings and walked directly toward a large table in the front corner of the room, while Smoke, Pearlie, Cal, and Louis spread out just inside the door with their backs to the wall waiting for their eyes to adjust to the gloomy lighting. The two mountain men stopped and eyed Smoke with raised eyebrows.
“You expectin’ trouble, Smoke?” Rattlesnake Bob asked, his hand dropping to the old Walker Colt stuck in the waistband of his buckskins.
Smoke smiled as his eyes searched the room for anyone who might be giving him special attention. “No, Rattlesnake, but I’ve found the best way to avoid trouble is to be ready for it when it appears.”
When he saw no one was looking their way, Smoke walked on over to the table where Van Horne was already sitting down talking to a waiter, and took his usual seat with his back to the wall and his face to the rest of the room.
As they all took their seats, Bill said, “I ordered us a couple of pitchers of beer to start with while we decide what to order for lunch.”
Bear Tooth smacked his lips. “That sounds mighty good, Bill. I ain’t had me no beer since last spring.”
Before Bill could answer, a loud voice came from a group of men standing at the bar across the room. “God Almighty! What the hell is that smell?” a man called loudly, looking over at their table. “Did somebody drag a passel of skunks in here?”
The young man, who appeared to be about twenty years old, was wearing a black shirt and vest with a silver lining, and had a brace of nickel-plated Colt Peacemakers tied down low on his hips. He had four other men standing next to him, all wearing their guns in a similar manner, and all were laughing as if he’d just said something extremely funny.
Rattlesnake Bob glanced at Bear Tooth and grimaced. “I hate it when that happens,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Now we’re gonna have to kill somebody ‘fore we’ve even had our beer.”
“Take it easy, Rattlesnake,” Smoke said. “He’s just some young tough who’s letting his whiskey do his thinking for him.”
Rattlesnake eased back down in his chair. “You’re right, Smoke,” he said, smiling. “If’n ever’ man who was drunk-dumb got kilt, there wouldn’t hardly be none of us left.”
Smoke continued to keep an eye on the man across the room as the bartender tried to get him to be quiet, without much success.
When their waiter appeared with the beer and glasses, Smoke asked him, “Who’s the man with the big mouth over there at the bar?”
The waiter glanced nervously over his shoulder, and then he whispered, “That’s Johnny MacDougal. His father owns the biggest ranch in these parts.”
“Well, I don’t care if’n his daddy owns Colorado Territory,” Bear Tooth growled. “You go on over there an’ tell the little snot if’n he wants to see his next birthday he’d better keep his pie-hole shut.”
The waiter’s face paled and he shook his head rapidly back and forth. “I couldn’t do that, sir,” he said.
“Why not?” Rattlesnake asked.
“Just last week Johnny shot a man for stepping on his boots.” The waiter hesitated, and then he added, “And the man wasn’t even armed at the time.”
“How come he’s not in jail then?” Louis asked.
“Uh, his father carries a lot of water in Pueblo,” the waiter said. “The sheriff came in and said it was in self-defense, though it was plain to everyone in the place that the man wasn’t wearing a gun.”
“So that’s the lay of the land,” Van Horne said, pursing his lips.
“Yes, sir,” the waiter said, and hurried off back to the kitchen before these tough-looking men could get him in trouble, or worse yet, get him shot.
A few minutes later, after he’d downed another glass of whiskey, the young tough and his friends began to swagger across the room toward Smoke’s table.
Smoke and Louis both eased their chairs back, took the hammer thongs off their Colts, and waited expectantly for the trouble they knew was coming. Smoke eased his right leg out straight under the table so he’d have quicker access if he had to draw.