Trying to keep a straight line of riders going into a storm and weaving back and forth in a fairly thick forest is impossible. Thus, the line of riders coursing through the woods toward Smoke was ragged and uneven, with some men being fifty or sixty yards ahead of or behind the others on either side of them. The fury of the storm kept conversation between the riders at a minimum, and most were riding with their heads down and their hats pulled low over their brows to try to keep the worst of the wind and snow out of their faces.
Smoke knew he could just lie still, and odds were that the men would pass him by and he’d be safe for a while. But he’d still be without a horse, and this put him at a terrible disadvantage in the deadly game of hide and seek they were playing. No, he couldn’t afford to let them go by. He needed both weapons and a horse if he was going to survive this death hunt.
He hated the idea of killing a man he didn’t even know, but the man must’ve known what he was doing when he signed on to take another man to his certain death. Smoke knew it was much too dangerous with the other men so close to try to take a man’s guns and horse and leave him alive, so he steeled himself to the inevitable; he was going to have to hit fast and hard and not worry about the consequences.
Smoke waited until a figure on horseback was directly opposite his hiding place. As the man moved just past him, Smoke eased out of the tree limbs and took a running jump up on the back of the man’s horse. As he landed, he wrapped his left arm around the man’s face and, with the knife in his right hand, he made a rapid slashing motion across the man’s throat.
The horse reared up and whinnied, but the sound was lost in the howling of the wind.
Smoke held on tight as the man’s body struggled for a few seconds and then became limp as his hot blood spurted across Smoke’s forearm.
When he was completely limp, Smoke eased the man’s hat off and put it firmly on his own head, throwing his own hat to the ground. Next, he took the man’s gun belt and holster and put it around his waist. The hardest part was removing the man’s thick rawhide and fur coat without letting his body fall off the horse, which Smoke kept moving by gentle nudges of his heels, guiding the animal with his knees.
When he had the man’s hat, guns, and coat on, Smoke started to let the body fall, and then thought better of it. Leaning to the side, he felt in the man’s right boot. Sure enough, there was a long-bladed skinning knife there. It would be of much more use to Smoke than the small clasp knife he’d used to kill the man.
Looking to both sides to make sure he’d been unobserved so far, Smoke waited until a particularly strong flurry of snow came, and then let the man’s body fall to the side, where it landed in a snowbank with a soft thud inaudible from more than a few feet away.
Slowly, so as not to draw too much attention to himself, Smoke let the horse he was riding ease on out ahead of the line of men. Before long, the men on either side of him were barely visible in the blowing snow. Smoke knew the storm couldn’t last too much longer, and he planned to be well away before the snow stopped and he became fully visible to the others. He hoped with the limited visibility of the storm, the man’s hat and coat would fool his friends into thinking Smoke was him.
Suddenly, a voice called from about forty yards behind him. “Hey, Charlie, what’s your hurry?”
Smoke hunched over, tightening his grip on the reins. He knew he didn’t have much longer before his ruse was discovered.
“Yeah, Blake,” another voice on the other side hollered. “Get your ass back here with the rest of us ‘fore we accidentally put a bullet in your butt thinkin’ you’re Jensen.”
As he passed a tight grove of trees, Smoke leaned forward and dug his heels into his mount, causing it to break into a full gallop ahead.
“Hey, what the . . . ?” a voice yelled.
And then, another screamed, “Yo, Clete! Somethin’s wrong with Charlie Blake. He’s ridin’ like a bat outta hell!”
The man on Smoke’s right kicked his horse into a gallop also, wanting to see why his friend was racing ahead. As he pulled closer, he realized it wasn’t Charlie Blake on the horse ahead of him.
“Damn! That ain’t Charlie, fellers, that’s Jensen,” he screamed, pulling his pistol out and opening fire.
He might have caught Smoke, but a branch suddenly appeared in front of him and whipped across his face, drawing blood and making him slow his horse to keep from falling off.
The ghostly figure on horseback in front of him disappeared into the gloomy snowstorm ahead.
Cletus and Sarah rode over to Sam Jackson. “You all right, Sam?” Cletus asked.
Jackson sleeved blood off his face where the tree limb had slashed his cheek. “Yeah, I’ll be all right,” he growled, leaning over to spit blood from his mouth.
“You say that wasn’t Charlie up there?” Sarah asked, looking ahead into the snow flurries.
“Naw, I don’t think so,” Jackson said. “He had Charlie’s coat on, but he didn’t sit a horse like Charlie an’ he looked to be about thirty pounds heavier and five or six inches taller.”
“But how did he get Charlie’s coat and horse?” Cletus asked.
Jackson looked back over his shoulder. “I don’t know, Boss, but I’ll bet we ain’t gonna find out what happened from Charlie either.”
Cletus nodded. “All right, men, let’s double back a ways and see if we can find Charlie’s body.”
Sarah took a deep breath and felt a deep sorrow. She didn’t know Charlie Blake well, but if he was dead, then it was her fault for letting Smoke Jensen escape.
She shook her head as she pulled her horse’s head around. How was she going to live with herself if more men were killed because of her? she wondered.
TWENTY-THREE
As he rode hell-bent-for-leather through the deepening snow and into the teeth of the freezing north wind after capturing the man’s horse, Smoke leaned as close to his mount’s head as he could to avoid being scraped out of the saddle by a tree limb. He had to trust the horse’s instinct not to run headlong into a tree or off a cliff, and so all he could do for the first couple of hundred yards of their flight was to hang on for dear life and hope for the best.
At least it beat a bullet in the back.
After about ten minutes at a full gallop, Smoke raised his head and looked back over his shoulder. The snow was still blowing, and all he could see was a solid sheet of white behind him.
He slowed the horse and cocked his head to the side, listening to see if he could hear any pursuit over the howling of the wind.
Nothing. He turned back around, pulled his hat down tight, and rode on into the wind toward the mountain up ahead, moving slower now to give his horse a rest. He knew that if he could make the slopes up ahead before his captors caught up to him, he would have the advantage for the first time since this adventure began.
He smiled grimly. And then it would be time to pay them back.
Angus MacDougal was just sitting down to a solitary supper, served by his housekeeper/cook, when the door banged open and a breathless Daniel Macklin barged in.
Angus threw down his napkin and smiled, evidently thinking the group of men had arrived with Smoke Jensen as their prisoner.
“Where is that son of a bitch?” Angus growled, moving toward the hat rack in the corner with his belt and holstered pistol hanging on it.
Macklin didn’t understand at first what Angus was referring to. “Uh . . . where is who?” he asked, taking his hat off and holding it in front of him like a shield.
Angus sighed as he buckled on his gun belt. “Jensen, of course,” he answered. “You remember him, don’t you? The bastard who gunned my Johnny down? The man you went to Big Rock to get for me?”