“That’s exactly what it was,” Abe said.
The sheriff walked back down the bar toward Smoke, who hadn’t spoken a word since the sheriff and his deputy came in. He was calmly drinking his beer.
“Mr. Jensen, I thought you told me when you found out your sister wasn’t here, that you would be goin’ back up to Colorado.”
“I am going back,” Smoke said. “Train’s leavin’ tomorrow.”
“Too bad it didn’t leave an hour ago,” the sheriff said.
“I would have been on it,” Smoke said.
“And Moore would still be alive,” the sheriff said.
“For now. But with his attitude, he was sure to get himself killed, sooner or later.”
“I expect you might be right.”
“I know I’m right.”
“I reckon you’ve run across people like Moore before.”
“More often than I want to,” Smoke said. “Most of the time it’s all jaw. Not ever’one has the guts to actually make the try, like Mr. Moore did.”
“And you say your train leaves tomorrow?”
“That’s right.”
“What are your plans now?”
“My plans are to go back home.”
“No, I mean from now until your train leaves tomorrow.”
“I thought I might have supper and get a good night’s sleep,” Smoke said. “Unless you need me to stay around for an inquest or something.”
“No, no, that won’t be needed. Uh, but it would be good for all of us, if you’d maybe have your supper and turn in early. You wouldn’t want to sleep late and miss your train tomorrow, would you?”
Smoke chuckled. “No, I don’t think I would want to do that.”
A tall, very gaunt-looking man dressed in black tails and a high hat came in then. Two other men were with him.
“Hello, Gene. I see it didn’t take you long to get here,” the sheriff said. “Gene Ponder is our undertaker,” he added, speaking to Smoke.
“Oh, my, I do believe that is young Mr. Moore, isn’t it?” Ponder asked. “He has given me business before, but always before it was the other gentleman I would be carrying away.”
“Get him out of here,” the sheriff said.
Ponder nodded toward his two associates, and they picked the body up and carried him out. Immediately after the body was moved, one of Abe’s workers began cleaning up the blood.
“Mr. Jensen, I apologize for this,” the sheriff said. “And I do hope nobody else gets the idea to come after you.”
“Yes, I hope so as well.”
Sugarloaf Ranch
Smoke and Sally were sitting in a porch swing watching the light show on the mountains as the sun dipped lower in the western sky.
“And this man, Moore, just challenged you for no reason?” Sally asked.
“Oh, he had a reason all right. He wanted to be known as the man who had killed Smoke Jensen.”
Sally shivered. “That’s no reason.”
“It was to Moore, and it is for other men just like Moore.”
“Smoke, will you ever be able to just hang up your guns and become a gentleman rancher?” Sally asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. That’s pretty hard.”
“What’s so hard about it?”
“The ‘gentleman’ part,” Smoke said, teasingly.
“Oh, pooh, you know what I meant,” Sally said with a little laugh, hitting him playfully on the shoulder.
“To answer your question, truthfully, I don’t know,” Smoke said. “It seems to me like my trail has already been blazed. I don’t know as I have any choice but to follow it.”
“But wouldn’t you like to see Sugarloaf become a productive ranch?”
“It will become a productive ranch, Sally, I promise you that. The day will come when Sugarloaf will be one of the biggest and the best ranches in all of Colorado.”
“But if someone is always trying to kill you?”
“I’ll deal with it,” Smoke said, confidently.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Old Main Building
After Smoke finished with his account of the encounter with Fast Lennie Moore, he, Professor Armbruster, and Wes went into the faculty lounge, where they had coffee and freshly made bear signs.
Over coffee, Smoke told them about the Jordan automobile he had bought for Sally, and Wes, particularly fascinated by it, asked him all sorts of questions, most of which Smoke couldn’t answer.
“I’m not all that familiar with modern gadgets,” Smoke said. “For example, I’m barely able to understand how a telephone works, let alone a radio, or even how, when I speak into the microphone, you can play my voice back to me. All I know is that the man who sold the car said it had a sixty-five horsepower engine. But I don’t understand that either, because even if you hooked sixty-five horses to the machine, they wouldn’t be able to run at seventy miles an hour. The car will run seventy miles an hour though. I know this, because I drove it that fast.”
Professor Armbruster and Wes laughed.
“Well,” Armbruster said as he put his cup down. “Are you ready to continue the account of John Jackson?”
“Yes,” Smoke said.
The three men returned to the recording studio, and as soon as Wes was ready, he gave the sign to Professor Armbruster.
“What happened after John burned the cabin, in effect cremating his wife and child?”
“John went on the warpath,” Smoke said. “That’s what happened.”
Montana—1872
John saw smoke drifting up through the trees ahead, and he heard the sound of Indians talking. He had no idea whether these were the same ones who raided his cabin or not, but he didn’t care. They were Crow, and it had been Crow Indians who had killed Claire and Kirby. And in John’s anger and hatred, all Crow were the same.
Pulling his pistol, he urged his horse into a gallop, heading straight for the campfire of the Indians. He didn’t know how many were there, and he didn’t care. He intended to kill as many of them as he could before he was killed, and the idea that he might be killed disturbed him not in the least.
With a loud and enraged scream, John burst into the clearing. There were three Indians sitting around a fire, cooking some kind of meat. They looked around at John in shock and fear.
John began shooting. He killed two of them instantly, but the third managed to get to his feet and start running.
John put his pistol away and took out a hatchet that hung from his belt. Easily overtaking the running Indian, John swung his ax, blade first. He split open the fleeing Indian’s skull, and his brains began pouring from the wound, even before he fell.
John left him where he lay, and he returned to the campfire to make certain than the two he had shot were dead.
They were dead, and John dismounted and stared at their bodies, wondering what he could do to send a signal to the other Indians, to let them know that this was more than just a random killing.
Then he recalled something Claire had once told him.
“To the Crow, the liver is the most important part of the body,” she had said. “Without it, they don’t believe they can make it to the afterlife.”
John carved open the stomach of one of the Indians, then he cut out his liver. He did the same with the other two. Then, he skewered the three livers on a stick, and put them over the fire to cook.
Once they were cooked, he took a small bite from each of the livers, then cut the rest of them up in small pieces and scattered them about to be consumed by animals and insects.
The Indians had been cooking a rabbit, and he ate what he could, then wrapped the rest of it up in a piece of cloth and took it with him.