“They’s about ready to make their play!” Hardrock called out. “You got to take out the man on your left first, he’s the bad one.”
“Now!” Silver Jim yelled.
Parnell’s right hand dipped and his left hand came across to support the sawed-off shotgun. One barrel exploded in a roar of gunsmoke, the second barrel was shattered as Parnell let loose the second charge. As fast as anything Smoke had ever seen-considering the cumbersome weapons he was using-Parnell I dropped the first sawed-off to the ground and drew the left hand shotgun. The third barrel was reduced to splinters.
“I’m impressed,” Smoke said.
“I’m proud of you, Brother!” Fae said.
“I love you!” Rita yelled.
Hardrock looked close at Parnell and shook his head. “Furst time I ever seen a wolf blush!”
Twenty-Three
“Feel like trying out the new general store?” Cord asked Smoke.
“I thought you’d never ask. I forgot to pick up some tobacco last time in.”
“Ah ... Parnell wants to go along. I refuse to call him Wolf. I just can’t!”
Smoke laughed. “I can’t either. Sure, if he wants to come along. I notice he’s been in the saddle for the last week. He’s turned out to be a pretty good rider.”
“Man is full of surprises. And speaking of surprises, I’m told that we’re all in for a surprise when we see what’s happening, or has happened, to Gibson.”
“Yeah. I hear there’s even a paper.”
“The Gibson Express. I want to pick up a copy.”
“How about your boys?”
“I ordered them to stay close to their ma. They’ll obey me.”
“I’ll put on a clean shirt and meet you out front.”
Cord, Smoke, Parnell, Lujan, Beans, Del, Charlie, and Ring rode into Gibson. A wagon rattled along behind them to carry the supplies back, Cal at the reins. At the edge of town, they reined up and stared in disbelief. The once tiny and sleepy little town was now a full three blocks long and several blocks deep on either side. Many of the new stores were no more than knocked-together sideboards with canvas tops, but it was still a very impressive sight.
“This spells trouble, gentlemen,” Lujan said.
“Yeah,” Charlie agreed, standing up in his stirrups for a moment. “You bet your boots it does.”
“I fail to see how the advancement of civilization, albeit at first glance quite primitive in nature, could be called trouble, Parnell stated.
“That town ain’t filled with nothin’ but trash,” Charlie told him. “Hurdy-gurdy girls, tin-horn hustlers and pimps, two-bit gunslingers, slick-fingered gamblers, and the like. It’s dyin’ while it seems to be growin’. As soon as this war is settled, one way or the other, ninety-nine percent of them down yonder will pull up stakes and haul their ashes. Town will be right back where it started from.”
“How about the one percent that will stay?” Parnell questioned.
“Good point,” Charlie agreed. “Wolf, you stay on top of things down yonder in that town. They’s gonna be a bunch of people eyeballin’ ever move you make. And you gonna get called out. Bet on it.”
“I am aware of that,” the schoolteacher turned gunfighter said. “I am ready to confront whatever comes my way. ”
“Me and you, Parnell,” Beans said, “will have us a cool beer in one of them new saloons. Check things out.”
Parnell glanced at him. “I detest the taste of beer. However, I might have a sarsaparilla.”
The Moab Kid returned the glance. “You go sashayin’ up in a saloon in the middle of a bunch of hardcases and order sodee pop, Parnell, you better be ready for trouble, ’cause it’s shore gonna be comin’ at you.”
“I am aware of that, too.”
“Let’s go,” Smoke said.
The men rode slowly toward the now-crowded street of the West’s newest boom town. The news of their arrival spread as quickly as a prairie fire across dry grass. In less than a minute, the wide street had emptied. No one wanted to be caught in the middle of agu nfight, and that was something that everybody knew might be, probably was, only a careless word away.
As the men rode past the Pussycat, Charlie cut his flint-hard eyes to a stranger sitting on the boardwalk, his chair tilted back. Charlie smiled faintly.
Gonna get real interestin’ around here, Charlie thought.
Ring reined up in front of Hans and dismounted. “I shall be visiting Hilda,” he told them. “I will come immediately if there is trouble.”
Cord, Del, and Cal pulled up in front of the new gener store. “Which one of those new joints are you boys going try?” Cord asked.
“How about Harriet’s House?” Parnell asked. “That sounds quite congenial.”
“Oh, I’m sure it will be,” Beans said. “Harriet always runs a stable out back.”
“Well, then, that will be a convenient place for our horses.”
“A stable of wimmin, Parnell,” Beams told him. “For hire.”
“You mean ... I ... ladies who sell their ... ?”
“Right, Parnell.”
Smoke dismounted and almost bumped into a small man wearing a derby hat and a checkered vest. The man’s head struck Smoke about chest-high.
“Horace Mulroony’s the name, sir. Owner and editor of The Gibson Express. And you would be Smoke Jensen?”
“That’s right.”
Horace stuck out his hand and Smoke took it, quickly noticing that the hand was hard and calloused. He cut his eyes just for a flash and saw that the stocky man’s hands were thick with calluses around the knuckles. A Cornish boxer sprang into Smoke’s mind. Not very tall, but built like a boxcar. Something silently told him that Horace would be hard to handle.
“And your friends, Mister Jensen?”
Smoke introduced the man all around, pointing them out. “Charlie Starr, Lujan, The Moab Kid, Parnell Jensen.”
“The man they’re calling the Reno Kid.”
“I am not the Reno Kid.”
“Name’s Wolf,” Charlie said shortly. He didn’t like newspaper people; never wanted any truck with them. They never got anything right and was always meddlin’ in other folks’ business.
“I see,” Horace scribbled in his notebook. “That is quite an unusual affair strapped around your waist, Wolf.”
“I would hardly call two sawed-off shotguns an affair, Mister Mulroony. But since this is no time to be discussing proper English usage, I will let your misunderstanding of grammer be excused-for now.”
Mulroony laughed with high Irish humor. “You sound like a schoolteacher, Wolf.”
“I am.”
“Ummm. Are you gentlemen going to have a taste in Miss Harriet’s saloon?”
“We was plannin’ on it,” Charlie said. “The sooner the better. All this palaverin’ is makin’ me thirsty.”
“Do you mind if I join you?”
“Could we stop you?” Charlie asked.
“Of course not!” Horace grinned. “After you, Mister Starr.” He waved at a man toting a bulky box camera and the man came at a trot. Horace grinned at thegu nfighters. “One never knows when a picture might be available. I like to record events for posterity.”
Charlie grunted and pushed past the smaller man, but not before he saw the stranger leave his chair in front of the Pussycat and walk across the street, toward the saloon they were entering.
Charlie had a hunch the stranger was thinking about joining the game. He knew from experience that the man was a sucker for the underdog.
The saloon was filled with hardcases, both real and imagined. Smoke’s wise and knowing eyes immediately picked out the real gunslingers from the tinhorn punks looking for a reputation.
Smoke knew a few of the hardcases in the room. Several from Dad Estes’s gang were sitting at a table. A few that had left Cord’s spread were there. A couple of Cat Jennings’s bunch were present. They didn’t worry Smoke as much as the young tinhorns who were sitting around the saloon, their guns all pearl-handled and fancy-engraved and tied down low.