Noonan flushed but did not deny the damning charges.
“I still got something to settle with this loud-mouthed, sassy pig-farmer’s kid!” Smith said. “You gonna interfere with that, Jensen?”
“No. I’m as aware as you concerning a fair shoot out between two armed men. In this case a man and a boy. But I’ll kill any of your buddies who try to step in.”
“You ready, punk?” Smith sneered at the boy.
Matt had stepped to the edge of the porch. Smoke glanced at him. There was no fear to be seen about the boy. His face was impassive and his hands were steady. He stared at Smith through his thick spectacles.
“Too bad, boy,” Smith tried to rattle Matt. “You got about ten seconds left to live.”
“I have a whole lifetime ahead of me, Mr. Smith. Let’s just say this is payback time for you.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you remember that time you and those other hooligans rode your horses over my mother’s garden? Ruined it. We didn’t eat very good that winter, Mr. Smith. It was too late to replant. I remember it very well.”
“You gonna bawl about it, kid?” Smith sneered at him.
“No, sir. But I am going to kill you.”
Smith stared at the boy while something crawled slowly across his face. He wanted to brush away the invisible sensation, for he knew what it was. Fear.
“My baby sister died that winter, Mr. Smith. I won’t say it was all because of what you done, even though you did kill our milk cow. She needed milk bad. You had a hand in her dying.”
Smith said nothing. There wasn’t very much left to say.
“Goddamn nesters should have stayed out this area,” Smoke heard one of the cattlemen in the bar say.
Smoke ignored him for the time being. The man had his own conscience to live with. Providing he had one at all.
“Are you ready, Mr. Smith?” Matthew asked, very politely.
“Smith,” one of the Bar V hands spoke softly. “Back away. I don’t like this. The kid’s too damn sure of hisself.”
“I ain’t backin’ up for no damn snot-nose pig farmer’s whelp!” He stared at Matt. “All right, boy. You’ve made your brags. Now do something ’sides talk!”
“After you, Mr. Smith.”
Smith hesitated. Something was terribly, awfully wrong here. He’d seen any number of two-bit, show-off, would-be gunhands in his time. At the last minute, they always backed down. And even before they backed down, they were nervous, their voices shrill, faces shiny with the sweat of fear. But not this kid. Kid, hell! He was just a boy—barely in his teens.
“My little sister suffered, Mr. Smith. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”
“Shut your mouth, damn you!” Smith screamed. “Draw, you punk!”
Matt waited, waited in his worn-out, low-heeled farmer’s boots. In his faded and patched old jeans and carefully mother-mended shirt. His eyes were calm behind his thick glasses.
Smith jerked iron. He just managed to clear leather as Man’s pistol belched and roared smoke and sparks. The first slug hit him in the belly, spinning him around in the dirt. The second slug struck him in the side and knocked him down to one knee. The expression on his face was one of utter disbelief that this could be happening to him. The third slug hit him in the face, entering between nose and upper lip and making one Godawful mess. Smith trembled once and died.
The three remaining Bar V hands stood in open-mouthed shock, all of them knowing they were not nearly as fast as this fresh-faced, as-yet-to-shave farmer’s kid standing on the porch of the store, and all of them so very, very glad they had not tried to brace him.
Leroy stepped out of the store, his short-barreled .44-.40, hammer back, in his hands. The barrel of the carbine was pointed straight and rock-steady at the belly of a Bar V hand.
“I’m out of this, kid!” the hand said quickly.
“You interfere in the fight between Mr. Smoke and Noonan and you’ll be out of it forever,” Leroy told him, his young voice holding hard steel.
Matt had quickly reloaded and holstered the Peacemaker. His calm eyes, magnified behind the thick glasses, looked at the other Bar V hand.
“That goes for me, too, kid!” the hand said.
“Mr. Smoke?” Matt said.
“Matt?”
“If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I got to go behind the building and throw up!” “Go on, Matt.” The boy ran from the porch.
“I done the same thing my first man,” a Bar V rider admitted. “It ain’t nothin’ to be ’shamed of.” He didn’t know what else to do with his hands—only wanting to keep them as far away from his pistol as possible—so he stuck them into the back pockets of his jeans.
Noonan looked at the bulk of Smoke Jensen and swallowed hard. “Come on, boys!” he urged, panic in hisvoice. “They’s three of us. We can take them two.”
The Bar V rider with his hands in his back pockets told Noonan what he could do with his suggestion, together with the same corncob they had originally had in mind for Matthew.
“That goes double for me,” the remaining Bar V rider added. “You wanted to fight Jensen, you just go right ahead, Noonan.” He removed his gun belt and hung it on his saddle horn.
The other hand thought that was a dandy idea, and did the same. Leroy shifted the muzzle of the .44-.40 to Noonan’s belly and the man let his gunbelt fall.
The shopkeeper, his wife, the barkeep, and the two cattlemen had walked out on the porch, to stand and stare. The body of Smith was, for the moment, being ignored. Matt walked around from behind the building, wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve.
Smoke took off his guns and laid them on the bench. He stepped off the porch, walked up to Noonan, and knocked the puncher down in the dirt with one very quick and unexpected hard left hook.
Noonan rolled and came to his boots, the side of his jaw beginning to bruise from the blow. He shook his head, clearing it of stars and chirping birdies, and backed up, lifting his fists.
He swung at Smoke. Smoke ducked the punch and busted the cowboy in the belly with a hard right. Noonan whoofed out air just as Smoke came around with another left which connected on the man’s ear, spinning him around and seriously impairing his hearing for a few moments.
Just as Noonan regained his balance, Smoke stepped in and blasted him in the mouth with another straight right punch. Noonan’s boots left the dirt and he sat down hard on his butt, his mouth bloody.
Smoke backed up. He wasn’t even breathing hard; hadn’t even worked up a sweat yet.
Noonan wisely sat on the ground. He took another good long look at the gunfighter who stood above him, his fists balled, hanging at his sides, waiting. Smoke looked awesome. A big man, six feet or more, with a massive barrel chest and shoulders and arms that were packed with hard muscle.
Noonan came off the ground in a rush, a long-bladed knife in his right hand.
Smoke slipped the first swing of the knife, bending down as he parried the thrust, his left hand scooping up dust from the road. When Noonan closed with him, Smoke tossed the dirt into the man’s eyes, momentarily blinding the man.
Smoke kicked the man on the knee, bringing a howl of pain. Smoke hit the man twice in the face, a left and a right. The knife dropped from his hand just as Smoke’s right hand clamped down on the man’s fingers. Smoke bore down, using all his strength. Noonan began screaming as the bones in his fingers were crushed, the crunching sounds causing all the spectators to wince.
Still holding onto Noonan’s now ruined hand, Smoke began battering the man’s face with short, hard, chopping blows from his left fist. Within a minute, the man’s face had been turned into a bloody, misshapen mask. His nose was flattened, his lips smashed into bloody pulp, several teeth knocked out of his mouth. Both eyes were beaten closed.