The girl did not go into the outhouse. But she did disappear from view. So the shed either had a back door or a couple of loosened boards. Clint Perkins, the so-called Robin Hood of the West either had him a girlfriend, or was planning to rescue the lady from the sweaty evil clutches of Jud Vale. Probably a combination of both, Smoke thought. This Clint Perkins, as it was turning out, was quite the ladies’ man.
Smoke wondered just how many starry-eyed women Clint had loved and left and how many woods’ colts this dubious Robin Hood had in his back trail?
After only a few moments, a man wearing two guns belted around his waist stepped onto the porch and, judging from the expression on his face, started yelling. The girl appeared, seeming to come from out of the privy. And from the expression on her face, she seemed to be yelling at the man. When she reached the porch, the man slapped her, staggering her, only the railing preventing her from falling off the porch. He grabbed her by the arm and hurried her into the house, slamming the door behind them.
Interesting, Smoke thought. Then he wondered how many more young ladies Jud Vale was keeping against their will in the huge mansion?
Smoke settled back in a more comfortable position, his back to a tree, his hat on the ground beside him and waited and watched. This might prove to be a very interesting morning.
And Smoke might not have to do anything for a change. Except enjoy the show.
12
Smoke shifted his attentions to the front of the mansion as Jud Vale stepped out onto the porch with a cup of coffee in his hand and took a chair. Smoke envied him that cup of coffee, for a fact. His had been a cold camp the night before, and he sorely missed his usual full pot of hot, strong, black cowboy coffee upon waking up.
He contended himself by chewing on a biscuit sandwich made with fried salt pork and chasing it down with sips of water from his canteen.
The girl Smoke had seen meeting with Clint Perkins came out onto the porch and began talking to Jud, gesturing with her hands.
Jud shook his head a couple of times and then, with an angry expression on his face, pointed toward the door. The girl, her shoulders slumped in defeat, walked back inside the house.
Jud stood up and hollered something; Smoke could see his lips move but could not make out the words. Three men stepped out of a bunkhouse and walked toward the house. Three more men, with the girl in tow, quite unwillingly, Smoke noted, by the way one held onto her arm, came out of the mansion to stand by Jud on the porch.
The man holding onto the girl nodded his head and the three went back into the mansion. Shifting his glasses. Smoke watched as Clint ran the short distance from shed to back porch and then disappeared into the mansion.
Gong to get interesting very soon, Smoke thought.
Jud’s horse was saddled and led to the porch, and Jud and three of his bodyguards rode off. Smoke finished his biscuit and salt meat and waited for something to start popping.
It wasn’t long in coming.
One man was suddenly hurled through a side window, the side of his head bloody. Gunfire shattered the early morning quiet and one of Jud’s bodyguards came staggering out onto the back porch. He fell over the railing and lay still.
More gunfire came from within the house and the third bodyguard fell out of the front door, on his back, on the porch. The front of his shirt was bloody.
Wisps of smoke began leaking out of an open window in the rear of the house as Clint and the girl ran out the back door and toward the creek. Several moments later, Smoke watched as two horses pounded away, the girl riding astride. They topped a hill and were gone.
“Robin Hood strikes again,” Smoke muttered, as he took out another biscuit and settled back, just as Jud Vale and his bodyguards came galloping back to the ranch.
The fire had been confined to the kitchen and had been extinguished in a few minutes. Jud was talking to the man who had been bashed on the noggin and tossed out the side window.
“So it wasn’t Jensen all along,” Jud said, standing up, his face tight with anger. “It was that damn Clint Perkins!”
“They look enough alike to be brothers,” Jason reminded his boss. “Be easy to mistake them in the dark.”
“Maybe they’re brothers?” a hand suggested. “And Smoke Jensen come in here to help him out?”
But Jud Vale rejected that on the spot. He’d been in the West for some years when the stories about Smoke Jensen first began surfacing. Jud knew that Jensen’s father had died and the mountain man, Preacher, took care of the boy’s raising after that. Smoke had always been a loner, with no family to speak of, certainly no brother.
He shook his head. “No. He doesn’t have a brother. Not anymore. His brother was killed in the war. Tortured and killed by a group headed by three men who later moved into Idaho. Jensen killed them all and detroyed the town.”
“Then what’s he doin’ here, Boss?” Jason asked.
“Exactly what he said he was dong,” Jud replied, bitterness in his voice. “He was just seeing the country when we braced him. That got his back up, and he stayed.” Jud shrugged. “We brought it on ourselves.”
“And we do what about it?” a gunslinger asked.
“Kill him.”
A Bar V hand had gotten close to Smoke’s hiding place while taking a shortcut to a search area. He now found himself flat on the ground looking up into the cold eyes of Smoke Jensen, with a knife blade across his throat. There were any number of questions he wanted to ask, but wisely kept his mouth shut, figuring if Jensen wanted him to talk, he’d tell him so.
“Who is in the house besides Jud Vale and his men?” Smoke asked.
“Nobody! I swear it!”
“The girl who got away—who is she?”
“Susie somebody-or-another. Nester’s kid from over Wyoming Territory.”
“She was the only servant?” Smoke moved the razor sharp knife blade and the man cringed in fear.
“If that’s what you want to call what she done. Yeah. She cain’t cook and don’t clean house. It’s like a boar’s nest in that house. There was two more girls. One run off— never seen her agin, and Jud kilt the other. But it was an accident, Jud said. He broke her neck whilst they were messin’ around. You know.”
“Sounds like a nice gentle fellow, this Jud Vale does.”
The hand didn’t know how to respond to that, so he kept his mouth closed.
“What’s Clint Perkins’s beef with Jud?”
“Lord, man, I don’t know! ‘Ceptin’ that Perkins is crazy, I reckon. He hates rich folks, I do know that.”
Smoke stared hard at the man. The Bar V hand was scared and sweating, even though the day was cloudy and cool, threatening rain. "Where are you wanted?"
The hand hesitated. Smoke moved the big blade. That loosened his mouth. “Kansas!” He blurted out.
“What for?”
“I robbed a store. I was down on my luck and needed some cash.”
Smoke grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back, exposing his throat even more. “Tell it all!”
“Nebraska! I robbed a bank, kilt a teller! You gonna turn me in?”
“Not if you level with me.”
“Anything you want. Jist anything at all, Mr. Jensen. You want me to git down and howl lak a dog, you jist say so.”
“Is there any puncher on Vale’s payroll who isn’t wanted by the law?”
“Lord, no! Jud laks to hire people on the hoot owl trail. He’s got more control over ‘’m. They’s more outlaws down yonder than at Robber’s Roost.”
“And Jud Vale wants to be king of this part of the state?”
“Mister Jensen, he is king!”
“Huh?”
“Shakespeare wrote that.”
“I ain’t never heard of him. What outfit does he ride for?”
“Forget it.” Smoke stuffed a gag into the man’s mouth and tied him to a tree. He picked up his rifle and began making his way toward the creek that ran behind the mansion of Jud Vale. He wasn’t worried about being spotted by any ranch hands; there weren’t any hands left on the ranch, except those gunslingers and bodyguards in the house with Jud. Every hand, including the cook, was out looking for Clint Perkins and the girl. According to the tied-up and gagged Bar V hand, no one believed Smoke was within thirty miles of the mansion. And by this time, there wouldn’t be a puncher, bounty hunter, or hired gun within ten miles of the ranch.