“I hate you, I despise you, I loathe you!”
“This is really going to be a fun trip. I can sense that right off.”
“Where are you taking me, you pig?”
“To the mountains, lady. I’m glad you had sense enough to bring a coat with you. You’re going to need it.”
“Why did you kidnap me?”
“So the others will follow.”
“I shall have you whipped to death, you barbarian.”
“Right, lady.”
“If you attempt to violate me I shall give you no satisfaction.”
“You’re as safe with me as you would be in a nunnery.”
“Don’t you find me beautiful?”
“In the same way a rattlesnake is pretty.”
“These bonds are too tight. My hands hurt.”
“My ears hurt.”
She cussed him.
“You have a very dirty mouth, lady.”
“I’m hungry.”
“We’ll eat this evening.”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Later.”
She cussed him.
“I’m not so sure this was such a good idea,” Smoke muttered.
On the third night out, Andrea finally got it through her head that Smoke was not going to violate her precious wonderful flawless perfect body. And that made her madder than the kidnapping.
The man was infuriating. He seemed to sleep with one eye open. She could not escape because Smoke tied a rope around her waist and the other end to his arm before they went to bed. Three times she’d tried to slip away. Three times Smoke had jerked her back to the ground so hard her eyes crossed, her teeth rattled, and her butt hurt from the impact.
While the fire burned down to coals, Andrea asked, “Why don’t you sleep with me tonight?”
“I’m married, lady.”
“She isn’t here.”
“Yes, she is. In my mind.”
“Is she beautiful?”
“Yes.”
“She probably weighs three hundred pounds and has a head like a hog.”
Smoke laughed at her.
“You find me amusing?” she flared at him.
“I find you dangerous, Andrea. Vicious and unfeeling and very dangerous.”
“It was only a game, Mister Jensen,” she said softly.
“Lady, you people were going to kill me.”
“When this started, we thought of it as the ultimate hunt. You are depicted as a notorious gunfighter. A killer. We assumed there would be arrest warrants on you. That no one would care if you got killed. We ...”
“Stop it, Andrea. You’re lying. Stop lying. You found out about me before the hunt started. You could have stopped it before you left Dodge. And you killed that Army patrol. A cold-blooded ambush. So stop lying and making excuses for yourself and your lousy damn friends. And Andrea, I buried your husband. We talked at length before he died. You shot him with that little hide-out gun I took from you. And he didn’t die easy.”
She refused to meet his eyes. “If you turn me over to the police, I won’t be prosecuted.”
“I know that. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. But believe this, Andrea, if you believe nothing else: if you try to kill me, I’ll hurt you.”
“Big brave man, aren’t you?” she sneered the words at him.
“No. Just a man who is trying to survive. Now shut your mouth and go to sleep.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll stuff a gag in your big mouth.”
She lay down and closed her eyes.
“He’s leadin’ us back into the mountains,” Roy Drum said. “Just as sure as hell that’s what he’s doin’.”
“And then? ...” Gunter asked wearily.
“He’ll start killin’ us,” John T. said, his voice flat. “That’s why he grabbed Andrea. So’s we’d follow him.”
“Heading back to the mountains,” von Hausen said, scratching his unshaven chin. “And he’ll make his final stand there, won’t he?”
“You better believe it,” Utah said. “Howlin’ and snarlin’ and spittin’ and scratchin’ and shootin’.” He looked back at the group. “If any of you boys feel you’re comin’ down with a case of the yeller belly, git gone now. ’Cause once we git up in the high lonesome, there ain’t gonna be no runnin’.”
No one left. They sat their saddles and stared at the man, defiance in their eyes.
“Don’t say you wasn’t warned,” John T. told them. “Let’s ride.”
Smoke rode through Powder River Pass and took a deep breath of the cool clear air. He smiled, smelling the fragrance of the high country; he was home. Halfway between there and Cloud Peak, he set up his first ambush point, after securing Andrea’s mouth so she could not scream and warn her blood-thirsty friends.
She tried to bite him and kick him, but he was expecting that and got her secured with only a small bruise on his shin.
“Now you be a sweet girl now,” he told her, after stepping out of kicking range.
She bugged her eyes and fought her bonds and tried to kick him again.
“Relax, Andrea. You’re making your bonds tighter.”
She soon realized he was right and ceased her frantic struggling. She fell back on the ground and glared hate at him.
“Hans was probably glad to die after being married to you,” Smoke muttered. He picked up his rifle and moved to a spot several miles away.
Smoke watched the long, single-file column come up the old trail, Roy Drum watching the ground, tracking Smoke like the expert he was. Roy passed within ten feet of Smoke.
Ed Clay was the last man in the column. When the rider in front of him had rounded the sharp bend in the trail—a place Smoke had deliberately chosen—Smoke leaped from the ledge and knocked Ed out of the saddle, clubbing him with a big fist on the way to the ground. He threw Ed across his shoulder, grabbed his rope from his saddlehorn, and slapped the horse on the rump, sending it back down the trail. Smoke slipped into the brush and climbed back up to the ledge.
There, he hog-tied Ed and gagged him with the hired gun’s own filthy bandana and picked up his rifle, slipping back into the brush, paralleling the trail.
“I sure will be glad to get shut of this damn mule, Ed,” Sandy said. “You wouldn’t like to trade off for a spell, would you?”
He got no reply as they rode further into the dimness of thick timber and brush.
“Did you hear me, Ed?” Sandy asked, twisting in the saddle.
Ed wasn’t there.
“We got trouble!” Sandy called. He looked up in time to see a stick of dynamite come sputtering out of the ridge above him. “Oh, hell!” he yelled.
The charge blew, the mule walled its eyes and bowed up, and Sandy’s butt left the saddle and he went flying through the air. He landed on the west side of the trail and went rolling down the slope, hollering and cussing all the way down. He landed in a creek and banged his head on a rock, knocking him silly.
Marlene’s horse reared up at the huge explosion and threw her off. She landed hard and immediately started bellering.
One Eye’s horse fell against the slope and Smoke took aim and conked One Eye on the noggin with a fist-sized rock. One Eye slid off the saddle, out cold.
Smoke added more confusion to the riders on the narrow trail by jerking out his left-hand six gun and emptying it in the air. Then he threw back his head and howled like a wolf and screamed like a panther. The horses went crazy.
Smoke found some good-sized throwing rocks and started pelting those below him. One cracked von Hausen’s pith helmet and knocked the Baron slap out of the saddle. He landed belly-down on the edge of the trail and about fifteen seconds later, he joined Sandy in the creek, sitting in the cold water, addled goofy by the blow to his head.
Smoke had had his fun, but he wasn’t going to play games with skilled gunhandlers like John T. and those of the original bunch. He pulled his rifle to his shoulder and blew Tom Ritter out of the saddle. The outlaw was cooling meat when he hit the ground and went slowly tumbling down the slope to the creek.