He would give them more of a chance than they had given his brother or father. Ever so much more of a chance than they had given his baby son and his wife, Nicole. Ever so much more.
He let hate consume him as he recalled that awful day….
He had made a wide circle of the cabin, staying in the timber back of the creek, and slipped up to the cabin. Inside the cabin, although Smoke did not as yet know it, the outlaw Canning had taken a blanket and smothered Baby Arthur to death. Nicole had been brutally raped, and then her throat had been crushed. Canning scalped the woman, tying her bloody hair to his belt. He then skinned a breast, thinking he would tan the hide and make himself a nice tobacco pouch.
Kid Austin had gotten sick watching Canning’s callousness. He walked outside to vomit.
Another outlaw, Grissom, walked out the front of the cabin. Grissom felt something was wrong. He sensed movement behind him and reached for his gun. Smoke shot him dead.
“Behind the house!” Felter yelled.
Another of the PSR riders had been dumping his bowels in the outhouse. He struggled to pull up his pants and push open the door at the same time. Smoke shot him twice in the belly and left him to die on the craphouse floor.
Kid Austin, caught in the open, ran for the banks of the creek. Just as he jumped, Smoke fired, the lead taking the Kid in the buttocks, entering the right cheek and tearing out the left.
Smoke waited behind a woodpile, the big Sharps buffalo rifle Preacher had given him in his hands. He watched as something came sailing out the open back door. His dead baby son bounced on the earth.
The outlaws inside the cabin taunted Smoke, telling in great detail of raping Nicole. Smoke lined up the Sharps and pulled the trigger. A PSR rider began screaming in pain.
Canning and Felter ran out of the front of the cabin, high-tailing it for the safety of the timber. In the creek, Kid Austin crawled upstream, crying in pain and humiliation.
Another of the PSR riders exited the cabin, leaving one inside. He got careless and Smoke took him alive.
When he came to his senses, Smoke had stripped him, staked him out over an anthill, and poured honey all over him.
It took him a long time to die.
Smoke buried his wife and son amid a colorful profusion of wild flowers, stopping often to wipe away the tears.
16
“What are you thinking, young man?” Audie asked.
“About what Potter and Stratton and Richards ordered done to my wife and son.”
“Preacher told us. That was a terrible, terrible thing. But don’t allow revenge to destroy you.”
“When this is over, Audie, it’s over. Not until.”
“I understand. I have been where you are. I lost my wife, a Bannock woman, and two children to white trappers. Many many years ago.”
“Did you find the men who did it?”
“Oh, yes,” Audie smiled grimly. “I found them.”
Smoke did not have to ask the outcome.
“There will always be men who rise to power on the blood and pain of others, Smoke,” the former-schoolteacher-turned-mountain-man said. “Unfortunate, certainly, but a fact, perhaps a way, of life.”
“The people who run the shops in that town can leave,” Smoke said. “Even though I know they are, in their own way, as bad as Potter, Stratton, and Richards. I’ll let them go, if they’ll just go.”
“They won’t,” Audie prophesied. “For most of them, this is the end of the trail. Behind them lies their past, filled with crime and pettiness. For most of them, all that waits behind them is prison—or a rope. Theirs is a mean, miserable existence.” He waved his hand at the mountain men. “We, all us, remember when that town was built. We sat back and watched those dreary dregs of society arrive. We have all watched good people travel through, look around them, and continue on their journey. I, for one, will be glad to see that village razed and returned to the earth.”
Audie walked away. About three and a half feet tall physically, about six and a half feet of man and mind and courage.
Smoke sat back on his bootheels and wondered what razed meant.
He’d have to remember to ask Sally. She’d know. And with that thought, another problem presented itself to Smoke’s mind. Sally. He knew he cared a lot for the woman—more than he was willing to admit—but what did he have to offer someone like her? When news of what he planned to do to Bury reached the outside, Smoke Jensen would be the most wanted man in the west. Not necessarily in terms of reward money, for if he had his way, Potter, Stratton, and Richards would be dead and in the ground, but more in terms of reputation. A hundred, five hundred, a thousand gunhawks would be looking for him to make a reputation.
Back to the valley where Nicole and Baby Arthur were buried?
No. No, for even if Sally was willing to come with him, he couldn’t go back there. Too many old memories would be in the way. He would return to the valley for his mares; he wanted to do that. Then push on and get the Appaloosa, Seven.
Then…?
He didn’t know. He would like to ranch and raise horses. And farm. Farming was in his blood and he had always loved the land. A combination horse and cattle ranch and farm? Why not? That was very rare in the west—almost unheard of—but why not?
Would Sally be content with that? A woman of class and education and independence and wealth? Well, he’d never know until he asked her. But that would have to wait. He’d ask her later. If he lived, that is.
Deputy Rogers was the first to report back to Potter and Stratton and Sheriff Reese. Josh Richards was still out in the field; he knew nothing of the true identity of Buck West. Not yet.
“North road’s blocked ’bout three miles out of town,” Rogers reported. “An’ I mean blown all to hell. Brought a landslide down four-five-hundred feet long.”
Deputy Payton galloped up and dismounted. “South road’s blocked by a landslide. A bad one. Ain’t nothing gonna get through there for a long time. They’s riflemen stuck up all around the town, watchin’ the trails. Old mountain men, looks like.”
“I should have put it all together,” Stratton said with a sigh. “I should have known when that damn Jensen came ridin’ in, bold as brass. Should have known that’s who it was.”
“What are we going to do, Keith?” Wiley Potter asked.
“Wait and find out what Jensen wants. Hell, what else can we do?”
Audie had made himself a megaphone out of carefully peeled bark. He had stationed himself on a ridge overlooking the town of Bury.
“Attention below!” Audie called. “Residents of Bury, Idaho Territory, gather in the street and curb your tongues.”
“Do what with a tongue?” Deputy Rogers asked.
“Don’t talk,” Stratton said.
“Oh.”
“Armageddon is nigh,” Audie called. “Your penurious and evil practices must cease. Will cease—immediately. The women and the children will be allowed to leave. You have twenty-four hours to vacate and walk out with what meager possessions you can carry on your backs. Follow the flats south to Blue Meadows. Where you go from there is your own concern. Twenty-four hours. After that, the town of Bury will be destroyed.”
“What’s that about arms?” Dan Reese asked.
“Armageddon,” Reverend Necker said. “Where the final battle will be fought between good and evil.” He looked around him. “Has anybody got a jug? I need a drink.”
“I ain’t gonna hoof my tootsies nowhere,” Louise Rosten said. “They’s wild savages out there.”
“Just head straight across the flats toward the east,” her husband told her. “They’s a settlement ’bout thirty miles over yonder. Pack up the kids and git gone. Hell, you can outshoot me.”