“Smoke, I want you to promise me something,” Sally said as the two of them stepped down from the buckboard.
“I’ll promise you anything, my love, you know that,” Smoke replied.
“Let’s not go overboard when bidding for that bull. I think we should give ourselves a limit.”
Smoke chuckled. “I’ve already taken care of that,” he said. “I’m only taking seven hundred fifty dollars. That’s as high as I will be able to go.”
“Good,” Sally said. “If you think having a champion bull is important, I hope we can buy him. But if we can’t, then I’m sure we can find another bull who—how was it you put it? Has an eye for the ladies?”
Smoke laughed, then reached back into the buckboard to pick up their luggage. “Cal, I’m counting on you to look out for things while I’m gone,” he said.
“I will, Smoke,” Cal promised. “Don’t you worry none about that. I will. You two have a good time in Colorado Springs, and bring back that bull.”
“I’ll bring him back.”
“If he doesn’t cost too much,” Sally added.
“If he doesn’t cost too much,” Smoke agreed.
Smoke and Sally walked across the wooden depot platform, then stepped up into the train. Once in the car, they sat on the depot side of the train with Sally taking the window seat. As the train pulled out of the station, Sally waved at Cal, who sat in the buckboard, watching them leave. Smiling broadly, Cal waved back.
“Bless his heart, he sure misses Pearlie,” Sally said as the train began gathering speed.
“I know he does. We all do,” Smoke said. “But Pearlie being gone is good for Cal.”
“How is it good for him?”
“One of the things about growing up is learning how to adjust to changes,” Smoke said.
“Smoke, Cal was orphaned when he was barely into his teens. It was a struggle just for him to stay alive. It isn’t as if he hasn’t had to deal with changes.”
Smoke nodded. “I guess you are right at that,” he said. He leaned back in his seat, then pulled his hat down over his eyes.
“What are you doing?” Sally asked. “Smoke Jensen, are you just going to sit there like that for the whole trip?”
“It’s going to be a long overnight trip,” Smoke said. “And I got up early this morning.”
“You get up early every morning.”
“Yeah, I do, don’t I?” Smoke made no effort to remove his hat.
Sally looked at him for a moment, then reached up and took his hat off his head. Before he could say anything, she kissed him, then replaced his hat.
“What was that all about?” Smoke asked
“Don’t I always kiss you good night?” she asked with a little chuckle.
As Smoke napped beside her, Sally turned in her seat to look at the countryside that was unrolling just outside the window. The scenery, now taking on the golden hue of sunset, was beautiful, and she thought again how lucky, and how unlikely, it was that she, a New England Yankee, would wind up here, married to this man who was already a legend in his own lifetime.
Growing up in New Hampshire, Sally came from a family of great wealth. She could have stayed in New Hampshire and married “well,” meaning she could have married a blue blood from one of New Hampshire’s old, established, and wealthy families. She would have hosted teas and garden parties, and grown old to become a New England matriarch.
But while such a future promised a life of ease and tranquility, that wasn’t what Sally had in mind. She envisioned a much more active—some might suggest uncertain—future. Thus, she announced to one and all that she intended to leave New Hampshire.
“You can’t be serious, Sally!” family and friends had said in utter shock when she informed them that she intended to see the American West. “Why, that place is positively wild with beasts and savages.”
“And not all the savages are Indian, if you get my meaning,” Melinda Hobson said. Melinda Hobson was of “the” Hobsons, one of New Hampshire’s founding families.
But Sally had a yen to see the American West, as well as a thirst for adventure, and that brought her to Bury, Idaho Territory, where she wound up teaching school.
It was in Bury that she met a young gunman named Buck West. There was something about the young man that caught her attention right away. It wasn’t just the fact that he was ruggedly handsome, nor was it the fact that, despite his cool demeanor, he went out of his way to be respectful to her. That respect, Sally saw, applied to all women—including soiled doves—even though he was not a habitué of their services.
But it was the intensity of the young man that appealed to Sally—a brooding essence that ran deep into his soul.
Then, she learned that his name wasn’t even Buck West, it was Smoke Jensen. And the hurt he felt was the result of a personal tragedy of enormous magnitude. Smoke’s young wife, Nicole, had been raped, tortured, murdered, and scalped by men whose evil knew no bounds. They had also murdered Arthur, his infant son.
Those same men owned ranches and mines around the town of Bury. In fact, one might say they owned Bury itself, including nearly every resident of the town. If ever there was a Sodom and Gomorrah in America, Sally thought, it was Bury, Idaho Territory.
And, like the Biblical cities of sin, Bury was destroyed, not by God, but by Smoke Jensen, who, after allowing the women and children to leave, killed the murderers and the gunmen, and then put the town to the torch. When Smoke, with Sally now by his side, set out en route to the “High Lonesome,” there was nothing remaining of Bury but the smoldering rubble of a destroyed town and the dead killers Smoke left behind him.
The rage that had burned in his soul was gone, and he had put Nicole and Arthur to rest in a private compartment of his heart. With the fire in his gut gone, Smoke was free to love once more, and to be loved, and Sally was there for him.
Sally knew that Smoke would always love Nicole—in fact, Sally was sure that she loved him the more because of that loyalty. And though she had never met Nicole, Sally had come to love her as well, as a sister that she’d never met.
The train rolled over a rough part of the track and the resultant jostling startled Smoke awake.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing, darling,” Sally said, taking his hand. “Go back to sleep.”
Smoke squeezed her hand, and she responded. Her life may have taken some unusual twists, but had she planned every twist and turn, she could not have hoped for anything more than she had right now.
For Sally Jensen, life could not be sweeter.
Santa Clara
The New York Saloon had nothing to do with either the city or the state of New York. Rodney Gibson, the owner, was not a native New Yorker, and had never even been in New York. But the name appealed to him, so when he built his saloon in Santa Clara, shortly after the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad ensured the survival of the struggling little town, he named his saloon after the city he had only read about.
The saloon was well appointed, with two large, hanging chandeliers as well as light sconces all around the walls. The walls were covered with a rich red paper, which filled the space from baseboard to molding.
The most talked about item of the saloon, however, was the exceptionally lifelike, as well as nearly life-size, painting behind the bar. The painting, titled Note From Cupid, was of a very beautiful nude woman lying on a couch of red and gilt in such a way that absolutely none of her charms were hidden from view. Hovering just over her was the artist’s concept of Cupid, looking down mischievously, as the nude woman read the note he had just delivered.
It was just after seven P.M. and the saloon was at its busiest with cowboys, miners, freighters, store clerks, and the town’s few professionals filling the tables and lining the bar. At the back of the room the piano player, a young man who was barely out of his teens, was bent over the keyboard, playing music that could barely be heard over the laughter and conversation of the many patrons.