The street was quiet. The battle was over.
The barber pole squeaked and turned, then was silent.
Smoke sank to his knees in the dirt.
“You hard hit, son,” a miner told him. Unnecessary information, for Smoke knew he was hurt. “You can’t just ride out bleedin’ like that.”
Smoke swung into the saddle, gathering the reins in his left hand, the pack horse rope in his right. “I’ll be all right.”
He had cleaned his wounds in town, now he wanted the high country, where he would make poultices of herbs and wildflowers, as Preacher had taught him.
The mountain man’s words returned to him. “Nature’s way is the best, son. You let old Mother Nature take care of you. They’s a whole medicine chest right out there in that field. All a man’s gotta do is learn ’em.”
“When you boys plant them,” Smoke told the crowd, “put on their headboards that Smoke Jensen was right and they were wrong.”
He rode off to the west.
“Boys,” a miner said. “We just seen us a livin’ legend. You remember his name, ’cause we all gonna be hearin’ a lot more about that young feller.”
EPILOGUE
For a month Smoke tended to his wounds and rested at his camp on the banks of the San Miguel, on the west side of the Uncompahgre Forest. He rested and treated his wounds with poultices.
He ate well of venison, fished in the river, and made stews of wild potatoes and onions and rabbit and squirrel. He slept twelve to fifteen hours a day, feeling his strength slowly returning to him. And he dreamed his dreams of Nicole, her soft arms soothing him, melting away the hurt and fever, calming his sleep, loving him back to health.
At the beginning of the fifth week, he knew he was ready to ride, ready to move, and he carefully checked his guns, cleaning them, rubbing oil into the pockets of his holsters, until the deadly .44s fitted in and out smoothly.
Then he packed his gear and rode out.
In the southwestern corner of Wyoming, a wanted poster tacked to a tree brought him up short.
WANTED
DEAD OR ALIVE
THE OUTLAW AND MURDERER
SMOKE JENSEN
$10,000.00 REWARD
Contact the Sheriff at Bury, Idaho Territory
Smoke removed the wanted flyer and carefully folded it, tucking it in his pocket. He looked up to watch an eagle soar high above him, gliding majestically northwestward.
“Take a message with you, eagle, “ Smoke said. “Tell Potter and Richards and Stratton and all their gun-hands I’m coming to kill them. For my Pa, for Preacher, for my son, and for making me an outlaw. And they’ll die just as hard as Nicole did. You tell them, eagle. I’m coming after them. “
The eagle dipped its wings and flew on.
Table of Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Epilogue