The Family Jensen (10 page)

“Oh, Sandy,” Robin said. “I hadn’t had a chance to tell you yet.”

Smoke chuckled. “Sandy,” he repeated. “That’s a good name for you.”

The young man flushed a darker red than his usual coppery hue. “Tell me what?” he said to Robin.

“That Mr. West is going to stay here tonight, too,” she said.

“He is? Why?”

“Because he got in a big fight with Mitch Thorn and his cronies, and then my father threatened him. You can’t blame Mr. West for not wanting to stay at the hotel.”

“No, I suppose not,” Sandy said. He looked at Smoke and went on, “You had trouble with those three again?”

“Again?” Robin echoed.

Sandy nodded. “Buck here is the one who stepped in when Thorn and the others threw me out of Mr. Hammond’s store this afternoon. I thought there was going to be a gunfight then and there, but Thorn backed down.”

“That must have stuck in his craw,” Smoke said. “He and the other two caught up to me later on at the livery stable.”

“Father set all three of them on Mr. West,” Robin said, frowning in disapproval. “He told them to give him a good beating. But it was them who wound up taking the beating!”

Sandy looked like he had a hard time believing that, but Smoke was standing right there in front of him as proof. “You should be careful,” the young man said. “They will want to settle the score with you.”

“Reckon they already tried that,” Smoke said.

Robin’s hand went to her mouth as she gasped in alarm. “Those shots a little while ago! They tried to kill you!”

“I figure Harley and Ballew did, anyway. Thorn’s gun arm was hurt during that fight at the stable. I don’t think he could have even handled a rifle.”

“But you weren’t hurt?”

Smoke shook his head. “No. I’m pretty sure I winged one of the men who bushwhacked me outside the hotel and may have wounded the other one, too, but they both got away. Marshal Calhoun claims it couldn’t have been Harley and Ballew because they were with him when the shooting started, but I don’t think he’s telling the truth.”

“You’re right to feel that way,” Robin said. “He’s a terrible excuse for a lawman. He just does whatever my father tells him and lets Thorn and the others get away with doing anything they want.”

Sandy turned to Robin and put his hands on her shoulders. “You should come back east with me,” he told her. “This is no place for you, whether your father is here or not.”

His words obviously affected her. She looked emotionally torn as she said, “He’s all the family I have left, Sandy. I…I can’t just desert him. Anyway, if I left Buffalo Flat, who would teach the children?”

“The town could get another teacher! If you came with me, we wouldn’t have to hide the way we feel about each other.” Sandy shot a wary glance at Smoke. “You probably disapprove, too.”

“It’s none of my business one way or the other,” Smoke said with a shrug. “The best friend I ever had was an old mountain man who had plenty of Indian wives and a passel of kids by them. I don’t see anything wrong with it bein’ the other way around.”

“I don’t want a lot of Indian husbands.” Robin smiled. “Only one. A big family might be nice, though.”

“We can talk about that after I’ve gotten my education,” Sandy said stiffly. “I want to be able to provide properly for you.”

“I’d go and live in the Crow village with you, if that’s what you wanted. I’ve told you that.”

Sandy shook his head. “No, you deserve better than that.”

“What could be better than being with the man I love?”

A bitter taste rose in the back of Smoke’s throat. Seeing the two of them like that, so obviously in love, reminded him too much of the all-too-brief time he and Nicole had shared. They had barely even gotten to know their son when tragedy struck.

He hoped Sandy and Robin never had to go through something like that, but given the opposition bound to plague their marriage, they might have all sorts of trouble.

Smoke was a long way from being their guardian angel. They would have to work out their problems for themselves, like everybody else. The one thing he could do was see to it that Sandy didn’t get killed before he left Buffalo Flat for the east.

“Might be wise for the two of you not to do your courting in a well-lit room with an open door,” he advised. “You’d better blow that lamp out before you leave, Sandy.”

“I’m not leaving,” the young man replied. “Robin said I could stay here at the school until the stagecoach arrives day after tomorrow.”

Smoke looked at Robin and raised an eyebrow.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. When I asked you to stay here, Mr. West, I didn’t think about the fact that I’d already promised the cot to Sandy.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Smoke told her with a wry smile. “You said there’s a shed out back?”

“That’s right.”

“Has it got any hay in it?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Then that’s where I’ll spread my bedroll. It’ll still be more comfortable than the hard ground.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“It’ll be fine,” Smoke told her. “I’ve slept in plenty worse places.”

“All right. I am sorry, though.” She turned to Sandy. “I have to go. Father will be getting home soon, and he’ll wonder where I am. We don’t want him coming down here to look for me.”

“No, we don’t,” he agreed. He glanced at Smoke.

Trying not to chuckle, Smoke shifted his saddlebags on his shoulder and said, “I’ll take my horse and go on around back. Good night, you two.”

He went back out the front door of the school, pulling it closed behind him. As he led the Appaloosa toward the rear of the building, he said, “Looks like we’ll be bunkin’ together tonight, as usual, Seven. Far be it from me to stand in the way of young love.”

The first part of the night Smoke’s dreams were haunted by images of blood and death. Eventually he fell into a deep sleep, and if he dreamed any after that, he didn’t remember it when he awoke the next morning. As he stretched, he heard rustlings in the hay on which he had spread his blankets and knew the rats that had spent the night with him were scurrying back into their hidey-holes.

He would rather spend the nights with furry, long-tailed rats than human ones like Garrard, Thorn, Harley, and Ballew, he reflected as he sat up. At least the four-legged ones were honest about being vermin.

He hated to think of Robin’s father like that, since she seemed like a nice young woman, but facts were facts. Garrard had already seized a lot of power in the town and intended to have more before he was through. Smoke hadn’t forgotten Garrard’s comment about forcing Luther Hammond’s general store out of business. Once he’d succeeded in doing that, Garrard would move on to whatever struck his fancy next and try to close his iron fist around that as well. He would keep going until someone stood up to him and tried to stop him.

When that day came, Smoke wondered, would Garrard have Thorn and the other gunmen kill whoever opposed him? Smoke didn’t think it was beyond the realm of possibility.

He got to his feet. As was his habit, he had woken early. The sun wasn’t up yet, although the eastern sky was rosy with its approach. He saw a pump behind the school with a bucket hanging on its handle. It would feel good to dump a bucket of cold water over his head. Nothing like it to wake a fella up properly in the morning, he thought.

He buckled on his gunbelt before he stepped out of the shed. Even groggy from sleep, he was careful.

He walked over to the pump and took the bucket from the handle. Holding it under the spigot, he began working the handle up and down. Water ran into the bucket.

Smoke had it almost full when a scream sounded from inside the school building.

He dropped the bucket, letting the water he had pumped into it splash on the ground. By the time the bucket landed, Smoke’s first leap had carried him halfway to the school’s rear door. He drew his right-hand Colt as he reached for the latch on the door and slapped it back. He jerked the door open.

No lamps had been lit yet. Smoke hadn’t even known that Robin was already there, but the front door stood wide open, letting dawn light the big main room. Robin struggled in the grip of a tall man with his right arm in a black sling. Smoke recognized him as Mitch Thorn.

Wherever Thorn was, Harley and Ballew were usually close by. The two men had hold of Sandy. Harley held the young man’s arms while Ballew stood in front of him, hammering punches into Sandy’s midsection.

“Beat the damn ’breed to death!” Thorn ordered, raising his voice to be heard over Robin’s cries. “He tried to molest Miss Garrard!”

“No!” Robin said. “That’s not what happened! He and I—”

Thorn had only one good arm, the left one, but it was wrapped around Robin’s throat. He tightened it and jerked her harder against him. “Shut up, you little slut!” he told her as he choked off her protests. “I know damn good and well what was going on here, but the rest of the town doesn’t have to. We’ll kill that bastard, and nobody else’ll have to know that you were degrading yourself with a filthy redskin!”

Smoke drew his other Colt and eared back the hammers on both guns. “The only ones who are gonna die here are you and your friends if you don’t let those folks go, Thorn,” he warned, his powerful voice filling the schoolroom.

“It’s West!” Ballew yelled. As he turned to face Smoke, the cuts and scratches on his face came into view, as did the bloodstained bandage wrapped around his upper left arm. When Smoke saw those things, he knew that Ballew was the one his bullet had knocked through the glass in the door across the street the night before. That left Harley to be the other bushwhacker. He didn’t appear to be wounded, so Smoke figured again that his shot had missed.

Thorn turned hurriedly, hanging on to Robin so that she had to come with him. That put her between him and Smoke.

“It takes a mighty yellow son of a bitch to hide behind a woman,” Smoke growled.

“You just don’t know how to keep from sticking your nose into things that are none of your business, do you, West?” Thorn said. “What is it? You want this tramp for yourself, now that the Indian’s through with her?”

Smoke didn’t dignify that question with an answer. Instead, he said, “I’m gonna take particular pleasure in killin’ you, Thorn.”

“How are you gonna do that? I can’t draw on you. You ruined my gun arm, remember? Only way you can kill me is by murdering me, and you’ll hang for that.”

Smoke shook his head. “Garrard’s little tin badge of a marshal won’t ever arrest me.”

“No? You gonna kill him, too? You want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder while every lawman in the West hunts you? Because that’s what’ll happen once word gets around that you gunned down a peace officer. The rest of the star packers won’t know what really happened here. They’ll just know that Buck West murdered a fellow lawman.”

In that case, Smoke thought, he would just forget about Buck West and come up with some other name. But his description might follow him, and sooner or later Thorn’s prediction might well come true. Smoke could find himself facing an honest lawman, or a whole posse of them, and might have to choose between death and becoming a real outlaw.

“Let Miss Garrard go,” he said. “Your grudge is with me, not her or Sandy.”

“The hell it is! I’ve been after this tramp for months to marry me, or at least to let me court her, and she always says no! But then I come in here this morning and find her letting that dirty Indian put his hands all over her. No, sir. She owes me, and she’s gonna pay up.”

“She doesn’t owe you a damn thing,” Smoke insisted.

Thorn backed toward the front door, dragging Robin with him. Harley still had hold of Sandy and was using him as a human shield, and Ballew was staying behind both of them with his gun drawn. Smoke couldn’t get a shot at any of them without risking Robin or Sandy being hit.

“Earl, get the horses,” Thorn ordered. “We’re getting out of here.”

Ballew was the closest to the door. He ducked out through it, and Smoke still wasn’t able to get a shot.

Thorn sneered over Robin’s shoulder. “You want her, you’ll have to come after her, West. And we’ll be ready for you this time. You won’t ride away, you bastard.”

“Not until I’ve killed all three of you,” Smoke said.

“Big talk for a man who doesn’t hold any cards.”

Smoke heard hoofbeats outside and knew that Ballew had brought up their mounts. If Thorn and Harley made it outside, they could get away with their prisoners before Smoke could stop them.

But he couldn’t fire without risking the lives of those prisoners. He seethed with rage and frustration and looked for some way to turn the tables on Thorn.

Suddenly, Thorn lunged back through the doorway, taking Robin with him. She managed to get a muffled scream past his choking arm, but that was all. Sandy was still stunned from the beating they had given him, so he wasn’t able to put up a fight as Harley leaped after Thorn and Robin.

Smoke raced along the aisle after them.

Ballew popped in the doorway, the gun in his fist blasting out shots. Smoke weaved and fired, saw Ballew jerk under the impact of the lead and stagger to the side. Ballew managed to stay on his feet, and emptied the revolver at Smoke, who was forced to dive behind one of the desks as bullets whistled around his ears.

Ballew ran back outside. Smoke scrambled up and went after him. He reached the door in time to see that Thorn and Harley were already in the saddle. Since Thorn had only one good arm, Robin sat on the back of Harley’s horse in front of him. He had an arm wrapped around her waist. Sandy was stumbling around nearby, still half-senseless, while Ballow, wounded again, was trying to climb onto his horse.

Smoke took all that in instantly, just as Thorn yelled, “Kill the redskin!”

The gun in Harley’s free hand came up and roared. Blood flew in the air from Sandy’s head as the bullet smashed into it. Robin let out a wrenching scream as she saw him fall.

Smoke opened fire at Thorn, but just as he pulled the trigger, Ballew finally made it into the saddle and his horse lurched to the side. That put Ballew in the path of Smoke’s bullet. It punched into the man’s right ear and bored on through his skull into his brain. Ballew toppled off the horse, his foot hanging in the stirrup. He was dragged along the ground as the animal bolted in fear from all the gunshots and the smell of powder smoke and blood in the air.