Massacre Canyon (7 page)

The smell of wood smoke drifted through the night air to the men who sat their saddles in the thick shadows under a grove of trees. Somewhere not far away, a campfire burned.

“Varmints have got confident they lost us,” one of the riders said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. “They figure they don't have to cover their trail no more.”

“They're wrong about that,” another man said with the eagerness of youth. “They're gonna find out just how wrong. Isn't that right, Smoke?”

“I intend to get back those horses they stole, Cal,” Smoke Jensen said. “Whether or not we do that peace-fullike . . . well, that's up to them.”

The first man who had spoken said, “It won't be peaceful. They're horse thieves. They know we'll just string 'em up if they surrender, so they'll fight.”

That brought a chuckle from Smoke.

“Don't be so bloodthirsty, Pearlie,” he told his foreman. “Don't you know the days of hang-rope law are over? Just read the editorials in the newspapers.”

Pearlie snorted.

“I got a better use from them dang editorials and the papers they're printed in. It has to do with a little buildin' with a quarter-moon cut in the door.”

Smoke smiled in the darkness. Pearlie wasn't long on patience.

But he was probably right about what was going to happen, Smoke reflected. The eight men who had hit the Sugarloaf's horse herd a few nights earlier and run off more than forty fine saddle mounts weren't very likely to give up peacefully. Their natural response to a challenge would be to slap leather.

Pearlie knew that because he was kin to their breed. In the past, he had been an outlaw and a hired gun, although he had never stooped so low as to steal horses. Meeting Smoke Jensen had changed his life, but the lessons learned in those old, wild days were still with him.

Smoke had heard the owl hoot on dark, lonely trails himself, back when he was younger. In the days following the death of his first wife, Nicole, he had been outlawed for a time. Wanted posters with his name and likeness on them had circulated among the frontier law offices, and rewards had also been posted on “Buck West,” the name Smoke had used for a while.

All the charges against him were bogus, but he'd had to live as if they weren't in order to survive. He had lived among men who had no regard for the law, and he knew how they thought.

In a firm voice, Smoke said, “We're going to give them a chance to surrender. If they will, we'll take them back to Big Rock, turn them over to Monte Carson, and let the law take its course.”

Monte Carson was the sheriff in Big Rock and one of Smoke's best friends.

Smoke paused, then before his foreman could object he continued. “But Pearlie's right. In all likelihood they'll put up a fight. If any of you boys aren't ready for that, you can wait here and nobody will think any the worse of you.”

That wasn't strictly true, of course. Anybody who backed out would be an object of scorn among the other hands who rode for the Sugarloaf.

None of the other seven men spoke up. After a moment, young Calvin Woods said, “Shoot, Smoke, you know better than that. Let's go get the sons of—”

“Hold on there, son,” Pearlie cut in. “You know Miss Sally don't like you cussin'.”

“Dang it, I'm not a little kid, Pearlie! I'm about to ride in there and trade shots with a bunch of no-good horse rustlers, aren't I?”

Smoke knew his friends would squabble for as long as he would let them, so he said quietly, “Come on. Let's go take a look at the layout.”

The nine riders moved slowly up the draw they had been following. The smell of smoke from a campfire grew stronger. They were too close to the horse thieves' camp for talking and it was too dark to see more than a few feet, so Smoke signaled to Pearlie to stop and dismount. Pearlie passed that signal on to Cal, who passed it on to the next man and so on, until the party from the Sugarloaf had come to a halt and the men had swung down from their saddles.

With a faint whisper of steel on leather, the men withdrew their rifles from saddle sheaths.

They left the horses there and continued on foot. Smoke led the way, slipping along the draw with a stealth that would have done an Indian proud. The men who came behind him were almost as quiet. He spotted an orange glow up ahead and knew they had almost reached their destination.

The horse thieves had pushed their four-legged loot hard during the past few days. Smoke and the men with him had been on the trail first thing the next morning after the raid and probably could have caught up sooner, but Smoke had wanted to lull the thieves into thinking they had escaped pursuit. That would make it easier to take them by surprise and maybe avoid a fight.

He wasn't worried about his own hide if it came down to gunplay. He had already dodged so many bullets in his life that he figured he was living on borrowed time. Nor did the thought of taking the law into his own hands and dealing out hot lead justice to the horse thieves bother him.

But even though they were always ready to back his play, whatever it was, Smoke wanted to lessen the risk to Pearlie and Cal and his other men. Cal had suffered a couple of serious bullet wounds in the past, and since Smoke's wife, Sally, regarded the young man almost as an adopted little brother, he didn't want Cal to get shot up again.

When it came down to the nub, though, Smoke would do what he had to do. He wasn't going to let those thieves get away with his horses.

The draw opened up into a flat about fifty yards wide. On the far side was a ridge with trees growing on top of it that stretched for several hundred yards in each direction. A little creek tumbled down the ridge in a waterfall and formed a pool at the bottom. Smoke could see all that in the glow from the campfire.

Off to the right, the thieves had built a corral out of poles and brush that backed up to the ridge. The stolen horses were in there, docile at the moment because the wind carried the scent of the other horses away from them. Smoke hadn't planned it that way, but he was canny enough to take advantage of it.

A couple of men stood near the corral, holding rifles and puffing on cigarettes. Two more sat beside the fire passing a flask back and forth. The other four thieves were stretched out in their bedrolls, asleep. At least two of them were snoring.

Smoke and his men were beyond the reach of the light from the campfire. He motioned for them to spread out and encircle the camp. They ought to be able to pin the horse thieves against the bluff and with any luck force them to surrender.

“Pearlie, stay with me,” he whispered to his foreman. “We'll brace them head-on.”

“Now you're talkin',” the former gunhawk breathed.

Smoke's keen eyes followed the other men as they worked their way to right and left, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. After a minute, he lost sight of all of them, but he knew where they were and how long it would take them to get into position.

When he judged that he had allowed enough time, he nodded to Pearlie, who whispered, “You sure you don't want to just cut loose on them varmints, Smoke?”

“I don't bushwhack anybody, even horse thieves,” Smoke replied. “Come on.”

He stepped out of the darkness at the head of the draw and walked toward the fire. When he was just outside the circle of light, he stopped and called, “Hello, the camp!”

The two guards near the corral stiffened and lifted their rifles. The two who had been drinking by the fire bolted to their feet and reached for their guns. The four who'd been asleep started thrashing around in their bedrolls.

“Stand where you are and keep your hands away from your guns!” Smoke shouted. “You're covered!”

From the darkness sounded the metallic ratcheting of Winchester levers being worked. The familiar, menacing sound made the horse thieves freeze.

“What the hell is this?” one of the men beside the fire called angrily. “Who are you, mister, and what gives you the right to throw down on us?”

Smoke moved forward into the light. He was a man of medium height with sandy hair under his brown Stetson, and the most impressive thing about him physically was the unusual width of his shoulders, which were powerfully muscled, as well as his arms.

Yet some indefinable something about him said that here was a man to stand aside from. It might have been the utter calm and confidence with which he carried himself. That confidence never spilled over into arrogance, though. Smoke had learned humility early on in his life, and he had never lost that quality.

Plenty of men could claim to be fast on the draw, but none were faster than Smoke Jensen. Not Frank Morgan, Ben Thompson, Matt Bodine, Luke Short, or any of the other legendary gunmen known from one end of the frontier to the other. Not even Smoke's adopted brother Matt, who had already developed quite a reputation as a shootist after only a few years, could match his speed and deadly accuracy with the twin Colts he wore.

So when he answered the outlaw's question by saying, “My name is Smoke Jensen,” everybody in the camp instantly knew the name. He added, “I'm the man who owns those horses you stole, so that's what gives me the right. I'm calling on you right now to throw down your guns and surrender.”

The man at the fire sneered. He had a pointed, fox-like face, and long dirty hair tumbled from under the battered hat he wore with its front brim turned up. He said, “Yeah, well, I'm callin' on you, Jensen. I'm callin' on you to eat lead and die!”

No sooner had that shout rung out from the horse thief than guns began to roar along the top of the bluff. Muzzle flame bloomed in the darkness like crimson flowers and slugs whipped past the heads of Smoke and Pearlie, prompting the foreman to yell, “Damn it! It's a trap!”

Eight men had stolen the horses from the Sugarloaf and drove them this far. Smoke was certain of that from the tracks he and his men had followed.

But nothing prevented those horse thieves from joining up with another bunch of outlaws. Obviously, that was what had happened. And they had set a trap of their own, leaving the original eight by the campfire while settling down atop the bluff to ambush any pursuers that caught up.

Too fast for the eye to follow, Smoke's hands swooped to the butts of his guns and brought the Colts out of their holsters. The barrels came level and smoke and fire began to belch from their muzzles. The hail of lead that erupted from his guns scythed through the men around the campfire. They jerked and jittered as .45 slugs ripped bloody holes in them.

Despite giving up his gunfighting ways, Pearlie was still faster on the draw than most men, too. His revolver blasted and brought down one of the guards near the corral. The other man fired his rifle, but he hurried his shot and the bullet went over the heads of Smoke and Pearlie.

The sudden racket, along with the smells of powder smoke and blood that abruptly filled the air, spooked the stolen horses. They began to lunge back and forth in the makeshift corral as they tried to find a way out. The barriers erected by the rustlers wouldn't hold up under such punishment for long.

Smoke and Pearlie backed away as they continued trading shots with the men who had been left in the camp. Cal and the other Sugarloaf hands, who were spread out to the sides, concentrated their fire on the riflemen up on the bluff. The battle might as well have been a terrible storm, with gun thunder substituting for the regular kind and muzzle flashes clawing through the darkness like bolts of lightning.

The men who had been sleeping near the fire had managed to throw off their blankets and leap to their feet, only to run into bullets from Smoke and Pearlie's guns that knocked them down again. In a matter of chaos-filled seconds, all eight of the horse thieves were on the ground.

One man reared up again. Blood from a wound streaked his face, but he had guns in both hands and roared curses as he triggered the weapons at Smoke and Pearlie.

Smoke snapped a shot at the man with his left-hand Colt. The outlaw's head jerked back as the .45 round bored into his brain. He swayed on his knees for a second, then pitched forward onto his face.

Rifle bullets from the top of the bluff kicked up dirt around Smoke's boots as some of the riflemen up there tracked him in their sights. Cal and the other men were making things hot for those bushwhackers, but they hadn't given up the fight.

At that moment the brush barrier collapsed and the horses stampeded out of the wrecked corral. Smoke and Pearlie had to leap backwards to avoid being trampled as the panic-stricken animals pounded between them and the fire.

The surging mass of horseflesh provided cover for them, however, and so did the roiling cloud of dust kicked up by the hooves of the stampeding horses. The dust filled the air all around the camp and made it impossible to see. Smoke and Pearlie took advantage of that to fall back into the mouth of the draw. Smoke bellowed, “Sugarloaf, come on!”

Cal and the other cowboys began converging on the draw, firing their rifles on the run as they fell back. Smoke kept calling out so they could home in on his voice through the choking, blinding cloud of dust. Bullets still whined here and there, but they were like phantoms because no one could tell exactly where they were.

Smoke counted the men as they ran into the draw. When he reached the right number, he ordered, “Back to our saddle mounts, boys. We'll have to round up those horses.”

“What about the horse thieves?” Pearlie asked. “We gonna round them up, too?”

“I haven't forgotten about them,” Smoke replied with a grim note in his voice. “Anybody hurt?”

A couple of the men had been grazed by flying lead, but the injuries weren't serious. The wounds could be tied up with bandannas, and the men would be fine until they got back to the ranch.

Cal said, “Smoke, I think I heard hoofbeats up on that ridge a minute ago, and I know there weren't as many men shootin' at us there at the end as there were at first. Some of them lit a shuck. Wouldn't surprise me if all of them have by now.”

“It wouldn't surprise me, either,” Smoke agreed. “Once they saw their trap didn't work and the horses broke out of the corral and stampeded, they decided to cut their losses and run.”

When they reached the spot where they had left their mounts, Smoke said, “Pearlie, you and Cal come with me. The rest of you fellas follow the horses, gather them up, and start 'em back to the Sugarloaf. There are a half dozen of you. You ought to be able to handle them.”

“Where are you going, Mr. Jensen?” one of the cowboys asked.

“To see if we can find those fellas who bushwhacked us.” Smoke's voice was hard as flint as he added, “I don't like being bushwhacked.”

Somebody was going to find that out before too much longer, to their everlasting regret.

 

 

Smoke and his two companions climbed their horses out of the draw and headed one way in the night while the rest of the group from the Sugarloaf set off in the other direction to look for the stolen horses.

The horses might have run a mile or so when they stampeded, but probably not much farther than that, if any. They might have scattered some, though, which would make them more of a challenge to round up. It could easily be morning before the Sugarloaf hands had them all gathered and on the way back to the ranch.

While the shooting was going on, Smoke had tried to count the number of muzzle flashes he had seen on top of the ridge. Of course, he had been a mite busy at the time, gunning down the horse thieves by the campfire and the corral, but he was fairly certain he had seen rifle fire coming from six different locations up there. If all the ambushers had survived, that meant he and Pearlie and Cal would be facing two-to-one odds if they caught up to the men.

Smoke had faced worse odds in his time. Much worse.

They circled wide of the horse thieves' camp. Some of the outlaws might have still been alive, although Smoke doubted it. He was in no mood to check on them, however. They could fend for themselves. The important thing as far as Smoke was concerned was that they were all too shot up to represent a threat anymore.

The moon and stars provided enough light for the three men to see where they were going. Smoke found a place where their horses could climb to the top of the ridge. With rifles held ready, they rode slowly along it until they reached a spot overlooking the rustlers' camp. Sure enough, all eight bodies were sprawled around the fire, which was burning down now with no one left alive to tend it.

“This is where those varmints were lurkin', all right,” Pearlie said. “Reckon we can pick up their trail?”

“We're going to try,” Smoke said.

He dismounted, struck a match, and used its light to look around. A few yards away, he found some empty shell casings. The brass gleamed dully in the matchlight.

A few yards back from that point Smoke spotted hoofprints. He hunkered on his heels, snapped a fresh lucifer to life with his thumbnail, and closely studied the tracks.

Every set of hoofprints was different, although sometimes the things that set them apart might be so small that most people would never see them. Smoke had been taught how to track by one of the canniest scouts who had ever lived, the old mountain man known as Preacher, so to his eyes a set of hoofprints might as well have been a sign chalked onto a blackboard. He could read them that easily.

Pearlie and Cal knew what Smoke was doing as he ranged along the bluff and continued his search by matchlight. When he returned to the horses, he swung up into his saddle and gave a decisive nod.

“Looks to me like they came in from the east and headed back the same way,” he said.

“What's in that direction?” Cal asked.

“There's a settlement about fifteen miles yonder,” Pearlie said. “You been there, Cal. Place called Fletcher's Gap.”

“Oh, yeah,” Cal said. Moonlight gleamed on white teeth as he grinned. “Not much to it, just a wide place in the trail, but the fella who runs the one store has a pretty daughter, right?”

Pearlie snorted.

“Trust you to remember that, boy,” he said.

Smoke turned his horse's head to the east and said, “That'll be our first stop. Maybe somebody there will know something about the men we're looking for.”

“And if they don't?” Pearlie asked.

“We'll keep looking.”