Blood Of The Mountain Man. William W. Johnstone

me. That made it personal.”

      “They was just havin’ fun.”

      “I didn’t see the humor in it.”

      Other area ranchers and farmers had drifted in and were enjoying the scene. The saloon was nearly full. Red and his men had been throwing their weight around for years, and payback time was long overdue and much appreciated.

      Smoke was under no illusions about what Red was going to do. Just as soon as Red got a chance, he was going to try to kill him. Ned and Shell and Carl were cowboys, not fast guns. They rode for a rough brand, but they were not killers.

      But Jim Sloane was another matter. Smoke felt he would side with his boss when it came down to the nut-cuttin’.

      Red finally threw down his broom and turned to face Smoke. “That’s it, Jensen. No more.”

      “Your choice,” Smoke told him, a fresh pot of coffee on the table before him.

      “You’d kill me over a bunch of people you never laid eyes on before today?”

      “I don’t want to.”

      “That don’t answer my question.”

      “You figure it out.”

      “I come in here first, Jensen. I fought …”

      “I don’t want to hear that crap!” Smoke said harshly. “I’m sick of hearing it from men like you. Yes, you fought Indians and outlaws. Yes, you settled this land. But it’s 1883 now. And time has passed you by. The old ways are all but gone. It won’t be long before this territory will become a state. With a state militia and maybe even a state police force. You think they’ll put up with the crap you’ve been pulling? The answer is no, they won’t. Look around you, Red.”

      Red did, and saw a half a dozen ranchers and their foremen, all armed, all staring back at him. Suddenly, all because of one man, Red knew his days of beings top dog were over. The people had become united against him. And he hated Smoke Jensen for that.

      “You still lookin’ for hands out at your spread, Mister Jackson?” Shell asked a rancher.

      “Still lookin’, Shell. You interested?”

      “I sure am.”

      “Me, too,” Ned said.

      “And me,” Carl was quick to add.

      “You’re all hired.”

      “You yellow bastards!” Red told his former riders.

      “You’d best watch your mouth, Mister Lee,” Shell told the man. “You can insult me all you like, but leave my family out of it.” He looked at his friends. “Let’s get our gear from the ranch. See you ’bout dark, Mister Jackson.”

      “The grub will be hot and waitin’ on you, boys.”

      The three punchers left the saloon … after nodding respectfully at Smoke.

      Red Lee cursed the men until they were out of sight. Smoke waited, well aware that the man was hovering near the breaking point.

      “Go home, Red,” another rancher told the man. “Go home and cool off.”

      “Don’t you tell me what to do, you goddamn raw-hider.”

      “We all were rawhiders when we first came here, Red,” another rancher said. “Even you. So you got no call to insult us.”

      “I’ll do just as I’ve always done,” the man popped back. “And that is whatever I damn well please”

      “Them days is over, Red,” a farmer spoke up. “You’re the only rancher in the area that don’t buy my vegetables and bacon and hams, and whose men still ride roughshod over my place. It’ll not happen again. I tell you that face to face.”

      Red pointed a finger at the farmer, dressed in overalls and low-heeled boots. The finger was shaking and his voice was thick with barely controlled emotion. “You don’t talk to me like that, Jergenson. I don’t take lip from a goddamn squatter.”

      Smoke sat and listened. With any kind of luck, he would not have to draw on the hair-trigger-tempered rancher. He felt that the locals were just about to deal with Red Lee. And maybe he’d been wrong about the foreman, Jim Sloane. The man was slowly edging away from his boss, occasionally looking pleadingly in Smoke’s direction.

      Smoke sat drinking coffee, waiting. He hated two-bit tyrants like Red Lee. He’d had a gutfull of them as a boy, back in Missouri, working their hard-scrabble rocky farm from can-see to can’t-see while his daddy was off in the war and his mother lay dying.

      Red suddenly stopped his cursing and shouting and turned on Smoke. “Stand up, gunfighter,” he said.

      “Don’t do it, Red,” Smoke told him. “Just settle down and be a good citizen from now on. Can’t you see that the others are willing to forgive and forget?”

      “I said get up, damn your eyes!”

      “Try me, Red,” the rancher named Jackson said.

      Red turned, disbelief in his eyes. “You, Jackson? You want to try me?”

      “I reckon it’s come to that, Red,” the rancher said calmly, standing with his feet spread and his right hand close to the butt of his six-gun.

      “I’m out of this,” Jim Sloane said. “Red, man … come on. Let’s go home.”

      “You’re fired, you son-of-a-bitch!” Red shouted.

      “You’re hired,” a rancher told Sloane. “You’re a good cowboy, Jim.”

      “Draw, damn you!” Red shouted to Jackson.

      “I’ll not start this,” the rancher said.

      Red’s temper exploded and he grabbed iron. He got off the first shot, the lead splintering wood at Jackson’s feet. Jackson didn’t miss. His shot took Red in the center of his chest and the man staggered back, an amazed look on his face.

      “Why … you shot me,” he said.

      Smoke poured another cup of coffee.

      Red tried to speak again but his mouth was suddenly filled with blood. He slowly sank to his knees on the fresh-mopped floor and his gun slipped from his fingers to clatter on the boards. Red knelt there, looking at the pistol.

      “It didn’t have to be,” Jackson said.

      “Yes, it did,” another rancher disagreed.

      The words were very faint to Red Lee as the world began darkening around him. This just couldn’t be happening to him. Not to him.

      “I tried to tell him,” Jim said. “Over the past months I’ve tried and tried to talk sense to him. He just wouldn’t listen.”

      “I know you have,” Jackson said.

      “The day of the tyrant is over,” Jergenson said. “I knew it had to happen.”

      “You be sure and save me a couple of them hams come this fall,” a rancher told the farmer. “They was mighty fine eatin’.”

      “I will,” Jergenson said.

      “Hams?” Red Lee gasped.

      “Has he got any kin?” the barber asked.

      “Not that I know of,” Jim Sloane replied. “His wife took the kids and run off years ago. Right after he beat her real bad.”

      “She had it … comin’,” Red said.

      Jackson punched out the empty and loaded up. “I don’t have much use for a man who’d beat a woman,” he said.

      Red Lee fell over on his face.

      “Hell, now I got to mop the damn floor,” the bartender said.