Free Trail of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

laughed. “No. She shortened her name to Modjeska. She is here in America now. Performing Shakespeare in New York, I believe. She also tours.”
    Smoke sipped his scotch and kept his mouth shut.
    â€œWhen I finally retire, I believe I shall move to New York City. It’s quite a place, Smoke. Do you have any desires at all to see it?”
    â€œNo,” Smoke said gently.
    â€œPity,” the gambler said. “It is really a fascinating place. Smoke?”
    The young rancher-farmer-gunfighter lifted his eyes to meet Louis’s.
    â€œYou should travel, Smoke. Educate yourself. Your wife is, I believe, an educated woman. Is she not?”
    â€œSchool teacher.”
    â€œAh ... yes. I thought your grammar, most of the time, had improved since last we spoke. Smoke ... get out while you have the time and opportunity to do so.”
    â€œNot.”
    â€œPearlie was right, Smoke. There are too many against you.”
    Smoke took a small sip of his scotch. “I am not alone in this, Louis. There are others.”
    â€œMany of whom will not stand beside you when it gets bad. But I think you know that.”
    â€œBut some of them will, Louis. And bear this in mind: we control the high country.”
    â€œYes, there is that. Tell me, your wife has money, correct?”
    â€œYes. I think she’s wealthy.”
    â€œYou think ?”
    â€œI told you, Louis. I’m not that interested in great wealth. My father is lying atop thousands and thousands of dollars of gold.”
    Louis smiled. “And there are those who would desecrate his grave for a tenth of it,” he reminded the young man.
    â€œI’m not one of them.”
    Louis sighed and drained his tumbler, refilling it from the bottle of scotch. “Smoke, it’s 1878. The West is changing. The day of the gunfighter, men like you and me, is coming to a close. There is still a great rowdy element moving Westward, but by and large, the people who are now coming here are demanding peace. Soon there will be no place for men like us.”
    â€œAnd? So?”
    â€œWhat are you going to do then?”
    â€œI’ll be right out there on the Sugarloaf, Louis, ranching and farming and raising horses. And,” he said with a smile, “probably raising a family of my own.”
    â€œNot if you’re dead, Smoke.” The gambler’s words were softly offered.
    Smoke drained his tumbler and stood up, tall and straight and heavily muscled. “The Sugarloaf is my home, Louis. Sally’s and mine. And here is where we’ll stay. Peacefully working the land, or buried in it.”
    He walked out the door.

10
    Smoke made his spartan camp some five miles outside of Fontana. With Drifter acting as guard, Smoke slept soundly. He had sent Pearlie to his ranch earlier that night, carrying a hand-written note introducing him to Sally. One of the older ranchers in the area, a man who was aligned on neither side, had told Smoke that Pearlie was a good boy who had just fallen in with the wrong crowd, that Pearlie had spoken with him a couple of times about leaving the Circle TF.
    Smoke did not worry about Pearlie making any ungentlemanly advances toward Sally, for she would shoot him stone dead if he tried.
    Across the yard from the cabin, Smoke and Sally had built a small bunkhouse, thinking of the day when they would need extra hands. Pearlie would sleep there.
    Smoke bathed — very quickly — in a small, rushing creek and changed clothes: a gray shirt, dark trousers. He drank the last of his pot of coffee, extinguished the small fire, and saddled Drifter.
    He turned Drifter’s head toward Fontana, but angling slightly north of the town, planning on coming in from a different direction.
    It would give those people he knew would be watching him something to think about.
    About half a mile from Fontana, Smoke came up on a small series of just-begun buildings; tents lay behind the construction site. He sat