Free Blood of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

belched, grinned, and patted his belly. “Damn shore is that.”

Eight
    Sheriff Monte Carson had handed Sally the telegram and stepped back while she was opening it. He was expecting Sally to explode, and she didn’t disappoint him.
    “A whorehouse!” Sally yelled.
    “Now, Miss Sally,” Monte said. “It ain’t as bad as . . .”
    “A whorehouse! ” Sally yelled. “My husband owns a whorehouse!”
    “He says you better get right on up there.”
    “You can bet your boots and spurs I’m going up there.” She went to the door and yelled for the foreman. He came at a flat run.
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “Get my horse ready for travel. I’m pulling out first thing in the morning. You run things here until we return.”
    “Uh . . . yes, ma’am.”
    Sally turned to the sheriff. “When you get back to town, you get me passage on the train. Rent a car. I’ll alternate between passenger car and staying with my horse.”
    “Uh . . .”
    “Do it, Monte!”
    “Right! Consider it done, Sally.”
    The sheriff gone, Sally packed swiftly. Just a
    couple of dresses; mostly jeans and work shirts and an extra pair of boots. She paused. And a pair of shoes for the dress, if she elected to wear a dress. She tossed in a gunbelt and her .44. Walking to the gun cabinet, she took down her .44 carbine and put it in the saddle boot.
    “A whorehouse! ” she said.
    The next morning she was on the train, heading north.

    Not yet trusting Devil around people he was not familiar with, Smoke saddled up Buck for the ride into town. Jenny climbed up beside Ladd and off they went, rattling down the road.
    Just before leaving, Smoke told Van Horn, “I’m expecting trouble in town. It’s just a feeling I have in my guts.”
    The old gunfighter nodded in agreement. “So do I.” He toed out his cigarette butt. “Ladd and Cooper are good boys. They’ll stand. Don’t worry about things here. You just be careful. We don’t have many friends in Red Light.”
    That was evident when the man at the big general store insulted Jenny and refused to sell her anything. Ten seconds later, after looking into the cold eyes of Smoke Jensen and almost soiling his drawers, he apologized profoundly for his remark and began filling the large order as fast as he could work.
    Several cowboys appeared in the door. Smoke had seen the Biggers brand —a Triangle JB —on a dozen horses lining the narrow street. “Shopkeeper, you was told not to sell to them,” one of the men said.
    “It’s a free country,” Smoke replied, turning from the counter to face the men. “And who the hell asked you to stick your mouth in this matter?” “Jensen” the spokesman for the group said, “you may be a big wheel down where you come from. But around here, you ain’t jack-crap. I’d bear that in mind, was I you.”
    “You’re not me,” Smoke told him. “Now why don’t you just shut your face and wander back to wherever the hell it is you came from?”
    “That’s all!” Sheriff Bowers said, walking up and stepping into the store. “Seems like you can’t even come to town without startin’ trouble, Smoke.”
    “I didn’t start this. But I will finish it, if I have to. We came into town for supplies, that’s all. These yahoos tried to stop the store owner from selling to us. Now, what do you have to say about that?” Club Bowers was silent for a moment. Everything would have been real easy if Smoke Jensen hadn’t a showed up. Everything was working out to plan . . . until he rode into town. Now everything was all fouled up. Taking a ranch away from a seventeen-year-old girl and an old has-been of a gunfighter was one thing. Pulling iron against a U.S. Marshal was something else. Especially when that marshal was Smoke Jensen. He knew the Marshals’ Service had a nasty habit of avenging their own. And they didn’t always do it according to a law book. What the powers that be in the town didn’t need right now was for a bunch of U.S. Marshals to come