“Her daughter, honey?” Sally said, putting his plate in front of him and sitting down with a biscuit and a cup of coffee.
“That all you’re eating?” Smoke asked with a frown.
“I’m on a diet. Her daughter?” she repeated.
“Maybe. She did have a daughter by that gambling man she took off with back in Missouri. She pulled out in ’64 and I heard she had the child in ’67. She wouldn’t be out of her teens.”
“She had a daughter, Smoke,” Sally said. “I remember some of the women talking about it back in Idaho Territory — before I met you. Jenny was her name.”
“Monte, can you wire back and see if this is Janey or Jenny who died?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll be in town this afternoon and stop by your office.”
Monte finished his breakfast and headed back to town. Over a second cup of coffee, Sally said, “This is bringing back bad memories for you, isn’t it, Smoke?”
“Some.” He smiled at her. “But I’ll survive them.”
“This girl, if it is Jenny, would be no more than a child. Seventeen at most.”
“What do you remember about her?”
“Nothing. I never saw her. The ladies of the town said that she was at school back East.”
“We’ll know more after I go into town.”
“Saddle my pony for me. I’m riding in with you.”
“Sidesaddle, of course,” Smoke said with a straight face.
Her reply would not have been printable in those times.
“Here’s the whole story, Smoke,” Monte said, handing Smoke several pages of telegraph paper. “I wired a sheriff I know up in Montana Territory. He knew all about it.”
Smoke opened the envelope. MISS JANEY JENSEN DIED OF FEVER TWO YEARS AGO. WAS PROMINENT BUSINESSWOMAN IN TOWN. OWNED BUSINESSES AND RANCH IN VALLEY. IS BURIED IN RED LIGHT, MONTANA CEMETERY. HAD ONE DAUGHTER, JENNY. JENNY RETURNED TO RED LIGHT AND IS LIVING ON RANCH. ENTIRE ESTATE LEFT TO JENNY. NO ONE KNEW WHERE TO FIND JANEY’S BROTHER, A MISTER K. JENSEN. UNDERSTAND HE WAS FINALLY LOCATED IN COLORADO AND NOTIFIED. TELL HIM TO BE CAREFUL. DON’T TRUST ANY LAW OFFICER IN COUNTY. K. JENSEN IS RIDING INTO A DEN OF SNAKES. ANY RELATION TO SMOKE? IF SO, TAKE HIM ALONG. JUST KIDDING. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, MONTE.
“Man lays it right on the line, doesn’t he?” Smoke said.
“Tom’s a good man,” Monte replied. “Is Sally going up there with you?”
“No. Not initially. I might send for her later on. Jenny vanished. I don’t like the sound of that. Damn it, Monte, she’s my only kin. Except for some folks in Iowa that I have never seen and who fought against my father in the war. I understand they harbored such bad feeling toward those Jensens who fought for the south that they changed their name to Jenson.”
“That war tore up a lot of families, Smoke. Mine included. When are you pulling out?”
“Tomorrow, probably. I’ll ride the trains as far as possible. It’s been awhile since ol’ Buck and I hit the trail. We’ll both look forward to it.”
“Not taking one of your appaloosas?”
“Not this time. Buck’s a mountain horse and better than any watchdog in the world. And meaner, too. I want him to see some more country before I retire him. Lord knows, we have seen some trails together.”
“You really love animals, don’t you, Smoke?”
“Yes. And I respect them. I don’t trust a man who doesn’t like animals. There’s a flaw in his character …” He smiled. “Although some of Sally’s highly educated friends say that is not true.”
“They called you a liar to your face?”
“Only once.”
Buck was a mountain-bred buckskin that was just about too big and too much horse for the average man. But Smoke was not an average man. He had gentle-broken the animal and was the only one who could ride it. Truth be known, he was about the only one who wanted to ride the mean-eyed animal.
“Now, you change into your suit when you reach the rails,” Sally told him, handing him a sack of food for the trail.
“Yes, dear,” the most famous gunfighter in all the West replied.
“And you button your collar and fix your tie properly.”
“Yes, dear.”
“And if your suit is rumpled, you have it brushed and ironed at the nearest town.”
“Yes, dear.”
“And as soon as you are settled up there, send for me.”
“Yes, dear.”
“And you will not let anyone know that you are Smoke Jensen unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”
“Yes, dear,” he said with a smile, towering above her outside the house. He closed his big hands around her arms and gently picked her up with all the ease of picking up a pillow. He kissed her lips and set her back down, then chuckled.
“What is so funny?” she demanded.
“Knowing my sister, what if it turns out the business she owned in town is a whorehouse?”
Sally narrowed her eyes. “If that is the case, Mister Jensen, you are in a world of trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Two
Smoke Jensen was a known gunfighter, though not by choice. Dozens of books — penny dreadfuls — had been written about him, ninety-nine percent of them pure crap and nonsense. Songs had been sung about him, and at least one play was still being performed about the life and times of Smoke Jensen. Smoke had read some of the books, or as much of them as he could stand, and he usually used them afterward to light fires in the stove or fireplace. The songs were terrible and the play was worse. But for all his fame and notoriety, relatively few people knew what he looked like. He seldom left his horse ranch, called the Sugarloaf, in the mountains of Colorado, and when he did venture out, it usually was not for long. So many would-be toughs and gunslingers had taken to wearing their guns as Smoke wore his, that trademark was no longer a giveaway.
Smoke rarely buckled on two guns anymore, doing so only when he knew he was riding into trouble. He was content to wear one gun, right side, low and tied down.
He was a ruggedly handsome man, but not in the pretty-boy way. His face was strong, his jaw firm, and his eyes cold as winter-locked fjords. He loved children and animals, and attended church on a regular basis, even though the preacher at the town of Big Rock, Colorado, knew Smoke would never pay much attention to the New Testament, since he was strictly an Old Testament man.
He raised appaloosas on his ranch, running only a few head of cattle now.
His wife, Sally, was of the New England Rey-noldses, and enormously wealthy. She was a strong-willed woman, not one to mince words and certainly not someone to ride over. Sally was a strong supporter of women’s rights, was very outspoken on the subject, and would not back down from a grizzly. She had strapped on pistol and picked up rifle and sent more than one thug to Hell in her time. She was also a loving mother and a faithful companion to her husband and a sweet person … just as long as you didn’t mess with her man.
Smoke rode to the rails and boarded the train. At rail’s end, he signed the hotel registry as K. Jensen and no one paid any special attention to him, except for the men commenting on his size and the ladies on