Arkansas Smith by Jack Martin

cobalt and the temperature had dropped a few degrees. And Arkansas was desperate to get back to Will’s place before nightfall.
    For a moment he thought of Clay, laying there dead back at the old Bowen place, killed by a stray bullet and the doc supposedly shot by accident. Each of those deaths were the responsibility of John Lance. And what of the man called Pug who had provoked and lost a gunfight with Arkansas? And, of course, there was old man Bowen who had mysteriously disappeared. Was he another victim of Lance’s empire building? Not to mention Will who, too, would have been dead were it not for a stroke of luck when the bullet failed to destroy any vital organs and got snagged up in thick fatty tissue.
    ‘Come on,’ Arkansas said to the horse and started it slowly towards the ranch. He wasn’t sure what he exactly intended to do, but he knew he had to confront Lance. He realized how foolish it was to ride in by himself – effectively into a hornets’ nest. He was one gun, a crack-shot maybe, but still only one against many. He’d faced greater odds in the past, though.
    Arkansas was counting on the fact that John Lance wouldn’t go up against him on the spur of the moment, that the rancher was too devious for that and would prefer to attack later, preferably when he (Lance) was far away and could not be implicated in events. The man was a coward and, if anything, that made him all the more dangerous. You knew where you were with a fighting man, but a coward would come at you from behind or when you were asleep. A coward would strike at those close to you, cowards had all the moral boundaries of a gutter rat.
    Arkansas didn’t much like cowards.
    As he neared the ranch Arkansas saw a group of men standing immediately outside the grand ranch house, John Lance was at the head of the group. He quickly scanned the faces but there was no sign of the man called Jim.
    Arkansas pulled his horse to a halt outside the ranch gates and waited, saying nothing.
    John Lance, flanked by several armed men, walked towards him.
    ‘What can I do for you?’ Lance asked.
    Arkansas smiled. ‘Tell your men that anyone so much as moves I’ll kill them stone dead.’
    ‘Brave talk for a lone man,’ Lance said.
    ‘Try me.’ The words had a dread about them that hung heavy in the air and caused more than one of Lance’s men to twitch involuntarily.
    ‘Why would we want to hurt you?’ Lance asked. ‘I’m am a peaceable rancher.’
    ‘You’re a low-down, lying varmint is what you are,’ Arkansas told him and shifted casually in his saddle.
    Briefly Lance was angered but he managed to pull himself under control.
    ‘State your business,’ he said, firmly. He didn’t want to lose face in front of his men and he was damned if he’d show any physical signs that the man called Arkansas Smith worried him.
    ‘My business,’ Arkansas said, ‘is to see you hang.’
    Lance was taken aback and he produced a large cigar from his pocket and struck a match to it. He looked ill at ease as he smoked and it was obvious fromhis manner that he was struggling to remain calm. He drew heavily on the cigar and allowed the smoke to twist between his teeth.
    ‘One of your men, goes by the name of Jim, rode in here not too long ago,’ Arkansas said.
    ‘Did he?’ Lance spoke through a thick plume of smoke.
    ‘He did,’ Arkansas said. ‘Him and his pard, a man known as Clay, killed the doc. Clay’s dead himself. Shot by his short-sighted pard. He’s lying back at the old Bowen place.’
    ‘The doc?’ Lance was genuinely surprised. Maybe he had nothing to do with that, but either way he obviously had not yet had a chance to talk to Jim.
    ‘They were both among the gang that shot William McCord – men acting on your orders. Killing the doc they did on their own initiative, or so it seems. And the man called Pug that I gunned down in Red Rock. You forced that fight on me. You couldn’t be any more responsible if you’d pulled the