The Family Jensen by William W. Johnstone, J. A. Johnstone

enough.” He paused, then added, “I just hope the young’uns take after you when it comes to their looks, not their pa.”
    The mention of children brought a blush from Mala, which surprised him a little. He would have thought she was too bold to blush, but he had long since learned that gals were an infinite source of surprises.
    “I meant what I said, Crazy Bear,” Preacher called as his friends mounted up. “If you need me, put the word out. It’ll find me.”
    Crazy Bear lifted a hand. “Farewell, Preacher.”
    “So long.” Preacher stood and watched them as they rode away, adding softly, “Live a happy life.”

Interlude
    “I reckon that’s just what they’ve done, for the most part,” Preacher said in the heat of the little cabin where he was holed up with Smoke and Matt. “Had a little trouble from time to time, the way most folks do, but they’re still together all these years later.”
    “That’s right,” Smoke said. “I can vouch for that.”
    “So can I,” Matt added.
    Smoke watched the trees in front of the cabin. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Bannerman’s hired guns were going to try something again. Waiting for nightfall made more sense, but while he was shooting it out with them during the last attack, Smoke had caught a glimpse of a man he recognized. Lew Torrance was a top man with a gun, one of the best on the frontier. He had been pointed out to Smoke once in a saloon in Santa Fe, though they hadn’t met. Smoke wasn’t surprised that Bannerman had hired a cold-blooded, efficient killer like Torrance.
    Torrance had a flaw, though: he was impatient. When he took on the job of killing someone, he wanted to get it done as quickly as possible. That impatience had come close to getting Torrance killed a time or two. Smoke didn’t believe that the man would be content to wait for the sun to go down.
    That last attack should have taught the gunmen they couldn’t charge the cabin in the open and expect to win. The first attempt had cost them some lives. The same thing would happen if they tried again.
    Movement in the trees caught Smoke’s eye. He knew whatever they were up to wasn’t anything good.
    “Those varmints are stirring around again,” he told Preacher and Matt.
    “They ain’t nothin’ goin’ on back here,” the old mountain man reported.
    “It’s quiet on this side, too,” Matt said.
    Smoke’s eyes narrowed. He muttered, “What the hell…?” Something big loomed in the trees. It came into view through a gap in the growth and looked so odd for a second Smoke couldn’t figure out what he was looking at.
    Then he recognized it as a flatbed wagon that probably had been fetched from Reece Bannerman’s ranch. Someone had built a wall on the front that rose a good six feet straight up behind the driver’s seat and extended from one side of the wagon to the other. Rifle barrels protruded from three holes that had been cut in the wall.
    The wagon didn’t have a team hitched to it. The tongue had been lifted and tied to the wagon it wouldn’t gouge into the ground in front of the vehicle. It began to move, which meant men were behind it, pushing it slowly but steadily toward the cabin. Powder smoke spurted from the rifles as the gunmen concealed behind the wall opened fire.
    “What’s goin’ on?” Preacher asked as the shots began to ring out and bullets thudded into the cabin’s thick walls.
    “The damnedest thing you’ve ever seen,” Smoke replied. “They’re bringing their own cover with them. They’ve made a rolling wall out of a wagon.”
    He cranked off several rounds from his Winchester. Splinters flew from the places where the slugs struck the boards, but he doubted if any of them penetrated. He figured that wall was several layers thick.
    Matt went to one of the loopholes in the front wall and took a look for himself. “Holy cow!” he exclaimed. “How in blazes are we going to stop a thing like that?”
    “I don’t know,” Smoke