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

said. Between his pa Emmett and Preacher, he’d been raised to never give up, never back down. But it seemed likely that at least one man with a torch would be riding on that fortified wagon. Once it was pushed close enough, they’d be able to throw the torch over the wall and onto the top of the cabin. They could finish off Smoke, Matt, and Preacher at almost point-blank range when the resulting fire forced them out.
    The wagon was sort of like an old medieval siege engine, Smoke thought, recalling the history books he had read that described such things being used to breach the walls of castles. Immediately something else occurred to him.
    “Preacher, get out of the line of fire of the door!” he called to the old-timer. “Matt, cover me! That blasted thing can’t move without somebody pushing it!”
    “You got it, Smoke!” Matt said, his keen mind instantly grasping what his adopted brother had in mind. Together, they grabbed the bar holding the door closed and tossed it aside. Smoke went low, throwing himself onto his belly at the threshold, while Matt fired around the edge of the door, pouring lead at the hidden riflemen to keep them distracted.
    From that angle, Smoke could look under the wagon and see all the way to the legs of the men who were pushing it. He snugged the rifle’s stock against his shoulder and began firing from his prone position. Men yelled in pain as his accurate bullets smashed ankles, shattered shins, and tore through calves. Smoke’s shots knocked their legs right out from under them, and the wagon lurched to a halt. It had covered only half the cleared distance between the trees and the cabin.
    As busted legs spilled the men behind the buckboard onto the ground, Smoke had even better targets. He kept firing. His bullets drove into the bodies of the fallen men, killing some of them instantly and wounding others. One of them shouted to his companions, “We can’t walk! Get us out of here, damn it!”
    Men rushed from the trees to come to their aid, but Matt’s rifle fire drove them back. The wounded men began shooting back with handguns, but the range was too great for much accuracy. Smoke’s jaw tightened as he drilled another gunman through the head while the hombre tried to drag himself to safely on his bullet-riddled legs. Killing men like that was pretty cold-blooded, but they had called the tune, he thought. They could damned well dance to it.
    Or rather they couldn’t, he reminded himself with a faint, grim smile, because he had shot their legs out from under them.
    But any man he spared might be the one who killed him or Matt or Preacher later on. Even worse, the hired guns might launch another attack on Crazy Bear’s village and murder more women and kids. Smoke wasn’t going to lose any sleep over killing snakes like that.
    The four men who’d been standing in the wagon bed gave up the fight. They leaped from the vehicle and made a dash for the timber. Matt winged one of them, shattering his elbow from the looks of the way the man’s arm jerked and flopped, but they all made it into the cover of the trees. That left the wagon sitting there empty, with the four men who’d been pushing it sprawled behind it, dead.
    Smoke rolled out of the doorway and into the cabin as bullets from the trees began to kick up dirt not far in front of his face. Matt slammed the door and dropped the bar back into place.
    “Well, that didn’t work out too well for ’em,” Preacher said with a dry chuckle. “That was mighty fast thinkin’ on your part, Smoke, firin’ under the wagon like that.”
    “It was the only way to get at any of them,” Smoke said as he got to his feet. He took a handful of .44-40 cartridges from a pocket and began thumbing them through the Winchester’s loading gate.
    “What do you reckon they’ll do next?” Matt asked.
    Smoke shook his head. “There’s not much telling. We’ve managed to whittle down the odds considerable. They’ll be a little more