Forty Times a Killer by William W. Johnstone Page A

could go no farther and needed some shut-eye. After some coffee, he’d take the first watch, Davis the second, and Jones the third. Wes was ordered to sit across the fire from Smith with his back against a pine.
    â€œI see you even bat an eyelid, I’ll blow a hole in you with this here scattergun,” he said. “You understand that, huh?”
    Wes, perhaps tired of playing the scared youngster, said nothing. He leaned the back of his head against the tree trunk and pretended to sleep.
    Smith motioned with his shotgun and indicated that I should sit next to Wes. “One barrel of buck each if you and your friend suddenly feel ambitious. You catching my drift, runt?”
    â€œI ain’t planning to do nothing but sleep,” I said.
    Smith nodded. “Sleeping your life away, boy. If I was fixin’ to get hung, I’d try to stay awake as much as I could.” He smiled. “Savor the moment, you might say.”
    The lawman took another swig from the bottle then lifted his head. “You smell it, boy?”
    â€œSmell what?” I said.
    â€œThere’s death in the wind.”
    â€œI don’t smell it.”
    Smith ignored that because, half drunk, he was talking to himself, not me.
    â€œSmelled it once before, on the night afore the Battle of Champion Hill. Death walked through our camp and then ol’ General John C. Pemberton ran around the tents asking everybody he met, ‘What’s that smell, boys? What’s that accursed smell?’”
    Smith drank from the bottle and wiped off his mustache with the back of his hand. “The next day Grant and his Army of the Tennessee kicked our asses and piled our Confederate dead in heaps as high as a man.” His eyes sought mine in the darkness. “It was a great battle and the field of honor stank like a charnel house. It was the smell I’d smelled the night afore, the smell I smell now. Death just took a stroll through our camp, boy. But whose death?” He smiled. “Not mine, so maybe yours, huh? Or Hardin’s.”
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    Beside me, I became aware that Wes’s eyes were half open, studying Jones and Davis who, overcome by alcohol, were sound asleep. His eyes slanted under his lids, fixing the location of the lawmen’s weapons.
    Behind the glow of the crackling fire, Smith laid his shotgun across his knees and sang softly to himself.
    â€œO, I’m a good ol’ Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am.
For this ‘Fair Land of Freedom’,
I do not care at all.”
    Wes watched the lawman with wolf eyes.
    â€œI’m glad I fit against it,
I only wish we’d won,
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I done.”
    Smith’s head dropped on his chest and he jerked awake.
    Wes tensed . . . a young man-eater getting ready to spring.
    The lawman took another swig and sang again.
    â€œI hates the glorious Union,
’Tis dripping with our blood—”
    Smith’s voice faded. His head bobbed, lower . . . lower....
    â€œI hates their stripèd banner,
I fit . . . it . . . all . . . I . . . could. . . .”
    The lawman’s voice ebbed . . . died away . . . grew silent....
    He snored softly.
    And John Wesley Hardin descended upon him like the wrath of God.
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    Wes carefully lifted the shotgun from Smith’s lap, then stepped to the sleeping constables and grabbed Davis’s Colt.
    He returned to Smith and let the snoring man have both barrels in the face.
    Smith, his head practically blown off his shoulders, died without making a sound.
    Davis and Jones woke and sat up. Davis yelled, “What the hell is happening?”
    Expertly working the Colt, Wes thumbed two shots into him.
    Davis screamed and fell back, sudden blood staining his mouth.
    Jones, the youngest of the three, threw off his blankets and scrambled to his feet.
    â€œFor pity’s sake, don’t shoot me,” he called out. “I have a pregnant wife