William W. Johnstone by Law of the Mountain Man

grown just after my thirteenth birthday, working a hardscrabble farm back in Missouri and looking after my sick mother. Wasn’t ever enough food; just enough to keep body and soul together. So I know what you mean. Rusty. And no, I don’t believe those so-called experts either.
    “What makes men like Montana Slim and Bob Garnerand all the rest be what they are?” He shook his head. “I think they were born to it, Rusty. They could have had all the advantages in the world and they would have turned out bad. A different kind of bad, maybe, but bad just the same.”
    “What do you mean, a different kind of bad?”
    “Oh, they might have been bankers cheating old ladies or grocers cheating people and being mean-spirited folks. That type of thing.”
    Rusty thought about that for a mile or so. “You know, Smoke. You’re right. There sure are a lot of mean-minded and mean-spirited people in this world. Why, I know a few people who was born into money, and come from nice parents. Kind parents. But their kids would steal the pennies off’n a dead man’s eyes.”
    “That’s what I mean, Rusty. Born to it. I call it the bad seed theory.”
    Rusty settled into the bunkhouse with the old men and the kids. Smoke had taken to sleeping in a room out in the barn.
    And Doreen stopped batting her eyes at Smoke and seemed to be quite taken with Rusty—much to the relief of Smoke. She got to getting all gussied up and swishing around him until it was embarrassing for all the others around them. Rusty, he just grinned like an egg-suckin’ dog and stood around in sort of a daze.
    There had been no trouble from Jud Vale or his men during the time Smoke had been gone.
    But gunfighters kept drifting into the area, in groups of twos and threes. Pretty soon, Smoke thought, Jud Vale was going to have his own private army. And he was going to have to make his move pretty quick, for he was paying out a lot of money for all his hired guns to sit around and do nothing. While many of the bounty hunters and hired guns could work cattle, Smoke had a hunch that damn fewwere going to. Most of them were just downright lazy.
    On a bright, sunshiny morning, Smoke lined the boys up and laid it on the line to them, telling them what their parents had said, and leaving the final decision up to the young cowpunchers.
    The boys huddled together for a time, and then Jamie stepped out of the group and faced Smoke.
    “I allow as to how we’ll stay, Mr. Smoke,” the boy said. “We got to have the money to help out at home. And it ain’t as if we never faced outlaws and the likes of Jud Vale before, ’cause we all have. I figure it like this, and you tell me if it don’t meet with your approval and we’ll work something else out.”
    Smoke waited, as did the other adults.
    Jamie took a deep breath. “You see, sir, me and Alan and Cecil and two or three of the others, well, we know more about Jud Vale than you do, we think. We know it won’t make no difference to him whether it’s a grown man or a boy—not when it comes to standing in his way when he’s a-goin’ after something he wants. Like this ranch and Miss Doreen. So we went ag’in your orders and each of us stuck a pistol in our saddlebags.”
    Smoke sighed. He couldn’t really blame the boys. He would have done the same thing had he been in their position. Smoke had been toting a pistol since he was thirteen. A Navy .36 caliber that had been given him back in ’63 by the as yet unknown Confederate guerrilla fighter name of Jesse James.
    “’Way we all figure it, Mr. Smoke, it’s gonna be comin’ down to the nut-cuttin’ right shortly. And it ain’t fair for no one to ask us to ride unarmed when we might catch a bullet at any moment. I reckon that’s all I got to say, Mr. Smoke.”
    Smoke towered over the boy, staring down at him. Finally, and with a sigh, Smoke nodded his head. "All right, Jamie. I fear for your lives, but I can’t ask you todisarm yourselves. I been packing a