Heart of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

accounting for more than three-quarters of the deaths in most towns.
    Cal and Pearlie, trained by Smoke, stepped to the other side of the door and also waited, checking out the customers to see if any appeared dangerous. They both knew there were many men in the country who would like nothing better than to get a reputation for being the one who planted Smoke Jensen forked end up.
    Smoke noticed his gambler friend of many years, Louis Longmont, sitting at his usual table in the saloon he owned, where he plied his trade, which he called teaching amateurs the laws of chance.
    Louis was a lean, hawk-faced man, with strong, slender hands and long fingers, nails carefully manicured, hands clean. He had jet-black hair and a black pencil-thin mustache. He was, as usual, dressed in a black suit, with white shirt and dark ascot—something he’d picked up on a trip to England some years back. He wore low-heeled boots, and a pistol hung in tied-down leather on his right side. It was not for show, for Louis was snake-quick with a short gun and was a feared, deadly gun hand when pushed.
    Louis was not an evil man. He had never hired his gun out for money. And while he could make a deck of cards do almost anything, he did not cheat at poker. He did not have to cheat. He was possessed of a phenomenal memory and could tell you the odds of filling any type of poker hand, and was one of the first to use the new method of card counting.
    He was just past forty years of age. He had come to the West as a very small boy, with his parents, arriving from Louisiana. His parents had died in a shantytown fire, leaving the boy to cope as best he could.
    He had coped quite well, plying his innate intelligence and willingness to take a chance into a fortune. He owned a large ranch up in Wyoming Territory, several businesses in San Francisco, and a hefty chunk of a railroad.
    Though it was a mystery to many why Longmont stayed with the hard life he had chosen, Smoke thought he understood. Once, Louis had said to him, “Smoke, I would miss my life every bit as much as you would miss the dry-mouthed moment before the draw, the challenge of facing and besting those miscreants who would kill you or others, and the so-called loneliness of the owl-hoot trail.”
    Sometimes Louis joked that he would like to draw against Smoke someday, just to see who was faster. Smoke always allowed as how it would be close, but that he would win. “You see, Louis, you’re just too civilized,” he had told him on many occasions. “Your mind is distracted by visions of operas, fine foods and wines, and the odds of your winning the match. Also, your fatal flaw is that you can almost always see the good in the lowest creatures God ever made, and you refuse to believe that anyone is pure evil and without hope of redemption.”
    When Louis laughed at this description of himself, Smoke would continue. “Me, on the other hand, when some snake-scum draws down on me and wants to dance, the only thing I have on my mind is teaching him that when you dance, someone has to pay the band. My mind is clear and focused on only one problem, how to put that stump-sucker across his horse toes-down.”
    Today, Louis was, as usual, sitting at his personal table, playing solitaire and drinking coffee, a long, black cheroot in the corner of his mouth. Louis looked up and saw Smoke, but he didn’t smile as he usually did when Smoke paid him a visit. Instead, he cut his eyes toward the bar and gave his head a slight toss.
    Smoke followed his gaze, letting his right hand unhook the hammer-thong on his Colt .44. There were three men standing at the bar, leaning on elbows and drinking whiskey with beer chasers. They looked like hard men, and all had their guns tied down low on their legs, showing they weren’t typical cowboys.
    Smoke spoke low, out of the side of his mouth. “Watch those three, boys, and keep your guns loose. Something tells me they ride