They had come down out of the mountains a short time earlier, through a pass that Smoke knew gave the little settlement its name. Fletcher’s Gap. The town, although calling it by that designation was generous, was about a mile out on the flats, where the grassy plains began that stretched all the way to the Kansas border and beyond. Smoke had spotted the settlement as they rode down the sloping trail and had counted six buildings. He thought back to previous visits and remembered a trading post, a livery stable and a blacksmith shop run by the same man, and a saloon. The other two buildings were houses. Another memory came back to him. The trading post and saloon were owned by a pair of brothers, each man operating one of the businesses. Nothing much here to attract a bunch of horse thieves, or men in the market to buy some stolen horses. Smoke figured the hombres he and his friends were tracking fell into one of those categories. But they might have stopped to pick up some supplies.
