BLOOD BOND MOONSHINE MASSACRE

BLOOD BOND MOONSHINE MASSACRE

WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

with J. A. Johnstone

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 1

The sound of gunfire somewhere ahead of them made the two young men rein their horses to a halt.

“We could always go another way,” Sam August Webster Two Wolves suggested.

“We could,” Matt Bodine agreed with a solemn nod. “But what do you think the chances of that are?”

“Well…slim and none, I’d say.”

A grin suddenly broke across Matt’s ruggedly handsome face. “More like none.”

With an excited whoop, he dug his heels into the flanks of his horse and sent the animal leaping forward at a gallop. Sam was right behind him.

They were somewhere in western Kansas. At least, they believed they had crossed the Colorado border, but it was hard to be sure out here on these rolling plains. The terrain was mostly flat, with a few low hills and ridges scattered here and there. The gunshots that boomed flatly through the warm air came from the other side of one of those ridges.

Matt and Sam rode with the grace and skill of men who had learned to ride before they learned to walk. Both had been born and raised in Montana—Matt the son of a successful rancher, Sam the son of a Cheyenne warrior and the beautiful white teacher that Medicine Horse had met when he was sent back East to school. They had been best friends and blood brothers since childhood, having gone through the ritual that made them onihomihan, or brothers of the wolf. Those who knew their reputation knew them to be brothers of the gun as well…

Because, to put it plain and simple, Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves were fightin’ fools, the sort of fiddle-footed hellions who were always ready for a scrap. Sam liked to pretend that he was more restrained than Matt and more likely to try to avoid trouble, but nobody could tell that now from the eager expression on his face as his horse pounded alongside Matt’s, heading for the sound of guns.

They were about the same size, both tall and ruggedly muscular, both deeply tanned from a life spent outdoors, although Sam’s skin held the reddish tint of his Cheyenne blood. His long hair was as black as a raven’s wing, while Matt’s was closer cropped and dark brown in color. Sam’s concho-studded black hat was pushed back so that it dangled behind his neck by its chin strap. Matt reached up to pull his battered old brown Stetson down tighter on his head so that the wind wouldn’t blow it off.

Both men wore jeans. Sam sported a fringed buckskin shirt with a few discreet beaded decorations on it. Matt’s bib-front shirt was a faded blue. He carried two Colts and wore crossed cartridge belts supporting the weapons’ holsters. Unlike some men who carried two irons, Matt was blindingly swift and deadly accurate with either hand. His speed put him in the same league as Smoke Jensen, Frank Morgan, and John Wesley Hardin. Sam wore only one gun and handled it well, too, although he was a shade slower on the draw than Matt. He was an expert, though, with the razor-sharp bowie knife sheathed on his other hip. Each of them had a Winchester in a saddle boot, and they could make those long guns sing and dance if they needed to.

In other words, they were armed for bear and ready for any other varmints that came their way as well, including the two-legged variety.

They charged up the ridge that separated them from the powder smoke ruckus that was going on, slowing their horses as they neared the crest so they could see what was happening before they found themselves in the middle of it. They could be a mite reckless at times, but they weren’t foolish.

As they drew their mounts to a halt at the top of the ridge, they looked down on the prairie spread out before them and saw a sod cabin next to a narrow, twisting creek. Gun smoke puffed from the cabin’s windows as more shots rang out. The defenders inside the cabin were aiming at a dozen men who had scattered around the place, taking advantage of whatever scant cover they could find as they returned the fire.

“What do you think?” Matt asked.

“We don’t know which side is in the right here,” Sam pointed out. “For all we know, neither side is.”

“Yeah, but my sympathies lie with the folks inside the cabin.”

“Why?”

Matt frowned. “Hell, I don’t know. Because they’re defending their home?”

“Yes, but they could be outlaws.”

One of the men outside the cabin jumped up from behind the little knoll where he had been lying and dashed over to a parked, empty wagon. Bullets from the cabin kicked up dust around his feet as he ran, but he made it safely. That brought him a little closer to the cabin and gave him a better angle to aim at one of the windows. The man lifted a rifle to his shoulder and blasted several shots through the window as fast as he could work the weapon’s lever.

“Looked like that hombre has a badge pinned to his vest,” Sam went on. “I saw the sunlight reflect off it when he ran behind that wagon.”

“You’re saying those fellas are lawmen?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m not sure, but that’s the way it looked to me.”

Matt frowned. They had clashed with crooked badge-toters in the past, but for the most part, he and Sam tried to stay on the right side of the law. They didn’t like being locked up, which had happened a few times.

“Well, hell!” he said in exasperation. “What do we do now?”

Sam shook his head slowly. “I think we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens here.”

“That’s a hell of a note. I don’t like sittin’ on my rear while there’s lead flyin’ around, Sam.”

“I know. But we can’t just get mixed up in every single ruckus that comes our way.”

“Want to bet?”

Sam considered, and then shook his head again. “No, not particularly.”

The two of them sat their saddles and watched the battle for a few minutes. The lawmen, if such they really were, continued working their way closer. They were going to have a hard time rooting out the hombres inside the cabin, though. Those sod walls were thick enough to stop anything short of a cannonball. All the attackers could do was aim for the windows and hope that the slugs would bounce around enough inside to find some targets.

Then one of the men made a dash that carried him all the way up to the cabin itself. He threw himself prone next to the wall and lay there where the defenders couldn’t get a shot at him.

Matt suddenly leaned forward in the saddle and asked, “What’s that he’s got there?”

“I’m not sure,” Sam said with a frown. “He’s lighting a match, though…Good Lord! I think it’s a bomb!”

Sparks flew from the fuse attached to the round black object as the man held the match flame to it. He came up on his knees, leaned out, and tossed the bomb through a window into the cabin.

Several years earlier, Pinkerton detectives had thrown a similar bomb into a cabin in Missouri where they believed Frank and Jesse James were hiding out. Actually, the outlaw brothers weren’t there at the time, but other members of their family were. The blast had killed their younger stepbrother and blown off one of their mother’s arms. Most folks in the West knew about bombs because of what had happened that day.

The men inside this cabin certainly knew a bomb when they saw one. Even up on the hill, Matt and Sam heard their shouts and screams of terror. As the man who had thrown the explosive surged to his feet and dashed away, the cabin door flew open and the men inside started falling all over themselves trying to get out. The attackers held their fire as the men scrambled through the door.

Matt and Sam stiffened in their saddles as a sheet of fire suddenly filled the doorway and the cabin blew apart in a thunderous explosion that sent echoes rolling over the plains. The force of the blast knocked the fleeing men flat on their faces.

“Son of a bitch!” Matt exclaimed. “I hope everybody got out.”

A thick column of black smoke rose into the blue Kansas sky from the place where the cabin had stood. The structure was completely destroyed. The sod blocks that formed the walls had disintegrated in the explosion.

“If anyone didn’t make it out,” Sam said, “there won’t be enough left of them to bury.”

The men who had surrounded the cabin moved in now, guns drawn, and swiftly disarmed and took into custody the erstwhile defenders, kicking guns away, jerking arms behind backs, and slapping on handcuffs.

“They’re star packers, all right,” Matt told Sam. “I can see the sun shining on their badges now, too.” He lifted his reins. “Why don’t we ride down there and see what it’s all about?”

“It’s none of our business, you know.”

“I know, but I’m curious.”

“There’s an old saying about curiosity and a cat.”

Matt grinned. “Yeah, but it ain’t killed us yet, has it?”

“I suppose not.” Sam hitched his horse into motion and started down the slope alongside his blood brother.

Some of the men saw them coming and must have warned the others. Now that the prisoners had been secured and still lay facedown with their hands cuffed behind their backs, their captors straightened and gathered to form a well-armed line that turned toward Matt and Sam.

“I’m glad we’re just looking for information and not trouble,” Matt said. “Those fellas look a mite proddy.”

“They sure do,” Sam agreed. “It’s too late for us to turn back now, though. They’ve already seen us coming.”

Matt and Sam rode to within about twenty feet of the line of men and then reined in. Most of the men were dressed in range clothes, but two of them wore sober dark suits and black derbies.

Matt nodded to the men and said, “Howdy.”

One of the black-suited hombres said in a sharp voice, “What do you want here?” He jerked his head toward the prisoners. “Are you friends or relatives of these men?”

“Never saw them before in our lives, mister,” Sam drawled. “We were just wondering what’s going on here.”

“Yeah, I reckon they heard that explosion all the way back in Abilene,” Matt added.

The spokesman snorted contemptuously. He had an angular face with a nose like a hatchet over a thick black mustache.

“Then this is none of your business, and I suggest you move on,” he said.

“No need to take that tone,” Matt said. “We were just—”

“I don’t care,” the man snapped. “I’ll take any tone I like. And if you don’t ride on now, I’ll tell my men to blow you out of your saddles!”

The rifles in the hands of the other men rose, and suddenly all hell was just one little spark away from breaking loose.

Chapter 2

The other man in black suit and derby stepped forward and said, “There’s no need for more violence, Ambrose. I don’t think these young fellas have anything to do with why we’re here.”

“That’s the truth, mister,” Sam said. “We’re just passing through these parts.”

Both blood brothers knew they were outgunned. They were fast enough and good enough with their irons that they would get lead in several of the men if it came down to a fight, but at the same time, the rest of the lawmen would fill them full of holes. It was a losing bet.

But despite knowing that, both of them were itching to slap leather. They didn’t cotton to having guns pointed at them. Not one little bit.

The less belligerent of the two black-suited gents continued. “Why don’t we just put our guns down and let these boys go on their way?” He was shorter and stockier than his companion, with a broad, sunburned face and sandy hair under the derby.

“All right,” the man called Ambrose said after a moment. “You heard the man. Git!”

“You know,” Matt said, “I still don’t like your tone—”

“Come on, Matt,” Sam interrupted. He started to turn his horse. “We’re leaving.”

Showing obvious reluctance, Matt came with him. They rode slowly away from the destroyed cabin. Matt was seething with anger.

“That fella needs a lesson in manners.”

“I agree,” Sam said, “but not at the cost of both of us getting shot.”

Matt sighed. “I reckon you’re right about that.”

They had ridden about fifty yards when they heard hoofbeats behind them. Hipping around in their saddles, they saw the shorter of the two dudes riding after them.

“Now what?” Matt muttered. “Has he decided he wants trouble after all?”

“More than likely he just wants to talk to us,” Sam said.

They slowed their horses and let the man catch up to them. As he rode up beside them, he nodded pleasantly and said, “I thought you fellas deserved an explanation.”

“Your pard Ambrose ain’t gonna like that,” Matt said.

The man waved a hand to dismiss that idea. “Ambrose is just a little hotheaded sometimes. He was all caught up in the heat of battle, I guess you could say. He’s calmed down now. He understands that if folks know what’s going on, that’ll make our job out here easier.”

“What is your job?” Sam asked. “Are you Pinkertons?”

“No, sir. Special marshals appointed by Governor St. John to enforce the new liquor act. I’m Marshal Calvin Bickford, and my partner is Marshal Ambrose Porter.”

“Wait a minute,” Matt said. “What new liquor act?”

“Why, the one banning its possession or sale in the state of Kansas, of course.”

Matt’s eyebrows rose. “The whole state?”

Bickford nodded. “That’s right.”

“But…but you can’t just get rid of booze in the whole state!”

“It’s done,” Bickford insisted. “Governor St. John signed the law into effect and swore in a force of special marshals to see that it’s carried out. We’re empowered to deputize men to help us.”

Sam jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s why you were after those men in that cabin?”

“That’s right. They’ve been brewing and selling illegal whiskey. We called on them to surrender, in which case we would have simply taken them into custody and destroyed their still, but they refused and opened fire on us.”

“So you tossed a bomb at them,” Matt said.

“And blew up their still,” Sam said. “That’s what caused the explosion to be so big. They must have had some of their whiskey stored in there.”

Bickford nodded. “Quite a bit, in fact, judging by what happened. It’s fortunate for them that they all got out in time.”

“What if they hadn’t?” Matt asked.

Bickford’s beefy shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “Then the state would have been spared the expense of trying them on charges of violating the liquor act and attempted murder of sworn peace officers. Those fellas will be behind bars for quite a spell, I’m afraid.”

“Well, no offense, but tryin’ to blow up somebody just because he’s been brewin’ a little Who-hit-John seems to me like a damned sorry way to make a livin’,” Matt said.

“It’s the law, son,” Bickford replied. “And you don’t really care whether you offend me or not, do you?”

“Come to think of it…no, I sure don’t.”

Bickford smiled. “That’s all right. Any lawman learns pretty quickly that he’s got to have a thick hide to do the job, at least if he intends to do it right.”

“Is there a town around here?” Sam asked.

“Sure is. Nice place called Cottonwood, about ten miles east.”

“Do they have any saloons there?” Matt asked.

“Not anymore. Town’s dry as a bone, just like the rest of Kansas.”

Matt growled in disgust. “I don’t believe it. How’s a fella supposed to cut the dust from his mouth when he’s been on the trail all day if he can’t even get a damned beer?”

“Buttermilk’s good for that,” Bickford said.

Matt made a face. “Never did care for that clabber.”

“You could probably get a phosphate at the drugstore.”

“Ah, just forget it!” Matt lifted the reins and urged his horse ahead of the other two riders.

Bickford smiled over at Sam. “Your friend’s a mite hotheaded, isn’t he? Can’t say as I really blame him. I used to enjoy a drink every now and then, too. But the law’s the law, and I’m sworn to uphold it. I hope you boys understand and won’t give me any reason to look you up again in my official capacity.”

“We’re not moonshiners, Marshal, and if we get thirsty enough, I suppose we can head for Nebraska or Texas, or turn around and go back to Colorado. I assume they still have plenty of whiskey in those places.”

“I reckon they do.”

“I have to say, though,” Sam went on, “I don’t envy you your job. I have a hunch you’ll be a very unpopular man wherever you go.”

“Like I said, a lawman’s got to have a thick hide. So long, Mr…. What is your name anyway?”

“Sam Two Wolves.” Sam nodded toward his blood brother, who was riding about twenty yards ahead of them now. “That’s Matt Bodine.”

“Bodine.” Bickford repeated the name like it meant something to him. “I’ve heard of him. You, too. I used to be a Dickinson County deputy sheriff, over Abilene way. You fellas have quite a reputation among lawmen.”

“For helping them out, you mean?”

Bickford grunted, and after a second Sam realized the sound had been a laugh. “More like for always being around whenever there’s trouble.”

“Unfortunately, there’s something to what you say, Marshal. But we try to avoid it when we can.”

“Uh-huh.” Bickford didn’t sound convinced, and in truth, it was a pretty feeble claim considering the evidence, Sam thought. “Are you headed for Cottonwood?” Bickford asked.

“We need supplies. That would be the closest place to get them.”

“Yeah, I suppose it would. Well, be careful. I’d better get back and help transport those prisoners.”

Bickford lifted a hand in farewell and wheeled his horse around. Sam heeled his mount into a faster pace and drew even with Matt again a moment later.

“You finish talking to that loco hombre?” Matt asked without looking over at his blood brother.

“He didn’t strike me as loco.”

“Anybody who thinks he can stop folks from drinkin’ is plumb crazy,” Matt said. “When people get thirsty, they’ll find a way to take a drink.”

“You’re probably right about that,” Sam admitted. “Still, Marshal Bickford and the others are just trying to do their jobs.”

“Like I said, it’s a sorry excuse for a job.”

Sam let the subject drop. He knew there wouldn’t be any changing of Matt’s mind, and anyway, Sam thought that Matt was pretty much right in his opinions this time.

“We’ll stop in Cottonwood and pick up some supplies. That’ll take just about all of our cash, though, so we might have to try to find a poker game.”

“Didn’t you hear Bickford?” Matt asked. “There aren’t any saloons in that town. They’ve all been closed down because of that stupid law.”

“They may not be selling liquor anymore, but I’ll bet there’s someplace in town where poker games still go on.”

Matt shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll have a look around.”

He was an excellent poker player, and could usually run up a stake for them when their funds ran low. If they were in a town where there was a telegraph office, they could wire home for money. Each of the blood brothers owned a cattle spread in Montana, and thanks to the efforts of the crews who worked for them, those ranches were quite successful. From time to time, Matt and Sam talked about returning to Montana to live and work on their range, but that idea was soon discarded. They weren’t ready to settle down yet, not by a long shot.

Half an hour later, they began seeing smoke from the chimneys of Cottonwood. A little later, the town itself came into view, a good-sized group of buildings scattered along the bank of a creek. The trees that gave the place its name grew on the other side of the stream. Cottonwood had a couple of churches with their steeples standing tall above the settlement, along with a large, whitewashed building at the edge of town that was probably the school. A number of business buildings lined the main street, with residences on the other side of town from the creek. It looked like a typical cow town, maybe a little sleepier and more peaceful than some.

That tranquil atmosphere was the main reason Matt and Sam were both surprised when, for the second time today, they heard the roar of gunfire fill the air.

Chapter 3

Sam didn’t even try to talk Matt out of galloping toward the shots this time. They were headed for the settlement anyway. They would just get there a little quicker this way.

The gunfire continued as the blood brothers raced toward town. They rode past the school, which was empty at this time of year, and as they started along the main street, they saw that the boardwalks were deserted. Obviously, people had scattered to hunt for cover when the shooting started.

Matt and Sam saw a man kneeling behind a water trough and firing a revolver at a wagon across the street. Several men were behind that wagon, blazing away with rifles. Once again, Matt and Sam were in the position of not knowing which side was in the right, if indeed either was.

Then a couple of the men behind the wagon solved the problem by turning and throwing lead at the oncoming riders. To Matt’s way of thinking, anybody who took a shot at him deserved whatever happened, and Sam’s opinion was almost as pragmatic. Matt dropped his reins, guided his horse with his knees, and filled both hands with his Colts.

The revolvers roared and bucked as he began squeezing off shots. The hurricane deck of a galloping horse wasn’t a very good platform for accurate firing, but Matt was better at it than most. Some of his slugs ripped through the canvas cover on the back of the wagon, while others kicked up dust around the feet of his targets.

Instead of putting up a fight, the men broke and ran. Clearly, they were the sort of hombres who liked a battle only when the odds were overwhelmingly on their side.

The man behind the water trough stood up and waved his gun arm after the fleeing men. “Stop them!” he called to Matt and Sam. “Don’t let them get away!”

The blood brothers sent their horses pounding after the gunmen. The race, such as it was, was over in a matter of seconds. Matt pouched his irons, kicked his feet out of the stirrups, and left the saddle in a diving tackle, spreading his arms so that he took down two of the men. They all went crashing to the street, rolling over and over in the dust.

Meanwhile, Sam snatched the coiled lasso from his saddle and shook out a loop with the practiced ease of a man who has spent a lot of time working cattle. He twirled the rope over his head a couple of times and then let fly with it. The loop spread out and dropped perfectly over the shoulders of the third man. Sam jerked it tight, dallied the rope around his saddle horn, and then brought his mount to an abrupt, skidding halt.

The rope went taut with a twang! and pulled the running man off his feet. He went backward and crashed down hard enough to stun him.

A few yards back up the street, Matt made it to his feet at the same time as one of the men he had knocked down. The man was tall and scrawny, wearing greasy buckskins. Long, lank hair tangled around his head, and he had a ragged beard sprouting from his lean jaw. He yelled a curse and came at Matt, swinging knobby-knuckled fists.

Matt ducked under the wild punches and stepped in to hook a hard left into the man’s midsection. The man grunted and started to double over as Matt’s fist sank into his gut. Matt threw a right cross that slammed into the man’s perfectly positioned jaw. That blow sent the hombre to his knees.

Matt didn’t have time to feel any elation at his apparent victory, though, because just then a heavy weight landed on his back and drove him forward. “I got him, Dud, I got him!” a voice yelled in his ear. The sharp stench of long-unwashed flesh filled his nostrils.

Matt knew the other man must have jumped on him, and also realized that if he went down, they would probably try to stomp him to death. He was confident that Sam would stop them, but his blood brother might not be able to do that before they had inflicted some damage on him. As he stumbled and fought to keep his balance, he reached behind him and clawed at the man’s face, trying to jab his thumbs in the varmint’s eyes.

One of them came close enough to make the man let out a howl of pain and loosen his grip. Matt reached higher and tangled his fingers in long, greasy hair. He heaved as hard as he could, which sent the man’s yells up another notch. When Matt spun around, the weight came off. He used his left hand to hang on to the man’s hair while his right fist hammered the man’s face.

This one was shorter and rounder, but just as ugly and dirty. Matt hit him a couple of times, then shoved him toward the boardwalk. The man stumbled backward until his heels hit the edge of the boardwalk. He tripped and fell, landing heavily on the planks.

Matt barely had time to catch his breath before the first man was on him again, grappling with him this time. The man’s arms and legs were so long and skinny, it was almost like wrestling with a spider. He lowered his head and butted Matt in the face, which set bright-colored sparks to dancing in front of Matt’s eyes and made his head spin.

He shook off the dizziness and got his hands up. His fingers went under the scraggly beard and locked around the man’s throat. Matt spun him around and drove him toward the boardwalk. Both of them fell, but Matt made sure he landed on top. He used his grip to bang the man’s head against the planks a couple of times. The man went limp under him.

They were lying next to the other man, who was still half stunned. He appeared to be recovering, though, shaking his head and trying to push himself up. Matt muttered, “Oh, no, you don’t,” and reached over to hit that one again. The man subsided into a stupor.

From horseback, Sam called, “You hit him while he was down.”

Matt climbed shakily to his feet, started knocking some of the dust off his clothes, and said angrily, “Damned right I did. I didn’t want him gettin’ back up again. I thought for a minute there they were just gonna take turns tryin’ to kill me!” He glared up at Sam. “I notice you didn’t fall all over yourself helpin’.”

Sam smiled and gestured toward the man he had lassoed. “I got the one you left me. Figured you thought you could handle the other two.”

The man who had been behind the water trough came up to them, still holding his gun. He wore a black hat and a black vest over a white shirt. A string tie was cinched at his collar, and a tin star pinned to his vest reflected the sunlight. He was in his fifties, still a pretty tough-looking hombre despite his age. Bushy gray eyebrows crooked over a pair of deep-set eyes.

“I’m much obliged to you boys,” he said. He had Matt’s hat in his left hand, having picked it up as he came up the street. He held it out, and Matt took the Stetson and began using it to slap dust from his jeans.

“You’re the law around here?” Sam asked.

“That’s right,” the older man said. “Marshal of Cottonwood. The name’s Marsh Coleman.”

“Short for Marshall?”

“Yeah, that’s why I go by Marsh, so folks won’t call me Marshal Marshall. Wasn’t funny the first time I heard it, and it still ain’t.”

Sam made an effort not to grin. “I’ll remember that, Marshal Coleman.” He inclined his head toward the three men who had been trying to kill the lawman. “What was this all about?”

“Those strangers got into a ruckus with Pete Hilliard at the general store,” the marshal explained. Sam noted that the wagon was parked in front of Hilliard’s General Merchandise and Sundries. Coleman went on. “Somebody ran down to my office and told me there was trouble, and by the time I got here those hombres were roughing Pete up and threatening to tear up his store. I threw down on them and told them to stop, and the bastards started shooting at me. I had to run for cover. Barely made it across the street to that water trough.”

“They’re strangers, you say?”

Coleman nodded. “Yeah. Drove into town in that wagon just a little while ago. I saw ’em come in but didn’t know they were going to be troublemakers.”

Matt grunted. “Ought to be able to tell that by lookin’ at ’em. They’re as dirty and greasy as buffalo skinners.”

“Yeah, well, skinning buffalo was legal last time I checked, young fella. Anyway, there’s not any buffalo hunting going on around here anymore. All the herds have moved down to the Texas Panhandle.”

“I didn’t say they were buffalo skinners, just that—” Matt broke off with a shake of his head. “Never mind. I’m just glad we came along in time to give you a hand, Marshal.”

“So am I. Three-to-one isn’t very good odds.”

The man Sam had roped spoke up, saying, “Hey! Lemme go! You can’t do this to us! We didn’t do nothin’!”

“The hell you didn’t,” Coleman said. “I saw you with my own eyes when you were pushing Pete Hilliard around.”

“We were just funnin’ with the old codger,” the man argued. Like his companions, he was bearded, wore buckskins, and smelled like he hadn’t been anywhere near soap and water for at least a year. “We wouldn’t’a really hurt him.”

“You threatened to pull the whole store down around his ears.”

“He tried to cheat us! He said he couldn’t take no Confederate money!”

“I can see why, you dang fool. The war’s been over for fifteen years. Anyway, you did plenty to justify being locked up for disturbing the peace, and that’s just what I’m gonna do.” Coleman looked at Matt and Sam. “Could I prevail on you boys to help me get them on their feet and march them over to the jail?”

Matt clapped his hat back on his head and nodded. “It’d be our pleasure.”

Sam dismounted and went over to the man he had lassoed. Leaving the rope in place so that the man’s arms were pinned to his sides, Sam lifted him onto his feet. The powerful muscles in Sam’s arms and shoulders didn’t even seem to strain much at the task.

Matt drew his guns and prodded the men on the boardwalk with the sharp toe of a boot. “Get up,” he told them. “You can walk.”

The men were groggy, but they managed to climb upright and stumble toward the squat stone building where the marshal’s office and jail were located. Coleman pointed it out to the men and covered them with his gun, just as Matt and Sam were doing. As they escorted the three prisoners along the street toward the jail, doors began to open along the street and the citizens of Cottonwood started emerging again, now that the shooting was over.

The door of the marshal’s office opened, too, just before they got there, and a young woman stepped outside with a worried look on her face and a rifle in her hands.

Despite that expression of concern causing her to frown, she was still pretty enough to almost take the breath away from Matt and Sam.

Chapter 4

She stepped forward, her blue eyes widening as she looked at the prisoners. “Dad, are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, thanks to these two young fellas,” Coleman replied. “They came along and pitched in on my side.”

The young woman hefted the rifle she held. “I was about to come help you. I heard the shooting and got here as fast as I could.”

It was Coleman’s turn to frown as he shook his head. “I’ve told you before, Hannah, you ain’t my deputy. You need to stay out of any law business. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Well, I don’t want you getting hurt,” she said right back at him. “And if the town council won’t let you hire a deputy, I’ll just have to volunteer.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” the marshal said with a weary shake of his head. “I got to lock these gents up.”

He prodded the prisoners past his daughter, who stepped aside to let them go into the office. Matt and Sam watched through the doorway as Coleman marched the three men across the room to the heavy wooden door that led into the cell block. That door had a small, barred window set into it. Before Coleman put them in cells, he had the man Sam had lassoed take the rope off and drop it on the floor.

Matt glanced over at his blood brother. Like Matt, Sam was keeping an eye on what happened inside, just in case the prisoners tried to escape, but he also shot quite a few quick, intent looks toward the young woman called Hannah.

She was well worth looking at. Probably in her early twenties, she had fair hair that fell in thick waves around her shoulders and framed a lovely face. The simple, dark blue dress she wore hugged a well-shaped body. Sam clearly appreciated her beauty. Matt did, too, but he thought his blood brother was a mite more thunderstruck by it than he was.

Sam cleared his throat and said, “You’re Marshal Coleman’s daughter?”

“That’s right. Hannah Coleman.”

“You’re not married, then.”

“No, I’m not, Mr….”

“Oh.” Sam gave a little shake of his head. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m Sam Two Wolves.”

Hannah shifted the Winchester to her left hand and held out her right. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Two Wolves.”

“Make it Sam,” he told her as he took her hand.

“Thank you so much for helping my father. I always worry every time he leaves the house to come to the marshal’s office. You never know what’s going to happen.”

“No, you sure don’t,” Sam agreed, still holding her hand. He realized that and let go.

Matt leaned forward and said dryly, “I’m Matt Bodine, by the way.”

Hannah turned toward him. “Thank you, too, Mr. Bodine. Exactly what happened? There was so much commotion I couldn’t really tell what was going on.”

Coleman came out of the office coiling Sam’s rope. As he handed it over, he said, “I’ll tell you what happened. Those ornery varmints attacked old Pete Hilliard because he wouldn’t take their blasted Confederate money.” Coleman snorted. “I’ve got a hunch this is the first time they’ve ever been out of the mountains of Tennessee.”

“What are you going to do with them?” Hannah asked.

“That’ll be up to the judge. Attempted murder’s a pretty serious charge, though. It could be they’ll wind up in the state prison.” Coleman looked at Matt and Sam. “Again, I’m obliged to you boys. If there’s anything I can do to repay you for your help…”

“We just planned to pick up some supplies,” Matt said. “Reckon we’ll go on over to Mr. Hilliard’s store and see about doin’ that.”

“But we could stay a few days,” Sam added. “We’ve been on the trail for quite a while. Our horses could probably use the rest.”

Matt’s eyebrows lifted. “You think so?” He knew good and well why Sam was suddenly so interested in staying a spell in Cottonwood, and her name was Hannah Coleman.

That was all right with Matt, other than the fact that they couldn’t get a drink here.

Or could they? All they had to go by was the word of Calvin Bickford and Ambrose Porter. The two so-called “special marshals” hadn’t seemed to be lying, but despite his relative youth, Matt was old enough to know better than to take everything at face value.

“Say, Marshal,” he went on, “we heard there’s a new law here in Kansas that says no more liquor.”

Coleman nodded. “That’s right. Governor signed it into law a while back.”

“Does that just apply to whiskey, or—”

“Whiskey, beer, wine, anything with alcohol in it. It’s illegal to sell any of it or have it in your possession.”

“So there’s no place here in Cottonwood where a man can get a real drink?” Matt asked as if he couldn’t believe it.

“I’m afraid not. I reckon that means you fellas will be in even more of a hurry to move on—”

“Not at all,” Sam broke in. He smiled at Hannah. “It really doesn’t matter to us.”

Matt wanted to tell his blood brother to speak for himself, but instead he just shrugged and said, “I reckon we can take it or leave it.”

It was true that Sam wasn’t much of a drinker to start with. He had seen how badly liquor affected his father’s people. Matt was more inclined to tip an elbow, but he could live without it for a while, he supposed. Sam would get over being smitten with Hannah Coleman as soon as he realized that he would have to be ready to settle down in order to get anywhere with a girl like her.

Coleman sighed and said, “I’m glad to hear that somebody around here feels that way about booze. When the governor got the legislature to pass that law, I don’t reckon he knew just how much of a hornets’ nest he’d be stirring up.”

“Folks haven’t taken kindly to it?” Matt asked.

“That’s putting it mildly. Governor St. John had to send out special deputies to try to enforce the ban, and they’ve wound up getting in shoot-outs with saloon owners and people who try to smuggle in the stuff and just average folks who want to take a drink.”

Matt and Sam glanced at each other, but didn’t say anything about having witnessed one such gun battle earlier that very day.

“On top of that, local badge-toters like me have had to close down the saloons in our towns, and that’s caused a lot of hard feelings, too,” Coleman went on.

“Someone tried to shoot Dad from an alley a few nights ago,” Hannah said. “I’m sure it had something to do with that ban on liquor and the way he ordered all the saloons in town to close.”

“Now, we don’t know that,” Coleman said with a shake of his head.

“Why else would anyone try to bushwhack you like that?”

Coleman shrugged. “Lawmen always have enemies.”

“There hadn’t been any real trouble in town for months,” Hannah insisted. “Not until that new law went into effect.”

“Well, maybe not, but we still don’t need to jump to conclusions.” Coleman turned to Matt and Sam again. “But you young fellas don’t want to stand around listening to my problems. Tell you what. Since I can’t buy you a drink to thank you for helping me out, why don’t I feed you supper instead?” He looked at his daughter. “That is, if Hannah doesn’t mind me volunteering her to cook for you.”

“Not at all,” Hannah said quickly. “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

“So do I,” Sam said without hesitation, which didn’t surprise Matt. “Thank you for the generous invitation. We accept.”

Matt didn’t mind Sam speaking on his behalf this time. After being on the trail for several weeks, a home-cooked meal sounded mighty fine.

“We live on Third Street,” Hannah told them. “Just go up one block and then turn left. It’s the fourth house.”

Sam nodded. “We’re much obliged, Miss Coleman.”

“Yeah,” Matt added. “Thanks. Now we’d better see about finding a stable for our horses and a place to stay.”

“Cottonwood Hotel’s across the street in the next block,” Coleman said. “Nice, clean place. And I’d recommend Loomis’s Stable, at the eastern end of the street. Ike Loomis will take good care of your animals.”

Matt and Sam nodded their thanks, then went to gather up their mounts while Coleman and Hannah went into the marshal’s office. The horses were well trained and hadn’t gone far. As the blood brothers led them toward the stable Coleman had recommended, Matt grinned and said, “You’ve got it bad.”

“What?” Sam said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The hell you don’t! I saw the way you were makin’ calf eyes at Miss Hannah.”

“You’re loco!” Sam protested. “She’s a pretty girl, I suppose, but I wasn’t…I didn’t…” His voice trailed off and he blew out an exasperated breath.

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that you started talkin’ about stayin’ around these parts for a while.”

“The horses need a rest,” Sam insisted.

“I need a drink, too, but it looks like I’m not gonna get one here.”

“You can live without a drink for a few days.” Sam paused, then went on. “Did you hear what Hannah said about someone trying to bushwhack her father?”

“Of course I heard her. I was standin’ right there.” Matt frowned a little. “But that is a mite interestin’. Could be the marshal has more trouble on his hands than he realizes.”

“And the prospect of trouble always intrigues you, doesn’t it?” Sam asked.

Matt grinned in response but didn’t say anything.

They reached the livery stable. According to the sign painted on the front wall over its big double doors, it was LOOMIS’S LIVERY—ISAAC LOOMIS, PROP. When they led their horses inside, a short, barrel-shaped man in overalls and with a plug hat met them. He had a short, rusty beard, and a crooked black stogie was clenched between his teeth.

“Howdy, gents,” he said without removing the stogie. “He’p you?”

“We need a place to put up our horses,” Sam said.

“And a place that’ll sell us a drink,” Matt added jokingly.

The fat man leaned out to look both ways along the street, then slowly straightened and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone as he said, “Just could be I might can he’p you with both of them things.”

Chapter 5

The blood brothers looked at him in surprise. Matt said, “I was just funnin’ with you, old-timer. We know about the new law in Kansas.”

“Yeah, well, just ’cause somethin’s a law don’t mean that everybody follows it.” The liveryman frowned suddenly. “You boys ain’t some o’ them special marshals, are you?”

“Us? Not hardly,” Matt said.

“We’re just passing through Cottonwood,” Sam added. “And we’re really not interested in having a drink.”

“Speak for yourself,” Matt said. He turned to the liveryman. “Just what were you gettin’ at, amigo?”

“There’s an old barn at the other end o’ town. It used to be Cottonwood’s other livery stable, but there weren’t enough business to support two of ’em. Fella who owned it closed up shop and went back wherever he came from. Barn’s been sittin’ there empty for nigh on to a year.”

“So what happened?” Sam asked. “Someone came along and converted it into a secret saloon once that new law went into effect?”

The liveryman looked around nervously again, then said, “You didn’t hear it from me.”

“Wait a minute. You’re serious? There really is a saloon down there?”

“Now you’re talkin’,” Matt said.

“Just go ’round back and tell ’em that Ike sent you. That’s me, Ike Loomis.”

Matt grinned. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Loomis. Under the circumstances, mighty pleased.”

“I suppose you get a little payment for sending customers down there,” Sam said with a note of disapproval in his voice.

Loomis shook his head. “No, sir, I sure don’t.” He hooked his thumbs in the suspenders that held up his overalls and added proudly, “I own the place. Well, not the barn itself, I reckon, but nobody was usin’ it. I brought everything in and set it up, though.”

“Where do you get your booze?” Matt asked.

Loomis shook his head. “That’s a secret. I’m already takin’ a chance just tellin’ you about the place, but you boys look trustworthy to me.”

“We just helped Marshal Coleman arrest some men who were disturbing the peace,” Sam said. “He’s the one who told us to bring our horses down here.”

Loomis started to look worried again. “Oh, shoot. You’re friends of Marsh Coleman, are you?”

“We just met him,” Matt said. “Don’t worry, Mr. Loomis, we’re not gonna run back to the marshal’s office and tell him about your saloon.”

“I expect he’ll find out sooner or later, though,” Sam said. “He seems like a pretty smart man.”

Loomis nodded. “Oh, he is. Marsh is sharp as a tack, and a damn fine lawman, to boot. Reckon when the time comes, he’ll close me down. But I plan on makin’ a nice tidy sum before that day dawns.”

“That’s your business.”

“That’s right, sonny, it is.”

“Can you take care of our horses?” Sam asked.

“Oh, sure, sure. That’s my business, too, takin’ care o’ horses. They’ll be took good care of, too. You got my word on that, Mr….”

“I’m Bodine,” Matt said. “He’s Two Wolves.”

Loomis scratched at his graying red beard and frowned. “Bodine and Two Wolves…seems to me I’ve heard them names before.”

“Must’ve been two other fellas,” Sam said. He held out the reins. “Here you go.”

Loomis took the reins of Matt’s mount, too, and said, “That’ll be a dollar a day for each, plenty o’ grain and water included. I’ll make sure they get rubbed down good, too.”

“We’re obliged,” Matt said with a nod.

“Now don’t tell anybody what I told you about that barn,” Loomis warned.

“Don’t worry. We’ll keep it to ourselves,” Matt promised.

As they left the livery stable, carrying their saddlebags and rifles, Sam muttered, “I can’t believe you’d do that.”

“Do what?”

“Tell that old-timer we’d keep his secret, when we’re going to Marshal Coleman’s house for dinner this evening.”

“Coleman offered to feed us because we rounded up those troublemakers for him,” Matt said. “The way I see it, one thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other.”

“He’s sworn to uphold the law here in Cottonwood, and you just agreed to help someone break it.”

“Loomis is gonna be runnin’ that illegal saloon whether I say anything about it or not,” Matt pointed out. “He was runnin’ it before we got here, and I figure he’ll be runnin’ it when we leave.”

“Unless we tell the marshal about it and help him close it down.”

Matt stopped in his tracks. “Oh, now, wait just a minute. It’s a far piece from tellin’ Coleman about it to helpin’ him put the place out of business.”

Sam shrugged. “You heard Hannah. He doesn’t have any deputies.”

“Well, don’t go volunteerin’ me for the job. We didn’t even wear badges when we helped out ol’ Seymour Standish down there in Sweet Apple, Texas. We were unofficial deputies, at most.”

“All I’m saying is that the deck is stacked against Marshal Coleman the way it is.”

“And we don’t have cards in that game,” Matt said. “I’d just as soon keep it that way.”

Sam grunted and shook his head. “Now you’re saying we should avoid trouble. Never thought I’d see the day when Matt Bodine did that.”

They glared narrowly at each other as they reached the Cottonwood Hotel, a nice-looking, two-story establishment. While the blood brothers got along quite well most of the time and had for many years, it wasn’t unheard of for the two of them to clash. A time or two, they had gotten so mad at each other that they split up and rode separate trails for a while. They had always come back together eventually, but who was to say whether or not one day their trails might fork for good?

Not today, though, not over something as minor as this. They went into the hotel and got a couple of rooms, Sam paying for both of them since he usually kept their cash.

Matt looked through an arched entrance that led into a smaller room off the lobby and saw several men sitting around a table playing poker. “You’ve got a card room,” he said to the clerk.

That slick-haired, bespectacled gent nodded. “That’s right. When all the saloons closed, folks still needed a place to play, so Mr. Winston, the owner of the hotel, made a card room out of that storage room.”

“High-stakes games?”

“Well, more friendly, I’d say,” the clerk replied. “But from what I hear, the pots sometimes get pretty big. Two or three hundred dollars, even.”

Those weren’t huge pots as far as Matt was concerned, but they weren’t penny-ante, either. If a man spent a few hours in a game like that, he might walk away with enough cash to buy quite a few supplies.

He inclined his head toward the card room and said to Sam, “I think I’ll have a look.”

“Give me your gear,” Sam said. “I’ll put it in your room.”

“Thanks.” Matt handed over the saddlebags and Winchester. The momentary friction of a few minutes earlier was forgotten.

He strolled over to the door and stepped into the card room. Since it was a converted storage room, it didn’t have any windows, but paintings had been hung on the walls. Three of them sported scenes of the English countryside, while the fourth painting was of a well-upholstered gal with bright red hair and absolutely no clothes. One hand and a long, flowing strand of hair covered up the essentials.

Five men sat at a table covered with green felt. Matt eyed the lone empty chair. To the players who glanced up at him, he gave a friendly nod, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to distract anybody from their cards.

A handsome, brown-haired man in a gray suit with fancy vest, white shirt, and a cravat with a diamond stickpin in it was handling the deck, as well as playing his own hand. The bet went around the table as the players discarded and drew, then went around a couple more times until the only ones left in were the dealer and a bald-headed man with a big belly and a second chin. Matt tipped his hat back, leaned against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, and watched the play. He didn’t know what either man had, so he tried to decide by studying their faces if they were bluffing or not.

When there was about eighty dollars in the pot, Double-Chin called the bet and put down his cards. He had a good hand, three nines, but the other man beat him with a straight.

As the brown-haired man raked in his winnings, he smiled up at Matt and said, “Interested in sitting in on the game, friend?”

“You’ve got an empty chair,” Matt pointed out.

“Indeed we do. Pull it up.” The man glanced around the table. “That is, if no one else has any objections.”

A couple of the men shook their heads, one grunted in assent, and another said, “Fine by me.” The only one who didn’t respond was the fat man, who was still frowning at the table as if he couldn’t believe that he had lost the last hand.

Matt sat down at the table and took out a twenty-dollar gold piece. He had been saving the double eagle for a moment like this. As he tossed it onto the green felt, he said, “Is that enough for me to buy in?”

“More than enough,” the brown-haired man said. “Like me to change that for you?”

“I’d be obliged.”

The man counted out some greenbacks from the pile in front of him and pushed them over to Matt, who handed him the double eagle. “I’m Linus Grady, by the way,” the man introduced himself. “That’s Ted Barnes, Seward Stone, Walt Phillips, and Gus Blauner.”

“Matt Bodine.” Judging by the lack of reactions around the table, none of the men had heard of him, which was just fine with Matt. Sometimes having a reputation as a fast gun was just an annoyance, and sometimes it was a downright danger. None of these men looked like the sort who’d be interested in challenging him just to get a reputation of their own, though. They were more interested in playing cards.

“The game is straight draw poker,” Linus Grady said. “Two-dollar ante. Sound all right to you, Matt?”

“Sounds fine. Deal ’em.”

Grady began flicking the pasteboards around the table with a practiced ease that said he was a professional. As Grady dealt, the fat man, who had been introduced as Seward Stone, continued to glare at him.

Matt told himself to keep an eye on that one. If there was going to be trouble, it was likely to come from Stone.

Chapter 6

The game went smoothly for a few hands, though. Stone seemed to get over being mad about losing that good-sized pot to Grady. The pots stayed relatively small, under fifty dollars, and Matt won several of them.

Then a pot started to rise as several of the players seemed to think they had good hands. Either that, or some of them had decided to run a bluff. Matt was confident that Stone wasn’t bluffing. The big man wasn’t quite good enough to hide his emotions completely. Excitement lurked in his piggish eyes.

With Grady, on the other hand, Matt didn’t have any idea. The man was a professional, and the vaguely pleasant smile never left his face. He was unreadable.

As for Matt’s own hand, he liked it. On a whim, he had tried to fill a flush on the draw, and two spades had turned up to go with the three he already had. He kept his raises conservative, though, knowing that if he plunged it would just run the other players off before the pot built up.

Seward Stone didn’t have that much patience. When the bet came to him, he saw it and raised twenty, and when it came back around, he raised fifty. Matt kept his face expressionless and didn’t show his annoyance. Everybody else dropped out except for him, Stone, and Grady.

He would just have to take more of the fat man’s money, he told himself.

Or else Grady would. Matt couldn’t rule out the possibility that the brown-haired man had him beat. Either way, all he really had at stake was the twenty dollars he had brought to the table. Soon, though, that was in the pot, too, as he pushed everything he had left into the center of the table and said, “I’m all in, gents.”

Stone smiled, but his mouth still looked like he was pouting. “In that case, I raise another fifty.”

“I’ll see that,” Grady said as Matt felt a surge of disappointment. He couldn’t afford to stay in.

But then Grady went on. “And so will Matt.” He tossed more bills into the pot.

“Wait a minute,” Matt said, and at the same time, Stone exclaimed, “By God, you can’t do that!”

“Of course I can,” Grady said calmly. “I can loan money to anyone I want to.”

Stone pointed a sausagelike finger at Matt. “He was all in. He said so himself.”

“He was mistaken.” Grady smiled at Matt. “I want to see your cards, amigo, so you’re calling the bet.”

“You sure about that?” Matt asked.

“Positive.”

“It’s not the way things are done,” Stone sputtered.

“This is a friendly game,” Grady said. “I don’t think we need to stand on ceremony too much.” He looked at the other men. “What do you gents say?”

“I say this is between the three of y’all,” one man responded. “I dropped out a long time ago.”

“So did I,” another man put in as he started to scrape his chair back. “But if there’s gonna be trouble, I think I’d just as soon mosey on.”

“No trouble,” Grady said. “We’ll just lay our cards down, and that’ll be the end of it, one way or another. Right, gentlemen?”

“Damn it, have it your own way,” Stone said. He slapped his cards faceup on the table. “You’re not going to beat that, anyway! Four jacks!”

A sigh came from Grady as he laid down his hand. “You’re right,” he said. “That beats my four tens. Matt?”

“I’ve got a flush,” Matt said.

Stone chortled and reached out with pudgy hands to pull in the pot.

“A straight flush,” Matt added.

One by one, he laid down the three, four, five, six, and seven of spades.

Linus Grady clapped his hands and laughed in delight. “Well played!”

Seward Stone’s broad features began to turn a deeper and deeper scarlet as rage caused the blood to flow into his face. “That’s not possible,” he growled.

“Oh, it’s possible, all right,” Grady said as he pushed the pot toward Matt. “Unlikely, maybe, but entirely possible.”

“Not without help,” Stone blustered.

The other three men had relaxed a little, but now they stiffened. Chairs scraped on the floor again as their occupants stood up in a hurry.

Quietly, Grady said, “Seward, I don’t know you very well, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and advise you that you had better not mean that the way it sounded.”

Stone pointed a finger at Matt. “And how well do you know this man?” he demanded. “Did he cheat on his own, or are the two of you partners?”

“Mister,” Matt drawled, “you’d better stand up and haul your freight out of here, because I’m really not in the mood to kill anybody today.”

Stone looked so mad he was fit to burst, but he controlled himself with a visible effort and said, “I’m no gunman. I won’t draw on you.” He put his hands on the edge of the table and started to heave himself to his feet.

As he came up, though, he suddenly gave the table a hard shove, ramming it into Matt and upending it. The move took Matt by surprise. He felt his chair going over backward as coins and greenbacks flew into the air. He crashed to the floor as a couple of the chair’s legs snapped off.

Stone roared in rage and swung the table around. He might be fat, but a lot of his bulk was muscle, too, and he obviously had immense strength. Stone used the table as a battering ram to drive Linus Grady against the wall. He pinned the gambler there and leaned on the table, as if it were a giant thumb and he intended to crush Grady like a bug. Grady let out a groan of pain.

Matt came up off the floor holding one of the broken chair legs. He brought it crashing down twice on Stone’s back. The blows forced Stone to let go of the table. He swung around and backhanded Matt with a thickly muscled arm. The blow sent Matt rolling across the floor, through the scattered money.

Stone came after him and landed a painful kick in Matt’s side. As Matt curled up on the floor, gasping in pain and lack of breath, Stone turned and went after Grady again. The gambler had slumped half-senseless to the floor when Stone let go of the table. Now Stone grabbed the lapels of his coat and dragged him up again. He shook Grady like a terrier with a rat, then slammed him twice against the wall.

Matt forced himself to his feet and drew his right-hand Colt. He leveled the gun at Stone and eared back the hammer. The sound of a gun being cocked would get through to almost any man, no matter how mad he was, but Stone ignored it.

“Let him go, damn it!” Matt yelled. He would shoot Stone’s legs out from under him if he had to.

He didn’t have to, though, because at that moment, Grady lifted his hand and pressed the barrel of the derringer he had shaken down from his sleeve against Stone’s forehead. Matt caught just a glimpse of the little pistol before Grady pulled the trigger.

The derringer didn’t make much sound at all, just a quiet pop. The sides of Stone’s head seemed to bulge out a little, though, and blood welled from his ears. He let go of Grady and toppled over backward, landing with a huge crash like a redwood tree falling in the forest. A finger of crimson oozed from the black-rimmed hole in the center of his forehead. His dead eyes stared sightlessly toward the ceiling.

Grady leaned against the wall. His right arm hung down at his side with the derringer held loosely in his hand. A little wisp of smoke curled from the muzzle.

“You killed him,” Matt said. It wasn’t an exclamation of surprise, just a statement of fact.

“He…he was damned lucky…I didn’t do it…as soon as he accused me…of cheating,” Grady said as he tried to catch his breath. He groaned again as he pressed his left hand to his side. “Feels like…the fat son of a bitch…might’ve cracked a rib or two.”

The hotel clerk peeked nervously around the doorjamb. “Are you gentlemen all right?”

Matt lowered the hammer on his gun and slid the iron back into leather. “I reckon we will be. You’re gonna need the undertaker here, though.”

“Someone’s already run to fetch him. The marshal, too.”

For the marshal of a nice, peaceful town, Marsh Coleman was having to deal with a lot of trouble today, Matt thought.

Grady still looked shaken and disheveled, but he had caught his breath. “Let’s get this money picked up,” he suggested. “Several hundred dollars of it belong to you.”

Matt was about to say that he didn’t care about the money, but then he remembered that he had won it fair and square. He started gathering it up, along with Grady.

By the time Marshal Coleman came hurrying into the lobby, gun in hand, Matt and Grady had the money straightened out and sorted. Matt’s winnings were rolled up and tucked into his pocket.

“Bodine!” Coleman exclaimed. “I didn’t know you were mixed up in this.”

“And I should have known,” Sam said as he appeared behind the lawman. “Are you all right, Matt? I heard a commotion down here, but I didn’t know there had been a shooting.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Matt told his blood brother. “I’m sorry about this, Marshal. That fella there on the floor took exception to losing.”

Coleman grunted. “Violent exception, from the looks of it. Who shot him?”

“I did,” Grady answered without hesitation. “It was self-defense, Marshal. He would have killed me.”

Coleman looked at Matt. “Is that true?”

“Yeah, Stone was doing his damnedest to bash Grady’s brains out against the wall.”

“He had already almost crushed me with that table,” Grady added.

Coleman nodded as he holstered his gun. “Well, then, from the sound of it there won’t be much doubt about the verdict at the inquest. There’ll have to be an inquest, though. Can’t just let a killing go.”

“I understand,” Grady said. “Let me know when it is, Marshal, and I’ll be there.”

“Thanks. You been around here for a while, Grady, and you seem like a law-abiding sort, for a gambler.”

“I always try to abide by the law, Marshal. And for the record, I didn’t cheat, and neither did Mr. Bodine. Stone lost that hand fair and square.”

“Yeah,” Coleman said with a look at the corpse on the floor. “I’d say he lost the biggest hand of all.”

Chapter 7

The undertaker arrived a few minutes later, along with a couple of his helpers. It took all three of them, along with some volunteers, to lift Stone’s body onto a door from a back room in the hotel that was taken off its hinges. Then, with much grunting and groaning and straining, they carried the corpse out to the undertaker’s wagon.

“I believe I’ll go see the doctor,” Linus Grady said. “He might need to tape up these ribs of mine. I’m pretty sure none of them are broken, but a couple might be cracked.”

When the gambler was gone, Marshal Coleman said to Matt and Sam, “You boys try to stay out of trouble the rest of the day. Hannah would be mighty disappointed if you didn’t make it for supper tonight.”

“We’ll be there, don’t worry about that,” Sam said quickly. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Coleman nodded. “All right. See you then.” He paused, looked back over his shoulder, and added, “I’ll let you know about the inquest, Matt. You’ll probably have to testify, too.”

“Whatever you need, Marshal,” Matt assured him.

As the blood brothers went upstairs, Sam asked, “What happened?”

Matt explained, then said, “I was gonna try to make Stone settle down without killin’ him, but I don’t reckon I can blame Grady for doin’ what he did. It wasn’t me that Stone had hold of.”

“It would be nice to ride into a town without all hell breaking loose.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, then added with a grin, “You reckon that’ll ever happen to us?”

Sam didn’t reply.

It was past the middle of the afternoon by now, so they didn’t have to wait too awfully long before heading over to the marshal’s house for supper. Matt took advantage of the opportunity to wash up a little and put on a clean shirt. When he went downstairs to meet Sam in the lobby, though, he frowned at his blood brother and said, “You look different somehow.”

Sam frowned and said, “No reason for me to look different.”

“You do, though,” Matt insisted. Suddenly he leaned closer and sniffed. “No, I’m wrong. You don’t look different. You smell different. You took a bath!”

“No, I didn’t,” Sam protested.

“Yeah, you did. I smell lye soap and lilac water!” When Sam shook his head, Matt went on. “I can go ask the clerk if you had a tub and some hot water sent up.”

“Oh, all right, all right,” Sam said. “So I took a bath. So what? We’ve been on the trail for a long time. You don’t exactly smell like a rose.”

“I don’t stink…but I don’t smell flowerdy, neither.”

Sam jerked his hat brim down over his eyes. “Shut up,” he muttered. “Let’s just go. And you don’t have to say anything about this to Hannah and her father.”

“I don’t intend to. It’s downright embarrassin’.”

Sam glared at him and then stalked out. Matt chuckled and followed.

Dusk was beginning to settle over Cottonwood as they walked along Main Street and then turned onto Third. There were houses on only one side of the street, so they didn’t have any trouble finding the neat, white frame structure belonging to Marshal Coleman. It had a nice, well-cared-for yard, and a porch with a couple of rocking chairs on it that looked out at the seemingly endless prairie rolling away across the street. They walked past a small flower bed and went up the steps onto the porch.

A small, shaggy, gray and brown dog that had been lying there stood up and barked in greeting, his stub of a tail wagging frantically. Coleman appeared at the open front door and pushed back the screen door.

“Howdy, boys,” he said. “Come on in.” To the dog, he added, “Hush there, Lobo.”

Matt looked down at the appealingly ugly mutt and said, “Lobo?”

“He thinks he’s a wolf,” Coleman said in apparent seriousness.

Matt and Sam went inside, and both young men immediately noticed the wonderful smells in the air, a mingling of savory roast beef, fresh-baked bread, and—

“Is that apple pie I smell?” Matt asked with a hopeful expression on his face.

“Sure is,” Coleman replied. “You won’t find a better apple pie in the whole state of Kansas than the one Hannah makes.”

Matt licked his lips. “I can’t wait to sample it.”

“You’ll have to save a little room for it, then.”

“You’re a wise man, Marshal.”

Coleman took their hats and ushered them into the living room. The house was simply but comfortably furnished. There were woven rugs on the floor and lace doilies on the tables. Framed photographs stood on the mantle above the fireplace. In one of them, a much younger Marsh Coleman stood behind a woman with her fair hair pulled back in a bun. He had one hand on her shoulder, and both of them wore solemn expressions and their Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes.

“Your wife?” Sam asked with a nod toward the photograph.

“That’s right. That’s my Elsa, God rest her soul. A fever took her when Hannah weren’t but a little tyke.”

“We’re sorry,” Matt murmured.

“It was a hard thing, but life’s that way. You got to take the bad with the good, or not have any of it at all.”

“And that’s Hannah a few years ago,” Sam said, pointing at a portrait of the lovely young woman.

“Yep. One of those traveling photography fellas came through here with his wagon and set up for a few days to take everybody’s picture who wanted it took. I reckon she was sixteen or seventeen then.”

Hannah came into the room and said, “Dad, don’t bore our guests with a lot of family history. We asked them here for supper, remember?”

“We’re not the least bit bored, Miss Hannah,” Sam said. “And that’s a beautiful picture of you.”

She blushed a little. “Thank you.”

“But I think you’re even lovelier now,” Sam added.

“Oh, go on with you.” She wore a white apron over a blue dress dotted with yellow flowers. She took off the apron and went on. “Come in the dining room. Supper’s ready.”

The delicious aromas grew even stronger as they went into the dining room and sat down at a table covered with a cloth of snowy white linen. From the looks of the place settings, Hannah had brought out the fine china and silver. In the center of the table sat a serving platter with a roast on it, surrounded by bowls of potatoes, peas, and carrots. Steam rose from a basket of fresh rolls nestled in a cloth. Everything looked almost as good as it smelled.

“Sit down and dig in, boys,” Coleman said.

“Not until we say grace,” Hannah corrected.

“Oh, yeah.” Coleman bowed his head. The blood brothers followed suit. Coleman went on. “Thank you, Lord, for the bounty we are about to receive, and for the visitors you have brought to grace our house with their presence. Amen.”

“Amen,” Hannah murmured. She reached for a chair, but Sam beat her to it, pulling it out and holding it for her as she sat down.

The food was the best that Matt and Sam had had for a long time, and the company was certainly pleasant. Matt asked Coleman to tell them about Cottonwood.

“Place got started because there were quite a few big cattle spreads around here. They needed someplace to buy supplies, so Pete Hilliard and his brother Bob sunk their life savings in some wagons and the goods to fill them and drove out here about ten years ago to set up a trading post. All they had at first was a big tent. But that grew into a regular store, and when folks heard about it, they came to start other businesses, and in a few years the place had turned into a real town. Bob Hilliard’s ticker went bad on him, so he had to move back east. He sold out to his brother Pete, who was the first mayor of Cottonwood. Folks decided to call it that because of the trees growing along the creek bank.”

“Seems like a nice town,” Sam commented.

“Oh, it is, it is. Since it’s not on the railroad, it’ll never be as big as, say, Abilene or Dodge City, but that’s just fine with the folks who live here.”

“It’s big enough to have some troublemakers, though,” Matt said.

Coleman frowned. “Yeah, I reckon you’re right about that. Still, two bad ruckuses in one day, like we had today, ain’t all that usual. Seward Stone always was sort of a hothead, though.”

“What did he do for a living?” Matt asked.

“Owned part of the stagecoach line that comes through here. His partner did most of the work, so I reckon that won’t change much.”

“What about those three hombres you arrested earlier?”

“You mean the ones you fellas nabbed for me?” Coleman shook his head. “Once I found out their last name, I wasn’t surprised they started a ruckus as soon as they came into town. They’re some more of Cimarron Kane’s shirttail relatives.”

“Who’s Cimarron Kane?” Sam asked.

“Seems like I’ve heard the name before,” Matt added.

“Cimarron Kane’s an owlhoot,” Coleman said. “He grew up around here, but went off when he was younger to raise hell in Colorado and New Mexico and Arizona. I don’t know what-all he did, but I wouldn’t put much of anything past him. Heard he killed at least three men in gunfights. Reckon when the law made it too hot for him in those other places, he came back here to Kansas. He’s not wanted for anything in this state, so I can’t arrest him. The old Kane homestead is about five miles northwest of here, and for the past year or so, his relatives have been showing up to stay with him. Most of them are just like those three you tangled with today: right out of the mountains in Tennessee and rough as a cob.”

“How do they get by?” Sam asked. “Farming?”

Coleman shook his head. “They run a few cattle, but if you ask me, they’re up to something no good out there. Those few scrubby cows wouldn’t make ’em much money.”

“And the three men you arrested are part of the clan?”

“Yep. Dudley, Nelse, and Wiley Kane. Claim they’re cousins to Cimarron and said that if I’d send word to him, he’d come in and pay their fines.”

Hannah said, “But you’re not going to let them off with just fines, are you, Dad? They tried to kill you. They deserve to go to jail!”

“That ain’t up to me,” Coleman said with a shake of his head. “I’ll abide by whatever the judge says.”

“Would’ve simplified matters if we’d just killed ’em,” Matt said. Then as Sam turned to frown at him, he said, “What?”

“You’re a barbarian, you know that?”

“Heard a fella say once that barbarism is the natural state of mankind,” Matt replied with a grin. “Pass me another roll, would you?”

Chapter 8

The rest of the meal went smoothly, and after they had finished eating—including healthy servings of the deep-dish apple pie Coleman had advised the blood brothers to save room for—Sam offered to help Hannah clean up.

“That’s not necessary,” she told him.

“I really don’t mind.”

She shooed him out of the dining room. “No, you go with Dad and Mr. Bodine. Dad usually sits out on the porch in the evening after supper, and I’m sure he’d be glad for the company.”

Coleman took one of the rockers on the porch, Matt the other. Sam sat on the steps and rubbed the ears of the shaggy little mutt Lobo, who seemed to revel in the attention.

As Coleman took out a tobacco pouch and started packing his pipe, Matt asked, “Is that Cimarron Kane hombre liable to make any trouble because you arrested his cousins?”

Coleman scratched a match into life on the sole of his boot and held the flame to the pipe’s bowl. When he had puffed on it until the tobacco was burning good, he shook the match out and said, “Probably not. Like I said, there are no reward dodgers out on Kane here in Kansas, and I reckon he’d like to keep it that way. He’s always on his best behavior when he’s in town, and he tries to keep the rest of the clan in line, too.” The lawman smoked for a moment, then added, “I don’t know what he’ll do, though, if he thinks those fellas are going to prison. He might not stand for that.”

Matt and Sam exchanged a glance in the light that spilled onto the porch through the open door. Sam had already started making noises about hanging around Cottonwood for a while to give Marshal Coleman a hand. There might be even more reason to do that if Coleman found himself facing potential gun trouble from a hardcase like this Cimarron Kane.

They already planned to stay here for a few days, though, to rest their horses, so maybe by the time that interval had passed, they would know more about whether or not Kane represented a real threat.

“Don’t you boys worry about any of that,” Coleman went on. “I’ve been the law here for five years, and I packed a badge for more’n twenty years in other places before that. So I know how to handle trouble.”

“I’m sure you do, Marshal,” Sam said. “If you need any help while we’re here, though, don’t hesitate to call on us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Coleman promised.

They chatted about more pleasant subjects for a while. Like most Westerners, Coleman obviously didn’t believe in prying into a man’s past, so he didn’t ask Matt and Sam to tell him about themselves. They volunteered some information anyway, talking about how they had grown up as friends in Montana and telling the marshal about some of the adventures they’d had since going on the drift several years earlier.

When Hannah joined them on the porch a little later, Matt hopped up to give her his chair. She smiled and sat down, then asked, “Has Dad been talking your ears off?”

“Not at all,” Sam said. “In fact, I think Matt and I have been doing most of the talking.”

“Well, I’m sorry I missed that. Maybe you can join us again some other time while you’re in town.”

Sam nodded. “I’d like that. I mean, we’d like that. Wouldn’t we, Matt?”

“Do you know how to make any other kind of pie?” Matt asked.

Hannah laughed. “Oh, yes, all kinds. I bake cakes sometimes, too.”

“Then we’ll come back any time you want,” Matt said.

After they had visited a while longer, Matt practically had to drag Sam away from the house. They said their good nights, Hannah brought them their hats, they said good night again, rubbed Lobo’s ears, and finally the blood brothers were strolling back toward Main Street.

“Those are mighty nice people,” Sam said. “Sitting down with them was almost like being home again.”

“Salt of the earth,” Matt agreed. “I don’t much like the sound of that Cimarron Kane fella, either.”

“So you think we should stay and lend Marshal Coleman a hand, too?”

“We’ll see how the next few days play out,” Matt said. “He may be a good lawman, but I don’t think he’d be any match for a real gun-wolf.”

“That’s what I thought,” Sam said.

“I also think we should mosey on down to that old abandoned livery barn Ike Loomis told us about and see what’s going on there,” Matt added.

Sam frowned. “You mean that secret saloon?”

“Yeah.”

“We’d be breaking the law.”

“A damn crazy law that nobody except the governor and those hired-gun marshals of his believes in.”

“Well…” Sam hesitated. “I don’t suppose it would hurt anything to go have a look.”

A grin spread across Matt’s face. “That’s what I was hopin’ you’d say.”

When they reached Main Street, they turned left instead of right and headed for the western end of town. Matt vaguely recalled seeing the big, apparently abandoned barn when they rode in, but he hadn’t really paid any attention to it.

Cottonwood was quiet and peaceful, and from the looks of it a lot of its citizens had already turned in for the night, although lights still burned at the hotel, of course, and several of the other businesses that stayed open late, including Pete Hilliard’s store. The old livery barn was dark as Matt and Sam approached it, though, but Matt noticed one thing that was odd.

He nudged Sam in the side with an elbow and said quietly, “Lots of horses tied up at this end of town. Where are all the hombres who rode in on them?”

“Yeah, I saw that, too,” Sam said. “I reckon you know the answer as well as I do.”

They walked around the barn and found a narrow door at the back. No light came through the cracks around it, and they couldn’t hear any noises coming from inside the structure.

“You think maybe that old liveryman was just joshin’ us?” Matt asked with a frown.

“I don’t know. You sure can’t tell from out here that there’s anybody inside.”

Matt lifted a hand. “Let’s find out.” He rapped sharply on the rear door.

For a long moment, there was no response. Then the blood brothers heard somebody fumbling with a latch inside the door. The panel swung back a couple of inches.

“Yeah?” a man’s gruff voice asked.

“Ike Loomis from the livery stable at the other end of town told us we could get a drink here,” Matt said bluntly.

“He did, did he?” The door swung open farther. “Well, why didn’t you say so? Come on in!”

Darkness loomed inside the barn. Matt and Sam glanced at each other, then warily stepped forward into the shadows. If this was some sort of trick, whoever was trying to pull it was going to be mighty sorry.

The door whispered shut behind them. Then another door opened, and as light flooded in, Matt and Sam realized that they had been admitted to some sort of small anteroom. When both doors were closed at the same time, they wouldn’t let any light out. The little chamber probably hadn’t been in the barn when it was being used as a livery stable. It must have been added on later.

As Matt and Sam walked into the barn, they looked around in surprise. Even though Ike Loomis had told them they could get a drink here, they hadn’t really expected to find a full-fledged saloon in operation, complete with a hardwood bar with a brass foot rail, tables and chairs, including a poker table, and shelves full of liquor bottles behind the bar. There was even a tasteful painting of a nude hung on the wall, much like the one in the hotel’s card room, only the gal in this one had blond hair and if anything was even more lushly built than the other. More than a dozen men stood at the bar, drinking, and several of the tables were occupied, as well.

The only real differences between this establishment and a real saloon were that the floor was dirt here, instead of wood, there were big sections of black cloth hung up over the front doors like curtains to prevent any light from seeping around them, there was no piano player or music of any sort, and the customers were talking quietly, without any loud, raucous conversation or laughter.

The man who had let them in was huge, with brawny arms, massive shoulders, a pugnacious jaw, and a red handlebar mustache to go with a shock of rusty hair. He told Matt and Sam, “You fellas go on in and have a good time. Just be quiet about it. We can’t afford to have any ruckuses in here. My pa and Marshal Coleman are old friends, and it’d be mighty awkward if the marshal had to arrest Pa and me for runnin’ an illegal saloon.”

“Ike Loomis is your father?” Matt asked.

The big young man nodded. “Yep. My name’s Mike. Red Mike, they sometimes call me, on account of my hair. I take care of this place for Pa.”

“Well, we won’t cause any trouble,” Sam assured him. “My friend here just wants to get a drink.”

“What about you?” Mike Loomis asked.

“I don’t use the stuff that much.”

“Good. You look like a half-breed to me, and Injuns don’t handle booze too well.”

Sam stiffened in anger, but Matt put a hand on his arm and said, “Come on, Sam.”

“Wait a minute,” Mike Loomis said. “I recognize you fellas now. You’re the hombres who helped Marshal Coleman arrest those troublemakers who attacked old Pete Hilliard.” He held a hand out to Sam. “I’m sorry about what I just said, mister. I didn’t mean no offense.”

Sam wasn’t sure he wanted to be that quick to accept the man’s apology, but his natural grace came to the fore and he gripped Mike Loomis’s hand. “That’s fine.”

“Enjoy yourselves, and if there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know.”

The blood brothers went over to the bar, where Matt ordered a shot of whiskey and a beer from the apron-clad bartender. He threw back the whiskey the man placed in front of him and licked his lips appreciatively.

“That’s good stuff.”

“It ought to be,” the man said. “The boss pays plenty for it. It’s the best that’s brewed in these parts.”

“That whiskey’s made around here, not brought in from some other state?” Sam asked.

“Shoot, the boss couldn’t afford to do that, and anyway, those special marshals would make it too hard to transport that far without gettin’ caught. It’s hard enough just gettin’ the home-brewed stuff into town without anybody findin’ out about it.”

Matt pushed the empty glass across the hardwood. “I’ll have another. Who brews those fine corn squeezin’s, anyway?”

The bartender tipped the unlabeled bottle in his hand and splashed more whiskey into Matt’s glass. Then, as he corked the bottle, he looked over Matt’s shoulder and nodded.

“There she is right now. That girl.”

Chapter 9

“Girl?” Matt and Sam exclaimed at the same time, both of them surprised by the bartender’s statement. They turned to look in the direction he had indicated.

The person he was talking about was a girl, all right. Or a young woman, rather. There was no doubt about that, despite the fact that she wore boots, jeans, and a man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up over tanned, smoothly rounded forearms. Her hat hung behind her head by its chin strap, allowing thick masses of curly brown hair to fall free around her shoulders. She moved with an easy grace across the room, nodding and speaking to several of the men she passed. Then she said something to Red Mike Loomis and went out through the rear door.

Matt let out a low whistle of surprise and admiration, then turned to the bartender and said, “She’s a moonshiner?”

“Well, her family is,” the man replied. “I don’t know for sure who does what. I just sell the stuff she brings into town for us. There’s a bunch of those Harlows. The pa, the girl, and four or five brothers.”

“I notice that she packs iron,” Sam commented.

“Yeah,” the bartender said. “I reckon that’s in case she runs into trouble while she’s making her deliveries.”

Matt had seen the ivory-handled revolver holstered on the young woman’s trim hip, but the fact that it was there hadn’t really penetrated his brain until now. He had been too taken in by her beauty. He turned to the bartender and repeated, “Deliveries?”

The drink juggler nodded. “Yeah, from what I hear, the Harlow family supplies most of the county with booze. Them who want it have to pay a pretty price these days, too, what with those special marshals roaming around and all.”

Matt supposed that was true. And it meant that the young woman and her family would be in danger from the governor’s gun-toting special agents. He recalled the bomb blast he and Sam had witnessed earlier that day, and a little shiver went through him at the thought of the young woman getting caught in an explosion like that. Somebody as pretty as she was shouldn’t be running such risks, he thought.

“Hello, Matt.”

The man’s voice came from behind Matt. He turned and saw Linus Grady, the gambler who’d killed Seward Stone in the hotel. Grady smiled and went on. “I see you found the other place where folks can play a hand of poker in Cottonwood.”

“Yeah, we heard about it from Ike Loomis,” Matt replied. He inclined his head toward his blood brother. “This is Sam Two Wolves, by the way. I don’t recall if you fellas were ever introduced this afternoon or not.”

Grady nodded. “I’m pleased to meet you, Sam. Care to sit in on a game?”

“Thanks, but I don’t play poker that often,” Sam said. “That’s Matt’s game.”

Grady turned back to Matt and asked, “How about it? I don’t think we’ll have the same problems here that we did earlier. Red Mike makes sure everyone stays in line.”

Matt thought it over for a second, then shook his head. “No, thanks. It’s been a long day, and I’m a mite tired. Reckon we’ll go back to the hotel and turn in.”

“Maybe another time,” Grady said with a nod. He turned and strolled toward one of the felt-covered tables, where a game was starting.

“Seems like a nice fella,” Sam commented.

“Yeah, but you don’t want to back him into a corner,” Matt said, thinking about how Grady had reacted with deadly, lightning-quick reflexes when Stone attacked him.

“Do you really intend to call it a night?”

Matt picked up his mug of beer and took a long swallow. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Well, I suppose so.” Sam smiled and patted his stomach. “And still full from that wonderful supper Miss Hannah prepared.”

“Still moonin’ over her, that’s what you mean,” Matt said with a grin. He drank down the rest of the beer, tossed a coin on the bar, and nodded. “Let’s go.”

Mike Loomis stood beside the door to the anteroom, arms crossed over his chest. He nodded to Matt and Sam as they approached and asked, “Takin’ your leave, gents?”

“For now,” Matt said. “We’ll probably be back while we’re still in town.”

“You’re welcome anytime.” Loomis opened the door. “Just go on out once this door is closed. Be sure to shut the outside door behind you. The latch will lock when you do.”

They did as instructed and a moment later stepped out into the warm night. Matt couldn’t get the young woman they had seen in the saloon out of his mind as they walked back up the street toward the hotel.

Maybe because he was thinking of her, he noticed her more readily when she drove past in a buckboard, handling the reins attached to the four-horse hitch with practiced ease. Matt stopped short on the boardwalk and turned to look after the vehicle.

“What is it?” Sam asked as he came to a stop, too.

Matt nodded toward the buckboard as it rolled along the street toward the west end of town. “That Harlow girl who was down at the saloon,” he said. “That was her on the buckboard that just passed us.”

“Are you sure? I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, I guess she was going home. She must have finished her business here in town.”

Matt frowned. “A girl like that doesn’t have any business driving around by herself in the middle of the night.”

“She looked to me like she could take care of herself,” Sam said. “She was carrying a gun, after all.”

“How much good do you reckon that gun would do her if she ran into Bickford and Porter and that gang of bloodthirsty special marshals?”

“The buckboard was empty. What could they do to her?”

“If they suspect her and her family of making moonshine, who knows what they might do?” Matt shook his head grimly. “You saw how quick they were to blow up that shack.”

“They’re not going to throw a bomb at a girl driving an empty buckboard, no matter what they might suspect her of,” Sam said tolerantly.

“Maybe not, but something else bad could happen,” Matt insisted, “especially if she drew that gun and started shooting at them. You think that bunch would put up with that?”

Sam frowned and rubbed at his chin in thought. “Probably not,” he admitted. “What have you got in mind, Matt?”

“I think we should follow her,” Matt replied without hesitation. “Just to make sure she gets home safely, you understand.”

“We don’t know where she lives, and she’s already driven out of town. By the time we could get our horses ready to ride, she’d have a good lead on us.”

“Well, then, time’s a-wastin’, isn’t it? Come on.”

With that, Matt turned away from the hotel and strode determinedly toward the livery stable where they had left their mounts. Sam lingered on the boardwalk just for a second, staring after his blood brother. Then with a sigh and a shake of his head, he started after Matt.

The lamp in the livery stable office was turned low. Through the window they could see Ike Loomis bent over a ledger book. Matt rapped sharply on the glass. Loomis jumped a little, as if the noise startled him, then stood up and motioned toward the big front doors. When he had opened one of them slightly, he peered out owlishly and asked, “What do you boys want? It’s after dark.”

“We need our horses,” Matt said.

Loomis opened the door wider. “All right, come in, come in. If there’s one thing a liveryman gets used to, it’s folks bringin’ their animals in or takin’ ’em out at all hours of the day or night.”

“We’re sorry to bother you,” Sam said as he and Matt entered the stable.

“What’re you fellas up to, not that it’s any o’ my business?”

“Can you tell us how to find the Harlow place?” Matt asked.

Loomis blinked in surprise. “Thurman Harlow’s farm? What do you want out there?” The man’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You’ve heard about that booze he makes, haven’t you? If you want a taste of it, you can go right down to my saloon—”

“That’s where we just were,” Matt said. “And that home brew is mighty fine. That’s not what we’re after, though.” Matt realized he had to lay his cards on the table, or Loomis might refuse to cooperate with them. “We just saw Miss Harlow drive out of town, and we’re a mite worried about her. We’d like to make sure she gets home all right without running into any trouble.”

“What Matt means is that he’s worried,” Sam said, “but I’m willing to go along with him.”

Loomis gave a bark of laughter. “If it’s Frankie Harlow you’re worryin’ about, there ain’t no reason.”

“No, it was the Harlow girl,” Matt said.

“That’s who I’m talkin’ about. Frankie Harlow. That’s what she goes by. I don’t know what her real handle is. But she can shoot the wings off’n a gnat at a hundred yards, and she’s got the disposition of a surly ol’ badger. Ever’body around these parts knows not to take no liberties with her. They’d be riskin’ gettin’ a hole in their hide if they did.”

“Maybe so,” Matt said. “But what about those special marshals the governor sent out?”

Loomis frowned, scratched at his beard, and said, “You know, I never thought about that.”

“Those fellas are dangerous, especially for anybody who’s got anything to do with the whiskey trade. Now, will you tell us where to find the Harlow place?”

Loomis nodded. “Sure. I don’t reckon it’d hurt anything to make sure Frankie gets home all right. I’d plumb hate to see anything happen to that gal.”

While Matt and Sam were putting their saddles on their horses, Loomis explained that the Harlow farm was about five miles west of town, then a mile south of the main trail.

“It was just a hardscrabble homestead at first, but when Thurman and his boys couldn’t make a go of it, they started brewin’ whiskey. Their corn crop might not’ve been good enough to support ’em, but it was fine for makin’ corn squeezin’s.”

As Matt drew his cinches tight, he said, “I think if we hurry, we can catch up to Frankie before she gets to the turnoff. We can follow her and make sure she gets home all right.”

“Best do your followin’ at a distance,” Loomis advised. “If’n you come up on her too suddenlike and spook her, she’s liable to start shootin’.”

“We’ll be careful,” Sam promised. He still thought Matt was probably worrying a little too much about Frankie Harlow, but he was willing to go along with this idea if it made his blood brother happy.

A few minutes later, they swung up into their saddles as Loomis opened one of the doors enough for them to ride out. “If the light in the office is out when you get back, I’ve turned in. I’ll leave the doors unlocked, though, so you can bring your hosses in. You boys seem trustworthy to me.”

“Thanks, Mr. Loomis,” Matt told him.

“You might be doin’ me a favor. I don’t want anything happenin’ to any of the Harlows. Without them, I might not be able to keep my saloon open. Folks come from miles around for that Who-hit-John they cook up.”

The blood brothers lifted their hands in farewell and then rode out, heading west from Cottonwood.

Chapter 10

As the settlement fell behind them, Sam said, “You’re going to feel a mite foolish if that girl gets home safely and we’ve wasted our time.”

“Not a bit,” Matt insisted. “I’ll be plumb satisfied if she does. You don’t think I go around hopin’ to run into trouble, do you?”

Sam grunted but didn’t make any other reply.

They rode at a fast pace, the miles falling behind them as they followed the main trail by moonlight. Matt kept his eyes peeled for any sign of the buckboard up ahead, but he couldn’t see well enough in the darkness to spot it.

They might be practically on top of the vehicle by the time they saw it, Matt knew, and that could cause Frankie Harlow to believe she was being attacked, as Ike Loomis had cautioned them. Matt couldn’t think of any way to solve that problem, though. If Frankie started shooting at them, they would have to yell for her to hold her fire and assure her that they meant no harm.

As it turned out, the blood brothers didn’t have to worry about that happening, though, because about half an hour after they left Cottonwood, Matt suddenly brought his horse to a halt and asked, “Do you hear that?”

A flurry of popping sounds drifted through the night air.

“Yeah, I hear it,” Sam replied. “That’s gunfire, coming from somewhere up ahead.”

“Damn it, I knew that gal was gonna run into trouble! I just knew it!” Matt jabbed his boot heels into his horse’s flanks and sent the animal leaping ahead at a gallop. “Come on!”

They rode hard toward the source of the gunshots. To Matt’s way of thinking, there was only one explanation that made any sense: Frankie Harlow had run into the group of special marshals, and they had opened fire on her, probably when they called on her to halt and she kept going.

It wasn’t a running fight, though, Matt knew, because he and Sam were drawing closer to the shots. Frankie must have forted up somewhere and tried to hold off the marshals. Fear gnawed at Matt’s vitals. Would Bickford and Porter and their hired guns toss a bomb at her, not knowing that she was a woman?

And even if they did know, would it make any difference to them?

Matt and Sam swept around a bend in the trail and suddenly spotted orange muzzle flashes spouting in the shadows up ahead to their right. There was enough silvery moonlight to reveal that the buggy was lying on its side in the road about a hundred yards ahead of them. The horses weren’t hitched to the vehicle anymore and weren’t even in sight. The team must have broken loose when the shooting started and the buckboard overturned, Matt thought. That would have occurred as Frankie was trying to flee from the bushwhackers.

Because an ambush was exactly what it had been, Matt saw in that fleeting second. Half a dozen riflemen were firing down at the buckboard from the cover of a tree-topped ridge to the north. They must have been hidden there, waiting for Frankie to come along. Then they had opened fire on her as she drove the buckboard past them…the dirty bastards.

The only good thing he could see was that Frankie was still alive. Muzzle flashes came from behind the buckboard as she returned the bushwhackers’ fire. She might be hurt, but she was still capable of putting up a fight. From the sound of the sharp cracks, she’d had a rifle with her in the vehicle.

Matt pulled his Winchester from its saddle sheath and called to Sam, “We’ll split up and come at that ridge from different directions!”

“Right!” Sam called back, indicating that he understood. The blood brothers had ridden together for so long and found themselves in so many desperate battles that it didn’t take much for each of them to know what the other was thinking.

They veered their horses apart and headed for the ridge, Matt going to the left and Sam to the right. They guided their horses with their knees and opened fire on the bushwhackers as they charged.

The gunmen must have spotted their muzzle flashes right away and realized that this was a new threat. Several of them switched their attention to Matt and Sam. At least that drew some of the fire away from Frankie Harlow, Matt thought as a slug whipped past his head, close enough for him to hear it. He sprayed the trees along the ridgetop with bullets as fast as he would work the rifle’s lever, and off to his right, Sam was doing the same thing.

Matt lowered the Winchester, snatched the reins out of his mouth where he had put them, and hauled his mount to the right so that he wouldn’t come between Frankie and the bushwhackers and ride right into her line of fire. Sam changed his angle of attack, too, heading farther north so that he could circle the eastern end of the ridge and get behind the hidden gunmen. If he could pull that off, they would have the bushwhackers in a cross fire.

The men on the ridge must have figured that out, too, because the muzzle flashes from up there abruptly ceased. They didn’t want to be trapped. Matt hauled his horse to a stop and listened, and a moment later he heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats from the far side of the ridge. The bushwhackers were getting out of there while they still had a chance to do so. If they had waited, they might have been pinned down. That would have been a neat job of turning the tables on them, despite the odds, Matt thought.

Instead, the varmints were taking off for the tall and uncut, and Sam wouldn’t be in position yet to stop them.

All the shooting had stopped now. Frankie must have realized that the bushwhackers had given up, too. Matt swung his mount around and rode slowly toward the wrecked buckboard. He hoped that Frankie would have seen how he and Sam threw themselves into the battle on her side and would know that they were friends.

She might suspect that, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Another shot suddenly blasted from behind the buckboard. The slug kicked up dirt ten yards in front of Matt’s horse.

“Don’t come any closer!” a woman’s voice called. “I’ve got a bead on you, mister, and I’ll drill you if you do!”

Matt reined in and said, “Hold your fire. I’m on your side, Miss Harlow.”

There was a moment of silence, then she said, “You know who I am?”

“Frankie Harlow, right? We haven’t been introduced, but my friend and I heard about you back in Cottonwood. My name’s Matt Bodine.”

“Did you just happen to come along here when that bunch opened up on me, Matt Bodine?” Frankie’s voice held a definite edge of suspicion.

Better to be truthful with her, Matt decided. “No, Sam and I were following you. That’s Sam Two Wolves, by the way. Reckon he’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Following me?” Frankie repeated. “What for?”

“We wanted to make sure you got home safe.”

Matt heard a snort of disdain from behind the buckboard. “Likely story. That’s why strange men always follow a gal at night, because they’re so concerned about her safety.”

“It’s true,” Matt insisted. “You see, we know what you had on that buckboard earlier.”

Again, suspicion was sharp in Frankie’s voice as she declared, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were delivering some of the moonshine that you and your family brew to Ike Loomis’s hidden saloon in that old abandoned barn.” A little impatience crept into Matt’s voice as he added, “Does that make it clear enough?”

Before Frankie could reply, Matt heard a horse approaching. The young woman did, too, because she called, “Who’s that?”

“Sam Two Wolves, miss,” Sam replied. “A friend, so please don’t shoot me.”

“Over here, Sam,” Matt called. A moment later, his blood brother rode up.

“All right, you two, stay there where I can see you,” Frankie warned. “I’ll blow you out of your saddles if I have to. I can do it, too.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second, Miss Harlow,” Matt said. He stayed where he was, not making any threatening movements, and so did Sam.

Frankie stepped out from behind the buckboard and leveled a rifle at them. Matt could see her slim figure fairly well in the moonlight, which meant she could see them, too. Judging by the easy, graceful way she moved, she hadn’t been wounded in the attack or injured in the wreck.

“Get down off those horses,” she ordered.

Matt and Sam did as she said, swinging down from their saddles and standing beside the horses, holding the reins. “Did you get a look at that bunch?” Matt asked.

“No such luck,” Sam replied. “They had already taken off by the time I could get around the end of the ridge. I didn’t even waste any lead hurrying them on their way.”

Frankie said, “You two could’ve been killed, you know.”

“So could you,” Matt said. “Looks like you might’ve come close when that buckboard turned over.”

“Did the team break loose and run away?” Sam asked.

“That’s right. Those horses probably didn’t go far, though. I can find them and ride one of them back to my pa’s place.”

“We’d be glad to give you a hand,” Matt offered. “If the buckboard doesn’t have a cracked axle or a busted wheel, we can set it upright, find the horses, and hitch them up again.”

“You’d go to that much trouble for me?”

“Sure,” Matt answered promptly. “It wouldn’t be that much trouble. Ain’t that right, Sam?”

Sam’s innate chivalry wouldn’t let him disagree. “We’d be glad to do that, Miss Harlow.”

She finally lowered the rifle slightly and said, “You two sound like you mean it.”

“We do,” Matt assured her. “Just give us a chance to show you.”

Frankie hesitated a few seconds longer, then lowered the rifle the rest of the way. “All right,” she said. “I’m much obliged for the help.”

She stepped back as Matt and Sam led their mounts forward. Sam handed his reins to Matt, then went to check over the buckboard as best he could in the darkness. After he’d inspected the vehicle for a few minutes, he said, “It seems sound enough. Let’s tie our ropes to it and pull it back onto its wheels.”

This wasn’t the first time the blood brothers had righted an overturned wagon. They knew what they were doing, and within a few minutes they had tied their ropes to the buckboard, made the other ends fast to their saddles, and had the horses backing away to pull the ropes taut. Matt and Sam went around to the other side of the buckboard and bent to get hold of it, then called out to their horses to back some more. With a creaking of ropes and grunts of effort from the two young men, the buckboard lifted and fell over onto its iron wheels, upright once more. Sam started checking the axles and wheels again to make sure their salvage efforts hadn’t done any damage.

Matt said, “I’ll go find those horses that ran off.”

“You’d better take me with you,” Frankie said. “They know me, and they’ll be less likely to bolt if they hear a familiar voice.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Matt mounted, then held a hand down to her, leaving the stirrup on that side empty so she could use it to help her step up. Frankie hesitated, but only for a second. Then she clasped Matt’s wrist and let him help her onto the horse’s back. She sat behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist to hang on.

“Which way did they go?” he asked.

“They were still headed west, the last I saw of them.”

“Then that’s the way we’ll go,” Matt said as he heeled his horse into motion.

Chapter 11

As they rode, Matt was all too aware of how Frankie’s firm, apple-sized breasts pressed into his back. The warmth of her breath against his neck and the strength of her supple arms around his waist made tingles of delight go through him. Despite her name and her mannish clothes, she was all woman—and having her so close like this was causing a definite reaction in him.

To make some conversation, he said, “Frankie’s sort of an unusual name for a gal, isn’t it?”

“Never you mind about my name,” she said. “Just find those horses. My pa and my brothers are probably starting to get worried about me.”

“Sure. Four horses, right?”

“That’s right.” She took one arm from around his waist and used that hand to point. “I think that’s them over there, isn’t it?”

Matt saw the dark shapes grazing on the grass where Frankie was pointing and said, “Yeah, I reckon so.” He turned his mount in that direction.

As they came closer, Frankie said quietly in his ear, “Stop here and let me off. I’ll go round them up.”

“I could probably lasso one of them for you,” Matt offered.

Frankie gave a little snort. “Spook them and run them all off again, that’s what you’d be liable to do. Just stop, like I told you.”

Matt brought his mount to a halt, biting back a comment as he did so about how bossy she was. Bossy she might be, but that didn’t make her any less lovely.

Frankie slid down from the horse’s back with an agile grace and ran lightly toward the runaway team. They were still harnessed together, so they couldn’t move that well. Matt heard her call out softly to them as she approached. The horses danced around skittishly for a second and let out a few nervous nickers, but then they settled down and allowed her to come up to them. She got a firm grip on the harness of one of the leaders. When he responded, so did the others. They followed docilely as she led them back to Matt.

“Here,” she said as she handed him the trailing reins. “Can you hang on to them?”

“Of course I can.”

“Move your foot out of the stirrup so I can get back up there.”

Matt gritted his teeth a little as he moved his foot. She really liked to give orders.

Frankie climbed aboard the horse behind Matt and took the reins back from him. Then they started toward the spot where the buckboard had turned over.

When they got back to the vehicle, Sam reported, “I went over everything, and there’s no major damage to the undercarriage. Whoever built this buckboard did a good job of it.” He reached for the reins. “I’ll get the team hitched up.”

Frankie slid down from the horse’s back. “I’ll do it,” she said. “They’re used to me.”

Sam looked at Matt, who gave a little shrug in answer to the unasked question of who had put the proverbial burr under Frankie’s proverbial saddle.

Frankie was as good as her word. She hitched the team to the wagon in a matter of minutes and had the buckboard ready to roll again.

“Thanks for your help,” she said as she settled herself on the seat, although to Matt’s ears it sounded like she had to drag the expression of gratitude out of her. “I’ll be fine now. You two can go on about your business.”

“Forget it,” Matt said. “Tonight our business is seeing to it that you get home safely. We’re comin’ with you, Miss Harlow, in case those blasted special marshals decide to jump you again.”

“I told you—” she began angrily, then stopped short. “What did you say?”

“That we’re comin’ with you in case those special marshals—”

“Hold it right there. Is that who you think bushwhacked me tonight?”

“Well, who else could it have been?” Matt asked. “We ran into a bunch of ’em earlier in the day, and attack-in’ a young woman seems like just the sort of lowdown, no-good thing those skunks would pull. Why, they blew up a whole cabin with a bomb just because some fellas were inside it who’d been makin’ whiskey!”

Matt heard the sharp intake of breath between Frankie’s lips, and an awful possibility occurred to him. Maybe that cabin had belonged to her family.

“Where was this?” she asked in a voice pulled taut with strain.

“A ways further west from here,” Sam replied. “Probably another three or four miles.”

A held breath came out with a sigh from Frankie’s mouth. “That would be the Bourland place. They never brewed much ’shine, just enough for themselves and a few friends of theirs. I thought for a second…Well, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“You thought it was your family’s place that got blown up,” Matt said. “Nobody could blame you for bein’ worried about that.”

“Were any of the Bourlands hurt? Or…killed?”

Sam said, “None of them appeared to be hurt badly. They got out of the cabin in time, although just barely. They were all arrested, though.” He looked over at Matt. “Come to think of it, I’m surprised the marshals didn’t bring their prisoners into Cottonwood so they could be locked up in the local jail for the time being.”

Frankie shook her head. “Those regulators who call themselves special marshals don’t need to use jails. They’ve got jail wagons of their own that they cram their prisoners into and tote them around. They take them back to Wichita when they get a full load.”

Matt heard the scorn and hatred in Frankie’s voice when she referred to the special marshals as “regulators.” Such men, who often were hired to support one side or the other in a range war, were regarded as no better than hired killers. Having met Bickford and Porter that afternoon and seen their handiwork, Matt thought they fit that description pretty well.

“You’re wrong about them, though,” Frankie went on. “They’re not the ones who bushwhacked me.”

“Who else would have done a thing like that?” Sam asked.

“The Kanes.”

Her voice was cold and flinty with hatred as she answered.

Matt said, “You mean Cimarron Kane and his bunch?”

“That’s right.” Suspicion suddenly entered Frankie’s tone again as she asked, “How do you know Cimarron Kane?”

“We don’t,” Sam said. “His name was only vaguely familiar to us, until Marshal Coleman in Cottonwood told us about him tonight.”

“Oh. You’re friends of the marshal, are you?”

“I reckon you could say that,” Matt replied. “We helped him round up and arrest three of Kane’s cousins who showed up in Cottonwood today and started causin’ trouble.”

“That’s right!” Frankie said. “I heard something about that in Loomis’s place. That was you two?”

Matt nodded. “Yep.”

Sam asked, “Why would Cimarron Kane and his family attack you?”

“Because they want to take over the whiskey business in these parts. They’ve got a good-sized still out there on that spread they call a ranch. They’d like nothing better than to wipe out all the Harlows so they wouldn’t have any competition.” Frankie laughed humorlessly. “They’ll have to kill us all, because they sure as hell can’t make ’shine as good as we can.”

“How do you know it was them and not the marshals who were lying in wait on that ridge?”

“Because I heard Cimarron himself yelling orders at the others just as the shooting started,” Frankie replied.

“We should go back into Cottonwood so you can report that to Marshal Coleman,” Sam suggested.

Frankie laughed again, but this time there was a trace of genuine amusement in the sound.

“What’s funny about that?” Sam asked with a frown.

“Coleman’s the town marshal. He’s got no jurisdiction out here. What am I gonna do? Go to the county sheriff or, better yet, those special marshals and tell them that I got ambushed while I was on my way home after delivering a load of illegal whiskey to Ike Loomis’s place?”

“You don’t have to tell them what you were doin’,” Matt pointed out, “just that you were attacked.”

Frankie shook her head. “I’m not going to do anything to draw the law’s attention to my family, Bodine. That would be a mighty stupid thing to do.”

She was probably right about that, considering her family’s line of work, Matt thought.

“I don’t like the idea of Kane and his bunch gettin’ away with such a thing,” he said.

“We’ll deal with the Kanes in our own way,” Frankie said in a flat, hard tone. “That’s a promise. In the meantime, the two of you can head back to town. They won’t bother me again tonight.”

Matt shook his head. “You can’t be sure of that. We’re comin’ with you.”

“I told you—” Frankie stopped and heaved a sigh. “You’re pretty stubborn, aren’t you, Bodine?”

Matt grinned at her. “I’ve been accused of it,” he admitted.

“Actually, he’s been accused of a lot worse,” Sam added.

“What about you, Two Wolves?” Frankie asked. “Do you have any sense?”

“I like to think so. But in this case, I happen to believe that Matt’s right. There’s no guarantee that Cimarron Kane and his relatives won’t double back and try to ambush you again.”

“All right. I’m tired of arguing with the two of you.” Frankie lifted the reins and slapped them against the backs of the team. “Do what you want to,” she went on as the buckboard started rolling. “Whatever happens, it’s your own damned fault.”

“That sounds a little worrisome,” Sam commented as he and Matt rode side by side behind the buckboard.

“Aw, she’s just blowin’ off steam,” Matt said. “You can’t blame her, after gettin’ ambushed like that. If we hadn’t come along, there’s no tellin’ what might’ve happened, and I’ll bet she knows it.”

They followed the buckboard as Frankie drove another quarter of a mile or so along the main road, then turned south on a smaller trail. It led through a range of low, rolling hills, then cut through a series of rocky ridges that thrust up from the prairie almost like waves from the sea. The trail ran between cut-banks that rose just above the height of a man’s head on horseback.

Matt and Sam were following Frankie’s wagon through one of those cuts when dark shapes suddenly sailed out from the banks on both sides with no warning. The blood brothers saw the figures leaping toward them but didn’t have time to avoid them. The attackers slammed into Matt and Sam and knocked them out of their saddles, sending them crashing to the hard ground.

Chapter 12

The impact knocked the breath out of both Matt and Sam, momentarily stunning them. Matt blinked his eyes and gasped for breath. He had twisted as he fell, so that he landed on his back, and he could see the dark figure looming above him and raising a club of some sort.

The realization that the varmint intended to bludgeon his brains out galvanized Matt’s muscles. His iron will allowed him to shake off the effects of the fall. He heaved up from the ground and threw his right fist at his attacker. At the same time, his left hand shot up and grabbed the man’s wrist as the killing blow started to fall.

Because of his position, Matt’s blow didn’t have much power behind it, but it landed cleanly on the man’s jaw. That was enough to make the man lean to the side, and from there, Matt was able to buck him off.

A few yards away, Sam had his hands full, too. He recovered his wits and jerked his head aside just before a club came smashing down on it. His attacker was bending down close enough so that Sam was able to reach up and lock his hands around the man’s neck. The two of them went rolling across the ground, grappling desperately.

Matt leaped after the man who had knocked him off his horse. He drove a knee into the man’s side, eliciting a gasp of pain. Matt clubbed his hands together and swung them in a powerful blow that stretched his opponent out on the ground.

Sam had the upper hand by now, too. The man he was fighting was small and wiry, but his strength was no match for Sam’s. Keeping a steady pressure on the man’s neck, Sam continued choking him. He intended to ease off as soon as the man passed out from lack of air and went limp.

Before that could happen, a shot blasted. Sam heard the bullet whine over his head.

“Stop it!” Frankie Harlow yelled. “You’re killing him! Let him go!”

Matt’s attacker seemed to be out cold. He saw Frankie fire the warning shot over Sam’s head and surged up from the ground, worried that she might fire again and not miss that time. She was standing beside the buckboard holding the ivory-handled revolver as Matt lunged at her and grabbed her from behind. He wrapped his left arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet as he reached around her with his right and snagged her wrist. He jerked her arm up. The gun went off again, but this time the bullet was directed harmlessly into the sky.

“You’re the one who’d better stop it,” Matt told her as she writhed and struggled in his grip. “Somebody’s gonna get hurt if you’re not careful!”

“Damn right,” a new voice threatened, “and it’s gonna be you if you don’t let go o’ my little girl!”

Sam had climbed to his feet, but he froze, as did Matt, as three shadowy figures pointing rifles closed in around them.

“Take it easy, mister,” Matt said to the man who had spoken. “You can’t shoot me without runnin’ the risk of hittin’ Frankie, too.”

“No, but my boys can sure ventilate that friend o’ yours,” the man replied. “And don’t count on me not bein’ able to blow your brains out. I growed up knockin’ squirrels outta trees with an old flintlock, back in the Smoky Mountains. My aim’s as good as it ever was, even at night like this.”

Matt didn’t really believe that, but he didn’t see any point in pressing the issue, especially since he had figured out by now that this was all just a misunderstanding. He said, “Put your gun down, Mr. Harlow. We’re friends.”

The man gave a little grunt of surprise. “How do you know who I am?”

“Who else could you be? You called Frankie here your little girl.”

“You know Frankie?”

Sam said, “Why do you think we were riding with her?”

“Didn’t know,” Thurman Harlow responded. “That’s what we was aimin’ to find out.”

Frankie had stopped struggling. She snapped at Matt, “You can let go of me now.”

“Not just yet,” Matt said. “Your pa and your brothers might decide to start shootin’.”

Besides, although it wasn’t very gentlemanly to admit it, he enjoyed having his arms around her.

“Nobody’s gonna do any more shooting,” Frankie said. “You hear that, Pa? Put your gun down. Alf, you and Quint lower yours, too.”

“You know these fellas, Frankie?” Thurman Harlow asked.

“Yeah. They gave me a hand earlier when Cimarron Kane and his bunch ambushed me on the road back from town.”

“Kane!” Harlow exclaimed bitterly. “That son of a bitch. Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Frankie replied. “Thanks in part to Bodine and Two Wolves here.”

Harlow lowered his rifle and motioned for his sons to do likewise. “Help your brothers,” he told them. “Get ’em on their feet and take ’em back to the house.”

“All right, Pa,” one of the younger men said.

Frankie turned her head toward Matt. “Are you convinced you can let me go now?”

“I’ll risk it,” he said. He released her.

She slipped out of his arms, whirled around suddenly, and jabbed the barrel of her gun under Matt’s chin. He stood absolutely still, knowing that it would take only the slightest pressure on the trigger for her to send a bullet into his brain.

“Don’t you ever lay hands on me again,” she said between clenched teeth, “unless I ask you to.”

She was a tall girl, and her face was only inches from his. He felt the warmth of her breath on his cheek. Maybe it was foolish under the circumstances, he thought, but he wanted to lean forward and kiss her. Instead, he said, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Wrong with me?” she repeated, clearly surprised by the question.

“All Sam and I have done tonight is try to help you, and not only do we get jumped by your brothers, you keep actin’ like you want to bite our heads off every time you turn around!”

She stared at him for a second, then sputtered in outrage, “You…you…”

“I’ve had enough of this.” Matt reached up, closed his hand around the gun she was digging into his neck, and wrenched it aside. Another twist pulled it out of her fingers. He turned and extended the gun toward Thurman Harlow, saying, “Here. Until you teach your daughter some manners, maybe she shouldn’t be packin’ iron.”

Harlow chuckled and said, “Your mistake, mister, is thinkin’ that I can teach that little wildcat much of anything.”

Frankie gasped, evidently as mad at her father now as she was at Matt for grabbing her.

“What we all need to do is sit down and talk,” Sam suggested, the voice of reason as usual. “We’re not looking for trouble, Mr. Harlow. We just wanted to make sure Miss Frankie got home safely after that fight with Cimarron Kane and his men.”

“His relatives, you mean,” Harlow said. “Everybody on the Kane spread is blood kin in one way or another, even if they ain’t all called Kane. Cimarron’s got a bunch of nephews and shirttail cousins, and they’re all a sorry lot.” Harlow tucked his rifle under his arm, another sign that the hostilities were over, at least for now. “Come on to the house and have a drink. If you boys helped out Frankie, then I owe you.”

Matt said, “If the drink you’re offerin’ is the same stuff you sell to Ike Loomis for his saloon, then we accept.”

Harlow chuckled again. “Like it, do you?”

“It’s prime drinkin’ whiskey,” Matt declared.

“Frankie, bring the buckboard on in,” Harlow ordered. “You fellas come with me.”

Frankie’s disgusted snort said that she didn’t like being given orders like that, but she didn’t argue. She climbed back onto the buckboard’s seat while Matt and Sam picked up their hats, took the reins of their horses, and led the animals as they followed Thurman Harlow. The four brothers had already disappeared through the cut.

The trail came out into the open beyond the ridges, and Matt and Sam saw the light from a cabin that backed up to the last ridge. It was a sprawling structure that had probably started out as a small soddy before being expanded with timbers and more blocks of sod. Several tin stovepipes stuck up through the sod roof. A barn and a corral sat beyond the cabin.

The door stood open, letting yellow lantern light spill out into the night. As Harlow led Matt and Sam toward it, he said, “You boys put your horses in the corral. You’re welcome to spend the night in the barn, if you’re of a mind to. It’s a mite late to be headin’ back to town tonight.”

The blood brothers had been planning to return to Cottonwood. They had rooms in the hotel, after all. But when Matt glanced over at Sam, he shrugged and said, “It’s up to you, Matt.”

“Well…it is pretty late,” Matt said. “We might just take you up on that, Mr. Harlow.”

“You’ll be welcome. Any friend o’ Frankie’s has got a place to stay with us.”

“You did see her shove a gun barrel in my throat, didn’t you?” Matt asked.

“Yeah, but she didn’t shoot you,” Harlow pointed out. “She can be a mite touchy, but I’d say she likes you.”

Matt just shook his head.

By the time he and Sam had led their mounts into the corral and unsaddled them, Frankie had driven the buckboard into the barn. Not surprisingly, she refused their offer to help her unhitch the team, saying curtly, “I can take care of it. Go on in the house.”

Matt shrugged and told Sam, “Let’s go.”

The door was still open. They walked in and found themselves in a large, surprisingly comfortably furnished room with a plank floor, rugs, several heavy chairs and a divan, and a polished hardwood dining table with a matching china cabinet sitting against one wall.

Harlow must have noticed them looking around. “Most of these things belonged to my folks back in the Smokies,” he explained. “When we come west, we brung ’em with us. I wanted to have a little touch o’ home wherever we wound up.”

“It’s a nice place,” Sam said.

The four Harlow brothers sat at the table. The ones who had tackled Matt and Sam looked up with surly expressions. It was clear they didn’t like the fact that the blood brothers had gotten the better of them. They didn’t make a move to get up and start the fight again, though.

“Why did your boys jump us like that?” Matt asked.

Harlow hung his rifle on a couple of hooks fastened to the wall. “Frankie was late gettin’ back from town,” he explained. “I don’t like her takin’ the deliveries in by herself, but she gets her back up when you tell you she can’t do somethin’.”

“We noticed,” Matt said dryly.

“Anyway, we was a mite worried about her,” Harlow went on, “and we thought we heard some shootin’ a while ago, but we couldn’t be sure. We went out to watch the trail, and when we seen Frankie comin’ with a couple of strangers followin’ her, we figured she might’ve been took prisoner. Dex and Farrell climbed up on those banks to take you fellas by surprise.”

“That’s exactly what they did,” Sam said. “I’m sorry if we hurt either of them.”

One of the brothers said in a hoarse voice, “Liked to choke me to death, that’s what you done, you big varmint.”

“Well, you were trying to club our brains out,” Sam reminded him.

Harlow said, “Yeah, and I didn’t tell you boys to do that. I never said nothin’ about killin’ nobody.”

All the men in the Harlow family were on the short side, with sandy hair and muddy brown eyes. They weren’t much for looks, Matt thought. Frankie must have inherited her beauty from her mother. Matt didn’t see any sign of an older woman in the cabin and wondered if Frankie’s mother had passed away.

Frankie came in from putting away the buckboard and the team. She rested her hands on her hips, glared at her father, and asked, “What are we gonna do about the Kanes?”

“What do you reckon we ought to do?” Harlow said.

“I think we should ride over there and kill ’em all!” Anger made Frankie’s eyes blaze. “If they want a war, we’ll damn well give ’em one!”

“Cimarron Kane’s a gunslinger and an outlaw,” her father pointed out, “and the rest of that bunch is rough as a cob, too. Not to mention there’s probably twice as many o’ them as there is of us. Just how do you expect us to have a chance against odds like that, gal?”

“Simple,” Frankie said. “We hire a couple of gunfighters of our own.”

And with that, she turned and looked directly at Matt and Sam.

Chapter 13

“Wait just a doggone minute,” Matt said.

“We’re not gunfighters,” Sam said.

Frankie pointed at Matt. “He is. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve heard of you, Bodine. People say you’re mighty fast on the draw, and I figure this fella you’re riding with probably is, too.”

“Just because I can handle a gun doesn’t mean it’s for sale,” Matt said.

“Anyway, we can’t afford to hire no gunfighters,” Thurman Harlow said. “And even with the two o’ them, we still wouldn’t be no match for Kane’s bunch.”

“We’d stand a better chance than we do now,” Frankie argued.

Matt said, “You could just ask us to help you, you know.”

Sam lifted a hand. “Wait a minute. You can’t just volunteer us to get in the middle of a…a whiskey war, Matt.”

“You wanted to volunteer us to be deputies for Marshal Coleman,” Matt shot back. “How’s that any different?”

“Well, for one thing—” Sam looked at their host. “And I mean no offense by this, Mr. Harlow…Marshal Coleman isn’t breaking the law.”

“Oh, no offense, no offense,” Harlow said. “We all know it ain’t legal to cook up that moonshine. It’s sort of a family tradition, though. Harlows’ve been cookin’ ’shine back in the mountains for longer’n anybody can recollect. Even if it was still legal to buy it in town, we’d be makin’ our own. We just wouldn’t be sellin’ it.”

Matt said, “The thing of it is, you’re not doin’ anybody any harm. That law’s crazy, and folks won’t stand for it very long. In the meantime, there’s no good reason you can’t help people out by makin’ a little good whiskey.”

“Other than the fact that it’s against the law,” Sam said.

“A crazy law! Weren’t you listenin’?”

Harlow held up his hands. “Now, there’s no need to go to fussin’, especially a couple of pards like you fellas. I told you, you’re welcome to spend the night ’cause of what you done for Frankie. There’s no reason for anybody to feel beholden to anybody else. Lemme fetch a jug, and we’ll all have a friendly drink.”

He went over to a cabinet and took out a jug with a cork stopper. He brought it back over to the table and set it down in the center.

“You fellas ain’t been introduced to my boys yet,” Harlow said. “This here’s Alf…Quint…Dex…and Farrell.”

One by one, the Harlow brothers nodded. They still didn’t seem very friendly, but at least they weren’t trying to kill the blood brothers anymore. Matt and Sam returned the nods, and Sam said, “Pleased to meet you. Sorry about the misunderstanding earlier.”

A couple of grunts was as close as the Harlows came to acknowledging that. One of them pointed at the jug and asked, “We gonna drink or talk, Pa?”

“We’re gonna drink,” Harlow said. He pulled the cork from the jug and then held it out to Matt. “Guests first, Mr. Bodine.”

Matt took the jug, lifted it, and swallowed a healthy slug of the clear, fiery liquid inside it. He tried not to gasp as he lowered the jug. “That’ll warm up your insides right smart,” he said as he handed the jug to Sam.

Sam took just a small sip, and even though he didn’t drink much, he had to say in admiration, “That’s mighty smooth…and mighty potent.”

“Thank you kindly,” Thurman Harlow said with a smile. “We aim to please.”

He took a drink, then passed the jug on to his sons. It had to be almost empty by the time it made it around the table.

“How about me?” Frankie asked.

Harlow frowned and shook his head. “You know I don’t hold with gals a-drinkin’, Frankie. ’Tain’t ladylike.”

“So it’s all right for me to tote the stuff around over half the countryside and get shot at by Cimarron Kane because of it, I just can’t even have a taste, is that it?”

“I never said it was all right for you to get shot at.”

Frankie blew out her breath, rolled her eyes, and shook her head. “I’m going to bed,” she muttered as she turned away and started toward a door on the other side of the room.

“Sleep tight, sweetheart,” Harlow called after her.

More muttering was Frankie’s only reply as she went through the door.

Harlow picked up the jug and shook it back and forth. A sloshing sound came from inside it. “Sounds like there’s just a taste left,” he said. He held the jug out toward Matt and Sam. “One of you fellas want it?”

“You go ahead,” Sam told his blood brother. “I’ve had plenty.”

“Well, if you’re gonna twist my arm…” Matt said. He took the jug, lifted it to his mouth, and polished off the last few drops of moonshine. Then he licked his lips in appreciation.

“Want anything to eat?” Harlow asked.

Sam shook his head. “No, thanks. We had supper in town with Marshal Coleman and his daughter.”

“Ol’ Marsh Coleman’s a fine hombre, sure enough. Knowed him ever since he come to Cottonwood. Hate to see a fella like that put in such a bad position.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“Havin’ to enforce that liquor law like he does. I know good an’ well Marsh don’t believe in it.”

“He’s sworn to uphold the law, though, whether he agrees with it or not.”

Harlow nodded. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about. If he caught Frankie or one of us sellin’ booze in town, he’d be bound to arrest us. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d do it.”

“I don’t know,” Matt said. “Could be he’s turnin’ a blind eye to Loomis’s secret saloon in that old barn. Surely he’s heard rumors about it by now.”

“Mebbeso,” Harlow said. “I wouldn’t want to risk it, though. That’s why we only make our deliveries at night, and we’re mighty careful about it even then. Or Frankie is, I should say.” He clasped his hands together in front of him. “Well, if you gents are ready to turn in, don’t let us keep you up. Alf, get these fellas some blankets to take out to the barn. Plenty o’ hay in there you can bed down on, and there shouldn’t be any varmints. Got a couple o’ old cats that’re damn fine mousers.”

“We’re much obliged for the hospitality,” Sam said.

“We’ll figure out some way to pay you back,” Matt added. “Maybe give you a hand with your troubles.”

“Matt…” Sam began.

Thurman Harlow held up a hand. “Don’t you two go to squabblin’ again. Ain’t no need for that. We’ll be fine. We’ll figure out some way o’ dealing with Cimarron Kane.”

Alf Harlow came back with an armload of blankets. He handed them to Matt and Sam, who took the bedding and said their good nights. They headed out to the barn.

“You’re bein’ downright rude,” Matt said as they walked through the night.

“How?” Sam asked. “By not wanting to get us mixed up in a shooting war that’s none of our business?”

“You saw for yourself in town what Kane’s relatives are like. And then tonight the rest of them ambushed a helpless girl!”

“Frankie didn’t look all that helpless when she was shoving a gun against your throat.”

“She wouldn’t have stood a chance against Kane and his bunch, though, and you know it.”

“I reckon you’re right about that,” Sam agreed. “I don’t like it when anybody attacks a woman, no matter how good she is at defending herself.”

“You see? You heard what Mr. Harlow said. The Kanes have them outnumbered two to one. They’re in for a heap of trouble.”

“Well…they wouldn’t be if they gave up making moonshine and let Kane take over the illegal whiskey trade.”

Matt growled in frustration. “You just don’t understand, do you? Since when did you become such a champion of law and order? I seem to remember you bein’ right beside me a few times in the past when we were bendin’ a few laws.”

“That’s true, but we were trying to help folks who needed our help. People who were the victims of injustice, or who couldn’t defend themselves.”

“I’d say it’s an injustice for Cimarron Kane to try to murder these good folks.”

“Good folks who are making illegal whiskey.”

Matt threw his hands in the air. “I give up! I don’t know what’s got into—Wait just a damned minute.”

“What?” Sam asked.

Matt came to a stop and faced his blood brother. “This is about Hannah Coleman, isn’t it? You still want to help her father because of how you feel about her.”

“Hannah’s got nothing to do with it,” Sam insisted.

“Sure she does. You’re sweet on her. I said it before, and I still believe it.”

“You can believe whatever you want,” Sam said stiffly. “That doesn’t make it true.”

Matt grunted and shook his head. “Yeah, that’s it. I see it all now.”

“I’m not sure you see anything…except the way Frankie fills out those jeans she wears.”

“Blast it, Sam, you’ve got no call to go talkin’ like that!”

“Just let it go, Matt,” Sam said with a sigh. “I’ve got a hunch we’re not going to be able to see eye to eye on this argument.”

“Huh. Bet a hat we won’t.”

They went into the barn and found a couple of widely separated places to spread the blankets Alf Harlow had given them. Then they curled up in the hay to sleep. Both of the blood brothers had trouble dozing off, though. Each was thinking about the trouble they had unwittingly ridden into here in western Kansas.

Each had the image of a beautiful young woman floating in his mind, too. In Matt’s case, a fiery, pistol-packing brunette; in Sam’s, a more demure but no less lovely blonde…

Matt wasn’t really aware of going to sleep, but he knew when he woke up because his senses alerted him that something was wrong. His eyes opened and his ears listened intently. Someone moved close by, the hay stirring faintly under the weight of someone’s feet. In absolute silence, Matt’s hand reached out and closed around the butt of one of his Colts, which rested near his head where he had coiled his shell belts. With a whisper of steel against leather, the revolver came out of its holster.

Then Matt exploded into action, lashing out with one leg and sweeping the legs of whoever was sneaking up on him out from under them. With a startled cry, the lurker fell into the hay next to him.

Like a flash, Matt was on top of the person, earing back the hammer of his gun and warning in a harsh whisper, “Don’t move or I’ll shoot!”

That was when he realized that he was sprawled atop the undeniably shapely curves of a woman.

Chapter 14

Since there was only one gal on the Harlow place as far as Matt knew, he went on in a whisper. “Frankie?”

It was unmistakably her voice that answered, “Get off me, you damn oaf!” as she pushed at his chest.

Matt lifted himself onto his hands and knees and then sat beside her in the hay. “What’s goin’ on here?” he asked. “What are you doin’ out here, Frankie?”

“What do you reckon?” she whispered back. “Didn’t you ever wind up in a pile of hay with a girl before?”

“Well, uh, as a matter of fact…” The question embarrassed Matt a little, although he wasn’t sure why. He went on. “What I’ve done before in a pile of hay ain’t any of your business.”

Before Frankie could say anything else, Sam called from the other side of the barn, “Matt? Everything all right over there?”

“Yeah, sure,” Matt replied. “One of those, uh, cats that Harlow mentioned came nosin’ around and woke me up.”

He gritted his teeth to keep from yelling as Frankie reached out blindly in the dark, found his arm, and pinched it hard.

He jerked his arm away from her. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he breathed as he leaned closer over her.

“A cat, am I? I know what you’re saying, you…you…”

“Well, you’re the one who snuck out here to throw yourself at me.”

Her hand came up and took hold of the back of his head. “Shut up,” she whispered as she pulled his mouth down to hers. “Don’t talk anymore.”

They didn’t talk for a few minutes. Kissing Frankie Harlow was a lot more pleasant way to use his mouth, Matt thought. But he fought down the impulse to take things any further than that.

“Listen,” he said when he broke the kiss. “What is it you want?”

“Are you gonna make me say it, Bodine?”

She tried to pull his head down again, but he wouldn’t let her. “I want to know if you think you can buy my help against the Kanes this way.”

“What if I do?”

Matt took Frankie’s arms from around his neck. “Then I’ll say no, thanks. I offered my help, free and clear. You don’t have to do this to seal the deal.”

“Yeah, well, Two Wolves said no.”

“Sam doesn’t speak for me.”

“Prove it.”

Again he felt a surge of irritation. He couldn’t understand why Frankie wasn’t prepared to just accept his help without either bribing or tricking him into it. She must not trust anybody, he thought. Her life must have been pretty rough to make her feel like that.

He sat up again. “Look, you’re a mighty pretty gal, Frankie,” he told her, “and I enjoy rollin’ around in some hay with a pretty gal as much as the next fella does. But when that happens, I like for it to be because the gal wants me…not my gun.”

She gasped softly. “Why, of all the arrogant…You want me to tell you that you’re so manly and handsome you make me go all weak in the knees, Bodine? Well, if that’s what you want, the hell with you!”

She rolled away from Matt and started to stand up. He found her arm in the darkness and wrapped his fingers around it, stopping her.

“Hold on,” he said. “Let’s get this settled. I’ll help you. Sam doesn’t have to go along with everything I do. Now that you know I’m on your side, maybe the two of us can get together some other time, when there won’t be any question about why we’re doin’ what we’re doin’.”

“You’re turning me down tonight?” She sounded like she couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” Matt replied, although it pained him a little to do so. He couldn’t hardly believe it, either.

“There may not be another time,” Frankie warned him.

Matt shrugged. “There have never been any guarantees in life that I know of.”

“You’re a maddening man, Matt Bodine.”

He grinned in the darkness. “So I’ve been told.”

“All right, if that’s the way you want it…” He let go of her arm and she started to get up. Then she leaned closer and went on. “Just so you’ll know for sure what you might be missing…”

She kissed him again, her lips finding his with an unerring instinct despite the thick shadows inside the barn.

The kiss lasted a long time, and when it was over, Matt’s heart was pounding hard in his chest. Blood roared in his ears. He barely heard Frankie slip away from him and leave the barn.

But by the time a couple of minutes had gone by, he had calmed down enough so that he had no trouble hearing Sam say, “You gave her your word that you’d help her and her family, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Matt said.

“Oh, come on, Matt! You know good and well you haven’t been over there for the past ten minutes whispering to some cat. That was Frankie Harlow. She came out here to convince you to help them. Thing of it is, she probably didn’t realize that you didn’t need any extra convincing. You would have thrown in with them just from what you’d seen so far.”

“You think whatever you want to think, Sam. But just so you’ll know, I’m not goin’ back to Cottonwood with you in the mornin’. Reckon I’ll stay out here for a while and see how things go with Cimarron Kane and his bunch.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Sam said, and Matt heard the disapproval in his blood brother’s voice.

“We’ve ridden different trails before,” he pointed out. “It’s nothing new.”

“Nope,” Sam agreed.

“Nothing to worry about.”

“I didn’t say I was worried.”

“Well…that’s good.”

Matt stretched out in the hay, rolled over, and tried to go back to sleep. He had a hard time of it, though, because whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was worried. Because of the circumstances, there was a chance that this time, he and Sam might wind up not only on different trails, but on opposite sides of the law as well.

And that couldn’t be good for anyone.

Things didn’t look any better when Matt woke up the next morning. An awkward silence lay between him and Sam. As longtime trail partners, they could sometimes ride for hours without either of them saying a word, and those quiet stretches never seemed to bother them. It was different this morning, though. The fact that they couldn’t find anything to say to each other spoke volumes.

Farrell Harlow came out to the barn while the blood brothers were tending to their horses and told them, “Frankie says to come on in for breakfast.”

“Tell your sister we’ll be right there,” Matt said as he poured some grain from a bucket into a feed trough for their mounts.

Farrell grunted in acknowledgment and started to turn away, then paused.

“Is it true that you’re as fast on the draw as folks say you are, Mr. Bodine?”

“Well, I don’t know what everybody says,” Matt replied with a faint smile, “but I reckon I’m fast enough to still be alive.”

“I’ve heard that you can outdraw anybody except maybe Smoke Jensen or Frank Morgan.”

“I wouldn’t know. Never met those fellas. Wouldn’t have any reason to draw against them if I did, from what I know of them. They don’t go around huntin’ trouble any more than I do.”

“Men like you, they always find it, though.”

Matt shrugged. “Sometimes it seems like that, don’t it?”

A few minutes later, he and Sam went into the house. “Mornin’, boys,” Thurman Harlow said from the stove, where he was pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Sleep good?”

“Fine,” Sam said. “We’re obliged to you for the hospitality, Mr. Harlow.”

“Think nothin’ of it. One good turn deserves another, I always say, and you done us a mighty good turn when you run off those bushwhackin’ Kanes before Frankie got hurt.”

Frankie stood by the stove, too, cooking flapjacks in a big iron skillet. As she turned them, she said curtly over her shoulder, “Sit down, you two. Pa, fetch them some coffee.”

“Sure,” Harlow agreed. He gestured toward a jug that sat on a nearby shelf. “You fellas care for a little sweetenin’ in it?”

Matt shook his head. “No, thanks.”

“Black is fine,” Sam added.

“Yeah, it’s a mite early, even for ’shine as good as we make,” Harlow agreed.

The four brothers weren’t in the cabin’s main room. “Where are your sons?” Sam asked.

“Out tendin’ to chores.” Harlow didn’t explain what those chores were, but Matt thought they might have something to do with brewing whiskey. He hadn’t seen any evidence that the family’s still was located inside the cabin, so it had to be somewhere else, probably close by.

Thurman Harlow set cups of steaming black coffee in front of Matt and Sam. He said, “Frankie tells me you’re gonna be stayin’ on with us for a while, Mr. Bodine.”

“That’s right,” Matt said. He picked up his coffee and blew on the strong black brew to cool it. “Until I see what Cimarron Kane and his relatives are gonna be up to next.”

“It won’t be anything good, I reckon you can count on that. I appreciate you offerin’ to help us, and you’re mighty welcome to stay as long as you want.” Harlow looked over at Sam. “I don’t mean to slight you by sayin’ that, Mr. Two Wolves. I reckon you and Mr. Bodine just look at things differentlike, that’s all.”

Sam nodded. “Sometimes that’s true,” he agreed. He looked at Matt, eyes narrowing as he did so. “This happens to be one of those times.”

“Well, any time you feel like ridin’ on out here to see us, you’ll be welcome as you can be.” Harlow turned to the stove. “Them flapjacks about ready, honey?”

Frankie brought a platter full of the hot flapjacks over to the table, along with a bowl of molasses. “Help yourself,” she said as she set the food on the table.

The blood brothers dug in. The meal was simple but delicious, especially when the flapjacks and molasses were washed down with the hot coffee. Matt and Sam both relaxed a little as they ate, and the friction between them was forgotten for a while.

But then the meal was over, and the time had come for Sam to head back to Cottonwood while Matt stayed here on the Harlow homestead. Neither of them knew when they would see each other again.

Or under what circumstances that meeting might take place.

Chapter 15

“There’s one thing we need to get straight,” Matt said as Sam led his horse out of the barn a short time later. The two of them were alone.

“You know you can say whatever’s on your mind,” Sam told his blood brother.

“What you know about the Harlows…and about Loomis’s saloon in town, for that matter…you need to keep that to yourself and not go tellin’ Marshal Coleman all about it.”

“Why would I tell the marshal?” Sam asked as he regarded Matt steadily.

“Because you’re friends with him…and because of the way we both know how you feel about Hannah, whether you want to admit it or not.”

Sam felt his face growing warm as he frowned. “You’re wrong about Hannah,” he insisted. “And as for the marshal, well, enforcing the law is his job, not mine.”

“Even if he talks you into pinnin’ on a tin star as his deputy?”

“I won’t say anything about the Harlows or about Loomis’s place,” Sam promised. “That just wouldn’t be right.” He paused. “What about Cimarron Kane wanting to take over the whiskey business around here?”

Matt smiled slightly. “I reckon you can say anything you want to about Kane. That won’t bother me a bit.”

Sam nodded. He picked up the reins, grasped the saddle horn, and swung up into the saddle. “I’ll be seeing you, Matt,” he said. “You know where to find me if you need me.”

“Likewise.” Matt held up his hand. “So long.”

Sam gripped Matt’s hand. “So long.”

He rode away without looking back. There was no point in thinking about the circumstances or the decision that each of them had made. Sam knew how strong-willed Matt Bodine was. It was almost impossible to change Matt’s mind once he’d made it up. And to be fair, Sam thought with a wry smile, he himself could be a mite stubborn at times.

He headed for Cottonwood, retracing the trail he and Matt had followed the night before. When he reached the spot where the Kanes had ambushed Frankie, he reined in and studied the place in broad daylight this time.

It was a good place for an ambush, Sam thought, with a view of the road and adequate cover on top of the ridge. He was a little surprised that Cimarron Kane hadn’t stood his ground the night before, since there had been at least half a dozen bushwhackers with only him and Matt to oppose them.

However, the blood brothers had been moving fast enough and spraying so much lead at the top of the hill, Kane might not have been able to tell exactly how many men had ridden to Frankie Harlow’s rescue. He could have believed that the odds were much closer to even, in which case staying on the hill and getting pinned down in a cross fire would have been a dangerous thing for him and his companions to do. So Kane had chosen the better part of valor and lit a shuck out of there.

That line of reasoning told Sam that Cimarron Kane was a man who liked to have the odds on his side. Sam tucked that bit of information away in his brain, because you never knew what might turn out to be important in a fight.

He reached Cottonwood by mid-morning and went first to Loomis’s livery stable to put up his horse. Ike Loomis greeted him with a nod and the shift of an unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

“You boys been stayin’ out of trouble here in Cottonwood?” Loomis asked around the stogie as he took charge of Sam’s horse.

“That’s right. You stay on top of everything that’s going on in this town, don’t you?”

“Yep. Mike gives me a full report ever’ night. Lord knows, there ain’t much goes on anywhere in Cottonwood that I don’t know about.” Loomis frowned slightly. “I don’t know where that partner of yours is, though.”

“He’s tending to some business of his own,” Sam said, leaving it at that. He could tell that the liveryman was extremely curious about Matt, but Loomis didn’t probe for more information, and Sam didn’t offer it.

He left the stable and started toward the marshal’s office, intending to check with Coleman and see if there had been any more trouble in town. Before he reached the squat stone building, though, the sudden pounding of hoofbeats made him stop and look around while he was still in the street.

Half a dozen riders pounded toward him, and it appeared that they didn’t intend to slow down. Sam got a good look at the man who rode slightly in the lead. The hombre sat tall in the saddle and wore black trousers and a black coat over a white shirt. A black Stetson with a curled brim was crammed down tightly on snow-white hair that grew down around his shoulders. He was clean-shaven, with a craggy, hawklike face that years of exposure to the sun had burnished to a copper not unlike Sam’s own skin tone, although this man didn’t look like he had any Indian blood in him.

Sam took all that in, then had to move quickly to get out of the way before the horses trampled him. When he reached the boardwalk, he turned to follow the riders with his eyes. The men following the leader all had hard, hawkish countenances, too.

Sam had a hunch he was looking at Cimarron Kane and some of his kin.

That hunch grew stronger when the men drew rein in front of the marshal’s office. The tall, white-haired man dismounted and handed his reins to one of his companions. Then he went inside and left the others sitting there on their saddles.

Sam continued toward his destination. He still wanted to speak to Marshal Coleman, and he wasn’t going to let Cimarron Kane stop him.

One of the men on horseback made a move to do just that, however, edging his horse closer to the boardwalk as Sam approached.

“Hey, you! What’re you doin’?”

Sam nodded toward the door of the office. “Going to see the marshal.”

“No, you ain’t. Our cousin’s in there right now, and he’s got important business with that damn lawman. You just get on outta here.”

Sam shook his head and said, “I don’t think so.” He kept walking.

The man moved fast as he got off his horse and hopped onto the boardwalk to block Sam’s path. He stuck his jaw out belligerently and demanded, “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

“I heard you.”

“Well, you must not’ve understood.” The man’s lip curled in a sneer. “And I reckon now I see why. You’re a Injun, ain’t you, or at least a filthy half-breed?”

With an effort, Sam controlled his temper. “Just step out of my way, please. I’m not looking for any trouble.”

“You talk mighty fancy for a redskin. You go to mission school, boy?”

It wouldn’t do any good to mention the prestigious university back east he’d attended, Sam thought. The man sneering at him had probably never even heard of it. Sam said, sharper this time, “Step aside.”

Fury darkened the man’s face. “No Injun’s gonna talk to me that way,” he said. “Come on, boys, let’s teach this red son of a bitch a lesson.”

With potential odds of five to one facing him, Sam didn’t waste any time thinking about how it sure would have been nice to have Matt at his side right now. He just went to work, and the first thing he did was to improve those odds by twenty percent.

He brought his left fist rocketing up in a terrific punch that landed squarely in the middle of the man’s sneering face. The impact of that blow lifted the hombre completely off his feet, sent him sailing backward through the air, and brought him crashing down onto the boardwalk in a crumpled, senseless heap.

By the time the man hit the planks, Sam had used his own momentum that had been behind the punch to help him whirl toward the men still on horseback. His right hand dipped to his Colt and palmed it out in a draw so swift that it would have shaded nine out of ten men. The revolver came level in Sam’s rock-steady hand as he pointed it at the other four men, none of whom had had a chance to do anything other than sit there and gape foolishly at what had just happened.

“The first man who reaches for a gun, I’ll blow him out of the saddle,” Sam warned.

“The hell you will!” a voice grated from his left. Sam’s eyes flicked in that direction for a second and saw the tall, white-haired man standing in the open doorway of the marshal’s office. The man had a long-barreled Remington revolver in his hand, and the gun was pointed right at Sam’s head. “Drop your gun, you son of a bitch,” the man went on, “or I’ll kill you where you stand!”

Cimarron Kane had the drop on him.

Chapter 16

But Kane wasn’t the only player who had taken cards in this deadly game. From behind him in the office came the unmistakable sound of a pair of hammers being eared back. Marshal Coleman said, “If I let loose with both barrels of this Greener at this range, Kane, there won’t hardly be enough left of you to bury.”

Sam saw Kane stiffen and glance back over his shoulder. “You do that, Marshal, and you won’t live another minute,” he warned. “My kin will see to that.”

Coleman sounded calm as he said, “In that case, I’ll just use one barrel. That’ll still splatter you all over the street, and I can save the other barrel for the rest of your no-account bunch.”

Despite the tense situation, Sam wanted to smile at the marshal’s coolheaded comment. Kane must have realized that he didn’t have any cards to play, because he slowly lowered the Remington.

“I ain’t gonna forget this, Coleman,” he said in ominous tones. “Nor the way you locked up my cousins, neither.”

“I want you to remember it,” Coleman countered. “I want you to remember that you aren’t the law in Cottonwood. I am. As for those cousins of yours, if they hadn’t taken those shots at me, they’d have likely just been fined for disturbing the peace and would be out of jail by now. Trying to kill a peace officer is something else entirely. It’ll be up to the circuit judge to decide what to do with them when he comes through in a couple of weeks. Until then, like I told you, they stay locked up.”

Kane’s arm hung at his side, the revolver still tightly gripped in his hand. But as Sam continued to cover the rest of the bunch, Kane holstered the gun and heaved an angry sigh. He started toward his horse and snapped, “Let’s get out of here.”

“But what about Dud and Nelse and Wiley?” one of the men asked. “What are we gonna do about them?”

Another man spoke up. “Yeah, Cimarron. You gonna let kin just rot in jail?”

“Shut up!” Kane blazed as he jerked his reins away from the man who’d been holding them. “I still give the orders here, and you’d damn well better not forget it. We’ll deal with that law dog some other time.”

Stiff with fury, Kane swung up into the saddle and hauled hard on the reins to pull his horse around. The others got out of his way as he cruelly dug his spurs into the animal’s flanks and sent it galloping back down the street. The others followed him, although not without visible reluctance on the part of some of them. Sam waited until they had vanished in a cloud of dust at the end of the street before finally lowering his gun.

Marshal Coleman came up beside him, holding the shotgun he had used to threaten Kane. “Glad you came along when you did, Sam,” he said. “If Kane hadn’t gotten distracted by what was goin’ on out here, I don’t know if I’d have been able to get my hands on this scattergun.”

Sam slid his Colt into its holster. “I take it Kane came to town to try to get his cousins released?”

“Yeah, he heard about them being arrested. Figured he could ride in with some of his gunslinging kinfolk, bluster a little bit, and get me to turn them loose.” Coleman shook his head. “He figured wrong.”

“He won’t let it go at that, though, will he?”

Coleman sighed. “Probably not. But we’ll worry about that later.” He tucked the shotgun under his left arm and clapped his right hand on Sam’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you again, son. Where’s that side-kick of yours?”

“Matt had some business of his own to tend to,” Sam replied, being deliberately vague with his answer.

He was in an awkward position. He had promised Matt that he wouldn’t tell the marshal about the hidden saloon or the moonshining going on at the Harlow farm. Yet he felt that Coleman had a right to know about those things. For now, he would have to continue walking a fine line between keeping his word to his blood brother and following what he felt was his civic responsibility.

“Well, come on in the office,” Coleman invited. “I’ve got coffee on the stove.”

They went inside. Sam heard angry voices coming from the cell block. Coleman waved a hand toward the cell block door and said, “Don’t pay them any mind. They’ve been carryin’ on and raising a ruckus most of the night, and it got worse when they heard Cimarron out here. I try to just ignore ’em.”

Sam saw the wisdom of that approach but doubted it would be easy to carry out, considering the profanity that was coming from the cells. Coleman didn’t seem bothered by it, though. The marshal poured two cups of coffee from the pot staying warm on the stove and handed one of them to Sam.

“I’m glad you came by,” Coleman said as he sat down behind the desk. “I’ve been thinking about something. Were you planning to be around town for a while, Sam?”

“We didn’t really have any plans, one way or the other,” Sam answered. “I don’t think Matt intends to move on any time soon, though.”

Of course, that would depend to a certain extent on Frankie Harlow, he added silently.

“Well, then, how would you boys like to have a job while you’re here? I could sure use a couple of deputies.”

“Did the town council decide to let you hire someone?” Sam asked, remembering what Hannah had said the day before.

Coleman’s mouth tightened a little. “No, the council says the town can’t afford that. So I’d be payin’ you out of my own pocket. I can’t offer much in the way of wages, but you’d get three square meals a day, plus there are a couple of cots in the back room where you could sleep and save the price of a hotel room.”

Coleman had no way of knowing that with their successful ranches in Montana, both of the blood brothers could be considered rich men, especially out here on the frontier.

Sam started to shake his head. Then, as a look of disappointment came over Coleman’s face, he hurried on. “I can’t speak for Matt, but I’ll take the job, Marshal. But only on one condition. You won’t owe me anything in wages.” He smiled. “I’ll take the three square meals a day, though, if Hannah’s going to be cooking them.”

Coleman sat forward and slapped the desk. “She sure is! You got to let me pay you something, though.”

“No, that doesn’t matter,” Sam insisted. “Maybe if the town council sees that it’s a good thing for you to have a deputy, they’ll realize they need to find the money for a real one.”

Coleman opened one of the desk drawers and reached inside. He brought out a badge, which he slid across the desk to Sam.

“Pin that on. You’re hired, Sam, and as far as I’m concerned, you are a real deputy. Let me know when Matt gets back to town, and I’ll make the same offer to him.”

“Sure,” Sam said as he picked up the tin star. It was easier just to agree rather than trying to explain why Matt wasn’t going to be pinning on a deputy’s badge.

“Hannah will be awful glad to hear about this. You know she’s been tryin’ for a while to convince me that I need some help. I don’t know if I do or not—I’ve always been able to keep order here in town—but I’ve got a hunch that Kane is about to start raisin’ more hell than ever.”

Considering the attack on Frankie Harlow and the fact that three of Kane’s cousins were locked up here in town, that seemed like a safe bet to Sam. And that was the main reason he had agreed to take the job. Coleman wouldn’t be any match for the Kanes by himself. It was always possible, too, that the clash between the Kanes and the Harlows could spill over into the settlement. Cottonwood was where everyone in the area had to come for supplies.

Sam pinned the badge onto his buckskin shirt. Coleman nodded in satisfaction and said, “Looks mighty good.”

Before Sam could make any reply, one of the townsmen jerked the door open and stuck his head inside the office. “Marshal, come quick!” he said. “You ought to take a look at this!”

Coleman didn’t waste any time standing up. “What is it?” he asked the townie.

“Prison wagons comin’ into town, from the looks of it!” the man replied.

Sam recalled what Frankie Harlow had told him and Matt about the special marshals sent out by the governor using prison wagons to tranport the men they arrested for brewing, selling, or possessing illegal liquor. It sounded like the marshals were paying a visit to Cottonwood after all.

Coleman and Sam followed the townie outside. Quite a few people had congregated on the street to watch the new arrivals. There were four wagons in the convoy, flanked by outriders on horseback. The vehicles had enclosed beds that formed eight-foot-by-ten-foot cells. A door with a barred window was on the back of each wagon, and there was a small, barred window in each side for ventilation.

Those openings wouldn’t let in much air, though, and Sam had a hunch that on a hot day, like most days were at this time of year, the backs of those wagons would be like sweatboxes.

Ambrose Porter sat on a driver’s box attached to the front of the lead wagon. Calvin Bickford handled the team hitched to the second wagon, and two of the deputies drove the other pair. The men brought the vehicles to a stop in front of Marshal Coleman’s office.

Porter nodded and said, “Marshal, I’m sure you remember us. We stopped by here a few weeks ago to let you know that we’d be working in your area.”

Coleman grunted. “Yeah, I appreciated that.” Clearly, he wasn’t too fond of the governor’s men. “Something I can do for you?”

Porter jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the wagon he’d been driving. “As a matter of fact, there is. We have some wounded men here, and we’d like to have your local doctor take a look at them before we start for Wichita.” Porter smiled thinly. “We wouldn’t want them to die along the way so that they couldn’t face justice for their crimes.”

“What crime would that be?” Coleman asked. “Bein’ thirsty?”

Porter’s insincere smile disappeared. “The legislature passed that law, Marshal, not me. If you have a problem with it, take it up with them. Now, where can we find the doctor?”

“Take those wagons over by the creek and park ’em in the shade of the cottonwoods,” Coleman said. “At least that way, those fellas you’ve got locked up can be a mite more comfortable. I’ll go get the doctor and bring him over there.”

“I don’t care whether these lawbreakers are comfortable or not.” Porter shrugged. “But I suppose it won’t hurt anything. We’ll be by the creek.”

He lifted the reins and flicked them against the backs of the mules hitched to the wagon. The team stepped forward, and the wagon rolled toward the creek, followed by the others. As the vehicles moved past, Sam heard the groans coming from the wounded prisoners in the first one. The men in the other wagons were cursing monotonously. Bickford nodded pleasantly to Sam as he drove past, evidently recalling him from their encounter the day before.

“I’ll go down to Doc Berger’s office,” Coleman said when the wagons were gone. “You want your first job as my deputy, Sam?”

“Sure.”

Coleman nodded. “Good. Keep an eye on those wagons while I’m gone.”

“You think those prisoners might give some trouble?” Sam asked.

“I’m more worried about those special marshals,” Coleman said bluntly. “Especially Porter. I didn’t like the looks of him when he came through here before, and I still don’t. As far as I’m concerned, the man’s just one step above a hired killer.”

“He’s a lawman, too,” Sam pointed out.

“So they say.” Coleman sighed. “All I know is that I’d just as soon never have seen that bunch again. I’ll be happy when they leave town, and as far as I’m concerned, I hope they never come back!”

Chapter 17

Matt watched until Sam had ridden through the cut in the ridge and was out of sight. Then he turned to go back into the Harlow cabin, but before he reached the door, Frankie came out.

“Come on,” she said. “Pa asked me to show you around the place.”

Matt nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

Any excuse to spend more time with Frankie Harlow was just fine with Matt, even if she was a mite proddy a lot of the time. At the moment, she seemed fairly friendly.

Although not as friendly as she’d been the night before when she was kissing him in the barn, he thought…

She led him past the barn and pointed along the ridge. “See where the smoke’s coming up there, a couple of hundred yards away?” she asked.

“I see it,” Matt said. “Is that where the still is?”

“Yeah. Come on. I’ll show you.”

They walked along the ridge until they came to what appeared to be the mouth of a cave. As they got closer, though, Matt saw that the opening had been shored up and steps had been carved into the earth, leading down.

“There was a little cave here already,” Frankie said, anticipating Matt’s question, “but Pa and the boys dug it out and enlarged it, sort of like a root cellar. Then they ran a pipe up through the ground to vent the firebox on the boiler.” She leaned through the entrance and called, “Don’t get nervous and start shooting, boys. It’s just me and Bodine.”

Matt followed her down the earthen steps, and found himself in a chamber that was partially carved out of the ridge and partially underground. It was about twenty feet by twenty feet, he estimated. A couple of lanterns hung from nails driven into the timbers that supported the roof.

A huge iron boiler dominated the room and made the air hot and moist in the chamber. The Harlows must have assembled the contraption here, Matt decided, because he didn’t think they could have gotten it through the door the way it was now. A copper pipe emerged from the tapering top of the boiler and ran over to a barrel that was connected to a second barrel by another pipe. More barrels that were probably full of moonshine sat on the other side of the chamber.

The four Harlow brothers stood around the room, two of them holding rifles, the other two tending to the fire in the boiler and watching the ’shine drip into the second barrel.

Frankie nodded toward the boiler. “This is Old Skullbuster,” she said with a note of pride in her voice. “My great-grandpappy built her originally. She helped brew up thousands of gallons of white lightning, back in the mountains in Tennessee.”

“More like millions of gallons, I’ll bet,” one of her brothers said.

“My grandpappy used it, too,” Frankie went on, “and then when my pa decided to come west, he took it apart and loaded the pieces on his wagon as careful as he could. We put it back together when we decided to settle here and got this place ready for it.”

Matt nodded. “Mighty impressive. You keep it runnin’ all the time?”

“Nearly all the time,” Frankie said. “Have to let it cool off every now and then, so we can clean out the firebox.” She pointed to the first barrel. “The mash is in there, and the squeezins drip out into the other barrel.”

Matt nodded. It was a simple setup. He had seen moonshine stills before, but Old Skullbuster was probably the biggest he had come across.

“It really only takes a couple of people to tend it and to stand guard,” Frankie continued. “We take turns doing that and working in the fields. We have to keep the corn crop growing so we’ll have it to make the mash. Some folks use grain, but Pa says there’s nothing sweeter than good corn liquor.”

“He just might be right about that,” Matt said with a smile. “What would you like me to do? I reckon I can tend a boiler if I need to.”

Frankie shook her head. “We’ll take care of this part of it, just like we always have. You’re here to kill Cimarron Kane, Bodine.”

Matt stiffened at the casual way Frankie spoke the words. “I told you, I’m not a hired gun. And I’m dang sure not a paid killer.”

“That’s not what I meant. Sooner or later, Kane and his kinfolks will come after us again. That ambush last night was just the start of it. When that happens, we’ll need help fighting him off. That’s where you come in.”

“And if Kane happens to wind up with a slug in him—”

“We dang sure won’t grieve for him,” Frankie said.

Matt understood. “Maybe it would be a good idea if I was to sort of patrol the place. You know, keep an eye out for Kane and his bunch.”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Let’s go.”

“You’re coming along, too?”

“Pa and the boys don’t need me right now, and it’ll help if you know the countryside hereabouts.”

Matt couldn’t argue with that, so he and Frankie left the cave where the Harlow still was located and returned to the barn. Matt saddled up his stallion while Frankie got a big bay gelding ready to ride.

“That looks like a lot of horse,” Matt commented. “You sure you can handle him?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew they were a mistake. Frankie snorted contemptuously, gave a defiant toss of her head, practically vaulted into the saddle, and said, “Let’s see you keep up with me, Bodine!”

With that, she galloped out of the barn, and all Matt could do was go after her.

He swung up onto his horse and put the animal into a run. Frankie had already opened up a lead as she raced off to the west, paralleling the ridges. A thin cloud of dust coiled up into the air from her horse’s hooves.

Despite that lead, Matt’s rangy gray stallion soon began closing the gap. The horse wasn’t much for looks, but he had plenty of speed and stamina and could run all day if he needed to. Matt saw Frankie glancing over her shoulder at him. He wasn’t sure what she was trying to prove. Probably that she was as good as her brothers. From what Matt had seen so far, he wasn’t sure but what she was already better.

They flashed past the fields where the family’s corn crop grew. The green leaves and tasseled ears waved back and forth a little as a morning breeze stirred them. The plants were shorter and scrubbier than the ones Matt had seen growing in other, more fertile places, but they had plenty of ears on them. He wondered if the Harlows ever roasted any of those ears, or if they all went to make moonshine.

Still in the lead, Frankie sent her mount curving around the fields and took off toward the south. Matt stayed close behind her, holding his horse in a little now so that he wouldn’t overtake her. He was curious where she was going, and letting her win seemed to be the best way to find out.

A few minutes later, when they were out of sight of the Harlow homestead, Frankie galloped up a long swell of ground and didn’t slow down when she reached the top of it. Her horse was airborne for a second as it crested the slope at a full gallop. Matt reined in his horse even more as he reached the top in time to see Frankie’s mount land nimbly on the far slope and keep running. He would have been willing to bet that she had done this before.

At the bottom of the hill, a creek twisted across the prairie. A few trees stood along its banks. Frankie brought her horse to a stop under one of those trees and slipped down from the saddle.

Matt reached her side a moment later. Frankie was breathing hard from the exhilaration of the gallop. Matt tried not to stare at the way her breasts rose and fell under the red-checked shirt she wore, but it wasn’t easy.

“This is one of my favorite spots around here,” Frankie said as Matt dismounted. She pointed to some low hills rising in the distance. “Those knobs aren’t anything like the Smokies, but at least they’re not just flat prairie. They remind me a little of home, and so does this stream.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty,” Matt agreed. “As pretty as any place around these parts, I guess.”

“You’ve been a lot of places, haven’t you?”

“Quite a few, I reckon,” Matt replied with a nod. “Sam and I have been on the drift for a few years.”

In truth, they had seen almost everything from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, from the Rio Grande in the south to the Milk River in the north. Folks talked about somebody having been to see the elephant. Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves had not only seen the critter on numerous occasions, they had walked right up and shaken hands with it. Or trunks, as the case might be.

“How’d the two of you wind up riding together?”

Matt smiled. “That’s too long a story to tell. Let’s just say we sort of grew up together, way up yonder in Montana. That’s still what we consider home, although we don’t get up there very often.”

“So you just…drift? Don’t you have any ambition?”

“Oh, I reckon we do. It’s just not time for us to worry about it yet. We’re still young, after all.”

Frankie gazed off into the distance. “I have ambition,” she said without looking at Matt. “I want to go to San Francisco and see the ocean. And I’d like to go back home someday, only with plenty of money so that folks would know I was a success.”

“Most people consider a woman a success if she has a good home and family,” Matt pointed out.

Frankie glanced sharply at him. “Well, that’s not the way I look at it,” she snapped. “I don’t need some man to take care of me, when what that really means is burdening me with a whole mess of squalling brats.”

“I guess you just don’t have much of a maternal instinct,” Matt said.

“Never you mind about my maternal instincts.” She led her horse over to one of the trees and looped its reins around the slender trunk, tying them so they wouldn’t slip. “I reckon it’s warmed up enough now.”

“Warmed up enough for what?” Matt asked.

“This,” Frankie said as she lifted her hands to the buttons of her shirt and began to unfasten them.

Chapter 18

“Whoa!” Matt exclaimed in surprise. “Hold on there!”

Frankie had the top three buttons undone already, and as the shirt began to fall open, the cleft between her breasts became visible. She paused in what she was doing, though, and asked, “You want me to stop? Why?”

“Well…blast it…” Matt searched for words. “I told you last night you don’t have to pay me back for helping you and your family. You sure don’t have to do it this way.”

Frankie’s eyes narrowed. “Let me ask you, Bodine…Do I strike you as the sort of person who does anything she doesn’t want to do?”

“Well…no,” Matt admitted.

“And right now, I want to go skinny-dipping. This is as close to a swimming hole as we’ve got around here.”

With that, she turned around so that she faced the creek instead of Matt and finished stripping off her shirt. He couldn’t help but admire the smooth, clean lines of her bare back as she tossed the shirt onto a bush. She held onto a tree trunk with one hand and used the other to pull her boots and socks off. Then her hands went to the buttons of her jeans.

She paused and looked back over her shoulder. “You can come in if you want. It’s up to you.”

Then she unfastened the jeans and pushed them down over the graceful curve of her hips. Matt had to swallow hard as he watched her drape the jeans over the same bush as her shirt. Then she waded out into the creek.

“Aw, the hell with it!” Matt muttered as he reached for the buttons of his own shirt.

Frankie had told the truth. She didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do, and Matt knew it. Sometimes, a fella could beat his head against his own best instincts all day, he thought, when what he ought to do was just open his eyes and see things for what they were.

A couple of minutes later, his own duds were draped over a bush and he was wading out into the creek, too. Frankie had sunk up to her neck and was stroking around, swimming as best she could in the relatively shallow water. The creek was cool but not actually cold, Matt discovered as the water crept up his thighs.

Frankie rolled over in the water and looked up at him, a grin stealing across her face. “See, Bodine, you didn’t have anything to be ashamed of,” she said.

“I never said I was ashamed. I was just brought up not to take advantage of a lady.”

“Well, if one of those highfalutin’ critters happens to come along, I’m sure her virtue will be right safe with you.” Frankie laughed and then ducked all the way under the water.

A second later, Matt felt a strong little hand grab one of his ankles. He tried to set himself, but he was too late. Frankie pulled hard on his leg, making his foot slip on the muddy bottom of the creek. With a startled yell, Matt went over backward, landing in the creek with a huge splash.

He came up a moment later, sputtering and trying to shake the water and wet hair out of his eyes. He heard Frankie laughing, and when he could see again, he glared at her as she hunkered about ten feet away with the water up to her chin.

“You’re all wet, Bodine.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah, but it was my idea.” She paused. “How many times have you been skinny-dipping with a girl?”

“None when the girl was as troublesome as you.”

She laughed again and splashed water at him. “If that’s the way you feel about me, I reckon I’ll just have to live up to it.”

“Dang it!” Matt tried to duck the water, but got another faceful of creek. He lunged at her, but she twisted away with a lithe grace that kept her just out of his reach.

He was just judging her speed, though, and when he made a second try to grab her, this time he moved faster. The lightning-quick reflexes that made him respected across the West as a gun-handler allowed him to anticipate her reaction, and as she leaped, he was there first, closing a hand around her arm. Frankie cried out in surprise.

They both fell, sending up another big splash, and when they came out of the water this time, they were in each other’s arms, mouths pressed together in an urgent kiss.

After a moment, Matt took his lips away from Frankie’s and said in a husky voice, “I’ll tell you one more time…you don’t have to do this.”

“And I’ll tell you one more time, Bodine…the hell I don’t!”

After that, neither of them wasted time or energy talking for a while.

Later, they stretched out on the bank in the sun, which had risen high enough now that its rays were getting pretty warm. The light felt good on Matt’s skin.

After lying beside him for a while, Frankie turned and propped herself up on an elbow so she could look at him. “How long do you think it’ll be before Cimarron Kane makes another move against us?” she asked.

Matt shook his head. “I reckon you’d know that better than I would. I never even heard of the hombre until yesterday.”

“I don’t think he’ll wait too long,” Frankie answered her own question. “Once he makes up his mind, he doesn’t waste any time going after what he wants, and what he’s got his heart set on now is taking over the liquor business around here.”

“Is there really that much money in it?”

Frankie’s forehead creased in a frown. “Are you joshing me, Bodine? If those special marshals put everybody else out of business, and if Kane can run us out or kill us, then anybody in this whole end of the state who wants a drink of whiskey will have to pay his price. He can charge Ike Loomis through the nose for the stuff, and Ike will have to pay. Same thing is true of anybody else who wants to sell it, and Kane can always cut out the middleman and peddle it directly to folks, too. If it takes a few years for the legislature to wise up and realize what a foolish thing they’ve done, Kane can make a small fortune in that time.”

“But if we can stop him, you and your family will make that small fortune,” Matt mused.

“That’s right.”

“You’d be able to pay that visit to San Francisco and then go back to the Smoky Mountains as a rich woman, like you wanted.”

Frankie smiled. “Yeah.”

“So I reckon it’s worth it to you to get Kane out of the way, whatever it takes.”

“Sure, I—” Frankie stopped short and frowned at him again. “What do you mean by that, Bodine? You still think that what we did a while ago was a…a bribe?”

Matt sat up. “I’d like to think it wasn’t, but—”

Frankie came upright suddenly, and her open hand flashed toward Matt’s face. She was a strong young woman, and she was mad. It would have been a vicious slap if it had landed.

But Matt’s hand moved too fast for the eye to follow and caught her wrist, freezing the blow in midair. Frankie strained against his grip but couldn’t budge it.

She bared her teeth and said in a quiet, furious voice, “You son of a bitch. I never saw a more suspicious bastard in my life.”

“Women have tricked me before. I don’t intend to let it happen again.”

“That’s not all that’s never gonna happen again. Let go of me!”

Matt released her wrist. She didn’t try to slap him again. Instead, she turned her back to him, scrambled to her feet, and started toward the bush where she had left her clothes earlier.

Matt stood up, too. “Listen, Frankie, I had to be sure—”

“Well, now you are, or at least you damned well should be,” she said without turning around to look at him as she jerked her denim trousers on.

“Come on, there’s a lot of money involved here. You admitted that yourself. You might have thought that it was worth it to do whatever you had to in order to get me on your side.”

“Yeah, well, I was a fool,” she said bitterly. “I thought just asking you for your help would be enough. I had you pegged as the sort of hombre who appreciates it when folks are honest with him.”

“I do,” Matt insisted. “And I believe you—”

She shoved her arms through the sleeves of her shirt. “You didn’t believe me all the other times I told you, though. There was still some doubt in your mind, even when we…even when we were…Oh! The hell with it!”

Leaving the shirt unbuttoned, she started toward her horse. “Hey, wait a minute!” Matt said as he reached for his long underwear. “If you ride back to the cabin lookin’ like that, your pa’s liable to take a shotgun after me!”

“And you’d damned well deserve it, wouldn’t you?”

“I wasn’t the only one out there in that creek, you know.” Matt was getting mad now, too. She couldn’t blame him for having a few doubts about the situation when there was so much at stake.

Evidently she did, though. She stopped long enough to force her shaking fingers to fasten the buttons on her shirt. Then she stomped into her boots, grabbed the reins, and started to mount up. By that time, Matt has his own jeans and boots on. He pulled the bib-front shirt over his head, which had just emerged from the faded blue garment’s neck opening when he heard the sudden crackle of gunfire in the distance.

Frankie must have heard it, too. Her head jerked up as she settled down in the saddle. Her eyes widened in fear.

“That sounds like it’s coming from the cabin!”

Matt agreed with her, and he ripped out a bitter curse at his own stupidity. He had agreed to help the Harlows, and then, knowing that Cimarron Kane and his bunch of bloodthirsty kinfolks might attack at any time, he had gone off to play a little slap-and-tickle with Frankie. No matter how pleasant that had been, he should have known better.

His Winchester was still in the saddle boot on the gray. He grabbed his shell belts and the attached holsters and strapped them on, quickly thonging down each Colt. As Matt did that, Frankie suddenly wheeled her horse around.

“Wait!” Matt told her. “Don’t go charging off—”

Too late. That was exactly what Frankie was doing. She jabbed her heels into her horse’s flanks and sent the animal racing up the hill from the creek. All Matt could do now was grab his hat off the saddle horn, bound onto the stallion’s back, and gallop after her.

That and pray that she wouldn’t ride right into a hailstorm of leaden death.

Chapter 19

Matt let the gray really stretch his legs out this time. They sailed into the air, too, when they topped the hill like Frankie and her mount. In the distance, Matt saw the thin line of smoke that rose from the still’s firebox through the stovepipe in the ridge. He didn’t see any other smoke, which was probably a good sign. He wanted to think so, anyway.

Frankie was about fifty yards ahead of him. The stallion pulled steadily closer until Matt was riding right behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, and he saw that her face was white with fear.

He could still hear the shots, even over the pounding hoofbeats. Most of them were the sharp cracks of rifles, mixed with the reports of handguns and an occasional dull boom of a shotgun. Matt had no doubt that the Harlows were under attack, and it seemed obvious who the attackers were, too.

He pulled alongside Frankie and motioned for her to fall back. “Let me see what’s goin’ on!” he shouted to her.

“The hell with that!” Anger blazed brightly on her face. “You know it has to be Kane!” She reached for her rifle and drew it out of its saddle sheath.

Even though he hadn’t been acquainted with Frankie for long, Matt knew he’d be wasting his breath if he tried to tell her to stay out of the fight. She would never do it. For another thing, he could probably use her help. The odds were bound to be against him, and if Thurman Harlow and his sons were pinned down as Matt suspected, he couldn’t expect much help from them.

“They won’t be expectin’ us to cut through the cornfield!” he called. “Maybe we can take them by surprise!”

She jerked her head in a curt nod to show him that she understood. When they reached the edge of the field, they plunged into it, Matt going first to break a path and Frankie following. The rows ran the other direction, so their horses had to trample over some of the plants. If any of the raiders happened to look this way, they might spot the movement among the crops as the plants shook. Matt’s hope was that they wouldn’t think to keep an eye on the fields.

When he sensed that he was getting close to the edge of the corn, he pulled back on the reins and brought the stallion to a halt. Since Frankie was following him, she had no choice but to either stop or veer off onto a new path of her own. She stopped, but she didn’t look happy about it.

“What the hell are you doing, Bodine?” she asked in a low, urgent voice.

Matt dismounted and pulled his rifle from the saddle boot. “I told you, I’m gonna have a look at what’s goin’ on.”

Frankie’s boots hit the ground. “Not without me, you’re not!”

“Come on, then.”

They left the horses and started forward through the few remaining yards of corn, weaving around the stalks now. When they came to the edge of the field, Matt dropped to one knee and motioned for Frankie to do likewise.

Shots still rang out from the cabin and the entrance to the underground chamber where the still was located. A haze of powder smoke floated in the air. Several men crouched behind the barn, using it for cover as they fired toward the cabin. Farther along the flat ground in front of the ridge, more men lay belly-down and squeezed off shots from the prone position at the still.

Matt did a quick head count. Three men at the barn, four keeping the Harlow brothers pinned down at the still. Those odds weren’t too bad. All seven horses that the men had ridden out here were behind the barn.

Judging from the amount of fire coming from the defenders, Frankie’s father and all of her brothers were still in the fight, although it was possible some of them could be wounded.

He leaned closer to her. “Are you a good shot?”

She snorted and asked, “What the hell do you think?”

“I’ll take the three hombres behind the barn,” Matt said. “When I open up on them, you throw lead at the ones who’re goin’ after the still. You don’t have to worry about hittin’ ’em, just spook ’em real good and make them run for their horses. By that time, I ought to be finished with the others, and I can take over.”

She glared at him. “Take over!” she repeated. “I hit what I aim at. We’ll just see who kills their men first—and I’ve got one more than you do!”

“Fine,” he muttered. “You ready?”

“Ready,” she said, and although her voice was steady, he thought he heard the faintest hint of a quiver in it. He wondered fleetingly if she had ever killed a man before.

He drew a bead on one of the men at the barn. It was about a hundred and fifty yards from the edge of the field, but that wasn’t too long a shot for a marks-man of Matt Bodine’s skill. He wanted to make sure of his first shot, so he let his breath out softly and waited an extra heartbeat, then squeezed the trigger.

The Winchester cracked and kicked hard against his shoulder. As he worked the lever, he saw the man he had targeted driven forward against the barn wall by the slug smashing into his body. Before the man could even hit the ground, Matt had shifted his aim and was ready to fire again. As his rifle blasted, Frankie opened up beside him, peppering the other group of men.

Matt’s second shot wasn’t quite as accurate as his first. It didn’t drill the gunman he’d aimed at through the body, but broke the man’s arm instead. Matt saw him slump against the barn and clutch at the wounded limb.

“Bodine!” Frankie yelled.

Matt still had a third man to put out of the fight. He worked the Winchester’s lever, but before he could draw a bead, Frankie cried out again.

“Bodine! Now!”

Matt jerked around and saw that there was a new element in the fight. A couple of men had appeared at the top of the ridge, above the entrance to the chamber, and each of them carried a blazing torch in his hand. Matt felt a surge of alarm at the sight, remembering all those barrels of moonshine stored down below. If flame ever reached that volatile liquid…

“Drop them before they can toss those torches in there!” he told Frankie.

She must have figured that out already, because she was blazing away at the two men even as the words came out of Matt’s mouth. He added his shots to the effort, cranking off several rounds as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever, just as Frankie was doing.

Suddenly he felt the wind-rip of a bullet past his ear and then heard other slugs rustle through the cornfield. He and Frankie were coming under fire from the man at the barn and the ones who had laid siege to the still. Matt stopped shooting and thrust out an arm, sweeping Frankie backward so that she sprawled among the plants.

“Stay down!” he told her.

“But the still—”

Matt cast a desperate glance toward the ridge and saw the two men throw their torches into the chamber. The coils of black smoke they gave off twisted out of the opening. Two of the other gunmen were up now, shooting through the opening, probably trying to keep the Harlow brothers from putting out the torches. The other two and the man at the barn kept scything lead through the corn at Matt and Frankie.

Matt rolled onto his belly and drilled the man at the barn through the middle of his body. The man folded up and collapsed. The other four stopped shooting and ran for the barn and the horses. Frankie took a hurried shot at them, but missed. As Matt twisted in that direction, he saw why the sudden change on the part of the attackers. The two torches now lay in front of the chamber’s entrance. The Harlow brothers had dared that hail of lead to grab them and throw them back outside before the flames reached those barrels of moonshine.

Matt snapped a couple of shots at the fleeing gunmen, too. One of them stumbled, but stayed on his feet. Then the two men on top of the ridge opened fire on Matt and Frankie and forced them to scramble deeper into the cornfield. A moment later, hoofbeats pounded as the men reached their mounts, leaped into saddles, and lit a shuck out of there.

Matt leaped to his feet and ran out of the corn in time to see Thurman Harlow emerge from the cabin and let loose with a blast from both barrels of the shotgun he held, but the men were already too far away for the buckshot to reach them. Dust rising from the other side of the ridge testified to the fact that those two men were getting out, too.

Angry shouting drew Matt’s attention to the chamber where the still was located. He saw all four Harlow brothers come through the entrance, and so did Frankie. “Thank God,” she breathed. One of her brothers was limping, but they were all alive and relatively unscathed, from the looks of it. A couple of them finished the job of stomping out the flames from the torches.

Matt whistled for the stallion. The horse came through the field with Frankie’s bay trailing along behind it. Matt and Frankie grabbed the reins and led the animals toward the cabin. Frankie’s brothers were converging on the cabin as well.

They all got there about the same time. “Pa!” Frankie said as she hurried toward him. “Are you all right?”

“Fine as frog’s hair,” Thurman Harlow replied in his mild-mannered voice. “Those varmints shot up the place mighty good, but I kept my head down as much as I could and didn’t get hit.”

“Dex got a crease on his leg, Pa,” one of the brothers reported. Matt still wasn’t quite sure which one was which.

“Ah, hell, I’ll be all right,” Dex said. “Ain’t nothin’ but a puny little scratch.”

“Looks like it bled right smart for a puny little scratch,” Harlow said with a nod toward his son’s blood-soaked pants leg. “Better let your sister take you inside and clean that up.”

Frankie took hold of Dex’s arm. “Come on and don’t argue about it.”

“Pa, she’s rough as a cob when she goes to tendin’ to hurts, and you know it!” Dex protested.

“Go on, boy,” Harlow said. “You don’t want to get blood poisonin’.”

While Frankie took her brother into the cabin, Matt walked over to the barn, expecting to find at least one body there. Instead, although there were a couple of generous splashes of blood on the ground, there were no corpses.

“Either those hombres I ventilated weren’t quite dead, or their compadres took the bodies with them,” he said to Thurman Harlow, who had followed him.

“I seen a couple of them helpin’ other fellas into the saddle,” Harlow confirmed. “Wish I’d gotten outside in time to give ’em a load of buckshot.”

“If you had, they might have killed you, too,” Matt pointed out. “I reckon we were all mighty lucky that things didn’t turn out any worse than they did.”

Harlow shook his head. “Luck didn’t have nothin’ to do with it,” he declared. “I reckon the rest of us are alive right now ’cause you were around to lend us a hand, Mr. Bodine. Without you and Frankie doin’ what you did, they’ve have blowed up the still and roasted my boys along with it. Then they’d’ve rooted me out of the cabin and killed me, too.”

Harlow was probably right about that, Matt thought. But he just nodded and said, “I’m glad I was here. You think it was Cimarron Kane and his kinfolks?”

Harlow rubbed his fingers across his stubbled jaw. “Well…I didn’t actually see Cimarron amongst ’em, mind you…but who else could it have been?”

Matt didn’t have an answer for that. He figured Cimarron Kane was to blame for this attack, whether the leader of the bloodthirsty clan had actually been part of it or not.

“Maybe we ought to think about takin’ the war to the Kanes,” he said. “Otherwise, all we can do is sit back and wait for them to hit you again.”

“You reckon? Maybe what happened today will convince ’em to leave us alone.”

Matt glanced at the blood spilled on the ground next to the barn and knew there wasn’t a chance in hell of that.

Chapter 20

Sam watched as Ambrose Porter, Calvin Bickford, and the other men drove the prison wagons into the shade of the trees along the creek at Cottonwood. Porter designated two deputies to stand guard over the wagons, while the others took the saddle mounts to the livery stable.

They would probably be surprised, Sam mused, if they knew they were turning their horses over to the man responsible for selling illegal liquor here in town.

Sam wasn’t just about to tell them, though, and he didn’t think that anyone else in the settlement would, either.

Porter and Bickford left the wagons and walked toward Main Street, carrying their rifles. As they came closer to Sam, Porter stopped short and frowned at him, suspicion etched deeply on the hawkish, sunburned face.

“Don’t I know you?” he snapped.

“We met yesterday,” Sam said. “Ten miles west of here where you blew up that cabin.”

Bickford grinned and said, “Oh, yeah, sure! Ambrose, this is that fella Two Wolves. Where’s your friend Bodine?”

“Tending to some business of his own,” Sam replied.

Bickford nodded at the badge pinned to Sam’s shirt. “You didn’t mention you were a lawman.”

“Wasn’t, then,” Sam replied with a shake of his head. “I just took the job of deputy to Marshal Coleman today.”

“Marshal Marshall Coleman,” Bickford said with a laugh. “A good man, from what I hear.”

“He is,” Sam said.

Porter said, “Stay out of our way.”

Sam frowned. “I wasn’t intending to—”

“Our authority supersedes yours,” Porter went on as if Sam hadn’t said anything. “If you try to interfere with us, you’ll be subject to the same treatment we’d give anyone selling or brewing illegal liquor.”

Sam tried to rein in his temper, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “You mean you’ll blow me up with a bomb, too?”

“Just give me an excuse,” Porter said between clenched teeth. Then he pushed past Sam, brushing him harder with a shoulder than he needed to.

Sam half turned to watch him go, then said to Bickford, who still stood there, “Is he like that with everybody?”

Bickford sighed. “I’m afraid Ambrose doesn’t have much patience with people. He’s very devoted to his job, you understand, and he can’t stand the idea of anything or anyone keeping him from doing it to his fullest.”

“If he keeps that up, somebody’s going to take offense and draw on him.”

Bickford shook his head. “It would be a real shame if that happened. Ambrose is pretty fast on the draw himself, you see. In fact, I’ve never come across anybody faster. I’m not sure even your friend Bodine could beat him.” The pudgy little special marshal brightened. “Luckily, we’ll never have to find out, because you and Bodine are law-abiding citizens, aren’t you, Sam?”

“We try to be,” Sam allowed.

“And now that you’re a fellow lawman, well, I’m sure there won’t be any trouble. In fact, if we need a hand while we’re here in town, we’ll be able to count on you, won’t we?”

Sam didn’t care for the question, but he had to nod. “Sure. How long do you plan to be here?”

“I suppose that’ll depend on what the doctor says about our prisoners. If he thinks they’re fit to travel, we’ll probably pull out later today and get started to Wichita. If not, I guess we’ll wait a few days and let them get stronger.”

Sam nodded again. He knew that Marshal Coleman wanted Bickford, Porter, and the others out of Cottonwood as soon as possible, so he hoped the doctor would say the prisoners were all right to travel now.

“Ambrose has gone to find the doctor,” Bickford went on. “We should know something soon.”

“It would be a good idea if you kept Marshal Coleman informed about what you’re doing.”

“Of course.” Bickford’s head bobbed up and down in a nod. “We always try to cooperate with the local law.”

Sam didn’t figure that Porter cooperated with anybody, but he didn’t say that.

“Say, did Coleman tell you to keep an eye on the wagons?” Bickford went on.

“That’s right.”

“It’s not necessary, you know. We always have at least two men standing guard.”

“Yes, I can see that, but since that’s what he told me to do…”

“Of course, of course. Wouldn’t want you to disobey orders, especially your first day on the job!” Bickford raised a hand in farewell. “Well, see you later. I’m going to go find a café and get a cup of coffee. Nothing like a hot cup of belly wash!”

The amiable little special marshal walked off toward Main Street. Sam moved into the shade of a cottonwood, leaned against a tree trunk, crossed his arms over his chest, and settled down to watch the wagons as Marshal Coleman had told him to do.

The moaning and cursing that came from inside the wagons brought a frown to Sam’s face after only a few minutes. Not so much the profanities, but the sounds of men in pain bothered him. He stood it for a while, but eventually he straightened from his casual pose against the tree and walked toward the wagons.

One of the guards saw him coming and stepped out to meet him. The man was rawboned and had a lantern jaw with dark stubble on it. He held a Winchester at a slant across his narrow chest.

“You best hold it right there, mister,” he warned as Sam came closer.

Sam stopped. “I’m a deputy, too.”

The man shook his head. “You ain’t a special deputy workin’ for the governor, like I am, so that means you ain’t squat as far as I’m concerned. Marshal Porter said nobody was to come around them prisoners, and that means nobody.”

“Sounds like some of them are in pretty bad shape.”

A leer stretched the guard’s thin-lipped mouth. “Never you mind about what kinda shape they’re in. They got what was comin’ to ’em, the damn moonshiners!”

“You never took a drink yourself?” Sam asked sharply.

The way the guard glared and then suddenly, furtively, ran his tongue over his lips told Sam that the man had indeed taken a drink in the past. He could have used one right now, in fact.

But then a stubborn expression came over the guard’s face, and he said, “That ain’t none o’ your business. Just back off, or when Marshal Porter gets here, I’ll tell him to arrest you, too!”

“Shouldn’t he have been back by now with the doctor?”

“That ain’t none o’ my concern.” The guard started to swing the muzzle of his rifle in Sam’s direction. “Now skedaddle, or—”

The face of one of the prisoners appeared in the small, barred window on the side of the lead wagon. The window was set so high that the man must have had to pull himself up somehow.

“Mister!” he cried in a wretched voice. “Mister, you gotta help us!”

The guard whipped around and yelled, “You get away from that window, you bastard!”

The prisoner was looking straight at Sam. “They’re gonna murder us! You gotta help!”

“I said shut up, damn you!” The guard lunged at the wagon. Sam followed and saw that the prisoner was holding on to the bars, supporting himself that way. Then the guard lashed out with his rifle, slamming the barrel against the bars and smashing the prisoner’s fingers. The man screeched in pain and dropped out of sight.

“You probably broke his fingers!” Sam exclaimed angrily.

The guard whirled toward him, snarling, “I told you to get the hell out—”

Sam’s patience had reached its limits. He reached out, took hold of the guard’s rifle, and plucked the weapon out of the man’s hands. Sam’s movements were so smooth and efficient that he didn’t even appear to be moving fast, but in reality, he had taken the guard’s rifle away before the man even knew what happened. When the guard let out an outraged howl and clawed at the revolver holstered on his hip, Sam swung the Winchester and caught the man on the side of the head with the stock, knocking him senseless to the ground.

“You sonuva—”

That angry shout came from the other guard, who was charging toward him. Sam dropped the rifle, pivoted lightly, and drew his Colt at the same time. The special deputy skidded to a shocked, frightened halt as he found himself staring down the rock-steady barrel of Sam’s revolver from a distance of about four feet.

“Whatever you were about to do, I’d advise you not to,” Sam said quietly.

The man’s prominent Adam’s apple jumped up and down as he swallowed. “Mister, you’re crazy! When Porter gets back here, he’ll throw you in one of those wagons!”

“He may try,” Sam said. Despite the fact that Matt was generally the more reckless and hotheaded of the pair, Sam had just as deep a reserve of outrage when he saw something happening that shouldn’t be. And when Sam Two Wolves finally lost his temper, as was about to happen here, he was every bit as much a man to stand aside from as Matt Bodine was.

He went on. “Put your rifle on the ground, and then put your pistol beside it.”

“I’m not givin’ up my guns,” the guard insisted. Sam had to give him credit for some courage. It took sand to refuse to follow orders when a fella was pointing a gun at your face from only a few feet away.

The standoff came to an end a couple of heartbeats later when Marshal Coleman roared, “What in blazes is goin’ on here?”

“Stand aside!” That was Ambrose Porter. “Stand aside, by God! I’m going to kill that man!”

“The hell you will! That’s my deputy!”

From the corner of his eye, Sam saw Coleman and Porter hurrying toward the wagons, trailed by a man in a dark suit who was probably Cottonwood’s doctor. Porter carried his rifle, and Coleman had drawn his handgun. It was a question now of who was going to shoot who.

But it seemed entirely likely that one way or another, in the next moment or two, bullets were going to fly.

Chapter 21

“Sam!” Marshal Coleman bellowed. “Put away that gun! That’s an order!”

“Marshal, you don’t understand—” Sam began.

“I understand that you pinned on that badge, and that means you do what I tell you, damn it! We’re all lawmen here. We don’t need to go around killin’ each other.”

Porter was so tightly strung that he quivered a little as he said, “That man is under arrest. I’m within my rights to kill him for assaulting a special officer and interfering with the performance of our duties.”

“Nobody’s gonna arrest anybody,” Coleman said, still trying to be the voice of reason. “I’m tellin’ you, this is all just a plain ol’ misunderstanding. Sam, holster that hogleg—now!”

Sam took a deep breath and lowered the Colt. He didn’t holster it, though. Instead, he held it down at his side, ready to use it. He wasn’t convinced that gunplay had been averted here.

Coleman moved so that he was between Sam and Porter. “Now, let’s try to get this straightened out,” he said.

“There’s nothing to straighten out.” Porter’s voice was as cold and hard as a glacier. “That man is under arrest. We’ll be taking him back to Wichita with us to face trial.”

“How about if I give you my word that he won’t bother you or any of your folks again while you’re here in Cottonwood? That I’ll keep him away from you?”

Sam felt a surge of anger at Coleman’s words, but he knew the marshal was just trying to head off more trouble. He clamped his jaw tightly shut so he wouldn’t say anything and just make the situation worse.

“You want me to close my eyes to a violation of the law?” Porter demanded. “You know I can’t do that. My God, man, my deputy was attacked!”

That so-called deputy was nothing but a hardcase, a hired gunman, Sam thought, and he couldn’t hold his anger in check any longer. “Doesn’t anybody want to know what actually happened here?” he asked.

Coleman glanced over his shoulder at Sam. “I sort of would, now that you mention it.”

Sam used his free hand to point at the deputy he had knocked senseless. “That man right there attacked one of the prisoners. A man inside this wagon had hold of the bars in the window and had pulled himself up so he could look out.”

“That’s a violation of the rules, right there,” Porter snapped. “Prisoners are to stay away from the windows. All those men know that.”

This time it was Sam’s turn to ignore Porter and act like the special marshal hadn’t said anything. “The guard slammed the barrel of his rifle against the bars and probably broke that hombre’s fingers.” Sam looked at the little, goateed man in the dark suit who had followed Coleman and Porter from town. “That’ll be something else for you to take a look at, Doc,” he said. Sam was sure of the man’s identity now, having spotted the black bag he was carrying.

“You can’t blame my deputy for enforcing the rules—” Porter began.

“But those are just your rules,” Coleman pointed out. “That’s not the same as a law. Sounds to me like your deputy assaulted the prisoner by whackin’ his hands that way, and my deputy was within his rights to stop an assault from going on in town.” Coleman paused. “The town limits go all the way to the creek, you know. This is still my jurisdiction, Marshal.”

“My authority supersedes yours,” Porter said, tight-lipped with rage.

“Actually, I’m not sure that it does,” Sam said. “It could be argued in court that your authority only pertains to the enforcement of the specific statue forbidding the brewing, sale, possession, or consumption of liquor and that you have no jurisdiction whatsoever over other crimes, such as the sort of simple assault that was carried out here by your deputy. In other words, Marshal Porter, it seems to me that Marshal Coleman could arrest your deputy and hold him on charges of assault and disturbing the peace until the circuit judge arrives in a couple of weeks to sort everything out.”

If Porter got any more red-faced, he was liable to bust a vein, Sam thought. Coleman turned all the way around to frown at his new deputy and ask, “Do you have any legal training, Sam? You sound a mite like a lawyer.”

Sam smiled faintly and shook his head. “I’ve done quite a bit of reading, that’s all.”

Porter growled in anger, literally growled like a dog. Then he said savagely, “The hell with this! Coleman, take your deputy and get out of here. If either one of you come around these wagons again, I won’t be held responsible for what happens.”

“Oh, I reckon you will,” Coleman said firmly. “You’ll be held accountable for your actions just like any other citizen would be, Marshal.”

Sam said, “I think we should stay while the doctor takes a look at those prisoners, just to make sure nothing else happens.”

Coleman shook his head. “No, I think it’ll be all right. Pouch that iron, Sam, and come with me.”

Sam hesitated. He didn’t trust Porter or the other special deputies. On the other hand, it was doubtful that they would try anything with the doctor around.

“A good lawman knows that he’s got to choose his battles, Sam,” Coleman said quietly.

Sam blew out a breath and nodded. He slid the Colt into leather and moved away from the wagon. Porter continued to glare murderously at him. Sam didn’t turn his back on the man until he and Coleman were well away from the wagons.

Then he said in an undertone, “You don’t know the whole story yet, Marshal. You don’t know what that prisoner was saying.”

“I know that we came damned close to having a really messy situation back there,” Coleman said.

“The prisoner claimed that Porter was going to murder all of them.”

Coleman glanced over sharply at him. “You sure about that? He said murder?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Well…that don’t hardly seem likely.” Coleman rubbed his jaw in thought. “Porter and those other hombres are lawmen, after all.”

“They’re more like regulators. Hired killers. Matt and I saw them blow up a cabin with a bomb yesterday, and they came mighty close to blowing up the men inside it, too. And it’s a long way to Wichita. Who knows what might happen between here and there, once they start in with the prisoners?”

Coleman shook his head stubbornly. “Nope, I just don’t believe it. Those boys in the wagons are facin’ prison terms, Sam. Of course they’ll say anything to try to get out of them. You can’t put too much stock in any claims they make.”

Coleman had a point there, Sam supposed. The prisoners were outlaws, at least in the eyes of the state of Kansas. And outlaws, generally, couldn’t be trusted.

There had been something in that man’s voice as he called from inside the wagon, though. Something that Sam had heard often enough to recognize.

Fear.

No, it was more than that, he decided as he remembered what the prisoner had sounded like. It was sheer terror, Sam thought, the sound a man makes when he knows that he’s going to die and his time is running out.

There was something more going on here, but Marshal Coleman either couldn’t or wouldn’t allow himself to see it. Coleman wanted to keep the peace in Cottonwood, and Sam couldn’t blame him for feeling that way. It was the marshal’s job, and Coleman had devoted his life to it.

But Sam knew he couldn’t just stand by and let all those prisoners be killed in cold blood. Even if they had been real outlaws instead of men who had just run afoul of an ill-advised law that was bound to be overturned sooner or later, he couldn’t countenance murder.

He didn’t want to put Marshal Coleman in a bad position, though, so anything he did, he would do on his own, without Coleman’s knowledge. Once he had reached that decision, Sam felt a little better.

When they got back to the marshal’s office, Coleman suggested, “Why don’t you stay here for a while, Sam? Coffee on the stove, help yourself. I’ll take a turn around town. I like for folks to be able to see that the law’s lookin’ out for ’em.”

What Coleman really wanted was for him to stay here and cool off after the confrontation with Porter, Sam knew, but he supposed that wasn’t really a bad idea. He nodded and said, “All right, Marshal.”

Anyway, this would give him a chance to think about what he was going to do about the situation. He knew how Matt would approach the problem: head on, with fists and even guns if necessary.

Sam wondered if a little subtlety might be more effective.

Coleman left the office. Sam poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the desk to ponder matters as he sipped the strong black brew.

He had been there maybe half an hour when the door opened and Hannah came in.

“Oh,” she said as she stopped just inside the door. “I was looking for my father—” Her eyes widened in surprise. “Is that a deputy’s badge you’re wearing, Sam?”

“Yep. Your father offered me the job this morning, and I said yes.”

“But…I didn’t think the town council was willing to hire any deputies.”

“He offered to pay me out of his own pocket.” Sam held up a hand as a concerned expression appeared on Hannah’s face. “Don’t worry. I told him he didn’t need to do that. I’m working for room and board only.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the door to the storage room. “The room is a cot back there, and I’m afraid the board is you, Miss Coleman.”

Hannah smiled. “I thought we were past that. My name is Hannah, Sam. So Dad promised you three square meals a day, did he?”

“His exact words, as a matter of fact,” Sam said with a grin. “I hope that won’t be too much trouble for you.”

“No trouble at all. I usually bring his lunch down here to the office. I’ll just bring enough for two. And you can eat breakfast and supper at the house with us.”

“I’m much obliged.”

“I’m the one who should be thanking you,” Hannah said. “Don’t tell him I said this, but the job has gotten to be too much for one man, especially one who’s getting on in years like Dad. The town is too big, and what with this new liquor law…” She shook her head. “There’s going to be real trouble one of these days, and I’d like to think there’ll be a good man siding him when it comes.”

Sam warned, “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay on here.”

Hannah shook her head. “You know how the air feels when there’s a thunderstorm brewing?”

Sam nodded. He knew exactly what she meant.

“Well, there’s a storm brewing here in Cottonwood,” she went on, “and I don’t think it’s going to be long before it breaks.”

Chapter 22

Hannah left the office, and Marshal Coleman came in a short time later. “I just talked to Doc Berger,” he said as he hung his hat on one of the nails by the door. “A couple of that fella’s fingers were broken, all right. Doc splinted ’em. He had a bullet wound in his leg, too.” Coleman’s voice took on a grim tone. “But he was in good shape compared to some of those other hombres.”

“I’m not surprised,” Sam said. He was at the stove, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “Not after the way I heard them groaning in those prison wagons.”

Coleman went behind the desk and sank into his chair. His movements held the bone-deep weariness that the years will give a man, especially when he’s burdened down with troubles besides growing old. “According to Doc,” he went on, “all the boys in that first wagon are shot up pretty bad. He wasn’t sure that some of them would make it, and they dang sure aren’t in any shape to be jolted all the way to Wichita. He told Porter and Bickford that they ought to bring the worst ones down to his house so he can tend to them better. Porter refused, though. Said the prisoners had to stay locked up. Doc told him that in any case they shouldn’t be moved for at least a week, and that if they were, it’d be the same as killin’ ’em.”

“So what’s Porter going to do?” Sam asked.

“He wanted to move on anyway, claimed those prisoners didn’t deserve any special consideration, but Bickford talked him into staying here for a few days and seeing how they’re doing then. That’s what Doc told me, anyway. I wasn’t there.”

Sam nodded. “And did the doctor find out anything about how those men came to be wounded so badly?”

“Porter wouldn’t let any of the prisoners say a word. He stood right over them with a gun while Doc was examining them and told them to keep their mouths shut.” Coleman grimaced. “I’m sure those fellas put up a fight when Porter and the others went to arrest ’em, and that’s how they got hurt, but I’m tellin’ you, Sam…I don’t like the way that fella goes about his business.”

“Neither do I. Maybe someone should write the governor a letter and make sure he knows how his special marshals are doing their jobs.”

Coleman nodded slowly. “Now, that’s not a bad idea. I reckon I could do that.” He chuckled. “Might need a hand gettin’ all the words right from somebody who’s had more book learning than I have. That would be you, Sam.”

“I’ll do whatever I can, Marshal,” Sam agreed.

But writing a letter to the governor wasn’t going to help those men who were locked up in the prison wagons right now, he thought. Even if the letter caused the governor to look into Porter’s activities, any investigation would come too late to do any good for those prisoners.

This wasn’t over yet, Sam vowed to himself. There were still truths to be uncovered.

The rest of the day passed quietly enough. Hannah brought lunch to the office for Sam and her father, as she had promised, and the food—savory ham, thick slices of bread, and a hefty piece of pie for each man—was good enough to make Sam think that he had gotten the best end of the deal when he’d agreed to work for room and board. Hannah’s cooking alone made it a worthwhile arrangement.

During the afternoon, Sam took a couple of turns around town to let people see him wearing the badge and get used to the idea that he was Coleman’s deputy. As Coleman told him to do, though, he kept his distance from the creek and the prison wagons parked under the cottonwood trees.

It wasn’t just a matter of following orders. Sam didn’t want to put Porter even more on his guard than the special marshal already was. If Porter thought he was getting his way, he was more likely to relax a little…although Sam didn’t figure that the stiff-necked son of a bitch ever really relaxed much.

Supper at the marshal’s house was every bit as good as lunch had been, if not better, and after Hannah refused Sam’s offer to help clean up, he and Coleman went out to sit on the porch and enjoy the evening air as they had done the previous night. The main difference was that Matt had been with them, then. Sam couldn’t help but wonder what his blood brother was doing out there at the Harlow place. He hoped Matt was all right.

“I got that letter to Governer St. John started,” Coleman said as he filled his pipe. “Left it on the desk in the office, if you’d care to take a look at it when you go back down there.”

“Sure, I’d be glad to,” Sam said with a nod. “Would you like me to make evening rounds?”

Coleman scratched a match into life on the sole of his boot and held the flame to the bowl of his pipe. When he had puffed until the tobacco was burning to suit him, he shook the match out and dropped it onto the porch.

“I’d sure appreciate that, son,” he said. “To tell you the truth, once I’ve had supper, it’s hard for me to rattle these old hocks of mine into much motion again.”

“Then don’t worry about it,” Sam told him. “I’ll make sure the town’s locked up tight.”

“Much obliged to you. Once you’ve done that, you can head back to the office and turn in. If those cousins of Cimarron Kane that we’ve got locked up make too much racket for you to sleep, toss a bucket of water on ’em. Maybe that’ll cool ’em off.”

“It probably won’t come to that,” Sam said. “They carry on so much they’re bound to be getting tired by now. Anyway, I just don’t pay any attention to them.”

“That’s smart.”

Earlier, while Sam and Coleman were both at the marshal’s office and jail, the owner of the local café had brought meals over for the prisoners. They didn’t get much to eat—the town’s budget wouldn’t allow for that, according to the tight-fisted town councilmen—but the prisoners were fed well enough that they wouldn’t starve while they were locked up.

Having the three of them in jail was yet another worry. Sam knew that he and Coleman couldn’t forget about the possibility that Cimarron Kane and some of his hard-bitten relatives might come into town and try to spring Dud, Nelse, and Wiley Kane. As Sam thought about that, he was glad that he had agreed to pin on the deputy’s badge. Caught between two sets of troubles—the Kanes on one side, Porter and the other special lawmen on the other—Coleman would have had a hard job dealing with both.

He’d feel better about things if Matt were here, too, Sam mused, but he was practical enough to deal with a situation the way it was, not the way he wished it might be.

Hannah came out onto the porch and sat down next to her father. Sam was on the steps with the shaggy little mutt Lobo nuzzling his hand.

“It’s a beautiful evening,” Hannah said as she began to move the rocking chair back and forth a little.

“Sure is,” her father agreed.

“That was a wonderful meal, Hannah,” Sam told her.

“Thank you. I do my best.”

The small talk continued for a while. Then Sam stood up and stretched. “I guess I’d better get going.”

“Sam’s going to make the evening rounds so I won’t have to,” Coleman explained.

“Good,” Hannah said. “You work too hard, Dad. It’s about time you took life a little easier.”

She seemed to think that he was going to stay on here permanently, Sam thought, even though he had told her earlier in the day that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe she thought she could change his mind.

Maybe she could, he told himself suddenly. He and Matt had never discussed what they would do when the time came for them to finally settle down. Sam had sort of assumed they would return to their ranches in Montana.

But it didn’t have to be that way. He could sell his ranch to Matt. If the two spreads were combined, the result would be one of the biggest and best ranches on the northern plains. Sam could stay here and marry Hannah, maybe take over as marshal when Coleman hung up his gun and retired…

Sam’s jaw tightened. He was human. He couldn’t stop such thoughts from stealing into his brain, but he didn’t have to go along with them, either. He needed to concentrate on now, not the future, and right now he wanted to find out if there was any truth to what that prisoner had said about Porter planning to murder them.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Marshal,” he said. “Good night, Hannah.”

“Good night, Sam.” Her voice was soft and sweet, no denying it. The sort of voice a man could enjoy hearing every day for the rest of his life.

Sam shook that thought out of his head as he went down the walk to the street.

He made the rounds of Cottonwood’s business district, rattling doorknobs on the buildings that were already locked up for the night, as well as checking in at the ones that were still open, like the café, Pete Hilliard’s mercantile, and the livery stable.

Ike Loomis regarded him nervously. “I heard you was a deputy now, Two Wolves,” he said. “That gonna cause a problem?”

Sam knew the man was worried about what he’d told the blood brothers the night before. He put Loomis’s mind at ease by saying, “Anything I learned last night was before I pinned on a badge. I don’t see what one thing has to do with the other.”

Loomis heaved a sigh. “Mighty decent of you to look at it that way, son. I wouldn’t want Marsh Coleman put in a bad spot.”

“Neither would I.” Sam knew he was bending the law by ignoring Loomis’s hidden saloon, but he honestly didn’t see what good it would do to reveal the secret. Anyway, it was possible that Coleman was already aware of the saloon and was turning a blind eye to it on purpose.

“You know,” Loomis said, “if you was to ever…naw, never mind.”

Sam stiffened. “What were you about to say, Mr. Loomis?”

“I was about to offer you a payoff for lookin’ the other way, son,” Loomis answered bluntly. “Then I realize that’d be the wrong thing to do.”

“It sure would,” Sam agreed. “I’m doing this because the marshal has enough trouble on his plate right now without worrying about anything else. If things settle down, things may be different.”

“Reckon we’ll have to wait and see.”

“Exactly.”

Sam left the livery stable and walked to the hotel. Earlier he had moved all of his gear out of the rented room and taken it over to the marshal’s office, stowing it in the back room where he would sleep. As he came in now, he gave the clerk a friendly nod. The man’s name was Herman, Sam had learned.

“Evening, Herman,” he said. “Are Marshal Porter and Marshal Bickford in their rooms?”

The clerk glanced at the rack of keys behind the desk. “Yep, looks like it. You need to see them?”

Sam shook his head. “No, I’m just making sure they’re settled in for the night. Part of my evening rounds for Marshal Coleman, I guess you could say. Making sure the town’s special guests don’t need anything.”

Herman made a face. “That Marshal Porter is about the unfriendliest gent I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I don’t see how Marshal Bickford puts up with him. But they’re both fine as far as I know. Had their supper, went down to the creek to check on their prisoners, and came back and turned in. Those deputies of theirs are upstairs in their rooms, too.”

“All of them?” Sam asked.

“Well, all but a couple.”

That came as no surprise. Sam hadn’t expected Porter to leave the prison wagons unguarded, but it looked like the special marshal had been satisfied with posting only two sentries, as he had done during the day.

“I’m glad Marshal Coleman’s got himself some help at last,” Herman went on. “He’s done a bang-up job of keeping the peace here in Cottonwood, but the way things are going, what with these new laws and that gunman Cimarron Kane hanging around, I’m afraid hell’s liable to start popping around here. You don’t think you could talk Mr. Bodine into signing on as a deputy, too, do you?”

“Matt’s not in town right now, but we’ll see,” Sam replied noncommittally.

“If Porter or Bickford come downstairs, you want me to tell them you were asking about them?”

Sam shook his head. “No need for that. Just pretend that I wasn’t here, Herman.”

The clerk grinned. “You got it, Sam.”

Leaving the hotel, Sam paused on the porch. Cottonwood was quiet at the moment, but as Hannah had said that morning, an uneasy air hung over the town, a sense that something bad was going to happen, and soon.

Sam pushed that thought out of his head. He turned and started toward the marshal’s office. After a few steps, he passed the dark mouth of an alley.

One second he was there, the next he was gone. As if he had vanished by magic, Sam Two Wolves had disappeared into the shadows, becoming one with the night.

Chapter 23

The four wagons were parked in a line along the creek bank, separated by the spaces where the mule teams had been when they were pulled up there. One of the guards sat on the tongue of the fourth wagon, smoking a quirly. The other paced back and forth beside the lead wagon where the wounded prisoners were. He was probably moving around to fight off boredom and to help keep himself awake, Sam thought as he stood in the shadows of a nearby cottonwood and watched them.

It was dark here along the creek, under the trees, but Sam’s eyes were almost as keen as a cat’s. The light from the moon and stars that filtered down through the leafy branches was enough for him to make out the details of the scene. He waited until the pacing guard swung around, facing away from him, and then darted out of concealment long enough to circle the fourth wagon and approach the smoking guard from behind.

The man had no idea Sam was there. Sam could have killed him with no trouble at all, driving the bowie knife that was sheathed on his hip into the guard’s back and piercing his heart with the cold steel.

Sam wasn’t here tonight to kill, though. He was just after information. When he struck, his hands were empty of weapons. His left arm went around the man’s neck with the speed of a striking snake, closing hard and jerking the guard backward off the wagon tongue. The man never had a chance to make a sound.

The guard’s rifle fell to the ground. Sam reached down with his right hand and plucked the man’s revolver from its holster. The man continued to flail and writhe, but he was weakening rapidly from lack of air and his struggles were almost soundless. The groans of wounded men coming from the lead wagon would keep the guard up there from hearing anything.

After a couple of minutes, the man Sam had hold of slumped into unconsciousness. Sam lowered him to the ground, pulled the man’s belt off, and used it to tie his hands together behind his back.

The man had dropped his quirly when Sam grabbed him. The end of it still glowed redly on the ground. Sam put his boot toe on it and stubbed it out.

The other guard was too alert to sneak up on like that. Sam wouldn’t be able to take him by surprise as he had with this one. In such a case, the best course of action was usually to be bold. Sam walked toward the lead wagon like he was supposed to be there.

The man heard him coming and stopped pacing, swinging around to ask, “Something wrong, Hendrickson?”

“Yeah,” Sam grunted as another step carried him closer. “A lot.”

The other man suddenly exclaimed, “Hey, you’re not—” But Sam had closed the gap by the time the words left the man’s mouth. The next instant, a pile-driver punch exploded in the guard’s face. The blow drove him back against the side of the wagon. The back of his head struck it with a solid thump. Sam was ready to hit him again, but the man fell to his knees and then toppled over on his side. The double impact had knocked him out.

The sound of the guard’s head hitting the wall silenced the miserable noises coming from inside the wagon. Sam bent down to make sure that the man he’d hit was really unconscious, then stepped up on the hub of the wagon’s front wheel. That brought him high enough so that he could reach up with one hand and grasp a bar in the window. He held himself there and called softly through the opening, “Hey! Inside the wagon!”

He heard someone moving around on the other side of the wall. Then he saw a white blur appear in the window, and knew that one of the men had pulled himself up there to look out, like earlier in the day.

“Who…who are you, mister? You ain’t one of the guards.”

“No, I’m not,” Sam replied. “They’re both unconscious, so you don’t have to worry about them. My name is Sam Two Wolves. I’m a deputy marshal here in Cottonwood.”

“You’re not one of them?”

“If you mean, do I work for Porter and Bickford, no, not at all. I’m the one who was out here earlier. One of you called out to me for help and said that Porter was planning to murder you. Well, I’m here now. Tell me your story.”

“Oh, Lord, mister.” The man’s voice shook from pain, fatigue, fear…maybe all of that and more. “That was me. You gotta help us. Most of the fellas in here are all shot to pieces. They ain’t gonna make it if they don’t get help.”

“The doctor came to see you.”

“I know, but Porter wouldn’t let him take the boys with him who are in the worst shape. They’re gonna die.” A hollow laugh came from the man. “I don’t reckon it really matters, though. We’re all gonna die, because we didn’t have the money to pay Porter and Bickford.”

Even in Sam’s awkward position, balanced on the wheel hub and hanging on to the bar in the window, he stiffened in surprise. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Pay Porter and Bickford to do what?”

“Why, to spare our lives, of course. The way the others did.”

“What others?”

“The ones they let go. The ones who paid them off.”

Sam’s breath hissed between his teeth in surprise. “You mean they haven’t been arresting everyone they find with liquor?”

“Oh, they arrest those folks, all right, but they turn loose the ones who can come up with enough money. And not everybody they arrest is brewin’ moonshine, neither, or even drinkin’ the stuff. Some of these fellas are just farmers who didn’t have a drop of booze on their land, or pilgrims who were unlucky enough to cross trails with this bunch. That’s how most of the fellas in here got hurt, fightin’ back against bein’ arrested for something they didn’t do.”

“That’s loco,” Sam muttered. “Porter and Bickford are special marshals. They’re not supposed to arrest anyone who hasn’t broken that new liquor law.”

The prisoner at the window laughed grimly. “They can call themselves special marshals, and the governor may think they’re enforcin’ the law, but they’re crooks, Deputy, plain and simple. They’re just out for what they can get.”

“They’ll never get away with it,” Sam insisted. “When it comes out that they’ve been arresting people who weren’t breaking the liquor law and accepting payoffs to let prisoners go…”

His voice trailed off into a grim silence, which the man in the wagon broke a moment later by saying, “Yeah, that’s why all of us will get killed tryin’ to escape before we ever get to Wichita. They’ve done it before. Bickford bragged about it. They’ll haul in our carcasses and hold ’em up to show what a fine job they’re doin’ of protectin’ the state from bootleg whiskey. Then that damn fool governor will pat ’em on the heads and send ’em back out to do it again.”

Sam felt a chill go down his spine. While it was possible that the prisoner was lying to him, the man’s voice held utter conviction. And the scheme could certainly work the way the man described it.

“You say Marshal Bickford knows about this?”

“Knows about it, hell! It was his idea.”

So the jovial, friendly little man was actually the architect of this bloody plan. Sam found that a little hard to believe, but the man in the wagon sounded like he was telling the truth.

“Porter said we’d pull out in the morning,” the prisoner went on. “Some of the fellas in here are hurt so bad they won’t make it until sundown. The ones who don’t die over the next few days will be taken out of the wagons before we get to Wichita. They’ll turn us loose and make us run for it, then shoot us down like dogs. Then they can load our bodies back into the wagons and tote ’em into town like prizes.”

“Can you prove any of this?” Sam asked.

“You can talk to the rest of the prisoners. They’ll all tell you the same story.”

And that story might be a lie they had worked out, Sam thought. Outlaws couldn’t be trusted, and no matter how much he disliked Ambrose Porter, it was hard to believe such a monstrous scheme was real.

Still, this had to be looked into. The wagons couldn’t be allowed to leave Cottonwood until he and Marshal Coleman had talked to the other prisoners. That meant he needed to go to Coleman’s house right now and bring the lawman back here. At the very least, they could insist that the most severely wounded men be taken to Dr. Berger’s house so they could be looked after properly.

“Wait there,” he told the man on the other side of the bars.

The prisoner laughed. “Where am I gonna go, Deputy? I’m standin’ on a slops bucket inside a prison wagon.”

“I’m going to get Marshal Coleman, and we’ll get to the bottom of this. If you’re telling me the truth, we’ll do something about Porter and Bickford.”

“What can you do? They’ve got ten men workin’ for them, and those two are stone-cold killers themselves. I saw Bickford shoot a man in the back of the head the other day for cussin’ him, and Porter’s even more of a madman.”

Those were bad odds, all right, but maybe he and Coleman could take the special marshals by surprise while they slept in their hotel rooms, Sam thought. If they could capture the men one by one without alerting the others, they would stand a chance.

“Don’t worry, we’ll figure out something,” Sam said. He let go of the bar in the window and jumped down backward from the wagon wheel.

He had just landed on the ground and caught his balance when a ring of cold, hard steel pressed against the back of his neck, under the long, raven-black hair. Calvin Bickford said in a regretful voice, “Don’t move, Sam, or I’ll have to kill you.”

Chapter 24

Sam froze, mentally chiding himself for letting Bickford slip up on him unnoticed. He had been concentrating on what the prisoner inside the wagon was telling him. It was possible, too, that Bickford was capable of more stealth than should have been possible, considering his appearance.

“Marshal Bickford, is that you?” Sam asked as the wheels of his brain spun swiftly. “It looks like someone attacked your guards and knocked them out. I just came down here to check on the wagons—”

Bickford’s chuckle interrupted him. “Nice try, Sam,” the man said, “but I’ve been over there under that tree for the last few minutes, listening while that varmint inside the wagon spun that crazy yarn. It’s a good thing I decided to come down here and check on things before I turned in for the night.”

“Yeah, that story is crazy, isn’t it?” Sam agreed. “I didn’t believe him, of course.”

“Well, see…I don’t believe you. I heard you tell him that you and Marshal Coleman were going to talk to all the prisoners, and we can’t have that.”

“I was just going along with what he said—” Sam began.

The gun muzzle pressed harder against the back of his neck as Bickford plucked Sam’s gun from its holster. His voice had lost all its jovial affability as he said, “Shut up, you damned redskin. You think I’m gonna take any chances on a sweet deal like this getting ruined?”

“You admit it, then? You’ve been taking bribes and murdering the prisoners who won’t pay up?”

“You know how much money I’ve made in my whole career as a lawman, half-breed? Not as much as I’ve made in the past few months as a special marshal. And that’s with splitting the take with Porter and paying off those hardcases we hired as deputies, too.” Bickford paused. “I’d be a damned fool to give that up. I won’t give it up. All I’ve got to do is figure out a way to kill you and make it look like one of these prisoners did it.”

“You can’t get away with that,” Sam told him.

“I don’t see why the hell not. Those guards you knocked out probably never saw you. They’re still out cold, and they don’t know what happened. Nobody will ever get a chance to talk to the other prisoners, at least not without Porter and me being right there to make sure they keep their mouths shut, so we’re in the clear there. I’ll shoot you, then get one of those bastards out of the wagon and kill him, too. When I put a gun in his hand, it’ll look like he broke out, knocked out the two guards, and then shot you when you came along and interrupted his escape, but not in time to keep you from shooting him. Nobody’s gonna question a story like that.”

“Marshal Coleman might.”

“Even if he does, he won’t be able to prove a thing,” Bickford insisted blandly.

Sam thought desperately, searching for a way out of this. He could move with blinding speed when he needed to, but he wasn’t sure he could twist away from the gun fast enough to keep Bickford from pulling the trigger and putting a bullet in his brain. He needed something to distract Bickford…

“You’re not as smart as you think you are, Marshal,” he said. “If you shoot me and then take the time to unlock the wagon and force one of those wounded prisoners out at gunpoint so you can kill him, too, there’ll be too big a gap between the shots. As close as we are to town, somebody’s bound to hear the shots and remember how far apart they were. They might even come down here to see what was going on before you’d have a chance to gun down the prisoner and frame him for killing me.”

Bickford didn’t say anything for a long moment, and Sam could almost see the frown that creased the man’s forehead as he pondered what Sam had just said.

“Maybe you got a point there,” Bickford finally admitted. “Come on. Back up. We’ll unlock the wagon and get the prisoner out of there first.”

Sam had hoped that Bickford would take the gun away from his neck and step to the rear of the wagon to unlock the door. That would have given Sam a chance to turn the tables on him. Instead, Bickford kept the revolver pressed against his neck and forced him to back to the rear of the wagon.

“All right, swing around, but stay facing away from me,” Bickford ordered when they got there. “If I feel even a muscle tremble, I’ll pull the trigger and take my chances. I mean it, Sam.”

“I know you do,” Sam said. There was no doubt in his mind now that Bickford was a cold-blooded murderer.

He heard keys rattle and knew Bickford was trying to unlock the door and keep an eye on him at the same time. That might be enough of a distraction for him to risk making a move.

But Bickford was more deft than Sam expected him to be. The heavy padlock on the door clicked open, and Sam heard the door’s hinges squeal a little as it swung open.

“You,” Bickford said. “Barnabas, or whatever the hell your name is. Get out here.”

“I…I’m hurt, Marshal,” came the response from inside the wagon, in the voice belonging to the man Sam had been talking to only moments earlier. “I don’t reckon I can make it.”

“Sure you can. Come on out, or I’ll put a bullet in your knee and drag you out.”

“You’re just gonna kill me anyway,” Barnabas said defiantly. “I heard what you told that fella. Why should I cooperate?”

“Because you can die quick, or you can die in a hell of a lot of pain. It’s up to you.”

After a brief moment, Barnabas sighed. “All right. I’m comin’ out.”

Sam heard the man’s scraping, hesitant footsteps and knew that he was running out of time. He had to make his move…

Then suddenly, he heard a splash and Bickford cried out. Sam acted instantly, spinning away from the gun muzzle pressed against his neck. Bickford must have jerked the trigger in reaction to whatever had just happened to him, because the revolver blasted, the shot coming so close to Sam that the explosion slammed his ear like a fist and he felt the sting of burning particles of gunpowder against the side of his face. The bullet itself missed, though, and that was all that really mattered.

A stench filled the air, a foul mixture of human waste and burned powder. As Sam whirled around, he saw Bickford stumbling around and pawing at his face. The man who stood in the door to the prison wagon held a wooden bucket in his hand, and when Sam saw that, he knew that Barnabas must have thrown the contents of the slops bucket into Bickford’s face.

“Bucket!” Sam called.

Barnabas tossed it to him over Bickford’s head. Sam caught it by the handle and swung it. At the same time, Bickford jerked his gun up and fired again, aiming blindly this time at the sound of Sam’s voice. The slug whipped past Sam’s ear just as the bucket in his hand crashed against the side of Bickford’s head.

The impact of the blow from the heavy bucket drove Bickford off his feet. Sam kicked the gun out of his hand, feeling a twinge of satisfaction at the sound of breaking bones he heard as the toe of his boot slammed into Bickford’s wrist. The pistol flew from Bickford’s fingers and sailed off into the darkness as Bickford howled in pain.

Sam reached down, grabbed the lapels of Bickford’s coat, and hauled the smaller man upright again. He smashed Bickford against the side of the wagon twice, then let go of him and allowed Bickford to fall forward on his face. The crooked marshal didn’t move, just lay there in the grass groaning softly.

The prisoner called Barnabas had come down onto the steps attached to the back of the wagon. “Is he dead?” he asked.

“No,” Sam said as he bent and picked up his own Colt, which he had spotted on the ground where Bickford had dropped it. “Get back inside,” he added.

“What?” Barnabas sounded like he couldn’t believe it. “I just saved your life, Deputy.”

“Yes, but you’re still a prisoner until we get this all sorted out,” Sam snapped as he lifted the gun to cover Barnabas. “Besides, those shots are liable to bring Porter and the rest of those gunmen down here, and you’ll be safer in there with the door closed. Those walls are thick enough to stop most bullets.”

“That’s true,” Barnabas admitted. He reached for the door to pull it closed after him as he retreated into the wagon. “Just don’t forget we’re in here! And don’t get yourself killed before you can get us out!”

“Do my best,” Sam muttered. He still had to deal with Ambrose Porter and the other eight deputies, and those were bad odds.

But he suspected that Marshal Coleman would have heard the shots, too, and would be coming to investigate. Coleman might unwittingly plunge right into a hornets’ nest. Once Porter realized that Sam was on to their scheme, he would have to eliminate any possible witnesses.

The whole town might be in danger, Sam realized as an icy finger traced a trail down his spine. Porter might try to slaughter all the citizens and then burn Cottonwood to the ground to cover up the massacre.

Surprise was the only thing Sam had going for him, and considering the odds, that was going to be only a slight advantage.

He picked up Bickford’s pistol and tucked it behind his belt, then found the rifle that the guard on the lead wagon had dropped. Armed for bear now, Sam retreated behind the wagon and peered around the end of the vehicle, waiting to see what was going to happen.

He didn’t have to wait long. Heavy, hurrying footsteps thudded on the ground, and Ambrose Porter ran through the trees and up to the creek, trailed by several of the deputies. At least all of them hadn’t come with Porter, Sam thought. Porter must not have been able to find the others, who could have been playing cards at the hotel, eating at the café, or involved in some other activity that kept Porter from locating them easily. So the odds were only six to one. Right now, Sam would take any stroke of luck he could get, even that.

“Bickford!” Porter called as he spotted his partner’s body lying on the ground. “What the hell?”

Dropping to a knee, Porter grabbed Bickford’s shoulder and rolled the man onto his back. He recoiled at the smell that drifted up from Bickford’s clothes.

“What in damnation happened here?” Sam heard Porter mutter. Then the man straightened and turned toward the wagon.

Sam realized too late that even though Barnabas had closed the door, he had neglected to replace the padlock, so Porter knew right away the door had been opened. Sam saw Porter stiffen with that realization. Then Porter said to the deputies, “Get ready. We may have to kill all the prisoners.”

Before Sam would stand by and let that happen, he would take his chances and shoot it out with Porter and the other men. He tightened his grip on the Winchester and tensed his muscles, ready to leap out into the open and start firing.

A second later, the thunderous roar of gunshots filled the night—but they didn’t come from Sam Two Wolves, Ambrose Porter, or any of the crooked deputies.

Instead, it sounded like a small but intense war had just broken out in the streets of Cottonwood.

Chapter 25

“I don’t like it,” Frankie Harlow said with a frown on her pretty face. “I don’t like it one damned bit.”

It didn’t surprise Matt that Frankie felt that way. But her reaction to his plan wasn’t going to change his mind, either.

“This is just a scouting expedition,” he told her as he tightened the cinch on his saddle. “I just want to get the lay of the land on the Kane place tonight. If there’s any action, it’ll be later on, and maybe you can get in on it.”

Thurman Harlow had followed the two of them into the barn after supper. He spoke up now, saying, “I ain’t so sure that’s a good idea, Frankie. You run too many risks already. You ought to let me and the boys and Mr. Bodine take care of Cimarron Kane and those pesky kinfolks of his.”

Frankie gave a defiant shake of her head. “You may need an extra rifle, and you know I’m a good shot, Pa.”

“Yeah, there ain’t no denyin’ that,” Harlow conceded grudgingly. He turned to Matt. “You say you’re just gonna have a look around tonight?”

Matt nodded. “That’s right. If we’re gonna hit Kane, we need to plan it out first and figure out the best way to go about it. Since his bunch outnumbers us, we’ll have to grab hold of every advantage we can find.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Harlow said.

“It makes even more sense for you to take me with you,” Frankie added to Matt. “What if you can’t find Kane’s spread? I can take you right to it.”

“You gave me good directions,” Matt reminded her. They’d had a long talk over supper about how to get to the Kane ranch from the Harlow farm.

Frankie glared at him and said, “If I’d known you were going to leave me behind, I might not have told you as much.”

Matt had his horse ready to ride. He smiled at Frankie and her father and told them, “Don’t wait up for me. I don’t know when I’ll be back. If I run into any trouble, it may take me longer.”

“If you run into any trouble, you could wind up dead,” Frankie pointed out.

“I don’t intend to let that happen.”

“You’d damned well better not.”

With that, Frankie stepped closer to Matt, reached up and put her hand on the back of his neck, and pulled his head down a little so that she could press her mouth to his. She had taken Matt by surprise, but he didn’t try to pull away.

After a moment, Thurman Harlow said dryly, “Don’t mind me or nothin’. I’m just the girl’s pa, is all.”

Frankie broke the kiss, pulling away from Matt as she said, “Sorry you had to see that, Pa, but I was damned if I was gonna let Bodine ride away without giving him a proper good-bye.”

Harlow held out his hand to Matt. “I’ll just shake and wish you luck, if that’s all right with you.”

Matt smiled as he gripped the man’s hand. “I’m obliged for it,” he said. “Before this night’s over, I’m liable to need all the luck I can get.”

He gripped the saddle horn and swung up onto the stallion’s back. As he turned the horse to ride out of the barn, he lifted a hand in farewell to Frankie and her father. They returned the wave. Matt glanced back as he left the barn, and saw the two figures standing there in the lantern light. Harlow put an arm around his daughter’s shoulders and squeezed. Matt wasn’t sure if the man was trying to comfort her—or holding on to her to keep her from jumping onto a horse and following him.

Following the attack that morning, the rest of the day had passed quietly. Matt had spent most of it riding in a wide circle around the Harlow farm, borrowing one of their horses to do so because he wanted to keep his stallion fresh. It was already in the back of his mind to go on the offensive against Cimarron Kane, and he knew that to do so he would have to have more information about the enemy’s stronghold. After getting directions to the Kane ranch at supper, he had announced his intention of taking a ride up there.

A thin sliver of moon hung in the eastern sky. Down in Texas they would call that a Comanche moon, Matt mused, because it didn’t give off much light and the thicker darkness would conceal the movements of Comanche raiders as they slipped up on some unsuspecting homestead.

The darkness tonight in Kansas would serve to conceal him as he approached the Kane ranch. He didn’t know if he could move as quietly as a Comanche, but when it came to stealth, he’d had a mighty good half-Cheyenne teacher in Sam Two Wolves.

Matt came to the main trail, which was a thin silver ribbon in the faint light from the moon and stars. He crossed it and continued north. The Kane spread was another two or three miles in that direction.

The boundless prairie didn’t offer many landmarks, especially ones that could be made out easily on a dark night such as this one. Because of that, Matt had to proceed carefully. He didn’t want to ride right up to the house without seeing it until he was practically on top of it. If he did that, the Kanes would hear his horse coming and be ready for him. He had a feeling that a proddy bunch like that might shoot first and ask questions later if they had an unknown visitor after dark.

He came to a dry wash. Frankie had said that the Kane place was half a mile north of that wash. Matt reined in and dismounted. He found the place Frankie had told him about where the banks of the wash had caved in enough for him to lead his horse into and back out of it. He didn’t mount up again but instead went forward on foot, knowing that the hoofbeats of a horse and rider could carry a long way out here on the plains.

A few minutes later, he spotted the yellow glow of a lighted window several hundred yards ahead of him. He stopped and looked around until he found a scrubby bush sturdy enough for him to tie his horse’s reins to it. Then he started toward the light, moving at a careful walk.

Matt was still about a hundred yards away from the house, too far to make out any real details about it, when dark shapes began cutting between him and the light. Men were moving around up there for some reason. He stopped in his tracks and waited to see what was going to happen.

The sound of voices drifted to him through the night air. One of them was particularly harsh and compelling as it shouted what must have been orders. That was probably Cimarron Kane, Matt thought, although he had no way of knowing if that guess was correct. After a few moments, he heard hoofbeats as well. It sounded like a large number of horses milled around for a minute or so and then took off toward the southeast, the pounding of their hooves rolling across the prairie like the sound of distant drums.

Matt stood there for a second or two, thinking furiously. Cottonwood was southeast of here, and other than the settlement, Matt couldn’t think of anywhere else those riders would be going.

And when a group of horsemen that big started moving around at night, usually they were up to no good.

He turned and ran back to where he had left his own horse. Jerking the reins free, he bounded into the saddle and headed the stallion southeast at a run. The riders he had heard had been moving fast, and Matt didn’t want them to get too far ahead of him.

Of course, he also had to be careful about getting too close to them. He slowed his mount from time to time and listened intently until he picked up the sound of hoofbeats, telling him that he was on the right trail.

The stars told him they were still headed southeast. After half an hour or so, Matt spotted more lights up ahead and knew that they came from Cottonwood. He had no doubt now that the town was their destination.

He could think of only one reason for Cimarron Kane to be paying a visit to the settlement with a number of his hardcase relatives backing him up. Kane was going to set free the prisoners in Marshal Coleman’s jail. He had to be planning on busting them out. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have waited until after dark like this.

Matt didn’t know exactly how many men Kane had with him, but it was certain they would outnumber Coleman and possibly Sam. The marshal wouldn’t stand a chance against a bunch of gun-hung hombres like that if it came down to a fight. Maybe Coleman and Sam could fort up inside the jail and try to hold them off, but eventually Kane and the others would bust in and overwhelm them.

Sam and Coleman were going to have an unexpected ally, though, Matt thought as a grim smile tugged at his mouth. And it was going to be an even bigger surprise for Cimarron Kane when Matt Bodine took a hand in this fight.

The lights of the settlement drew steadily closer. Matt held the stallion to a walk now, once again listening intently for any sounds in the night. Would Kane and his companions charge the marshal’s office and jail in a head-on attack, he wondered, or would Kane try to be sneaky about it and slip up on the building without anybody noticing?

Matt didn’t hear the horses moving ahead of him anymore. That meant Kane’s bunch had stopped. Matt reined to a halt as well. A moment later he heard a couple of horses jogging easily toward the settlement. That brought a frown to his face as he thought about what it might mean.

It would be easier for Kane and the others to free their cousins if they didn’t have to lay siege to the jail, Matt decided. In order to accomplish that, their best bet would be to catch Marshal Coleman and Sam outside the building and deal with them there. They could do that by staging some sort of distraction that would draw Sam and Coleman into the open. A brawl, say, or maybe even a gunfight. Something like that would make a mighty good distraction.

No sooner had that thought crossed Matt’s mind than he heard a shot, followed a couple of seconds later by another one. The shots made him stiffen in the saddle. They sounded like they came from the same gun, and they had been fired from somewhere along the southern edge of town, down by the creek. That couldn’t be Kane’s men, Matt thought. They hadn’t had time to reach the creek, and anyway, they were after the prisoners in Marshal Coleman’s jail. This gunfire had to signify some other trouble.

But Cimarron Kane was fast to take advantage of it. A distraction was a distraction, whether he had staged it or not. Matt heard a yell and a sudden swift flurry of hoofbeats and knew that Kane and his men were attacking the town.

He jabbed his heels into the stallion’s flanks and sent the horse galloping after them. As he rode hard, he leaned forward in the saddle and drew his right-hand Colt.

Whatever this ruckus turned out to be, Matt Bodine intended to be right in the middle of it.

Chapter 26

At the sound of the shots from town, Ambrose Porter snatched his pistol from its holster and spun in that direction. “Jenkins! Mahaffey!” he barked. “Stay here and guard these wagons! Whatever you do, don’t let anyone come near them. The rest of you, come with me!”

As he issued the orders, he grabbed the padlock from where it hung in the open hasp, slapped the hasp closed, and clicked the padlock shut. Then he took off at a run toward Cottonwood’s main street with the deputies trailing behind him, except for the two men he’d left with the wagons.

As Sam watched from his hiding place behind the lead wagon, he was a little surprised by Porter’s swift reaction. That was the way a real lawman would have acted when he heard trouble breaking out, Sam thought. Porter had no reason to care what happened to Cottonwood and its citizens.

Or maybe he did, Sam realized. For all Porter knew, some of the prisoners had escaped from the unlocked wagon. They could have gone into town, found Marshal Coleman, and told him all about the murder and bribery scheme. The shooting could mean that Coleman was trying to arrest the deputies Porter hadn’t brought with him to the creek. Porter had to find out exactly what all that commotion was about.

There was still a lot of gunfire going on. As Sam stepped out from behind the wagon, he saw orange muzzle flashes winking in the night around the settlement’s buildings.

The two men Porter had left behind were watching the town, too, their attention drawn by the shooting. That was their mistake. Moving with the speed and silence of a striking panther, Sam smashed the brass butt plate of the rifle he carried into the back of one deputy’s head. The blow drove the man forward to land in a senseless sprawl, out cold.

The other deputy had time to yell in surprise and make a grab for the gun on his hip. Sam swung the rifle one-handed and used the barrel as a club this time. It landed against the man’s skull with a solid thud. The second deputy folded up, unconscious just like his companion.

Sam started toward Cottonwood, but he had taken only a single step when a voice called urgently from the wagon. It belonged to Barnabas, who must have pulled himself up to the window and watched as Sam knocked out the two guards.

“Hey! Deputy! Porter locked us in here! Come back and let us out!”

Sam turned to look back at the vehicle. “Just stay there,” he told Barnabas. “I’ll come back later and see about you turning you loose.”

“But Porter and Bickford are murderin’ crooks! You know that now!”

“You’re safer in there!” Sam said again as he broke into a trot toward town. “I’ll be back!”

Despite everything that had happened, he still didn’t know for sure which of the men locked up in the wagons were actually innocent of any lawbreaking, if indeed any of them were. It was better to leave them right where they were, and then he and Marshal Coleman could sort everything out later.

Assuming they were both still alive to do so…

“Don’t get yourself killed!” Barnabas called worriedly after him.

Sam held the rifle at a slant across his chest as he ran toward the settlement. He couldn’t see Porter and the other deputies anymore, but as the flurry of gunfire from the town increased suddenly, he wondered if the crooked lawmen had just joined the fight, whatever it was.

He reached the old, abandoned livery stable where Ike Loomis’s secret saloon was located. The big building was dark and appeared to be as deserted as it was supposed to be. Sam knew that probably wasn’t the case, though. If the patrons had any sense, they would have stayed inside when the shooting started. The barn’s thick walls would stop most bullets.

A big figure suddenly loomed in front of him, and a harsh voice commanded, “Hold it!”

Sam didn’t stop. In fact, he didn’t even slow down. Instead, he dove forward, cutting the man’s legs out from under him. The man let out a yell of alarm as he fell. His weight caught Sam a glancing blow. Both men rolled across the ground beside the stable.

Sam came up onto his knees first. Holding the rifle in his left hand, he used his right to draw his Colt since the revolver was better for close work. He leveled it at the man he had just knocked down and said, “You hold it, mister. If you make a move, I’ll put a bullet in you.”

“Sam Two Wolves?” the man exclaimed in surprise. “Is that you?”

The voice was familiar to Sam, but he couldn’t quite place it. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“Mike Loomis,” the man replied. “Red Mike. Sorry I jumped you, Two Wolves. I thought you were one of those damned raiders.”

Sam lowered his gun slightly but didn’t holster it. “What raiders?”

“Hell if I know,” Red Mike replied. “Somebody came runnin’ down to the saloon and said a bunch of men were attackin’ the jail. I told everybody in there to stay put and came out to see what was goin’ on. My pa and Marshal Coleman are old friends, so I didn’t want nothin’ happening to him.” In the darkness, Sam caught a glimpse of Mike’s brawny shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. “Then you came runnin’ along and I took you for one of that bunch. That’s all I know.”

Sam stood up and holstered his gun. He held out a hand to Mike, who would probably make a good ally in a fight. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”

Mike hesitated, but only for a second. Then he and Sam clasped wrists and Sam helped him to his feet. “I dropped my gun,” Mike said as he shuffled around with his feet in the area where he had fallen. “Wait a minute…Here it is!”

Mike picked up his gun. Then he and Sam trotted through the shadows toward the other end of Main Street. Sam could tell now that most of the muzzle flashes he saw came from the area around the marshal’s office and jail.

The street was deserted. The citizens of Cottonwood must have scurried for cover when the shooting started. Sam counted muzzle flashes and figured that about a dozen men were scattered along both sides of the street, using water troughs, parked wagons and buckboards, and building corners and alcoves for cover as they kept up a steady fire directed at the squat stone building that housed the marshal’s office and jail.

That told Sam the attack was directed against Marshal Coleman, and since the shooting had started before Porter and the other deputies hurried back to town, he concluded that the raiders had to be Cimarron Kane and some of Kane’s kinfolks. Kane was the only one who had a reason to attack the jail, that reason being his three cousins who were locked up there.

As Sam and Mike Loomis drew up at the corner of a building to watch the fight, Sam saw muzzle flame bloom like a crimson flower at one of the front windows flanking the door into the marshal’s office. He felt a surge of relief go through him. The shot meant that Coleman was still alive, and although he might be wounded, he was in good enough shape to pull a trigger.

But then an instant after that shot, orange flame spurted from the other window, and Sam’s heart sank a little at that sight. Coleman hadn’t had time to move from window to window, and he wouldn’t have had any reason to, anyway. The second shot meant somebody else was in there helping Coleman defend the place, and the most likely person that could be was Hannah.

Sam wondered for a second where Ambrose Porter and the other men were. Maybe once the corrupt special marshal had seen what was going on, he had decided to stay out of the fight and allow Cimarron Kane to do his dirty work for him and dispose of Marshal Coleman.

Sam knew he couldn’t afford to waste any time pondering that. Coleman was heavily outnumbered, and if someone didn’t come to his aid soon, the attackers might overrun the jail. Sam didn’t think Kane and the others would be too careful about who they shot if they went storming in there. He had to do something to stop them now and worry about Porter later.

Leaning closer to Mike Loomis, he said quietly, “We’ll split up. I’ll go across the street, and you take this side. We’ll hit them from behind at the same time and take them by surprise.”

Mike gave him a grim nod. “All right. But we’re pretty outnumbered, Two Wolves. You know that, don’t you?”

Sam grinned at him and said, “Then we’ll try to whittle down the odds as quickly as we can. Give me a minute to get over there and get set.”

“Sure. I’ll wait for you to hit those varmints, and then I’ll go at the same time.”

That sounded like a workable plan to Sam. Clutching the Winchester, he darted out from the cover of the alley and began racing across the broad, dusty street.

Too late, he realized that Cimarron Kane must have posted a lookout to make sure that no one snuck up behind them while they attacked the jail. Sam was less than a third of the way across the street when someone yelled a warning. A couple of shots rang out from behind a wagon. One of the bullets went well wide of him, but the other came close enough that he felt the hot breath of the lead as it whistled past his cheek. He began firing the rifle from his hip as he ran, cranking off rounds as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever.

He was still only halfway across the street when something slammed into his right foot and knocked it out from under him. His momentum carried him forward, and although he tried to keep his balance by pinwheeling one arm as fast as he could, it was a lost cause.

He fell, tumbling forward and rolling over and over as a small cloud of dust rose around him.

Sam came to a stop on his belly with the dust choking him and stinging his nose and eyes. His right leg was numb, and he didn’t know how badly he was hurt. But he couldn’t move, he was stuck out in the open, and Kane’s men knew he was there, an easy target. It seemed unlikely that things could get any worse.

That was when he heard thundering hoofbeats right behind him and jerked his head around to gaze over his shoulder at the gigantic, looming figure of a madly galloping horse about to pound him to a red ruin under its hooves.

Chapter 27

When Matt reached the western end of Cottonwood’s main street, he saw that the fighting was concentrated around the far end of town. That was where the marshal’s office was located, and he was more convinced than ever that Kane and his relatives had come to bust Dud, Nelse, and Wiley Kane out of jail. From the muzzle flashes he saw, it looked like Kane’s bunch had split up and hunted cover on both sides of the street as they laid siege to the jail.

Matt drew his left-hand gun as he clamped his knees tighter on the stallion’s flanks. The attackers wouldn’t expect somebody to come roaring down the middle of the street between them, raking them with gunshots in both directions.

The stallion lunged ahead, responding gallantly as Matt leaned forward in the saddle and urged him on to greater speed. Suddenly, Matt saw someone dart out from his right and try to cross the street in front of him. At first he thought the man must be one of Kane’s bunch, changing position for some reason, but then he saw more muzzle flashes as Kane’s men opened fire on the running figure. The man made it almost to the middle of the street before he tumbled forward off his feet, evidently hit.

Matt couldn’t slow the charging stallion in time, and he wasn’t sure he could even veer the animal around the fallen man. So he jammed his left-hand Colt back in its holster, grabbed the reins, and hauled up on them, lifting the horse into a jump.

The stallion responded instantly, rising into the air with a grace belying its rangy ugliness, and it was only at the last instant that Matt caught a glimpse of the face looking up at him and recognized it as that of his blood brother, Sam Two Wolves.

Then the stallion soared up and over Sam and landed running full tilt, and Matt dropped the reins again and jerked out his left-hand Colt. He was between the forces arrayed along both sides of the street, so he began firing—right, left, right, left, spraying slugs among the places where the raiders had taken cover.

Matt never slowed his mount. As the hammers of his revolvers fell on empty chambers, he used his knees to guide the stallion into a sharp turn that carried them into the mouth of an alley near the marshal’s office. The horse pounded along the passageway through thick, almost impenetrable shadows, and Matt hoped they wouldn’t run into anything.

A moment later they broke out into the faint light from the moon and stars behind the buildings. Matt holstered one revolver, wheeled the horse around, and reined to a halt. He started reloading his guns with swift, practiced ease. He didn’t know how much damage he had inflicted on the Kane bunch, but from the sound of the shots still filling the night air, the attack wasn’t over. Matt wanted to get back in the action.

Not only that, but his blood brother was out there in the street, maybe wounded and definitely in a bad place, and it might be up to Matt to see to it that Sam didn’t get shot full of holes!

Sam barely had time to recognize the horse as Matt’s rangy gray stallion before he ducked back down to give the animal plenty of room to leap over him. The horse landed on the other side of him and kept going, never slowing down as Matt opened fire on the gunmen along both sides of the street.

Sam was trying to make his numb right leg work so he could struggle onto his feet when he heard someone running toward him. He propped himself up on one hand and twisted in that direction, ready to fire the Colt in his other hand, but his finger eased off the trigger when he saw Red Mike Loomis approaching.

The burly young man reached down and grabbed hold of Sam’s arm. “I’ll help you,” he said. “How bad are you hit?”

“Don’t know,” Sam replied as Mike lifted him without much trouble. “Head for the other side of the street!”

With Mike’s strong grip supporting his right side, Sam set off at a hobbling run. It was almost like they were a team in a three-legged race, he thought crazily. His right leg dangled uselessly.

They headed toward a rain barrel that was big enough to shield one of them, but not both. “You can stay here,” Mike said as he lowered Sam to the ground behind the barrel. “I’ll find some other cover.”

“Be care—” Sam began, but he didn’t have a chance to finish. He heard the solid, meaty thump of a bullet striking flesh, and then Mike grunted and went down, collapsing at the edge of the raised boardwalk.

Sam bit back a curse and reached up to grab the top of the rain barrel. He experienced a tingling now in his right leg, an indication that feeling was coming back into it. The muscles still didn’t want to work, though. Hanging on to the barrel, Sam lifted himself on his left leg. Bullets thudded into the wooden barrel as he shoved hard on it. Water began to slosh out the top, and as the weight of the water in the barrel decreased, it moved easier. He toppled it, creating a miniature tidal wave that washed around his feet and Mike Loomis’s sprawled body.

Mike sputtered and spit as water went up his nose, so he wasn’t dead. The overturned barrel was between him and the gunmen, so he had a little protection now. Sam was back in the open, though. He hopped toward the boardwalk and let himself fall when he reached it. He rolled across the planks into the alcove where the building’s door was set back a few feet.

He had dropped his rifle in the street, but he still had his Colt. He thrust the revolver out of the alcove and triggered a couple of shots at the muzzle flashes of the raiders. Glass shattered as Kane’s men shot out the windows in the building. Sam returned the fire and then ducked back out of sight again.

A high-pitched yell split the night. Matt was taking a hand in the fight again. And of course he couldn’t do it without calling attention to himself, Sam thought as a grim smile tugged at his mouth. He reached for the fresh cartridges in the loops on his shell belt and thumbed some of them into his Colt. Fast shots banged out. More of Matt’s work, Sam knew.

He ignored the throbbing pain that now filled his leg as he pulled himself to the front of the alcove again. Watching as Matt drove once more between the two halves of Kane’s force, Sam felt a little awe at the way his blood brother took the fight to them so fiercely, so gallantly. And possibly so foolishly, too, but Matt Bodine had never been one to hold back. He gave himself fully to whatever he was doing.

“Matt!” Sam shouted. He braced the six-shooter against the boardwalk and fired twice. “Over here!”

Matt left the saddle in a flying leap as his stallion raced past the building. The jump carried him onto the boardwalk. He careened into the alcove, dropped to one knee beside Sam, and joined his blood brother in throwing lead at the men who had attacked the jail.

A hailstorm of lead came racketing back at them, forcing them to duck back deeper in the alcove. As they reloaded, Matt said, “It figures you’d be right in the middle of this ruckus, Sam.”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to come galloping in and jump your horse right over me like you were performing a trick in a Wild West Show!” Sam replied.

Matt grinned. “Well, it was either that or trample you, so I figured you wouldn’t mind if I showed off a little.” He grew more serious. “You know what’s goin’ on here, don’t you?”

“My guess is that Cimarron Kane and some of his kin are trying to help those prisoners in Marshal Coleman’s jail escape.”

“That’s it, all right,” Matt said. “I followed the whole bunch into town from the Kane ranch.”

“Kane was here earlier in the day,” Sam explained. “He thought he could come into town and bluster a little, and the marshal would release his cousins. Marshal Coleman’s not going to do it, though.”

Matt snapped the cylinder on one of his revolvers closed after refilling the chambers. “I didn’t know that.”

“Here’s something else you don’t know,” Sam said. “Those special marshals, Porter and Bickford, are in town, too, along with their deputies. They’re all crooked, though.”

“What do you mean?” Matt asked with a frown.

Sam quickly filled him in on the bribery and murder scheme being carried out by the special marshals, and the news brought a muttered curse from Matt.

“Where are those varmints now?” he asked.

Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. Porter and most of the deputies are here in town somewhere, as far as I know. Bickford was still down by the creek with the wagons the last time I saw him, but he could have regained consciousness by now.”

“Well, we’ll deal with them once we’ve handed Kane his needin’s. Where’s the marshal? Holed up inside the jail?”

“He must be. Someone is in there trying to hold off Kane’s bunch.” Sam paused, then added in a worried voice, “I think Hannah may be in there with him, too. They had two rifles going.”

Matt let out a little whistle of surprise. “Sorry, amigo. I know you set a lot of store by that gal. We need to do something to convince Kane to give it up. How’s that leg of yours?”

Enough feeling had returned to Sam’s leg so that he could move it now. He reached down and ran his hand over the leg, searching for a wound. When he didn’t find any, he pulled his foot up and felt of his boot.

“So that’s what happened,” he said. “One of them shot my boot heel off. The impact of the bullet made my leg go numb for a little while, but it’s getting to be all right now.”

“Then you’re not wounded?”

“I don’t seem to be.”

“That’s a stroke of good luck. Reckon you can get around?”

Sam nodded as he pulled off both boots, so that the lack of a heel on the right one wouldn’t unbalance him. “I think so, as long as I don’t have to move too fast.”

“All right, you can cover me while I make a run for the other side of the street.”

“You’ll never make it,” Sam warned.

“I will if you make those polecats duck.” Matt pressed one of his guns into Sam’s left hand. “Just keep ’em busy. Once I get over there, we’ll have ’em right where we want ’em.”

Sam had had the same sort of thing in mind, only his plan had included the element of surprise. That hadn’t worked out. Maybe having Matt on his side would. Matt Bodine was worth ten men in a fight.

“My rifle’s lying out there in the middle of the street where I dropped it,” Sam told his blood brother.

Matt nodded. “I’ll pick it up when I go by. That’ll give me better firepower.” He pressed his back against the wall of the alcove. “You ready?”

Sam made it to his feet and jerked his head in a curt nod.

“Then cut loose your wolf!” Matt called, and with that, he burst out of the alcove, leaped across the boardwalk into the street, and headed for the buildings on the opposite side at a dead run.

Chapter 28

Matt heard Sam’s guns start blasting behind him, but he didn’t look around or slow down. As he ran toward the middle of the street, he spotted the rifle Sam had dropped and angled toward the Winchester. He paused briefly to snatch it off the ground, but that took only a heartbeat.

Even so, it was long enough for one of the Kane gunmen to draw a bead on him. Matt felt a bullet tug at the back of his shirt, ripping it slightly without actually touching the flesh underneath. A couple of inches and a whisker of time earlier, and the bullet would have bored right through his body.

Now he was moving at top speed again, though. He heard several slugs whistle close behind him, but none of them tagged him. As he neared the boardwalk, he launched himself into a dive that carried him onto the planks. His momentum sent him rolling over and over into the shadows at the base of the darkened building’s front wall.

It didn’t take long for more bullets to come searching into the darkness for him, only a matter of seconds. He scrambled to his feet and into an alcove like the one Sam occupied across the street. Using the building for cover, he thrust the rifle’s barrel around the corner and started blazing away at the raiders. At the same time, Sam continued the barrage with both pistols, emptying the revolvers, reloading them, and emptying them again.

Someone else joined the battle, too. Matt had seen an apparently unconscious or dead figure lying behind an overturned rain barrel near Sam’s position, but had no idea who the man was. Clearly, though, he wasn’t dead, and if he had been knocked out, he had regained consciousness. He was taking part in the fight now, firing a six-shooter over the barrel.

The gunfire from the jail picked up with renewed intensity. Rifles cracked and spat lead at both of the front windows. Cimarron Kane and his men had gone from having the upper hand to being trapped in the middle of a veritable hailstorm of bullets. Even though they might still have the advantage in numbers, they were in a bad spot.

So Matt wasn’t surprised when he heard a harsh voice yell, “Grab the horses and let’s get out of here!” He snapped a shot in the direction of the man giving the orders, the same man whose voice he’d heard back at the Kane ranch, but he had no way of knowing if he hit his target.

A moment later, with hoofbeats pounding in the night air, a number of riders burst into the street. They didn’t try to run the gauntlet between Matt and Sam, but instead plunged into an alley, seeking the quickest way out of town. Matt threw lead after them and thought he saw one of the men sway in the saddle, but none of the riders fell and they didn’t slow down.

Matt leaped out of the alcove and ran toward the alley mouth. Muzzle flashes winked in the darkness as the fleeing men twisted around in their saddles and fired wild shots behind them. Matt brought the Winchester to his shoulder and hurried them along with several more rounds, until the rifle was empty.

“Matt!” Sam said as he limped hurriedly up to his blood brother. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Matt lowered the rifle. “They came close a few times but never hit me. How’s your leg?”

“A little sore, but better now. Can you go back up the street and check on Mike Loomis?”

“Red Mike?”

“Yeah. He’s the one behind that rain barrel. He was trying to help me earlier when he got hit.”

Matt nodded. “Sure, I’ll see how he’s doin’. Where are you goin’?”

“The marshal’s office,” Sam replied, and that didn’t surprise Matt at all. He knew that Sam wanted to make sure Hannah Coleman was all right.

As Sam hurried off, Matt turned and walked back to the rain barrel. The man behind the barrel was slumped wearily against it now.

“Red Mike?” Matt said.

The man slowly lifted his head like it was a struggle to do so. “B-Bodine?” he asked. “Is that you?”

“Yeah.” Matt hunkered on his heels next to the wounded man and braced the rifle’s butt plate against the ground to balance himself. “How bad are you hit?” he asked.

“Not too bad…I reckon,” Mike replied. “Feels like the slug…just ripped across my side. Reckon I…lost quite a bit of blood, though. Feel mighty…weak. Head’s sort of…swimmin’ around.”

Matt leaned over where he could take a look at Mike’s side and saw the large dark stain on the young man’s shirt. “You’ve lost some blood, all right,” he agreed. “Stay right there, and we’ll see about gettin’ the doctor to take a look at you.”

“I ain’t…goin’ anywhere,” Mike said with a faint chuckle.

Farther down the street, the door of the marshal’s office swung open before Sam could get there. Marshal Coleman stepped out onto the walk in front of it, holding a Winchester tightly in his hands.

“Sam? Is that you?” he called.

“It’s me, Marshal,” Sam replied.

“Are those varmints gone?”

“Yes, they rode out hell-bent-for-leather a few minutes ago, and there’s no sign of them coming back.”

Coleman’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Thank God. I thought at first we were goners, Hannah and me.”

“Then Hannah is in the office?” Sam asked tensely.

“Yeah.”

“Is she hurt?”

“Nope.” Coleman turned his head and called through the open door, “Come on out, honey. The shootin’s over.”

Sam hoped that was true, but he hadn’t forgotten about Ambrose Porter and the special deputies. He stepped quickly to Coleman’s side, put a hand on the lawman’s arm, and said, “You’d better get back inside, Marshal, and keep Hannah there for the time being, too.”

“What’s wrong?” Coleman asked with a frown. “You think Kane’s gonna come back?”

“No, but there might be another problem.”

Movement in the doorway of the marshal’s office caught Sam’s eye. He looked that direction and saw Hannah stepping out with a rifle in her hands. He was about to call out to her and tell her to go back inside when a shadowy shape glided up behind her and she suddenly let out a gasp of surprise and fear. The Winchester dropped to the planks with a clatter as it was torn from her hands, and Sam stiffened as he saw an arm go around her neck and jerk her back against the man who had come up behind her.

“Drop your gun, Two Wolves,” Ambrose Porter ordered as he tightened his left arm around Hannah’s throat and thrust the gun in his right hand toward Sam and Coleman.

“What the hell?” Coleman exclaimed as he turned toward this new and, to him, unexpected problem.

Sam had tucked the extra revolver Matt had given him behind his belt and still held his own Colt. He didn’t drop either gun. He kept the one in his hand pointed toward Hannah and Porter and told the crooked special marshal, “Forget it, Porter. Your little scheme is done for.”

A harsh laugh came from Porter. “I don’t think so. Look around, you damn ’breed.”

Sam glanced up and down the street. “I don’t see anything.”

“That doesn’t mean my men aren’t there. There are eight rifles trained on you right now, Two Wolves. You don’t have any choice but to do as I say.”

“Blast it, what’s goin’ on here?” Coleman demanded. “Marshal Porter, is that you?”

Sam didn’t wait for Porter to answer. He told Coleman, “It’s him, all right, but he’s a lawman in name only, Marshal. He and Bickford and their deputies are all criminals.”

“That’s a matter of interpretation,” Porter said.

“The hell it is,” Sam snapped. “Bickford told me all about how you’ve been taking payoffs to let some of the men you’ve arrested go free…and murdering the ones who wouldn’t come through.”

An angry growl came from Coleman. “Is that true, son?”

“One of the prisoners in the wagon told me all about it, and then Bickford confirmed it when he thought he had the drop on me.”

Coleman glared at Porter. “Why, you low-down skunk! Dishonoring the badge that way. Let go of my daughter, right now!”

“I can’t do that,” Porter said. “You and Miss Hannah and Two Wolves have to go in one of the cells. We’ll lock you up, and then we’ll be on our way. I was tired of this game, anyway.”

Sam knew that Porter was lying. The crooked lawman wouldn’t be content to lock them up and escape. He and Bickford were making too much money with their scheme.

No, if Porter succeeded in getting the three of them inside the jail, he would kill them and probably gun down the three men who were already locked up in there, too, so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. All the law-abiding people in town had their heads down at the moment, lying low because of Cimarron Kane’s attack on the jail and all the lead that had been flying around a few minutes earlier. If Porter insisted that Sam, Coleman, and Hannah had been killed in that fight, there would be little chance that anyone would contradict him. He and Bickford could still salvage their scheme and carry on with it for a while yet, extorting more money from the luckless prisoners they arrested.

“I won’t tell you again,” Porter said in a harsh voice. “Drop your guns, or I’ll kill the girl right now.”

“If you hurt her—” Coleman began.

“Don’t waste my time with threats, old man,” Porter interrupted coldly. “I told you, you’re covered. If I shoot the girl, a second later my men will fill you and the half-breed full of lead. Your only chance to survive is to do what I tell you.”

“He’s lying,” Sam said under his breath. “He intends to kill us anyway.”

Coleman sighed. “I know that.” He bent over and dropped his pistol into the dirt of the street. “But that’s my little girl he’s got. I have to go along with him.”

Sam knew that the marshal was right. Porter would kill them and maybe even try to wipe out the whole town if he was pushed too far. With his mouth twisted in a grim line, Sam dropped his Colt next to Coleman’s. Then he reached for the gun tucked behind his belt.

“Careful,” Porter warned.

Sam eased the revolver out and added it to the two lying in the street. Then he and Coleman backed away from the guns.

“Come on,” Porter ordered. “Into the jail.”

Miserably, Coleman asked, “What do we do?”

“Play along with him,” Sam said. Something had occurred to him. Porter hadn’t said anything about Matt, and when Sam glanced over his shoulder, he didn’t see any sign of his blood brother. Sam hoped that meant Matt was still on the loose somewhere nearby.

Because Matt Bodine was a hell of a secret weapon!

Chapter 29

Matt had been turning away from the rain barrel and Red Mike Loomis when he saw something suspicious going on down at the marshal’s office. Instantly, he dropped into a crouch behind the barrel, next to Mike, so that he couldn’t be seen as easily.

“What…the hell…” the wounded man began.

“Shhh,” Matt hissed. “Let me listen.”

His keen ears picked up enough of the tense, low-voiced exchange for him to understand what was going on. He knew that his blood brother would go along with Porter’s orders, at least for the moment. As long as Hannah’s life was in danger, Sam didn’t really have any choice.

But of course, they couldn’t trust Porter, either. The crooked lawman’s continued survival depended on not leaving any living witnesses to testify against him.

As Sam and Coleman dropped their guns, Matt turned to Mike Loomis and whispered, “You’re gonna have to wait here for a while. Hell’s about to pop again, and I can’t fetch the doc right now.”

“Don’t worry…about me,” Mike said. “I don’t know what’s…goin’ on…but you go take care of…whatever you got to do.”

Matt squeezed the young man’s shoulder. “Hang on, Mike. I’ll see to it that bullet wound’s tended to as soon as I can.”

With that, he dropped to his belly and crawled over into the shadows at the edge of the boardwalk. He didn’t know where the rest of the crooked deputies were and didn’t know if any of them had spotted him. A cold prickle swept over his skin as he started making his way toward the marshal’s office. For all he knew, bullets were about to smash into him at any second.

No hot lead came his way, though. When he reached the corner, he wriggled around it and risked coming to his feet long enough to dart into an even deeper patch of shadows. He pressed his back against the wall of a building and waited there for a moment, listening to the heavy thump of his heart beating in his chest.

There was a back door to the marshal’s office, but he was sure it would be closed and barred. He couldn’t get in that way, and it would be suicide to try to come in through the front door. What he needed to do was draw Porter back out somehow and hope that the corrupt lawman wouldn’t kill the prisoners before he could do that.

But first, Matt thought, he had to even the odds a little. In order to accomplish that, he had to find Porter’s deputies. Porter had probably told them to spread out during the battle against Cimarron Kane, so that they could make their move after Kane fled. Matt would need all the stealth he had learned from Sam Two Wolves and Sam’s father, old Medicine Horse, if he was going to find them.

Staying in the shadows, Matt melted into the night.

Porter didn’t let go of Hannah until they were all inside the marshal’s office. He told Sam, “Close that door,” then took his arm away from her throat as Sam followed the order.

Hannah ran into her father’s arms. Coleman gathered her to him and hugged her tightly. “Are you all right?” he asked in a voice hoarse with emotion.

She nodded and said, “Yes, Dad, I’m fine.” Her voice was a little hoarse, too, and Sam knew that was from the pressure Porter’s arm had put on her throat. Anger welled up inside him. The idea that Porter had hurt her made him want to smash his fist in the middle of the crooked lawman’s face, then hit him again and again…

For the moment, though, Sam had to keep that urge under control, and he knew it. Porter was calling the shots right now.

But maybe not for long.

Coleman glared over his daughter’s shoulder at Porter and said, “So, is what Sam tells me about you true, Marshal? Or should I even call you that?”

“I still hold a special commission from the governor,” Porter replied with a smirk. “I don’t see why I won’t continue to do so.”

“Then it is true?”

Porter’s smirk disappeared with an exasperated sigh. “Yes, all right, it’s true. Marshal Bickford and I have been…supplementing our salaries, I suppose you could say. But it’s only right, considering that we’ve had to risk our lives trying to apprehend all the moonshiners around here.”

“Lawmen get paid to risk their lives,” Coleman said. “I don’t reckon a polecat like you would understand that, though.”

Porter gestured with the gun in his hand. “Keep talking if you want, Marshal. It’s really all you can do.”

Coleman didn’t say anything, but Hannah asked, “You’re not really going to lock us up and then leave, are you?”

“I can’t afford to do that.” Porter jerked the gun again, this time toward the cell block door. “Get in there, all three of you.”

Sam exchanged a glance with Coleman. He knew that if one of the cell doors ever swung closed behind them, they were doomed. Porter would gun them down without mercy. He could tell from the look in Coleman’s eyes that the marshal understood that, too. If it came down to it, he would risk jumping Porter, even though he would probably get shot in the process. But if he could get the gun away from Porter, Coleman might be able to handle him.

Right now, though, Sam was going to try a different tactic. He said, “You’re making a mistake, Porter.”

“By eliminating some of the witnesses against me?” Porter shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s because you’ve forgotten about Matt Bodine.”

Porter’s eyes narrowed. “Bodine,” he repeated. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“Didn’t you see him out there, fighting Kane’s men? He’s still on the loose.”

Porter made a dismissive gesture. “Of course I saw him, the grandstanding young fool. I told some of my men to hunt him down and kill him before I ever grabbed the girl. He’s probably already dead by now.”

“I haven’t heard any shots from outside,” Sam said. “Have you?”

Porter frowned a little as worry appeared in his dark eyes. It was true. Since Cimarron Kane and his men had fled, there had been no more shooting in the streets of Cottonwood.

“You may wind up needing some leverage to get out of here,” Sam went on. “You won’t have any if we’re dead.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Porter shot back with a sneer. “All I need is you, Two Wolves, not these other two.”

Sam took a quick step so that he shielded Coleman and Hannah from Porter’s gun. “You can’t get to them without coming through me,” he said.

Suddenly, it was a standoff of sorts, even though Sam and Coleman were unarmed. Tension filled the room…

Only to be broken suddenly by the roar of gunshots that ripped through the night outside.

It didn’t take Matt long to find the first of Porter’s deputies. The man was slinking along the street, obviously searching for something. Probably him, Matt thought wryly. He stepped out of the dark maw of an alley mouth as the man went past it, and the butt of his gun thudded against the deputy’s head. The man never knew what hit him.

Matt grabbed the man under the arms and dragged him into the thick shadows. It was a moment’s work to bind the man’s hands behind him with his own belt and cram his own bandanna in his mouth as a gag. Then, confident that this deputy was out of the fight, Matt resumed the hunt.

A minute later, he lay in the deep darkness underneath a parked wagon and listened as two sets of footsteps approached. The men whispered back and forth to each other.

“…that hombre Bodine,” one of them was saying.

“I’ve heard he’s mighty fast with a gun,” the other man replied.

“Yeah, but there’s eight of us and only one of him.”

Seven, now, Matt thought with a grim smile. There were only seven of them still in the fight.

“You reckon Porter’s really gonna burn down the whole town, like he said?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. That’s one way of makin’ sure there’s nobody left to talk about what we’ve been doin’.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of killin’s,” the other man said, sounding worried.

A callous laugh came from the first man. “One killin’ or two hundred, you can only swing for it once.”

“Yeah, but how the hell do you go about murderin’ a whole town?”

“Mighty quietlike, that’s how you do it. With knives, one house at a time. That way, folks don’t panic. They won’t even know they’re about to die until it’s too late.”

The two men had stopped beside the wagon where Matt was hidden. He fought the urge to slither out from under the vehicle and shoot both of the bastards in the head. Gunfire would draw too much attention right now, though. He had to be patient and, just like that son of a bitch had said, mighty quietlike.

“Stay here,” the first man went on to his companion. “If you see Bodine, kill him.”

“Yeah,” the second man muttered, “if he don’t kill me first.”

“You knew there’d be risks when you agreed to go along with Bickford’s plan,” the other one snapped. “You were quick enough to take your share of the money, too.”

“Don’t worry, if I see Bodine, I’ll ventilate the bastard. Count on it.”

“Yeah,” the first man said. His footsteps moved off as he continued to search.

So he was the object of a hunt, Matt mused. That came as no surprise. Porter knew he was out here and wanted him dead.

But Matt was doing some hunting of his own. Noiselessly, he moved closer to the man who stood beside the wagon with his back to the vehicle. Reaching out, Matt suddenly grabbed hold of the man’s ankles from behind and jerked his legs out from under him. The man opened his mouth to yell in alarm, but his face slammed into the street before he could get out more than a peep.

Matt was on him with the speed of a striking snake, driving a knee into the small of the man’s back to keep him pinned to the ground, then hammering both clubbed fists into the back of his head. The man went limp.

Matt took hold of his ankles again and dragged him under the wagon, then left him there. That was two of the varmints, he thought, but there were still six of them out there in the shadows, thirsty for his blood.

He wasn’t going to be able to continue hunting them down one by one, either, because just then a man yelled, “Hey, over here! It’s Bodine!”

Damn, he thought. He’d been spotted.

And before he could do anything, shots blasted from both sides of him, the garish muzzle flashes lighting up the night.

Chapter 30

At the sound of the shots outside, Porter’s eyes jerked instinctively toward the door, and Sam made his move as from the corner of his eye he saw Coleman grab Hannah and drop down behind the heavy desk.

With blinding speed, Sam dived at Porter, going low to try to avoid the Colt’s barrel if the crooked lawman managed to get off a shot. Porter’s finger closed on the trigger. The shot was shockingly loud in the close confines of the marshal’s office, and the gun went off so close to Sam’s head that he felt the report pound against both ears. But he didn’t feel the heavy impact of a bullet and knew the shot had missed. An instant later, he crashed into Porter’s legs and drove the man backward off his feet.

Porter came crashing down on the floor. Sam lunged across the crooked lawman’s body, reaching for Porter’s gun hand. His fingers closed around Porter’s wrist and shoved the gun aside as it blasted again. At the same time, Sam hammered his fist into Porter’s face. The blow landed solidly on the man’s nose. Porter howled in pain as blood spurted. Sam hit him again. It felt every bit as good as Sam had thought it would a few minutes earlier.

So he hit Porter again.

Before he could land another punch, he felt Marshal Coleman tugging at his arm. “Take it easy, son,” the lawman urged. “He’s out cold, and if you keep hittin’ him like that, you’re gonna kill him.”

That didn’t sound like such a bad idea to Sam. When he thought about how Porter had hurt Hannah, a red haze tried to creep over his vision. With his breath hissing between clenched teeth, he forced himself to lower his arm, which he had poised to hit Porter again. He looked over and saw that the gun had slipped out of Porter’s fingers, so he reached for it and picked it up.

More shots came from outside. That had to be Matt doing battle with the deputies. Sam came to his feet and told Coleman, “Stay here. Look after Hannah.”

“Wait just a dang minute,” Coleman said. “Last time I looked, my badge said marshal and yours says deputy. We’ll both give Bodine a hand.”

“Somebody needs to protect Hannah,” Sam insisted.

“How about if Hannah protects herself?” she asked sharply. Sam looked at her and saw that she had climbed to her feet and taken down a shotgun from the rack behind the desk. She finished thumbing shells into the twin barrels and snapped the weapon closed. Then she handed the Greener to her father and went on. “You’re liable to need this, Dad. I’ll load another one for myself.”

Coleman took the shotgun and nodded. “You’ll stay inside?” he asked.

“Yes…even though I’d rather come with you.”

Coleman glanced at Sam and smiled faintly. “She always did have a mite of a mean streak.”

“Feisty,” Hannah insisted as she started loading another double-barrel. “Not mean.”

Coleman nodded toward Porter’s unconscious form. “Keep an eye on that snake, and if anybody besides us or Bodine or one of the townsfolk comes in here, blast the hell out of ’em.”

Hannah nodded in understanding.

Coleman started toward the door. “Come on,” he said to Sam. “Let’s see if we can give that pard of yours a hand.”

If Matt still had both of his Colts, he would have returned the fire in both directions. As it was, he had to pick and choose. He pivoted to his right and triggered twice, then left his feet in a rolling dive that carried him back under the wagon.

The man he had just knocked out and stashed there had a gun on his hip. Matt ran his free hand over the man’s body until he found the walnut grips of the weapon jutting up from its holster. He pulled the gun free and rolled the other way as bullets began to slice underneath the vehicle and kick up dirt from the ground. A couple of them thudded into the unconscious man. Matt felt a little bad about that…but only a little. The crooked deputy had been on the verge of joining his compadres in mass murder, after all.

As he cleared the wagon, Matt sprang back to his feet with a gun in each hand again, a situation that always made him feel better. Flame stabbed from the muzzle of each weapon in turn as he fired them, angling the barrels in different directions. He saw a man charging toward him stumble and pitch forward, and another man jerked around in a half-turn as one of Matt’s bullets tore through his body. Matt broke into a run toward the jail and kept firing as he ran. He targeted the muzzle flashes that seemed to surround him. Slugs whipped past his head.

Then he heard the boom of a shotgun, followed by swift blasts from a revolver. One man yelled in pain. Another stumbled out into the open, bent over almost double as he clutched at his bullet-riddled guts. Matt spotted Sam and Marshal Coleman coming toward him, fighting their way down the street. Coleman loosed the second barrel of the scattergun he carried. The flash lit up the night.

Then suddenly, as fast as it had started, the shooting was over. Sam came up to Matt and asked, “You all right?”

“Yeah, I think so. How about you?”

“Still a little gimpy, but no worse off than I was before.” Sam turned to Coleman. “Were you wounded, Marshal?”

“No, we took those varmints by surprise and hit ’em so hard they didn’t have a chance to put up much of a fight.”

“We need to get a lantern out here and make sure they’re all dead.”

“Good idea. I’ll fetch one from the office.”

Matt said, “Mike Loomis is wounded, back up the street. He’ll need a sawbones.”

Coleman nodded. “Doc Berger’s house and office is on Second Street, right around the corner from the hotel. Reckon you can take Mike over there?”

Matt had been reloading his guns. Finished with that chore, he holstered the weapons and nodded. “Sure.”

“I’ll stay here to keep an eye on things while you fetch that lantern, Marshal,” Sam said.

“By things, you mean them crooked deputies we shot?”

Sam grunted. “That’s right. And you’d better sing out before you go through the office door, just to be sure Hannah knows it’s you.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Coleman and Matt set off in different directions along the street. Sam slipped fresh cartridges into the gun he had taken from Ambrose Porter, which luckily was the same caliber as his Colt.

Matt called, “Hey, Mike, it’s me, Matt Bodine,” as he trotted up to the rain barrel where he had left Red Mike Loomis. When he saw the figure slumped on the ground, his first thought was that the burly youngster had bled to death. Quickly, Matt dropped to a knee next to him and searched for a pulse in Mike’s neck. After a moment he found one, weak but fairly steady, and felt relief go through him.

Even though Red Mike was a big man, Matt got his arms around him and was able to lift him. Teeth clenched against the strain, he started carrying Mike toward the doctor’s house.

Several men emerged from one of the buildings as Matt came to it. “Bodine!” one of them called. “Let us help you.”

He recognized them as townspeople as they gathered around him and took Mike out of his arms. They carried the wounded man quickly toward Doc Berger’s place. The doctor himself met them before they got there, hurrying toward the scene of battle with his black bag in his hand.

“Who’s that you’ve got there?” the medico asked.

“Mike Loomis,” Matt told him.

“How bad is he hurt?”

“That’s your department. He caught a bullet in the side and lost a lot of blood.”

Berger nodded and said to the men carrying Mike, “Take him down there and put him on the table in my examining room. I’ll be right there.” Berger turned back to Matt. “Is anyone else wounded?”

“All those special deputies are shot up pretty bad.”

The doctor started to hustle in that direction. “I’d better see to them—” he began.

“No hurry, Doc,” Matt drawled. “They’re either dead or soon will be, and it’s no great loss either way.”

Berger paused and frowned at him. “What are you talking about, young man? I don’t particularly like that liquor law any more than anyone else, but those are lawmen!”

“Not hardly. They wore badges, but that doesn’t make ’em real lawmen. They were all crooks, Doc, just like Porter and Bickford. Murderin’ scum, each and every one of ’em.”

“What in blazes are you talking about?”

Matt took hold of the medical man’s arm. “Come on back to your place and see to Red Mike, and I’ll tell you all about it on the way.”

Berger still looked upset and confused, but he allowed Matt to lead him back toward his house where he had a patient waiting for him.

Back at the jail, Marshal Coleman emerged carrying a lantern that spilled its yellow glow in a circle around him. Sam joined him, and one by one they checked the bodies sprawled in the street. There were six of them, each one shot full of holes. Four of the men were already dead, one died with a final rattle of breath in his throat as Sam and Coleman checked on him, and the sixth man was unconscious but still breathing.

“Doc might be able to save this one,” Coleman said. “Where are the others? I thought there were ten of those deputies.”

“Two of them are with the prison wagons down by the creek,” Sam explained. “I knocked them out and left them tied up there. I don’t know about the other two, but Matt might be able to tell us what happened to them. They’re either around here somewhere, dead or knocked out, or else they realized the jig was up and lit a shuck.”

“What a massacre,” Coleman said as he shook his head slowly. “There’s been more powder burned and more blood spilled in the past two days than Cottonwood usually sees in a month of Sundays.”

“I’m sorry Matt and I brought so much trouble to your town with us, Marshal.”

“Oh, hell, none of it was your fault, son. You just happened to be here.”

Sam wasn’t sure about that. Over the years he had come to believe sometimes that he and Matt traveled under a cloud. It wasn’t a storm cloud, though.

It was a cloud of gun smoke.

Chapter 31

The citizens of Cottonwood were coming out again all over town now that the shooting was over. The undertaker showed up with his wagon and a couple of helpers to load the bodies of the dead deputies, but before he could take charge of the corpses, Marshal Coleman commandeered him and his wagon to transport the wounded deputy down to Doc Berger’s.

“Then you can come back and deal with this bunch, Tully,” Coleman told him.

Sam and the marshal returned to the jail. They found Hannah sitting in a ladder-back chair across the room from Porter, holding the loaded shotgun on him. Porter had come to and was sitting up with his back propped against the wall. Blood from his broken, swollen nose was smeared across the lower half of his face. He lifted hate-filled eyes toward Sam and Coleman when they came in.

“I told him this scattergun has hair triggers,” Hannah said. “I believe for a minute he thought about trying to find out if I was telling the truth.”

Coleman grunted. “Better be glad you didn’t, Porter. I know that gal of mine. She’d have splattered you all over this office if you’d tried anything.” He trained his revolver on Porter. “On your feet. I’m gonna take particular pleasure in lockin’ you up.”

Sam had picked up his gun and Matt’s in the street outside. He placed Porter’s Colt on the desk and covered the crooked marshal with the other two as Porter climbed to his feet. Sam and Coleman marched Porter into the cell block and put him in the one vacant cell. The three Kane brothers watched wide-eyed from the other cells. The uproar in town tonight had finally succeeded in shutting them up. No more curses or complaints came from them.

One of them smiled, though, and said, “From the sound of things, you’ve had your hands full tonight, Marshal. It’d sure make life easier for you if you just let the three of us go.”

“I’ll tell you what I told that cousin of yours—it ain’t up to me. When the circuit judge comes through, he’ll decide what to do with you.”

Another of the brothers sneered. “Cimarron ain’t never gonna let it get that far.”

“He’s already tried twice to get you boys out of jail,” Coleman replied with a shake of his head. “You’re still here.”

“Your time’s comin’, old man! Your time’s comin’!”

Sam and Coleman left the cell block, slamming the heavy door behind them to muffle the sound of the shouted threats.

The marshal’s shoulders suddenly slumped, and he looked even older than his years. He sank down in the chair behind the desk and heaved a sigh.

“I’m gettin’ too old to be fightin’ two wars in one night,” he declared.

Sam holstered his gun and stuck Matt’s Colt behind his belt until he got a chance to return the weapon to his blood brother. “Sorry, Marshal,” he said as he perched a hip on a corner of the desk. “If I hadn’t had my hands full with Bickford and those other deputies down by the creek, I would have been here to help you fight off the Kane bunch.”

“You showed up before the ruckus was over.”

“And brought even more trouble raining down on you,” Sam pointed out.

Hannah had gone behind the desk to rest a hand on her father’s shoulder. She shook her head and said, “You did no such thing, Sam. Someone had to stop Porter and Bickford from doing those awful things. I’m glad you found out what terrible men they are.”

“Speaking of Bickford,” Sam said as he straightened, “I’d better get back down to those prison wagons and see if he’s still there. He may have regained consciousness and taken off for the tall and uncut by now.”

“Good riddance,” Coleman said. “Once we spread the word about what him and Porter were doin’, legitimate lawmen all over the state will be lookin’ for him. He won’t get away, and he’ll pay for what he’s done.”

“I hope you’re right,” Sam said. “If Matt comes by here, tell him where I’ve gone, would you?”

“Sure thing, son.”

Sam had just reached the boardwalk in front of the office when he heard Hannah say his name softly behind him. He stopped and turned to face her as she stepped outside and eased the door closed behind her.

“Sam, there’s no way I can thank you for what you and Matt have done,” she said. “You saved Dad and me tonight, not just once but twice.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m not sure Kane and his bunch would have ever gotten into the jail. It looked like the two of you were forted up pretty good.”

“But we were also badly outnumbered,” Hannah pointed out. “There’s no way we could have held them off for long, and you know it.”

Sam shrugged.

“Then that business with Porter,” Hannah went on. A little shudder passed through her. “He’s an evil man, Sam. I could feel the evil coming from him when he had hold of me.”

“I can’t argue with that. I’m glad he’s locked up where he belongs. With any luck, he’ll be behind bars until it’s time for his date with the hangman.” Sam frowned. “Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have said—”

“Don’t worry about offending my delicate sensibilities, Sam. I’m a lawman’s daughter, remember? I’ve seen hangings before. And from what I’ve heard tonight, Porter deserves a hang-rope as much or more than anyone I’ve run across.”

Sam smiled. “Your father was right. You are a little bloodthirsty.”

“Only in a good cause,” she said with a laugh. Then she stepped closer to him and whispered, “Sam…”

His arms went around her as she came up on her toes and lifted her mouth to his. She leaned against him as they kissed. He felt the tiny tremblings in her muscles and knew that some of it was in reaction to all the violence she had gone through tonight.

Some of it, but not all of it.

When they finally broke the kiss, he said, “I have to go see about Bickford.”

“And I’d better get back inside and make sure that Dad’s all right,” she said. “He’s not as young as he once was, you know.” She smiled up at him. “We’ll take this up again some other time, right?”

“I reckon you can count on that,” Sam told her.

After cleaning and examining Red Mike Loomis’s wound and checking the young man’s condition, Dr. Berger emerged from his examining room and told Matt, “I think young Loomis will recover. It appears that the bullet missed any vital organs and did only a limited amount of damage. The blood loss is the main problem. With rest and proper care, he should be all right.”

Matt nodded in relief. “Thanks, Doc. He seems like a fine hombre, so I’m glad to hear it.”

One of the townsmen who had carried Mike to the doctor’s house looked out the front window and announced, “Looks like you got more work comin’, Doc. The undertaker’s wagon just pulled up outside, and they’re unloadin’ somebody.”

Berger wiped his bloody hands on a cloth and muttered, “Why is the undertaker bringing someone to me?”

The answer quickly became obvious as the men with the wagon carried in the wounded deputy. Berger told them to take the man into the other examining room, then glanced at Matt and added, “I hope that’s the last of it tonight. You’re not planning to shoot anyone else, are you, Mr. Bodine?”

“Hey, I didn’t shoot Red Mike,” Matt pointed out.

“What about this newest patient?”

“Well…it was hard to tell, the way so much lead was flyin’ around. I reckon I might have.”

A moment later, the front door of the house burst open again and the liveryman, Ike Loomis, rushed in. “Somebody told me my boy got shot! Is he here?”

“Yes, he’s here, Ike,” Berger said, “and I think he’s going to be all right. So you can tone down that bellowing, if you please.”

“Thank the Lord!” Loomis exclaimed fervently. “When I heard he was in the middle of that ruckus, I was afraid he was a goner! Can I see him?”

Berger pointed at the door of the examining room. “Right in there. But you’ll have to be quiet. I don’t want him upset.”

Loomis snatched his hat off his thatch of rusty gray hair and held it in front of him as he nodded humbly. “Sure thing, Doc,” he promised.

Since everything seemed to be under control here, as soon as Loomis had gone in to see his son, Matt told Berger, “Take good care of Red Mike, and if you need any money, let me know.”

The doctor frowned skeptically as he looked at Matt’s rough range garb.

“I know, I look like a saddle tramp,” Matt said with a grin, “but I’m good for the dinero. You got my word on that, Doc.”

“Very well. I doubt if it will be necessary, though. Ike Loomis is a pretty successful businessman.”

Maybe more successful than the medico knew, Matt mused as he thought about the hidden saloon in the old livery stable.

He left the doctor’s house and started along the street. Sometime during all the excitement, his hat had flown off, and he didn’t know where it was. He was looking for it when he spotted Sam walking away from the marshal’s office. Matt angled across the street to intercept him.

“Keep an eye out for my Stetson,” he told his blood brother. “Reckon I lost it somewhere durin’ that ruckus.”

“We can look for it later,” Sam said. “Right now I’m on my way down to the creek to check on Bickford. If he’s still there, he needs to be locked up along with Porter.”

“How come you didn’t just tie him up so he couldn’t run off?”

Sam grimaced. “I was a mite busy at the time, because all hell broke loose here in town. I didn’t know what was going on, but I figured with that much shooting, I ought to take a hand.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you did, I guess. But Bickford’s liable to be long gone.”

“I know.”

“I’ll come with you,” Matt said. “Just in case he’s still there and itchin’ to start some more trouble.”

That wasn’t the case, though. Just as Sam had feared, Calvin Bickford was gone, although the two deputies Sam had knocked out and tied up were still there and definitely unhappy about their predicament. Bickford came in for a large share of their ire because he hadn’t take the time to free them before grabbing one of the horses and fleeing. Matt and Sam ignored their complaints.

“Might be able to trail Bickford when the sun comes up,” Matt suggested.

“Maybe.” Sam went over to the first prison wagon and called through the window, “Hey, Barnabas, you still in there?”

The reply came back instantly. “Where the hell would I go?” Barnabas demanded. “I’m locked up in here, remember?”

“And that’s where you’re going to stay for one more night,” Sam said. “Tomorrow we’ll get everything straightened out.”

“You’re gonna leave us in here?” Barnabas protested. “It ain’t right. We ain’t lawbreakers.”

“We’ll see about that,” Sam promised. “And we’ll make sure all the wounded men get the medical care they need, too.” He paused. “Did you happen to see which way Bickford went?”

“Can’t see much of anything from in here,” Barnabas said. “What happened to Porter?”

“He’s locked up in jail where he belongs.”

“Well, thank God for that! What about them deputies?”

“Most of them are dead.”

“Can’t say as I’m sad to hear it. They might not’ve been quite as bad as Porter and Bickford, but they were a pretty low-down bunch, too.”

“We’ll get you out of there first thing in the morning,” Sam assured him. “In the meantime, try to get some rest.”

“Sure.” Barnabas hesitated, then said, “Thanks, mister. If it wasn’t for what you did, some of us wouldn’t have made it much longer.”

“Somebody had to put a stop to what Porter and Bickford were doing,” Sam said.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t just somebody. It was you. That makes you a hero in my book.”

Sam shook his head. He had never thought of himself as a hero, or Matt, either, for that matter. They were just a couple of hombres who did what needed to be done and dealt with trouble as they came to it.

Which was all too often, Sam reflected. But for tonight, at least, it seemed to be over.

Chapter 32

For once that prediction proved to be accurate, and not a jinx. The rest of the night passed quietly with no sign of Cimarron Kane and his troublesome relatives returning to Cottonwood, or of Calvin Bickford, either, for that matter.

Belatedly, Matt thought about the deputy he had left underneath the wagon, but when he went to check, the man had already been found. One of the bullets that had been fired by the man’s crooked compadres at Matt had struck the hombre smack-dab between the eyes instead, killing him instantly.

The deputy Matt had tied up in the alley had been found, too, and locked up in Marshal Coleman’s jail, along with the two Sam had captured down at the creek. That made it a clean sweep of the crooked lawmen, except for Bickford.

Out of gratitude to Matt and Sam, Ike Loomis offered to take care of their horses for free as long as they remained in Cottonwood, and he told Matt that he could sleep in the livery stable’s hayloft if he wanted to, as well. Matt declined that offer as graciously as he could and chose to spend the night at the hotel instead. He wanted to get back out to the Harlow place as soon as possible—Frankie and her pa and brothers didn’t know yet about Cimarron Kane’s raid on the town—but morning would be soon enough for that, Matt decided.

Sam slept on the cot in the jail’s back room, and was up early the next morning. He went outside as the approach of dawn grayed the eastern sky and was struck by how hot and still the air was. Usually, there was a hint of coolness in the early morning like this, even in the middle of summer, but not today. The atmosphere had a heavy, uncomfortable feeling to it, and at times like this, Sam longed for the clean coolness of the Montana high country, the homeland of his father’s people.

He spotted Matt leading the saddled gray stallion out of the livery barn and walked over to meet him. With a smile on his face, Sam held out the thing he had found and picked up just a few moments earlier as he was making his rounds.

“My hat!” Matt exclaimed. “You found it.”

“Yes, and it doesn’t look like it’s been shot up and trampled on too much,” Sam said.

Matt took the Stetson, beat it against his leg to get the dirt off it, poked it back into shape, and settled it on his head. “How’s it look?” he asked his blood brother.

“No more disreputable than usual.”

“No more…Hey, what do you mean by that? This is a fine hat!”

“Of course it is,” Sam said. “Where are you going this early in the morning?”

“Back out to the Harlow place.”

Sam frowned. “I thought maybe you’d changed your mind about that.”

“Why would I?” Matt asked. “Those folks still need help. Cimarron Kane’s determined to put ’em out of the whiskey business, even if it means killin’ all of them.”

“Seems to me like Kane’s more concerned with getting his cousins out of jail.”

Matt shook his head. “Not yesterday mornin’, he wasn’t. He raided the Harlow farm and tried to blow up their still. Even wounded one of Frankie’s brothers a little bit.”

“You’re sure it was Cimarron Kane and his bunch?” Sam asked with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve never seen Kane, or if I have, I didn’t know which one he was. What does he look like?”

Quickly, Sam described Cimarron Kane’s appearance. He had gotten a good look at the outlaw gunman the day before when Kane rode into town with some of his kinfolks, so he was able to paint a vivid word picture for Matt.

As Sam concluded the description, Matt shook his head. “No, I didn’t see anybody who looked like that in the bunch that attacked the Harlow place. But who else could it have been? It sure as hell wasn’t Porter and Bickford and their deputies, and they’re the only other hell-raisers in these parts right now!” Matt paused, then added, “At least they were until last night. Now I don’t reckon they fall into that category anymore, with Porter locked up, Bickford on the run, and the only other survivors either behind bars or shot up.”

“That reminds me,” Sam said. “I need to go down to Dr. Berger’s and see how Mike Loomis is doing this morning.”

“I’ll come with you,” Matt said, lifting his reins to lead his horse rather than mounting up.

As they walked toward the doctor’s house, Sam said, “Tell me more about the attack on the Harlows.”

“Nothin’ more to tell,” Matt insisted. “They tried to shoot up the place, kill everybody, and blow up the still. Cimarron Kane might not have been there himself, but I’m sure they were his relatives and that he sent them.”

“You’re probably right.”

“What about those prison wagons down by the creek?” Matt asked as he jerked a thumb in that direction. “What are you gonna do with all those fellas Porter and Bickford locked up?”

“Well, first of all, we’ll take the men who are in the worst shape physically to Dr. Berger’s house and let him look after them. We’ll also need to question everyone and find out which ones were actually brewing or selling whiskey and which ones were just unfortunate enough to fall victim to their scheme.”

Matt frowned. “You mean you’re gonna keep the ones who broke that stupid whiskey law locked up?”

“What other choice does Marshal Coleman have? They broke the law.”

“But not here in Cottonwood,” Matt pointed out. “And the marshal’s jurisdiction only covers the town limits.”

Sam rubbed his jaw and frowned in thought. “You’ve got a point there.”

“Not to mention the fact that you’ve been keepin’ the secret about Ike Loomis’s saloon.” Matt chuckled. “Reckon that makes you a—what do they call it—accessory after the fact to a crime. You know about it, but you’re not doin’ anything about it.”

Sam looked down at the badge pinned to his shirt and sighed. “I never should have put on this tin star. It just complicates things.”

“Yeah, especially when the real reason you did it was to be around a gal.”

“Hey, the only reason you got mixed up with the Harlows was because of that girl Frankie!”

“You don’t know that. Her pa’s a real likable fella, and I suspect her brothers would be, too, if I could ever figure out which one of ’em is which.”

Sam snorted in disbelief. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s the reason you’re willing to risk your neck for them. Frankie’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Now, I never said that…”

A man’s voice hailed them from behind, saying, “Mr. Bodine, Mr. Two Wolves, good morning!”

The blood brothers stopped and turned to see the gambler, Linus Grady, strolling after them. His expensive suit looked a little wrinkled, but his straw planter’s hat was cocked at a rakish angle. He patted a hand over a yawn as he came up to them.

“You’re up early,” Matt commented.

That brought a grin from Grady. “No, I’m up late,” he corrected. “The poker game at Loomis’s went all night. Of course, it was rather late getting started because no one could concentrate on cards with all the shooting going on in town. It sounded like the battle of the Little Big Horn all over again.”

Matt and Sam exchanged a quick glance. As it happened, they both knew exactly what the battle of the Little Big Horn had sounded like, because they had been in the Montana hills on that fateful day several years earlier, not far from the site of the epic clash. The sound of the shots had come clearly to them.

Grady didn’t seem to notice that reaction, though. He went on. “Then Red Mike rushed out to see what was going on, and when he didn’t come back, everyone was worried. It was quite a while before someone came in and told us that he’d been wounded but that the doctor thought he would be all right.”

“We were just on our way to see him now,” Sam said.

Grady looked interested. “Mind if I come along?”

Matt shrugged and said, “That’s fine. You must know him pretty well. Bein’ a gambler, you probably spend quite a bit of time in that saloon his pa owns.”

“That’s right.” Grady nodded. “He’s a fine young man.”

The three of them walked on to Dr. Berger’s house. Despite the early hour, lights burned in several of the windows, which came as no surprise. Doctoring usually went on around the clock.

A severe-looking, middle-aged woman with gray hair answered Sam’s knock on the front door. “If you’re not hurt, the doctor doesn’t have time for you,” she said without preamble.

“We just came to visit a patient,” Sam explained. “Mike Loomis.”

The woman’s expression softened slightly. “Mike’s sleeping, and he doesn’t need to be disturbed. If you’re friends of his, though, I can tell you that he spent a fairly peaceful night and is making acceptable progress.”

“You’re Dr. Berger’s nurse?” Matt asked.

“His nurse and his sister, Prudence,” the woman introduced herself.

“What about the other man who was brought here last night?” Sam asked.

“That outlaw?” Prudence Berger sniffed. “He’s doing all right, too, I suppose.” She looked at the badge on Sam’s shirt. “Tell Marsh Coleman that he can’t just leave a prisoner down here. My brother and I are medical people, not jailers.”

“When can he be moved?” Sam asked.

“Later today, I imagine. You’ll have to talk to the doctor to find out for sure.”

“I’ll pass along the message to Marshal Coleman,” Sam promised. “Has the prisoner regained consciousness?”

“Yes, but he lost so much blood that he’s weak as a kitten, like poor Mike Loomis. He’s no real danger to us, I suppose, but we still don’t want him here.”

“I’ll see that it’s tended to,” Sam told her. He tugged on the brim of his black hat. “Good morning, ma’am.”

As the three men turned and went back down the walk to the street, Grady yawned again and said, “I think I’m going to get some breakfast and turn in.”

“Breakfast sounds good before I hit the trail,” Matt said. “Where’s the best place to get some flapjacks and bacon and strong black coffee in this town?”

Grady smiled. “Probably the hotel. Why don’t we go down there together?”

Matt nodded. “All right.”

“Leaving town, are you?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d ride back out to the Harlow place.” Matt glanced at the gambler. “I don’t reckon you’ve heard about what happened out there yesterday.”

Grady’s eyebrows rose in interest. “More trouble? Tell me about it. I know the Harlows fairly well. Good people. And that girl Frankie is beautiful, even if she is a bit of a hellion.”

“You’re right about that,” Matt agreed, “both parts of it. And as for the trouble, some of Cimarron Kane’s bunch attacked the place. I happened to be there, and I helped the Harlows send ’em packin’.”

“Well, that was a stroke of luck.”

“Yeah. You’ve had some of those corn squeezin’s the Harlows brew?”

Grady licked his lips like he was tasting something good. “Yes, indeed.”

“Kane wants to take over the moonshining business around here,” Matt went on. “He knows he can’t ever do that unless he gets rid of the Harlows first.”

“Definitely not.”

“I plan on helping them deal with Kane.”

“I’m sure they’re grateful for that.” Grady looked over at Sam, who hadn’t said anything for a couple of minutes. “Wait a minute. You’re a deputy now, Mr. Two Wolves, and yet you know about the Harlows and their moonshine business. In fact, you know about Ike Loomis’s secret saloon.”

Sam sighed. “Yeah. And it’s a dilemma, too. Not the way the Harlows are brewing that stuff, so much, because that happens outside the town limits and Marshal Coleman doesn’t have any authority over it. But they sell the whiskey to Ike Loomis, and he turns around and sells it in his saloon, which is in town…”

“And you don’t know whether to tell the marshal about it or not,” Grady guessed.

“That’s the problem I’m wrestling with, all right,” Sam admitted. “I like Mr. Loomis, and his son may have saved my life last night, and I think that liquor law is a foolish one…but it’s still the law, which I swore to uphold.”

Grady frowned as he thought it over, then said, “You know, Sam—can I call you Sam?—if I was you, I think I’d turn in my badge, resign that deputy’s job, and ride out of Cottonwood. Just put it all behind you.” He looked over at Matt. “You should go, too, Matt. There’s just going to be more trouble if the two of you stay around here.”

“You mean run out on the Harlows and let Cimarron Kane wipe out their business, and maybe them, too?” Matt shook his head without hesitation. “No, sir. That’s not gonna happen.”

“And I can’t abandon Marshal Coleman, either,” Sam said. “I’ll stay here and figure it all out…somehow.”

Grady shrugged. “I was just thinking about what might be best for you gents, not for everybody else. To tell you the truth, I’m glad you’re staying around here.” He grinned again. “You make life interesting.”

“Maybe so,” Matt said, “if you count gettin’ shot at way too often as interestin’.”

Chapter 33

By the time the three men finished eating breakfast in the hotel dining room and came back out onto the street, the temperature had risen even more. Sweat broke out in beads on a man’s forehead just from him moving around, and the sky was a washed-out silver blue, Matt saw when he glanced up at it. The ride out to the Harlow farm would be a hot one, he thought.

“Well, I’m going to toddle off to bed,” Grady announced. “Good day to you, gentlemen.” He went off down the street toward whatever whore’s crib he was sharing.

“You really have to go?” Sam asked his blood brother when Grady was gone.

“I do,” Matt said. “There’s no tellin’ what Kane will try next, and I want to be there to help the Harlows when he does.”

“All right,” Sam said. He stuck out his hand. “Thanks for showing up when you did last night. That made a real difference.”

The blood brothers shook hands with an odd formality. Matt said, “We’re back on opposite sides now, is that it?”

“Not opposite sides, really,” Sam said. “Just different trails right now.”

Matt nodded. He swung up into the saddle and said, “Trails have a way of comin’ back together.”

“That they do,” Sam agreed. He lifted a hand in farewell as Matt headed west out of Cottonwood.

The sun had risen and was a giant, brassy ball hanging in the eastern sky behind Matt as he rode. The dust kicked up by his horse’s hooves hung motionless in the air behind him because there was no breeze to stir it. From time to time, Matt took off his hat and sleeved sweat from his forehead. The oppressive feeling in the air didn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

Matt was nearing the spot where the trail to the Harlow farm branched off when he heard some distant popping sounds. That had to be gunfire, he thought as he reined in sharply, and as best he could tell, the reports were coming from the direction of the Harlow place. He bit back a curse as he gazed off to the south and saw a large ball of black smoke suddenly billow up over the horizon.

The Harlow cabin, which was built mostly of sod, wouldn’t cause a cloud of smoke like that if it was on fire, Matt knew. But if the moonshine still had exploded, it might.

Damn it! Matt thought. Cimarron Kane had gotten to the Harlows after all, while Matt was in Cottonwood. Kane had launched the next move in the game sooner than Matt expected. He had thought that after the defeat the outlaw had suffered the night before, Kane would lick his wounds for a while before striking again. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.

Matt wasn’t the sort to sit around and brood because things had gone wrong. He would do his best to put them right again. He urged his mount into a gallop, and a couple of minutes later, horse and rider swung onto the trail leading to the Harlow farm. Matt knew he might run right into Cimarron Kane and the rest of that murderous family, but at the moment he didn’t care. He knew what Kane looked like now, thanks to the description Sam had given him, and he wanted to get that varmint in his gunsights.

As Matt urged the stallion to a faster pace, he watched the black smoke climb higher in the sky ahead of him. There was no doubt in his mind now that it came from the Harlow farm. He lowered his gaze and searched for a pall of dust hanging in the air. That would indicate the location of the Kane bunch as they rode away from the farm.

But he didn’t see any dust coming toward him, which was strange. He figured that after the raid, they would head back to their own ranch, which meant they would have to ride north.

Instead, the air remained hot and clear ahead of him, except for the column of black smoke, which was thinning now. Matt slowed his horse all the way to a stop and listened intently for the sound of shots. He didn’t hear any. More than likely the fight was over, and he had a bad feeling that he wasn’t going to like the outcome.

He pulled his Winchester from the saddle sheath and galloped ahead again. The line of ridges came into view a few minutes later. The Harlow homestead was just on the other side of those ridges, he recalled from the day before. It was hard to believe that only about twenty-four hours had passed since he’d gone exploring the area around the homestead with Frankie Harlow.

Matt followed the trail through the cuts in the ridges, thinking that this would be a bad place to run into Cimarron Kane, but there was no sign of the outlaw and his relatives. When he emerged from the last of the cuts and swung toward the farm, he saw that the cabin was intact. Just as he had thought, the smoke rose from the mouth of the underground chamber where the still was located. Kane had managed to blow it up. Matt discounted the idea of an accidental explosion because of the gunshots he’d heard. There had definitely been a fight here.

A rifle suddenly cracked from one of the windows in the cabin, the slug throwing up dirt about twenty yards in front of Matt’s horse. Matt hauled back on the reins and slowed the animal. That had been a warning shot. Somebody in the cabin was trigger-happy, and he couldn’t blame whoever it was. Lifting his voice, he shouted, “Hold your fire! It’s me, Matt Bodine!”

The cabin door flew open. Thurman Harlow ran out, holding a rifle. “Mr. Bodine!” he called. “Come on in!”

Matt rode quickly up to the cabin and dismounted, his boots hitting the ground even before his horse had stopped moving. “What happened here?” he asked. “I heard the shootin’ and saw the smoke.”

“It was that damned Cimarron Kane!” the usually mild-mannered Harlow replied with unaccustomed vehemence. “He hit us again, and this time he managed to blow up the still. He had a bomb, I reckon you’d call it, that he tossed in there. Quint and Farrell barely got out in time before it blowed up.”

Matt frowned. Kane using a bomb like that reminded him of what he and Sam had seen those crooked marshals doing a few days earlier, when they first rode in to the area.

“They kept the rest of us pinned down,” Harlow went on, “all except for…” He had to choke out the next words. “Except for Frankie.”

Fear made Matt’s heart slug heavily in his chest. “Frankie,” he repeated. “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know,” Harlow replied miserably as he shook his head. “That son of a bitch Kane made off with her!”

Ambrose Porter was sullenly quiet as he sat in a cell by himself. The three crooked deputies who had been arrested shared one of the other cells, but Marshal Coleman had left Porter locked up alone. The whole bunch was quiet at the moment, Sam saw as he looked in through the little barred window in the cell block door.

Sam had returned to the office after bidding Matt farewell. Coleman came in a few minutes later, looking a little stronger this morning after getting a night’s sleep.

“Everything peaceful?” he asked as he went to the stove to pour himself a cup of coffee.

“Quiet as it can be,” Sam replied. “I made the morning rounds a little while ago.”

Coleman nodded. “Good man. You know what needs to be done, and you do it without anybody havin’ to tell you about it. That’s rare.”

“Just a matter of common sense,” Sam said with a shrug.

“Maybe so, but you’d be surprised in what short supply that quality is most of the time.”

Sam got some coffee for himself as Coleman went behind the desk and sat down. “What do you plan to do about Porter and those deputies?” Sam asked.

“Not much I can do except leave ’em locked up and let the circuit judge deal with ’em when he gets here next week, same as those Kane boys. You’ll still be around to testify at the hearin’, won’t you?”

Sam nodded. “I’m not planning on going anywhere.” He mulled over his next words for a long moment before saying, “Marshal, what would you do if you found out that somebody was running an illegal saloon here in town?”

Coleman frowned. “Well, I reckon it’d be my duty to close it down and arrest whoever was doin’ such a thing. The law’s the law, after all.” He took a sip of his coffee. “But as it happens, I don’t have any personal knowledge of such a thing goin’ on.”

“It could be happening, though, without you knowing about it.”

“I suppose it could,” Coleman said. “Thing of it is, I’ve got more important things to do with my time than goin’ and lookin’ for such a place, and I sure wouldn’t expect anybody to tell me about it if they knew anything.”

“I see,” Sam said slowly.

“I mean, it’s not like a place like that would really be hurtin’ anything,” the marshal went on. “As a lawman, I can’t pick and choose which laws I enforce, but there’s such a matter as priorities.” He took another sip of coffee. “A star packer can’t be everywhere at once, if you know what I mean.”

Sam understood. Coleman had to suspect that there was probably an illegal saloon operating somewhere in Cottonwood, but he wasn’t going to hunt it down. If he did, he’d be duty-bound to arrest not only the proprietor, who was probably his friend, but all the customers as well, and they would likely be friends of his, too. As Coleman had pointed out before, the new law put him in a bad spot, and all he could do was try to make the best of it.

“You’ve given me a lot to think about, Marshal,” Sam said.

“If there’s anything you feel like you have to tell me, Sam, you go right ahead…but remember, there’s an old sayin’ about discretion bein’ the better part of valor.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that,” Sam agreed. “I believe in it, too.”

A short time later, he went down the street to the café and brought back breakfast for the prisoners. Nelse, Dud, and Wiley Kane all ate hungrily, as did the three crooked deputies, but Porter refused the food.

“We can’t make him eat,” Coleman told Sam. “Just let him be stubborn, if that’s what he wants.”

When the meal was over, the customers began to complain about the heat in the jail. “It’s like a damn oven in here,” Wiley Kane said.

“There’s nothin’ I can do about that,” Coleman told him. “And it’s just as hot for me as it is for you. Anyway, those stone walls mean it’s probably cooler in there than it is outside.”

“Well, it still ain’t right,” Nelse insisted.

Coleman ignored their grousing and said to Sam, “Why don’t you go down to the creek and hitch up those wagons? Take the one with the wounded men over to Doc Berger’s so he can decide if any of them need to stay at his place.”

“Otherwise…?” Sam said with a lifted eyebrow.

“Otherwise, turn ’em loose,” Coleman declared. “I’ve been thinkin’ about it. Maybe they broke the law, maybe they didn’t, but none of it happened here in Cottonwood, so I don’t have any jurisdiction over them. Some of the ones who ain’t from around here may need help gettin’ back wherever they came from. Tell those fellas to come and see me, and we’ll try to figure somethin’ out.”

Sam nodded his understanding and left the marshal’s office to carry out those orders.

Doing so took most of the morning. Dr. Berger deemed two of the former prisoners badly enough injured that they needed to stay at his house so he could care for them. He cleaned the wounds and changed the dressings of the others and told them they could check back in with him if they needed to, as long as they were in Cottonwood.

Barnabas Smith turned out to a short, fair-haired man who hailed from Georgia. He had come west to Kansas after the war. After he was released, he followed Sam back toward the marshal’s office, his little legs moving quickly as he tried to keep up with Sam’s longer stride.

“What am I gonna do, Deputy?” he asked. “My farm’s a good forty miles from here, and I ain’t got no horse or mule to get me back there.”

“Maybe you could buy a horse,” Sam suggested.

“With what? I didn’t have much money on me when I was arrested, and Porter and Bickford took all of it.”

“I’m sure all the rest of those fellas are in the same predicament. Maybe you can get together with them and figure out something.”

“Did Porter and his bunch have any money on them? If they did, then by rights it ought to go to their victims, don’t you think?”

“The judge will have to decide that next week. All of you should probably stay around here anyway, in case you’re needed to testify.”

“Then the town ought to put us up in the hotel, don’t you think? Or at least provide someplace to stay and some meals.”

Sam smiled at the little man’s persistence. “All right, Barnabas. You can take it up with the marshal. Maybe he’ll have some suggestions.”

“I’ll do that.” Barnabas paused and pulled a bandanna from his pocket. He mopped sweat off his face and then squinted up at the sky. “I don’t like the looks of it. Whenever the day’s so hot and still like this, and the sky gets all flat, it means a storm’s comin’.”

Sam nodded. “I think you’re probably right. But at least you won’t be stuck in those wagons if it does. I imagine they’d leak in a hard rain.”

“More’n likely. We ain’t had a hard rain in these parts for a while. That’s just one more reason I think somethin’s buildin’ up.”

“We’ll wait and see,” Sam said. But the glance he cast at the sky was more apprehensive than it had been a few minutes earlier. Barnabas had put into words the worry that had been lurking in the back of Sam’s mind all day. These Kansas plains were notorious for the big storms that sometimes rumbled across them. Those storms had been known to drop torrential downpours of rain, and to spawn cyclones, as well. There wasn’t much out there on the flat and mostly treeless prairie to slow down a twister.

But maybe it wouldn’t come to that, Sam told himself. Cottonwood had already seen more than its fair share of trouble the past few days. Surely it wouldn’t be plagued with a bad storm on top of everything else.

But then he remembered that nature didn’t have any concept of fairness. It just was.

He headed for the jail to warn Marshal Coleman that a storm might be brewing. He looked to the west and saw a haze in the air. Was that a cloud gathering?

No, Sam decided a moment later, it wasn’t a cloud. Not a storm cloud, anyway.

That haze in the air was dust. Riders were headed toward town.

From the looks of it, a lot of riders.

Chapter 34

Matt was shaken by the news he’d just heard. He stared at Thurman Harlow for a second, then said, “You mean they carried her off?”

Harlow’s head bobbed up and down. “Yeah. She was down at the creek and got caught out in the open when Kane’s bunch showed up. She tried to make it back to the cabin, but they cut her off. I yelled for her to get in the cornfield and hide. She didn’t have time, though. Cimarron Kane hisself grabbed her and hauled her up on his horse.”

Anger raged through Matt like a prairie fire, mixed with fear for Frankie’s safety. “Did he hurt her?”

“Not right then,” Harlow replied with a shake of his head. “Not that I could see, anyway. Lord knows what he plans on doin’ to her, though.”

Matt forced himself to put aside the emotions he was feeling and think coolly and calmly. “This was just a few minutes ago. They haven’t gone far yet. I came in from the main trail and didn’t run into them. Which way were they headed when they rode out?”

Harlow frowned. “Now, that’s odd. They lit a shuck outta here goin’ east. That ain’t the way back to their place.”

“No, it’s not,” Matt agreed. “But Cottonwood’s northeast of here. Maybe they were headed for town.”

“Why would they do that?”

Matt shook his head. “I don’t know, but I aim to find out where they’re goin’, because I’m gonna pick up their trail and follow the sons of bitches. How big a bunch was it?”

“Looked like ever’ nephew and shirttail cousin Kane could scare up. Close to thirty men, I’d say.”

Those were heavy odds, Matt thought, but he wasn’t going to let them stop him.

Besides, if Kane was headed for the settlement for some reason, Sam was there, and the two blood brothers made a formidable team.

“You say you’re goin’ after ’em, Mr. Bodine?” Harlow asked.

“That’s right.”

“The boys and me was about to get mounted up and do the same thing, if you want to wait—”

Matt swung up into the saddle and lifted the reins. He wasn’t waiting for anybody or anything, not with Frankie’s life probably in danger. “A bunch of riders that big will leave a trail that’s easy to follow,” he said. “You can catch up to me.”

Before Harlow could argue with him, he turned his horse around and sent the stallion leaping into a run. He rode past the ruined still, where only a little smoke was rising from the entrance now, and on past the ridges. The ground was a jumble of hoofprints from all the horses that had galloped along here. The trail was so plain a blind man could have followed it, Matt thought.

He drove his horse hard, and after a few minutes he began to see dust hanging in the air ahead of him. It hadn’t had time to settle yet after Kane and the others passed, and there was no wind to blow it away. The heat was as bad as ever, maybe even worse, but Matt barely noticed it now. All his thoughts were of Frankie.

Again, he forced his brain to function rationally, pushing the fear aside so that he could figure out what he needed to do now. No matter how you stacked it up, thirty-to-one odds were almost insurmountable. If he rode right up and attacked the men he was following, he wouldn’t accomplish anything except to get himself killed. And that wouldn’t help Frankie one damned bit, he told himself.

As soon as that was clear in his head, he pulled back on the reins and slowed the stallion. The horse couldn’t keep galloping at that pace, anyway, without running itself into the ground. At a fast trot now, Matt continued following the men who had abducted Frankie Harlow. He wasn’t likely to lose sight of them, not with all that dust their horses were kicking up.

And sure enough, the trail had angled a little north of due east. They were heading for Cottonwood. Matt was sure of it.

The question remained, though…what were they going to do when they got there?

Sam stood looking at the dust for a moment and frowning because he couldn’t figure out why a group of that size would be riding toward Cottonwood. He didn’t know that the riders represented trouble…

But he didn’t know that they were peaceful, either. He decided that he needed to tell Marshal Coleman about this.

Turning, he moved at a fast walk up the street toward the marshal’s office. That made him stand out, because everybody else who was moving around today was going about it pretty slowly because of the heat. Ike Loomis was standing in the open double doorway of his livery barn, and he called, “Where you goin’ in such an all-fired hurry, Sam?”

“I need to find Marshal Coleman,” Sam replied as he stopped. “Have you seen him?”

“Nope. I just got back from visitin’ with Mike. He’s awake now and seems to be doin’ pretty good.”

Sam nodded. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said honestly. “He may well have saved my life.”

“If I see Marsh, I’ll tell him you’re lookin’ for him.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Sam said. He hurried on toward the marshal’s office.

When he got there, he saw that the door was still standing open. Coleman had opened both the front and back doors earlier, to let whatever breeze there might be blow through the building. So far it hadn’t done anything to dissipate the heat, Sam discovered as he stepped inside. It was sweltering in there, just as it had been when he left.

He frowned as he saw that Coleman wasn’t in the office. The cell block was quiet. It was too hot even for the prisoners to bitch. Sam felt a pang of worry and dropped his hand to the butt of his Colt as he stepped over to peer through the window in the cell block door. He thought for a second that the prisoners might have escaped somehow, but he could see that the cells were all closed securely and the prisoners were still locked up inside.

Coleman could have gone to his house for a few minutes. That was the most likely explanation since Sam hadn’t spotted him on the street. He turned and walked out of the office, heading for the lawman’s home.

He heard Lobo barking before he reached the house. The little dog sounded upset about something, but that didn’t really mean anything. Sam had been around dogs all his life and knew that they often carried on like that for no good reason.

But the possibility that Lobo did have a reason for being upset made Sam walk a little faster as he approached the house. He saw Lobo standing on the front porch, barking at the closed door.

“Lobo, what’s wrong?” Sam called as he opened the gate. He started up the walk toward the house.

Lobo turned and started barking at him then. The little bundle of gray and brown fur was definitely angry or scared or both, Sam thought. He bounded onto the porch and rapped his knuckles sharply against the doorjamb. Lobo kept barking.

Marshal Coleman opened the door a few seconds later and looked out at Sam through the screen. Sam felt relief go through him as he saw that the lawman seemed to be unhurt. Coleman didn’t look happy, though. He frowned as he glanced down at the dog and said sharply, “Hush, Lobo!”

Lobo gave a little whine, but he stopped barking.

Coleman looked at Sam and asked, “What is it?”

“There’s a lot of dust outside of town, Marshal,” Sam reported. “Appears to be a big bunch of riders coming.”

“Why are you tellin’ me about it?”

It was Sam’s turn to frown. “Well…I thought you’d like to know.”

“People come and go all the time,” Coleman said stiffly. “I don’t reckon it’s anything to worry about. Just go on back to the office, Sam.”

“It could be Cimarron Kane and his family coming back to cause more trouble,” Sam pointed out.

Coleman waved a hand in dismissal. “On a hot day like this? I don’t reckon even Kane’s that crazy. No, Sam, just go on back to the office and don’t worry so much.”

Why was Coleman so insistent that he go back to the office? Sam wondered. He had just been there a few minutes earlier, and everything seemed fine.

Unless Coleman didn’t really care where he went. The marshal just wanted him to get away from here, Sam realized. That meant if there was something wrong, it was probably going on right here, and Sam knew that Coleman would want to protect Hannah above all else…

But who or what could be threatening her?

Lobo had stopped barking, but he continued to make angry little growling noises deep in his throat. He stood stiffly next to Sam’s boots, and suddenly, as Coleman pushed open the screen door and snapped at Sam, “Well, go on,” Lobo shot forward through the narrow gap. He darted past Coleman’s feet, prompting a startled exclamation from the marshal, and raced across the room, snarling.

Coleman jerked around, lines of terror suddenly appearing on his weathered face. “No!” he cried.

Sam jerked the screen door open and rushed inside even as the wicked crack of a gunshot sounded. Somewhere inside the room, which was dimly lit because all the curtains were pulled, Hannah screamed. Sam shouldered Coleman aside and drew his gun at the same time. He caught a glimpse of Hannah struggling with a man, holding on to his arm and trying to keep him from shooting again. Down around the man’s feet, Lobo nipped furiously at his ankles.

“Drop the gun!” Sam ordered as he raised his Colt, but the man ignored the command. Instead, he slashed a brutal backhanded blow across Hannah’s face, knocking her away from him. At the same time, the small-caliber pistol in his hand jerked up and gouted flame and lead again.

Sam was in the line of fire and might have been hit if someone hadn’t knocked him aside. He heard Coleman grunt in pain, and realized that the marshal had shoved him out of the way and taken the bullet meant for him. There was no time to see how badly Coleman was hurt, though, because there was still the threat of the intruder to deal with. Sam snapped a shot at him, but the man twisted aside just in time to avoid the bullet. Sam couldn’t pull the trigger again because Hannah cried out, “Dad!” and lunged toward her wounded father, putting herself in the line of fire.

The intruder didn’t worry about endangering her. His pistol cracked again, and what felt like a giant fist slammed into the side of Sam’s head just above his left ear. The impact made him stumble back a step. The room spun crazily around him. He felt his legs folding up beneath him, but couldn’t seem to stop them. As he fell, he tried to raise his gun for another shot, but everything was such a blur he couldn’t find his target.

He heard Lobo’s pained yelp, though, and Hannah’s sobs. He realized he was lying on his back. A figure loomed over him. His vision cleared enough for him to recognize Linus Grady glaring down at him over the barrel of the gun. The gambler didn’t look so affable now. In fact, he looked like the Devil himself.

“You should have done what the marshal told you and gone back to the office, Sam,” Grady said. “Of course, you’d have died anyway, but you could have postponed it for a while.” Grady drew back the pistol’s hammer. “This way I can go ahead and dispose of you now.”

He pulled the trigger, and the red flame spurting from the muzzle was the last thing Sam saw before oblivion claimed him.

Chapter 35

It was close to midday by the time the group of riders Matt was following approached Cottonwood. The heat was worse than ever, and Matt had breathed so much dust he felt like the insides of his mouth, nose, throat, and lungs were coated with the stuff.

He had been staying well back of the riders, so when they came to a halt outside the settlement, he was able to stop, too, before he was close enough to risk being spotted. He reined in, dismounted, and reached into his saddlebags for a pair of field glasses he carried. He knew he would have to be careful using the glasses and not let sunlight reflect off the lenses. Some of Kane’s men might spot the flash and figure out that they were being followed.

Stealing forward through the tall buffalo grass, Matt dropped to his hands and knees when he was only a couple of hundred yards behind the riders. From there he crawled even closer, then stood up in a crouch and trained the glasses on the men.

His heart leaped in a combination of relief and anger when he spotted Frankie Harlow seated on one of the horses in front of Cimarron Kane. Kane’s arm was around Frankie’s waist, holding her tightly to him, but as far as Matt could tell, she seemed to be all right. The field glasses brought them close enough so that he could see the outrage on Frankie’s face. She was mad as hell.

Kane didn’t seem worried about that. He was talking to a couple of his men, and after a moment the two men spurred off toward the town. The rest of the group sat there, obviously waiting for the men to come back. Matt figured that Kane had sent the pair into Cottonwood to check on something, although he wasn’t sure what.

Slowly, Matt moved the glasses so that he could take a good look at the rest of the men. They were a rough, hard-bitten bunch, much like their leader, Cimarron Kane himself.

Then Matt saw something that made him stiffen in surprise. Sitting on one of the horses not far from Kane was Calvin Bickford, the corrupt special marshal who had escaped from Sam the night before.

The fact that Kane had used a bomb to blow up the Harlows’ moonshine still had reminded Matt of Bickford and Porter, but the possibility that there was actually a connection between them hadn’t occurred to him. He had no idea what that connection might be, but from the looks of it, Kane and Bickford were plenty friendly.

That didn’t bode well, Matt thought, but he would have to sort it all out later. Right now, all that mattered was getting Frankie out of Kane’s hands…literally.

A few minutes later, the two men Kane had sent into town returned. They talked excitedly to Kane for a moment, and then Kane hitched his horse into motion and waved for the rest of the men to follow him. They rode unhurriedly toward the settlement. They weren’t attacking Cottonwood, Matt realized.

Instead, they were riding in like they already owned the place.

Something was terribly wrong, and Matt didn’t know what it was. He lowered the field glasses, dropped again onto his hands and knees, and crawled back to where he had left his horse. After tucking the field glasses in his saddlebags, he patted the stallion on the shoulder and murmured, “You’re gonna have to stay here, fella. I need to get into town without anybody seein’ me, so I’ll have to do it on foot.”

He checked both his Colts, thumbing a cartridge into the empty chamber on each weapon where the hammer usually rested. He made sure all the loops in his shell belt were full, and then stuffed his pockets full of ammunition, too. There was no telling how many bullets he would need before this day was over, but he was betting that it would be a lot.

Matt hung his hat on the saddle horn, rubbed the stallion’s nose one last time, then turned toward Cottonwood. He moved in a crouch through the tall grass, then dropped once again into a crawl as he drew near the edge of the settlement.

He didn’t look behind him, but if he had, he might have seen the dark gray clouds building along the southwestern horizon. A little puff of cooler air stirred the buffalo grass for a few seconds, but Matt’s attention was focused on the task in front of him, and he didn’t notice.

When Sam regained consciousness, his first thought was one of surprise at still being alive. His next was the realization that his head hurt like hell.

That, at least, came as no surprise. He remembered Linus Grady shooting him. The small-caliber slug must have just grazed his skull, with enough of an impact to knock him out but not enough to penetrate into his brain. However, there was the matter of that second shot Grady had fired down at him at point-blank range.

Somehow he’d survived, and Sam was thankful for that. As the pain in his head subsided to a dull ache, he began to wonder where he was.

After a moment, he figured out that he was lying on rough planks. His cheek was pressed against them, since he was sprawled on his belly. He forced his eyes open and saw a stone wall about six feet away from him. Something about it looked familiar. Without moving his head, he managed to lift his gaze along the wall until it came to a small, barred window.

He was in jail.

That was why the wall looked familiar. He had seen it before. He was in one of the cells inside Cottonwood’s jail. Curiosity overwhelmed him, and he lifted his head for a better look around. The movement made a fresh burst of pain explode inside his skull. He couldn’t hold back the groan that came from him.

“Take it easy, Sam.” The voice belonged to Marshal Coleman. “You’ll be all right.”

Sam gritted his teeth against the pain and rolled over. He saw that he was alone in the small cell. Coleman was behind the locked door of the cell across from him. Sam scooted closer to the bars, reached out to grasp one of them, and used it to help pull himself into a sitting position.

The left side of his face felt stiff. He checked it and found that it was covered with dried blood. He knew from experience that scalp wounds usually bled freely and often looked worse than they really were. The painful gash on the side of his head above his ear was no different. Blood must have flooded down his face from it.

“Yeah, you look like you’re in pretty bad shape,” Coleman confirmed. “You bled all over the floor of my parlor. But at least you’re not dead.”

“H-Hannah…” Sam rasped.

“That’s right. She jumped Grady again and pushed his gun to the side just as he pulled the trigger. Put a bullet hole in my floor, to go along with all the blood. Better that than your brains, though. After that, Grady decided maybe it would be better to keep you alive, so he made me carry you down here and locked us both up.”

“No. I meant…is Hannah…all right?”

Coleman’s face was lined with worry. “As far as I know. Grady took her with him. I don’t know where they are now.”

“What the hell…is Grady…upto?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Coleman replied with a shake of his head. “All I know is that he showed up at my house a little while before you got there. He pulled a gun on us and said we’d be all right if we just did what he told us. He had the drop on us, so we had to go along with him. Lobo started carryin’ on, so Grady told me to put him outside. Then you showed up a couple of minutes later. Grady said for me to get rid of you without makin’ you suspicious. I tried.” Coleman shrugged. “But you saw how well that worked out.”

Sam’s brain was beginning to function at a higher level. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Grady’s just a gambler. Why would he do such a thing?”

“I don’t know. I reckon he’s got some sort of plan, though, or else he wouldn’t have locked us up and let everybody else go.”

Sam looked around. In his dazed state, he hadn’t really thought about it until the marshal mentioned it, but the rest of the cells in the cell block were indeed empty. Ambrose Porter and the crooked deputies were gone, along with Dud, Wiley, and Nelse Kane.

“Where are they?” Sam asked.

“They left with Grady and Hannah.” Coleman’s voice caught a little in his throat as he added, “Lord, I…I hope she’s all right.”

“I’m sure she is,” Sam said, although he wasn’t really sure of anything anymore.

“Porter wanted to shoot both of us,” Coleman went on, “but Grady talked him out of it. Said that havin’ us alive might come in handy later on, whatever that means.”

Sam thought about it and had an idea he knew what Grady meant. The gambler intended to use them as hostages. That meant he had to be worried about Matt for some reason. But Matt had headed back out to the Harlow place earlier today. Grady had no reason to worry about him…

Unless Grady knew something Sam and Coleman didn’t, such as a reason to suspect that Matt might be returning soon to Cottonwood. A picture began to form at the back of Sam’s mind, a theory that everything going on around here was connected in some way.

“We have to get out of here, Marshal,” Sam said. “Whatever Grady has in mind, we can’t stop him as long as we’re locked up in here.”

“I know,” Coleman said solemnly, “but there’s not any way out. I’ve been the marshal here for five years, and I know good and well that this jail is as sturdy as can be. Nobody’s ever busted out of it.”

“There has to be a way,” Sam insisted.

Coleman shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

Sam hated the feeling of helplessness that gnawed at his guts. He had never given up on a fight, and he didn’t intend to start now. He grabbed hold of the bars in the door again and hauled himself to his feet. Once again, he had to hold on for a moment while a wave of dizziness swept over him. When it passed, he stumbled over to the window and grasped those bars, looking out into the alley beside the jail. When he pressed his face against the bars and craned his neck, he could see a narrow slice of Main Street.

That was where he was looking when he saw Barnabas Smith stumble past.

“Psst! Barnabas!” Sam called as his hands tightened around the bars. “Barnabas, come here!”

The little former prisoner stopped and peered around in owlish confusion. Sam saw the way Barnabas was swaying slightly, and knew that he was drunk. Barnabas must have found out somehow about Ike Loomis’s secret saloon and had come up with enough money to buy some whiskey. Either that, or he had begged a few drinks. After a moment, Barnabas shook his head and looked like he was about to move on, no doubt thinking that he had just imagined someone calling his name.

“Barnabas!” Sam said again. “Down here at the jail window!”

This time Barnabas turned toward the alley and frowned as he looked along the side of the building. Sam stuck a hand out through the bars and motioned to him.

Unsteadily, Barnabas came toward him. When he got close to the window, he looked up and said in surprise, “Deputy? Is that you?”

“That’s right, Barnabas,” Sam told him. “It’s Deputy Two Wolves. I need your help.”

“Wait a minute. Are you locked up in there?”

“That’s right. I—”

Barnabas giggled. “You’re locked up. Now you know how I f-felt, locked up in that wagon.”

“You have to come into the marshal’s office, find the keys, and let us out of here.”

“Like you let me out last night when I…I asked you to?” Barnabas shook his head. “You s-said I had to st-stay locked up. Now you have to.”

“You don’t understand, Barnabas,” Sam insisted. “Something bad is about to happen—”

“Damn right it is,” Barnabas interrupted. “It’s fixin’ to storm, jus’ like I told you. Big ol’ storm cloud comin’ up from the southwest.” A breeze suddenly swirled dust and litter in the alley. “See? The wind’s pickin’ up.”

“I’m not talking about a storm. Some bad men are going to do something here in Cottonwood—”

Again Sam was interrupted, this time by heavy footsteps from the office. The cell block door swung open. He turned away from the window, not wanting to draw attention to Barnabas.

Linus Grady strode into the cell block, followed by Cimarron Kane, Ambrose Porter, and Calvin Bickford. Sam’s breath hissed between his teeth at the sight of the four men together. His rudimentary theory about there being a connection between the four of them had just been confirmed.

Bickford grinned smugly at Sam. “I’ll bet you thought you’d never see me again, you damn half-breed,” he said. “Bet you didn’t know my mother’s maiden name was Kane, either.”

Sam shook his head. “So you’re all working together.”

“It didn’t start out that way. Ambrose and I had our own deal. But then you ruined that, so when I got away, I headed for Cimarron’s place. I knew it was close by here. I knew he’d been trying to put the competition out of business and take over the moonshining around here, too, so I suggested we throw in together. Once everybody’s dead who knows what was going on before, Ambrose and I will carry on as special marshals and make sure that nobody ever interferes with Cimarron’s business.”

“And I’ll run the end of the operation here in town,” Grady said. “Cimarron and I already had a deal concerning that. All we have to do is get rid of Ike Loomis and that dumb son of his, and I’ll take over the saloon.”

Those details fit right in with the picture that had begun to form in Sam’s mind. These four men were in an alliance of evil and would stop at nothing to get what they wanted, even wholesale murder if it came to that.

“There’s just one loose end,” Grady went on. “That gunhawk friend of yours. Bodine. He’s out there somewhere. We’ll need to deal with him, and once he’s dead, we can dispose of you.”

“You’ll never catch Matt,” Sam said. “Anyway, he’s nowhere near here.”

Cimarron Kane spoke up, rasping, “That’s where you’re wrong, ’breed. He’s gonna come to us, because we got somethin’ he wants.”

“What are you talking about?” Sam asked tensely.

“That Harlow slut,” Kane replied. “We got her down at the doc’s place, too, along with the marshal’s gal and the Loomises. Soon as we get our hands on Bodine, we’ll have everybody we need.” A savage grin tugged at the outlaw’s mouth as he added, “And then the killin’ can commence.”

Chapter 36

Matt took more than an hour to work his way into Cottonwood, utilizing every trick of stealth he had learned from Sam and Medicine Horse, not to mention his own experiences. By the time he reached the back alley that ran behind the buildings along the south side of Main Street, the dark clouds had moved in and could no longer be ignored, although the air itself remained still and heavy for the most part. It had a hot, breathless quality that made the hair stand up on the back of Matt’s neck as he pressed himself against the rear wall of the hotel.

He made his way to the corner and then along the side of the building until he could see some of the street. An atmosphere of tense foreboding that had nothing to do with the weather hung over the settlement. The street was deserted, and the only men he saw along the boardwalks were some of the Kane bunch. Matt stiffened in surprise as he recognized Wiley, Nelse, and Dud Kane, the three brothers Marshal Coleman had arrested a few days earlier.

Matt knew that Coleman wouldn’t have released those prisoners. The fact that they were walking around not only free but also heavily armed told Matt that Cimarron Kane must have released them from the jail. That meant Coleman was either dead or a prisoner himself.

Fear for Sam’s safety went through Matt like a cold chill. He knew that his blood brother was well capable of taking care of himself, but the odds would have been mighty high against Sam when the Kanes rode in to take over the town. Clearly, that was exactly what had happened, and Sam might be dead, too, although Matt hadn’t heard any shots as he was sneaking into the settlement.

He needed to reach the jail, Matt decided. If Sam and Coleman were still alive, maybe that was where they were. As for Frankie Harlow, Matt had no idea where she might be, but the first order of business was to find out if Sam was still alive and join forces with him if he was.

Matt was about to slip back down the narrow passage beside the hotel to the rear alley when another gun-hung hombre walking along the opposite boardwalk caught his attention. He recognized the man as one of the special deputies. Since Bickford had ridden in with Cimarron Kane, that came as no surprise. Kane must have let those prisoners out of jail, too, probably including Ambrose Porter.

Things had really gone to hell here in Cottonwood, Matt thought bleakly, and he would be facing an uphill battle to put them right again.

The Good Lord hadn’t included any backup in Matt Bodine, though, so he would fight to the bitter end. He went back to the alley and started making his way along it.

He had just stepped around the rear corner of the hotel when he almost ran into one of the Kanes. The man must have been sent back here to patrol the alley. His mouth opened to raise a shout of alarm, but before any sounds could come out, Matt struck with blinding swiftness. His fist crashed into the man’s face with stunning power, sending him staggering backward. Matt leaped after him, palming out his left-hand Colt and slamming the barrel against the side of the man’s head. The savage blow did the job. The man went down hard. He was out cold when he hit the ground.

Matt knew it might not be long before another guard came along and discovered the unconscious man. He broke into a run toward the far end of town where the jail was located.

He had taken only a few steps when what sounded like a giant clap of thunder shook the ground under his feet. Despite the gathering storm, though, it wasn’t thunder, he realized.

It was an explosion.

Linus Grady, Cimarron Kane, and Ambrose Porter left the jail soon after Kane’s leering threat, leaving Calvin Bickford behind to keep an eye on Sam and Marshal Coleman.

“You can’t expect to get away with this, Bickford,” Sam told the man. “Too many people in Cottonwood know what you were up to before. Now that you’re partners with Kane and Grady, you can’t wipe out the whole town. It would ruin their plans if you did.”

“Nobody’s going to be brave enough to speak up,” Bickford said confidently. “Not with Cimarron being Cottonwood’s new marshal and Linus Grady its mayor. They’ll run things, and folks will go along with them if they know what’s good for ’em.”

Sam hated to think it, but he knew Bickford might be right. The citizens of Cottonwood were common, ordinary people. They weren’t outlaws or professional gunmen, and they wouldn’t stand a chance against a whole clan of killers like the Kanes. Eventually, of course, the facts of what had happened here would filter out to the proper authorities, but by that time the four conspirators would have cleaned up. They could take their loot and run, but probably not without leaving death and destruction behind them.

“You fellas enjoy what time you have left,” Bickford went on. “Cimarron and Ambrose have a couple of dozen men patrolling the town. As soon as Bodine walks into their trap, we can wrap things up and get on with the business of becoming rich men.”

By wrapping things up, Bickford meant murdering Sam and Coleman, Ike and Mike Loomis, and probably Hannah and Frankie, Sam thought. Although it was possible the conspirators might keep the two young women alive as playthings, at least until they grew tired of them. Sam’s jaw clenched so tightly at the thought that he had to force it to relax before he broke some of his teeth.

Chuckling, Bickford strolled out of the cell block. He left the door open as he went into the marshal’s office. Sam heard the chair behind the desk squeak as the crooked lawman sat down.

Sam hadn’t given up on finding a way out of the cell. He was looking around, hoping that an idea would come to him, when he heard a whisper at the window. “Two Wolves!”

Sam sprang to the window and looked out. Barnabas Smith stood there. The little man didn’t look as drunk now as he had been earlier. Barnabas went on. “I heard what those bastards were sayin’ a while ago. Porter’s liable to try to hunt down all of us he had locked up in those wagons, so he can shut our mouths.”

“That’s right,” Sam said with a nod. “Listen, my friend Matt may be in town. Have you seen him?”

“Nope. But you don’t need him to get you outta there. I can do it.”

Sam frowned. “It’s too late to get the keys,” he said, keeping his voice pitched low. “Bickford’s in the office.”

“Don’t need the keys. Those varmints left their horses in the livery stable when they took Ike Loomis prisoner, so I was able to slip in there and get somethin’ even better outta Bickford’s saddlebags. Back when I was a prisoner, I saw where he keeps ’em.”

“Keeps what?” Sam asked in exasperation.

“This,” Barnabas said as he lifted a round black object into Sam’s line of sight. A fuse dangled from it.

Sam’s eyes widened in shock. “That’s a bomb!”

“I know,” Barnabas said calmly. He lifted his other hand, and Sam saw a match in it. Before Sam could say anything, Barnabas snapped the match into life with his thumbnail and held the flame to the end of the fuse. “Better grab the mattress off that bunk and get under it. I’ll put this down at the base of the wall.”

“No!” Sam exclaimed. “Put that fuse out! Get rid of it, Barnabas—”

“No time for that now,” Barnabas said as he bent to the ground. “Better duck!”

Then his running footsteps pounded away along the alley.

Sam did the only thing he could. He yelled, “Get down!” at Marshal Coleman, snatched the thin mattress off the cell’s bunk, and curled up in a corner as far away from the wall as he could get, wrapping the mattress around himself. He heard Bickford run into the cell block, shouting, “What the hell?”

When the blast came a second later, it was like being caught in the middle of the biggest thunderclap that ever sounded. A wave of force smashed into Sam and drove him back into the corner. A huge weight crashed down on top of him. He blacked out for a moment, and when he came to, his ears were ringing and the smell of burned powder was so sharp that it seemed to slice into his nose like a thousand knives.

But he was alive, no doubt about that. The weight was still on top of him, making it difficult to breathe. He shoved against it, and some of it fell away. Sam continued to struggle, fighting his way free of the rubble that was heaped on top of him.

He still couldn’t hear anything as he pushed the chunks of broken wall off him and climbed to his feet. He saw the chips of rock fly from a big piece of wall as a bullet struck it, though. Twisting around, he saw Calvin Bickford getting ready to fire another shot through the bars, which had withstood the explosion. Bickford’s face was covered with blood from the gashes that flying debris had left on it.

Sam grabbed a fist-sized shard of rock and let fly with it, aiming for a gap between two of the iron bars. The missile flew true and caught Bickford in the head just as he pulled the trigger. The impact threw off his aim and made him stagger backward.

That brought him within reach of Coleman, whose hands shot through the bars and caught Bickford around the neck. The real lawman jerked the corrupt one back against the door as hard as he could. Bickford’s head clanged against the bars. He went limp, and his gun slipped out of his fingers.

“Sam, go on!” Coleman shouted as he lowered Bickford’s unconscious form to the floor. “Get out of here!”

Sam tilted his head and gave it a shake. He heard the words vaguely, enough to understand them, and realized that his hearing was coming back after the explosion. He saw Coleman waving a hand toward the far wall and looked in that direction to see a gaping hole in it. Barnabas Smith and several other men were waiting outside in the alley.

“Come on, Two Wolves!” Barnabas urged. “We’ll help you! We got a score to settle with Porter!”

It was true. Barnabas’s companions were some of the men who had been imprisoned in the wagons, and they all had guns. Barnabas held out a revolver butt-first, offering it to Sam.

Those men were farmers and drifters, and some of them probably really were moonshiners. A motley army, to be sure. But a hell of a lot better than nothing.

Sam glanced over his shoulder at Coleman. “Go!” the marshal urged again. He was reaching through the bars, searching Bickford’s pockets. “I’ll see if I can find the key to unlock this door. If I can, I’ll come and find you. But you got to get Hannah away from those bastards, Sam. You just got to!”

Sam gave him a curt nod of agreement. “I’ll get her, Marshal,” he promised. Still a little shaky on his feet, he climbed through the hole that the bomb had blasted in the wall and joined Barnabas and the others in the alley.

Barnabas pressed the pistol into Sam’s hand. “I saw Porter and the others headin’ down toward the doc’s house,” he said.

Sam nodded. “We’ll have to fight our way through,” he warned. “Some of us probably won’t make it.”

Barnabas grinned, and the expression was positively fierce, especially for such a small man. “Like I said, we got scores to settle with those sons o’ bitches.”

Sam was about to lead the way when he heard someone call his name. “Sam! Sam!” He turned and saw Matt running toward him, a gun in each hand.

Matt grinned as he came up and waved a Colt toward the destroyed wall. “What’d you do, blow the place up?”

“No, Barnabas did,” Sam replied. “Hannah and Frankie are being held down at the doctor’s house, along with the Loomises. Kane, Porter, and Grady are there, too.”

“Grady!” Matt exclaimed.

“It’s a long, ugly story,” Sam said.

“Then save it for later. Just tell me this. Is Grady one of the varmints behind all this trouble?”

“That’s right.”

“Then we’ll shoot him, too,” Matt said. “Come on!”

Chapter 37

They had barely emerged onto the street when bullets began to whistle around their heads. The blood brothers led the way, crouching, running, firing, their deadly accurate shots ripping through the men who tried to stop them. Barnabas and their other half-dozen allies followed closely behind, fighting with enthusiasm and courage that partially made up for their lack of experience.

Dr. Berger’s house came into view. About a dozen men ranged around the place, mostly relatives of Cimarron Kane but including a couple of the crooked deputies, opened fire on the group led by Matt and Sam, forcing them to dive for cover. They traded shots for a couple of minutes before Cimarron Kane bellowed, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

The shots died away on both sides. Kane stepped out onto the porch of Berger’s house with the doctor’s sister in front of him as he held a gun to her head.

“Bodine! Two Wolves! I saw you there! I don’t know how you got out, ’breed, but it don’t matter! We still got hostages in here, so you better give up if you don’t want their blood on your hands!”

“Let them go and fight it out with us, damn you!” Matt shouted back at him.

Kane laughed harshly. “Go to hell, Bodine! We got the upper hand here!”

Matt and Sam looked at each other as they crouched behind a parked buckboard. “He’s right,” Sam said. “We can’t risk the hostages.”

The sky was so overcast now it was almost black. Lightning clawed its way through the clouds. But the air was still hot and stifling, heavy with the threat of rain that wouldn’t fall. The hair on the back of Matt’s neck was prickling again as he said, “I think we’ve got an even bigger worry.”

Sam frowned. “What are you—”

Then he heard what Matt had heard a second earlier. It was a low-pitched, rumbling sound, reminiscent of a freight train approaching at high speed. Sam’s eyes widened in horror, matching Matt’s expression, as both of the blood brothers turned to peer toward the southwest.

The twister barreling down on Cottonwood dipped down out of the clouds like a thick, sinuous snake. The madly whirling column of air was at least half a mile wide. From this angle, they couldn’t tell if it had already touched the ground, but if it hadn’t, it was about to.

Yells of fear came from the gunmen around the doctor’s house. Not very many people could stand and watch a giant tornado approaching without panicking, and these killers were no different. Most of them broke from cover and ran.

Matt and Sam weren’t sure where they were running to, and the men probably didn’t know themselves. But the blood brothers took advantage of the opportunity. They stood up and charged the house, with Barnabas and the others behind them. The roar of guns was drowned out by the earthshaking rumble of the twister, but the flames stabbing from gun muzzles competed with the flash of lightning. Men toppled and fell, riddled by the slugs fired by Matt, Sam, Barnabas, and the others.

That tornado was big enough to wipe out Cottonwood and everybody in it, Matt knew, but he couldn’t allow himself to think about that now. All he wanted was a chance to square off against Kane, Porter, and Grady. Sam felt the same way. Finish the fight, then worry about the twister.

Kane had ducked back into the house. He emerged now holding Frankie Harlow. Porter came next with Hannah clutched in front of him as a human shield. Grady brought up the rear with an arm around Prudence Berger. All three men opened fire on the charging Matt and Sam.

They had reckoned without the fighting spirit that burned inside all three women. Suddenly, they found themselves trying to hold on to a trio of wildcats. Frankie twisted around and slammed a fist into Kane’s throat, while Hannah clawed at Porter’s face. Prudence brought the heel of her shoe down hard on Grady’s foot, making him howl in pain.

Matt and Sam never slowed down, even when slugs were whipping around their heads. They hurdled the fence around the doctor’s front yard, bounded across the grass, and leaped onto the porch, crashing into the knot of struggling figures there. Guns flew out of fingers, and suddenly it was a hand-to-hand battle. Matt smashed his fist into Cimarron Kane’s face while Sam tackled Ambrose Porter and rolled across the porch with him.

Linus Grady was the only one who slipped away. He leaped off the porch and tried to run, only to find himself facing Marshal Coleman, who had freed himself from the cell and finally caught up to the others. Coleman had Bickford’s gun in his hand, and as Grady took a shot at him, Coleman fired. Grady staggered back a step as the marshal’s bullet drove into his body. He tried to lift his gun for another shot, but Coleman fired first. This time Grady went down as the lead ripped through his body.

The wind howled now as it rushed into the deadly, whirling funnel cloud. The few survivors of the gang tried to flee, but they were cut off by Thurman Harlow and his four sons, who had reached Cottonwood just ahead of the storm and were drawn to the far end of town by the gunshots. The two crooked deputies were already dead, so it was Harlows against Kanes in a fierce exchange of shots. Alf and Dex Harlow were hit but stayed on their feet. One by one, the Kanes went down, riddled by Harlow lead. The rivalry between the families had finally come to a bloody end.

Almost.

Cimarron Kane was still alive. He crashed a fist into Matt’s jaw and knocked the younger man aside. Kane reached for one of the fallen guns, but Frankie picked up a revolver and fired, the bullet burning a fiery line across Kane’s forearm. He cursed and rolled off the porch, then broke into a run as Matt scrambled up and went after him.

Meanwhile, Sam and Porter were still struggling. Porter had managed to get on top and pin Sam to the porch. His hands were locked around Sam’s throat, trying to squeeze the life out of him. Sam brought his cupped hands up and slapped them hard against Porter’s ears. Porter yelled in agony as his eardrums burst. Sam was able to buck him off. Porter rolled away and came up in a stumbling run. He wasn’t far behind Kane as both men reached the street.

They turned first to their left, only to find that direction blocked by the grim-faced Harlows, along with Barnabas Smith and the other former prisoners. Chests heaving, the two men looked the other direction along the street. The twister was almost on top of Cottonwood now, and if they went that way, they would be running right into its hungry maw.

Matt and Sam came to a stop about twenty feet away from Kane and Porter. “What’s it gonna be?” Matt shouted, raising his voice to be heard over the storm.

“You afraid to go down fightin’, Bodine?” Kane yelled back.

Matt turned and motioned to the Harlows, who were looking increasingly nervous as the tornado bore down on the town in its slow, steady, inexorable fashion. “We need four guns,” he said to Thurman Harlow.

“Son, we all better hunt a hole to hide in!” Harlow warned with a nod toward the twister.

“Not until this is over!” Matt insisted. Sam nodded in grim agreement.

“Give ’em your guns!” Harlow told his sons. The young men passed the revolvers to Matt and Sam.

Quickly, they checked the cylinders. Each gun had at least two rounds left in it. They turned and tossed two of the revolvers into the street near Kane and Porter.

“You’ll gun us down as soon as we reach for them!” Porter protested.

“Nope, it’ll be a fair fight,” Matt said. Behind the blood brothers, everybody was scattering, trying to find a place to ride out the storm. Over by the doctor’s house, Coleman and Dr. Berger were getting as many people as possible into the cellar underneath the house. Frankie and Hannah didn’t want to go, but their fathers forced them through the open door and down the steps into the cellar.

The tornado had almost reached the far end of the street. “Now or never!” Matt shouted at Kane and Porter.

The two men dived for the guns, snatching them out of the street. Porter rolled to the side and came up in a crouch, his gun belching flame as he fired at Sam, while Kane stood straight and blazed away at Matt. The blood brothers stood their ground as well, the revolvers roaring and bucking against their palms as they squeezed off a pair of shots apiece.

Both of Sam’s bullets punched into Porter’s chest and knocked him over backwards. He landed with his arms outflung as blood bubbled from the holes in his body.

Kane staggered as Matt’s slugs hit him, but he didn’t fall. He kept pulling the trigger, even after the hammer was falling harmlessly on empty chambers. Then crimson welled from his mouth and the gun slipped from his fingers. He took a step forward and pitched onto his face.

Matt and Sam were left standing in the middle of the street, watching as the twister bore down on them. It was too late to run now, even though Coleman was yelling at them to do so from the cellar door.

The three of them were the only ones alive to see what happened next. They watched in amazement as the twister struck the abandoned livery barn where Ike Loomis had his secret saloon. The old building exploded into splinters and kindling as the ferocious winds tore it apart.

But that was the only damage the tornado did. With the capriciousness of nature, the funnel cloud lifted into the air, passing over the rest of Cottonwood. The terrible roar suddenly died away and left an eerie silence behind it.

Then a barrel that had been plucked high into the sky by the twister came crashing down in the middle of the street, bursting apart and spraying gallons and gallons of the Harlows’ moonshine whiskey all around it. The sharp smell of the liquor filled the air.

And Matt and Sam started to laugh. Pretty soon, they were howling like crazy men as the twister vanished into the clouds and went on its way.

Luckily, no one had been in the old livery barn when the tornado struck it. The saloon’s patrons had fled as the storm approached, seeking safer places.

Ike Loomis took the loss philosophically. “Reckon I wasn’t meant to be a lawbreaker, even a law I don’t agree with,” he told Matt and Sam later that day. “My boy’s gonna be all right, so I’m more’n satisfied with the way things turned out.”

That seemed to be mostly true, although a couple of the former prisoners had been fatally wounded during the battle. They were the only casualties, though.

With Cimarron Kane and the rest of his relatives dead, the Harlows were free to rebuild their still without having to worry about being run out of business at gunpoint. Folks would have to venture out to their farm to buy the corn squeezin’s, though, as Marshal Coleman made plain when they all gathered at his house for supper that evening.

“There won’t be any saloons in Cottonwood, secret or otherwise, unless and until they change that law. I don’t have any control over what you do on your farm, Thurman, but I won’t have it here in town.”

Harlow nodded. “I reckon we can live with that.”

“Chances are, though, that the governor will send out some more of those special marshals, honest ones this time,” Coleman warned. Calvin Bickford was locked up down at the jail—in a cell where the wall wasn’t blown out—and the story of the vicious scheme he and Porter had hatched would reach Governor St. John soon enough. “I won’t tell ’em where to find you, but I don’t imagine it’ll take them long to figure out where the best liquor in this end of the state is comin’ from.”

“Well, we’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Harlow replied in his mild-mannered way.

Matt and Sam left Coleman, Harlow, Ike Loomis, and Barnabas Smith talking in the parlor while they walked outside with Frankie and Hannah. The storm had blown on through this part of the country, leaving behind clear skies, a million stars, bright moonlight, and a refreshingly cool breeze.

“Listen, Bodine,” Frankie spoke up before any of the others could say anything, “don’t you even start talking about you and Two Wolves moving on. The two of you are staying right here in Cottonwood for a while.”

“How do you figure that?” Matt asked with a grin.

“Frankie and I decided it,” Hannah said.

“The two of you made the decision, did you?” Sam asked.

Frankie nodded. “That’s right. And remember, you’ve seen both of us handle a gun, so you know we can back up what we say.”

Matt held up his hands, palms out in surrender. “I’ve taken enough chances lately. I don’t plan on arguin’ with you ladies.”

“Taking chances is right,” Frankie said. “I can’t believe you just stood there and waited to see what that twister was going to do! It could have blown you from hereto…to Mexico!”

Matt and Sam looked at each other. “Mexico,” Matt mused. “We haven’t been there in a while.”

“No, we haven’t,” Sam agreed.

Hannah linked her arm with his. “And you’re not going now,” she said.

“No, I suppose not,” Sam said.

But the seed had been planted, and the blood brothers knew that the time would come. For a few moments in recent days, Sam had given some thought to settling down, but he knew now that he wasn’t meant to do that just yet. The siren song of the frontier was still too strong, and one fine morning, when the wind was right and an eagle soared high in the sky, Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves would answer that call once again.

But for tonight, the only song came from the throat of Lobo, who sat on the porch and lifted his shaggy head to howl at the moon as he paid no attention to what the humans were doing in the shadows under the cottonwood trees.

Turn the page for a preview of

The Epic New Series

THE FAMILY JENSEN

from

USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

William W. Johnstone

with J. A. Johnstone

From the bestselling authors of the acclaimed Mountain Man series comes a sprawling Western saga that brings together for the first time the legendary frontiersmen the Jensens in a bloody battle for freedom, justice, and the fate of a nation….

THE FAMILY JENSEN: SMOKE AND MATT

Trapped in a remote cabin, surrounded by ruthless gunmen, Matt Jensen and his adoptive father Smoke Jensen join forces with their old friend, Preacher, in the greatest fight of their lives. A ruthless cattle baron has waged an all-out war against the peaceful native tribes-men who have become Preacher’s friends. In a bloodthirsty bid for land, power, and wealth, the baron has drafted an army of professional killers to destroy the homesteaders—among them the Jensens, the only men brave enough to stand in his way.

Now, Matt, Smoke, and Preacher face their ultimate and most deadly challenge—and share their hopes, fears, secrets, and dreams—in what could be their final, most desperate hour. No matter what happens, they are the family Jensen. Surrender is not an option.

THE FAMILY JENSEN

Coming in May 2010, wherever

Pinnacle Books are sold.

Prologue

The temperature in the small stone-and-log cabin climbed steadily during the afternoon. The single room was about twelve feet by twelve feet. There were no windows, and the door was closed and barred. The only light and air came in through gaps between the logs where the mud chinking had fallen out.

And through the loopholes that had been carved in those logs so that men who had to fort up in this cabin could fire rifles at their enemies.

Shots blasted occasionally from outside, but the bullets stood little if any chance of penetrating the thick walls. Lead smacked harmlessly into stone or logs.

The three defenders fired even less often. They stood at the loopholes, two at the front wall and one at the back, sweat trickling down their faces, and waited patiently for a target to present itself. When they had a good shot, they took it quickly, without hesitation.

The oldest of the trio, who was manning a loophole in the rear wall, squeezed the trigger of a heavy-caliber Sharps rifle. The weapon’s boom was so loud it was almost deafening in the cabin’s close confines. The acrid smell of burned powder already hung in the air, and this latest shot just added to the sharp tang.

“Got that son of a buck,” the old man said with satisfaction. “That’ll learn him to stick his ear out where I can see it.”

“You blew his ear off, Preacher?” one of the younger men asked.

The old-timer called Preacher turned his head and spat on the hard-packed dirt floor as he lowered his Sharps and started reloading the single-shot rifle. “Damn right I did.” He paused and then added slyly, “O’ course, since his brain was right on t’other side of his ear, I reckon that ball went on through and messed it up a mite, too.”

That brought grim chuckles from the other two men, but the respite lasted only a moment before one of them warned, “Hombre coming up on your side, Matt.”

A wicked crack came from Matt’s rifle, and he said, “Not anymore. Obliged for the heads-up, Smoke.”

Smoke Jensen grinned and gibed, “Somebody’s got to watch out for you, youngster.”

Preacher snorted. “You’re a fine one to be callin’ anybody youngster. You ain’t much more’n a kid yourself, Smoke. Why, it don’t seem like it’s been more’n a year or two since I first come on you and your pa, down on the Santa Fe Trail.”

“That was nigh on to fifteen years ago, Preacher,” Smoke said.

The old man snorted again. “When you get as old as I am, the years flow by like water in a high mountain crick.” He grinned, revealing teeth that were still strong despite his age. “The years are as sweet as that water, too, and I still drink deep of ’em.”

“I believe that,” muttered Matt Jensen, who was the youngest of the three men.

They had been holed up in the cabin since a little before noon. It was probably around two in the afternoon now, and the sweltering cabin would just get hotter as the day went on. With the coming of night, though, the temperature would cool off fairly quickly at this elevation. Smoke, Matt, and Preacher weren’t really looking forward to that, however, because darkness also meant that the small army of gunmen out there that wanted them dead could get close enough to toss some torches onto the roof. When that happened, they could either stay inside and die from the smoke and fire…

Or they could go out that door with guns in their hands, fighting to the end, dealing out blazing death to their enemies.

Not a single one of the three had to ponder the question.

They knew what they were going to do.

Unless they could figure out some way to turn the tables on the gunslinging bastards who had forced them to take shelter here.

Preacher ran his fingers through his tangled white beard. He was dressed head to foot in buckskins and had a broad-brimmed leather hat thumbed back on thinning white hair. An eagle feather was stuck in the hatband. He had a Colt .44 holstered on his right hip and a sheathed bowie knife on his left. This was his eighty-first summer, but somewhere along the way, he had become as timeless and ancient as the mountains, weathered slowly by the passage of time but hardly weakened. He could ride all day, and he could whip men half his age, and he could drink just about anybody under the table. He’d been naught but a boy when he went west, and he had been here, by and large, ever since, for more than six decades.

He was a mountain man, one of the last of that hardy breed.

He was also something of a surrogate father to Smoke Jensen, having taken the boy under his wing when Smoke’s own father Emmett had been killed. Smoke hadn’t been known by that name then; he’d been given the name Kirby Jensen when he was born. Preacher was the one who had dubbed him Smoke that long-ago day when Kirby, Emmett, and Preacher had been ambushed by a Kiowa war party. Maybe it was because of the powder smoke that filled the air when Kirby Jensen received his baptism of fire, or maybe it was because his ash-blond hair was almost the color of smoke, but whatever the reason, the handle stuck, and from that day forward he’d been Smoke Jensen.

He wasn’t a boy any longer, but rather a man in the prime of life, just over six feet tall with shoulders as broad as an ax-handle. Down in Colorado, he had a damn fine ranch called the Sugarloaf and an even finer wife named Sally. He had a reputation, too, as a man who was fast on the draw, maybe the fastest on the entire frontier. Smoke had no desire to live the life of a gunfighter, though. He drew the walnut-butted .44 on his hip only when he had to…but as many men had learned to their short-lived but final regret, he didn’t cotton to being pushed around.

Just as Preacher had helped Smoke out when he was orphaned, so Smoke had taken in Matt Cavanaugh, who had lost his family at an even younger age. That was back in the days before Smoke had settled down, when he was still searching for gold in Colorado. He had found it, and since Matt helped him work the claim, Smoke felt that Matt deserved an equal share in it. He had also taught Matt everything that Preacher had taught him about how to survive on the frontier, and even more importantly, how to live his life as a decent, honorable man.

When the time came for Matt to strike out on his own, as a tribute to the man who had become like an older brother to him he had taken Smoke’s last name, and ever since he had been known as Matt Jensen. It was a name that was becoming more widely known, too, as Matt seemed drawn to danger and adventure like a moth to flame. He wasn’t reckless, but he didn’t back down when challenged.

So the three men who waited in this stifling cabin in the Big Horn Mountains shared not a drop of common blood…and yet they were family. Bonds even stronger than blood held them together, bonds forged by love and respect and shared danger. Most of the time, each of them went their own way, especially Preacher and Matt, both of whom tended to be fiddle-footed, but distance didn’t mean anything to men such as these. When one needed help, the others would come a-runnin’.

That was why it looked like the three of them might well die together.

Preacher squinted over the barrel of his Sharps through the loophole and said, “Those hombres must not have the sense God gave a badger! Here they come again!”

Whoever had built this cabin back in the old days had known what he was doing. The area around it was cleared of trees and brush for a good fifty yards around. That way no one could sneak up on the place unseen. Some thick stumps remained, though, where trees had been chopped down, and as some of the hired gunmen charged out of the trees, they threw themselves behind those stumps and opened fire, aiming at the loopholes they had spotted from the powder smoke that gushed through them from time to time.

“Son of a gun!” Matt exclaimed as slugs chewed splinters from the log wall all around the loophole he was using. He was forced to draw back momentarily. So were Smoke and Preacher.

“More coming out of the trees!” Smoke called. He saw men dart out from cover, race past their companions who were firing from behind the stumps, and then dive behind other stumps. “They’re leapfrogging at us, blast it!”

It was true. As soon as the second wave of attackers had gone to ground, they opened up on the cabin, allowing the first ones to advance past them.

That wasn’t the only trickery going on. “Circling to your left, Matt!” Smoke said. Matt twisted in that direction, thrust the barrel of his Winchester through an opening, and began firing as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever.

Smoke bit back a curse as he spotted some of the gunmen running to his right, trying a flanking move in that direction. He wished one of his friends, Sheriff Monte Carson or the gambler and gunhawk Louis Longmont, was here to cover that fourth side, although he wouldn’t have really wished them into such a predicament as the one in which he, Matt, and Preacher found themselves.

There was only one thing to do. He leaned his Winchester against the wall, threw aside the bar that kept the door closed, drew one of the long-barreled .44s he carried in his holsters, and yanked the door open. Then he palmed out the other Colt and leaped outside, landing on his belly.

Both six-guns began to roar. Firing in two directions at once was a tricky, almost impossible thing to do, but in the hands of Smoke Jensen, guns could do almost anything. He could make ’em sing and dance if he wanted to, folks said.

He made them sing now, and it was a melody of death.

His left-hand gun slammed bullets into the bodies of the men charging head-on at the cabin. The right-hand Colt bucked and roared as it tracked the gunnies who were trying to circle in that direction. Men cried out and stumbled or spun off their feet as Smoke’s lead ripped through them.

From the corner of his eye, Matt had seen Smoke’s daring play, and he jumped into the doorway and used his rifle to mow down the men going to the left. At the back of the room, Preacher had thrown down his empty Sharps and snatched up another Winchester, and with deadly accurate fire he held off the men attacking from that direction.

For about thirty seconds, it sounded like a small war was going on as the thunderous gunfire echoed back from the peaks surrounding the beautiful little valley where the cabin was located. Then the hammers of Smoke’s guns clicked on empty chambers. With Matt covering him, he scrambled to hands and knees and dived back through the doorway. Matt hurried after him, slamming the door closed and dropping the bar in its brackets again.

“You give them ol’ boys what-for?” Preacher drawled.

“I reckon we did, Preacher,” Smoke said as he sat with his back against the wall and started reloading his Colts. “The last I saw, they were skedaddling back to the trees.”

“The ones who could still move, that is,” Matt added.

The other two knew what he meant. They had turned back this attack and done considerable damage to the enemy force. As silence fell again, they heard the pathetic moans of wounded men. Not one of the defenders wasted any sympathy on those varmints. The gunnies had known what they were getting into.

“It was a mite of a hornets’ nest in here,” Preacher said. “Plenty o’ slugs flyin’ around.” He touched a gnarled finger to his cheek, and the tip came away bloody. “Felt like one of ’em kissed me, and sure enough it did.”

That little bullet burn on Preacher’s cheek was the only injury they had suffered, however. They had been very lucky so far, and they knew it. Luck would only last so long, though, and they knew that, too.

“Bannerman must be paying those boys pretty well,” Matt commented. “That many gun-wolves don’t come cheap.”

Smoke said, “If there’s one thing Reece Bannerman has, it’s money, and plenty of it.”

“Then why’s the dang fool want more?” Preacher asked. “Why’s it so all-fired important that he steal this valley from Crazy Bear’s people?”

Smoke had finished reloading his guns, and now he picked up his rifle again and took his place at the loophole. As he peered out at the silent trees where the gunmen were hidden, he said, “I guess some men never get enough, no matter how much they have.”

“Well, I ain’t a-gonna let it happen,” Preacher declared. “We’re gonna get outta this fix somehow and show Bannerman he can’t get away with it. I owe Crazy Bear a whole heap o’ thanks for what he done for me. That’s why I come a-runnin’ when I heard he was in trouble.”

“Crazy Bear’s a good man,” Smoke agreed. “I was glad to help out when I got your letter, Preacher.”

“And it’s a good thing I was visiting Smoke at Sugarloaf at the time,” Matt added, “because I want to be in on this, too.”

“You just want to see that daughter of his again,” Smoke said with a smile.

“I won’t deny that,” Matt said.

Preacher snorted. “You young fellas may be fond o’ Crazy Bear, but I owe the ol’ rapscallion my life. I ever tell you that story, Smoke?”

“I don’t think so,” Smoke said, although as a matter of fact, Preacher had told him the story before. It was a pretty good yarn, though, and they needed something to pass the time while they waited for Bannerman’s hired guns to attack again.

So as the three men stood and watched and the heat grew worse in the cabin, Preacher drawled, “It was about thirty year ago, I reckon, and I was on my way through this same valley. Weren’t no ranches nor towns hereabouts in those days, though. ’Twas still mighty wild country, and it might cost a man his hide if’n he didn’t keep his eyes open…”

BOOK ONE

Chapter 1

An eagle soared through the vast blue sky overhead. The tall man in buckskins saw it as he rode along the edge of the trees, just as he saw the chipmunk that raised its head from a burrow in the clearing fifty yards to his left and the squirrel that bounded from branch to branch in a pine tree off to his right. He saw a dozen moose grazing half a mile ahead of him, and he saw the wolf slinking toward them through tall grass. A bear lumbered across a hillside nearly a mile away, and Preacher saw it, too.

But he never saw the man who shot him.

The heavy blast of the rifle echoed across the landscape and up the canyons that cut through the mountains. Preacher didn’t hear it until after the slug smashed into his body and drove him forward in the saddle, over the neck of the rangy gray stallion. He tried to grab on to something and stay on the horse, but his whole body seemed to have gone numb from the bullet’s impact and his muscles refused to work the way he wanted them to. As the horse shied, Preacher toppled from the saddle.

Even though his body wouldn’t cooperate, his mind still worked. He kicked his feet free of the stirrups just before he fell. He didn’t think the horse would bolt, but he hadn’t had the animal all that long and didn’t have complete confidence in him yet.

Preacher wasn’t completely numb. He felt the jolt as he landed heavily on the ground. Somehow he kept the fingers of his right hand clamped around the long-barreled flintlock rifle he’d been carrying across the saddle in front of him. He had a couple of those new-fangled Colt’s Dragoon revolvers that he’d picked up in St. Louis tucked behind his belt, too. If he could get to cover, he knew he could give a good accounting of himself.

Making it to cover might not be easy, though. Feeling began to flow back into Preacher’s body, but it brought with it waves of paralyzing pain.

Preacher knew how to deal with pain. If a man wanted to live, he learned how to ignore it. Whether it was in body or spirit, in this life hardly a day went by without something hurting. The trick was not to give in to it.

Still clutching the rifle, Preacher rolled to his right, closer to the trees. It was a good thing that he moved when he did, because another shot sounded and a heavy lead ball smacked into the ground where he had been lying a heartbeat earlier. Preacher kept rolling, even though every movement sent fresh bursts of pain stabbing through his body.

He was within a few feet of the trees now. He came up onto his hands and knees, then got his feet under him and launched into a dive that carried him to the edge of the pines. Vaguely, he heard another shot and felt a ball tug at his buckskin shirt as he flew through the air. He slammed into the ground again, the impact softened slightly by the carpet of fallen pine needles on which he landed.

More shots sounded, coming close enough together now that Preacher knew there was more than one bushwhacker. He scrambled around to the other side of a thick-trunked pine and rested his back against the rough bark. He tried to take a deep breath, but that made the pain in his left side worse.

All right, he told himself, he had a busted rib, or a cracked one, anyway. Probably just cracked, because if it actually was broken, all that falling and rolling and jumping around surely would have plunged the jagged end of a bone into his left lung and he’d be drowning in his own blood by now. So, he decided, the rib was cracked but still hurt like hell, and it could still break easily if he wasn’t careful.

Then there was the fact that his left side was covered with warm, sticky wetness. He might bleed to death if the hole wasn’t bound up soon. And any time a fella was shot, he had to worry about the wound festering. There were just all kinds of ways to die out here on the frontier.

Holes, he corrected himself as he gingerly poked around on his side. The rifle ball had struck him in the back, on the left side, glanced off that rib, and torn its way out the front of his body. He was lucky the bone had deflected it outward, rather than bouncing it through his guts. He really would have been a goner then.

Breathing shallowly through clenched teeth, he pulled up his buckskin shirt and used the heavy hunting knife that was sheathed on his hip to cut off two pieces from his long underwear. It wasn’t easy to do, because his left arm was still partially numb and he couldn’t use it very well. He managed to wad one of the pieces of woolen fabric into a ball and shove it into the exit wound. He couldn’t reach the place where the ball had gone in with his right hand, though, because it was around on his back. He had to grit his teeth even harder and force his left arm to work. It took a few minutes that seemed more like an hour, but finally he pushed the wadded-up cloth into the bullet hole.

That would help slow down the bleeding. He knew if he lost too much blood, he would pass out, and if that happened, chances were he would never wake up again. His enemies would slip up on him and cut his throat.

He didn’t know how many there were. The shooting had stopped now, but from the sound of the volley a few minutes earlier, he figured five or six.

Nor did he know who they were. He had spent five decades on this earth, as testified to by the leathery skin of his face and the numerous silver strands in his dark hair and beard, and few men lived that long without making enemies. Preacher had probably made more than his share, although he had also left many of them dead behind him, either in shallow graves or out in the open for the scavengers and the elements to take care of. It depended on how put out with them he’d been when he killed them.

But there were still plenty of folks out there carrying grudges against him, and obviously he had crossed trails with some of them today.

Unless the bushwhackers were just no-good thieves who wanted to kill him and take his outfit. He had a good horse, a sizable batch of supplies on the pack-horse he’d been leading, and some fine weapons. No pelts yet; it was too early in the season for that. These days, not many people would bother stealing furs, either. The mountains weren’t trapped out yet, far from it, but the fur trade wasn’t what it used to be. The last great rendezvous had been eight years earlier, in ’42. A lot of the mountain men had gone back east to be with their long-neglected families. Others had headed west to look for gold in California.

But Preacher had no intention of leaving the mountains for good. When his time came, he intended to die here.

Maybe today.

He listened intently. The woods were quiet. The shooting had scared off all the animals. If the bushwhackers started skulking around, he would hear them.

He was disgusted with himself for letting somebody shoot him in the back like that. He didn’t know where they’d been hidden or how carefully they had concealed themselves, but he didn’t care. He should have known they were there, lying in wait for him.

Was a time when he would have known, because Dog would have smelled the sons of bitches, and Horse probably would have, too. But the big wolf-like cur was gone, and so was the gray stallion that looked a lot like Preacher’s current mount.

Over the years, Dog had tangled with outlaws, savages, grizzlies, panthers, and lobo wolves. He had gotten chewed up, shot, half-drowned, and mostly froze. None of that had killed him, but time had. The years always won in the end.

Horse, at least, was still alive as far as Preacher knew. He had left the stallion back in Missouri with an old friend who had promised to make Horse’s final years as comfortable and pleasant as possible. Preacher wasn’t sure he had done the right thing, though. Being put out to pasture was a hard destiny. Maybe he should have brought Horse back to the mountains with him one last time.

If he had, he woudn’t be sitting here with a couple of bullet holes in him, he told himself. Because Horse’s keen senses would have alerted him that there were enemies nearby.

Off to his left a ways, something rustled in the brush.

A grin that was half-grimace drew Preacher’s lips back from his teeth. He reached to his waist and drew out one of the Dragoons. It was a fine weapon, well balanced, with a seven-and-a-half-inch octagonal barrel and a cylinder that held six .44 caliber loads, although Preacher always left one chamber empty for the hammer to rest on. Engraved on that blued steel cylinder was a scene of Texas Rangers battling Comanches. Preacher figured it was based on the fight at Bandera Pass a few years back. Captain Jack Hays, who’d been in command of the troop of Rangers involved, had told Preacher all about that ruckus one time when he was down in San Antonio de Bexar.

Yes, sir, a mighty fine gun. It shot straight and true, and between the two revolvers and the flintlock rifle, he had eleven rounds ready to go. More than enough to kill every one of those damn bushwhackers.

Of course, they’d probably kill him, too, Preacher reflected, but they wouldn’t live to brag about it.

Another rustle, to his right this time. They had him surrounded. And they were so confident that they had him trapped, one of them was bold enough to call out, “We’re gonna kill you, old man, if you ain’t dead already. You got anything to say?”

Preacher didn’t respond, except to draw his other Dragoon. His left arm was still a little weak, but he was able to hold the revolver fairly steady.

“You should’ve minded your own business back at that trading post, old man. You must be soft in the head. Who in his right mind would kick up such a fuss over a damned Indian whore?”

So that was why they wanted him dead, Preacher thought. They had trailed him all the way out here, a week or more, over some fracas at a trading post? He supposed that the fella whose guts he’d spilled on the ground meant something to them. A friend or maybe even kinfolk. Even so, the man had been a sorry son of a bitch, hardly worth dying over. Seemed like they were bound and determined to do just that, though.

“Shut up, Riley,” another voice, older and harsher, said. “That’s enough. Let’s get this done. You boys ready?”

Preacher was ready. He braced his back against the tree trunk and raised both Dragoons in front of him.

That was when a cry rang out through the trees, half-laugh, half-scream, a jagged, nerve-scraping sound that was one of the craziest things Preacher had ever heard.

Chapter 2

The eerie cry made some of the bushwhackers let out surprised yells. Getting ready to charge Preacher must have drawn their nerves pretty tight, and that shriek startled them into pulling triggers. Shots blasted through the woods, but the wail continued. It didn’t even sound human.

Bullets whipped through the branches and thudded into tree trunks, but none of them came close to Preacher. He spotted a muzzle flash off to his right and reacted instantly, angling the Dragoon that direction and dropping the hammer. The heavy revolver roared and smoke and flame erupted from its muzzle. Somewhere in the woods, a man screamed. Preacher didn’t know if his shot had found its target, or if whatever was making that unholy noise had gotten hold of the man.

With his back against the tree to brace himself, Preacher pushed to his feet. He didn’t know exactly what was going on, but there was still a good chance he would die here today. If that turned out to be true, he planned to go out standing on his own two feet with shooting irons in his hands.

“What the hell is that?” a man shouted. There was a great thrashing in the brush. “Look ou—yahhhhh!”

The howl of pain just made the bushwhackers shoot even more. A grim smile tugged at Preacher’s mouth again. If they kept this up, they’d all ventilate each other and save him the trouble, he thought. That would be just fine with him.

The older voice he’d heard giving orders earlier bellowed, “Head for the horses! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Preacher aimed at the voice and thumbed off two more rounds from the Dragoon. He figured the chances of him hitting anything in these thick woods were pretty slim, but it wouldn’t hurt anything to try. There were still so many guns going off, the bushwhackers likely wouldn’t even notice two more shots.

The gunfire died away, but Preacher could still hear men crashing through the brush. He let them go without sending any more lead after them. Blood still oozed from the holes in his side, and he was starting to get a little dizzy. Best to let those varmints take off for the tall and uncut right now, he decided.

Once he got his strength back, though, he might just try to track them down. He didn’t cotton to the idea of letting anybody get away with shooting him.

And there was also whatever kind of wild creature had made that sound, he reminded himself. He might have to deal with it, too.

The swift rataplan of hoofbeats drifted through the woods to his ears. The bushwhackers had reached their horses and were putting some ground behind them. As the hoofbeats faded into the distance until he could no longer hear them, silence settled once more over the valley.

Then Preacher heard a crackling in the brush. Something was coming toward him. Something big, from the sound of it.

He felt his legs weakening underneath him. His head spun, and each of the guns in his hands seemed to weigh a ton. It was all he could do to hold them up. When he felt himself slipping, he tried to stiffen his legs, but it didn’t work. He had lost too much blood, and his strength had leaked out of him along with the crimson fluid. Slowly, inexorably, he slid down the tree trunk until he was sitting on the ground at its base again.

The thing came closer, stepping around trees and pushing brush aside. A gray veil seemed to have slipped down over Preacher’s eyes, making it difficult for him to see. He could make out the massive, looming shape, but that was all. The Dragoons had sunk into his lap. His thumbs were still looped over the hammers, though. He struggled to lift the weapons. If he could just manage to raise the guns, when the thing stooped to reach out for him with its clawed, misshapen paws, he would blow a couple of fist-sized holes in it. Anything that big had to be a grizzly bear, his fevered brain decided…but he had never heard a griz make that kind of a noise.

He was wrong. The looming shape finally came to a stop directly in front of him, and as Preacher gazed up at it, his vision cleared enough for him to realize that it wasn’t a grizzly bear after all.

It was the biggest, ugliest Indian Preacher had ever laid eyes on.

That was the last thing Preacher saw as consciousness fled from him. He didn’t even feel it when his head fell back against the tree trunk with a solid thud.

The aromatic smell of woodsmoke filling his nostrils was the first thing Preacher recognized as awareness began to seep back into his brain. Then, not surprisingly, he heard the crackle of flames and felt warmth on his face. After a moment he figured out that he was lying on something soft, near a fire.

He kept his eyes closed and his breathing regular. Even though he had just come to, his instincts were already working again. Since he didn’t know where he was or what was going on around him, the smart thing to do was to not let on that he was awake.

He moved a hand slightly and felt something soft yet bristly. A thick fur robe of some sort, he decided. He sniffed the air and under the woodsmoke smelled bear grease and something else, a faintly musky scent.

A woman. She began to sing softly to herself, under her breath, confirming Preacher’s guess.

All these sensations were intimately familiar to him. He had spent many winters with various tribes, sharing a lodge or a tepee with a comely squaw. Sometimes when he visited those tribes again a few years later, he found young’uns trailing after those squaws who’d wintered with him. He never tried to be a pa to those kids, though. He’d always figured that a restless varmint like him who would probably come to a bad end didn’t have any business trying to act like a father. Might as well ask the wind to be a good parent. It wasn’t going to happen.

Now, Preacher thought about what he remembered from earlier and decided that that big, ugly Indian must have brought him back to a village rather than killing him. He kept his eyes closed and shifted his body a little. That told him that he had bandages wrapped tightly around his torso. His side felt stiff and hot where the rifle ball had torn through it, but whoever had tended to the wounds had probably packed each of them with a healing poultice. Preacher knew that with time and proper care, he would heal.

Of course, it was possible that the redskins were just trying to save his life so that they could kill him in their own way, in their own sweet time. He knew such things happened.

Maybe not here, though. Preacher hadn’t gotten a very good look at the beadwork and decorations on the big Indian’s buckskins, but he thought they might indicate that the man was a Crow. The Crow got along with white men about as well as any of the tribes did, and better than some. They didn’t hate everybody with a white skin, as the Blackfeet did, nor were they devoted to war like the Sioux. Preacher had always gotten along well with the Crow, and he hoped that the impression he’d gotten from that brief glimpse was correct.

The woman stopped singing. He heard her moving around, and then she was beside him. He felt the cool touch of a wet cloth on his skin as she wiped his face with it. He thought he might as well go ahead and take a chance.

He opened his eyes.

The woman drew back with a little gasp when she saw that he was awake. In her own tongue, she said, “He lives.”

“I do live,” Preacher replied in the same language, which he had recognized instantly as Crow. He was fluent in the lingo. “Thanks to you.”

The woman shook her head. She was young, probably no more than twenty summers, and had a round, pretty face, with dark eyes and hair as black as a raven’s wing, slick with bear grease, parted in the center and pulled into braids on each side of her head.

“You live because of Crazy Bear,” she told Preacher. “He is the one who brought you here.”

“You bound up my wounds?”

She nodded. “Yes, after packing them with moss and herbs that will heal them.”

“Then I owe you a debt of gratitude as well. How are you called?”

The woman hesitated, then said, “Bright Leaf.”

“Thank you, Bright Leaf. I am called Preacher.”

She leaned back again. Her breath hissed between her teeth. “Ghost-Killer,” she whispered. He saw fright in her big, dark eyes.

Preacher shook his head, wanting to reassure her even though the movement made his surroundings spin madly around him for a few seconds. “That is one of the names the Blackfeet know me by,” he said. “But I have never been an enemy to the Crow.”

Early in his career as a mountain man, he had mastered the art of slipping undetected into a village and cutting the throats of some of the warriors, then getting out again without anyone knowing he had been there until the bodies were discovered the next morning. That demoralized his enemies and made them regard him with the respect they would give a supernatural creature. Many of the tribes already thought he was special because the story had spread about how he had talked all day and all night to save himself from being burned at the stake. That incident had given him the name of Preacher.

Despite his words, Bright Leaf scooted away from him and then stood up, backing away around the fire ring in the center of the tepee. “I will go and tell Crazy Bear that you have returned to life,” she said. “Stay there. Rest.”

Preacher sighed. There wasn’t much else he could do except follow her orders, because right now he felt as weak as a newborn kitten. Even if he could make it to his feet, he doubted if he could walk across the tepee, let alone go outside and wander off.

“I will stay,” he told Bright Leaf.

She nodded, then bent over and pushed aside the flap of hide that covered the tepee’s entrance. Preacher was able to look outside for a second. He saw darkness, edged with the flickering glare of a fire. Night had fallen, and since it had been the middle of the afternoon when he was shot, that meant he had been unconscious for several hours, at the very least.

A tide of weariness washed over him. He lay there struggling to keep his eyes open. He knew that if he closed them, he would probably fall asleep. He wanted to stay awake until Crazy Bear got here, so he could talk to the man.

Luckily, Crazy Bear must have been close by, because only a couple of minutes passed before the hide flap was swept aside again, this time by a muscular arm as big around as the trunk of a small tree. The warrior who came into the tepee had to stoop low to make it through the entrance. When he straightened to his full height, he had to stand near the center of the tepee, otherwise his head would have poked against the sloping hide wall.

In the glow of the fire, he didn’t seem quite as ugly as he had in broad daylight. It softened the harsh planes and angles of his face, made the scars less noticeable, and the broken, crooked lump of a nose didn’t dominate his features quite as much. He still looked like the sort of figure that a mother might describe to her children and then threaten them with to get them to behave.

Bright Leaf came into the tepee behind the man and peeked timidly around his massive form at Preacher.

The Crow warrior regarded Preacher impassively for a moment and then said, “Bright Leaf tells me you are the one called Ghost-Killer.”

“This is true,” Preacher said, then continued, “But as I told her, the Crow are not my enemies.”

He could have been wrong, but he thought for a second that he saw a smile play over the man’s twisted lips.

“This is good. Our village will not have to fear you.”

“Nope,” Preacher agreed. “You got nothin’ to fear from me. I’m plumb friendly.”

The warrior hunkered on his heels beside the fire. “I am called Crazy Bear. I lead this band of my people.”

So he was a chief, Preacher thought. That wasn’t surprising, considering the elaborate decorations on his buckskins and the beads tied into the braids in which he wore his hair.

“Thank you for saving my life.”

“I did not save your life,” Crazy Bear said. “The Ghost-Killer cannot die.”

“You saw how much blood I lost, Crazy Bear. If you hadn’t helped me, I would have died. Believe me. But even before I could bleed to death, those men would have killed me. Thank you for stopping them.” Preacher paused. “I suppose it was you who made that terrible noise?”

This time the massive Indian definitely smiled. “You call the laugh of Crazy Bear terrible?” Then he folded his arms across his broad chest and shrugged. “There were six of the white men, and I was alone. I thought it best to make them afraid, in hopes that they would flee.”

“You were right about that. You got hold of at least one of them, didn’t you?”

“Two had broken arms when they fled.”

“You should’ve broken their necks,” Preacher muttered.

“We will kill them another day, eh, Ghost-Killer?” Crazy Bear extended his hand, white man fashion, as if to seal the agreement.

Preacher didn’t hesitate. He reached up, grasped the man’s hand, and said, “You got a deal, Crazy Bear. We’ll kill them another day.”

PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

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Copyright © 2010 William W. Johnstone

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.

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ISBN: 978-0-7860-2475-9