The hanging road, p.11
The Hanging Road, page 11
Reluctantly, Theresa said, “Well, all right. For now.”
Sturdevant called the two men who had helped him take Johnny’s body from the saloon the night before. Bo and Scratch lent a hand, as well, and it didn’t take long for them to get the coffin loaded onto the buckboard. As the undertaker stepped back, he said, “I suppose the deceased will be buried on your ranch, Mrs. Kincaid?”
“That’s right,” Theresa said. “There’s a small burial ground out there.”
“I’ll make a note of it for my records. The state requires me to keep track of where all my, ah, customers wind up, you know.”
“Does it require you to keep track of whether or not they were murdered by gunslingers?” Theresa asked coolly.
Sturdevant looked uncomfortable. “I try not to take sides in disputes, ma’am. A man in my line of work has to remain neutral, since I serve all parties.”
Theresa might have said something else, but at that moment, a sudden flurry of gunshots sounded from the far end of the street. Bo and Scratch looked sharply at each other.
Trouble had come once more to Buffalo Flat.
Chapter 13
At the sound of the blasting guns, instinct took over in Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves. Both young men whirled around. Matt dropped the stack of advertising fliers, and the hammer Sam had been wielding dropped unheeded to the ground at his feet. Their hands flew to their guns.
They stopped their draws as they saw that the shots weren’t directed at them. Four men stood in the street not far away, pouring lead into the post where Sam had just tacked up the flier. Bullets chewed into the wood and sent splinters flying through the air. In a matter of seconds, the flier was ripped to pieces by the slugs. It looked almost like a miniature snowstorm as tiny bits of paper fluttered to the ground at the base of the post.
The guns fell silent as the men were finally satisfied that their vandalism was complete. Laughing and joking among themselves, they began to reload.
“Hey!” Sam called. “What the hell was that all about?”
One of the men looked at him with a sneer. “You talkin’ to us, breed?”
“You know we’re talking to you,” Matt snapped. “We just put that flier up!”
“Flier?” one of the other men repeated. “We thought it was a target and figured you put it up there for us to practice on!”
That brought another round of laughter from the men. They grew more serious as they closed the cylinders of their revolvers and slid the reloaded weapons back into their holsters.
“We know who you and the breed are, Bodine,” said the first man who had spoken. “If you want to make somethin’ outta what we did to your pretty little piece o’ paper, you go right ahead.”
Matt and Sam glanced at each other. It was obvious to them what was going on here. By now Junius Cole had to know that they had been released from jail the night before. Sheriff Branch had probably gone straight to the saloon to tell Cole about it like the good little lapdog he was. And this morning Cole had sent more of his crew of hired guns to seek out Bodine and Two Wolves and settle the score with them.
This time, though, the gunmen were trying to prod Matt and Sam into drawing first, just so everything would be nice and legal where Cole was concerned.
“Target practice, eh?” Matt drawled. “Sounds like a good idea. Sam, go put up another of those fliers, would you?”
“Sure,” Sam agreed. He picked up one of the papers Matt had dropped, along with the hammer, and returned to the post. It was so splintered by bullets that he turned to Matt and asked, “All right if I use another post?”
“Go right ahead,” Matt told him.
The previous shots had drawn some attention. A small crowd of townspeople was gathering as Sam nailed the flier to another post. He moved quickly out of the way as Matt backed off to put a respectable distance between himself and the target. When he was ready, Matt smoothly palmed out the right-hand Colt and fired from the hip.
The shots rolled out in one seemingly continuous roar—one, two, three, four, five. Then, before the echoes had even had a chance to die away, Matt’s other revolver leaped into his left hand and added five more shots in a wave of thundering noise.
The advertising flier was still on the post, seemingly intact.
“Did he even hit it?” one of the gunmen muttered. “I saw splinters flyin’ in the air while he was shootin’. Leastways, I thought I did.”
Matt holstered the left-hand gun and started to reload the one in his right hand. “Sam?” he said.
Grinning, Sam poked his finger at the first letter O in the word SALOON. “One,” he said as the tip of his finger sunk into the bullet hole in the middle of the letter. He moved on to the next letter O and repeated the process, saying, “Two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . .” and on down the line as he pointed out the hole in the middle of each O, until he got to the tenth and final one, which also had a clean shot right in the middle of it. “That’s all of them.”
Matt had his second Colt reloaded by this time. He pouched it, smiled coolly at the gunmen, and said, “You’re right, it was good practice for the next time I have to shoot at something that’s empty in the middle . . . like a pack of gutless cowards. Like, say, you boys.”
The faces of the gunmen twisted with anger. Matt had shown them up and flung their challenge right back in their faces. They could take it—or they could draw.
The sheriff hadn’t come to see what all the shooting was about, Matt noted as the tense moment stretched out. That came as no real surprise to him. Given Branch’s connection to Junius Cole, the sheriff might have known that another attempt on the lives of Bodine and Two Wolves would be made this morning. Or maybe he’d just guessed as much when he heard the shots. Either way, he didn’t have the stomach for finding out what was going on until it was over.
The gunnie who seemed to be the spokesman for the group of hired killers breathed, “You son of a bitch.”
Matt stood facing them calmly. He and Sam were separated by several yards, which was a good thing with the odds four against two. With the instincts born of riding many a long and dangerous trail with his blood brother, Matt knew which pair Sam would take and which would be left to him if it came to a shoot-out.
And that was what it was going to come to, no doubt about that.
“Talk’s cheap,” Matt said.
He saw the telltale flick of the eyes as the man snarled and grabbed iron. Both of Matt’s hands swept down and then up, filled with the butts of his Colts. Shots blasted from the guns as they bucked against his palms. Off to his left, Sam’s gun was roaring, too.
Cole’s gunslingers were good at their work. They got their weapons out of their holsters and even triggered off a few rounds. But they were no match for Bodine and Two Wolves. Matt saw both of the men he had targeted stagger backward as his bullets slammed into them. He felt a slug jerk at his sleeve and heard the wind-rip of another past his ear. Then the two gunmen were folding up like puppets with their strings cut. Near them, one of the other men had doubled over and pitched forward on his face as a bullet from Sam’s gun punched into his midsection.
The fourth man, even though he was wounded, had managed to stay on his feet and was struggling to lift his gun for another shot. As Matt’s Colts fell silent, he saw that and briefly considered whether he ought to angle his left-hand revolver in that direction and take the man down. Before he could do anything, though, Sam’s gun spoke again and the final gunslinger flew backward off his feet to land in a limp sprawl.
It was over.
But as another pair of shots suddenly rang out behind him, Matt wasn’t so sure about that.
When the roar of gunfire sounded from the other end of the street, Bo and Scratch turned instantly in that direction, seeking the cause of the trouble. Theresa Kincaid stiffened as if expecting the bullets to come toward her, and Sturdevant and his helpers disappeared quickly back into the undertaking parlor.
As the blasts died away, Bo said quietly, “Doesn’t seem to be anybody shooting at us, ma’am. Maybe we’d better get you out of here—”
“No,” Theresa said. “You and Scratch go find out what’s going on. Junius Cole runs this town. It’s probably something to do with him.”
Scratch was like an old fire horse hearing the bell. Obviously, he wanted to go loping down the street to see what all the commotion was about. But he said, “Are you sure you’ll be all right, ma’am?”
Theresa reached to the driver’s seat of the buckboard and picked up the Winchester lying there. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I want to know what Cole’s up to now.”
Any knowledge of the enemy might prove to be useful, Bo thought. He said to Scratch, “Let’s go.”
Side by side, the old-timers strode down the street toward the eastern end of town. That was where the public watering trough and corrals were located. Quite a few townspeople were on their way down there, too.
When they got closer, Bo’s still-keen eyes saw two men facing four others in an obvious confrontation. It didn’t take him but a moment to figure out the sides in this conflict. He didn’t have any idea who those two strapping youngsters were, but the four hard-faced gunnies facing them were exactly the sort of hired scum who worked for Junius Cole.
On second thought, the two young men looked vaguely familiar, Bo decided. The one in the flat-crowned black hat and black vest had Indian blood in him, despite wearing white man’s clothes and packing iron on his hip like a white man. The other hombre, in buckskin shirt and tipped-back brown Stetson, wore two guns, and as Bo watched, he was the one who put on an impressive display of shooting skill over the next few minutes, drilling a bullet into the middle of each letter O on some sort of sign tacked up on a corral post.
Then both young men faced the four gunslingers, clearly ready to do battle if that was necessary.
The townspeople started to edge away, knowing that they had better get out of the line of fire. Bo said quietly to one of the townies, “Who are those two fellas?”
“You don’t know? Mister, that’s Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves. And those gents facin’ ’em work for Mr. Cole, so I’d hunt a hole if I was you!”
Scratch had a shoulder propped against one of the posts holding up the awning over the boardwalk in front of a saddle shop. He grinned at Bo and asked, “You figure on runnin’ and hidin’?”
“No, I want to see this,” Bo said calmly. He had heard of Bodine and Two Wolves, although he couldn’t recall ever seeing them before. They had reputations as being fast on the draw, but unlike many gunfighters, they were known to be honest men, not hired killers. Bodine had even done quite a bit of scouting work for the army. Bo wanted to see how they handled themselves against Cole’s men.
Townspeople went diving for cover as the hired guns slapped leather. Matt Bodine was a two-gun man, Bo noted as Bodine brought both weapons into play with blinding speed. Sam Two Wolves was almost as fast, and both youngsters were cool under fire and exceedingly accurate with their shots. Bo knew that a man could win most gunfights just by keeping his wits about him and not panicking, taking his time and aiming his shots. With Bodine and Two Wolves, though, their skill rose to an entirely different level. They combined amazing speed with those other attributes, and Bo wasn’t surprised when the four gunmen who worked for Cole were cut down by the deadly fire from Bodine and Two Wolves.
Then Scratch nudged Bo with an elbow and nodded toward a two-story building across the street. A flicker of movement drew Bo’s eye to the second floor. He saw a rifle barrel being poked through an open window up there, and it took him only an instant to realize that the rifleman was drawing a bead on Matt Bodine’s back.
Bo and Scratch drew and fired in the same instant, directing their shots at that second-floor window. They didn’t know who was up there, but the son of a bitch was a backshooter and that was enough to make the drifters take a hand in this game.
Matt and Sam whirled around to see who was shooting at them now, only to realize that the shots hadn’t been aimed at them. Two older men stood on the boardwalk about thirty feet away from them, each holding a revolver with smoke curling from the barrel. The guns were tipped up and pointed toward a building on the other side of the street.
As Matt and Sam watched, a rifle dropped from a half-open window, hit the awning below, slid off, and fell to the street. It was followed by a man who crashed through the raised pane, toppled forward, and plunged to the ground. He landed with a heavy thud, raising a puff of dust from the street, and then didn’t move again.
Matt looked at the old-timers. The one who wore a dark, dusty suit and black hat nodded in friendly fashion as he lowered his gun. “Hombre was drawing a bead on you from behind,” he explained.
“And if there’s anything we hate,” the other man drawled in an unmistakable Texas accent, “it’s a backshooter.” He opened his gun to replace the spent round. His partner did likewise.
Matt and Sam shrugged and took care of that chore, too. When all the guns were reloaded, the blood brothers holstered their weapons and walked over to join the older men. All along the street, people were starting to emerge from the hiding places they had ducked into when the shooting started. Matt figured it was only a matter of time now before Sheriff Branch came blustering up.
He held out his hand to the man in the dark suit. “Matt Bodine,” he introduced himself.
“Bo Creel. I’ve heard of you, Bodine.” Creel gripped Matt’s hand, then turned to Sam. “And you’d be Sam Two Wolves.”
“That’s right,” Sam said. “We’re much obliged for the favor, Mr. Creel.”
“I’m Scratch Morton,” the other old-timer said as he shook hands. “Maybe you’ve heard of me.”
Matt hated to disappoint the man, but he had to shake his head and say, “No, I don’t believe I have. But I’m mighty glad to meet both of you. You sure enough saved our bacon here today.”
“Like Scratch said, we don’t like backshooters,” Bo replied.
“Especially when they work for that varmint Cole, like that fella probably did,” Scratch added as he gestured toward the bushwhacker who had fallen from the second-floor window.
That added to Matt and Sam’s interest. “You know about Cole?” Matt asked.
Both old-timers nodded. “One of the townspeople told us those men you were facing worked for Cole,” Bo explained, “so it stands to reason the backshooter did, too. And we don’t have any use for Mr. Junius Cole. One of his men killed a friend of ours last night, and he’s trying to steal a ranch from the lady we work for.”
None of that surprised Matt. He knew that Cole owned quite a few of the businesses in Buffalo Flat, and it stood to reason that the man might have a cattle spread, too. And knowing what they did about how ruthlessly Cole tried to wipe out his competition, it was easy to believe that he would want to crush anyone who owned a neighboring ranch.
“We ought to get together sometime and have a drink,” Sam suggested, “maybe compare notes on what this fellow Cole has been up to around here.”
“No good, that’s what he’s been up to,” Scratch said. With a grin, he nodded toward the bodies sprawled in the street. “Looks like you boys are whittlin’ down his forces, though. Bo and me accounted for a few of ’em ourselves yesterday.”
Matt chuckled grimly and said, “That’s just the latest bunch we’ve had to ventilate. How many of those skunks have we shot in the past twenty-four hours, Sam?”
“I make it at least fourteen,” Sam replied. “Maybe a few more.”
Scratch let out a low whistle of admiration. “That’s a mighty fine job of work. Pretty soon Cole won’t have any gunnies left.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Bo said. “Men like that always flock to where the blood money is.”
“Speakin’ of blood money,” Scratch said, “here comes the sheriff.”
“You know he’s in Cole’s back pocket, too, eh?” Matt asked.
Bo said, “You don’t have to be around here long to figure that out.”
Carrying a shotgun as usual, Sheriff Branch hurried up after all the shooting was over, also as usual. He was clearly upset, especially when Judge Ashmore stepped out of the crowd and said, “Don’t bother taking anybody to jail, Sheriff. I’ve already been collecting affidavits stating that Bodine and Two Wolves acted in self-defense after those other gents drew on them first.”
“I don’t appreciate you sticking your nose into this without being asked, Ambrose,” the sheriff snapped. Matt knew what Branch meant—Cole wouldn’t appreciate the lawyer getting involved. But even though it was somewhat reluctantly, Ashmore seemed resolved to do the right thing.
Red-faced with anger, Branch warned Matt and Sam that if they kept getting involved in gunfights he would lock them up and throw away the key, self-defense or not. Then he turned to Bo and Scratch and said, “If you two old-timers are thinkin’ about getting mixed up with these two killers, you’d better think again.”
“We won’t stand by and let anybody be gunned down from behind,” Bo said.
The sheriff shook a finger at him. “Just remember what I said!”
As the lawman stalked away, Matt looked at Bo and Scratch and said, “Some friends of ours run a saloon. How about coming down there with us for a drink?”
Scratch licked his lips like he wanted to say yes, but Bo shook his head. “Can’t,” he said. “We have to get back to the ranch. Like we said, we came in with Mrs. Kincaid to pick up the body of one of her hands, so we have to get back to the Half Moon and see about giving him a proper burial.”
“Tell the lady we’re sorry to hear about that,” Sam said.
“And come back to the Silver Belle any time you want,” Matt added. “We’ll either be there, or the ladies who run it will know where we are.”
“Maybe tonight,” Scratch suggested.
“We’ll see,” Bo said. “Come on, Scratch.”
As the older men walked away, Matt waited until they were out of earshot and then said, “I’ll bet those two were pretty salty hombres in their time.”
