“Answer my brother’s question,” Bodine said. The tone of his voice told the militia he had bought into the hand. So bet or fold.
“Two settler families was killed early yesterday morning. The redskins moved west and slaughtered two more families early this morning.”
“What does that have to do with Two Wolves?”
“We figured it might be his bunch.”
Two Wolves spat on the ground in disgust. “You idiot! I do not now nor have I ever had any band of followers.”
“Don’t you call me no idiot, you goddamn heathen savage!”
“All right!” Bodine shouted. “Two Wolves has been with me for the last two and a half days. You men are way out of line.”
“Now we aim to hang that damn Injun, Bodine. Anyways, hell, you’d lie for him and ever’body knows it.” Another man stuck his lip into it. “You ain’t nothing but an Injun-lovin’ son of a . . .”
Bodine blew him out of the saddle before the last profanity had cleared his mouth. Shifting his Colt, Bodine cleared another saddle just as the militiamen jerked iron and Two Wolves’ Winchester began barking and spitting lead and flame.
The horses of the militiamen were rearing and screaming in fright; one rider was tossed to the ground, striking his head on a rock and knocking him unconscious.
Bodine shot another one out of the saddle and jerked yet another to the ground, clubbing him unconscious with his Colt.
Not fifteen seconds had passed and the militiamen had six out of their original ten on the ground, about half of them hard hit.
Bodine and Two Wolves jumped as one being, both of them shrieking out a Cheyenne war cry.
“Jesus God!” a militiaman yelled, fighting to stay in the saddle and to stay alive.
The leap of Bodine and Two Wolves took two militiamen out of their saddles. They landed hard on the rocky ground, one of them breaking his arm and the other one having the wind knocked out of him.
The riderless horses, eyes walled in fear, collided with the horses of the two militiamen still in their saddles. The dust was thick and choking from the churning hooves. Two Wolves clubbed one of the riders on the back of the head with his rifle butt, knocking him to the ground just as Bodine and the last militiaman shot it out.
The militiaman lost as Bodine’s slug struck him in the shoulder, numbing his arm. With a curse, he held up his one good hand in surrender.
“I ain’t believin’ this,” the man still in the saddle said. “I seen it, but I don’t believe it.”
“Our medicine was good,” Bodine told him. “Now step down and let me patch that shoulder before you bleed to death. We got a long ride ahead of us.”
“Where we goin’?” the man asked, dismounting with a grimace of pain.
Two Wolves looked at Bodine and both men started laughing.
“To Cutter!” Bodine said.
* * *
They rode into the whore-town of Cutter just as the late afternoon’s sun was sinking, blood-red and bubbling as it reluctantly surrendered the light of day. Three of the militiamen were tied across their saddles. Two more were tied in their saddles to prevent them from falling out. They were unconscious, or nearly so. The rest had their hands tied behind their backs, the horses roped together in a line.
“Tom Thomas,” Two Wolves told Bodine.
“Yeah. And he looks mad enough to eat an anvil. Well, you wanted to see Cutter.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“By God!” the well-dressed man in a dark suit yelled at Bodine. “I’ll see you men hang for this . . . this outrage!”
“Big sucker, isn’t he?” Bodine said. “And younger than I thought.”
“Damn both of you!” Thomas shook his fist at the bloody parade.
They reined up in front of Thomas.
“Tell him,” Bodine said to the last man wounded in the bloody gunfight.
“We started it, boss,” the man groaned. “It was fair right down the line.”
“Where are the others?” Thomas demanded.
“What others?”
“The men with Bodine and this damn Injun who mauled you people, you fool!”
“There ain’t no others,” the man admitted reluctantly. “Just these two.”
Tom Thomas was so angry he looked like he might explode any second. But there was a different light in his furious eyes as he looked from Two Wolves to Bodine. Any two men who could take out ten of his best and come out of it unscathed. . . He shook that thought out of his head and turned away from the disgusting sight, stomping back into the saloon, almost tearing the batwing doors down with his entrance.
“I’m hungry,” Two Wolves said. “How about you?”
“I could eat.” Bodine turned Rowdy’s head and walked him over to a stable.
After seeing to the needs of their horses, Bodine and Two Wolves walked across the street to a cafe and pushed open the door. The place became awfully quiet when the two men entered and sat down at a table.
“We don’t serve no stinking Injuns in here!” a red-faced, pus-gutted man standing behind the counter informed them loudly.
“Then place the food on my left side,” Two Wolves told him. “That’s my white side.”
The waitress laughed at the expression on the owner’s face. “Aw, hell, Harry,” she said. “There ain’t no point in kickin’ up a fuss about it.” She picked up a menu and walked to the table, handing the menu to Two Wolves, who took it with a smile and with his left hand.
The waitress laughed and the owner cursed and walked back into the kitchen.
“What’ll it be, boys?”
“Is he going to cook it?” Bodine asked, jerking his thumb toward the kitchen.
“Naw. We got a Chink cook. He’s pretty good. I’d try the stew and apple pie. Got a fresh pot of coffee, too.”
“Sounds good to me,” Two Wolves said, his eyes on a huge man who had appeared on the boardwalk across the street.
The waitress followed his eyes. “Stay away from that one, boys,” she cautioned them. “He’s pure poison. That’s Whacker Corrigan. Came out here about six months ago from New York City. Call him Whacker ’cause he likes to whack people.”
“Sounds like a charming fellow,” Two Wolves said dryly.
“Strong as a grizzly. And just about as mean, too.” She walked to the kitchen. “Dish ’em up, Loo Boo,” she said.
The Chinese cook muttered under his breath.
“I know it ain’t your name. I can’t say your name. And my name ain’t Wucy, it’s Lucy. So it all evens out, don’t it?”
Bodine and Two Wolves ate the good stew, both of them keeping an eye on the man sitting on a barrel on the boardwalk across the street. Whacker had not taken his eyes off the cafe.
“If it comes down to it,” Bodine said, “don’t try to fight him with your fists up close. That’d be suicide. Pick up a club and bust him across the teeth.”
“You’re reading my mind again.”
With the meal finished and the table cleared, the men lingered over coffee.
“We’re in this den of crooks,” Two Wolves said. “Now what?”
“Feel like pushing your luck?”
“That’s what we’ve been doing all day. Why change it now?”
“Your medicine still good?”
Two Wolves laughed softly. “Sometimes I wonder who is more Indian—you or me?”
“Let’s go look into the lion’s mouth, shall we?”
The men left the cafe just as night was covering the land. They walked across the street to the Kittycat saloon. Whacker Corrigan stood up and blocked the batwings, a smile on his face.
Chapter 10
“Get out of the way, lard-butt,” Bodine told the huge man.
Whacker looked startled for a moment, and then burst out laughing. But he didn’t step out of the way. He looked down at Bodine and said, “You feel up to moving me, lad?”
“If I have to.”
“By the Lord, I think you’d try it!�
�� Whacker looked at the pair and then shrugged. “All right, lads. I admire courage.” He stepped to one side.
Bodine and Two Wolves pushed open the batwings and walked into the saloon. Bodine’s spurs jingled as he walked across the freshly sawdusted floor. Two Wolves’ moccasins whispered across the floor. Whacker Corrigan entered after them and sat down in a chair. He watched with a smile on his lips.
Tom Thomas stood by the bar, watching the pair with open contempt and disgust in his eyes. He picked up his shot glass and took a tiny sip of whiskey. That move did not escape the eyes of Bodine and Two Wolves. Tom Thomas was a man who was going to be always in control, not allowing alcohol to cloud his reasoning.
Bodine ordered beer and Two Wolves asked for a glass of water. That brought a round of laughter from the assorted scum and trash and gunslingers seated in the big room.
One of them called out, “Why don’t you give the savage some whiskey, barkeep? Maybe then he could do a war dance for us.”
Two Wolves did not change expression; but his dark eyes suddenly held a very dangerous glint. It did not go unnoticed by Bodine.
“Stinks in here,” another man piped up. “Smells like a dirty tipi to me.”
“Yeah,” his partner said. “You reckon he ever takes a bath?”
“Shore don’t smell like it to me.”
Bodine turned to face the pair, his right hand held close to the butt of his .44.
The men shut their mouths.
“You always fight that damn Injun’s battles for him, Bodine?” Tom Thomas asked.
Bodine cut his eyes. “I never fight his battles for him, Thomas. I can assure you, Two Wolves is man enough to fight his own battles. Which is a lot more than I can say for you.”
That stung Thomas, bringing a flush of red from his neck up to his face. Out of the corner of his eye, Bodine could see that the comment amused Whacker Corrigan. And he wondered about that.
Tom Thomas slammed the shot glass down on the bar, the whiskey spilling out, wetting his big, ham-like hand. “Just what the hell do you mean by that, Bodine?”
“It means,” Bodine spoke calmly, “that neither Two Wolves nor I have to have our fighting done for us. We’ve courage enough to do our own fighting.”
Two Wolves smiled. He was putting together just what Bodine was up to. And he hoped it would not backfire on them both.
“Say it plain out what’s on your mind, Bodine!” Thomas demanded. “Stop dancin’ around the issue.”
“It means, Thomas, that you don’t have the guts to fight your own battles. You’ve got to hide behind a dozen or more two-bit gunhawks. It means, Thomas, that you’re yellow. That you’re a coward. That you hide in dark places and wait to strike at someone’s back. Is that plain enough for you, Coyote Butt?”
Two Wolves threw back his head and laughed. Cutting his eyes, Bodine could see Whacker Corrigan duck his head to hide his widening smile, brought on by the slur against his employer.
Thomas appeared to be gathering enough steam to drive a locomotive up a steep grade. Then, with a visible effort, he began calming himself. After a moment, a very tightly controlled smile cut his lips.
A lean, hawk-faced man, wearing two guns belted low and tied down pushed back his chair and stood up. “Let me take this pup, boss.”
“Sit down and shut up!” Thomas barked the orders. The gunhand sat down quickly. Tom Thomas looked square at Bodine. Bodine could almost feel the heat from the gaze. “All right, you’ve insulted me in front of my men. You know what I have to do. And I’m admitting that I look forward to it.”
“With help from your wild dogs, of course.” Bodine stuck the needle in the man again.
“Now you’re accusing me of having no honor.”
“Honor?” Bodine laughed the word. “A rattlesnake has more honor than you, Thomas. You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
Thomas took the slur without changing expression.
“Honor?” Bodine kept it up. “You’re a two-bit operator who managed to hit it big out here by terrorizing small ranchers and forcing homesteaders off their legally gotten land. How in the hell you managed to get so much pull in Washington is beyond me. I guess that to people who don’t know how deadly a rattlesnake is, it might seem pretty and harmless. But I know better. You’ve been run out of every place you ever tried to alight, or left just before the authorities ran you out.”
That hit home. And Bodine made a mental note of it. He doubted that Tom Thomas was the man’s real name; he had dropped his birth name years back. He’d used no telling how many aliases in no telling how many places.
“You’re a damn stinking liar, Bodine!” Thomas yelled at him.
“And just before I begin to stomp your guts out, Thomas, your men will interfere.”
“No, they won’t.” Whacker spoke the words softly, but loud enough so that all in the Kittycat could hear. “I’ve bullied my share of men, and whipped every one of them. But I’ve taken no part, ever, in a gang-up on one man. I shall stand by the Indian and make sure that there is no interference—from either side. If need be, I shall fight shoulder to shoulder beside the Indian. Is that clear, Mister Thomas?” He looked dead at his boss.
Thomas’s smile was thin. “A side of you I was not aware of, Whacker. Very well. Of course, there will be no interference. Those are my orders. Are they understood, men?”
The gunslingers in the room nodded their heads.
Whacker Corrigan motioned for Two Wolves to join him at the table. “And bring your water. I have no objection to a man who doesn’t drink hard liquor.”
Two Wolves looked at the former New York City shoulder-striker and smiled. He picked up his glass of water and joined the man at his table.
Bodine took off his gunbelt, rolled it up, and laid it on the table before Two Wolves.
Tom Thomas removed his suit coat and rolled up his sleeves. Bodine watched him closely. Thomas was a big man, no doubt about that. And in his prime. He outweighed Bodine by a good thirty pounds, and he appeared to be in excellent physical shape.
Simon Bull sat in the back of the room. He had never seen his boss fight a man with his fists, but he knew that Bodine was tough as an anvil. And tricky as an Indian. This fight promised to be a good one.
But Simon was curious about Whacker’s intervention. It showed a side of the man that was not to Simon’s liking. Not at all.
Time would tell, he reckoned.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” Thomas said, doing a couple of deep knee bends and flapping his arms to loosen up. “I’m going to kill you, Bodine. With my hands. I’m going to beat you to death.”
“Maybe, or else put me to sleep with your big fat flapping mouth,” Bodine countered. “That’s about the only way you’re going to whip me, you lard-butted windbag.”
Even the gunslingers in Thomas’s employ all smiled at that. Bodine had guts, that was a matter of proven fact. Whether he had a chance against the bulk of Thomas was quite another matter.
“You ready, Bodine?” Thomas asked.
“Hell, Thomas, I been ready! I’m just waitin’ on you to work up enough courage to swing the first fist, that’s all.”
Thomas stepped away from the bar and held up his fists in the classic boxer’s stance. Left and right held up high, far away from his face.
Bodine laughed at the man, his fists held close to his body, just under his jaw, close to his barrel chest.
“You find your impending death amusing, cowboy?” Thomas asked, shuffling his feet in the sawdust.
“No. I find you amusing, you ape! You look like you’re about ready to start beating your chest and swinging by your tail at any moment. Who’d your mother breed with, a monkey?”
That did it. Howling his outrage, Tom Thomas charged Bodine. And that was what Bodine had hoped for. He sidestepped and tripped the bigger man, clubbing him on the side of the head as he went down to the floor. Bodine kicked him twice in the side while he was down and then stepped back, allowing the ma
n to get to his boots.
“Foul! Foul!” cried Thomas after the kicks.
“Horse-crap!” Corrigan said. “This isn’t the ring. This is bare-knuckle strike and gouge. There are no rules here.”
Thomas suddenly lunged at Bodine, the force of his charge knocking the smaller man down. Bodine rolled quickly, avoiding Thomas’s boots, and sprang to his feet, smiling at the man.
“Come on, ape-face,” Bodine taunted the man. “Is this the best you can do? You fight like a dandy!”
Thomas cursed Bodine and stepped in, swinging. Bodine went under the punches and landed two hard body shots to Thomas’s stomach, then stepped back.
Thomas looked at Bodine, sudden doubt in his eyes at the shockingly powerful body-blows he’d just received. Then he hit Bodine with a left that knocked the man backward, the bar stopping him.
Thomas rushed him and landed two more blows, to the face and the stomach, that hurt. Bodine twisted away and managed to land a right that jerked Thomas’s head back.
The men circled each other warily. Thomas had given up his boxer’s stance and now held his elbows in tight to his ribs and his fists up, to protect his face.
Bodine hit him a combination in the belly that knocked the wind from him momentarily and followed that with a kick to the knee that staggered the big man. Thomas cursed and backed up, limping for a moment on his bum leg.
Bodine stalked him, flipping hard, fast fists at the man, worrying him more than hurting him, for Thomas blocked most of them with his massive arms.
The spectators in the barroom were strangely silent as they watched the fight, for at this point, Bodine was clearly the man who had taken charge.
Bodine jumped at Thomas, the move startling the man. Then Bodine really got his attention by spreading his nose all over the man’s face as a left got through that brought blood splattering. Thomas shook his head and backed up.
Bodine was relentless in his pursuit. He followed the bigger man, throwing punch after punch, bruising the arms of Thomas, hurting him, and occasionally getting a fist through to smash into Thomas’s face. Thomas’s lips were pulpy with blood and his breathing was ragged through his shattered nose.
But the man was far from being out. Thomas lashed out with a right that rocked Bodine’s head back and followed that with a left to the gut that very nearly doubled Bodine over. Bodine backed up, shaking his head and catching his breath. He could taste blood in his mouth.
Blood Bond Page 7