Bodine had written: WALKER, YOU BIG BLOWHARD. YOU’VE BEEN FLAPPING THAT BIG FAT MOUTH ABOUT HOW YOU’RE BETTER WITH A GUN THAN I AM. NOW IS THE TIME TO PROVE IT—PROVIDING YOUR BIG FAT BUTT HASN’T OVERLOADED YOUR MOUTH.
He had signed it “Bodine”.
“You do have such a way with words, Bodine,” Two Wolves told him.
“Thank you. I thought it was quite good myself.” Two Wolves rolled his eyes.
The boy ran back into the hotel, almost out of breath. “Mister!” he panted. “I don’t have no idea what you wrote on that paper, but you shore caused Mister Walker to lose his temper and cuss. Lordy, did he cuss!”
“Fine, boy. Now you get over there with the desk clerk and the both of you stay away from the windows.”
Bodine and Two Wolves walked to the windows and looked out. The street was barren of any kind of life, human or animal. Max and his men should be getting into position on the rooftops. Bodine and Two Wolves slipped the hammer thongs free and stepped out onto the boardwalk.
Walker and a dozen of his men stood on the boardwalk in front of the saloon.
“You were expecting Walker to meet you alone, Brother?”
“One can always hope,” Bodine replied.
“Bodine, the eternal optimist.”
“I have a plan.”
“I would certainly hope so!”
“It just came to me.”
“I don’t doubt that, either.”
“Max and his people are in position on the roofs, right.”
“We hope.”
“Well, why don’t we shorten the distance by about half a block and just start shooting into the mob of them all bunched up there on the boardwalk?”
“Bodine, that’s positively brilliant!”
Bodine smiled and glanced at him. Two Wolves’ eyes were twinkling despite the danger that faced them. “You ready?”
“Lead on, Bodine.”
They began walking up the boardwalk, spurs jingling. When they were about seventy-five feet from the knot of hardcases, Bodine yelled, “Now, Max!” and grabbed for his guns.
The men on the rooftops opened fire with rifles, pistols, and shotguns just as the guns of Bodine and Two Wolves roared.
But at Bodine’s yell, Walker had dived back through the batwings, into the saloon.
A half a dozen gunhands were killed during the first volley and the others were down, wounded and moaning.
“I’m going around back!” Bodine told Two Wolves, punching empties out and reloading. “I’ll see you in a minute.”
“I certainly hope so. It would be a lonesome ride to Arizona without you.”
Bodine grinned and ran into the alley.
One of the wounded lifted a gun and pointed it at Two Wolves. Two Wolves shot him, the bullet taking the man directly through the nose; if he’d had any sinus problems, Two Wolves just cured them . . . and any other problems he might have been suffering during his short stay on this mortal plain.
Bodine rounded the corner and ran right into a gunslick, knocking him sprawling. Bodine kicked the man in the head and went in through the back door of the saloon. He threaded his way through the murk of the dark storeroom, which was filled with kegs of beer and cases of whiskey. The door suddenly flew open and a man stood there, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.
Bodine shot him twice and grabbed up the shotgun, fanning the man for shells and finding a handful. He checked the weapon and slipped away from the door.
None too soon. For just as he changed positions, half a dozen guns barked from within the saloon and the door was riddled.
Bodine fired through a small, dirty window, giving several gunnies standing at the bar both barrels and making a big mess behind the bar with various parts of them.
He again shifted locations, reloading the sawed-off as he moved.
Bodine spotted stairs leading to the second floor and took them quietly, just as the storeroom was shattered with lead. The stench of beer and whiskey was very nearly overpowering.
He stepped out onto a balcony, lifted the shotgun and blew two more of Terri’s toughs out of this world. He dropped the shotgun and filled his hands with Colts just as Walker stepped into view.
Bodine literally filled him with lead. The man jerked and stumbled each time the lead struck him, the bullets driving him back against the bar. He died with his elbows hooked onto the bar railing and his blood leaking into a dirty spittoon.
“You rotten son of a bitch!” Terri squalled at him.
Bodine had the strangest sensation that he’d done all this before.
* * *
“You can’t do this to me!” Terri hollered as her butt hit the seat of the wagon and the reins were pressed into her soft, pretty hands. Reins that were attached to two mules.
The bed of the wagon was filled with wounded gunhands, patched up by the local doctor. Without benefit of laudanum.
Bodine slapped a mule on the rump. “See you around, Terri!” he called.
“I’ll get you for this, Bodine!” she screamed. “You and that damn half-breed! I’ll see you both in hell for this.”
She was still squalling and cussing and raining down dire threats upon their heads as the wagon lurched out of town.
Two Wolves had been burned on the arm by a bullet and Bodine had his new jeans torn by a ricochet. He cussed the hole in his jeans more than he did the burn on his leg.
They swung into the saddle and headed out, with the cheering of the townspeople ringing in their heads. But with it, they both knew another notch had been carved deeply into their already growing reputations.
“Do you suppose, Bodine,” Two Wolves said, “that when our luck begins to turn bad, we’ll have enough sense to hang it up and go back home?”
“I sure hope so, Brother. I surely do.”
“Get off the road, quick!” Two Wolves said. “Good God, there’s the wagon and Terri!”
“She’s got a pistol!” Bodine warned.
They just made it out of pistol range when she opened up on them, standing up in the front boot and banging away. Fortunately for them, hitting nothing but cool fall air.
” I’ll get you, damn you both!” she hollered. “Ill find you, Bodine. You too, you damn Godless heathen!”
“Godless heathen?” Two Wolves said, as they galloped away. “I guess I forgot to tell her my mother had me baptized into the Presbyterian church.”
The two young men laughed and with wild whoops out of their throats, they galloped south, letting their horses run for a time, carrying them into the unknown. But both of them knew that while they might square off and bust each other in the mouth and cuss each other, and argue from dawn to dusk, they were Brothers of the Wolf, bonded by blood. And if you chose to fight one, you had to fight the other. For that was the way their fathers had wanted it, and that was the way it was to be.
And they knew that destiny pulled them south. Unknown, but real.
They slowed their horses and walked them.
“Look, Bodine!” Two Wolves pointed. “A message from the Other Side.”
A huge old Lobo wolf stood on a knoll, watching them through wise eyes.
He threw back his head and howled.
AFTERWORD
Notes from the Old West
In the small town where I grew up, there were two movie theaters. The Pavilion was one of those old-timey movie show palaces, built in the heyday of Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin—the silent era of the 1920s. By the 1950s, when I was a kid, the Pavilion was a little worn around the edges, but it was still the premier theater in town. They played all those big Technicolor biblical Cecil B. DeMille epics and corny MGM musicals. In Cinemascope, of course.
On the other side of town was the Gem, a somewhat shabby and run-down grind house with sticky floors and torn seats. Admission was a quarter. The Gem booked low-budget “B” pictures (remember the Bowery Boys?), war movies, horror flicks, and Westerns. I liked the Westerns best. I could usually be found every Saturday
at the Gem, along with my best friend, Newton Trout, watching Westerns from 10 A.M. until my father came looking for me around suppertime. (Sometimes Newton’s dad was dispatched to come fetch us.) One time, my dad came to get me right in the middle of Abilene Trail, which featured the now-forgotten Whip Wilson. My father became so engrossed in the action he sat down and watched the rest of it with us. We didn’t get home until after dark, and my mother’s meat loaf was a pan of gray ashes by the time we did. Though my father and I were both in the doghouse the next day, this remains one of my fondest childhood memories. There was Wild Bill Elliot, and Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, and Tim Holt, and, a little later, Rod Cameron and Audie Murphy. Of these newcomers, I never missed an Audie Murphy Western, because Audie was sort of an antihero. Sure, he stood for law and order and was an honest man, but sometimes he had to go around the law to uphold it. If he didn’t play fair, it was only because he felt hamstrung by the laws of the land. Whatever it took to get the bad guys, Audie did it. There were no finer points of law, no splitting of legal hairs. It was instant justice, devoid of long-winded lawyers, bored or biased jurors, or black-robed, often corrupt judges.
Steal a man’s horse and you were the guest of honor at a necktie party.
Molest a good woman and you got a bullet in the heart or a rope around the gullet. Or at the very least, got the crap beat out of you. Rob a bank and face a hail of bullets or the hangman’s noose.
Saved a lot of time and money, did frontier justice.
That’s all gone now, I’m sad to say. Now you hear, “Oh, but he had a bad childhood” or “His mother didn’t give him enough love” or “The homecoming queen wouldn’t give him a second look and he has an inferiority complex.” Or “cultural rage,” as the politically correct bright boys refer to it. How many times have you heard some self-important defense attorney moan, “The poor kids were only venting their hostilities toward an uncaring society?”
Mule fritters, I say. Nowadays, you can’t even call a punk a punk anymore. But don’t get me started.
It was “Howdy, ma’am” time too. The good guys, antihero or not, were always respectful to the ladies. They might shoot a bad guy five seconds after tipping their hat to a woman, but the code of the West demanded you be respectful to a lady.
Lots of things have changed since the heyday of the Wild West, haven’t they? Some for the good, some for the bad.
I didn’t have any idea at the time that I would someday write about the West. I just knew that I was captivated by the Old West.
When I first got the itch to write, back in the early 1970s, I didn’t write Westerns. I started by writing horror and action adventure novels. After more than two dozen novels, I began thinking about developing a Western character. From those initial musings came the novel The Last Mountain Man: Smoke Jensen. That was followed by Preacher: The First Mountain Man. A few years later, I began developing the Last Gunfighter series. Frank Morgan is a legend in his own time, the fastest gun west of the Mississippi . . . a title and a reputation he never wanted, but can’t get rid of.
For me, and for thousands—probably millions—of other people (although many will never publicly admit it), the old Wild West will always be a magic, mysterious place: a place we love to visit through the pages of books; characters we would like to know . . . from a safe distance; events we would love to take part in, again, from a safe distance. For the old Wild West was not a place for the faint of heart. It was a hard, tough, physically demanding time. There were no police to call if one faced adversity. One faced trouble alone, and handled it alone. It was rugged individualism: something that appeals to many of us.
I am certain that is something that appeals to most readers of Westerns.
I still do on-site research (whenever possible) before starting a Western novel. I have wandered over much of the West, prowling what is left of ghost towns. Stand in the midst of the ruins of these old towns, use a little bit of imagination, and one can conjure up life as it used to be in the Wild West. The rowdy Saturday nights, the tinkling of a piano in a saloon, the laughter of cowboys and miners letting off steam after a week of hard work. Use a little more imagination and one can envision two men standing in the street, facing one another, seconds before the hook and draw of a gunfight. A moment later, one is dead and the other rides away.
The old wild untamed West.
There are still some ghost towns to visit, but they are rapidly vanishing as time and the elements take their toll. If you want to see them, make plans to do so as soon as possible, for in a few years, they will all be gone.
And so will we.
Stand in what is left of the Big Thicket country of east Texas and try to imagine how in the world the pioneers managed to get through that wild tangle. I have wondered about that many times and marveled at the courage of the men and women who slowly pushed westward, facing dangers that we can only imagine.
Let me touch briefly on a subject that is very close to me: firearms. There are some so-called historians who are now claiming that firearms played only a very insignificant part in the settlers’ lives. They claim that only a few were armed. What utter, stupid nonsense! What do these so-called historians think the pioneers did for food? Do they think the early settlers rode down to the nearest supermarket and bought their meat? Or maybe they think the settlers chased down deer or buffalo on foot and beat the animals to death with a club. I have a news flash for you so-called historians: The settlers used guns to shoot their game. They used guns to defend hearth and home against Indians on the warpath. They used guns to protect themselves from outlaws. Guns are a part of Americana. And always will be.
The mountains of the West and the remains of the ghost towns that dot those areas are some of my favorite subjects to write about. I have done extensive research on the various mountain ranges of the West and go back whenever time permits. I sometimes stand surrounded by the towering mountains and wonder how in the world the pioneers ever made it through. As hard as I try and as often as I try, I simply cannot imagine the hardships those men and women endured over the hard months of their incredible journey. None of us can. It is said that on the Oregon Trail alone, there are at least two bodies in lonely, unmarked graves for every mile of that journey. Some students of the West say the number of dead is at least twice that. And nobody knows the exact number of wagons that impatiently started out alone and simply vanished on the way, along with their occupants, never to be seen or heard from again.
Just vanished.
The one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old ruts of the wagon wheels can still be seen in various places along the Oregon Trail. But if you plan to visit those places, do so quickly, for they are slowly disappearing. And when they are gone, they will be lost forever, except in the words of Western writers.
The West will live on as long as there are writers willing to write about it, and publishers willing to publish it. Writing about the West is wide open, just like the old Wild West. Characters abound, as plentiful as the wide-open spaces, as colorful as a sunset on the Painted Desert, as restless as the ever-sighing winds. All one has to do is use a bit of imagination. Take a stroll through the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona; read the inscriptions. Then walk the main street of that once-infamous town around midnight and you might catch a glimpse of the ghosts that still wander the town. They really do. Just ask anyone who lives there. But don’t be afraid of the apparitions, they won’t hurt you. They’re just out for a quiet stroll.
The West lives on. And as long as I am alive, it always will.
About the Author
William W. Johnstone is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over three hundred books, including the bestselling series Smoke Jensen: The Mountain Man, Preacher: The First Mountain Man, Flintlock, MacCallister and Will Tanner: Deputy U.S. Marshal, and the stand-alone thrillers Black Friday, Tyranny, and Stand Your Ground.
Visit his website at www.williamjohnstone.net.
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BROTHERHOOD OF THE GUN
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Chapter 1
They were blood-brothers, bonded by the Cheyenne ritual that made them as one. And more importantly, they were Brothers of the Wolf.
Two young men, Matt Bodine and Sam August Webster Two Wolves. The two men could and had, many times, passed as having the same mother, which they did not. Both possessed the same lean hips and heavy upper torso musculature. Sam’s eyes were black, Matt’s were blue. Sam’s hair was black, Bodine’s hair was dark brown. They were the same height and very nearly the same weight.
Both wore the same type of three-stone necklace around their necks, the stones pierced by rawhide. Both were ruggedly handsome men.
Both had gone through the Cheyenne Coming of Manhood, and each would carry the scars on his chest until death turned the soulless flesh into dust.
They were both Onihomahan: Friends of the Wolf. Both revered the great Gray Wolf, and both had raised wolf cubs as boys. The Indians did not have the fear of the wolf that the white man possessed, probably because the Indians took the time to understand animal behavior. Matt had learned the white man never took the time—any animal he didn’t understand he wanted to kill.
“Are we going to have to ride forever to reach Arizona?” Two Wolves asked, shifting in the saddle.
“I think we are. in the territory, brother. I also think we are being followed.”
Neither one of them knew it, but they were already in Arizona, having crossed the border two days back.
“You think? Hah! I have known about that for at least two hours.”
“Nice of you to say something about it.”
“I was waiting for you to dig the sand out of your eyes and ears and discover it yourself. You would have probably noticed something amiss just before they—whoever they might be—conked you on the head.”
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