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…
&n
bsp; “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.
Moonshine Massacre Page 11