“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 eve
rything 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.”
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