Matt leaped out of the alcove and ran toward the alley mouth. Muzzle flashes winked in the darkness as the fleeing men twisted around in their saddles and fired wild shots behind them. Matt brought the Winchester to his shoulder and hurried them along with several more rounds, until the rifle was empty.
“Matt!” Sam said as he limped hurriedly up to his blood brother. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” Matt lowered the rifle. “They came close a few times but never hit me. How’s your leg?”
“A little sore, but better now. Can you go back up the street and check on Mike Loomis?”
“Red Mike?”
“Yeah. He’s the one behind that rain barrel. He was trying to help me earlier when he got hit.”
Matt nodded. “Sure, I’ll see how he’s doin’. Where are you goin’?”
“The marshal’s office,” Sam replied, and that didn’t surprise Matt at all. He knew that Sam wanted to make sure Hannah Coleman was all right.
As Sam hurried off, Matt turned and walked back to the rain barrel. The man behind the barrel was slumped wearily against it now.
“Red Mike?” Matt said.
The man slowly lifted his head like it was a struggle to do so. “B-Bodine?” he asked. “Is that you?”
“Yeah.” Matt hunkered on his heels next to the wounded man and braced the rifle’s butt plate against the ground to balance himself. “How bad are you hit?” he asked.
“Not too bad…I reckon,” Mike replied. “Feels like the slug…just ripped across my side. Reckon I…lost quite a bit of blood, though. Feel mighty…weak. Head’s sort of…swimmin’ around.”
Matt leaned over where he could take a look at Mike’s side and saw the large dark stain on the young man’s shirt. “You’ve lost some blood, all right,” he agreed. “Stay right there, and we’ll see about gettin’ the doctor to take a look at you.”
“I ain’t…goin’ anywhere,” Mike said with a faint chuckle.
Farther down the street, the door of the marshal’s office swung open before Sam could get there. Marshal Coleman stepped out onto the walk in front of it, holding a Winchester tightly in his hands.
“Sam? Is that you?” he called.
“It’s me, Marshal,” Sam replied.
“Are those varmints gone?”
“Yes, they rode out hell-bent-for-leather a few minutes ago, and there’s no sign of them coming back.”
Coleman’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Thank God. I thought at first we were goners, Hannah and me.”
“Then Hannah is in the office?” Sam asked tensely.
“Yeah.”
“Is she hurt?”
“Nope.” Coleman turned his head and called through the open door, “Come on out, honey. The shootin’s over.”
Sam hoped that was true, but he hadn’t forgotten about Ambrose Porter and the special deputies. He stepped quickly to Coleman’s side, put a hand on the lawman’s arm, and said, “You’d better get back inside, Marshal, and keep Hannah there for the time being, too.”
“What’s wrong?” Coleman asked with a frown. “You think Kane’s gonna come back?”
“No, but there might be another problem.”
Movement in the doorway of the marshal’s office caught Sam’s eye. He looked that direction and saw Hannah stepping out with a rifle in her hands. He was about to call out to her and tell her to go back inside when a shadowy shape glided up behind her and she suddenly let out a gasp of surprise and fear. The Winchester dropped to the planks with a clatter as it was torn from her hands, and Sam stiffened as he saw an arm go around her neck and jerk her back against the man who had come up behind her.
“Drop your gun, Two Wolves,” Ambrose Porter ordered as he tightened his left arm around Hannah’s throat and thrust the gun in his right hand toward Sam and Coleman.
“What the hell?” Coleman exclaimed as he turned toward this new and, to him, unexpected problem.
Sam had tucked the extra revolver Matt had given him behind his belt and still held his own Colt. He didn’t drop either gun. He kept the one in his hand pointed toward Hannah and Porter and told the crooked special marshal, “Forget it, Porter. Your little scheme is done for.”
A harsh laugh came from Porter. “I don’t think so. Look around, you damn ’breed.”
Sam glanced up and down the street. “I don’t see anything.”
“That doesn’t mean my men aren’t there. There are eight rifles trained on you right now, Two Wolves. You don’t have any choice but to do as I say.”
“Blast it, what’s goin’ on here?” Coleman demanded. “Marshal Porter, is that you?”
Sam didn’t wait for Porter to answer. He told Coleman, “It’s him, all right, but he’s a lawman in name only, Marshal. He and Bickford and their deputies are all criminals.”
“That’s a matter of interpretation,” Porter said.
“The hell it is,” Sam snapped. “Bickford told me all about how you’ve been taking payoffs to let some of the men you’ve arrested go free…and murdering the ones who wouldn’t come through.”
An angry growl came from Coleman. “Is that true, son?”
“One of the prisoners in the wagon told me all about it, and then Bickford confirmed it when he thought he had the drop on me.”
Coleman glared at Porter. “Why, you low-down skunk! Dishonoring the badge that way. Let go of my daughter, right now!”
“I can’t do that,” Porter said. “You and Miss Hannah and Two Wolves have to go in one of the cells. We’ll lock you up, and then we’ll be on our way. I was tired of this game, anyway.”
Sam knew that Porter was lying. The crooked lawman wouldn’t be content to lock them up and escape. He and Bickford were making too much money with their scheme.
No, if Porter succeeded in getting the three of them inside the jail, he would kill them and probably gun down the three men who were already locked up in there, too, so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. All the law-abiding people in town had their heads down at the moment, lying low because of Cimarron Kane’s attack on the jail and all the lead that had been flying around a few minutes earlier. If Porter insisted that Sam, Coleman, and Hannah had been killed in that fight, there would be little chance that anyone would contradict him. He and Bickford could still salvage their scheme and carry on with it for a while yet, extorting more money from the luckless prisoners they arrested.
“I won’t tell you again,” Porter said in a harsh voice. “Drop your guns, or I’ll kill the girl right now.”
“If you hurt her—” Coleman began.
“Don’t waste my time with threats, old man,” Porter interrupted coldly. “I told you, you’re covered. If I shoot the girl, a second later my men will fill you and the half-breed full of lead. Your only chance to survive is to do what I tell you.”
“He’s lying,” Sam said under his breath. “He intends to kill us anyway.”
Coleman sighed. “I know that.” He bent over and dropped his pistol into the dirt of the street. “But that’s my little girl he’s got. I have to go along with him.”
Sam knew that the marshal was right. Porter would kill them and maybe even try to wipe out the whole town if he was pushed too far. With his mouth twisted in a grim line, Sam dropped his Colt next to Coleman’s. Then he reached for the gun tucked behind his belt.
“Careful,” Porter warned.
Sam eased the revolver out and added it to the two lying in the street. Then he and Coleman backed away from the guns.
“Come on,” Porter ordered. “Into the jail.”
Miserably, Coleman asked, “What do we do?”
“Play along with him,” Sam said. Something had occurred to him. Porter hadn’t said anything about Matt, and when Sam glanced over his shoulder, he didn’t see any sign of his blood brother. Sam hoped that meant Matt was still on the loose somewhere nearby.
Because Matt Bodine was a hell of a secret weapon!
Chapter 29
Matt had been turni
ng away from the rain barrel and Red Mike Loomis when he saw something suspicious going on down at the marshal’s office. Instantly, he dropped into a crouch behind the barrel, next to Mike, so that he couldn’t be seen as easily.
“What…the hell…” the wounded man began.
“Shhh,” Matt hissed. “Let me listen.”
His keen ears picked up enough of the tense, low-voiced exchange for him to understand what was going on. He knew that his blood brother would go along with Porter’s orders, at least for the moment. As long as Hannah’s life was in danger, Sam didn’t really have any choice.
But of course, they couldn’t trust Porter, either. The crooked lawman’s continued survival depended on not leaving any living witnesses to testify against him.
As Sam and Coleman dropped their guns, Matt turned to Mike Loomis and whispered, “You’re gonna have to wait here for a while. Hell’s about to pop again, and I can’t fetch the doc right now.”
“Don’t worry…about me,” Mike said. “I don’t know what’s…goin’ on…but you go take care of…whatever you got to do.”
Matt squeezed the young man’s shoulder. “Hang on, Mike. I’ll see to it that bullet wound’s tended to as soon as I can.”
With that, he dropped to his belly and crawled over into the shadows at the edge of the boardwalk. He didn’t know where the rest of the crooked deputies were and didn’t know if any of them had spotted him. A cold prickle swept over his skin as he started making his way toward the marshal’s office. For all he knew, bullets were about to smash into him at any second.
No hot lead came his way, though. When he reached the corner, he wriggled around it and risked coming to his feet long enough to dart into an even deeper patch of shadows. He pressed his back against the wall of a building and waited there for a moment, listening to the heavy thump of his heart beating in his chest.
There was a back door to the marshal’s office, but he was sure it would be closed and barred. He couldn’t get in that way, and it would be suicide to try to come in through the front door. What he needed to do was draw Porter back out somehow and hope that the corrupt lawman wouldn’t kill the prisoners before he could do that.
But first, Matt thought, he had to even the odds a little. In order to accomplish that, he had to find Porter’s deputies. Porter had probably told them to spread out during the battle against Cimarron Kane, so that they could make their move after Kane fled. Matt would need all the stealth he had learned from Sam Two Wolves and Sam’s father, old Medicine Horse, if he was going to find them.
Staying in the shadows, Matt melted into the night.
Porter didn’t let go of Hannah until they were all inside the marshal’s office. He told Sam, “Close that door,” then took his arm away from her throat as Sam followed the order.
Hannah ran into her father’s arms. Coleman gathered her to him and hugged her tightly. “Are you all right?” he asked in a voice hoarse with emotion.
She nodded and said, “Yes, Dad, I’m fine.” Her voice was a little hoarse, too, and Sam knew that was from the pressure Porter’s arm had put on her throat. Anger welled up inside him. The idea that Porter had hurt her made him want to smash his fist in the middle of the crooked lawman’s face, then hit him again and again…
For the moment, though, Sam had to keep that urge under control, and he knew it. Porter was calling the shots right now.
But maybe not for long.
Coleman glared over his daughter’s shoulder at Porter and said, “So, is what Sam tells me about you true, Marshal? Or should I even call you that?”
“I still hold a special commission from the governor,” Porter replied with a smirk. “I don’t see why I won’t continue to do so.”
“Then it is true?”
Porter’s smirk disappeared with an exasperated sigh. “Yes, all right, it’s true. Marshal Bickford and I have been…supplementing our salaries, I suppose you could say. But it’s only right, considering that we’ve had to risk our lives trying to apprehend all the moonshiners around here.”
“Lawmen get paid to risk their lives,” Coleman said. “I don’t reckon a polecat like you would understand that, though.”
Porter gestured with the gun in his hand. “Keep talking if you want, Marshal. It’s really all you can do.”
Coleman didn’t say anything, but Hannah asked, “You’re not really going to lock us up and then leave, are you?”
“I can’t afford to do that.” Porter jerked the gun again, this time toward the cell block door. “Get in there, all three of you.”
Sam exchanged a glance with Coleman. He knew that if one of the cell doors ever swung closed behind them, they were doomed. Porter would gun them down without mercy. He could tell from the look in Coleman’s eyes that the marshal understood that, too. If it came down to it, he would risk jumping Porter, even though he would probably get shot in the process. But if he could get the gun away from Porter, Coleman might be able to handle him.
Right now, though, Sam was going to try a different tactic. He said, “You’re making a mistake, Porter.”
“By eliminating some of the witnesses against me?” Porter shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s because you’ve forgotten about Matt Bodine.”
Porter’s eyes narrowed. “Bodine,” he repeated. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“Didn’t you see him out there, fighting Kane’s men? He’s still on the loose.”
Porter made a dismissive gesture. “Of course I saw him, the grandstanding young fool. I told some of my men to hunt him down and kill him before I ever grabbed the girl. He’s probably already dead by now.”
“I haven’t heard any shots from outside,” Sam said. “Have you?”
Porter frowned a little as worry appeared in his dark eyes. It was true. Since Cimarron Kane and his men had fled, there had been no more shooting in the streets of Cottonwood.
“You may wind up needing some leverage to get out of here,” Sam went on. “You won’t have any if we’re dead.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Porter shot back with a sneer. “All I need is you, Two Wolves, not these other two.”
Sam took a quick step so that he shielded Coleman and Hannah from Porter’s gun. “You can’t get to them without coming through me,” he said.
Suddenly, it was a standoff of sorts, even though Sam and Coleman were unarmed. Tension filled the room…
Only to be broken suddenly by the roar of gunshots that ripped through the night outside.
It didn’t take Matt long to find the first of Porter’s deputies. The man was slinking along the street, obviously searching for something. Probably him, Matt thought wryly. He stepped out of the dark maw of an alley mouth as the man went past it, and the butt of his gun thudded against the deputy’s head. The man never knew what hit him.
Matt grabbed the man under the arms and dragged him into the thick shadows. It was a moment’s work to bind the man’s hands behind him with his own belt and cram his own bandanna in his mouth as a gag. Then, confident that this deputy was out of the fight, Matt resumed the hunt.
A minute later, he lay in the deep darkness underneath a parked wagon and listened as two sets of footsteps approached. The men whispered back and forth to each other.
“…that hombre Bodine,” one of them was saying.
“I’ve heard he’s mighty fast with a gun,” the other man replied.
“Yeah, but there’s eight of us and only one of him.”
Seven, now, Matt thought with a grim smile. There were only seven of them still in the fight.
“You reckon Porter’s really gonna burn down the whole town, like he said?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. That’s one way of makin’ sure there’s nobody left to talk about what we’ve been doin’.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of killin’s,” the other man said, sounding worried.
A callous laugh came from the first man. “One killin’ or tw
o hundred, you can only swing for it once.”
“Yeah, but how the hell do you go about murderin’ a whole town?”
“Mighty quietlike, that’s how you do it. With knives, one house at a time. That way, folks don’t panic. They won’t even know they’re about to die until it’s too late.”
The two men had stopped beside the wagon where Matt was hidden. He fought the urge to slither out from under the vehicle and shoot both of the bastards in the head. Gunfire would draw too much attention right now, though. He had to be patient and, just like that son of a bitch had said, mighty quietlike.
“Stay here,” the first man went on to his companion. “If you see Bodine, kill him.”
“Yeah,” the second man muttered, “if he don’t kill me first.”
“You knew there’d be risks when you agreed to go along with Bickford’s plan,” the other one snapped. “You were quick enough to take your share of the money, too.”
“Don’t worry, if I see Bodine, I’ll ventilate the bastard. Count on it.”
“Yeah,” the first man said. His footsteps moved off as he continued to search.
So he was the object of a hunt, Matt mused. That came as no surprise. Porter knew he was out here and wanted him dead.
But Matt was doing some hunting of his own. Noiselessly, he moved closer to the man who stood beside the wagon with his back to the vehicle. Reaching out, Matt suddenly grabbed hold of the man’s ankles from behind and jerked his legs out from under him. The man opened his mouth to yell in alarm, but his face slammed into the street before he could get out more than a peep.
Matt was on him with the speed of a striking snake, driving a knee into the small of the man’s back to keep him pinned to the ground, then hammering both clubbed fists into the back of his head. The man went limp.
Matt took hold of his ankles again and dragged him under the wagon, then left him there. That was two of the varmints, he thought, but there were still six of them out there in the shadows, thirsty for his blood.
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