“Get away with what?” Jeff asked. “Stealing? What did any of us steal?”
“How are things in Crossing?” Matt asked. “Is business good or are conditions a little . . . vacant?”
John drummed his gloved fingertips on his saddle horn. He just didn’t know what to do. He’d always been in command, always taken charge. This new development had caught him off guard and he wasn’t sure how to handle it.
“The . . . ah . . . town of Nameit, is it on your property, Jeff?” John asked.
“Oh, no!” the rancher said with a serious look. “I deeded the land to the town. A hundred acres. All legal and proper. We expect Nameit to grow with the times. Things are changing, John. Even you must see that.”
“Some mighty good people lost everything they had back at Crossing,” John pointed out.
“Did something happen at Crossing?” Sam asked. “Tornado touch down maybe?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said, hatred for the man who killed his father very evident in his eyes, “I seen a funnel cloud yesterday—’bout noon, I think it was. I told ever’body I thought it musta hit Crossin’. But since you think you’re Lord God Almighty, and forbid any of us from visitin’ Crossin’, there wasn’t much none of us could do about it, since we shore didn’t want to do nothin’ that might upset you. You bein’ such an important man, an’ all.”
“Except pray,” Sam said.
“Yeah,” Dodge said. “As soon as we seen the funnel cloud, we immediately got together and held a prayer meetin’ for all the good people of Crossin’.”
“It was wonderfully inspirin’,” Chookie said. “Brought tears to my eyes. ’Specially when we all lifted our voices in song and sang “The Mighty Winds Do Blow.”
“No play on words intended,” Sam added.
John Lee kept his face bland. But inside he was boiling and burning with fury and hatred. John Lee did not like to be the butt of jokes. But this time there was nothing he could do about it, except take it.
“Have your fun, boys,” John said, in a voice that was choked with rage. He lifted the reins and all could see his hands were shaking. Then his anger boiled over. “I’ll pay your town a visit some night and burn the goddamn thing to the ground! Let’s ride, men!”
They left in a cloud of dust.
“That’s a mighty upset man,” Dodge said.
“Hell with him,” Ed said. “Right now, we got to spread the word we need a barber and a blacksmith and a dressmaker and so forth for our town.” He turned to one of his hands. “Gary, ride for the settlement and start talkin’ it up. It won’t take long for folks to come in.”
“Go with him, Bell,” Jeff ordered. “And you boys watch yourselves.”
“See if you can find a piano player for the saloon,” Al said. “Nothin’ like someone poundin’ the eighty-eight’s to liven things up.”
“And a preacher,” Dodge added. “Tell him we’ll build him a church and a house for his family if he’ll come live here. We got to have a church to make the town respectable.”
The men would provision up at the ranch and then head out, looking for citizens to inhabit the new town.
Ed lifted the reins. “Let’s head back for Nameit, boys. We’ve still got a lot of hammerin’ and sawin’ to do to make the town look right.”
“Not to mention to make it able to stand up agin any kind of stiff breeze,” Chookie added.
Chapter 8
John Lee paced the floor in his study. His rage mounted with every step. He wanted to strike out, destroy, hurt, kill. But how? He had looked over the new hands Jeff had hired and saw wang-leather toughness in them all. These were men his hired guns would not intimidate. His men might be faster on the draw, but that alone would not cause Jeff’s new punchers to back up. He knew only too well that many fast guns put their first shot into the dirt. And Jeff’s new men, although slower on the draw, would not miss their first shot. And he knew, too, that tough men could take two or three slugs and still stay on their boots, firing with deadly accuracy. He’d personally witnessed that more than once.
And there was nothing he could do about the stealing of Crossing. He didn’t want the law in here.
But to steal a whole damn town! Incredible.
John Lee ceased his angry, restless pacing and sat down behind his desk. He had to think. He’d offered up his brags, but Jeff and Ed, with the help of Bodine and Two Wolves, had turned his brags into so much hot air.
And stolen a whole damn town.
That rankled John Lee. Crossing was his. He frowned, thinking: or rather it used to be his. Bunch of outhouses was all that was left.
And the people he’d brought in to run it were gone or in the process of leaving. Bunch of whiners and quitters. He was glad to be rid of them, tell the truth.
He sighed. But now where the hell was he going to buy supplies? He shook his head in disgust. Damned if he’d go buy supplies in Nameit. Stupid name for a town. He’d just have to send wagons to the settlement. That’s all there was to it.
“Come in!” he called out at the knock on the study door.
Nick walked in, his mouth all poked out in a pout.
“What’s wrong with you?” John asked.
“Cindy don’t want to perform her wifely duties,” the young man said, sitting down.
John glanced at the clock. “At two o’clock in the afternoon? What’s the matter with you? Things like that are done at night. Not in the middle of the day. Damn, boy!”
“Marriage ain’t what it’s cracked up to be,” Nick griped.
His father chuckled, thinking: you haven’t seen anything yet, boy. “You talk to any of the hands?”
“Yeah. They told me the town is gone. Now what?”
“I honestly don’t know. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Kill Bodine and the Injun.”
“Matt Bodine is a skilled gunfighter, son. And Sam Two Wolves is nearabout as good as he is. Don’t tangle with either of them.”
“I could take both of them.”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine. Now leave me alone and let me think. We’ve got to come up with a plan.”
“Dad, we’re payin’ them gunslicks out there in the yard fightin’ wages. They ain’t done no fightin’ yet. Turn ’em loose and let them earn their money.”
John leaned back in his chair and folded his big hands across his hard belly. “Go on, boy. I’m listening.”
“Peck told me that we ain’t been banned from the town, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Them new hands are gonna be ridin’ in for drinks come this weekend, right?”
“Go on.”
“Ambush ’em.”
“Just like that, eh?”
“No, sir. We wait until they start the ride back home. They’ll be full of beer and whiskey and a whole lot more careless than they was ridin’ in. We hit them fast and hard and then get the hell gone.”
John thought for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. “I like it, son. I like the way you think. Let’s add this: two groups of men. One to hit the punchers on their way home, the other lying in wait for those left in the saddle when they come chasing after our people. A double ambush.”
“Yeah!” the son said. “I like that.”
“I’ll ramrod the first bunch, you can lead the second bunch. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
The father rose and took a map of the area from a drawer and laid it out on a table. “Let’s plan where we’re going to hit them.”
“What would you do if you were in John Lee’s shoes, brother?” Sam asked.
“I’ve been thinking on it. I’d strike and I’d hit hard. That’s the how of it. Where and when is the unknown.”
“He threatened to burn the town.”
“Temper talk, I think. It wouldn’t accomplish anything. Not as far as lessening the odds anyway.”
“He was looking over the boys today, for
a fact. I don’t think he liked what he saw.”
“I’m sure he didn’t. Jeff’s got a fine crew now, what with those four men he just hired from up Kansas way who left their crew when the herd they were supposed to take back fizzled out. You met them. What do you think?”
“I think they’re stayers.”
“So do I. But John’s still got us badly outnumbered with the money to hire a hundred more men if need be. But maybe we’re looking at it from the wrong angle.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re thinking and talking about a full-scale attack. Maybe that isn’t the way John’s thinking. Let’s think like an Apache, Sam.”
“Ambush?”
“That’s right.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, shifting himself to a more comfortable position in the saddle. “You’re right. And with some of the pressure off, and a place to go and relax—namely Nameit,” he said with a grimace, “the boys will surely head for the saloon come Saturday night.”
“That’s when it might be.”
“Let’s go talk to Dodge.”
“Not Jeff ?”
“No. Jeff’s still holding on to hope that this can all be settled without gunplay. And that just might get him killed. If we go to him with our thoughts, he might try to keep the boys on the ranch come Saturday night.”
“Let’s go see the foreman.”
“I’m glad you come to me with this instead of goin’ to Jeff,” Dodge said, moments later. “I hate to hold back from him, but until he gets it through his head that we’re in a real life-and-death struggle here, that’s the way it’s got to be.”
“How many men does he have to lose before he understands that?” Sam asked.
“This ambush oughta do it.” Dodge smiled. “I know how you boys operate. I heard about that business with the kids west of here. You boys like to ride in all lathered up and hell-for-leather. I was your age I’d probably do the same thing. Age tempers things. Now you boys go talk to the hands while I ponder on this theory of yours. I was fightin’ Apaches twenty-five years before either of you was born. Don’t worry. I’ll set it up right.”
“That’s a tough old man,” Sam said, walking to the bunkhouse. “I have a hunch that he’s going to get down and dirty with his planning.”
“I think you’re right.”
They gathered the hands around them and discussed it over supper.
“I think you boys hit on something,” Barlow said. “For sure we was all plannin’ on ridin’ into Nameit come Saturday night for cards and drinks. Look here.” He got a pencil and a piece of a paper. Barlow drew the meandering lines of a creek about three miles from the town. “Road takes a sharp bend right there at this crick. Good cover in the bend. That’s the only place ’tween the town and the ranch they could pull it off.”
Matt and Sam nodded their agreement, Sam saying, “And if I was planning this, I’d set it up to hit us after we’ve spent half the night drinking in the saloon, riding along half-asleep in the saddle.”
“Right,” Chookie said. “So what’s the plan?”
Matt shrugged. “Dodge is thinking on it. If it were up to me, I’d get there before Lee’s men and blow them out of the saddle.”
Gilley grinned. “I do like the way you think, Matt.”
“Sounds good to me,” the foreman said, later that night. “Anyway we cut it up, John Lee’s men have to ride onto Circle S range to get to that crick. They been warned what would happen. So to hell with them.”
“Who stays behind to guard the ranch?” Sam asked.
“We’ll draw straws,” the old man said. He smiled. “ ’Ceptin’ you boys and me, that is.”
The Circle S men left their horses behind a bluff on an old dry creek bed and walked to the cottonwoods, getting into position just at dusk. Dodge had strapped on another long-barreled Peacemaker and the old foreman looked right at home wearing the guns. Matt had told Sam that he suspected Dodge had not always been a foreman, that there were things in the foreman’s past that were dark. Sam agreed.
Crouched behind the bank of the creek, enjoying the coolness of dusk, Dodge turned his eyes to Matt, who had been studying him. “Think you got me pegged, eh, boy?”
“I don’t believe you’ve spent all your life looking at the rear end of cows, if that’s what you mean.”
Dodge chuckled and spat a stream of tobacco juice, knocking a frog off a flat rock about five feet away. “I traveled here and there in my youth. I scouted for the Army and I’ve rode with mountain men and wintered with Injuns. I’ve been the marshal of more than one wild town that people said couldn’t be tamed. I tamed ’em. But I never rode on the hoot-owl trails. Never stole nothin’ and don’t have no use for them that do. I own a percentage of the Circle S, Matt. So this is personal for me.”
“Vonny Dodge,” Matt softly pegged him, “the man some people say was the first to use a fast draw.”
“That’s what some people say, all right.”
“You dropped out of sight more than twenty years ago, according to my dad. The word is that you’re dead.”
“That’s the way I like it, boy. I had too many young punks lookin’ for me, wantin’ to make a reputation. Got mighty tired of lookin’ over my shoulder all the time. So I left the gold fields and come east, landed here and here I’ll die—tonight, next week, ten years from now. Who knows? Listen to me. Hang up them guns of yourn, boy. Before it’s too late. You’ve already got the name, and it’ll haunt you. You and Sam go on back to your ranches, marry up with good women, and settle down. I used to be just like you, Matt. It’s in the walk, the way a man carries hisself. I could clear a barroom of some of the most saltiest ol’ boys west of the Mississippi just by walkin’ in there. I liked it, and so do you. I lived for that cotton-dry mouth seconds before the lead started to fly. And I knowed no one could beat me. I knew it. Just like you know it. Has to be that way. When you lose that confidence, that’s the day you’ll die.”
“Did you lose it, Dodge?”
“Nope.” He chewed and spat again. The frog had gotten the message the first time and moved to another rock, farther away. “I got smart, boy. Just like you’ll get smart on down the road. If you don’t, you’ll die. It’s just that simple.”
Sam was on the other side of the old foreman, listening intently. Dodge cut his eyes to him.
“You got the same bearin’ about you as your brother, Sam. I knew what you boys was the moment I laid eyes on you. I’m forty years older than the both of you. And I know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“We’ll drift back to Wyoming sometime,” Sam told him.
“Maybe,” Dodge countered, “but I wouldn’t bet my last chip on either of you doin’ it anytime soon. You both got the mark on you. But for now, I’m glad you’re here. Enough talk. We best start listenin’.”
“If the Broken Lance riders come,” Sam said, “do we give them any breaks at all?”
Dodge looked at him, and the old man’s eyes were as flat and hard as a rattler’s gaze. “Hell, no! When they get into range, we just stand up and blow ’em out of the saddle.”
Sam grinned. “You’re a randy old bastard, aren’t you?”
“I’m alive, son. And I didn’t get to my advanced age by doin’ no damn favors to the crud of this earth.”
Matt and Sam both grinned at him in the gathering gloom along the lazy-flowing little creek.
The men waited. Stars were out and the moon up before the sounds of hooves reached the men. All the punchers jacked back the hammers of the six-shooters. The riders were walking their horses very slowly, to keep both the dust and the noise down. Just outside of effective pistol range, the riders pulled up. The sounds of low talking reached the ears of the men waiting by the creek, but they could not make out any words. Then a lone rider left the bunch and walked his horse toward the thicket.
He walked his horse up and down the road by the creek. But the men from the Circle S were all wearing dark clothing and none of them moved. Mo
st breathed through their mouths to cut down even that slight sound.
He walked his horse back to the bunch and talked for a moment. “Let’s get into position.” The clear sounds of John Lee’s voice reached them.
When the Broken Lance gunhands were no more than twenty-five yards away, Vonny Dodge opened the dance by blowing a gunhand clean out of his saddle.
The creek bank blossomed with streaks of fire, the violent sounds shattering the quiet night. The frog who had been watching the men leaped for the water and sank out of sight.
Horses were rearing and bucking and screaming in fright. Half a dozen saddles were empty, some slick with fresh blood. The air was thick with the combination of kicked-up dust and gunsmoke. The sounds of wounded men moaning and calling out for help was lost in the frantic melee. Those still in the saddle—and some of them were wounded and just hanging on—got their animals under control and hit the air.
“That’s it!” Dodge called. “Load up in case they double back and try it again. But I think that’s doubtful.”
When the sounds of running horses could no longer be heard, Matt called out, “You boys on the road, keep your hands empty and sit up if you’re able. Anyone who comes up with a fistful of iron gets dead.”
“Dirty murderin’ ambushin’ bastards!” a wounded man moaned.
“That’s what you were going to do to us, wasn’t it?” Chookie called.
“That’s different,” the man groaned.
“I fail to see the distinction,” Sam said, spinning the cylinder of his pistol. “But then, I’m just a poor ignorant savage.”
“Stinkin’ redskin,” another said.
“May I borrow your knife, Matt,” Sam said. “I think I’m going to take a scalp.”
“Now wait just a damn minute!” a new voice was added. “You make sure you’re peelin’ the right feller. I ain’t said nothin’!”
“Is that you, Dallas?” Chookie called.
“Yeah. Who am I talkin’ to?”
“Chookie. You sure picked the wrong side, Dallas. You hard hit?”
“Side and leg. But I can sit a saddle. How about it?”
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