“How many of them?” Wellman asked.
“I’d say a good twenty still sitting their saddles and able to fight. Let’s bury those we dropped.”
“Hell with them,” the mountain man nixed that idea. “They knowed what they was gettin’ into when they jumped us. Leave ’em for the varmits to eat on. I’ll not have a part in buryin’ heathen.”
Matt and Sam took the dead mens’ guns and ammunition and caved in part of the canyon wall over their bodies. Dick Wellman would have no part in the burying. He stayed in the shade on the other side of the canyon with Laurie. The mountain man was hard as nails and true to his unwritten and uncompromising code.
They rode out of the canyon with about an hour of daylight left them. Dick took the point, heading them west and a little south. The route would take them to Horsehead Crossing. Dick’s plan was to cross the river and recross to come in south of the town.
At this point in time, Horsehead Crossing was wild and woolly and full of fleas and was no place for a pilgrim. It was calming down a bit at a time, but was still filled with rough men and few women; fewer still were ladies.
All of them expected to run into Porter and his gang in Horsehead Crossing. And by the set of Wellman’s jaw, he was going to push the point when he caught up with them. There was a mean look in the old mountain man’s eyes, and he rode with his Winchester across his saddle horn.
“We got enough to worry about with what’s ahead of us,” he said. “Damned if I want to keep lookin’ over my shoulder for both ’Paches and Porter’s crew. When we catch up with them, I ain’t gonna be no Christian about it: I’m goin’ in shootin,’ boys.”
And Matt and Sam knew he meant every word of it. Wellman was riding with gunsmoke in his thoughts.
Mountain men followed their own strange moral code, seldom paying the slightest bit of attention to the changing times and the written laws of men. Many a tale has been spun over campfires from the Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi River about the antics and the bravery and the cold nerve of mountain men . . . and the blood that was spilled when one crossed a mountain man.
“Should be interesting when we reach Horsehead Crossing,” Sam whispered to Matt.
“Very,” his blood brother agreed.
* * *
Horsehead Crossing in the mid-1870’s was a wide-open, anything-goes-town. Shootings were common and the town marshal stayed out of it unless it was a back-shooting. Then he would have to get involved, however reluctantly.
Just outside of the town—but not too far out, for this was Apache country—the quartet passed several hardscrabble farm and ranch houses. From all appearances, the families who occupied those ratty-looking dwellings were just barely hanging on, for most settlers came West with more ambition than money.
Matt was the first to spot the river and the first to let his horse dip its nose into the waters.
“Horsehead Crossin’s just a few miles yonder,” Wellman said, pointing. “There ain’t no point in shilly-shallyin’ around this, boys. We’ll ride in, stable our horses, put Miss Laurie up in the hotel, if they is one, and then we’ll go huntin’ Porter and the rest of them no-goods. That all right with you-all?”
“Not to me, it isn’t!” Laurie said. “You’re not about to stick me in some flea-bag while you go off and have all the fun. I’m the one they said all those awful things about, remember? I got just as much right to have a part in this as any of you—maybe more. And I can shoot just as good as any of you. Maybe better with a rifle.” She stuck out her chin and glared at them, one at a time.
Laurie had a Winchester .44 stuck in her saddle boot, and Wellman had told Matt and Sam that the little lady knew how to use it, and would not hesitate to do so.
“Suits me,” Matt said. “But what are you going to do if we have to go inside a saloon?”
“Go right in there with you!”
Wellman bit off a chew of tobacco from a plug and shook his head. “The world shore is changin’,” he said sorrowfully. “Wimmin ridin’ astride and wearin’ men’s britches. Next thing you know they’ll be gettin’ the vote.”
“And won’t that be a glorious day?” Laurie said with a smile, her teeth very white against her tanned face. Most town and city ladies of that day avoided the sun, in order to maintain a white, unmarred complexion.
Wellman grunted and swung back into the saddle, pointing his horse’s nose toward Horsehead Crossing and a showdown with the Porter gang.
The quartet rode in using the back streets of the small town, swinging in at a livery stable. Dismounting, they beat the trail dust from their clothing with their hats and washed their faces in a horse trough. Then they checked their guns, wiping the action clean and loading up the usually kept empty chamber under the hammer. Laurie levered a round into her Winchester and shoved another round into the tube, bringing the full load up to eighteen.
The man who ran the stable was standing back, in the shade of the huge barn, eyeballing the group nervously. “You, ah, boys and, ah . . . lady,” he was looking at Laurie’s attire, especially the jeans she filled out quite well, “want me to look after your horses?” he finally got up enough courage to inquire.
“Yeah,” Wellman told him. “Rub them down good and give them all the grain they want to eat. Watch that brown gelding the lady rode in on. He’s a bad one. Kick the snot out of you or bite your arm off.”
“Yes, sir.” He looked at Laurie’s gelding, who was looking all wall-eyed at him. “How about them pack horses?”
“The same treatment,” Sam told him.
“Big bunch of sorry-lookin’ hombres ride in here some hours ago?” Wellman asked. “Some of them shot up?”
“Yes, sir.” The livery man’s adam’s apple bobbed up and down and his eyes were jumpy under the brim of his hat. “They shore did. They all stayin’ over to the hotel. But they in the saloon now. That one.” He pointed up the street.
“You got law here?” Bodine asked.
“Yes, sir. Sort of. There ain’t much county law, howsomever. But we got us a town marshal. That’s his office yonder.” Again, he pointed.
“He in?”
“Oh, yes, sir! He ain’t left the office since them hardcases hit town. Takes all his meals inside the jail.”
“They some rowdy, huh?” Wellman asked.
“You could say that.”
“You ain’t seen us, partner,” the mountain man told him. “You keep your butt right here, seeing to them horses of ours, you hear?”
“Yes, sir! I’m a-fixin’ to start curryin’ and feedin’ right now.”
The livery man got to his work, doing his best to remain deaf, dumb, and blind.
“I got an idea,” Matt said.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Let’s go see the marshal.”
“What for?”
“Let’s see if he’ll deputize us.”
“I don’t need no badge to stomp on a snake,” Wellman said. “I ain’t never toted no badge in my life and damned if I intend to start now. I saddle my own horses.”
“It was just an idea,” Matt said with a shrug. He could tell that Wellman was hot under the collar and operating with a full head of steam.
Just how hot the mountain man was became very evident as they began walking up the street. A young dandy with shiny guns tied down low stepped out of the saloon and froze when he spotted the quartet.
“That one of them?” Wellman asked.
“Yes,” Sam said.
“Hey, punk!” Wellman called. “Drag iron, you little weasel!”
The dandy grabbed for his guns and Wellman leveled his Winchester and shot him in the chest, spinning him around. The kid would die screaming with one arm hanging over a hitchrail. He had not cleared leather.
“One less,” the mountain man growled. “Now let’s go clean out a snake-pit.”
Up and down the main street of town, shutters were being banged shut and secured, curtains drawn, and people getting off the dusty street. Me
n were rushing out to grab the reins of saddle horses and pulling wagons out of the line of fire. In less than a minute the wide street was void of life. A strange silence quickly settled over the little town.
The batwings of the saloon slammed open and two gunnies stepped out to see what all the noise was about. They saw the dying, now weakly-whimpering dandy, his blood staining the dirt beneath him, his own guns still in leather. The two gunslicks yelled back into the saloon, cussed, and grabbed for their pistols.
The quartet opened up with Winchesters. The two outlaws never had a chance. A deadly fusillade of .44 slugs tore into them, knocking them spinning and jerking to the rough and warped boardwalk. One caught a spur between boards and fell awkwardly, smashing through a front window into the saloon.
“I’m going in the back of the saloon,” Matt said. “Don’t shoot me,” he added.
“Don’t get in the way,” Sam told him with a grin.
“Good huntin’,” Wellman said tersely, and kept on walking.
“What the hell-fire’s a-goin’ on?” the shouted question came from behind the walls of the combination jail and marshal’s office located just across the street from the saloon.
“We’re snake-huntin’!” Wellman yelled. “You want to come out and join us?”
“Hell, no! You boys just hunt on!” the invisible marshal shouted. “And then get gone out of my town so’s I won’t have to arrest you.”
Sam laughed at that remark.
“That’ll be the damn day when the likes of you arrests me,” Wellman muttered, and stepped up onto the boardwalk, presenting less of a target to those in the saloon. The outlaws had busted out the remaining windows and were shooting wildly and in all directions, hitting nothing except air and boards. “You stay behind me, Laurie. Sam? You with us?”
“Right here. I have an idea, Wellman: let’s wait until Bodine comes in the back shooting and we’ll hit the front at the same time. More or less,” he added.
“I’m goin’ in right now,” Wellman said. “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.” He was gone in a bowlegged lope up the street.
“The man does have a mind of his own, doesn’t he?” Sam muttered.
“You just noticed?” Laurie asked. Then she was gone in a feminine run after Wellman.
“I keep asking myself,” Sam muttered, running up the boardwalk after Wellman and Laurie, “how does a nice Indian boy like me get himself in so much damn trouble!”
Chapter 6
Bodine leaned his rifle up against a wall and rounded the corner of the saloon with both hands filled with Colts. He ran right into a gunny running out toward the alley he’d just left. The outlaw’s hands were also filled pistols. It was point-blank range and Matt was the first to fire. The slugs struck the rowdy in the belly, doubling him over and dropping him to the ground, just as two more ran out the back door and around the other side of the building before Matt could fire.
Bodine let them go and stepped into the darkness of the storeroom just as he heard Dick Wellman screaming like a puma as he ran into the saloon, tearing one batwing off its hinges. The screaming alone probably scared the pants off of half a dozen of the outlaws.
Matt heard running feet on the outside stairs and knew that some of Porter’s men—probably including Porter—were getting away. He put that out of his mind and opened the door to the saloon.
Wellman was standing to the left of the batwings, Laurie to the right, and Sam was crouched in the center of the broken batwings.
The three of them had turned the barroom into a smoky hell. Moaning men lay writhing in pain on the floor, sprawled across tables and hanging one-handed and dying on the upper bar rail.
The two barkeeps had hit the floor behind the long bar and were hugging the sawdust.
“Don’t leave me out of this, boys!” Bodine called, and a gunny turned, his face filled with fear and fury and a curse on his lips.
He pointed a pistol at Bodine and Matt shot him through the brisket with his right hand Colt just as another got to his knees, blood leaking from a shoulder wound, and leveled his pistol at Sam. Bodine finished what someone else had started.
Laurie leveled her rifle and plugged one right between the eyes.
Then it was over. An eerie silence fell like a shroud over the gunsmoke-filled room, broken only by the moaning of the wounded.
Matt began walking through the bloody sprawl. None of the high-priced guns he and Sam had seen back at the trading post were down and dying. And neither was Porter.
“You see that yeller-bellied Porter?” Wellman asked, shoving .44’s into his Winchester.
“No. But I did see some men leaving out the back door and then heard some others running down the outside steps.”
“That figures. That was Porter and some of the other ones with him. And Porter was in the lead. Bet on it. The man’s a coward.”
Matt looked over at Laurie. The young woman’s face was flushed, but other than that she appeared calm. She’ll do to ride the river with, Matt thought. She’s got more than her share of cold nerve.
Laurie met his gaze and for a very brief moment the two stood staring at each other, silent messages passing between them. Laurie’s face flushed even deeper crimson and she finally turned away.
The bartenders had gotten up off the floor behind the bar and were looking at the carnage. One shifted his eyes to Matt. “I know you!” he cried out. “You’re Matt Bodine, the Wyoming gunfighter.”
The bartender pointed at Sam. “And you must be Sam Two Wolves.”
“Right on both counts,” Wellman said, stepping up to the bar. “Gimme a rye.”
The marshal stepped gingerly into the barroom and pulled up short at the wreckage, both human and to the saloon. “Lord, have mercy!” he said in a shocked tone. “I ain’t never seen nothing to match this.”
“Then you should have been with me at that trading post up on the Platte back in ’39,” Wellman said. “Or maybe it was ’40. I disremember ’xactly.”
“You’re Dick Wellman,” the marshal said, a hushed and reverent tone to the statement.
“Yeah. And stop interruptin’. Me and some others brought our pelts in to sell. Bunch of hardcases got it into their heads they was gonna steal them. I think the body count was forty-five when we got through. Looked like we’d been slaughterin’ hogs.” He downed his rye and gestured for a refill. “Step up here, marshal. Have a drink, son.”
The marshal was at least fifty years old. “I got to write a report on this!”
“Oh, hell, marshal,” Wellman told him. “Just say the punks got into a squabble among theyselves. That’d be the easiest way to tell it.”
Several badly shot-up would be gunhands started moaning and hollering on the barroom floor. Wellman looked at them in disgust. “Either drag them crybabies outta here or kick ’em in the head. If somebody don’t do something with ’em I’m a-fixin’ to shoot the both of them—again.”
“Here, now!” the voice came from the shattered batwings. A man in a black suit, white shirt, and high starched collar stood there, a leather bag in one hand. “They’ll be none of that.”
“Howdy, Doc,” the marshal greeted him. He waved at the bloody scene. “Looks like you got your work cut out for you.”
“Help me, Doc,” a duded up young dandy moaned from the floor. “I’m hurt awful bad.”
The doctor moved toward the young man with holes in his belly.
“You shoulda stayed to home with your momma and helped your daddy slop the hogs, boy,” Wellman told him bluntly, not one note of pity in his voice.
The young dandy hollered once, drummed his boot heels on the floor, coughed up blood, and then died.
Bodine and Sam moved to the bar. Laurie stood at the far end of the bar. “Two beers for us,” Matt told a barkeep. “And whatever the lady wants.”
“Lemonade,” Laurie told him.
“You ain’t even ’posed to be in here!” the barkeep told her.
“You better
give her some lemonade and shut your mouth,” Wellman said. “I’m tellin’ you now, you don’t want to make her mad.”
The barkeep poured a glass of lemonade and slid it down the bar toward Laurie.
Matt moved toward one gunhand who appeared to be suffering only flesh wounds. He jerked him off the floor and sat him down not too gently in a chair.
“Where’d Porter and the others go, punk? And give me straight answers and give them to me fast.”
“Here, now!” the doctor protested. “You can’t treat a wounded man like that.”
“That’s Matt Bodine, Doc,” a barkeep said.
The doctor shut his mouth and tended to a patient; but he was angry and his face showed it.
“I ain’t got no idee, Bodine,” the gunhand moaned the words. His left arm had been shattered just below the elbow by a .44 slug and hung useless by his side. “And that’s the truth. But they ain’t gonna give up on gettin’ that gold and the girl. He’ll just get some more men and keep right on followin’ y’all.”
“And you?”
“I’m out of it. Soon as I can ride, I’m headin’ back to Nebraska. Didn’t none of us count on you and the breed throwin’ in with Wellman.”
“Why did Bradley and Doyle and those other top guns join up with trash like Porter?”
The outlaw’s face mirrored his inner struggle. He sighed and decided to level with Bodine. “Money. They’s good money to be had in slavin’. Porter and the others—me included—was on our way down to meet with Lake; see if we couldn’t get in on some of the action he’s got goin’ for himself.”
“Gawdamn filth,” Wellman cussed him from the bar. “Them’s scared little girls they’s kidnappin’ and sellin’ into bondage. Ain’t you got no morals atall? I oughtta kill you where you sit.”
The wounded gunny started sweating. “They ain’t nothin’ but nester trash!” he said. “Who cares what happens to them?”
“You call my little girl nester trash?” Wellman snarled, turning from the bar. Matt backed away from the gunny, sensing what was about to happen.
The gunny spat on the floor.
Wellman kicked a pistol toward the man. It came to a stop by the man’s boots.
Brotherhood of the Gun Page 4