Brotherhood of the Gun

by William W. Johnstone

  The old mountain man bit off a hunk of plug tobacco and chewed for a moment. Finally, he nodded his head. “All right, boy. I admire your courage. But what kind of high sign are you gonna give us so’s we’ll know you’re clear?”

  Matt grinned. “Oh, you’ll know, Dick. When that whole building blows up, that’s your cue.”

  “You just can’t be subtle about anything, can you?” Sam needled him.

  Bodine grinned at him. “I’ll leave my rifles here and take a full pack of dynamite. That’ll give you and Dick eight fully loaded Winchesters. One of you here, the other about a hundred yards over yonder. There’s a narrow wash just behind the rear wall. The kids will be running up that to the back of this rise we’re on. Laurie, I want you to be where the wash peters out and meets this rise.”

  “There ain’t gonna be no horses for the kids,” Wellman pointed out.

  “That’s right. We’ll have to rope the kids together so they don’t get separated and hoof it back to that mining camp where we bought the dynamite. We can pick up wagons there.”

  “Rear guard?” Sam asked.

  Bodine shook his head. “No. At least not right off. When we get clear, you and Laurie go on with the kids and me and Dick will lay back with rifles and discourage any who might want to follow.”

  Dick grinned. “Now that, I’m lookin’ forward to.”

  Bodine took off his spurs and stowed them in a saddle bag. He filled a huge pack with explosives and struggled into the heavy pack. “I’m gone,” he said, then disappeared into the mist.

  Chapter 11

  While the others moved into position, Bodine slipped into the narrow ending of the wash and began making his way toward the rear of the old fort. The water was about ankle deep but running off rapidly; he could see the waterline marks that had been cut during heavier downpours. The wash would not be a safe place to be during any storm. Bodine glanced up at the leaden-looking sky and hoped any further rain would hold off for another hour, at least.

  He started to lean against the north side of the cut to catch his breath then thought better of it when he heard the agitated buzz of a rattler who had sought refuge in a small hole just above the waterline. Bodine moved a few yards farther on and let Mister Rattler alone.

  Catching his breath—the pack weighed close to a hundred pounds—Bodine moved on. With only a few hundred feet to go before reaching the spot where he had planned to climb out, the walls of the arroyo were now several feet over his head. But he could see where a spot had caved out of the north side; he would have to climb out there. From there, it would be only a dozen yards to the wall surrounding the old fort.

  Reaching the jumble of rocks, Bodine climbed up carefully and looked over the top. So far, so good. He could see no one walking a guard mount along the inner wall. He found a good grip and heaved himself up, scrambling quickly to the wall and hugging it for a moment, listening.

  He could hear nothing.

  Bodine tied one end of a rope around a boulder and looped the remainder around his chest. He climbed up on the pile of rocks and trash by the wall, muttered a prayer in both English and Cheyenne—one of the Great Spirits might be listening—and grabbed hold of the top of the wall. He heaved himself over the wall and landed heavily on the other side, quickly drawing both Colts and looking around him.

  Nothing.

  He looked up at the one window that faced the wall and the arroyo beyond. It was barred; he had seen that from the rise, and had come prepared for it.

  Several faces appeared at the bars; frightened young faces. Bodine put a finger to his lips, silently warning them to be quiet. The girls nodded their heads.

  Slipping out of the heavy pack, Bodine jumped up and grabbed hold of the bars, muscling himself up, bringing himself eye-level with the sill, and looking into the cavernous room. There was no glass in the window.

  “Are you guarded?” Bodine whispered.

  “From the outside,” a girl returned the whisper.

  “Do they check on you very often?”

  “No, sir. Who are you?”

  “A man who’s come to get you out of this place. Just stay put and tell the others not to make any more noise than you normally make. Hang on, girls, I’ll be right back.”

  Bodine dropped to the ground and ran to the corner of the building where he had seen a bench. He dragged it back to the window. From the pack, he took out a flat piece of metal he’d bought from the miner, climbed up on the bench, and began working at the bolts that held the bars in place. The adobe was old and the bolts were rusty, still it took him precious minutes to pry several loose.

  He tugged at the bars and winced when one bolt make a sharp grinding sound as it came loose. He paused for a moment, listening. If anyone heard the sound, they did not think it important enough to investigate.

  He could understand why there was no one back here guarding the windows. The way the bars were positioned, there was no way the children could have pried loose the bars from the inside.

  Bodine put the bench back where it had been, muscled the pack up to the kids—it was all several of them could do to pull it in, even with him pushing from beneath—and with the rope still looped around his chest, jumped up, grabbed the edge of the protruding sill, and crawled through the pried-open bars. Once inside, he re-positioned the bars so they would look, at a glance, as though they were undisturbed. He let the rope dangle down the side of the building. Building and rope were almost the same color.

  “Stay quiet, girls,” he cautioned them. “I’ve got about ten minutes’ work to do, and then we’ll get gone from this place.” He counted the girls and bit back a groan of dismay. Twenty-five of them. All of them scared and trembling.

  Bodine went to a dirty, fly-specked window that faced out into the yard. He could see nobody moving about. The rain had begun, falling in a dull drizzle.

  “Have you been fed this morning?”

  “About thirty minutes ago, sir.”

  “Will they pick up the bowls?”

  “No, sir. Not until dinnertime.”

  “How many men are inside the compound?”

  “I’d guess they’s between seventy-five and a hundred of them, sir. A big new bunch rode in about three days ago. Somebody named Porter.”

  “Where do they keep their horses?” Bodine was working as he whispered, unpacking the explosives.

  “Some of them are kept in the stable inside the walls,” another girl whispered. “But most of them are kept in a corral on the east side of the fort.”

  Bodine could not have seen the east side and the corral from the rise, due to the two-story building he was now in. “Guarded?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. They’ve got a deal worked out with the Apaches so’s the Injuns don’t swipe their ponies.”

  “Chappo?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any of you girls ever ridden astride?”

  They all grinned impishly at him.

  “Bareback?”

  The grins widened.

  It might work, Bodine thought. It just might work. “Anybody here named Jenny?”

  “Me, sir,” a girl whispered.

  “Your grandpa Dick Wellman is over yonder on the ridge. You girls do as I tell you, and you’ll soon be out of here.”

  “What’s your name, sir?” Jenny asked.

  “Matt Bodine.”

  Everybody from the Canadian Rockies to the Mexican border had heard of Matt Bodine. He was almost as famous as Smoke Jensen, although the two had never crossed trails . . . yet.

  Like Jensen, Bodine had never sought the name of gunfighter. And like Jensen, neither Sam Two Wolves or Matt Bodine had ever hired out their guns.

  Matt laid out enough explosives to ensure the total destruction of the two story building the girls had been held prisoner in, and anything that might be close to the structure.

  He had placed charges beneath support beams and posts, against the walls at stress points, and would lay the final charge against
the front door. He began cutting the fuses, guessing at the time of each fuse. That done, he moved to the window and pulled the rope taut, securing his end around a support post. He pushed the bars away from the window and motioned for the girls to gather at the window.

  “Use the rope one at a time, hand over hand, kids,” he told them. “Drop down to the other side of the wall and stay close to it. Jenny, your grandfather says you’ve got nerve. You think you and three or four other girls can slip around to the corral and steal some horses?”

  She grinned at him. “Yes, sir!”

  “OK. Follow the arroyo around and get the horses. Two apiece and lead them around to this wall. We don’t have time for saddles. Grab a handful of bridles if you can find them, if not, you know how to grab onto a mane. Walk them around here and keep them quiet. When I give the word, swing on and follow this arroyo to where you’ll see a lady waiting for you. Her name is Laurie. She’ll lead you over the rise and to safety. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “OK, Jenny. You first. Go!”

  As the last girl was hand-to-handing it across to the wall and dropping out of sight, Matt saw the first of the horses being led up the wash. Then he heard the sound of a key being fumbled into a padlock. He moved quickly to the door, picking up the flat bar on his way over.

  “All right, girls,” the man spoke before he had the door open. “You pretties got to take a bath, you all leaving in the . . .”

  His words hung in his throat as he stood open-mouthed, staring at the vastness of the empty room. He turned to yell just in time to catch the flat bar in the center of his forehead. He hit the floor, his forehead caved in from the force of the blow.

  Matt closed the door and ran to the window. “Walk your horses out of here!” he called in a hoarse whisper. “Be quiet and move!”

  The girls, riding two to a horse, began moving up the wash. “Just a little more time, Lord,” Matt pleaded. He stood by the window and counted them. Jenny was on a pony by herself and was out of sight. When he counted twenty-five, he slipped into his considerably lighter pack and ran back to the door and lit the fuse, then moved swiftly around the room, lighting fuses. When the last one was sputtering, Bodine was across the rope and over the wall in two heartbeats and running up the wash.

  “They’re gettin’ away!” he heard the screaming from behind him.

  Matt turned, drawing a Colt and earing back the hammer as he did so. The man was on the second floor of the building he had just left, leveling a rifle in Bodine’s direction. Bodine snapped off a shot that missed, but drove the man back inside the building.

  Then the charges blew.

  The walls blew out on all four sides. The roof caved in and a huge cloud of dust rose into the air, so great the rain took several moments to clear it. The shock of the explosion trembled the earth and collapsed the water tower inside the compound, sending hundreds of gallons of water in a minor tidal wave over the ground.

  Bodine ran for the ridge and scrambled up just as Wellman and Sam opened up with rifles from their high-up vantage point.

  “Lousy place to build a fort in the first place,” Bodine panted the words, throwing himself down beside Dick.

  “There ain’t nobody come out of that rubble, Matt,” Dick told him, tossing him a rifle. “I seen one man blowed clear out a window and high up in the air—out of the second story. I hope to hell it was Lake.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Matt said, checking the Winchester. “But for right now, let’s get gone!”

  * * *

  Wellman and Sam took the lead, the kids in the middle, and Matt and Laurie bringing up the rear. The going was very slow, for the rain had picked up and the kids kept falling off the wet backs of the horses. Wellman left the trail and plunged them into the brush.

  “We got to make the mining camp,” he called over his shoulder. “This way is longer, but it’s smoother ridin’ for the young’uns.”

  The kids were game, Matt would give them that. Not a one cried or complained during the tortuous ride. When one fell off, she just scrambled right back on again without a word and kept on going.

  It was no more than ten miles—over some of the roughest country in the southeast—to the first of the many mining camps that dotted that part of the territory along the Mexican border, but it seemed to be taking them forever to reach it.

  And none of them could understand why it seemed that no one from the fort was pursuing them.

  Finally, Wellman was forced to call a halt. The horses needed a break and the weather had turned from bad to just plain lousy.

  Jenny stayed close to her grandpa as Matt searched for dry wood and Sam built a fire under an overhang. Jenny started brewing coffee in every container they had. The kids were given hardtack and jerky to chew on.

  “I think those at the fort have circled and are waiting for us between here and the mining camp,” Bodine said, gulping at the tin cup of coffee Laurie handed him. “They’d guess that we have to get the kids to some sort of civilization, and that’s the closest inhabited area. And they also know that none of us—including the kids—can be allowed to live. Working with the Apaches would be bad enough in the minds of settlers, but stealing kids to sell into bondage would be putting a noose around all their necks. They have to get rid of us. They don’t have a choice in the matter.”

  “They’ve killed other kids,” a little girl told them. “I’ve seen them do it,” she added.

  “There we have it,” Sam said. “These people are the lowest of the low. I don’t think we can afford to go busting up into that mining camp. Lake and his people may have beat us there—that would account for no one hot after us—and taken over the place.”

  “Or lying in wait just outside the camp,” Matt said.

  “I was grabbed from my folks’ farm just across the border from Nogales, Mexico,” one girl spoke up. “We could head there.”

  “How many people live around there, girl?” Wellman asked.

  “Not many,” she admitted.

  “Enough to fight off maybe fifty or seventy-five hardcases like them back at the fort?”

  She shook her head. “No, sir.”

  “Then that’s out,” Dick said. “Folks livin’ along the border got enough grief without us bringin’ more to their doorsteps.”

  “They’re expecting us to head west or north,” Matt spoke quietly, his words just audible over the steady fall of rain. “They won’t be expecting us to backtrack and head east.”

  “Yeah,” Wellman said. “Right back through their own territory. Half a dozen or so miles east of the fort, we can cut north, ride through the Huachucas, and head for the Army fort.”

  “Let’s get the jump on them, then,” Laurie said. “Let’s go!”

  Chapter 12

  They backtracked, heading into the San Rafael Valley area, the steady fall of rain muffling their horses’ hoofbeats and helping to wash away their tracks. Sam stayed a mile or so ahead of the column, scouting the terrain for outlaws and Apaches; for sure Lake would have gotten word to Chappo and the guerrilla chieftain and his band would be looking for them.

  Just before night began wrapping the land in its cloak, Sam found a blow-down: several acres of storm-fallen trees, thick with underbrush. Working swiftly, they all pitched in to weave together a crude shelter for themselves and the horses and made ready for the night.

  They chanced a fire; a necessity, for they couldn’t afford to let any of the kids come down with pneumonia. They found plenty of dry wood, buried beneath underbrush and fallen trees, and the fires were built under overhangs, so the smoke would vanish through the limbs.

  Laurie put together a stew, of sorts, and that just about finished what supplies they had left.

  “We can’t risk a shot bringing down any game,” Matt said. “Sam and me will make some traps and see if we can’t snare us some rabbits. Sam’s got his bow; maybe we’ll get lucky and he can bag an antelope or javelina. If not, we’re going to be traveling w
ith mighty empty bellies.”

  “But we’ll be alive,” a little girl said solemnly, her eyes wide and frightened.

  * * *

  The traps set during the night got them a few rabbits and Wellman brought in three big rattlesnakes.

  “What are you going to do with those!” Laurie said, disgust in her voice.

  “Eat ’em,” the old mountain man said. “They’s right tasty meat; tastes like the white meat of chicken.” He began skinning the snakes, cutting away the edible parts, and wrapping them in leaves, tossing them on the coals to bake.

  “Won’t be long,” Wellman said. “I cut ’em sliver-thin so’s they’ll bake quick. We’re gonna have a long pull today, with precious little time to rest. Eat up and let’s git gone.”

  * * *

  They crossed the west fork of the Santa Cruz and headed northeast, toward Parker Canyon. “Probably the best fish you ever stuck in your mouth,” Wellman told them. “Fish practically jump on the hook. I was always told that ’Paches don’t eat fish, so the lake’ll be full. We can lay low there and bake enough fish to take us on into where the soldier boys is.” He grinned. “Then you children can be safe.”

  The rain stopped and it turned hot as they moved into scrub-oak country, mixed with gray-green needled Chihuahua pine, manzanita, cedar, Mexican piñon pine, and Arizona sycamore. It was rolling hill country, perfect for an ambush. Little of the storm they had endured in the mountains had reached this part of the country, and the horses kicked up dust as the survivors rode on.

  Sam caught a glimpse of antelope and headed off toward them, his bow ready. The antelope were elusive and he failed to get a shot, but he did bag two wild turkeys. Not much for twenty-nine people, but the meat filled at least a small corner of their stomachs.

  Twice during that day they spotted dust in the distance and both times they quickly went into whatever cover was available to them. The first dust was to the north and it bypassed them, traveling east to west. The second dust was caused by a roaming band of Apaches and the Apaches were looking for trouble with all senses working overtime.