They rode into town late one afternoon, dusty from the trail and wanting a bath and something to eat. They had planned to bathe in Turkey Creek, but it was just too damn cold!
As towns went, this one wasn’t much, but it did offer a small hostelry and stable, a saloon, and a cafe. And the first thing both men noticed when they swung down from their saddles at the stable, was several horses wearing the Triple-V brand.
They looked at each other and smiled, both of them slipping the hammer thong from their Colts.
And that move did not escape the eyes of the boy who worked at the stable.
“They’s bad ones in town,” he said. “Over to the saloon. They brag about being part of the biggest outlaw gang in the territory. They got the marshal treed.”
“Must not be much of a marshal,” Bodine said.
“He ain’t. But we ain’t used to havin’ much trouble in this town, neither. Mostly Old Weaver just handles the drunks and like.”
“He’s an old man?” Sam asked.
“Yes, sir. Got a bum leg from a minin’ accident.”
“Where is he?” Bodine asked.
“In his office. They told him if he came out they’d kill him.”
“His office got a back door?”
“Yes, sir. Third door down yonderway.” He pointed it out.
“Rub the horses down and give them some grain,” Bodine told the boy. “And stay off the street.”
“You fellows the law?”
“No,” Sam told him.
The big-eyed boy stared at the men.
“How many town people are in the bar?”
“None, that I know of. Them hardcases just tooken it over and throwed what few people was in there out the door.”
“When did all this happen?” Sam asked, knowing that under normal circumstances, nobody trees a western town, for the men would all be armed, and most would be veterans of the war between the states, or experienced Indian fighters, or ax-cavalry.
“ ’Bout noon. They was a big strike over to the flats. Thataway,” he pointed it out. “And most of the men pulled out yesterday.”
“Have the outlaws bothered any women?” Bodine asked.
“No, sir. Not yet anyways. They ain’t but ten or twelve in town noways.”
“Stay in the barn,” Bodine told him.
Sam and Bodine walked up behind the short street to the back door of the marshal’s office. Bodine tapped lightly on the door.
“Go away!” the voice spoke from within.
“We’re here to help,” Sam told him. “We’re coming in.”
Sam gently pushed the door open and his eyes narrowed and his lips tightened at the first glimpse of the man. He had been badly beaten.
“Pistol-whipped,” Bodine said, stepping inside.
Sam put water on the stove to heat while Bodine looked around the small, two-cell jail. “What happened, Marshal Weaver?”
“Marshal!” the man spat the word. “I ain’t much of a marshal, now, am I?”
“You did all you could do against them,” Sam said, bathing the man’s face with warm water. He had been terribly beaten. “You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”
Bodine had taken two double-barreled, sawed-off shotguns from the gun rack and had loaded them, stuffing his pockets with shells. He handed a shotgun to Sam along with half a box of shells. “What happened, Marshal?”
“I heard ’em ride in and stable their horses. They was a loud talkin’ bunch. Used a lot of bad language. Run all the women off the street that was out shoppin’. I recognized them from reports I got. I knew it was a stupid thing for me to do, but the people in this town pay me to enforce the law, so I tried to do just that. Them hardcases laughed at me and took my shotgun away. I ain’t never been much good with a six-shooter so I don’t even carry one. Then they just pistol-whipped me. No reason for it; they just done it. Then they throwed some old men out of the saloon and took over.”
“How many of them?” Sam asked.
“Must be a dozen or more. I’d say eight of them are bad. The rest are young tinhorn punks. You know the type: hair all slicked back and wearing shiny six-shooters, tied down low.”
“We know the type,” Sam said. “We’ve been following this gang of scum for weeks.”
“Who are you boys?” Weaver asked, holding a warm, wet rag to one side of his face.
“I’m Sam Two Wolves. That’s Matt Bodine.”
The marshal smiled grimly. “Heard of both of you. Give them rowdies hell, boys.”
“We intend to give them hell, Marshal. We intend to send them there!”
Matt and Sam slipped in through the back door of the saloon, the express guns in their hands, the hammers jacked back. The marshal had loaded his own shells, and they were filled with bits of nails, rusty screws, and ball-bearings. At close range, the sawed-off shotguns would literally tear a man apart.
Bodine kicked open the door and he and Sam went in fast and low.
“Party’s over, boysl” Bodine shouted.
“The hell it is!” a hardcase yelled, and grabbed for his gun.
Sam gave him one barrel and spread the man all over the front of the bar.
Every man in the place grabbed iron and Matt and Sam dived for whatever cover they could find as the smoky, beery air was filled with lead and death.
Bodine gave an outlaw a bad case of indigestion by blowing a hole in his belly just as Sam gave another the second barrel of his express gun.
“Goddamn you, Bodine!” a man yelled, just as he jumped through a window and hit the ground outside the barroom, running toward his horse tied to a hitchrail across the street.
Bodine felt the shock of a bullet hitting his leg and the leg buckled under him. As he was going down, he unloaded the second barrel into the face of a young punk. The face vanished as the head was torn from the torso. Bodine grabbed for his Colts as he hit the floor and rolled over on his stomach. Bodine eared back the hammers and let his guns bang.
As the door was kicked open, the barkeep had gone belly-down on the floor behind the bar and stayed there.
“Holy jumpin’ Christ!” the barkeep hollered, trying to hug the floor a little closer. He couldn’t; his buttons kept getting in the way.
Sam was knocked back against the bar, a bullet wound in his side. He fired his last round into the man who’d shot him and grabbed for the pistol he carried tucked behind his belt.
Bodine rose to his knees, a Colt in each hand, and began doing his part in clearing the barroom of all hostile living things.
Sam had staggered behind the bar, the empty shotgun in one hand, and reloaded all his guns, keeping the locations of the hardcases in his mind. He crawled to the other end, shoving the frightened barkeep out of the way, and stood up, firing at an overturned card table. The charge blew the table apart and killed the two gunnies who had been crouched behind its dubious protection. He jerked out a Colt, thumbing back the hammer, when he realized there was nothing left to shoot at.
He glanced at Bodine’s bloody leg. “You hard hit?”
“I don’t think so. Went through the fleshy part. Just hurts. You?”
“Caught one in the side. I don’t think either of us will be doing much riding for a few days.”
A gunslick moaned from his intense pain and Bodine and Matt limped over to where he lay. He’d been gutshot twice.
“You’re not going to make it, pardner,” Bodine said, kneeling down beside the man. “Why not go out with a clean slate?”
“Why don’t you go to hell!” the man gasped out the words.
Bodine shrugged and rose painfully to his boots. A crowd had begun gathering outside the saloon, all of them peeping inside at the bloody carnage visible through the lingering gunsmoke.
By another badly shot-up outlaw, Sam said, “Lake and Porter . . . where are they?”
“Headin’ for the California line,” the man moaned. “By way of Wickenburg.”
Matt had limped over to where he lay. The outla
w looked up at him. “You boys played hell with us. But I can’t figure out why. We ain’t done nothin’ to you.”
“We gave our word to an old man.”
“Dick Wellman?”
“Yes.”
“I knowed Chappo hadn’t oughta tooken that little girl. Soon’s I heard her grandpaw was Dick Wellman I knowed we was in trouble.”
“Chappo’s dead,” Sam told. He watched the outlaw’s eyes widen. “We killed him over in the crazy rocks and the army cut off his head and stuck it up on a pole.”
The outlaw had been shot through and through, the slugs puncturing both lungs. Each breath was a painful wheeze and pink froth was gathering on his lips. “Letter in my saddlebags from my Ma. Address on the envelope. Write her and tell her where I’m planted. But don’t tell her I turned bad. I was her youngest and she had high hopes for me.”
“We’ll do it,” Bodine told him. “We’ll tell her you died an honorable death.”
“Much obliged.” The man closed his eyes and took his last ride.
Marshal Weaver pushed his way inside the saloon and whistled at the sight. “Lord have mercy! When you boys git on a rampage, you do it right, don’t you?”
“You got a doctor in this town?” Sam asked.
“Got a feller that passes for one. When he’s sober. I’ll send for him. He’s real good with horses and dogs.”
Chapter 22
Their wounds were painful, but not serious, with Sam’s wound requiring the most attention. The doctor, and he really was a doctor, gave them both a long lecture about people who live by the gun, charged them twenty dollars apiece, gave both of them a bottle of laudanum, and went off to get drunk.
“Don’t you think twenty dollars is a bit high?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know,” his blood brother said, unable to pass up a good chance to stick the needle to Sam. “Unlike you, I’ve never been sick a day in my life.”
Sam, speaking in Cheyenne, called Bodine some perfectly awful names.
The pull of the trail proved to be too strong for the restless young men. After two days of lounging about, they packed their gear, saddled up, and headed out, aiming for Wickenburg.
Wickenburg had been in existence for about fifteen years, and had good law officers. If Lake and Porter had stopped there, both Bodine and Sam had a hunch they wouldn’t stay long and would behave themselves while in town.
The change in scenery was abrupt and dramatic. They left timber and rode into the desert, riding between the hot springs to the south and Thoma Butte to the northwest. The Hieroglyphic Mountains—misnamed when someone confused petroglyphs (Indian rock carvings) with hieroglyphics—were a mess to get through, the mountains filled with boulder-choked canyons, twisting passes, and a pronounced absence of water.
The weather had turned sour, with a cold north wind blowing and even hard bursts of sleet from time to time, so Matt and Sam were glad to see the mining town of Wickenburg emerge in the distance. They had been told back at the Station that Wickenburg got its name from a Prussian prospector, one Henry Wickenburg. Henry, so the story goes, started the gold rush into the area when he threw a rock at a stubborn mule only to have the rock crack open, full of gold. It is not known whether or not Henry hit the mule.
Matt and Sam went first to the marshal’s office and laid their cards on the table to the town marshal and his deputy.
But the marshal shook his head after hearing them out. “You’re wasting your time here, boys,” he told them. “If this Lake and Porter came through here, they didn’t stay long and didn’t cause no trouble while they was in town. We got a couple of people chained to the tree, but they’re locals.”
“Chained to the tree?” Sam asked.
The marshal smiled. “We ain’t got no jail, as you boys can see plain. But we do have a jail tree. Over yonder,” he waved his hand, “on the corner of Tegner and Center streets. Good solid mesquite tree. We just chain them sentenced to do time to the tree. It ain’t that bad. Their families can come bring them lunch on Sundays.”
“What if it rains?” Bodine asked.
The marshal shrugged. “They get wet.”
* * *
The marshal had warned them. “You’re goin’ to have about seventy miles of practically nothin,’ boys. Nothin’ but desert and Apaches, with no dependable water holes.” He found a stub of a pencil and traced their route on a piece of paper.
“Right here, on the southern tip of the Granite Wash Mountains is a little two-bit town that ain’t even got a name. But it has water. It’s about sixty miles from here. There might be water here,” he pointed, “and here. But don’t count on it.” He smiled. “Good luck.”
* * *
“If hell is anything like this,” Sam groused, looking around the desolation and grimacing, “I am changing my ways immediately.”
“Going to become a man of the cloth, Sam?” Bodine asked with a smile.
“Let’s don’t take it that far. And speaking of far? . . .”
“We should be seeing that little town pretty soon.”
At that, they reined up and dismounted, checking their guns, wiping them free of dust and loading them up full. There was a good chance some of the outlaw gang would be in the town. Both were reasonably sure the one man who had escaped the carnage back at the Station had rejoined his buddies-in-crime. If so, they would be alert and waiting on the brothers.
They rode on a few more miles in silence, only the clop of their horses’ hooves and the dust to keep them company on the lonely trail.
They were in a land of saguaro and creosote bush, populated by coyotes, deer, bobcats, and Gambel’s quail, along with rattlesnakes, kangaroo rats, and foxes. It was a strange place for the young men, seeing it for the first time. Hot during the day and cold at nights; but they had learned to enjoy the fragrance of a mesquite fire. Back at Wickenburg, the marshal had told them of summer in the desert country, when the flowers and plants bloom at night under the moon, and close up against the heat during the day.
South of them, according to the marshal, in the Kofa Mountains, were groves of palm trees. Sam and Bodine had looked at one another and offered no comment. Neither of them knew what a palm tree was.
Sam spotted the thin fingers of smoke, seeming to rise from the vastness without root. “That’ll be it.”
Their wounds had very nearly healed, the pure clean air of the country helping the healing along as much as the medicine. Neither of them were quite up to any fistfights; but they could handle a gun.
They reined up about five hundred yards from the no-name town and looked it over. Like the marshal had said, it wasn’t much. From the crest of the rise, the men could see seven buildings—not counting the outhouses.
“The corral’s full,” Bodine pointed out.
A few of the horses wearing the Triple-V brand, both noted as they swung down from the saddle, handing the reins to a man with one gimp leg and a tobacco-stained beard.
“Treat them right,” Bodine said. “They’ve had some hard traveling.”
“Your name Bodine?”
“That’s right.”
“Figured it was. Bunch of hardcases over to the saloon waitin’ on you.”
“A set-up?” Bodine questioned.
The man spat in the dust. “Nope. They said for me to tell you that they want to talk. They’ve had enough of bein’ chased all over the country.”
“You believe that?” Bodine asked.
“Yep. You will, too, when you walk in the bar. Their guns is a-hangin’ on pegs on the wall.”
Bodine pushed open the batwings and stepped inside the bar, Sam right behind him. Not being very trusting types, neither had taken off their Colts. Guns on pegs notwithstanding, any or all of the men could be wearing a hideout gun.
Spurs jingling softly, they walked across the sawdust floor and to the bar.
The barkeep looked very nervous, and there was a quiver in his voice as he asked, “What’ll it be, boys?”
The
y ordered and turned to face the crowd of hardcases, all looking at them.
As before, none of the known gunslingers was in the crowd, and neither was Porter. Bodine didn’t know Lake, but he doubted the man was anywhere around.
“It’s over, Bodine,” a bearded man finally spoke. “Lake and Porter is out of the girl-tradin’ business. So there ain’t no more need for you to be follerin’ us all over the damn country.”
“It’s a free country,” Bodine said, after taking a sip of beer. “We’ll ride wherever we please.”
“Why?” another asked. “You ain’t the law. You got no stake in nothin’ we do. Why put your life on the line for nothin’?”
“It’s like we told one of your buddies back up the line,” Sam said. “While he was dying on a barroom floor. We made a promise to a friend.”
“Dick Wellman?”
“Why do I get the feeling we’ve had this conversation before?” Bodine smiled at Sam. “Yeah. Dick Wellman.”
“This is a fair warnin’ to you, Bodine,” the bearded man picked it up again. “We’re ridin’ out of here shortly. You follow us, and it’s open season on your butts. Now let me tell you how it is: there ain’t no dodgers out on any of us. Leastways not west of the Muddy. And that’s what matters. So there ain’t no reward money on us. In the eyes of the law—what law they is—you shoot us now, unarmed, and it’s murder charges agin you.”
“Get to the point,” Bodine told him.
“You and that damn breed is hay-rassin’ us by follerin’ us all over the country, and a-pickin’ fights with us. Now enough is enough. We’re gonna get you off our back-trails one way or the other, and I think you get my drift.”
“That all you got to say?”
“That’s it, Bodine.”
“Fine. Now you hear me. We’re going to follow you until one of two things happen: you either get enough lead in us to put us in the ground, or you’re all dead. Now that’s all I got to say.”
Two gunslicks stood up and walked to the pegs along the wall. “We’re through, Bodine. I think you and that damn Injun is just crazy enough to keep on comin’. So we’re headin’ the other way.”
They picked up their gunbelts but did not strap them on. They hung them over their shoulders and walked out of the saloon, heading toward the stable.
Brotherhood of the Gun Page 16