Brotherhood of the Gun

by William W. Johnstone

  “Damnit!” Sam whispered.

  “You boys get on back home!” the sheriff hollered to the young men.

  “You just stand aside, Sheriff,” one of the young men returned the shout. “This ain’t none of your affair.”

  “By God, I can make it my affair!”

  “Then you’re likely to get caught up in the crossfire,” he was warned. “We’re callin’ out Bodine and that half-breed.”

  “Don’t be fools, boys!” the sheriff yelled, an urgent note in his voice. “We’ll be buryin’ you all come tomorrow.”

  They sneered at that and came swaggering on, their hands close to the butts of their guns.

  “Idiots,” Sam muttered, slipping the hammer thong from his Colt. Bodine had already done so.

  “Step out in the street, gunfighters!” the third young man found his voice.

  “We’ve got no grievance with any of you,” Bodine called. “There is no need for this.”

  The sheriff was watching the pair closely. His face was unreadable.

  “What’s the matter, gunfighter?” a young man yelled. “You afraid of us?”

  “You know better than that,” Bodine’s voice was calm. “But this doesn’t make any sense. We’ve done you no harm.”

  “I’m the Santa Ana Kid!” he called.

  “Good Lord,” Sam whispered. “A would-be tough trying to make a reputation.”

  “Glad to meet you,” Bodine said. “How about a drink?”

  The trio stopped in the street. “No time for that,” the Kid called. “We’ll have all the drinks in the world for free after we kill you.”

  Bodine looked at the sheriff. The sheriff shrugged his shoulders.

  “You won’t kill either of us, boy,” Bodine told the young man. “Now go on home before hard words are said that you can’t back away from.”

  “I ain’t never lost a gunfight in my life!” the Kid screamed the words.

  The crowd was silent, watching.

  “Have you ever had one?” Sam asked, his voice low but carrying to the trio.

  “You damn right! I’ve had plenty of fights. I got four notches on my guns.”

  Nobody but a tinhorn cuts kill-notches in their gun grips.

  “Yeah!” another would-be tough yelled. “How many notches have you got, Bodine?”

  “Boy,” the sheriff called, “if Bodine notched his guns, he wouldn’t have any grips left on them.”

  “Shut up! You stay out of this. I got a right to call out a gunfighter.”

  Only a half-truth. The laws were changing in the West, but very slowly. The sheriff knew that if he tried to intervene, wild shots would be fired, and someone in the crowd was sure to get hit, for the crowd had swelled to several hundred, lining both sides of the wide street. The sheriff was caught between that rock and a hard place. He exhaled slowly and made up his mind. He would let the men settle it . . . he already knew what the outcome would be. He silently cursed the moment that Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves rode into town, all the while knowing that this was not their fault. They had provoked nothing; had caused no trouble.

  “I think they’re both yellow!” one young man sneered the words.

  “Yeah, Red,” the Kid said. “It sure seems that way to me, too. Ain’t that the way you see it, Sandy?”

  “Yellow dogs,” the third young man agreed.

  The Santa Ana Kid, Red, and Sandy spread out in the street.

  “What’s your problem, you greasy damn half breed?” the Kid yelled at Sam. “You’re like all Injuns: not only do you stink, you’re yellow.”

  Sam’s dark eyes were flint hard, his face expressionless.

  Then the Kid stepped into his coffin. “Come on, Bodine, Sam Yellow-Coyote, you sons of bitches!”

  Red and Sandy laughed at that.

  The sheriff did not laugh. He knew it was over. No man could be expected to take that slur.

  Bodine and Sam brushed back their suit coats and stepped off the boardwalk.

  Chapter 26

  There had been the faint sound of murmurings and whisperings coming from the crowd. Now there was only a deadly silence as they watched the men step down from the boardwalk and slowly walk to the center of the street, turning to face the three young would-be gunhandlers.

  “There is still time for you all to walk away,” Sam told the trio. “Retract that slur against our mothers and we’ll call it even.”

  The sheriff nodded his head in approval. Bodine and Sam were giving the young men every opportunity to back away with some dignity. Much more so than other gunslicks he’d seen in his time.

  Take the offer, boys! he silently urged the trio. Take it and walk away or tomorrow I’ll be listening to your weeping mothers as we bury all three of you.

  But his silent plea was ignored, as he knew it would be.

  “I think they’re afraid of us, boys!” the Kid yelled, a wide grin on his face. “I tell you what, Bodine: you beg some and we’ll let you live.”

  “Fools,” Sam muttered. “Cocky fools.”

  “Maybe the Injun could do a war dance for us,” Red suggested. “That’d be fun to see, wouldn’t it? Dance for us, Breed!”

  But Sam and Bodine had taken enough from these loud-mouthed punks. The sheriff tensed as Bodine said, “Shut your damn flapping mouths and make your play!”

  “You ready, Bodine?” the Santa Ana Kid yelled, his voice suddenly high-pitched. The faces of his friends were drawn and pale.

  “I’ve been ready, Kid.”

  “Then die, damn you!”

  The trio dragged iron.

  Bodine’s hands were suddenly filled with roaring Colts. His draw had been as lightning-quick as a striking rattlesnake.

  And ten times as deadly.

  Sam’s right hand was filled almost as quickly, the Colt roaring and bucking in his hand.

  The Santa Ana Kid was the first one down, two bullet holes in the center of his belly, several inches above his belt buckle, one just above the other. The Kid was down in the street, his guns still in leather.

  Sandy was on his knees, screaming in pain, both hands clutching his shattered belly from the twin .44 slugs from Sam’s Colt.

  Red was lying on his back in the dust. He had taken two. 44 slugs in his face. One going in at nose level, the other two inches above that, in the center of his forehead. His fancy guns lay beside his body, unfired.

  “Help me, Mommy!” the Santa Ana Kid cried out. “It hurts!”

  Bodine and Sam were punching out empties, reloading. Their faces were impassive.

  Several kids ran out into the street, to snatch up the empty brass for souvenirs.

  “I never even seen Bodine draw,” came the whisper from the crowd. “And the breed is nearabouts as fast. I never seen nothin’ like it.”

  “Oh, God, Mommy!” The Santa Ana Kid screamed. “Please help me. I can’t stand the pain.”

  Bodine holstered his guns.

  “Get him to a doctor,” the sheriff said. “And call the undertaker for Red.”

  Bodine and Sam wheeled about in the street and returned to the boardwalk in front of the hotel and sat down, relighting their cigars.

  The sheriff looked down as a piece of paper was pressed into his hand.

  “Telegram for Matt Bodine,” the station operator said. “It just come in. I missed the shootin’ because of the damn thing.”

  “Deliver it,” the sheriff said.

  “You deliver it!”

  The sheriff walked across the wide street, past the still-hollering Santa Ana Kid and the moaning Sandy. He glanced at the young man. Sandy, he guessed accurately, would be dead before morning. And so would the Kid, he figured. Anytime a man goes up against the house, he silently wrote the would-be toughs’ epitaphs, he’s bucking bad odds.

  “This just came in for you, Bodine.” He held out the telegram. “For whatever it’s worth, boys, you tried to talk them out of it. I’ll give you both that much. But I still want you gone in the morning.”


  Bodine took the telegram without any comment and opened it.

  GIRLS SAFE. FOUND THEM OUTSIDE TIJUANA. MORGAN GOT AWAY. BELIEVED HE JOINED LAKE AND PORTER SOMEWHERE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. GOOD HUNTING.

  It was signed Luis de Carrillo.

  “We’ll be gone at first light,” Bodine said, handing the telegram to Sam.

  * * *

  They rode out of San Diego before dawn, heading north. The sheriff was standing in front of his office, watching them leave. He lifted a hand in farewell and the young men returned the salute.

  The sheriff walked back into his office. He had three funerals to attend that day.

  Sam and Bodine rode about five miles outside of town and found a creek. There they made camp and cooked breakfast. They would stay there for a couple of days, giving their horses the rest they had planned on them having in San Diego. They both had put the gunfight out of their minds. They hadn’t started it, so it wasn’t their fault. In the West, if a boy strapped on a gun, he became a man, and that was that.

  When they left the camp, they rode for a day and then turned west, toward the ocean. When they came upon it, it was as Vasco had said it would be: the vastness and the seemingly endless beauty of it took their breaths away. They camped on the bluffs above the ocean, and for several days did nothing but relax and walk the lonely, windswept beaches, picking up and admiring shells they found along the way.

  But because of the monsters therein that Benito and Vasco had talked about, they did not go for a swim. They did taste the water and found it unpalatable.

  The constantly moving waters soothed them for a time, but then it began to bring out the restlessness in both of them.

  They packed up and pulled out, heading north, following the coastline. They both knew that Los Angeles had been taken by U.S. forces back in 1846, and they knew, too, that the wearing of guns was frowned upon in these rapidly changing times. Los Angeles was becoming a very modern city, with gas streetlamps and indoor water closets and a police force that walked their beats with billyclubs and would brook no nonsense for troublemakers.

  “It sounds like it’s going to be just too damn civilized for me, brother,” Bodine said. “What do you think?”

  “I think it might be a good place for us to visit and listen for the whereabouts of Morgan, Lake, and Porter.” He smiled. “And you might be at last exposed to some civility. Lord knows, your poor mother did her best to make you a gentleman. She used to tell me she wondered where she went wrong.”

  Bodine muttered under his breath and turned his horse’s head toward the west, and Los Angeles.

  * * *

  “You best get shut of them guns,” the stableman told them. “Or if you don’t want to do that, stick one down behind your belt and tote it thataway when you hit the street.”

  They were making ready for Christmas in Los Angeles, and while Sam’s people had never celebrated it, Sam had spent many a Christmas day at the Bodine ranch. The gayness of it all, here in Los Angeles, hundreds of miles from home country, laid a touch of sadness on the young men. But a couple of young ladies who came sashaying by, walking in that way that ladies do, all giggling and batting of eyelashes drove the lonelies from the young men and made them realize how trail-weary and dusty they were. They hightailed out, looking for a fancy hotel and a shave, a bath, and a haircut while they had their suits cleaned and pressed.

  The desk clerk at the fancy hotel looked at their dusty clothing and arched one eyebrow in distaste. His expression was that of a man who’d been chewing on a persimmon that wasn’t ripe.

  He brightened up considerably when both Sam and Bodine pulled out pokes of gold coin and tried to pay for their rooms in advance. He waved that offer away.

  The desk clerk stiffened when he heard Bodine ask where the roughest part of town might be.

  “Sir, that would be the Calle de los Negros section. But no decent man and certainly no decent woman would ever go there.”

  “Why not?” Sam asked, his expression bland.

  The desk, looking to be a rather fussy man, got even more flustered. “Sir, ladies of the evening and scoundrels and brigands and the like frequent the . . . ah, establishments there.”

  “Sounds like just the place for us,” Bodine said.

  The desk clerk looked like a man about ready to keel over.

  All duded up, neither Bodine nor Sam felt inclined to wear their guns in any way other than how they normally did. They checked the loads, strapped them on, tied them down and stepped out into the late afternoon of Los Angeles.

  “I never seen so many people in one place,” Bodine commented.

  “While you were taking a bath, wallowing about like a bear in a creek,” Sam said, “and singing just about as well, I met several very nice people in the lobby. The population of the city is now close to fifteen thousand.”

  “That’s ridiculous! That’s more people than in all of Wyoming Territory. What the hell do they do around here?”

  “I used to wonder about that myself. But then, I have been to New York City and am therefore much more an authority on the subject than you.”

  “And you got lost for two days,” Bodine reminded him with a grin. “I never heard of such a thing. An Indian getting lost.”

  “I want to be there when, and if, you ever venture to New York City, brother. Talk about a country bumpkin in the city.”

  “Is it bigger than this place?”

  “My word, yes! There are several hundred thousand people living there.”

  “I just can’t imagine that.”

  “Be quiet. I am attempting to enlighten you. The people who live here in the city are in business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Business, Bodine! The haberdasher must buy groceries just as the grocer must buy clothing.”

  “Well, you’ve accounted for two people. What about the other fourteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight?”

  “You’re impossible, Bodine. Sometimes I wonder if you’ve fallen off your horse one time too many.”

  “Well, explain it, then, Mister Know-it-all!”

  “It would take too long and besides, trying to make you understand anything makes my head hurt.”

  “At least I don’t stand around out in the rain looking up, wondering where it comes from.”

  They argued all the way to a saloon’s batwings. At this time in the history of Los Angeles, the saloons numbered over a hundred.

  The men pushed open the batwings and stepped into the noisy and beery-smelling saloon. Some of the conversation stopped as unshaven and rough-appearing men watched them walk to the bar, all of them noting the open display of guns.

  Matt and Sam sipped at their mugs of beer, listening to the hubbub of conversation going on all around them. They left after a few minutes, deciding there was nothing being said that was of interest to them.

  A young boy tugged at Bodine’s sleeve. “Got a message for you, mister.”

  Bodine looked down at the child.

  “Man gimme fifty cents to tell you this: Meet me in Chester’s as quickly as possible.”

  “Who was the man?” Bodine’s silent warning bells were ringing in his head. If there ever was a set-up, this was it. He exchanged glances with Sam and could see his brother was thinking the same thing.

  “I don’t know. I never seen him before.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Hard to tell. He was standin’ in the shadows. He was big, though. Bigger than you. And he talked like he was real educated. Talked like a schoolteacher.”

  “Lake,” Sam said.

  “More than likely.” Bodine gave the boy a dollar and a smile. “Where and what is a Chester?”

  “It’s a bad place to go,” the boy said solemnly. “A real rough bar about a block and a half from here. It’s located in an alley. There.” He pointed the way. “You got to be careful down there. They’s ladies that’ll mickey-up your drink and rob you. Men who’ll kill you for what’s in y
our pockets. Men who’ll pick a fight with you just ’cause they like to hurt people.”

  “Did you see which way this man went after he spoke with you?” Sam asked.

  The boy grinned. “Sure did. He went back into the bar.”

  Sam returned the smile and gave the boy another dollar “It’s almost dark, boy. You’d better get off the streets and get home.”

  “The streets is my home, mister. You two be careful. That man had friends in Chester’s. They’ll be layin’ for you. See you.” He ran off into the dusk.

  “Shall we?” Sam asked, jerking a thumb in the direction of the infamous bar.

  “Why not?” Bodine replied.

  The two of them slipped the hammer-thongs from their Colts and walked up the street.

  Chapter 27

  They turned off the street and stepped into the gloom of an alley. A man was lying next to a wall, in the dirt, face down. He might have been drunk, he might have been dead. They did not stop to investigate. It was not that either man was unfeeling. Their philosophy was that anyone who ventured into places such as this did so of their own free will, and if they got knocked in the head or served a drugged drink, they were grown men, they knew what they were getting into from the start.

  A drunk staggered out of Chester’s and slammed into the wall across the alley. He sat down hard, mumbling to himself. He reeked of cheap whiskey and vomit.

  “This place certainly caters to a lovely clientele,” Sam remarked drily.

  “Shall we improve this joint’s image?” Bodine said with a grin.

  “Oh, by all means! Things have been so dull lately.”

  The place didn’t have a door . . . just the hinges. It had probably been ripped off years back and never replaced.

  The patrons of the joint were some of the sorriest-looking men and women either man had ever seen. The stench of booze and sweat and cheap perfume hung in the air.

  The place had become silent as a tomb at their entrance.

  Spurs jingling softly, Bodine and Sam walked to the bar. Neither one of them had any desire whatsoever to drink anything served up in this bar. Bodine faced the loutish-looking barkeep and Sam turned to face the men in the murky room.