“Well, now,” the bartender said. “Ain’t we the fine-lookin’ gentlemen? Real gentry come to pay us a visit. And what might your name be—Percival?”
The men up and down the dirty bar hoo-hawed at that, the women making lewd suggestions.
They all stopped laughing when Matt said, “Matt Bodine. This is my brother, Sam Two Wolves.”
The long bar was suddenly vacated, leaving Matt and Sam alone.
The barkeep’s eyes narrowed. “What’ll it be, boys?”
“Someone wanted to see me. So here I am.”
A man stepped into the room, using a rear door. He was tall and broad-shouldered—he would have been handsome had it not been for his drooping eye, which gave him a sinister look. He was clean-shaven and smelling of expensive men’s cologne, and neatly dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and black tie. His boots were polished to a high sheen. He held his coat wide, showing Bodine he was not armed . . . at least so far as Matt could see.
“We finally meet, Mister Bodine, Mister Two Wolves,” the man said.
“You’d be Lake,” Bodine said.
“That is correct. I am not armed, Mister Bodine. And I will submit to a search if you feel it necessary.”
“No. I’ll take your word. You’re not armed, but fifty others in this room are. And you could, and probably have, bought this scum for a dollar a head.”
Several of the men in the room stirred at that slur, but none of them made a move toward the guns they were openly wearing.
“You are a plain-spoken man, Mister Bodine. But, yes, you are quite correct in your assumption.”
“That they’re scum or that you bought them off ?”
Lake smiled, showing very white teeth. “I’ll keep you guessing about that.”
“The first man who drags iron,” Bodine said, “and I kill you, Lake.”
Lake’s smile faded. “Yes,” he spoke the words low. “I imagine you would.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Have either of you had dinner?”
“No. We haven’t.”
“My treat then. I know a charming place just a few blocks from here. And so we’ll be meeting as equals, do you have any objections to my retrieving my guns?”
“None at all. We’ll meet you out front.”
Lake joined them by the street. “That is quite a disgusting place back there. But there are many disgusting people in this world and they have to have a place to congregate. Is that not correct, Bodine?”
“I suppose.”
“You two have very nearly wrecked my little empire. It was quite profitable for a time.”
“And you have the nerve to speak of disgusting?” Sam glanced at the man.
Lake laughed. “Don’t be so naive, Sam. I took those children from a life of dreary farm work and tedious drudgery and offered them security.”
“I suppose the sad thing is, you really believe that, don’t you?” Bodine asked.
“But of course! What else is a woman good for? I just started the girls doing what they do best a bit earlier, that’s all.”
Lake rattled on while Matt and Sam were silent as they walked out of the violent district and crossed over into the more acceptable part of the city.
“Right over there,” Lake pointed. “A wonderful restaurant. You’ll both enjoy it, I assure you.”
“No, we won’t,” Bodine told him. “Because we’re not eating there.”
Lake took no umbrage. He laughed. “You think I would have you poisoned? You really don’t trust me, do you, Bodine?”
“I really don’t, Lake.” Bodine stopped on the edge of the street and faced the man. “Sam and I prefer to eat alone, Lake. State your business with us or drag iron. Makes no difference to me.”
“I think it does, Bodine.” Lake’s words were spoken more harshly now. “I think you really want to kill me. And you might be good enough to do it. But I don’t think so.”
“Oh, I’m going to kill you, Lake. You and Porter and Morgan, too, if I can.”
“Umm,” Lake said, then motioned them across the street to a small park. He sat down and the others followed suit. “Why, Bodine?” Lake questioned.
“Here we go again,” Sam said. “I have this memorized.”
“Because I made a promise, that’s why?”
“To Dick Wellman?”
“Yes.”
“But Jenny is safe.”
“That’s more than you can say for her parents. You killed them.”
“Ahh, quite the contrary, Bodine. I did nothing of the sort. Chappo and his savages did that. And you killed Chappo. So it’s even.”
Bodine stood up. “The next time we meet, Lake, you best have your hand wrapped around the butt of a Colt.”
“You’ll never make it out of this city alive, Bodine,” Lake warned him, his words cold and menacing. “Neither you nor that breed with you.”
“We’re both light sleepers,” Sam assured the outlaw slaver.
“Are you backshooters?” Lake stood up.
“No. We leave things like that to scum like you,” Bodine told him.
Lake flushed and turned his back to the men, swiftly walking out of the park.
“Now what was all that about?” Sam mused aloud. “The dinner invitation and so forth?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he really thought he could talk us out of following him. Maybe the food was poisoned. I guess we’ll never know.”
It was that time of day when carriage traffic and pedestrians was the slowest. Most were already home, getting ready for dinner and it was still too early for the night-crawlers to be out.
The park was deserted.
A stick cracked faintly in the darkness behind the men, whirling them around. The thugs came at them in a rush, waving clubs and leather wrapped head-knockers. But no guns.
Bodine and Sam immediately shifted locations, splitting up, each giving the other ample fighting room.
Sam flung himself to the ground and rolled fast, slamming his body against the ankles and knees of several rowdies, knocking them sprawling just as Bodine gave one a knuckle sandwich to the teeth and drove his stiffened left fingers into the throat of another.
Sam jumped to his boots and kicked one assailant in the face, the toe of the boot smashing the man’s nose flat against his face. The thug rolled and screamed in pain.
Bodine jerked the club away from one and laid it on the man’s skullbone. The man staggered and went down, blood streaming from his torn scalp.
Sam applied some Indian wrestling to another and tossed the man over his shoulder. He landed heavily in the bushes, cussing and struggling to get free.
Bodine stood toe to toe with a hoodlum and smashed the man’s face with hard left and right combinations. The man went down and Bodine kneed him in the face just as uniformed police officers came galloping up, blowing whistles and shouting. Those few thugs able to do so jumped up and ran away into the night. The others lay on the ground, bleeding and moaning, especially that one who had received a kick in the groin from Sam.
The cops took one look at the tailored suits of Sam and Bodine, and the rough dress of the moaning men and began pulling out handcuffs.
“What happened, sir?” one asked Bodine.
“We were walking through the park, discussing where to have dinner when these hooligans set upon us.” He pointed to the clubs on the ground. “With those.”
“Disgraceful!” a policeman said. “How many were there?”
“Oh . . . six or eight of them, I suppose,” Sam said. “We thrashed them properly.”
“You certainly did that, sir. May I have your names, gentlemen. For the report, nothing more.” He took out a notebook and a pencil.
“I’m Sam Two Wolves.” The cop broke off the point of his pencil. “And this is Matt Bodine.” The cop broke the pencil.
The cop knelt down beside one handcuffed and bleeding man. “You’re lucky to be alive, lad,” he told the thug.
* * *
&
nbsp; There were only a handful of people in Chester’s when Bodine and Sam returned the next morning. They had packed their suits and dressed in jeans and checkered shirts, bandanas tied around their necks. They wore their guns openly and had not been challenged for doing so. But they had received some odd looks, and some inviting ones from young ladies.
“It’s a shame I had to have been born so handsome,” Sam said, after one young lady batted her eyes at him.
“She’s probably blind,” Bodine cut him down. “Or else she felt sorry for you and did it out of sympathy. Even ugly people like you need some sort of affection every now and then.”
They argued and insulted each other all the way to the bar.
Bodine jerked the barkeep—it was the same one from the night before—over the bar and slapped him across the face, twice.
“Do I have your attention, now?” he asked.
“Ye . . . yes, sir!”
“Lake? Where is he?”
“Gone, Bodine. Him and his gang pulled out late last night. After you and the breed whupped them men in the park.”
“Gone where?”
“I swear to the Blessed Virgin I don’t know. And I ain’t got no reason to lie, Bodine. Lake said he wouldn’t be back no more. He was pullin’ out for good.”
“Why would he do that?”
“To git away from you! He said you was a jinx on him. I swear I don’t know where he went.”
“Who would know?”
“His gal-friend. She lives ’cross the street, and she was shore cussin’ and a squallin’ at him when he rode out in the middle of the night.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sadie. First door to the right at the top of the stairs.”
Sadie was henna-headed and had a foul mouth. After she finished cussing Lake, she plopped down on the bed and said, “Why do you want to know where he went?”
“So I can find him and kill him,” Bodine was honest with her.
“You’re Bodine, ain’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“He’s skittish of you, all right. Says you got a hoodoo on him. Oh, what the hell?” she waved a hand. “He’s gone for good and I’ll never see him again. What do I owe the no-good? He’s gone to San Francisco.”
“Porter and Morgan?”
“Morgan’s at sea. He’ll meet Lake there. Porter went with Lake.”
“How many men?”
“What’s it worth to you?”
Bodine dug in a vest pocket and tossed a double eagle on the bed.
Sadie grabbed it up fast. “Twenty men. All good with a gun.”
“Names?”
“Don Bradley, Bob Doyle, Mavern, Hog . . . they ain’t none of them pushovers.”
“Going back into slaving?”
She grimaced. “Probably. Or certainly something just as awful.”
“If you feel that way,” Sam asked, “why’d you stay with him?”
She grinned lewdly. “He paid the rent.”
Out on the street, Sam said, “You check us out of the hotel. I’ll be saddling up.”
“All right. We need supplies.”
“We’ll get them on the edge of town.”
Bodine held out his hand.
Sam looked at it. “What do you want now?”
“The money for your room.”
Muttering in Cheyenne, which Bodine spoke and understood just as well as Sam, he forked over some coins.
It wasn’t until Bodine was checking out that he realized Sam had given him Mexican pesos.
Chapter 28
After only two days on the trail, it became apparent to Bodine and Sam that tracking Lake and his gang was going to be easy. For whatever reason, the outlaws appeared to be throwing caution to the wind: they were robbing and raping their way north, subjecting those in their path to terror and the viewing of wanton destruction of property. The gang had grown, nearly tripling in size, as punks and thugs and local ne’er-do-wells rushed to join the marauders as they passed through the country.
“The only thing I can figure out,” Bodine said. “Is he’s building a stake from the raids and will link up with Morgan in San Francisco and take to the seas.”
“To go where?”
“Who knows? South America, maybe. Perhaps some island thousands of miles away where he—and those who choose to go with him—can take over and live like kings. It’s happened before.”
“Then it’s a race against time,” Sam said, after thinking for a moment. “If they get to San Francisco and the docks before we do, we’ve lost the race.”
“If he is heading for that city,” Bodine replied. “He might have told that to Sadie just to throw us off, knowing she was sure to tell us. Right now, Lake is heading straight north. If he starts cutting to the west, we’ll know that Morgan has put in somewhere along the coast and is waiting for him.”
Lake and his outlaw band did not choose the easier and more populated route to the north. They chose the inland passage north where the pickings might be somewhat less, but the law was fewer in numbers and more widely scattered.
After leaving the city, Lake headed straight north, through the Los Padres, between the Tehachapi Mountains to the east, and the Sierra Madres to the west. He was heading for a sparsely populated area, mostly cattle country, with some mining, which was dotted with tiny towns with little or no law which would interfere with his plans. As they rode, Lake and his men were leaving in their wake pillaged towns, many set blazing, and shattered lives and the bodies of any who dared try to stop them.
The outlaws were taking everything and anything of value: rings, jewelry, watches, and money. Just south of the Kettleman Hills, Bodine and Sam came up on a familiar and sickening scene, one they had witnessed several times since leaving Los Angeles: a burned-out ranch with buzzards waddling about in the yard, too bloated to fly after feasting on the dead bodies in the yard.
Wetting bandanas and tying them around their faces to help block out some of the stench of death, the young men found shovels and began digging shallow graves for the dead, which included several young people.
His words muffled, Sam said, “Lake has gone insane. These men have been horribly tortured. There is no reason behind anything like this.”
Neither man commented on the obvious fact that the women had been sexually abused.
“He’s gone crazy, all right,” Bodine agreed.
Their work was interrupted by the pounding of hooves, riding hard from the southeast. The posse circled them in a swirl of dust. The men were trail-dusty and hard-faced, riding with rifles across the saddlehorns, about twenty of them.
“State your business and your names,” the leader of the posse yelled at Matt and Sam. “And you best be damn quick in doin’ it.”
Bodine tossed his shovel to the ground, ire welling up in him. Nothing like what they had seen riding north from Los Angeles would have been permitted to happen in Wyoming. No truly western town could have been treed by scum like Lake and his men. It was apparent to Bodine that while California was much more progressive and modern than anything he had ever seen before, some of the aggressiveness had gone from its citizens. They had let their guard down. Many of its people had taken off their guns and were living—past tense for many of them in the path of Lake—under a false sense of security.
Bodine faced the leader of the posse, a portly man with a flushed face and a belly that hung over his belt. “You best watch your mouth with me, mister. Use your eyes for a change. This happened a good day ago, maybe two days back. If we’d had anything to do with it, we damn sure wouldn’t be hanging around, burying the bodies. Now why don’t you get your big fat butt out of the saddle and find a shovel before I jerk you out of the saddle and slap the piss out of you.”
“You can’t talk to me like that, you saddle bum!” the man hollered, his jowls quivering. “Just who in the hell do you think you are?”
“Matt Bodine.”
The fight went out of the man. He sat back i
n the saddle, breathing heavily, but keeping his mouth closed.
“We been ridin’ hard for two days, Mister Bodine,” a posse member said. “The outlaws hit just southwest of Bakersfield. Four ranches and one little town. It was awful. It just seems like they’re killin’ for no reason.”
“Oh, they have a reason,” Sam said. “It’s called greed, ignorance, stupidity, viciousness, and contempt for the law. We’ve learned that Lake’s home base has been Los Angeles—off and on—for several years. Why in the hell didn’t you people hang him years back?”
The posse members dismounted stiffly. The portly gentleman said, “We like to think of ourselves as more civilized than that, sir. You’d be Sam Two Wolves?”
“That is correct.”
“We’ll help you bury the dead and we’ll rest for a time; give our horses a chance to blow. Then we’ll be off to catch Lake.”
“What are you going to do when you catch him?” Bodine asked. “Ask him to surrender?”
“Of course.”
“Then we’ll be burying you somewhere up along the trail,” Bodine told him. “Lake’s got about sixty hardcases riding with him.” He waved his hand at the carnage. “You’ve all seen what they are capable of doing. Circle around and come in from the north; lay out an ambush and blow them out of the saddle.”
“That would not be a lawful act,” a posse member said. “There may be those in the group who are along for a lark; who are taking no active part in this terror. Young people seeking thrills. They deserve a trial and to be punished, certainly. But doing what you suggest would be to lower ourselves to the level of those we pursue.”
Bodine and Sam exchanged glances. Bodine then summed up their mutual opinion of such a statement. “Crap!”
* * *
They came up on what was left of the posse a day later. The remnants of the posse were riding south, toward home. They were a pathetic-looking and defeated bunch. Not a man among the seven living had escaped unscathed. All wore bloody bandages.
“They laid in ambush for us,” the portly gentleman stated. There was a bloody bandage around his head and he had taken a bullet through his left shoulder. “The outlaws took several of my men prisoner and tortured them while the others kept us pinned down in the hills. It was the most awful thing I have ever seen or heard. They’re worse than a bunch of damn Injuns.”
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