Brotherhood of the Gun

by William W. Johnstone

  “Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves.”

  The deputy lifted the glass to his lips. He paused, his eyes widening at the names. He cleared his throat and then took a first a sip, then downed the rest of it.

  “We got to find somebody to dig six graves, Lars,” the barkeep said.

  “Eight,” the deputy told him, refilling his glass. “I caught up with them rustlers. Brought them back across their saddles.” He looked at Bodine. “You boys is sure welcome to stay the night and refresh yourselves and rest your horses. I’d appreciate it if you was both gone come the morning.”

  “We were planning on leaving at first light, Deputy,” Sam said.

  “Good. Las Vegas is a fine town, filled with church goin’ folks. I wouldn’t want it to get a bad name.”

  Chapter 30

  One of the dying men had stayed alive long enough to tell Bodine that they had left the gang on their own accord, as had others. The other bunch had drifted up toward Carson City. Lake and Porter still had about thirty men with them. And they were the worst of the lot, bad, evil men, the gunny said. The worst he’d ever seen. He asked if he could be buried with his boots on, ’cause his feet got awful cold in the winter.

  “I’ll see to it personal,” Bodine had told him.

  The outlaw had thanked him, then closed his eyes and died.

  Bodine asked the deputy where Cedar City, Utah was located.

  “I reckon it’s a good hundred and fifty miles from here, boys.”

  “Damn!” Bodine cussed. “We’ll never make it.”

  “What’s the problem?” the deputy asked.

  Sam laid it out for him.

  The deputy thought for a moment. “I’m changin’ my mind about you boys. You’re not bad hombres like some people think. This is a right honorable thing you’re doin’. Tell you what. Gimme a sheet of paper, Gene,” he said to the barkeep. He drew a rough map, and while he drew, he said, “You boys up to pullin’ out tonight?”

  “Yeah,” Bodine said, after looking at Sam and receiving a nod.

  The deputy looked at the barkeep. “Tell the stableman to saddle four of his best horses. Transfer these men’s gear. Move! Stay north of the Muddy Mountains. It’s fifty miles to the Tumblin’ Bar ranch. I’ll give you a note explain’ what you’re doin’. The foreman will switch your saddles and give you some food and you can be on your way. Just south of the Pine Valley Mountains in Utah, there’s a ranch run by my brother. Name is Clint. I’m writin’ him a note too. It’s about forty-fifty miles from there on into Cedar City. Go, boys, and good huntin’!”

  They swung into the saddles and were gone at an easy, mile-eating lope. They had no way of knowing how far ahead of them Lake and Porter and what was left of the gang might be, or whether Laurie and Jenny were dead. But they had to try to reach them.

  Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves rode on through the cold night, pausing only to change mounts and then it was back in the saddle and keep going.

  They hit the front yard of the Tumbling Bar ranch and began yelling. Within seconds they were surrounded by armed cowboys, in various stages of dress, but all with guns in their hands. The foreman read the note from the deputy and began shouting orders. The fire was stoked up and coffee heated and food prepared while the fresh horses were saddled up. Tully Brown, the owner of the Tumbling Bar read the note.

  “You boys can’t fight no thirty men alone,” he said. “’Sides, you don’t even know where Wellman’s ranch is. Dick was a friend of mine—from a long time back.” He turned to his crew. “I want five men armed and saddled up in ten minutes.”

  His whole crew stepped forward. Tully smiled and picked out five. “Get crackin’, boys. Two horses apiece. We’ll switch up at Clint’s place and probably pick up some more men.”

  Now there were eight riding through the night. There was no way that Tully Brown was going to stay out of this fight.

  The men who rode with Bodine and Sam that night were not gunfighters in the sense that they were known as such, or had books and songs written and sung about them. But many a man in the west was a fine gunhandler; he just didn’t push his skill or his kills were never recorded visually, to be told around campfires and barrooms. What these men were were hard men in a hard land in a hard time. More often than not, they hanged rustlers and horsethieves on the spot. Horsethieves more than rustlers. The reasoning behind that was, leave a man afoot in hostile country, and he might well die. Hence the harsh punishment.

  These were men who rode for the brand, for thirty a month, and many of them died for it. They were the men who made the West—hard men, yes, sometimes unfair men in the way they treated homesteaders, yes—but they came before the others, second only to the mountain men, and these men more than any others helped to tame the wild West.

  None of them knew Laurie or Jenny. They knew only that a young woman and a little girl were in trouble, and they were going to help. The trial would be by gunsmoke and guts; if any of the outlaws survived, they would swing from the nearest tree.

  Tully Brown hit the yard of Clint’s ranch hollering like a wild man. Inside the main house and bunkhouse, lamps were lit and armed men filled the yard. Tully was brief in his explanation. Bodine and Sam could feel eyes on them momentarily, then men were running for the corral to rope, top off, and saddle horses while the women hurriedly made fresh coffee and packed up pokes of food for the last leg of the journey.

  Now there were fifteen men riding hard for Dick Wellman’s ranch, the men bundled up against the freezing night, with mufflers tied around their faces and their hat straps tied under their chins, each leading a spare horse, each with an extra Colt or Remington shoved down behind his belt, each with a pocket filled with spare cartridges, each with his saddle-booted Winchester filled up with .44’s or .44-.40’s.

  Dawn split the eastern sky with hues of silver and gold and red, and it was a welcome sight as it highlighted the pockets of snow that lingered here and there on the harsh landscape of southwestern Utah.

  The men rode on through the cold, grim-faced, and ready for a fight.

  “We’ll need fresh hosses in case we have to charge or chase!” Clint hollered from his saddle. “Right over the next ridge they’s the Lazy L. We’ll change there.”

  Now there were twenty men riding through the morning, with Tully Brown taking the lead.

  “How many did you say there was in that gang of scum?” Clint yelled to Sam as they galloped along, side by side.

  “At least thirty—maybe more. I’d guess more,” Sam returned the shout.

  “We got enough rope,” a Lazy L hand said grimly. “I can’t abide a man who’d molest a good woman or hurt a child.”

  They had reined up to switch horses when they heard the gunfire, and there was lots of it.

  Bodine was back in the saddle and going, Sam right behind him before the others could react. Tully was the next to follow, then Clint, then the others. As he topped the ridge overlooking Dick’s spread, Bodine uttered a low curse, put the reins between his teeth, and filled both hands with Colts.

  The gunfighters, the ranchers, and the hands rode into the circling bunch of filth and trash and scum, catching them completely by surprise.

  Bodine spotted a known gun for hire named Randy Walker and ended his mercenary days by putting a .44 slug through his head. Sam knocked another out of the saddle and rode his horse right over the man, the steel-shod hooves driving the life from him, staining the snow crimson.

  Tully Brown rammed his horse into the horse of an outlaw, knocking the man to the ground. Tully leveled his Colt and shot the man between the eyes.

  Bodine saw Porter trying to make the house. He reined up, leveled his Colt, and dusted the man, the slug entering one side and coming out the other. Porter screamed as he hit the ground, then twisted in the snow and came up firing, the slug stinging Bodine’s cheek. Bodine shot the man in the chest and turned his attention elsewhere.

  Four of the hands had, at Tully’s orders, stationed themselv
es along the ridges overlooking the ranchhouse. Using rifles, they prevented any outlaw escape.

  The fight was brutal and short. Halfway through it, a group of Utah ranchers and their hands rode into the fray, having heard the news from other cowboys from the Lazy L who rode through the countryside, alerting the populace to the danger.

  A few of the outlaws surrendered. They were promptly taken over the ridges so the women couldn’t see what was happening and hanged.

  All but one of Dick’s hands were down, two of them dead, sprawled in the yard. The cook had barricaded Laurie, Jenny, and himself in the house and fought like a wild man protecting the woman and the girl.

  “You old goat!” Tully yelled at the grizzled cook. “I thought you was dead twenty years ago.”

  “Well, I ain’t, Tully,” the old man growled. “So hesh up and light and sit. I got fresh coffee and bear sign.”

  A tin cup of steaming coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other, Bodine prowled the carnage sprawled around the house.

  Lake was not among the dead.

  “Brother,” Sam said softly. “Up there on the north ridge.”

  Bodine looked. Even at that distance he could tell it was Lake, sitting his horse, looking down into the little valley.

  “Some of you boys take him,” Tully shouted to his men.

  “No!” Bodine stopped them. “He wants me. This is a personal matter.”

  Bodine walked out into the road, after getting another cup of coffee and another bear sign. He stood in the road and waited, sipping and munching.

  Lake had not moved. He still sat his horse and waited and watched from the ridges.

  “What the hell’s he waitin’ on,” one of Tully’s younger hands asked.

  Bodine stood in the road.

  “He’s tryin’ to spook Bodine,” the rancher told him. “But he’s wastin’ his time, I’m thinkin’.”

  The sheriff and a posse had ridden out from Cedar City. The sheriff had looked at the half dozen men hanging from trees; he grunted and rode on into the ranch yard, greeting Tully and Clint and the other ranchers.

  Laurie explained what had happened

  “Who’s that out yonder?” he asked, his eyes on the tall young man standing in the rutted wagon road.

  “Matt Bodine,” she told him. “That fellow up yonder on the ridge is the outlaw, Lake.”

  “Showdown time, Sheriff,” Tully said. “You goin’ to try to stop them?”

  “Do I look like a fool?” the sheriff said. “You got anymore of them bear sign left, ma’ am?” Coffee and doughnut in hand, he turned to Sam. “You’d be Sam Two Wolves?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Good job you boys done down on the border. I heard about it.”

  “Thank you. It would not have been possible without the help of Major Luis de Carrillo and his men from the Mexican Army.”

  “I ain’t got a thing agin Mexicans,” the sheriff was quick to reply. Sam Two Wolves was damn near as well known as Matt Bodine, and just as deadly with a short gun. “Here comes Lake. Gonna be right interestin’ around here shortly, boys. And girls,” he added.

  Bodine had taken off his gloves and had his left hand shoved down into his jacket pocket, his right hand wrapped around the warmth of the tin cup.

  He watched as Lake slowly rode from the ridge onto the wagon road and reined up about a hundred feet from him.

  “Good morning, Bodine!” Lake called cheerfully. “Do you think it’s a good day to die?”

  “For you,” Bodine told him.

  Lake’s face flushed and he began walking toward Bodine.

  The crowd fell silent.

  Chapter 31

  Bodine tossed the coffee cup to one side and brushed back his jacket, exposing both Colts. His left hand was close to the butt of the left hand Colt, his right hand hovering near the butt of the other six-shooter. No one had yet figured out how he did it, but all knew that Matt Bodine was just as fast with the left-handed, butt-forward pistol as he was with the tied down Colt on his right side.

  And Matt could tell that was worrying Lake; the outlaw’s eyes kept shifting from left to right as he continued walking toward Bodine.

  Matt did not attempt to talk the outlaw out of dragging iron. He knew that for Lake, surrender was out of the question. He would rather go down by a bullet than be hanged. But Matt Bodine had made up his mind that Lake would not go out so easy.

  “End of an era,” Lake said, stopping about fifty feet from Bodine.

  “Yes,” Bodine agreed. “And yours has been a bloody one.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t talking about me,” Lake called.

  “I was,” Bodine said, then drew and shot the outlaw in his left shoulder.

  The move caught Lake completely by surprise. The slug turned him around in the road and he stumbled, somehow managing to keep his balance. He jerked out a pistol with his one good arm and managed to get off a shot, the bullet furrowing up ground at Bodine’s feet.

  Bodine turned, presenting less of a target, took careful aim, and broke the outlaw’s right arm, leaving him helpless, unable to use either arm.

  “You bastard!” Lake cussed him. “You’ve left me to the hangman!”

  “That’s the general idea,” Bodine told him, then holstered his Colt and walked away. He walked over to the man with a star pinned to his heavy winter coat. “He’s all yours, Sheriff. Me and Sam will be here all the rest of the winter, helping Miss Laurie to get this ranch back in shape and locating beeves for the spring roundup. If you need us to testify, we’ll be here.”

  “You should have killed him, Bodine,” the sheriff said, without any admonition in the words; just stating a fact.

  “I’m tired of it, Sheriff. I’m tired of me and Sam being judge and jury.”

  “A condition that will soon pass, I’m sure,” Sam said, his voice as dry as the deserts they had ridden through chasing Lake and his band of scum.

  The sheriff smiled. “We’ll make it a very quick trial, Matt.”

  * * *

  Matt and Sam Two Wolves spent the rest of the winter and part of the spring fixing up the ranch, hiring new hands, and locating cattle for roundup and branding. The cold winds changed to cool, and then to warm as spring began laying gentle hands across the land.

  One pleasant spring morning Laurie looked out the kitchen window and was not surprised to see the horses of Matt and Sam saddled and tied to the hitchrail, the men leaning against the rail, smoking. She stepped out onto the porch.

  “Have some coffee before you leave?” she asked.

  “We drank a pot in the bunkhouse,” Sam told her. “We just wanted to say goodbye.”

  “Jenny will be disappointed.”

  “She knows we’re leaving,” Matt said. “I think it’s better this way.”

  “Will you be back?”

  “Probably not. I like that young fellow who’s sparkin’ you. I keep hearing weddin’ bells in the future.”

  “Jenny’s crazy about him,” she admitted that much.

  “All the more reason for us to be pulling out,” Sam said.

  “Thank you both for everything you’ve done. I’ll never forget you.”

  They swung into the saddle and each touched the brim of their hat in farewell. They pulled out of there as soon as they saw the tears begin to form in Laurie’s eyes. They reached the end of the ranch road and stopped. The wagon road ran east and west.

  “I seem to recall you mentioning something about Texas,” Bodine said.

  “Only in jest, I assure you, brother.”

  “Well, we have to go back to the fort to get our horses . . .”

  “And the way is west?”

  “It was the last time I looked.”

  “Then look again, it’s south of us.”

  “Well . . . call it southwest. I’m easy to get along with.”

  “Since when!”

  Bodine started arguing and waving the hand that wasn’t holding the reins. Sam began insulting him
in Cheyenne . . . as they headed southwest.

  “I’m telling you, Sam, I wanna see Texas!”

  “Oh . . . all right, Bodine, all right! Stop pouting.”

  “I’m not pouting.”

  “I said all right, let’s go to Texas!”

  Both young men laughed and let out war whoops and let their ponies run for a time . . . toward Texas.

  AFTERWORD

  Notes from the Old West

  In the small town where I grew up, there were two movie theaters. The Pavilion was one of those old-timey movie show palaces, built in the heyday of Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin—the silent era of the 1920s. By the 1950s, when I was a kid, the Pavilion was a little worn around the edges, but it was still the premier theater in town. They played all those big Technicolor biblical Cecil B. DeMille epics and corny MGM musicals. In Cinemascope, of course.

  On the other side of town was the Gem, a somewhat shabby and run-down grind house with sticky floors and torn seats. Admission was a quarter. The Gem booked low-budget “B” pictures (remember the Bowery Boys?), war movies, horror flicks, and Westerns. I liked the Westerns best. I could usually be found every Saturday at the Gem, along with my best friend, Newton Trout, watching Westerns from 10 A.M. until my father came looking for me around suppertime. (Sometimes Newton’s dad was dispatched to come fetch us.) One time, my dad came to get me right in the middle of Abilene Trail, which featured the now-forgotten Whip Wilson. My father became so engrossed in the action he sat down and watched the rest of it with us. We didn’t get home until after dark, and my mother’s meat loaf was a pan of gray ashes by the time we did. Though my father and I were both in the doghouse the next day, this remains one of my fondest childhood memories. There was Wild Bill Elliot, and Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, and Tim Holt, and, a little later, Rod Cameron and Audie Murphy. Of these newcomers, I never missed an Audie Murphy Western, because Audie was sort of an antihero. Sure, he stood for law and order and was an honest man, but sometimes he had to go around the law to uphold it. If he didn’t play fair, it was only because he felt hamstrung by the laws of the land. Whatever it took to get the bad guys, Audie did it. There were no finer points of law, no splitting of legal hairs. It was instant justice, devoid of long-winded lawyers, bored or biased jurors, or black-robed, often corrupt judges.