8
The brothers talked with the old mountain man most of the afternoon. Before they left, Sam told Ladue he should write all this down; it was a part of history.
Ladue had smiled. “I’ve started to a dozen times, lad. But who would believe it? You should have seen this country when I come out here. It was the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. Injuns, now, they respect the land. White man, he just takes from it and don’t make no effort to put back. Seems like white men, they got to dig and gouge and cut and clear, and they don’t look no further than the end of their noses. White men, it seems, don’t respect nothin’ ’cept money and power. White man is greedy. They always want more than they need.”
“That old man makes a lot of sense,” Sam said, as the brothers rode slowly back to town. They were off the road and keeping to a game trail. Both of them felt that was safer.
Before Matt could reply, they heard the sounds of horses on the road below them and reined up. They dismounted, holding the muzzles of their mounts and whispering to the horses, in an effort to keep them quiet.
“I don’t care what you say,” a man’s voice drifted up to them, over the slow prod of horses’ hooves. “This deal don’t make no sense, and I’m pullin’ out. Me and Junior is headin’ down to Utah. I’m gonna tell you something, Ben, Bull Sutton is crazy as a road lizard and so is John Carlin. And them kids of theirs is nuttier still. Hold up here, I think I got a loose shoe.”
There was a moment of silence, then the flare of a match to a cigarette. “It ain’t clear to me,” the voice came out of the near dusk. “If it was cattlemen agin sheepherders or nesters, I could see it. Cattlemen fightin’ over water rights, fine. That’s clear. But why are these two spreads fightin’? Lord, man, they got everything in the world and more. It ain’t water, it ain’t land, it ain’t sheep, it ain’t nothin’ that I can see. Two kids wanna get hitched up. So big deal. I ain’t dyin’ over no damn weddin’.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Ben Connors said.
“Then you tell me what it is?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Ben admitted.
“See? You don’t know either.”
“I know the pay is good. Best I’ve seen in a time. I ain’t turnin’ my back on that much money.”
“Ben, I ain’t got nothin’ agin Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves. I ain’t afraid of ’em, but I ain’t got nothin’ agin them. Why does both Sutton and Carlin want Matt dead? Him and Sam just drifted in and was plannin’ on driftin’ out. This deal is crazy!”
“I’m aimin’ on killin’ Bodine ’cause I want to kill him,” Ben said.
“Not if I can call him out first,” a third man spoke up.
“He’s faster than you, Big Dan,” Ben said. “And faster than you, too, Dick. You boys leave him to me.”
Ben Connors, Dick Laurin, Big Dan Parker, and a couple of others who had not yet been identified. Sam and Matt cut their eyes at each other. Each one knew what the other was thinking: It just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
“That shoe loose?” the rider was asked.
“New. I pried out a stone. He’s all right. You ready, Junior?”
“Let’s ride.”
“See you, boys,” the man said. And two horses cantered away from the group.
“I never figured Henry for yeller,” one of the group said.
“He ain’t yellow,” Dick said. “Him and Junior just might be the onliest ones with any sense amongst us.
The men rode on. The brothers waited until they could no longer hear the sounds of the hooves before they chanced uttering a sound.
“Sam, I am beginning to get PO’d about this,” Matt said, some heat in his voice.
“Understandable.”
“I feel like calling Bull and John out. Both of them. Together.”
“Not a good move, my brother. As big as Bull is, you’d have to hit a vital organ or a big bone to even jar him. He’d get lead in you. Besides, this mystery is becoming intriguing. Don’t you think so?”
Matt gave him a dark look and swung into the saddle.
“Where are we going?” Sam called.
“To see Bull Sutton.”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Sam shouted.
“No,” Matt called over his shoulder. “Are you coming or not?”
Muttering and shaking his head, Sam took out after his blood brother. He was thinking some perfectly terrible things about Matt Bodine.
“Hallo the house!” Matt yelled, from a respectable distance from the huge two-story home.
“Boss!” a hand called, disbelief in his voice. “It’s that damn Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves.”
“What?” the brothers could hear Bull’s beller even from where they sat their horses.
“Let me kill him, Pa!” a Sutton whelp shouted.
“Shut up!” Bull shouted. In a lower tone of voice, he said, “Let them ride on in, Clet. Pass the word, no shooting. They didn’t come here to make trouble. They’re brave boys, but not stupid.”
Matt and Sam rode up to the big mansion and swung down from the saddle, looping the reins around a metal ring set in a hitchpost.
Bull Sutton faced them from the large porch. “Come on up, boys,” he told them. “The only people who have ever been turned away from a meal at this house was named Carlin. Mother, tell the cook to hotten up the coffee and bring these boys something to eat. Come on up and sit, boys. They’ll be no shootin’ this evenin’ unless you start it.”
“We won’t,” Matt said. “And coffee would be fine. You’ll probably throw us off the place in about two minutes.”
Bull chuckled. “I doubt it. Go on and eat, boys, while I go in and get me a bottle. Then we’ll talk.”
Bull came back out with a large tray containing plates piled high with food, fresh baked bread, a coffee pot with cups, and a bottle of whiskey for himself. “Eat,” he told the brothers. “We can talk while you fill your bellies. What’s on your minds, boys? You took an awful chance coming here this evening.”
“We were on a trail above the road about an hour or so ago,” Matt said, while Sam busied himself with eating. Sam’s philosophy in a situation like this was if he was going to die, he might as well go out with a full belly. “Ben Connors, Big Dan Parker, Dick Laurin, and a couple more men, named Junior and Henry, came along. They reined up for a loose shoe, and their conversation was interesting, to say the least. According to them, both you and John Carlin want me dead. I’m just curious as to why.”
Bull paused in his pouring of whiskey. The brothers could see the frown on his face in the dim lamplight. “I gave no orders to have you killed. None at all. And while I’m not a church-goin’ man, I do believe in the hereafter, and I’ll stand in church, with the parson as witness, with my hand on a Bible and swear to that, boys.”
“That’s good enough for me, Bull.” Matt picked up a fork and fell to eating his supper.
“Mr. Sutton,” Sam said, “why do you and Carlin hate each other so?”
Bull smiled. “You boys got an hour or so to listen?”
“We have all the time it takes,” Sam said.
Bull set his whiskey aside and poured a mug of coffee. He settled his considerable bulk in the hide chair and said, “Me and John came out here within days of each other. From Missouri by way of Kentucky. We both had a lot in common, and for awhile I thought we could be friends. We’re both orphans, both taken in by good Christian people and come to find out we’d been raised up within a hoot and a holler of one another. Problem is, I bought most of my cattle on the way out, and I said most, while John stole nearly all of his. And by him doin’ so, I eventually got tarred with the same brush. And while I’ve been the mean ol’ Bull o’ the Woods around these parts, I ain’t no rustler. Other cow critters tend to join up with a trailin’ herd no matter what a drover does to prevent it.
“I’ll admit that I didn’t try very hard to make friends with John. Not after the first year or so. He just wasn’t
gonna have no part of it, and I was just too damn busy raisin’ this brood of mine and seein’ to the ranch and fightin’ Injuns and outlaws and the like. And I didn’t do too good of a job raisin’ my kids.
I’ll admit it even though it hurts. I figure I got one good one out of the bunch, and that’s Connie. And give the devil his due, John has a good boy in Daniel. But them two is not gonna get hitched up. And that’s my final word on the planned weddin’. But you didn’t come out here to talk about my problems with Connie.”
The brothers stopped eating for a moment and looked at each other. This sure didn’t sound like the fire-eating Bull o’ of the Woods they had met in town.
Bull caught their glances and smiled. “If that stupid fight between me and John did anything, it slapped some sense into my head. It gave me time to sit around the house and think, while I was groaning and moaning from all those licks John laid on me. I can’t speak for John Carlin, only for myself. I’ve been forced to admit that I’ve got a pack of ornery, no-count kids . . . except for Connie.” He glanced toward the living room. His wife nor none of his children were within earshot. “And my wife ain’t had much to do with me in a long time. We have not slept in the same bed for over fifteen years.” He smiled. “That, in itself, is enough to make a man right testy.”
Matt and Sam smiled with him, both of them finding that they rather liked this bear of a man.
Bull said, “I got me a suspicion that my kids have been whisperin’ to this pack of gunslicks I’ve surrounded myself with. They got something underhanded workin’ in their heads. They think I don’t know it.” He took a sheet of paper from his pocket. “This is a list of the gunhandlers I’ve hired and how much I owe them. I’m paying them off come the mornin’, and puttin’ word out that I am lookin’ for cowboys. Unless I miss the mark, John will hire all that I fire.”
“So the war is over?” Sam asked softly.
“As far as I’m concerned. But it won’t be for John. You’ll see. I’m gonna hire me some punchers that ride for the brand and herd cows. They’ll know how to use a gun, but they won’t be gunslingers. And when I do that, my kids are gonna turn against me . . . all except Connie. Stick around and see.”
“Maybe if we rode over and talked to John?” Matt suggested.
Bull shrugged his massive shoulders. “Go ahead. But it won’t do you any good. He might have you shot on sight. Now go ahead and ask the question that’s burnin’ your tongue to get out.”
“Why the change of heart, Mr. Sutton?” Sam asked.
Bull stood up, and when Bull stood up, it seemed to take a full minute. He walked to the railing and looked out into the darkness. “I’m pushin’ fifty hard, boys. I got everything, and I ain’t got nothin’. A bunch of goddamn, no good, sneakin’, connivin’, back-stabbin’ kids. A wife that just barely tolerates me. And that’s my fault. I got maybe two or three real cowboys left on the range. I knew this . . . mess had to stop when Frank rode out the other day. Damn good cowboy. Been with me ten years. Almost as long as Laredo.” He turned around. “You boys see any punchers lookin’ for work, you send them to me. I’ve got to start workin’ my range. And I’ll find out who told this pack of coyotes to kill you, Bodine. That’s a promise. But I suspect it was my two oldest boys, Hugh and Randy. And young Ross was right in there with them, and my girls, too. Damn!”
“I don’t mean this to sound sarcastic, Bull,” Matt said. “But are you going to church come Sunday morning?”
Bull looked startled for a moment, and then busted out laughing. The laughter boomed and echoed around the yard. “An ol’ sinner like me? No . . . I don’t think I’m quite ready for that. The damn church roof might fall in on me. All that I’ve told you this night . . . you break it to Tom Riley gently. I don’t want to be responsible for givin’ the man a heart attack.”
It was late when the brothers rode back into town, and Tom Riley’s small house was dark and so was the marshal’s office. The blood-bonded brothers stabled their horses, rubbed them down, and forked hay into the stalls for them. Just as they approached the yawning entrance to the big livery, Sam put out a hand and stopped his brother.
“What is it?” Matt whispered.
“A glint of light off metal. Across the street between Wo Fong’s and the Mexican Cafe.”
Matt instantly went to his right and Sam cut left, stepping away from the entrance and moving into the shadows behind the front wall. They waited silently. Not one light shone anywhere along either side of the main street of the town. Even the saloons were closed and dark.
The glint might have come from a tin can or a discarded broken bit or spur. But the brothers weren’t taking any chances. They waited.
They caught just the faintest murmur of a whisper, and then heard a boot scrape on the ground. Sam motioned to himself, and then to the rear of the cavernous building, and Matt nodded his understanding.
Sam vanished into the gloom. A figure dressed in dark clothing darted across the street, heading for a vacant building next to the livery. Matt heard boots strike with a hollow sound on the boardwalk, and he stepped outside and flattened against the front.
“You looking for me?” he called softly, and then hit the ground.
Twin guns boomed and sparked the night, and Matt fired directly between the muzzle blasts, then rolled to his right behind a pile of broken wheels, axles, and other busted wagon and buggy parts. Slugs slammed against the livery wall, and Matt and Sam fired as one.
“Damn!” came the anguished call from across the street. That was followed by the thud of a man hitting the ground.
Lamps were being turned on from one end of the town to the other, and Tom and a deputy were running up the street, both in various stages of undress.
“Head for cover, Tom!” Sam called. “We don’t know how many there are.”
Tom jumped behind a water trough, and Van Dixon stopped and knelt down beside the high boardwalk.
A horse galloping away told the rest of the story. The one left had had enough for this night.
Both gunmen were still alive, and both had been stretched out beside each other on the boardwalk that ended at the livery and picked up again at Wo Fong’s. But Doc Blaine shook his head at the unspoken questions in Tom’s eyes.
“Who hired you to gun me?” Matt asked.
“Go to hell,” the gutshot man gasped.
“I got their horses, Tom,” Van said, leading two horses up to the livery door. “But I never seen these brands before. It’s a double saddle riggin’. Probably Texas.”
“Damn right,” the other assassin said.
“You should have stayed there,” Doc Blaine bluntly told the man. “Because both of you are going to be buried in Idaho Territory.”
“That’s disgustin’,” the man said.
“What the hell difference do it make?” his dying partner asked. “We ain’t gonna know it.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me who hired you?” Matt asked.
“When pigs fly like eagles, Bodine.”
“Sutton or Carlin?” Sam asked.
“Nope. I can tell you that much for shore. And I ain’t lyin’ ’bout that. Gimmie some laudanum, Doc.”
“You’ll be dead before it could take effect, Mister,” Doc Blaine told him.
“Name’s Poe,” the man whispered. “Hank Poe. I got money in my britches for a marker. Somebody see to that, will you?”
“We’ll see to it.”
Hank Poe closed his eyes and never opened them again.
“What’s your name?” Tom asked the other gunny.
“John Smith. And don’t laugh. It’s the truth.”
“You got anyone you want us to notify?”
“Naw. Just wrap me up good and bury me deep.” He cut his fading eyes to Matt. “Poe was speakin’ the truth to you, Bodine. It wasn’t neither Sutton nor Carlin who hired us.”
“Tell me who it was.”
The gunman laughed out of his bloody mouth and shook his head. “You’ll find out in
time. But I know it all. I know the whole story. And it’s a strange one. Mighty queer. You see, Bodine. There was . . . There was more than . . .” The man coughed up blood and began gasping for air. Blaine quickly cleared his throat. But it was to no avail. Smith’s head lolled to one side.
“There was what?” Sam asked.
But Smith was dead.
“This thing is gettin’ more twists and turns than a damn snake hole,” Tom said.
“He knew the whole story,” Sam mused. “How did he know it? Ben Connors admitted on the trail that he didn’t.”
“What about Ben Connors?” Tom asked.
“In the morning, Tom,” Matt said. “You’d stay awake all night if we told you the news now.”
“Now I’ll stay awake all night just wondering what the news is,” the marshal groused.
9
Over breakfast at the hotel, Marshal Tom Riley stared in disbelief at the words the brothers told him. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Halfway through his eggs, young Parley ran in and whispered in Tom’s ear.
“I gotta see it to believe it,” Tom said. “Come on, boys.”
On the porch of the hotel, the men watched as all the gunfighters from the Flying BS rode into town and reined up in front of the Carlin House.
“Looks like Bull meant every word he said,” Tom muttered. “And he was right about John hirin’ those bad ones as soon as Bull fired them. I applaud Bull for tryin’ to end this years-long war, but he may have committed suicide by doin’ it.”
“Let’s take a walk over to the Carlin House,” Sam suggested. “The conversation should be quite lively.”
“That’s one way of puttin’ it,” Tom said.
As expected, the crowd in the saloon fell silent as soon as the marshal, the young deputy, and the brothers walked in. But the line of gunmen at the bar and seated at tables were a sullen-faced lot.
Bartender George looked awfully nervous.
Tom Riley walked straight up to Ben Connors, while Sam and Matt separated to better watch the room filled with some of the most notorious gunmen in the West. Parley stood to the right of the batwings. The deputy was young, but he had more than his share of sand.
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