“Hell with the others,” another all-too-familiar voice called out. “Kill John and Bull.”
Bull turned anguished eyes toward John. “Randy,” he whispered hoarsely. “Dear God in Heaven, what kind of kids did we produce?”
“Well, it’s all out in the open now,” John said. “We can legally kick them out.”
“How?” Matt questioned. “All we’ve heard are voices. None of us have seen anybody. No judge would honor that.”
John and Bull both did some fancy cussing.
“It’ll be dark in about thirty minutes,” Connie called. “If we can hold out ’til then, we have a chance.”
“Somebody kill that bitch!” a wild voice screamed from outside the little earth-depression where the party was trapped.
“Ross,” Bull said, the words tinged with bitterness. “My youngest son. Who wants to kill his sister.” His sigh was clearly audible to the others.
Connie put a round in the general direction of her brother’s voice.
“Holy cow!” Ross yelled. “I damn near got shot.”
Connie carefully placed another round, and her brother bellered out his surprise and shock.
“Are you hit?” yet another voice was added.
‘Marcel,” John said.
“No,” Ross called. “But if it’d been an inch closer, I’d a been dead.”
John emptied his pistol at the brush where Marcel’s voice had sprung. Wild cussing cut the fading light, and the sound of boots hitting the ground came to those pinned down.
Sam’s guns began roaring, and a man began screaming in pain. Matt chose that time to roll to his left and into a thin stand of cottonwoods. He came to his knees just as an unfamiliar face about twenty-five feet away turned toward him, eyes wide with surprise.
They were not surprised for long as Matt put a .44 slug between the gunhand’s eyes. His head snapped back, and the hired gun stretched out on the ground.
“That’s it!” a voice yelled. “Let’s get out of here.”
Seconds later, the sounds of fast-running horses were fading from the area.
“That was my son Pete who yelled that last bit,” John said, walking to Matt’s side in the trees. “The traitorous little shit!”
“I’ve never seen any of these people,” Bull called, standing over the body of a dead gunny. “Somebody’s brought in men and kept them hidden out.”
“Who the hell can we trust?” John asked, as the group gathered by the man Sam had filled with lead.
“If these words had come out of my mouth this morning,” Bull said. “Somebody would have had me put in the loony bin. But, John, I reckon we can trust each other.”
John nodded his big head and stuck out his hand. Bull took the peace offering.
“I don’t know how to handle this,” John said. “What do I say to my kids when I get back home? How do I act?”
The sounds of horses galloping turned the group around. About ten minutes of light remained. Tom Riley reined up and jumped down from the saddle, Van Dixon with him. “We heard the shooting,” Tom said. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“We were ambushed,” Matt said quickly, before anyone else could speak. “We were meeting out here to call an end to the war and someone slipped up on us. None of us ever got a glimpse of a face.”
“You don’t have any idea as to who it might have been?” Tom asked.
“Not a clue,” Bull said.
“Nothing,” John added.
Tom looked at both men. He took a longer, closer look, then he shook his head. “You know, I don’t want to start a fight between you two, but I just now noticed something: you two damn sure resemble.” He quickly held up a hand. “Now, don’t fly off the handle at me. Lots of folks resemble. I was just voicin’ a thought, that’s all.”
Sam took a chance and said, “They should resemble, Tom. They’re half brothers.”
Tom Riley’s mouth dropped open, and he leaned up against a tree, clearly stunned by Sam’s remark. “Brothers!” he blurted.
Van Dixon stood speechless, staring first at Bull, then at John.
Bull sized up the man as being genuinely shocked and said, “Matt and Sam put it together, Tom. Up until a few seconds ago, none of us really knew what side you stood on. Now I reckon you’re neutral. It was our kids who ambushed us.”
“Your . . . kids?” Tom said. He quickly recovered and looked at Matt and Sam. “All right, smart boys, you tell me what the hell is going on?”
Quickly and succinctly, Sam leveled with the man. The marshal was so shaken by the revelations he had to look around and find a large rock to sit on.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he muttered. He took off his hat and fanned himself. “I ain’t ready for this. And you think Miles Singer is also your brother?”
“Yes,” Bull spoke. “The resemblance is just too uncanny to be coincidence. But it took Matt and Sam here to point that out to us. He’s got the same Kentucky drawl as me and John. Same features, same build, same everything, including being totally unreasonable about damn near anything and stubborn as a Missouri mule.”
Tom nodded his head in absolute agreement with the last remark.
“We think the kids of Bull and John, with the exception of Dan and Connie here, are in this with Singer, and the gunfighters are working for them,” Sam said.
Tom stuck his hat back on his head and stood up. “And you really didn’t see any of the men who attacked you today?”
“No,” John said. “But me and Bull know the voices of our sorry kids, and the boys were damn sure here taking part in it. I heard Clement and Marcel and Bull heard Randy and Ross.”
“That’s no good in a court of law.”
“We know it,” Bull said. “John, I got a plan. You better stay in town tonight, and I’ll ride in in the morning, and we’ll meet at Lawyer Sprague’s office at say, oh, nine o’clock. I’m changing my will leaving everything to Connie and Roz and adding that under no circumstances will any of the other kids get any part of the ranch or my money, no matter what happens. I think Sprague can set it up so it’s ironclad. You do the same, and then we’ll have Tom and his deputies ride out to your place, and you can order the gunhands out. What do you say?”
“Sounds good to me. And just as soon as the gunhands leave, I’m kicking all my kids out except for Daniel.”
“The girls, too?” Tom asked, worry on his face.
“They’re in it just as strong as the boys,” Dan said. “Connie and I have known it for months.”
Both Bull and John did some cussing and kicking and stomping around for a moment. Bull said, “I’ll give ’em all some money to tide them over. I’ll set up accounts in Denver for them all. But from this moment on, I disown them all.”
“Denver sounds good to me, too,” John said. “What do we do about Singer?”
“I don’t know. Let’s face that after we deal with our no-count kids.”
“You going to be all right this night, Bull?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll ride in the back way and brief the boys in the bunkhouse. I’ve got the makings of a good crew, and Laredo is rock-solid.” He stuck out his hand, and John took it. “We’ve got years of catching up to do, brother. I look forward to goin’ fishin’ and huntin’ with you.”
John grinned. “Me, too, brother. Me, too!”
12
Lawyer Sprague was a sour-faced man, but one that kept his mouth shut about his clients and knew the law. He didn’t blink an eye at the will changes. He drew them up, the men signed them, Matt and Sam witnessed the documents, and that was that.
Tom Riley left Nate Perry to look after things in town and took Parley and Van with him. Bull and Matt and Sam rode with John back to the Circle JC. It was a grim-faced group of men who rode up to the house of John Carlin. John had told his wife everything when he had returned home from the meeting and the ambush attempt, and she had been horrified at the behavior of her children, and then pleased to learn the war and the feud was, at lon
g last, over.
“But what about the girls?” she had questioned.
“I won’t leave them penniless. I’ll set up trust funds so they won’t starve or walk around with their drawers showing through ragged dresses, but they’ll by God have to find work.”
“But they’re not trained to do anything!”
“That, Ginny, is their problem.”
John had stopped by the bank to line his pockets with cash money to pay off the gunhands, and both he and Bull had closed out their accounts with Miles Singer, and withdrawn all their funds, leaving the man in damn near a state of cold-sweat shock and the bank very nearly void of ready cash. Miles was going to have to sink a lot of his own funds into the bank’s coffers just to prevent a run once the news got out. And even that might not keep the man solvent.
Dan Carlin had taken his mother to the upstairs of the mansion and was guarding her against a possible attack by his brothers and sisters and the hired guns. Ginny Carlin called it an impossible situation. But she was scared, although she tried to keep that fear from the one son she knew was mentally stable.
The other sons and daughters of John and Ginny Carlin sat in the living room downstairs and waited for their father to make an appearance. They were sullen and scared, and no amount of tough talk or bravado could hide that. The girls were weepy and the boys grim-faced. The same scene was being played out at the BS spread, but without nearly as much tension, for over there, tough, straight-arrow cowboys, led by Laredo, were all over the house, keeping a wary eye on Bull’s turncoat kids.
“You can’t do this!” Wanda squalled at Slim.
“Doin’ it,” the lanky puncher replied.
“Get out of my house!” Willa yelled at Laredo.
“I take orders from Mrs. Sutton,” the newly promoted foreman told the young woman. “Not you.”
Cleat and Shorty were outside, and Laredo expected trouble from them, for he had a suspicion they were secretly on the payroll of Singer.
“I don’t think you can take me,” Hugh Sutton told Rusty.
“Maybe not,” the redheaded, freckle-faced cowboy said. “But I’ll damn sure get lead in you on my way down.”
Connie sat with her mother upstairs, a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun across her jeans-clad knees. Extra shells were in her pocket.
“You simply must start wearing dresses,” her mother told her. “Men’s britches are not proper for a young lady.”
“Hell with proper,” Connie replied. “You have a fine figure, Mamma. You want to get Poppa’s attention, slip into a pair of my jeans. That’ll perk him up real quick.”
“Heavens!” the mother said, but she had to hide a smile. Of late, all she had to do was walk into a room to get the Bull’s attention. It was sort of like a second honeymoon. “I’m scared, daughter.”
“It’ll be all right, Momma. Everything will be all right.”
“You’re all fired,” John told the gunhands gathered in the front yard. “Line up over yonder to draw your pay. The war is over, and I don’t need you no more.”
“I run this spread!” Johnny shouted from the front porch. “Don’t you men pay no attention to him. You all work for me.”
“You don’t run nothin’, boy,” the father told him coldly. “And you can pack up your junk and get gone with them.”
“What?” the oldest son blurted.
“There ain’t nothin’ wrong with your ears. You heard me.” John swung down from the saddle, and those with him did the same, spreading out across the yard.
“Oh, Daddy!” Petunia called from the porch. “I’ve been just worried sick about you. I’m so glad to see you home safely.”
John cut cold eyes to his daughter. “Pack your crap, too, girl,” he wiped the smirk from her face. “I will not abide something like you under my roof. Lars!” he called to one of the few cowboys left on the place. “Are you with me or against me?”
“Solid with you, boss,” the hand called.
“Hitch up the buggy and drive Miss Petunia into town when she’s ready.”
“Right, boss.”
“But . . . Daddy!” Petunia squalled.
“Hush up your mouth and pack,” John told her.
J.B. Adams and Ben Connors sized up the situation quickly. Everything had gone sour out here, and there was no point in kicking up a fuss about it. Parley and Van held sawed-off shotguns in their hands, the hammers back. Matt Bodine was looking square at him, and Sam Two Wolves was facing Ben Tom Riley was staring hard at Rambling Ed Clark, and Bull Sutton was holding a rifle aimed smack at Yok Zapata’s belly. He cut his eyes to the second floor of the ranch house. Daniel Carlin was aiming a rifle at Dick Yandle’s chest, and Ginny Carlin was aiming a rifle at Phillip Bacque, and Bacque was well aware of it. The percentages were all wrong here, J.B. thought. Best thing to do was draw their pay and ride into town.
“I’ll get my gear from the bunkhouse, John,” J.B. said.
“Fine, J.B.,” John said.
“By God, I won’t,” Utah Bates said.
“Don’t be a fool, boy,” Bacque told him. He put both hands in his back pockets and turned to face Ginny Carlin’s rifle. “I am out of this, Mrs. Carlin. I am going to pack my possessions and then draw my time.”
He turned and walked toward the bunkhouse, most of the others following him. Only the younger, less wise ones stayed put, facing the line of lawmen, ranchers, and the blood brothers.
“You see!” Clement called from the porch. “Them’s workin’ for us, Pa. It’s you who’d better pack your war bag and get gone from here.”
“Clement,” John said, steel in his words. “You got a couple of choices. And I’ll name them. Either pack and get out, or fill your hand.”
The expression on the young man’s face was clear shock. His own father was telling him to draw down. He couldn’t believe it.
“Back off,” Johnny said low. “He’s holdin’ all the cards. We can wait.”
“You mean that?” Marcel asked.
“Yes. Go on in the house and start getting our crap together. All of you. Move. All right, Papa,” he raised his voice. “You win this round. But you can’t take back the sections of land you done give us over the years. All them acres is ours free and clear. That’s ours now and forever.”
“Damn,” John said for Bull’s ears only. “I forgot about that.”
“Hell, me, too,” Bull said sourly. “I did the same thing while land-grabbin’ and snatchin’ up everything in sight. Don’t look like we’ll ever get shut of them.”
“Get gone,” John told his kids.
“You’re gonna have to move me,” Utah Bates said. Then his hands twitched.
John shot him. The rancher’s draw was deceptively swift for a man his size and age. Utah had cleared leather, but just barely before the slug struck him square in the center of the chest and knocked him flat on his back.
“Oh, hell!” the young would-be tough yelled. His boots drummed the hard-packed earth, and then he was still.
Johnny and Clement Carlin stared at their father. They all knew their dad was quick with a short gun, but they had never dreamed he was this quick.
Pete and Petunia stared in shock.
“Anybody else?” John questioned, his words hard as the man himself.
A couple of the younger ones wanted to try him, but they wisely kept their hands still.
“Throw that dead coyote across his saddle and tie him in place,” John told those few still facing him. “Get him off my property and bury him away from here.”
Some of the other older gunslingers were already riding out. They did not wave or look back. John’s children were still standing on the front porch.
“You best rattle your hocks,” John warned them.
“We’re takin’ our share of the cattle!” Marcel blurted.
John faced him. “You’re takin’ nothin’, boy. You got no share of my herds.” He tapped his pocket, breast high. “I just changed my will. All legal and proper. Yo
u get nothin’. Nothin’ at all. Now, or ever. Now get your connivin’ butts off my property and don’t never set foot back here again. Your names will be stricken from the family Bible and from this moment on, you are no kin of mine. Go suck up to Miles Singer.”
That shocked the Carlin kids. “How did you . . . ?” Petunia bit back the words as Pete clenched his fists so tightly the knuckles whitened.
“How ain’t important,” her father told her. “But we know.”
J.B. Adams and Ben Connors slowed their horses, and J.B. said to Matt, “You’re responsible for all this, Bodine. I’ll bet my boots and saddle on that. We’ll be around. We’ll meet up sooner or later.”
“You won’t be betting your boots and saddle, J.B.,” Matt told him.
“Huh?”
“You’ll be betting your life.”
J.B. snorted and rode on. Yok Zapata reined up. “You’ll face me first, Bodine.”
“I’ll take you, Yok,” Sam said. “I can’t let my brother have all the fun.”
“I’ll be lookin’ forward to that.” Yok rode on.
Phillip Bacque, Dick Yandle, and Raul Melendez were the next to ride out. They all grinned at Matt and Sam, clear warnings behind the hard smiles.
Paul Stewart, Simon Green, and Dick Laurin were the next to go. “I got a bullet with your name on it, Breed,” Paul said to Sam.
“Keep dreaming,” Sam told him.
Simon and Dick smiled at Matt, Simon saying, “I’m gonna kill you, Bodine.”
“You’ll have to get in line,” Matt responded.
Will Jennings, Jack Norman, and Bill Lowry rode by. Jack gave Matt an obscene gesture, and Matt returned it.
“That’s a new one on me,” Parley said. “I’ve never seen that before. What’s it mean?”
Matt told him, and the young deputy blushed.
Big Dan Parker, Paul Brown, and Ned Kerry rode out. All three of them had to run their mouths and make their threats. Matt waved at them and smiled.
Henry Rogers, Rod Hansen, and Bob Coody were the next to leave. Bob Coody reined up and stared at Sam. “I hate Injuns,” he said.
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