Matt had sensed that in other times, other places . . . and always, without fail, sooner or later hell had broken loose.
His instincts led him unerringly to the schoolhouse. He reached the edge of some trees and reined in to look across an open field at the back of the big, whitewashed building. The schoolkids played in that field every day during their free time.
He frowned. No children were in sight. Maybe they were all inside. Or maybe the school was closed during the time of emergency. If gunmen had taken over the town, parents would want their youngsters close by, to keep them safe.
Matt thought it the safest way to slip into town, as well as meet Preacher there later. The invaders wouldn’t likely think a threat would come from the vicinity of the school—a nonthreatening place.
Matt dismounted and took off his gun belt. In a town taken over by armed outsiders, nothing would draw attention faster than the sight of a man wearing a gun. He was sure one of the first things the invaders had done was disarm everybody.
He drew his Colt and stuck it in the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back, then put on a buckskin jacket he took from one of his saddlebags. The jacket would conceal the gun, at least from casual discovery. He coiled the gun belt and hung it from the saddle horn.
“You’re going to have to stay back here in the trees where nobody will see you,” he told his horse. “There’s enough graze, and I’ll tie you loosely enough you can get free if I don’t come back for you. But don’t worry. I’m coming back.”
With that vow made, he went to the edge of the growth and paused to study everything he could see. No one was moving anywhere. The town seemed to be locked down tight.
The school was about fifty yards from where he was and an equal distance from the nearest building. If he headed straight for the back of the school, the building and the trees that grew around it, would make it difficult for anyone to spot him. He was just about to step out and make a run for it when motion off to the right caught his eye.
A woman was walking toward the school with a determined stride. Matt didn’t recognize her, but he didn’t really know many people in Big Rock other than Monte Carson and a couple sheriff’s deputies.
Matt hoped that Carson was all right. The sheriff and Smoke were old friends.
Two men came into view as they followed the woman. Swaggering was more like it, Matt thought. One of them called something after her. He couldn’t make out the words. Both men laughed, so he figured it had been something crude that they found amusing.
The woman didn’t look back. She kept walking. In fact, she walked a little faster. Clearly, she was bound for the schoolhouse. There was nowhere else to go in the direction she was headed.
She reached the front corner of the school and disappeared from his view.
The two men following her did the same. They wore guns, Matt noted, proof they were part of the occupying force.
Whatever they wanted from the woman, it wasn’t likely to be anything good. Maybe they were just hoorawing her and didn’t mean her any harm, but he didn’t want to take that chance. He took his hat off, held it in his left hand, drew in a deep breath, and broke out of the woods to sprint toward the school.
The fifty-yard run took less than ten seconds, but it seemed much longer. He reached the building without incident, and stopped to press his back against the rear wall while he caught his breath.
Like most Western men, he considered a job that couldn’t be done from horseback as something not worth doing, so he wasn’t used to running. Nor were the riding boots he wore made for it.
He’d made it to the back of the building and nobody was yelling in alarm, so he was satisfied. After a moment, he put his hat back on and moved to the corner, edging his head around for a look. Nothing.
He heard footsteps inside the building, figured the woman and the two men had to be in there, and cat footed along the wall. Although the windows on the side of the building were closed in the cool weather, a quick glance through one confirmed that all the student desks and benches were empty.
As he neared the front of the school, he was able to look along the street. He spotted a few armed men here and there, but none seemed all that alert. Likely, they felt they had everyone in the town cowed and that no one would dare oppose them.
As far as Matt could see, they were right.
But they didn’t know somebody new was in town.
Through the school’s open front door he heard voices coming from inside. Mostly it was the men who were speaking, but from time to time the woman would say something. He still couldn’t make out the words. One of the men laughed. It was an ugly sound.
The smart thing to do, Matt told himself, would be to slip around behind the school again, wait until everybody left, and then sneak into town. He needed to find somebody who could tell him exactly what was going on.
Maybe he wouldn’t have to go to that much trouble, he realized. The woman might be able to tell him everything he needed to know. Surely she wasn’t part of the force commanded by the major. She was probably the teacher, even though she didn’t have any students at the moment.
If the two gunmen left and the woman stayed, he could talk to her and find out what she knew. It was a good plan. He turned to slide along the wall until he reached the rear of the building again.
The plan might have worked . . . if the woman hadn’t chosen that moment to let out a frightened scream.
Chapter 37
Matt straightened from his crouch to look through the nearest window. The woman was struggling with one of the men while the other hombre stood by chuckling and leering. The one wrestling with the woman pawed at her dress.
So much for my plan, Matt thought. He knew there was no way he could stand by and watch a woman being assaulted.
His mind worked at breakneck speed as he considered his options. He could draw the Colt at the small of his back, burst in, and ventilate those two skunks before they knew what was going on.
And those shots would draw at least a dozen more heavily armed killers who would rush to the school to find out what was going on. Matt didn’t mind when the odds were against him, but those odds were overwhelming. He’d wind up dead, and in the fracas the woman might get hurt, too.
Those thoughts flashed through his mind in a heartbeat. His hand flew to the gun and placed it behind one of the stone blocks that formed the school’s foundation. They were set several feet apart, and he had no trouble reaching behind a block and dropping the gun.
He could always come back and retrieve it later. With that taken care of, he turned and raced for the front of the school.
The door stood ajar, and he simply burst in, lunged toward the struggling figures, grabbed the shoulder of the hombre manhandling the woman, and jerked him around. Matt’s fist crashed against the man’s jaw with enough force to lift him off his feet and send him toppling over one of the desks in an ungainly sprawl.
“What the hell?” the second man exclaimed.
Matt heard the rush of feet as the man charged him and turned to meet the attack. At least the fella hadn’t slapped leather and tried to gun him down.
Yet.
Matt ducked under the wild roundhouse punch the man threw and stepped closer to hook two swift punches, a right and a left, to his belly. The man grunted in pain and bent forward, which put his chin in perfect position for the right uppercut Matt brought whistling from his knees.
The man’s jaw clicked together with tooth-cracking force as his head went back. His knees buckled. As he fell, he reached out to grab Matt’s jacket in a weak grip.
It was enough to prevent Matt from stepping back and getting ready for more trouble. He heard the woman say, “Look out!”—then something rammed into him from behind and drove him forward.
He tripped over the man he had just knocked down. Both he and his tackler landed on one of the desks. Its legs cracked under their weight and they fell as the desk broke beneath them.
Matt drov
e an elbow back into his opponent’s belly. The man grunted as he looped an arm around Matt’s neck, trying to crush his windpipe. With only a second to grab a breath of air before the man’s forearm tightened cruelly across his throat, Matt knew that breath wouldn’t last long.
He got his hands and knees under him and bucked his body upward, failing to dislodge the man choking him. Matt threw himself to the side and rolled over a couple times, but that didn’t break the man’s grip, either.
Matt’s hand fell on a piece of broken wood from the desk. He snatched it up and jabbed up and back, aiming at the man’s face. The man yelled and jerked away, loosening his chokehold enough for Matt to writhe out of it.
Matt twisted around on the floor and struck up at the man’s face, which was bleeding where the jagged wood had scratched him. The punch was short but packed a lot of power. It landed solidly and knocked the man off him.
Clambering to his feet, Matt turned toward the woman to make sure she was all right. He got just a glimpse of a frightened but lovely face surrounded by a thick mass of chestnut hair before the other man grabbed her from behind and pressed a gun barrel to her head. She gasped in surprise and terror but didn’t try to pull away. She looked like she was too terrified to move.
Reflex made Matt take a step toward them, but he stopped short as the man threatened, “Hold it right there or I’ll blow her brains out!”
A little breathless from the fight, Matt said, “Take it easy, mister. Nobody needs to get shot.”
“I ain’t so sure about that!” the man raged. “My jaw feels like you damn near broke it!”
Matt hadn’t expected him to recover quite so quickly. Obviously, he had a lot of stamina. Also, he was angry. That was fueling him, too.
Matt heard boot leather scrape the floor behind him, followed by a curse. He turned a little and saw that the man had picked up one of the broken legs from the desk and was poised to swing it at his head.
“Wait a minute, Dixon,” snapped the man holding the woman at gunpoint. “I want to find out who this is before we stomp him to death.”
“Please!” the woman cried. “Please don’t hurt him! He . . . he’s my brother Charles.”
Matt drew in a deep breath. If that was the way she wanted to play it, fine. He was willing to go along with it. He had no idea what her name was, so he said, “Don’t worry, sis. These men aren’t going to hurt you.”
Dixon, the one with the desk leg, sneered. “That’s mighty big talk for a man who’s gonna be dead in a few minutes.”
The other one asked, “So you’re the schoolteacher’s brother?”
“That’s right,” she put in before Matt had a chance to answer. Her voice quivered, which was understandable since she had a gun muzzle pressed to her head. “He’s Charles Morton. Who else would he be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t recall seein’ him around town the past couple days.”
“That’s because he’s been staying inside our house. We both have, as much as possible. He . . . he didn’t want me to come here today. But I had to make sure the school was all right, that you men hadn’t done any damage to it.”
Matt said, “And I was right to tell you to stay inside, wasn’t I, sis? You just wound up getting us both in trouble.”
She glared at him. “Well, I didn’t ask you to come along and help me, now, did I?”
Matt hoped that sounded enough like a spat between siblings to be convincing.
Evidently it did, because the man with the gun took the weapon away from her head and pushed her toward one of the benches. “Sit down,” he growled. “We’ll deal with your brother.”
“Please don’t hurt him,” the woman said again. Instead of sitting down, she stood with her hands clasped together in front of her.
She was young, in her early twenties. And undeniably lovely, a fact he was aware of even in the perilous circumstances. He wondered what her name was . . . and hoped he would get the chance to find out.
The man pointed the gun at Matt. “You heard what the major told the whole town the other day. Anybody who gives us any trouble dies. Plain and simple.”
“But . . . but no one has to know what happened here,” the woman argued. “And if the two of you spare Charles’s life, no one else has to know about that, either.”
Dixon leered at her. “You gonna make it worth our while to do you a favor like that, missy?”
The woman drew in a deep breath, which made her breasts lift under the plain gray dress she wore. Her chin had a defiant tilt as she said, “If I have to.”
“The hell with that.” Matt’s sudden anger wasn’t feigned. “I won’t let you do that—”
“It’s not really your decision, is it?” she interrupted. “You think I’m going to stand by and watch someone die when there’s something I can do to prevent it?”
Matt understood that. He had risked his own life plenty of times to help people who needed a hand.
But it wasn’t her life she was talking about.
“Here’s something else you men should think about before you kill my brother or molest me.” Her voice had taken on a tone of cool determination. “You probably wouldn’t want your friends or your employer to know how one unarmed man thrashed the two of you. But that’s what will happen if you hurt either of us. I’ll spread the story all over town. People will believe me. I have a reputation for honesty. And it’ll get back to the rest of your . . . your gang. You know it will.”
Both men scowled at her.
Dixon said, “Maybe we ought to just kill you, too.”
“That would look good. Two men murdering a defenseless woman. I thought it was against some sort of Western code to harm a decent woman.”
The man with the gun suddenly muttered a curse and shoved the iron back into its holster. “Come on, Dixon, let’s get out of here. These two are more trouble than they’re worth.”
Disappointment showed on Dixon’s face. “But Bracken, they could still talk—”
“Not if they got any sense, they won’t. The school-ma’am is smarter than that. Aren’t you, honey?”
“If you leave us alone, we won’t have any reason to cause trouble for you,” she said.
Dixon pointed to the scratch on his face. “What about this?”
“You could say you ran into a tree branch,” the woman suggested.
Clearly, Dixon still didn’t like it, but Bracken was the one in charge. He jerked his head toward the door, and they began to back off. He pointed a finger at Matt. “You better just lie low, mister. If I see your face again, I’m liable to put a bullet in it just on general principles.”
“I understand,” Matt said. Lying low and not drawing the attention of the invaders had been his intention all along. Things just hadn’t quite worked out that way.
Dixon muttered a few more curses, and then the men were gone
Matt turned toward the woman and was surprised when she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.
But that was what a brother and sister who’d just had a narrow brush with death would do, wasn’t it? He returned the hug, lowered his head so his mouth was close to her ear, and whispered, “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Lorena,” she whispered back. “Lorena Morton.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Morton. I seem to be your brother Charles.”
Chapter 38
Leaving Smoke and Sally alone for a while so they could enjoy their reunion, the Sugarloaf foreman and the young cowboy greeted Dog—an old friend of theirs—rounded up the horses belonging to Trask’s men, and dragged the bodies of the fallen outlaws into a grisly heap off to one side of the line shack.
Smoke and Sally walked off under some trees, so Pearlie took advantage of the opportunity to haul the dead man out of the shack and add his carcass to the pile.
“What are we gonna do with ’em, Pearlie?” Cal asked. “It’d take a mighty big grave to hold all those polecats.”
“Yeah, and I don’t feel like doin�
�� that much diggin’,” Pearlie responded. “I was thinkin’ we’d tie the varmints over their saddles and send the horses trottin’ back down the mountain. Chances are they’ll go back where they came from.”
“And Trask will know he’s lost seven more men. We’re whittling ’em down, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” Pearlie said as he rubbed his chin. “Problem is, there was a whole passel of ’em to start with. At this rate, they’re liable to outlast us.”
“You can’t be happy about anything, can you, you sour old cuss?”
“Reckon I’ll be happy when we’ve got all those owlhoots off the Sugarloaf and things get back to normal around here,” Pearlie said.
“I thought finding ourselves in a whole mess of trouble was normal around here.”
Pearlie squinted. “If I had my hat with me, I’d take it off and wallop you with it, youngster.”
Smoke and Sally walked up in time to hear the good-natured squabbling. Even though he knew the gibes didn’t mean anything, he said, “Save your hostility for the enemy, you two. And keep an eye out. Somebody else might have heard all the shooting that went on earlier and come to investigate it.”
Pearlie nodded. “I been watchin’ the slopes lower down. Ain’t seen anything movin’ yet.”
“We’re a long way from ranch headquarters. I doubt if they heard it down there. We don’t have any way of knowing where Trask’s other patrols might be, though.”
Pearlie looked at Sally. “You told Smoke about that fella who calls hisself a doctor?”
“Of course I did. You didn’t think we were over there under the trees just whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears, did you?” She blushed a little, which in Smoke’s eyes just made her prettier.
“We might’ve done a little of that,” Smoke said with a grin, then he grew more serious. “But yes, Sally told me about Dr. Trask and his men.”
“You know who he is, Smoke?” Cal asked. “Is he an old enemy of yours?”
Smoke shook his head. “I never heard of the man until just now, unless he was using some other name when I knew him. Sally described him to me, though, and he doesn’t sound that familiar. Could be a lot of men in the world who look something like that.”
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