“Fair enough,” Matt said.
Jack swung into the saddle and headed out, searching for new deputies.
The brothers saddled up, and as soon as the three ex-deputies rode out, they waited a couple of minutes and then headed out after them. At the crossroads just outside of town, the three men took the northern turn, heading for the Lightning range. Matt and Sam tailed along behind them. When they rode onto Lightning range, the brothers reined up.
“Now what?” Sam asked.
“Let’s go see Pete and tell him the news. Maybe he’ll spit out what’s on his mind.”
“Naturally, Millie has nothing whatsoever to do with this visit?”
“Naturally. She’s just a child.”
Sam spurred his horse and was still laughing at that when Matt rode up and took a swing at him. He missed.
* * *
“I don’t know, boys,” Pete Harris said over coffee on the front porch. “But it don’t surprise me. Dale’s gonna play on the winnin’ side, every time. I reckon he seen the writin’ on the wall, as the sayin’ goes, and stepped over the line.”
“Do you trust him, Pete?”
“Now that’s an interestin’ question, son. Yes, and no. Let me put it this way: I trust a rattlesnake as long as he’s out of strikin’ distance and I can see him. Dale is gonna make money. Period. I ain’t never known him to lose any. At least, not to amount to much. I keep money in his bank, but I don’t borrow none from him. ’Course, I don’t really trust Chrisman, neither. Oh, he comes on like a fine fellow—and maybe he is. But there’s something about him I just don’t trust.”
“He said he came out here about the same time as Dale,” Sam recalled.
“That’s right. But me and Hugo and Blake come out here years before they did. Man, this country was wild. Indians and outlaws and old sore-toothed mountain men and grizzly bears. I don’t know what happened to Blake and Hugo. They went power-crazy, I reckon. Nothin’ would satisfy them. They had to have the finest houses, the finest horses, the best of everything for their kids; and there ain’t neither one of them got a kid that’s worth a damn for anything.” He paused to refill their coffee cups. “Got any more news?” he asked with a smile.
Sam told him about Jack Linwood.
“I’ve seen it happen before. A man takes the wrong road and takes him years to find the right turn to get back on the straight and narrow. Jack’s hell with a short gun, boys, don’t sell him short on that. But I always thought I seen a streak of good in him. And those no-count deputies quit and rode off toward the Lightning range, eh?”
“That’s the way they were heading.”
“Hugo’ll hire ’em. Him and Blake brought in the Raley gang—so I heard. Robert told me. I knew a break was comin’ between us when they proposed doin’ that. I was against it from the start. I got me fifteen good hands, most of them men who’ve been with me for years. There isn’t a fast gun in the bunch, but they’re dead shots and there isn’t a one who wouldn’t charge the gates of Hell with a bucket of water. If Hugo and Raner want to take me on—and it might come to that—they’ll find the Box H hands will give ten times more than they get.” He grinned. “You boys want to stay for dinner?”
The grins he got back told him the answer to that.
“Oughtta just put you on the payroll,” Pete grumbled good-naturedly.
Dinner that day was a thick, hearty stew, with hot, fresh-baked bread covered with butter. And there was a huge platter of doughnuts that Millie had baked. The brothers had a hard time keeping their eyes off the bear sign.
“After dinner, boys,” Becky told them.
“Do the hands eat this well?” Sam asked.
“Sure. Except on brandin’ and roundups. We take turns cookin’ then or hire a trail cook if one can be found. The grub is one of the reasons my hands don’t hardly ever quit me.”
Just as the brothers were swinging up into the saddle, Millie came up with a cloth sack. “For after supper,” she told them with a smile.
The sack was filled with doughnuts. “We’ll keep it a secret,” Sam told her. “I’ve known of shootings to occur when doughnuts are involved.”
And he wasn’t kidding. Cowboys had been known to ride fifty or more miles for a sack of doughnuts.
Pete stepped out on the porch. “You boys ride loose. Hugo and Blake won’t let last night’s slight die easy. They’ll be like rattlers in the spring: they’ll strike at anything around them. I’ll see you boys in town tomorrow. It’s supply day.” He grinned. “Way you boys eat, I figure I’d better double the order.”
Laughing, the blood-bonded brothers hit the trail, with Matt arguing with Sam over who was going to carry the doughnuts back to town.
“I will,” Sam told him. “You’d have them eaten up before we got a mile. The sack, too, probably.”
“What’s that in your mouth? Get your hand outta that sack!”
“Oh, shut up!”
* * *
“That’s quite a pair, Dad,” Robert said, stepping out to stand by his father.
“Listenin’ to them and talkin’ with them, you’d never figure they were two of the top gunhands in the country.”
“I think Matt Bodine is the most handsome man I have ever seen,” Millie said, watching them ride off.
“Oh, Lord!” Pete said.
“He would certainly be a fine catch for any young lady,” Becky said, drying her hands on her apron.
“Now, wait a damn minute!” Pete said.
“I can see it now,” Robert said, after winking at his mother. “Millie getting married—a fancy church wedding and all that—and moving off to Wyoming. The house sure would be a much quieter place with her gone.”
“Married!” Pete thundered. “Hell’s fire, she just met the man a couple of days ago!”
Millie was under no delusions about Matt Bodine. He was a drifter and she knew it. But she could dream. “Millie and Matt,” she said, enjoying agitating her father. “That sure has a nice sound to it.”
Pete got it through his head that his family was having a fine time sticking the needle to him. He laughed. “All right, all right,” he said. He looked at his daughter. “But, girl . . . you could do a heck of a lot worse.”
Ten
They were five miles from the Box H when both brothers began to get a tingling feeling in the middle of their backs.
And that was something they always paid attention to.
“Now!” Matt yelled, and he and Sam sent their horses scrambling off the road and into a stand of timber. The word had just left his mouth when the rifle boomed. The slug came so close to Sam he could feel the heat of it slamming past his ear.
“Don’t drop the doughnuts!” Matt yelled.
They rode into the timber and jumped off their horses, shucking their rifles from the boots. The brothers made their way to timber’s edge and crouched down.
“That slope right over there,” Sam said. “In that jumble of rocks.”
“That was no .44 or .44-.40,” Matt said. “That was a Sharps or a Spencer.”
“I agree. Or an old Springfield. I’ve seen people make shots at a thousand yards with one of those. Somebody is bringing out the heavy artillery. Any of those slugs would tear your head off. My father used to say that the Springfield was the one rifle the Indians feared the most . . . until the Henry came along.”
“I know what your father used to say. I was there, remember? Where’s the bear sign?”
“In my saddlebags.”
“They’ll get all crushed. I’ll go get them.”
Sam hauled him back by the seat of his pants. “Will you stop worrying about doughnuts and concentrate on us getting out of this mess.”
“I had a hunger pang.”
“Wonderful. Since we might be pinned down here for several hours, I think we’ll keep the bear sign in reserve.”
“Good thinking. I’ll just get them out of the saddlebag before my horse figures out how to get to them and eats them.”
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Before Sam could put a good cussing on his brother, a slug howled over their heads and slammed into the tree behind them. Matt dug out the slug and looked at it. He whistled, holding it out for Sam to see.
“Springfield .45,” Matt said.
“Far out of range for these Winchesters we’ve got.” Sam looked around him. They were not in a good position for getting out safely. The thick timber they were in covered about five acres. To the left of them lay a rocky flat, to the right and behind them, a vast meadow, all within easy reach of the big single-shot Springfield rifle.
“Well,” Matt said, putting the doughnuts out of his mind for the time being, “I think we’re stuck.”
“Oh, that’s good, brother.”
“How would you size up our situation?”
Sam thought about that for a few seconds. He grinned and said, “Stuck.”
Only a few more shots were fired from the sniper hidden in the rocks above them during the next hour. And they were chance shots, since Matt and Sam were well hidden and well protected. No one came down the road and the brothers hoped no one would, for they suspected the killer above them would not hesitate to kill anyone who wandered into his field of fire.
‘Who did we tell we were going out to the Box H?” Sam asked.
Matt thought for a moment. “No one. So we had to have been followed. When the sniper reached this place, he just holed up and waited for us to return.”
The sniper fired again, but the slug went far wide of their position. He was searching now.
A small stray dog came walking up the road.
“Oh, hell,” Matt said.
Sam’s face was grim.
The sniper fired and the little dog was dead.
Matt cussed and Sam’s face tightened. Both Matt and Sam had been indoctrinated into the Cheyenne’s Dog Warrior society, and both loved dogs and despised anyone who was cruel to them.
“When we catch up with this scum,” Sam said, “he is mine.”
Matt nodded his head, his eyes on the little dog lying in a pool of blood in the road, a little dog who had meant no harm to anyone. Who wanted only to be man’s friend. “If I don’t get him first.”
“You won’t,” Sam assured him.
Another hour passed. The sounds of hooves reached the brothers, the horseman coming from the direction of the Box H. Matt and Sam started yelling.
“Stay back!” they shouted as loud as they could. “Stay back. Sniper in the rocks.”
The horseman veered quickly off the road to the north side and dismounted, grabbing his rifle from the boot. He concealed his horse and took up a position behind rocks. “Bodine and Two Wolves?” he shouted.
“Yeah,” Matt returned the shout. “He’s had us pinned down here for several hours.”
“Who killed the dog?”
“Whoever that is up in the rocks,” Sam shouted.
“Why’d he shoot the pup?”
“No reason. He just wanted to kill something, I reckon,” Matt yelled.
The man cussed. “I hate a son of a bitch who’d do something like that.”
“He’s mine,” Sam called. “Someday.”
“Not if I find him first. Name’s Cooper. Call me Coop. I ride for the Box H. I seen you boys the other day.”
“We got a sackful of bear sign we’ll share if we can get shut of that gunman up yonder,” Matt yelled.
“Millie make ’em?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll get shut of him,” Coop shouted. “They’s two more hands from the Spur comin’ up behind me.”
“Where’s the Spur?” Sam called.
“Little spread on the west side of the Parachute. Good people.”
That seemed to do it for the sniper. A moment later, he was riding off, putting the spurs to his horse. But the massive upthrusting of rock preventing anyone from getting a glimpse at him or taking a shot. The men gathered in the road and shook hands.
“I’ll bury the dog,” Matt said. “Sam, check up yonder for brass, will you?”
Coop went into the coolness of timber and dug a hole with his hands in the softer earth. Matt picked up the little pooch and carried him into the timber.
“Reminds me of a dog I had when I was kid,” Coop said.
Neither man said anything else for a moment. Both of them were thinking that no decent person kills a domesticated animal for pleasure. Only people who are perverted and darkly twisted.
The dog buried, the men got their horses and waited for Sam to come down from the rocks.
“.45 Springfield,” Sam said. “The man’s got a V-shaped cut on the sole of his right boot. And he’s right-handed.”
Two more cowboys rode up and swung down. Dickie and Waldo from the Spur.
“This is gettin’ out of hand,” Dickie said. He pointed to the dark stain on the dirt road. “Who got hit?” After Matt explained, Dickie hotly, bluntly, and with considerable passion compared the man’s character to a certain part of the anatomy. And what comes out of it.
Sam said, “We’ll report this to Sheriff Linwood.”
Waldo looked at him. “Are you serious?”
Sam explained briefly what all had taken place in Dale.
“Well, now,” Waldo mused. “That’s good news, but it don’t make no sense. I never figured Mister Dale would switch sides like that.”
“Does that man have a first name?” Sam asked.
If he did, none of the hands had ever heard it.
They mounted up and rode into town. The hands went to the Red Dog, Matt and Sam to the sheriff’s office.
Linwood listened to their story, sent his brand new deputy, Jimmy, over to the saloon to talk to the Box H and Spur men, and looked at the brass Sam had picked up.
“Only people around here who have Springfields is the Reed family, farmers. But they’d have no reason to shoot you boys. Thank you for reportin’ this. Maybe I was hasty in my dislikin’ you.” He wore a half-smile. “Tell me something: did you two turn the tables on those hands . . . about that ambush the other day?”
Matt and Sam grinned and Linwood returned it honestly. “I thought so,” the sheriff said. “You boys are pretty good actors.” He looked at Sam. “But you’re a ham.”
Louis Longmont sent one of his men into town to check on the deed to his property, filed under a corporate name, and set up his camp on his property.
Charlie Starr rode slowly into town and swung down in front of the Red Dog. He beat the dust of the trail from his clothing with his hat and stepped inside. LaBarre was standing at the bar, his face bruised and swollen from the beating he’d received at the hands of Matt Bodine. He was in a ugly mood and ready to strike at anyone, for any reason, real or imagined.
Young Deputy Jimmy Bryant was having a sandwich and a beer at a table across the room. LaBarre made him nervous, but the kid was game, with no back-up in him. He was good with a gun, although by no means in LaBarre’s class.
Sheriff Linwood was out by the rocks, trying to pick up the trail of the ambusher. But after twenty-four hours, he didn’t give that much hope.
Charlie Starr ordered a rye and a beer, then made himself a sandwich from the table and took a seat a couple of tables away from the young deputy. Just a kid, Charlie thought. And that hand all in black with the beat-up face was LaBarre. That was no guess on Charlie’s part. He’d seen his likeness only a few days back. He wondered if LaBarre knew there were fresh wanted posters out on him. One thousand dollars. He’d killed a man over in Nebraska, and a judge had ruled it murder.
Well, Charlie mused, he had a few dollars in his pockets and he wasn’t hunting trouble.
But LaBarre was.
“Hey!” LaBarre called. “You, the punk kid with the star on your shirt. Look at me when I talk to you, little baby boy!”
Charlie drank his rye down neat, chased it with a swallow of beer, and took a bite of sandwich. He liked the look of the young deputy; he sort of reminded Charlie of his kid brother, before a trouble-hunter like
LaBarre had killed him. The trouble-hunter went down under the guns of Charlie Starr.
“I think I’ll come over there and rip that tin star off your shirt and shove it up your nose, baby-face.”
Charlie sized up the situation with wise eyes. The kid had both hands on the table and the leather thong was over the hammer of his pistol. If the kid moved a hand, LaBarre would kill him.
“Deputy,” Charlie said. “Do you have the power to deputize citizens in time of need?”
“I, ah, think so, sir,” Jimmy replied.
“Then deputize me.”
“How do I do that?”
“Just say I’m a deputy.”
Jimmy laughed nervously. “Ah, well, gee, you’re a deputy of this county.”
“Thank you.” Charlie stood up. He knew his guns were loose in leather. From years of habit. He looked at LaBarre, watching the older man with a puzzled look on his beat-up face.
Charlie said, “Pretend I’m wearing that star and come over here and rip it off my shirt, you son-of-a-bitch.”
LaBarre’s mouth dropped open. This old geezer had to be at least sixty. LaBarre closed his mouth and cleared his throat. “What . . . did you call me, you old horse turd?”
“I called you a son-of-a-bitch. What’s the matter with you, are you deaf as well as ugly?”
Pete Harris was in the saloon, having a beer and a sandwich over in a darkened corner, and his foreman, Shorty, was with him. Robert was seeing to the loading of the supply wagon and Becky and Millie were shopping and gossiping.
If this old hard-bitten rider didn’t intercede, Pete had made up his mind to shoot LaBarre down himself. The tough old bird looked familiar to Pete, but he couldn’t place him. Lean-waisted, but with a lot of muscle still in his upper torso. The man’s wrists were thick and his hands big and callused.
“Do you have such a wish to die, old man?” LaBarre asked.
“I’ll die someday,” Charlie said. “That’s something we all have to face. But I won’t die at your hands, LaBarre.”
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