A rider from the Box H rode up and took a look, his face tight with anger. “I’ll go tell Pete and Miss Becky and Millie. They’ll get some blankets and clothin’ and food over here pronto, Reed.”
“I’m beholden to you,” Reed said.
“It’ll end someday,” the Box H man said. “Keep your powder dry, man.”
Reed nodded his head and the puncher rode off.
The cowboy crossed the road just as Matt and Sam and the sheriff were riding up. The Reed boy was behind them with blankets and food. “It’s bad,” the puncher said. “They shot them dead and then rode their horses back and forth over the bodies. Farmers is here, they’re gonna stay, so we best live with it and try to get on. This has got to stop.”
“All the Box H hands feel that way?” Matt asked, already sensing the reply.
“Damn sure do!” the hand said with considerable heat. “This killin’ of wimmin and children and children’s little pets has got to stop. It’s got to!”
“It will,” Jack said. “It will.” He rode off, his back stiff with anger.
Matt and Sam lingered with the Box H hand. “Would you be willing to ride in a posse?” Sam asked him.
“You call the time and I’ll have twenty-five men ready to ride.”
“We might do that,” Matt told him.
“Anytime, Bodine. Just anytime at all.”
* * *
“They’ve got to be killed,” Dale said. “They know too much.”
Chrisman nodded his head in agreement. “I never expected that girl to have the nerve to march in your office and demand a share. I figured she’d got it through her head that nobody believed their story.”
“Oh, the people believed it all right. The law couldn’t prove none of it was all that saved our butts.”
“It has to be an accident.”
“I know. Anything else would point directly at us. Any ideas?”
“How do you feel about losing a hotel?”
Dale stared at him. “They might escape before the flames reached their rooms.”
“Not if someone paid them a visit and conked them on the head before the flames were lit.”
“A good point. But who?”
“I’ll take care of it all.”
“When?”
“Tonight. Be sound asleep at midnight.”
“I plan on it.”
* * *
Matt and Sam began tracking the night riders. They had provisions for several days, and this time they planned on taking the fight to outlaws—no matter whose land they might be on.
Back at his place, Reed and his sons were cleaning their Springfield long rifles, loading up shotgun shells, and checking their pistols. Their farm was only a few miles from the farm where they’d helped bury the father and son hours back, so there was a pretty good chance they’d be the next on the list to be attacked. If so, the night riders were going to be in for a very sudden and deadly surprise.
Chrisman went to the rear of his saloon and began collecting old rags and scraps of aprons and towels. He found some packing and stuffed it and the rags in a big bag; it was bulky, but light. He did not want to use kerosene; the smell might linger, and that would be a dead giveaway. Then he decided, What the hell? The lamps were all kerosene.
Chrisman filled two jugs with the flammable liquid and hid rags and kerosene behind his saloon. It was an easy stroll through the alley to the rear of the hotel. Denise and Robert had the only two rooms downstairs—because of Robert’s injuries, he could not climb the stairs. Chrisman knew the back door to the hotel was never locked—sometimes local gentlemen took ladies into the hotel by that route. So getting into the hotel would be the easy part. He planned on people thinking that Robert, in a laudanum-induced stupor, knocked over a lamp and set the place on fire.
Chrisman planned on the fire starting in Robert’s room; with the doors closed, his room and Denise’s would be a blazing inferno within minutes.
Chrisman chuckled. It was a fine plan. He had keys to both rooms, given him by Dale, so getting in would be easy.
Chrisman found himself actually looking forward to the night.
* * *
“We’re on Lightning range now,” Matt said, as they stopped to water their horses at the creek.
“And the tracks are leading straight to the ranchhouse.”
“They’re not even making any attempt to hide them. It’s gonna be the same old alibi again.”
“Do we ride right up to the ranch?”
“Being brave is one thing, being plumb stupid is another.”
“The latter is something you should know well,” Sam said smugly.
Matt knocked his hat off his head and rode on.
About a mile further, the raiders had stopped and rested their horses. Cigarette butts littered the ground and several empty whiskey bottles were found, along with a bloody bandage.
“The man or his son got at least one of them before they overpowered him,” Sam remarked. “And that’s a lot of blood being lost there.”
“Tracks cut due north from here,” Matt said, pointing to the ground. “Most of them. All they’re going to say is that these tracks leading from here to the ranchhouse were made by cowboys doing a day’s work.”
“True.”
“So let’s follow the tracks leading north.”
It soon became evident to the brothers that the raiders were a mixed bunch of Lightning hands and probably men from Red Raley’s gang of trash. About a dozen horsemen, over a span of several miles, broke off from the main bunch and headed toward the Lightning Arrow ranchhouse. By late that afternoon they were out of the county and they reined up and made camp. They took their deputy sheriff’s badges from their shirts and stowed them away. They would be no good in another county. And, according to both Jack Linwood and Pete Harris, whose land extended into two counties, the sheriff up here was not only a jerk, but a crook to boot. He and his men were on the take and would do anything and shield anybody for enough money. They ran a protection racket and forced the merchants to pay them. The elections were always rigged, and the people of the county were afraid.
“We going into the town?” Sam asked, already knowing what his brother’s reply would be.
Matt looked at him and grinned.
* * *
Chrisman conducted business as usual that evening and closed up his saloon at ten. He stood on the boardwalk and smoked a cigar, as was his custom, making sure he was seen doing nothing out of the ordinary. He finished his cigar, tossed it into the dirt of the street, stretched and yawned, then went back into the Cattle Club and locked the door and put out the lamps. He went upstairs to his quarters, puttered around for a time, then put out the lamps at eleven. The town was quiet.
Dressed in dark clothing, Chrisman slipped out the back of his saloon and picked up his deadly bags. He made his way to the rear of the hotel and carefully eased into the darkened hallway. He stood silent for a moment, listening for any movement. The place was asleep. He moved to the door to Denise’s room and closed his hand around the knob. It turned. The haughty young lady had not even bothered to lock her door.
Then it came to him: she wasn’t in this room, she was with Robert in the next room. He opened the door and looked in. Her bed not been slept in. He quickly spread some kerosene-soaked rags around and moved to Robert’s room. Locked. Chrisman unlocked the door and looked in. The lamp was off, but he could see the young couple was asleep, sprawled atop the covers. An empty whiskey bottle was on the floor by Denise’s side of the bed, an empty bottle of laudanum stood on the nightstand at Robert’s side of the bed.
Chrisman walked to the bed and pulled a blackjack from his back pocket and struck Denise savagely on the head. Robert did not move. Chrisman walked to the young man and bashed him on the side of the head with the heavy cosh. He poured kerosene onto the bed and the dusty carpet, threw kerosene on the walls. He lit the rags and quickly backed out, closing the door. He ignited the rags in Denise’s room and l
eft the hotel, moving silently and swiftly back to his own quarters. He dropped his odious clothing in a tub of soapy water he’d prepared before he’d left and washed himself quickly. He was just getting into his nightshirt when he heard the excited shout.
“Fire! The hotel’s on fire! Everybody out. Get the pumper, boys.”
Chrisman pulled a robe over his nightclothes, put his feet into slippers, and ran down the stairs, throwing open the front door to his saloon and running out into the flame-licked night.
“Buckets!” he shouted. “Form a line here and start them buckets moving!”
Most of those guests on the second floor never had a chance. Only a few managed to jump out, breaking bones when they hit the street. The others died as the hotel’s second-story collapsed inward. The frantic screaming ceased abruptly.
The men working the town’s only pumper and the men and women of the bucket brigade concentrated on saving the buildings left and right of the blazing hotel, which they managed to do.
“Those poor people in there,” Dale said, shaking his head sorrowfully. He was covered with soot and burned in several places, having made a big show of running into the flames to save people. Several men had to restrain both him and Chrisman from entering the inferno.
“Quite an actor,” Charlie muttered to Jack.
“Yeah,” the sheriff agreed. “Its almost as good as that show Bodine and Two Wolves put on.”
“Four got out,” Jimmy said, after working the crowd and taking a head-count.
“Robert and Denise?” Jack asked.
“No sign of them.”
“They were on the ground floor; they should have been the first out,” Charlie said. “Unless somebody planned that they wouldn’t make it.”
“Denise was drinkin’ heavy and Robert was developin’ a need for laudanum,” Dewey pointed out. “They may have been so addled they didn’t even know what was goin’ on.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” Jack said. “But the fire sure happened at a good time for Chrisman and Dale.”
“It’s gonna be a mess, pullin’ them bodies out of there come mornin’,” Charlie said. “I’ve had to do it more times than I like to think about.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Me, too. Let’s set up watches so’s the flames won’t bust out again. Rest of us should try to get some sleep. It’s gonna be grim in the mornin’.”
“And Pete and Hugo have to be notified,” Jimmy reminded them.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I’ll tell Hugo. Jimmy, you ride for the Box H as soon as we know for sure. Charlie, you take the first watch. Dewey, relieve him at four. I’ll assign other townspeople to stay with you.”
Jack Linwood stared at the smoldering jumble of wreckage. The hotel had been full with traveling drummers and several women travelers taking a break from a tiring stagecoach ride. If the fire had been set deliberately, somebody was as cold-blooded as anyone Jack had ever seen.
He cut his eyes to Dale and Chrisman, now standing together on the boardwalk across the street, in front of the Red Dog. There was no doubt in his mind that one or both of them had set the fire. But he also knew he’d probably never be able to prove it. Jack was also very much aware that if he had been able to sleep that night, instead of rolling and tossing and turning and pounding the pillow, finally dressing and walking the town, he would be dead cooked meat in those smoldering ashes.
That made it a very personal matter for the sheriff.
* * *
Matt and Sam rode slowly into the tiny town, their hat brims pulled down low and their eyes taking in everything there was to see, which wasn’t very much. The town was not as large as Dale, and there were several boarded-up buildings, those merchants having had quite enough of crooked law enforcement and moving on to a more pleasant location.
The brothers reined up in front of the saloon and swung down, automatically freeing their guns in leather. That action did not escape the eyes of a so-called deputy sheriff lounging in front of the sheriff’s office.
“I think we got us a couple of randy ones,” he said, walking to the open doorway, for the morning was warm.
The sheriff, a big pus-gutted man rapidly going to fat, heaved his bulk out of the chair and lumbered outside. He stared at the brothers’ backs as they entered the saloon.
“Lawmen?” he asked the deputy.
“They wasn’t wearin’ no badges. I’ll amble on over there and check out their shirts for pin marks.”
He wouldn’t find any. Matt and Sam had changed shirts that morning for that very reason.
“Where’s Red and his boys?”
“Out of town, ’ceptin’ for four of his bunch. They’re over yonder in the saloon, havin’ ’em an early morning beer.”
“I’ll go with you. Something ’bout them two bothers me. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“They’re gunfighters,” the deputy said. “They got the mark stamped all over ’em.”
Matt and Sam ordered drinks, although neither of them wanted beer this early, and took up positions along the bar, at the end of it, facing the batwings. They both were conscious of the four hard-eyed men sitting at a corner table. The men were really giving the brothers the once-over.
“That’s the one who was with Red when they met with Robert and Denise,” Matt whispered.
“Yeah. I recognized him right off,” Matt returned the whisper.
“What’s all that whisperin’ about up there?” one of the men at the table demanded, raising his voice.
Matt looked at him. “Mind your own business.” He looked back at Sam and winked.
The other three men at the table laughed at that. “I reckon he told you, huh, Nelson?”
“I bet that’s Nelson Willis,” Matt whispered. “He’s supposed to be good.”
“I don’t like people whisperin’ neither,” another man at the table said. “You two knock that off.”
Sam looked at him. “Go to hell.”
Nelson slapped the table with his hand and laughed. “How about that, Miller?”
“Miller?” Matt whispered. “That name doesn’t ring a bell.”
The sheriff and his deputy stepped inside. They walked to a table and sat down, waving off the bartender.
Matt whispered, “That sheriff is a slob. Did you see the food stains on his shirt?”
“Yes,” Sam whispered.
“Hey!” the deputy hollered at the brothers. “Are you two in love or something?”
Matt and Sam had a good laugh at that.
“My deputy asked you a question,” the sheriff said. “You two drifters better answer him.”
The brothers ignored the man. Sam whispered, “The sheriff surely must know about the Raley gang.”
“Sure. That’s what Jack thinks. As far as I’m concerned, that makes him no better than them.”
“Didn’t Jack say this sheriff has raped several women in this county and then killed their husbands after they confronted him?”
“Yes.”
“All right, you two,” the sheriff lumbered to his boots. “I think we’d all better have a talk. Over to the jail, the both of you.”
“I really don’t feel like walking,” Sam said, straightening up and facing the big slob. “If you have something you’d care to discuss with us, this place will do just fine.”
“Well, well, Les,” another of the four outlaws said. “Ain’t he the hoity-toity one?”
“The lard-butt’s name must be Les,” Matt said in a normal tone. “Les of what? His belly’s hanging over his belt and his butt’s so big he probably has a tentmaker sew his britches.”
Matt and Sam cracked up laughing.
Sheriff Les cursed and lumbered across the room, the floor shaking each time a boot came crashing down. “I’ll break your back, you damn lousy drifter!” Les bellowed.
Matt waited until the last second, then sidestepped and grabbed up a piano stool. Les had lumbered around to face him just as Matt swung the heavy stool. The stool hit the she
riff flush in the mouth and pearlies went flying as the big man’s eyes rolled back in his head. He staggered back and his momentum sent him crashing into tables and chairs. He fell through the big front window of the saloon and landed on the boardwalk, out cold.
Matt turned to face the Raley gang. “All right, you baby-killing, worthless pieces of coyote crap. My name’s Matt Bodine and this is my brother, Sam Two Wolves. Stand up, drag iron, and get ready to kiss the devil’s butt!”
Twenty
Everybody in the room reached for their guns, all except the bartender. He hit the floor behind the bar and stayed down. As far as he was concerned, Bodine and Two Wolves could kill off every member of the sheriff’s department—including the sheriff—and the world would be a better place by far.
Sam drilled the deputy through the shoulder, the .44 slug turning the small man around and depositing him on the barroom floor. He lay there groaning.
The four gunslicks yelled, jumped up cussing, and dragged iron.
Matt’s first shot took one dead center in his forehead. The man sat back down in the chair he’d just vacated and put his dead head on the table, both hands dangling by his boots.
Sam drilled another in the brisket and doubled the man over. Matt shot the third one just as he was turning, the slug tearing through him and knocking him down, killing him. The fourth member tried for the shattered window. Matt and Sam fired together, their slugs striking true. The gang member cried out and landed on top of the sheriff, who was just struggling to get to his boots. Both men went crashing back to the boardwalk.
The brothers punched out empties and reloaded while the gunsmoke was still swirling around them. The bartender was peeping over the edge of the bar.
“I hear tell that sheriff’s as crooked as a snake,” Matt spoke to the wide-eyed man. “Is that right?”
“You got that right. Is the bum dead?”
“No. Not yet. But if he gets up with a gun in his hand he’s gonna be.”
“Good,” the bartender said, and dropped back down to the floor.
“God bless you boys!” a man called out from the street. “But you’d better watch out for Les’s deputies. They’re all as bad as he is.”
Gunsmoke and Gold Page 16