She didn’t acknowledge the apology. She didn’t care about cussing at the moment.
Her father put his left hand on one of the fence posts and kept his right near the butt of the gun on his hip. “It’s true that I’ve been generous and let your cows drink from this creek, Paxton. But it’s my creek, and I’ve decided that I need all the water from it. This is the only dependable water supply on the Double C after all.”
“It’s the only dependable water supply on Pax, too.”
Colton shook his head. “You’ve got another creek.”
“One that’s not worth a damn!” Paxton didn’t bother apologizing for his language this time.
“That’s not my problem,” Colton said.
Paxton’s eyes narrowed. “It will be when my men tear that fence down.”
Colton returned the intense, dangerous stare. “The first Pax man who lays a hand on this fence will get a bullet in his mangy hide.”
Paxton didn’t say anything to that. After a second, he turned and snapped at his sons, “You boys get on back to the ranch.”
“But, Pa—” one of them started to protest. Jessie didn’t know which. She’d never been able to tell Royce and Dave apart.
“Do what I tell you, blast it! You shouldn’t have come out here in the first place.”
While Paxton was trying to order his sons away, Colton made another attempt with his daughter. “Jessie, please ride on back home now.”
“And what do I tell Mama when she asks me where you are?” Jessie demanded. “That you’re out here getting yourself shot full of holes over a damned fence?”
“Jessie . . . I warn you, gal, I’m not gonna take much more talk like that from you.”
Colton stalked across the creek, water splashing up around his boots. Taking Jessie by surprise, he grabbed the reins of her horse from her and hauled the animal’s head around.
“Pa, what are you—”
Before she could finish the question, Colton snatched his hat off his head with his other hand and slapped it hard against the horse’s rump. “Hyaaah!” he shouted.
The horse leaped into a wild gallop, heading away from the creek.
The reins were trailing, and when Jessie lunged to grab them, she missed on the first couple of tries. After that, it was all she could do to stay in the saddle atop the bolting horse. Over the pounding of its hooves, she thought she heard angry yells.
Then she definitely heard shots as guns began to roar behind her.
Matt and Sam had taken rooms in Sweet Apple’s only boardinghouse, which was run by a hatchet-faced widow named Ferguson. Despite her intimidating appearance, she was really a friendly, kindly woman, and her biscuits were just about the best between San Antonio and El Paso. The blood brothers were just about to sit down to lunch in the house’s dining room along with some of the other boarders when Sandy Paxton hurried in with a worried expression on her pretty face. Seymour came in behind her, looking a mite worried himself.
“Thank goodness!” Sandy said when she saw Matt and Sam. “Marshal Standish . . . told me . . . I’d probably find you here.”
“What’s wrong, Sandy?” Sam asked.
She was a little out of breath, probably from a hard ride into town, so it took her a minute to get the answer out. “My father . . . and Jessie’s father . . . trouble at the creek between our ranches . . .”
Seymour put in, “Miss Paxton seems to think that there may be shooting.”
“Uncle Shad’s trying to . . . fence off the creek,” Sandy managed to say.
Matt and Sam exchanged a glance as their eyebrows rose in surprise. “Devil wire?” Matt asked.
Sandy nodded.
On nearly all of the vast ranches that filled the frontier from Montana to Texas, from the Milk River to the Rio Grande, open range was the rule. True cattlemen hated barbed wire with an unmatched passion. For Shad Colton to stoop to using the stuff, the rift between Double C and Pax had to be even deeper and more bitter than anyone had realized. Sandy was right—to deny water to thirsty cattle, and to do it by using devil wire, was a surefire recipe for gunplay.
She gasped out directions to the place where the confrontation was going to take place. Then Seymour stepped forward.
“Miss Paxton thought you two might be able to do something to stop her father and Mr. Colton from killing each other,” he said. “I’ll come with you.”
Matt and Sam shook their heads at the same time. “No offense, Seymour,” Sam said, “but you don’t have any authority out there.”
“Neither do you,” Seymour pointed out.
“Yeah, but we don’t have a marshal’s job to lose,” Matt said. “We’re just a couple of saddle tramps, remember?” He jerked his head at Sam. “Let’s ride.”
There was no hesitation on the part of either blood brother. They liked Jessie Colton and Sandy Paxton, and they didn’t want either of the young women having to mourn a dead father. They felt some respect for Shad Colton and Esau Paxton as well. Both ranchers were the sort of rock-solid pioneers who were helping to settle the West. Other than their hatred for each other, each was as fine an hombre as you could find.
“Thank you,” Sandy called after Matt and Sam. She swayed, suddenly a little unsteady on her feet, and put a hand on one of the chairs next to the dining table to brace herself.
Quickly, Mrs. Ferguson came up to her, put an arm around her shoulders, and urged her to sit down and get off her feet for a spell. “Land’s sakes, child, you’re plumb worn out! You must’ve just about rode your horse into the ground gettin’ here so fast.”
Seymour followed Matt and Sam outside as they went to the stable behind the boardinghouse where their horses were. As they saddled up, Seymour said again, “I can come with you.”
“You’ve got a job to do here in town,” Sam said. “The citizens of Sweet Apple are counting on you to keep the peace.”
“Besides,” Matt added, “it’ll be better if you don’t take sides in this fight. Men from Pax and the Double C ride into the settlement all the time, and it’s best that none of them think you’re one of the enemy. They’ll be more likely to behave themselves that way.”
“Well, yes, I suppose I can see that,” Seymour admitted. “And I doubt that my presence would be that helpful anyway. What sort of trouble could I handle that Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves couldn’t?”
Seymour needed to stop downgrading himself that way, Matt thought, but that conversation could wait until another time. Right now, he and Sam needed to get out to the creek between Pax and the Double C as fast as they could, so that maybe those two old he-wolves wouldn’t shoot each other full of holes.
They swung up into their saddles and put the horses into a hard run out of town. During the weeks they had been around Sweet Apple, they had ridden over the surrounding range several times, familiarizing themselves with the landscape. That was just habit. The more you knew about a place, the better, because you never knew when you might need to get from one spot to another in a hurry. And both of the blood brothers had a frontiersman’s eye. Once they had ridden over a trail, they would never forget it.
Because of that, they were able to make good time, but still, it was a good five miles from the settlement to the creek and it took a while to get there. With every minute that passed, Matt and Sam worried that a gun battle might have already broken out.
They were still half a mile from the creek, Matt reckoned, when he heard a faint popping over the drumming of hoofbeats. He glanced over at Sam and saw that his blood brother had heard the same thing. Those were gunshots, no doubt about it.
And it meant they were too late to stop this range war before it started.
Chapter 5
A couple of minutes later, Matt and Sam came in sight of the line of trees that marked the course of the creek. They were on the western side of the stream, so they couldn’t see very well what was going on to the east. The cottonwoods and mesquite screened off that part of the view.
But it wa
s obvious that the continuing gunfire came from over there. Clouds of smoke rose into the air, indicating that a lot of powder was being burned. Of course, Matt and Sam already knew that from the constant crashing of shots.
Movement on this side of the creek caught their attention. A rider careened at top speed across the flats. The long red hair blowing in the wind told Matt that the person in the saddle of that madly galloping horse was Jessie Colton.
“That horse is a runaway!” Sam called.
“I know!” Matt replied as he swung his mount into a course that would intercept the horse carrying Jessie. She seemed to have her hands full just hanging on. Matt figured she was a good rider, but even an excellent horsewoman would have trouble bringing a horse under control once it had lost its head.
He knew he was leaving Sam to deal with the fight between the forces from the Colton and Paxton ranches, at least for the time being, but he couldn’t help it. If that runaway horse stepped in a hole and tripped, or didn’t see a gully in time to avoid it, Jessie’s life would be in definite danger. Matt had to help her if he could.
His horse stretched out underneath him, running for all it was worth. Matt had been riding the rangy gray stallion for several years and knew the animal had plenty of strength, speed, and stamina, despite its mean-eyed, unprepossessing appearance. They swept over the plains now like a centaur, man and horse working together as one.
As they closed in on Jessie Colton and the runaway horse, Matt could see the fear on the young woman’s face. Jessie hadn’t given up, though. She was still trying to get hold of the trailing reins. It appeared that she couldn’t quite reach them.
Matt turned his horse more, so that he was riding in the same direction as Jessie. Leaning forward over the stallion’s neck, he urged the gray on. Gradually, the distance between Matt and Jessie began to shrink. He drew alongside her and reached over, balancing precariously in his saddle and trusting to his mount to maintain a steady pace. His fingers brushed the dangling reins. Matt strained forward and closed his hands around the lines. He straightened in the saddle and hauled back on them.
Jessie’s horse settled down as soon as it felt a strong hand on the reins. Matt slowed both animals to a walk and then brought them to a stop. He held out the reins to Jessie and said, “Here you go.”
She was trembling and holding tightly to the saddle horn. But with a flare of defiance in her eyes, she let go of the horn with one hand and took the reins from Matt.
“Thanks. I could have gotten him under control, but I appreciate you giving me a hand.”
Matt was about to grin at this display of stubborn pride on Jessie’s part, but a fresh spurt of gunfire from the creek made both of them turn in their saddles and stare back in that direction.
“You’ve got to stop them before they all kill each other!” Jessie cried.
“I reckon Sam’s working on that already,” Matt said. He couldn’t resist adding, “But I’ll go see if I can give him a hand, too.”
When Matt had peeled off to go to Jessie’s rescue, Sam had continued on toward the creek. Not at the breakneck gallop Matt was using. Sam proceeded more cautiously, because he didn’t know exactly what he was getting into and lead was flying over there.
He got proof of that when he heard the wind-rip of a bullet passing uncomfortably close to his head. He rode into the trees along the western bank of the stream and swung down from the saddle, pulling his Winchester from the saddle boot as he did so. The cottonwoods and mesquites weren’t very tall and had slender trunks, but they were better than nothing as far as cover was concerned. Sam pressed his back against a cottonwood trunk and edged his head around for a look-see.
Close to a dozen men were sprawled on their bellies along the eastern bank, firing at a low hummock of ground about a hundred yards away. The slight rise was forty or fifty feet long. Puffs of gun smoke rose from the grassy crest.
Sam spotted the burly figure of Shad Colton among the men lying along the creek bank. It was pretty easy to figure out what had happened. When the battle had broken out, Colton and his men had dug in here, using the bank for cover, while Paxton and his men had retreated and taken shelter behind that hummock. Neither force was in a particularly good position, and judging from the smoke Sam saw along the rise, they were about equal in numbers. It was a standoff. They could keep this up as long as they didn’t run out of ammunition.
Although Sam saw a few bright splashes of blood on the clothes of the Double C men, none of them seemed to be badly wounded. They were all still in the fight. He hoped the same was true of Esau Paxton and the Pax riders.
But even if it was, things wouldn’t stay that way. Somebody was bound to be killed if this kept up. Sam didn’t want that.
So he did the only thing he could to break up this stalemate. He drew a bead with his Winchester and blew Shad Colton’s hat right off his head, drilling it neatly through the crown.
By the time Colton’s hat flew in the air and the redheaded rancher let out a yell of surprise, Sam had worked the rifle’s lever and was ready to fire again. As Colton started to roll over, Sam bellowed, “Hold your fire! Don’t move! Hold your fire, or I’ll drill your boss next time, not his hat!”
He wasn’t going to shoot Colton, but the rest of the men didn’t have to know that. As the gunfire died away, Sam heard hoofbeats coming closer. He risked a glance and saw Matt approaching at a gallop. That had to mean Jessie was all right.
“Matt!” Sam called. “Bring in the Paxton bunch!” He waved a hand toward the hummock to indicate where they were located, while keeping the Winchester pointing at Colton with the other hand.
Matt waved to show that he understood, and turned his horse to circle around the spot where Sam had taken Colton’s men prisoner. The guns along the crest of the rise had fallen silent, too, in response to the Double C ceasing fire.
It was a precarious truce, though. One of Colton’s men yelled, “Damn it! There’s only one man back there in the trees! I don’t care if he does have the drop on us, we can blast him to hell!”
An older man with a ruggedly powerful face said, “I recognize that hombre. He’s Sam Two Wolves. If you want to get a hole blowed through you, you just try to gun him, Sloan!”
The loudmouth didn’t seem to care much for that idea. He didn’t say anything else. But Sam knew that he was still facing nearly a dozen armed, angry men, and even though he had them at a slight disadvantage right now, that might not last very long.
“What do you want, Two Wolves?” Shad Colton demanded.
“For you to show a little sense, Colton,” Sam snapped. “Going to war against Paxton’s not going to solve anything.”
“Tell that to Paxton. He’s the one who started the ball, damn it! One of his men fired the first shot!”
Sam didn’t know if that was true or not, since he hadn’t been here when it happened. It didn’t surprise him that Colton made such a claim. Men who were mixed up in a feud always felt like they were in the right and the other side was in the wrong.
Meanwhile, Matt pulled out his bandanna and tied it to the end of his rifle barrel. The bandanna was red, not white, but he hoped it would serve as a flag of truce anyway. Either that, or it would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull, he thought with a grim smile as he rode toward them with the rifle barrel upraised. He saw one of Paxton’s cowboys holding their horses, about two hundred yards behind the hummock.
Paxton and his men had stopped shooting, and they held their fire as Matt approached. They turned so that they could cover him, though, and he felt distinctly uncomfortable with nearly a dozen rifles and six-guns pointing at him. Several of the men had bloodstains on their clothing, but none of them seemed to be hurt badly. In the dime novels, everybody was a great shot, but in reality, a gunfight was a confusing, terrifying blur to most men. Sometimes hundreds of shots were fired without doing any serious damage. That appeared to be the case here, at least on the Paxton side. Matt couldn’t say yet about Colton and his m
en.
“Bodine!” Esau Paxton said as Matt reined to a halt a few yards away. “What are you doing here?”
“Tryin’ to keep you idiots from killin’ each other,” Matt said, not bothering to be diplomatic about it. Diplomacy had never been his strong suit anyway. “Your daughter rode into Sweet Apple and told us what was goin’ on out here.”
Paxton glared at him. “You’ve got no authority except in the settlement, and you’re not even real deputies there. What the hell makes you think you can tell us what to do?”
Matt had lowered the Winchester as he reined in, and he smiled thinly as he said, “The fact that I’ve got this rifle pointed at you, Paxton. That’s why I think I can tell you what to do.”
Paxton paled a little, but he didn’t lose any of his belligerence. “You pull that trigger and you’ll be full of lead a second later,” he threatened.
“More than likely,” Matt agreed. “But you’ll be dead before me.”
Their gazes dueled for a second, Paxton’s hot rage doing battle with Matt’s icy-nerved calm. Matt won out, as Paxton growled at his men, “Hold your fire. Put your guns down.” He turned back to Matt. “What do you want from us?”
“Go on back over to the creek and talk to Colton,” Matt said. “Just you. Your men stay here.”
Paxton gave a snort of disgust. “That bastard’s liable to shoot me. He already tried to. He and his men started this fight, not us.”
“I don’t care who started it. And Colton’s not gonna shoot anybody, because my blood brother Sam Two Wolves is holding a gun on him right now. Get it through your head, Paxton—this fight’s over.”
Paxton didn’t look like he believed that for a second. He said, “Have Colton come out of the trees and meet me halfway. Then maybe I’ll talk to him. Although it’s not going to do a damned bit of good. That hardheaded son of a bitch won’t listen to reason. He never would.”
Ride for Vengeance Page 4