Thunder of Eagles

Chapter One

The school in Sweet Apple, Texas, not far from the Rio Grande, wasn’t serving its usual function tonight. The benches and desks had been moved to create a large open space in the middle of the floor, and dancing couples filled that space, swirling around in time to the tunes played by several fiddlers and a trio of Mexicans with guitars. The music was loud and raucous, and so were the stomping feet and the laughter of those attending the dance.

Folks in Sweet Apple were having a high old time.

Matt Bodine leaned against one of the walls of the schoolroom and sighed. “All these pretty gals,” he said, “and not one of them wants to dance with me.”

“Stop complaining,” said Matt’s blood brother, Sam August Webster Two Wolves. “We’re working, remember?”

In truth, probably all of the young, eligible women in Sweet Apple and the vicinity—because everybody within riding distance came to town for a get-together like this—would have been glad to dance with either Matt or Sam, because the blood brothers were both tall, muscular, and handsome. They could have almost passed for real brothers. Matt’s hair was dark brown, while Sam’s was black as a raven’s wing. Matt’s eyes were blue, Sam’s such a dark gray as to be almost black. Sam also had the high cheekbones and slightly reddish cast to his tanned skin that he had inherited from his father, Medicine Horse, a Cheyenne warrior who had been killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Unlike nearly all the other members of his tribe, Medicine Horse had been educated in the East, at a white man’s university. It was there he had met and married Sam’s mother, who when Sam was a young man had insisted that he receive a college education, too.

Matt hadn’t gotten the benefits of such advanced schooling, but he possessed a keen natural intelligence. The son of a pioneer Montana ranching family, he had been Sam Two Wolves’ best friend since both of them were very young men, no more than kids really. Matt had been accepted into the Cheyenne tribe because of his bond with Sam. They were Onihomahan—Brothers of the Wolf.

Although they both owned sizable cattle spreads in Montana, both young men were too fiddle-footed to stay in one place for too long, so for the past few years they had been drifting around the West, usually landing smack-dab in the middle of trouble even though that wasn’t their intention. But they couldn’t turn their backs on folks in trouble, nor pass up the chance for an adventure.

Which was how they’d come to wind up in the rough-and-tumble border town of Sweet Apple, working as unofficial deputies for the town’s lawman, Marshal Seymour Standish. It was a long story involving owlhoots, Mexican revolutionaries (a fancy name for bandidos), and a train car full of U.S. Army rifles. Much powder had been burned. The air in Sweet Apple’s main street had been full of gun smoke and hot lead. Blood had been spilled, including a mite that belonged to Matt Bodine. But in the weeks since that big ruckus, things had been fairly peaceful in town.

Matt and Sam knew that wouldn’t last. It never did.

Tonight they were dressed a little fancier than usual for the dance, Matt in a brown tweed suit instead of his usual jeans and blue bib-front shirt, Sam in dark gray wool instead of his buckskins. They both wore boiled white shirts and string ties. Matt pulled at his collar and grimaced in discomfort and distaste.

“Damn thing feels like a noose,” he muttered. “This must be what it’s like to get strung up.”

“Are you going to complain about everything tonight?” Sam asked.

“I might.” Matt’s eyes followed the slender, graceful, redheaded form of Jessie Colton as she danced with one of the men from Sweet Apple.

“Oh,” Sam said. “I understand now. You’re mad because you haven’t gotten to dance with Jessie yet.”

“I saw you eyein’ Sandy Paxton,” Matt shot back. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t rather be out there with her instead of standin’ here holdin’ up this damned wall.”

“We’re doing more than that. We’re keeping an eye on the men from the Double C and Pax.”

Matt had to admit that those cowboys did need to be kept an eye on. Like the men who rode for all the other spreads in the area, the hands from the Double C and Pax ranches had come into Sweet Apple for the dance. They all knew that hostilities had to be put aside at the door. That was the plan anyway. Whether or not it worked might be another story entirely.

Once Pax and Double C had been one vast ranch, owned by cousins Esau Paxton and Shadrach Colton. Matt and Sam knew that much, but they had no idea why, somewhere along the way, the spread had been broken in two and Paxton and Colton had become bitter enemies. That was the case, though, and the feud was still going on.

Since Western men rode for the brand, the enemies of a cowboy’s boss became the cowboy’s enemies, too. That feeling had led to more than one brawl between riders from the two ranches. Here lately, as sort-of deputies, Matt and Sam had been forced to break up some of those ruckuses.

So far tonight, the men from Pax and Double C hadn’t done any more than eye each other suspiciously. Matt and Sam hoped it stayed that way.

Marshal Standish went by them, dancing with Magdalena Elena Louisa O’Ryan, the pretty little half-Mexican, half-Irish schoolmarm. Maggie O’Ryan had a big smile on her face. She was sweet on Seymour, and the feeling was returned.

Seymour glanced over Maggie’s shoulder at Matt and Sam, who each gave him a curt nod signifying that everything was all right so far. Seymour looked both relieved and happy. His face was flushed from the exertion of dancing, but it wasn’t as noticeable as it would have been a month or so earlier when he’d first arrived in Sweet Apple from Trenton, New Jersey. He’d been a salesman then, for the Standish Dry Goods Company, not a lawman. He’d also been pale as bread dough and just about as courageous. In fact, he’d been known for a time as the Most Cowardly Man in the West, a tag slapped on him by the local newspaper editor.

Nobody thought of him that way anymore, not after he’d stood up to the fierce outlaw Deuce Mallory and Mallory’s bloodthirsty gang, as well as the vicious bandits led by Diego Alcazarrio. Seymour was still slender and a little pale—although he was starting to tan a little—but he carried himself with more confidence, and with tutoring from Matt and Sam, he was getting better every day with the six-gun he now packed in a holster on his hip.

A couple of well-fed, middle-aged gents sidled up to the blood brothers. Abner Mitchell was a local merchant and the mayor of Sweet Apple; J. Emerson Heathcote published the newspaper and served on the town council with Mitchell and some of the other businessmen.

“It appears that everything’s under control,” Mitchell said as he hooked his thumbs in his vest. Even when he wasn’t trying to make a speech, his words came out with a certain blustery quality to them. Matt supposed that Mitchell was just a natural-born politician. He’d probably launched into an oration for the first time when the midwife slapped him on the ass after birthing him.

“I see that everyone from the Double C and Pax came into town tonight,” Heathcote said with a worried air.

“Of course they did,” Matt said. “It’s a dance. Everybody comes to a dance.”

“If there’s trouble, perhaps in the future the ranches could alternate—”

“No offense, Mr. Heathcote,” Sam cut in, “but you’re getting ahead of yourself. Everybody knows the rules. No matter what happens out on the range, when you step into a dance you leave all that behind.”

Heathcote nodded. “Yes, yes, I know. But some of those young cowhands are pretty hotheaded—”

“If anything happens, we’ll take care of it,” Matt said. He moved his coat aside a little to reveal the walnut grips on the butt of the gun holstered at his right hip. A matching Colt revolver rode on his left hip, covered up at the moment by his coat.

It was pretty obvious what he meant. No matter how reckless and impulsive they were, folks tended to listen to Matt Bodine, because he was known from one end of the West to the other as a gunfighter. He was deadly accurate with his shots, and nobody was slicker and faster on the draw than Matt except for the legendary Smoke Jensen, and maybe, just maybe, a youngster down Texas way named Morgan.

What was sometimes forgotten was that Matt’s blood brother Sam Two Wolves was only a hair slower on the draw. Together, they were as formidable a pair as had ever ridden Western trails, a pair of Western aces if ever there was one.

Their reputation had quelled trouble by itself on more than one occasion. If more than that was required, they could certainly provide it. But nobody wanted gunplay at a dance like this, especially with the whole town in attendance and kids running around underfoot.

The musicians reached the end of a song and paused for a minute before launching into the rollicking strains of another tune. Seymour came up to Matt, Sam, Mayor Mitchell, and J. Emerson Heathcote. The marshal was out of breath and sweating a little. He had been wounded in the battle a couple of weeks earlier, too, and maybe he wasn’t quite back up to his full strength yet.

“My word, that young lady can dance!” he said.

Heathcote dug an elbow into Seymour’s side. “You aren’t complaining, though, are you, Marshal?”

Seymour turned even redder, but he said, “Not in the slightest.”

“Sitting this one out?”

“Yes, Maggie said she needed to catch her breath, and to tell the truth, so do I. I was glad to oblige her.”

“Do I hear matrimonial bells in the offing? Should I save space on the front page of the paper for a wedding story?”

Seymour looked shocked. “Good Lord, no!” As the other men grinned at him, he hurried on. “I mean, that would be vastly premature. Perhaps someday…if Maggie and I…I mean, if Miss O’Ryan and I continue to…grow closer…I mean, if we decide that we want to…”

“Why don’t you stop right there, Seymour?” Matt drawled. “I reckon we all get your drift.”

Seymour took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. “Good.” He paused and then went on. “I saw some of the men from the Double C going out the back door a few minutes ago.”

“Probably somebody’s got a jug outside,” Matt said.

“They’ll guzzle down some of that Who-hit-John and then be back inside,” Sam added.

Seymour nodded. “I suspect that you’re correct. The only reason I was worried was because I saw Jeff Riley and some of the men from Pax follow them.”

Matt stiffened when he heard that. Jeff Riley was Esau Paxton’s top horse-breaker, and he was one of those hotheads Heathcote had alluded to. He’d been involved in more than one scuffle with riders from the Double C. Matt supposed that all the jerking and jolting Riley’s brain had gotten while he was on the backs of those wild broncs might have something to do with the man’s rash behavior.

“Maybe we’d better go take a look, just to make sure nothing’s brewing,” Sam suggested.

Matt nodded. “The back door, you said?” he asked Seymour.

“That’s right,” Seymour replied. “I’d better come with you.”

“That’s all right,” Matt said quickly.

“We can handle this,” Sam said. “Might be better for you to keep an eye on things in here, Marshal.”

“Oh.” Seymour blinked. “Of course. I’ll stay in here while the two of you see what’s going on outside.”

Seymour was trying to sound decisive, but it didn’t really come across that way. Matt felt bad about the way he and Sam had contradicted Seymour’s decision to come with them, especially in front of Heathcote and Mitchell.

But even though Seymour had come a long way and nobody questioned his courage anymore, he was still pretty inexperienced when it came to gun trouble. Matt and Sam were both confident that they could handle anything the Double C and Pax crews might come up with, but it would be easier if they didn’t have to worry about Seymour accidentally getting in the way of a bullet.

The blood brothers didn’t seem to hurry as they crossed the room, skirting around the dancers. But there wasn’t a wasted movement between them, and they arrived at the rear door pretty quickly.

Not quite quickly enough, though, Matt saw as he and Sam stepped outside. The moon and the glow of lamplight that came through the windows of the school building provided enough light for them to be able to see the two compact groups of men facing each other. The cowboys crouched, their hands hovering over the butts of their guns as they stood ready to hook and draw.

In the next breath, the next heartbeat, shots would roar out, Colt flame would bloom in the night, and men would die.