Moonshine Massacre

Chapter 10

As the settlement fell behind them, Sam said, “You’re going to feel a mite foolish if that girl gets home safely and we’ve wasted our time.”

“Not a bit,” Matt insisted. “I’ll be plumb satisfied if she does. You don’t think I go around hopin’ to run into trouble, do you?”

Sam grunted but didn’t make any other reply.

They rode at a fast pace, the miles falling behind them as they followed the main trail by moonlight. Matt kept his eyes peeled for any sign of the buckboard up ahead, but he couldn’t see well enough in the darkness to spot it.

They might be practically on top of the vehicle by the time they saw it, Matt knew, and that could cause Frankie Harlow to believe she was being attacked, as Ike Loomis had cautioned them. Matt couldn’t think of any way to solve that problem, though. If Frankie started shooting at them, they would have to yell for her to hold her fire and assure her that they meant no harm.

As it turned out, the blood brothers didn’t have to worry about that happening, though, because about half an hour after they left Cottonwood, Matt suddenly brought his horse to a halt and asked, “Do you hear that?”

A flurry of popping sounds drifted through the night air.

“Yeah, I hear it,” Sam replied. “That’s gunfire, coming from somewhere up ahead.”

“Damn it, I knew that gal was gonna run into trouble! I just knew it!” Matt jabbed his boot heels into his horse’s flanks and sent the animal leaping ahead at a gallop. “Come on!”

They rode hard toward the source of the gunshots. To Matt’s way of thinking, there was only one explanation that made any sense: Frankie Harlow had run into the group of special marshals, and they had opened fire on her, probably when they called on her to halt and she kept going.

It wasn’t a running fight, though, Matt knew, because he and Sam were drawing closer to the shots. Frankie must have forted up somewhere and tried to hold off the marshals. Fear gnawed at Matt’s vitals. Would Bickford and Porter and their hired guns toss a bomb at her, not knowing that she was a woman?

And even if they did know, would it make any difference to them?

Matt and Sam swept around a bend in the trail and suddenly spotted orange muzzle flashes spouting in the shadows up ahead to their right. There was enough silvery moonlight to reveal that the buggy was lying on its side in the road about a hundred yards ahead of them. The horses weren’t hitched to the vehicle anymore and weren’t even in sight. The team must have broken loose when the shooting started and the buckboard overturned, Matt thought. That would have occurred as Frankie was trying to flee from the bushwhackers.

Because an ambush was exactly what it had been, Matt saw in that fleeting second. Half a dozen riflemen were firing down at the buckboard from the cover of a tree-topped ridge to the north. They must have been hidden there, waiting for Frankie to come along. Then they had opened fire on her as she drove the buckboard past them…the dirty bastards.

The only good thing he could see was that Frankie was still alive. Muzzle flashes came from behind the buckboard as she returned the bushwhackers’ fire. She might be hurt, but she was still capable of putting up a fight. From the sound of the sharp cracks, she’d had a rifle with her in the vehicle.

Matt pulled his Winchester from its saddle sheath and called to Sam, “We’ll split up and come at that ridge from different directions!”

“Right!” Sam called back, indicating that he understood. The blood brothers had ridden together for so long and found themselves in so many desperate battles that it didn’t take much for each of them to know what the other was thinking.

They veered their horses apart and headed for the ridge, Matt going to the left and Sam to the right. They guided their horses with their knees and opened fire on the bushwhackers as they charged.

The gunmen must have spotted their muzzle flashes right away and realized that this was a new threat. Several of them switched their attention to Matt and Sam. At least that drew some of the fire away from Frankie Harlow, Matt thought as a slug whipped past his head, close enough for him to hear it. He sprayed the trees along the ridgetop with bullets as fast as he would work the rifle’s lever, and off to his right, Sam was doing the same thing.

Matt lowered the Winchester, snatched the reins out of his mouth where he had put them, and hauled his mount to the right so that he wouldn’t come between Frankie and the bushwhackers and ride right into her line of fire. Sam changed his angle of attack, too, heading farther north so that he could circle the eastern end of the ridge and get behind the hidden gunmen. If he could pull that off, they would have the bushwhackers in a cross fire.

The men on the ridge must have figured that out, too, because the muzzle flashes from up there abruptly ceased. They didn’t want to be trapped. Matt hauled his horse to a stop and listened, and a moment later he heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats from the far side of the ridge. The bushwhackers were getting out of there while they still had a chance to do so. If they had waited, they might have been pinned down. That would have been a neat job of turning the tables on them, despite the odds, Matt thought.

Instead, the varmints were taking off for the tall and uncut, and Sam wouldn’t be in position yet to stop them.

All the shooting had stopped now. Frankie must have realized that the bushwhackers had given up, too. Matt swung his mount around and rode slowly toward the wrecked buckboard. He hoped that Frankie would have seen how he and Sam threw themselves into the battle on her side and would know that they were friends.

She might suspect that, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Another shot suddenly blasted from behind the buckboard. The slug kicked up dirt ten yards in front of Matt’s horse.

“Don’t come any closer!” a woman’s voice called. “I’ve got a bead on you, mister, and I’ll drill you if you do!”

Matt reined in and said, “Hold your fire. I’m on your side, Miss Harlow.”

There was a moment of silence, then she said, “You know who I am?”

“Frankie Harlow, right? We haven’t been introduced, but my friend and I heard about you back in Cottonwood. My name’s Matt Bodine.”

“Did you just happen to come along here when that bunch opened up on me, Matt Bodine?” Frankie’s voice held a definite edge of suspicion.

Better to be truthful with her, Matt decided. “No, Sam and I were following you. That’s Sam Two Wolves, by the way. Reckon he’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Following me?” Frankie repeated. “What for?”

“We wanted to make sure you got home safe.”

Matt heard a snort of disdain from behind the buckboard. “Likely story. That’s why strange men always follow a gal at night, because they’re so concerned about her safety.”

“It’s true,” Matt insisted. “You see, we know what you had on that buckboard earlier.”

Again, suspicion was sharp in Frankie’s voice as she declared, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were delivering some of the moonshine that you and your family brew to Ike Loomis’s hidden saloon in that old abandoned barn.” A little impatience crept into Matt’s voice as he added, “Does that make it clear enough?”

Before Frankie could reply, Matt heard a horse approaching. The young woman did, too, because she called, “Who’s that?”

“Sam Two Wolves, miss,” Sam replied. “A friend, so please don’t shoot me.”

“Over here, Sam,” Matt called. A moment later, his blood brother rode up.

“All right, you two, stay there where I can see you,” Frankie warned. “I’ll blow you out of your saddles if I have to. I can do it, too.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second, Miss Harlow,” Matt said. He stayed where he was, not making any threatening movements, and so did Sam.

Frankie stepped out from behind the buckboard and leveled a rifle at them. Matt could see her slim figure fairly well in the moonlight, which meant she could see them, too. Judging by the easy, graceful way she moved, she hadn’t been wounded in the attack or injured in the wreck.

“Get down off those horses,” she ordered.

Matt and Sam did as she said, swinging down from their saddles and standing beside the horses, holding the reins. “Did you get a look at that bunch?” Matt asked.

“No such luck,” Sam replied. “They had already taken off by the time I could get around the end of the ridge. I didn’t even waste any lead hurrying them on their way.”

Frankie said, “You two could’ve been killed, you know.”

“So could you,” Matt said. “Looks like you might’ve come close when that buckboard turned over.”

“Did the team break loose and run away?” Sam asked.

“That’s right. Those horses probably didn’t go far, though. I can find them and ride one of them back to my pa’s place.”

“We’d be glad to give you a hand,” Matt offered. “If the buckboard doesn’t have a cracked axle or a busted wheel, we can set it upright, find the horses, and hitch them up again.”

“You’d go to that much trouble for me?”

“Sure,” Matt answered promptly. “It wouldn’t be that much trouble. Ain’t that right, Sam?”

Sam’s innate chivalry wouldn’t let him disagree. “We’d be glad to do that, Miss Harlow.”

She finally lowered the rifle slightly and said, “You two sound like you mean it.”

“We do,” Matt assured her. “Just give us a chance to show you.”

Frankie hesitated a few seconds longer, then lowered the rifle the rest of the way. “All right,” she said. “I’m much obliged for the help.”

She stepped back as Matt and Sam led their mounts forward. Sam handed his reins to Matt, then went to check over the buckboard as best he could in the darkness. After he’d inspected the vehicle for a few minutes, he said, “It seems sound enough. Let’s tie our ropes to it and pull it back onto its wheels.”

This wasn’t the first time the blood brothers had righted an overturned wagon. They knew what they were doing, and within a few minutes they had tied their ropes to the buckboard, made the other ends fast to their saddles, and had the horses backing away to pull the ropes taut. Matt and Sam went around to the other side of the buckboard and bent to get hold of it, then called out to their horses to back some more. With a creaking of ropes and grunts of effort from the two young men, the buckboard lifted and fell over onto its iron wheels, upright once more. Sam started checking the axles and wheels again to make sure their salvage efforts hadn’t done any damage.

Matt said, “I’ll go find those horses that ran off.”

“You’d better take me with you,” Frankie said. “They know me, and they’ll be less likely to bolt if they hear a familiar voice.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Matt mounted, then held a hand down to her, leaving the stirrup on that side empty so she could use it to help her step up. Frankie hesitated, but only for a second. Then she clasped Matt’s wrist and let him help her onto the horse’s back. She sat behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist to hang on.

“Which way did they go?” he asked.

“They were still headed west, the last I saw of them.”

“Then that’s the way we’ll go,” Matt said as he heeled his horse into motion.