Moonshine Massacre

Chapter 12

The impact knocked the breath out of both Matt and Sam, momentarily stunning them. Matt blinked his eyes and gasped for breath. He had twisted as he fell, so that he landed on his back, and he could see the dark figure looming above him and raising a club of some sort.

The realization that the varmint intended to bludgeon his brains out galvanized Matt’s muscles. His iron will allowed him to shake off the effects of the fall. He heaved up from the ground and threw his right fist at his attacker. At the same time, his left hand shot up and grabbed the man’s wrist as the killing blow started to fall.

Because of his position, Matt’s blow didn’t have much power behind it, but it landed cleanly on the man’s jaw. That was enough to make the man lean to the side, and from there, Matt was able to buck him off.

A few yards away, Sam had his hands full, too. He recovered his wits and jerked his head aside just before a club came smashing down on it. His attacker was bending down close enough so that Sam was able to reach up and lock his hands around the man’s neck. The two of them went rolling across the ground, grappling desperately.

Matt leaped after the man who had knocked him off his horse. He drove a knee into the man’s side, eliciting a gasp of pain. Matt clubbed his hands together and swung them in a powerful blow that stretched his opponent out on the ground.

Sam had the upper hand by now, too. The man he was fighting was small and wiry, but his strength was no match for Sam’s. Keeping a steady pressure on the man’s neck, Sam continued choking him. He intended to ease off as soon as the man passed out from lack of air and went limp.

Before that could happen, a shot blasted. Sam heard the bullet whine over his head.

“Stop it!” Frankie Harlow yelled. “You’re killing him! Let him go!”

Matt’s attacker seemed to be out cold. He saw Frankie fire the warning shot over Sam’s head and surged up from the ground, worried that she might fire again and not miss that time. She was standing beside the buckboard holding the ivory-handled revolver as Matt lunged at her and grabbed her from behind. He wrapped his left arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet as he reached around her with his right and snagged her wrist. He jerked her arm up. The gun went off again, but this time the bullet was directed harmlessly into the sky.

“You’re the one who’d better stop it,” Matt told her as she writhed and struggled in his grip. “Somebody’s gonna get hurt if you’re not careful!”

“Damn right,” a new voice threatened, “and it’s gonna be you if you don’t let go o’ my little girl!”

Sam had climbed to his feet, but he froze, as did Matt, as three shadowy figures pointing rifles closed in around them.

“Take it easy, mister,” Matt said to the man who had spoken. “You can’t shoot me without runnin’ the risk of hittin’ Frankie, too.”

“No, but my boys can sure ventilate that friend o’ yours,” the man replied. “And don’t count on me not bein’ able to blow your brains out. I growed up knockin’ squirrels outta trees with an old flintlock, back in the Smoky Mountains. My aim’s as good as it ever was, even at night like this.”

Matt didn’t really believe that, but he didn’t see any point in pressing the issue, especially since he had figured out by now that this was all just a misunderstanding. He said, “Put your gun down, Mr. Harlow. We’re friends.”

The man gave a little grunt of surprise. “How do you know who I am?”

“Who else could you be? You called Frankie here your little girl.”

“You know Frankie?”

Sam said, “Why do you think we were riding with her?”

“Didn’t know,” Thurman Harlow responded. “That’s what we was aimin’ to find out.”

Frankie had stopped struggling. She snapped at Matt, “You can let go of me now.”

“Not just yet,” Matt said. “Your pa and your brothers might decide to start shootin’.”

Besides, although it wasn’t very gentlemanly to admit it, he enjoyed having his arms around her.

“Nobody’s gonna do any more shooting,” Frankie said. “You hear that, Pa? Put your gun down. Alf, you and Quint lower yours, too.”

“You know these fellas, Frankie?” Thurman Harlow asked.

“Yeah. They gave me a hand earlier when Cimarron Kane and his bunch ambushed me on the road back from town.”

“Kane!” Harlow exclaimed bitterly. “That son of a bitch. Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Frankie replied. “Thanks in part to Bodine and Two Wolves here.”

Harlow lowered his rifle and motioned for his sons to do likewise. “Help your brothers,” he told them. “Get ’em on their feet and take ’em back to the house.”

“All right, Pa,” one of the younger men said.

Frankie turned her head toward Matt. “Are you convinced you can let me go now?”

“I’ll risk it,” he said. He released her.

She slipped out of his arms, whirled around suddenly, and jabbed the barrel of her gun under Matt’s chin. He stood absolutely still, knowing that it would take only the slightest pressure on the trigger for her to send a bullet into his brain.

“Don’t you ever lay hands on me again,” she said between clenched teeth, “unless I ask you to.”

She was a tall girl, and her face was only inches from his. He felt the warmth of her breath on his cheek. Maybe it was foolish under the circumstances, he thought, but he wanted to lean forward and kiss her. Instead, he said, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Wrong with me?” she repeated, clearly surprised by the question.

“All Sam and I have done tonight is try to help you, and not only do we get jumped by your brothers, you keep actin’ like you want to bite our heads off every time you turn around!”

She stared at him for a second, then sputtered in outrage, “You…you…”

“I’ve had enough of this.” Matt reached up, closed his hand around the gun she was digging into his neck, and wrenched it aside. Another twist pulled it out of her fingers. He turned and extended the gun toward Thurman Harlow, saying, “Here. Until you teach your daughter some manners, maybe she shouldn’t be packin’ iron.”

Harlow chuckled and said, “Your mistake, mister, is thinkin’ that I can teach that little wildcat much of anything.”

Frankie gasped, evidently as mad at her father now as she was at Matt for grabbing her.

“What we all need to do is sit down and talk,” Sam suggested, the voice of reason as usual. “We’re not looking for trouble, Mr. Harlow. We just wanted to make sure Miss Frankie got home safely after that fight with Cimarron Kane and his men.”

“His relatives, you mean,” Harlow said. “Everybody on the Kane spread is blood kin in one way or another, even if they ain’t all called Kane. Cimarron’s got a bunch of nephews and shirttail cousins, and they’re all a sorry lot.” Harlow tucked his rifle under his arm, another sign that the hostilities were over, at least for now. “Come on to the house and have a drink. If you boys helped out Frankie, then I owe you.”

Matt said, “If the drink you’re offerin’ is the same stuff you sell to Ike Loomis for his saloon, then we accept.”

Harlow chuckled again. “Like it, do you?”

“It’s prime drinkin’ whiskey,” Matt declared.

“Frankie, bring the buckboard on in,” Harlow ordered. “You fellas come with me.”

Frankie’s disgusted snort said that she didn’t like being given orders like that, but she didn’t argue. She climbed back onto the buckboard’s seat while Matt and Sam picked up their hats, took the reins of their horses, and led the animals as they followed Thurman Harlow. The four brothers had already disappeared through the cut.

The trail came out into the open beyond the ridges, and Matt and Sam saw the light from a cabin that backed up to the last ridge. It was a sprawling structure that had probably started out as a small soddy before being expanded with timbers and more blocks of sod. Several tin stovepipes stuck up through the sod roof. A barn and a corral sat beyond the cabin.

The door stood open, letting yellow lantern light spill out into the night. As Harlow led Matt and Sam toward it, he said, “You boys put your horses in the corral. You’re welcome to spend the night in the barn, if you’re of a mind to. It’s a mite late to be headin’ back to town tonight.”

The blood brothers had been planning to return to Cottonwood. They had rooms in the hotel, after all. But when Matt glanced over at Sam, he shrugged and said, “It’s up to you, Matt.”

“Well…it is pretty late,” Matt said. “We might just take you up on that, Mr. Harlow.”

“You’ll be welcome. Any friend o’ Frankie’s has got a place to stay with us.”

“You did see her shove a gun barrel in my throat, didn’t you?” Matt asked.

“Yeah, but she didn’t shoot you,” Harlow pointed out. “She can be a mite touchy, but I’d say she likes you.”

Matt just shook his head.

By the time he and Sam had led their mounts into the corral and unsaddled them, Frankie had driven the buckboard into the barn. Not surprisingly, she refused their offer to help her unhitch the team, saying curtly, “I can take care of it. Go on in the house.”

Matt shrugged and told Sam, “Let’s go.”

The door was still open. They walked in and found themselves in a large, surprisingly comfortably furnished room with a plank floor, rugs, several heavy chairs and a divan, and a polished hardwood dining table with a matching china cabinet sitting against one wall.

Harlow must have noticed them looking around. “Most of these things belonged to my folks back in the Smokies,” he explained. “When we come west, we brung ’em with us. I wanted to have a little touch o’ home wherever we wound up.”

“It’s a nice place,” Sam said.

The four Harlow brothers sat at the table. The ones who had tackled Matt and Sam looked up with surly expressions. It was clear they didn’t like the fact that the blood brothers had gotten the better of them. They didn’t make a move to get up and start the fight again, though.

“Why did your boys jump us like that?” Matt asked.

Harlow hung his rifle on a couple of hooks fastened to the wall. “Frankie was late gettin’ back from town,” he explained. “I don’t like her takin’ the deliveries in by herself, but she gets her back up when you tell you she can’t do somethin’.”

“We noticed,” Matt said dryly.

“Anyway, we was a mite worried about her,” Harlow went on, “and we thought we heard some shootin’ a while ago, but we couldn’t be sure. We went out to watch the trail, and when we seen Frankie comin’ with a couple of strangers followin’ her, we figured she might’ve been took prisoner. Dex and Farrell climbed up on those banks to take you fellas by surprise.”

“That’s exactly what they did,” Sam said. “I’m sorry if we hurt either of them.”

One of the brothers said in a hoarse voice, “Liked to choke me to death, that’s what you done, you big varmint.”

“Well, you were trying to club our brains out,” Sam reminded him.

Harlow said, “Yeah, and I didn’t tell you boys to do that. I never said nothin’ about killin’ nobody.”

All the men in the Harlow family were on the short side, with sandy hair and muddy brown eyes. They weren’t much for looks, Matt thought. Frankie must have inherited her beauty from her mother. Matt didn’t see any sign of an older woman in the cabin and wondered if Frankie’s mother had passed away.

Frankie came in from putting away the buckboard and the team. She rested her hands on her hips, glared at her father, and asked, “What are we gonna do about the Kanes?”

“What do you reckon we ought to do?” Harlow said.

“I think we should ride over there and kill ’em all!” Anger made Frankie’s eyes blaze. “If they want a war, we’ll damn well give ’em one!”

“Cimarron Kane’s a gunslinger and an outlaw,” her father pointed out, “and the rest of that bunch is rough as a cob, too. Not to mention there’s probably twice as many o’ them as there is of us. Just how do you expect us to have a chance against odds like that, gal?”

“Simple,” Frankie said. “We hire a couple of gunfighters of our own.”

And with that, she turned and looked directly at Matt and Sam.