Moonshine Massacre

Chapter 14

Since there was only one gal on the Harlow place as far as Matt knew, he went on in a whisper. “Frankie?”

It was unmistakably her voice that answered, “Get off me, you damn oaf!” as she pushed at his chest.

Matt lifted himself onto his hands and knees and then sat beside her in the hay. “What’s goin’ on here?” he asked. “What are you doin’ out here, Frankie?”

“What do you reckon?” she whispered back. “Didn’t you ever wind up in a pile of hay with a girl before?”

“Well, uh, as a matter of fact…” The question embarrassed Matt a little, although he wasn’t sure why. He went on. “What I’ve done before in a pile of hay ain’t any of your business.”

Before Frankie could say anything else, Sam called from the other side of the barn, “Matt? Everything all right over there?”

“Yeah, sure,” Matt replied. “One of those, uh, cats that Harlow mentioned came nosin’ around and woke me up.”

He gritted his teeth to keep from yelling as Frankie reached out blindly in the dark, found his arm, and pinched it hard.

He jerked his arm away from her. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he breathed as he leaned closer over her.

“A cat, am I? I know what you’re saying, you…you…”

“Well, you’re the one who snuck out here to throw yourself at me.”

Her hand came up and took hold of the back of his head. “Shut up,” she whispered as she pulled his mouth down to hers. “Don’t talk anymore.”

They didn’t talk for a few minutes. Kissing Frankie Harlow was a lot more pleasant way to use his mouth, Matt thought. But he fought down the impulse to take things any further than that.

“Listen,” he said when he broke the kiss. “What is it you want?”

“Are you gonna make me say it, Bodine?”

She tried to pull his head down again, but he wouldn’t let her. “I want to know if you think you can buy my help against the Kanes this way.”

“What if I do?”

Matt took Frankie’s arms from around his neck. “Then I’ll say no, thanks. I offered my help, free and clear. You don’t have to do this to seal the deal.”

“Yeah, well, Two Wolves said no.”

“Sam doesn’t speak for me.”

“Prove it.”

Again he felt a surge of irritation. He couldn’t understand why Frankie wasn’t prepared to just accept his help without either bribing or tricking him into it. She must not trust anybody, he thought. Her life must have been pretty rough to make her feel like that.

He sat up again. “Look, you’re a mighty pretty gal, Frankie,” he told her, “and I enjoy rollin’ around in some hay with a pretty gal as much as the next fella does. But when that happens, I like for it to be because the gal wants me…not my gun.”

She gasped softly. “Why, of all the arrogant…You want me to tell you that you’re so manly and handsome you make me go all weak in the knees, Bodine? Well, if that’s what you want, the hell with you!”

She rolled away from Matt and started to stand up. He found her arm in the darkness and wrapped his fingers around it, stopping her.

“Hold on,” he said. “Let’s get this settled. I’ll help you. Sam doesn’t have to go along with everything I do. Now that you know I’m on your side, maybe the two of us can get together some other time, when there won’t be any question about why we’re doin’ what we’re doin’.”

“You’re turning me down tonight?” She sounded like she couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” Matt replied, although it pained him a little to do so. He couldn’t hardly believe it, either.

“There may not be another time,” Frankie warned him.

Matt shrugged. “There have never been any guarantees in life that I know of.”

“You’re a maddening man, Matt Bodine.”

He grinned in the darkness. “So I’ve been told.”

“All right, if that’s the way you want it…” He let go of her arm and she started to get up. Then she leaned closer and went on. “Just so you’ll know for sure what you might be missing…”

She kissed him again, her lips finding his with an unerring instinct despite the thick shadows inside the barn.

The kiss lasted a long time, and when it was over, Matt’s heart was pounding hard in his chest. Blood roared in his ears. He barely heard Frankie slip away from him and leave the barn.

But by the time a couple of minutes had gone by, he had calmed down enough so that he had no trouble hearing Sam say, “You gave her your word that you’d help her and her family, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Matt said.

“Oh, come on, Matt! You know good and well you haven’t been over there for the past ten minutes whispering to some cat. That was Frankie Harlow. She came out here to convince you to help them. Thing of it is, she probably didn’t realize that you didn’t need any extra convincing. You would have thrown in with them just from what you’d seen so far.”

“You think whatever you want to think, Sam. But just so you’ll know, I’m not goin’ back to Cottonwood with you in the mornin’. Reckon I’ll stay out here for a while and see how things go with Cimarron Kane and his bunch.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Sam said, and Matt heard the disapproval in his blood brother’s voice.

“We’ve ridden different trails before,” he pointed out. “It’s nothing new.”

“Nope,” Sam agreed.

“Nothing to worry about.”

“I didn’t say I was worried.”

“Well…that’s good.”

Matt stretched out in the hay, rolled over, and tried to go back to sleep. He had a hard time of it, though, because whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was worried. Because of the circumstances, there was a chance that this time, he and Sam might wind up not only on different trails, but on opposite sides of the law as well.

And that couldn’t be good for anyone.

Things didn’t look any better when Matt woke up the next morning. An awkward silence lay between him and Sam. As longtime trail partners, they could sometimes ride for hours without either of them saying a word, and those quiet stretches never seemed to bother them. It was different this morning, though. The fact that they couldn’t find anything to say to each other spoke volumes.

Farrell Harlow came out to the barn while the blood brothers were tending to their horses and told them, “Frankie says to come on in for breakfast.”

“Tell your sister we’ll be right there,” Matt said as he poured some grain from a bucket into a feed trough for their mounts.

Farrell grunted in acknowledgment and started to turn away, then paused.

“Is it true that you’re as fast on the draw as folks say you are, Mr. Bodine?”

“Well, I don’t know what everybody says,” Matt replied with a faint smile, “but I reckon I’m fast enough to still be alive.”

“I’ve heard that you can outdraw anybody except maybe Smoke Jensen or Frank Morgan.”

“I wouldn’t know. Never met those fellas. Wouldn’t have any reason to draw against them if I did, from what I know of them. They don’t go around huntin’ trouble any more than I do.”

“Men like you, they always find it, though.”

Matt shrugged. “Sometimes it seems like that, don’t it?”

A few minutes later, he and Sam went into the house. “Mornin’, boys,” Thurman Harlow said from the stove, where he was pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Sleep good?”

“Fine,” Sam said. “We’re obliged to you for the hospitality, Mr. Harlow.”

“Think nothin’ of it. One good turn deserves another, I always say, and you done us a mighty good turn when you run off those bushwhackin’ Kanes before Frankie got hurt.”

Frankie stood by the stove, too, cooking flapjacks in a big iron skillet. As she turned them, she said curtly over her shoulder, “Sit down, you two. Pa, fetch them some coffee.”

“Sure,” Harlow agreed. He gestured toward a jug that sat on a nearby shelf. “You fellas care for a little sweetenin’ in it?”

Matt shook his head. “No, thanks.”

“Black is fine,” Sam added.

“Yeah, it’s a mite early, even for ’shine as good as we make,” Harlow agreed.

The four brothers weren’t in the cabin’s main room. “Where are your sons?” Sam asked.

“Out tendin’ to chores.” Harlow didn’t explain what those chores were, but Matt thought they might have something to do with brewing whiskey. He hadn’t seen any evidence that the family’s still was located inside the cabin, so it had to be somewhere else, probably close by.

Thurman Harlow set cups of steaming black coffee in front of Matt and Sam. He said, “Frankie tells me you’re gonna be stayin’ on with us for a while, Mr. Bodine.”

“That’s right,” Matt said. He picked up his coffee and blew on the strong black brew to cool it. “Until I see what Cimarron Kane and his relatives are gonna be up to next.”

“It won’t be anything good, I reckon you can count on that. I appreciate you offerin’ to help us, and you’re mighty welcome to stay as long as you want.” Harlow looked over at Sam. “I don’t mean to slight you by sayin’ that, Mr. Two Wolves. I reckon you and Mr. Bodine just look at things differentlike, that’s all.”

Sam nodded. “Sometimes that’s true,” he agreed. He looked at Matt, eyes narrowing as he did so. “This happens to be one of those times.”

“Well, any time you feel like ridin’ on out here to see us, you’ll be welcome as you can be.” Harlow turned to the stove. “Them flapjacks about ready, honey?”

Frankie brought a platter full of the hot flapjacks over to the table, along with a bowl of molasses. “Help yourself,” she said as she set the food on the table.

The blood brothers dug in. The meal was simple but delicious, especially when the flapjacks and molasses were washed down with the hot coffee. Matt and Sam both relaxed a little as they ate, and the friction between them was forgotten for a while.

But then the meal was over, and the time had come for Sam to head back to Cottonwood while Matt stayed here on the Harlow homestead. Neither of them knew when they would see each other again.

Or under what circumstances that meeting might take place.