Moonshine Massacre

Chapter 26

At the sound of the shots from town, Ambrose Porter snatched his pistol from its holster and spun in that direction. “Jenkins! Mahaffey!” he barked. “Stay here and guard these wagons! Whatever you do, don’t let anyone come near them. The rest of you, come with me!”

As he issued the orders, he grabbed the padlock from where it hung in the open hasp, slapped the hasp closed, and clicked the padlock shut. Then he took off at a run toward Cottonwood’s main street with the deputies trailing behind him, except for the two men he’d left with the wagons.

As Sam watched from his hiding place behind the lead wagon, he was a little surprised by Porter’s swift reaction. That was the way a real lawman would have acted when he heard trouble breaking out, Sam thought. Porter had no reason to care what happened to Cottonwood and its citizens.

Or maybe he did, Sam realized. For all Porter knew, some of the prisoners had escaped from the unlocked wagon. They could have gone into town, found Marshal Coleman, and told him all about the murder and bribery scheme. The shooting could mean that Coleman was trying to arrest the deputies Porter hadn’t brought with him to the creek. Porter had to find out exactly what all that commotion was about.

There was still a lot of gunfire going on. As Sam stepped out from behind the wagon, he saw orange muzzle flashes winking in the night around the settlement’s buildings.

The two men Porter had left behind were watching the town, too, their attention drawn by the shooting. That was their mistake. Moving with the speed and silence of a striking panther, Sam smashed the brass butt plate of the rifle he carried into the back of one deputy’s head. The blow drove the man forward to land in a senseless sprawl, out cold.

The other deputy had time to yell in surprise and make a grab for the gun on his hip. Sam swung the rifle one-handed and used the barrel as a club this time. It landed against the man’s skull with a solid thud. The second deputy folded up, unconscious just like his companion.

Sam started toward Cottonwood, but he had taken only a single step when a voice called urgently from the wagon. It belonged to Barnabas, who must have pulled himself up to the window and watched as Sam knocked out the two guards.

“Hey! Deputy! Porter locked us in here! Come back and let us out!”

Sam turned to look back at the vehicle. “Just stay there,” he told Barnabas. “I’ll come back later and see about you turning you loose.”

“But Porter and Bickford are murderin’ crooks! You know that now!”

“You’re safer in there!” Sam said again as he broke into a trot toward town. “I’ll be back!”

Despite everything that had happened, he still didn’t know for sure which of the men locked up in the wagons were actually innocent of any lawbreaking, if indeed any of them were. It was better to leave them right where they were, and then he and Marshal Coleman could sort everything out later.

Assuming they were both still alive to do so…

“Don’t get yourself killed!” Barnabas called worriedly after him.

Sam held the rifle at a slant across his chest as he ran toward the settlement. He couldn’t see Porter and the other deputies anymore, but as the flurry of gunfire from the town increased suddenly, he wondered if the crooked lawmen had just joined the fight, whatever it was.

He reached the old, abandoned livery stable where Ike Loomis’s secret saloon was located. The big building was dark and appeared to be as deserted as it was supposed to be. Sam knew that probably wasn’t the case, though. If the patrons had any sense, they would have stayed inside when the shooting started. The barn’s thick walls would stop most bullets.

A big figure suddenly loomed in front of him, and a harsh voice commanded, “Hold it!”

Sam didn’t stop. In fact, he didn’t even slow down. Instead, he dove forward, cutting the man’s legs out from under him. The man let out a yell of alarm as he fell. His weight caught Sam a glancing blow. Both men rolled across the ground beside the stable.

Sam came up onto his knees first. Holding the rifle in his left hand, he used his right to draw his Colt since the revolver was better for close work. He leveled it at the man he had just knocked down and said, “You hold it, mister. If you make a move, I’ll put a bullet in you.”

“Sam Two Wolves?” the man exclaimed in surprise. “Is that you?”

The voice was familiar to Sam, but he couldn’t quite place it. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“Mike Loomis,” the man replied. “Red Mike. Sorry I jumped you, Two Wolves. I thought you were one of those damned raiders.”

Sam lowered his gun slightly but didn’t holster it. “What raiders?”

“Hell if I know,” Red Mike replied. “Somebody came runnin’ down to the saloon and said a bunch of men were attackin’ the jail. I told everybody in there to stay put and came out to see what was goin’ on. My pa and Marshal Coleman are old friends, so I didn’t want nothin’ happening to him.” In the darkness, Sam caught a glimpse of Mike’s brawny shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. “Then you came runnin’ along and I took you for one of that bunch. That’s all I know.”

Sam stood up and holstered his gun. He held out a hand to Mike, who would probably make a good ally in a fight. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”

Mike hesitated, but only for a second. Then he and Sam clasped wrists and Sam helped him to his feet. “I dropped my gun,” Mike said as he shuffled around with his feet in the area where he had fallen. “Wait a minute…Here it is!”

Mike picked up his gun. Then he and Sam trotted through the shadows toward the other end of Main Street. Sam could tell now that most of the muzzle flashes he saw came from the area around the marshal’s office and jail.

The street was deserted. The citizens of Cottonwood must have scurried for cover when the shooting started. Sam counted muzzle flashes and figured that about a dozen men were scattered along both sides of the street, using water troughs, parked wagons and buckboards, and building corners and alcoves for cover as they kept up a steady fire directed at the squat stone building that housed the marshal’s office and jail.

That told Sam the attack was directed against Marshal Coleman, and since the shooting had started before Porter and the other deputies hurried back to town, he concluded that the raiders had to be Cimarron Kane and some of Kane’s kinfolks. Kane was the only one who had a reason to attack the jail, that reason being his three cousins who were locked up there.

As Sam and Mike Loomis drew up at the corner of a building to watch the fight, Sam saw muzzle flame bloom like a crimson flower at one of the front windows flanking the door into the marshal’s office. He felt a surge of relief go through him. The shot meant that Coleman was still alive, and although he might be wounded, he was in good enough shape to pull a trigger.

But then an instant after that shot, orange flame spurted from the other window, and Sam’s heart sank a little at that sight. Coleman hadn’t had time to move from window to window, and he wouldn’t have had any reason to, anyway. The second shot meant somebody else was in there helping Coleman defend the place, and the most likely person that could be was Hannah.

Sam wondered for a second where Ambrose Porter and the other men were. Maybe once the corrupt special marshal had seen what was going on, he had decided to stay out of the fight and allow Cimarron Kane to do his dirty work for him and dispose of Marshal Coleman.

Sam knew he couldn’t afford to waste any time pondering that. Coleman was heavily outnumbered, and if someone didn’t come to his aid soon, the attackers might overrun the jail. Sam didn’t think Kane and the others would be too careful about who they shot if they went storming in there. He had to do something to stop them now and worry about Porter later.

Leaning closer to Mike Loomis, he said quietly, “We’ll split up. I’ll go across the street, and you take this side. We’ll hit them from behind at the same time and take them by surprise.”

Mike gave him a grim nod. “All right. But we’re pretty outnumbered, Two Wolves. You know that, don’t you?”

Sam grinned at him and said, “Then we’ll try to whittle down the odds as quickly as we can. Give me a minute to get over there and get set.”

“Sure. I’ll wait for you to hit those varmints, and then I’ll go at the same time.”

That sounded like a workable plan to Sam. Clutching the Winchester, he darted out from the cover of the alley and began racing across the broad, dusty street.

Too late, he realized that Cimarron Kane must have posted a lookout to make sure that no one snuck up behind them while they attacked the jail. Sam was less than a third of the way across the street when someone yelled a warning. A couple of shots rang out from behind a wagon. One of the bullets went well wide of him, but the other came close enough that he felt the hot breath of the lead as it whistled past his cheek. He began firing the rifle from his hip as he ran, cranking off rounds as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever.

He was still only halfway across the street when something slammed into his right foot and knocked it out from under him. His momentum carried him forward, and although he tried to keep his balance by pinwheeling one arm as fast as he could, it was a lost cause.

He fell, tumbling forward and rolling over and over as a small cloud of dust rose around him.

Sam came to a stop on his belly with the dust choking him and stinging his nose and eyes. His right leg was numb, and he didn’t know how badly he was hurt. But he couldn’t move, he was stuck out in the open, and Kane’s men knew he was there, an easy target. It seemed unlikely that things could get any worse.

That was when he heard thundering hoofbeats right behind him and jerked his head around to gaze over his shoulder at the gigantic, looming figure of a madly galloping horse about to pound him to a red ruin under its hooves.