Moonshine Massacre

Chapter 27

When Matt reached the western end of Cottonwood’s main street, he saw that the fighting was concentrated around the far end of town. That was where the marshal’s office was located, and he was more convinced than ever that Kane and his relatives had come to bust Dud, Nelse, and Wiley Kane out of jail. From the muzzle flashes he saw, it looked like Kane’s bunch had split up and hunted cover on both sides of the street as they laid siege to the jail.

Matt drew his left-hand gun as he clamped his knees tighter on the stallion’s flanks. The attackers wouldn’t expect somebody to come roaring down the middle of the street between them, raking them with gunshots in both directions.

The stallion lunged ahead, responding gallantly as Matt leaned forward in the saddle and urged him on to greater speed. Suddenly, Matt saw someone dart out from his right and try to cross the street in front of him. At first he thought the man must be one of Kane’s bunch, changing position for some reason, but then he saw more muzzle flashes as Kane’s men opened fire on the running figure. The man made it almost to the middle of the street before he tumbled forward off his feet, evidently hit.

Matt couldn’t slow the charging stallion in time, and he wasn’t sure he could even veer the animal around the fallen man. So he jammed his left-hand Colt back in its holster, grabbed the reins, and hauled up on them, lifting the horse into a jump.

The stallion responded instantly, rising into the air with a grace belying its rangy ugliness, and it was only at the last instant that Matt caught a glimpse of the face looking up at him and recognized it as that of his blood brother, Sam Two Wolves.

Then the stallion soared up and over Sam and landed running full tilt, and Matt dropped the reins again and jerked out his left-hand Colt. He was between the forces arrayed along both sides of the street, so he began firing—right, left, right, left, spraying slugs among the places where the raiders had taken cover.

Matt never slowed his mount. As the hammers of his revolvers fell on empty chambers, he used his knees to guide the stallion into a sharp turn that carried them into the mouth of an alley near the marshal’s office. The horse pounded along the passageway through thick, almost impenetrable shadows, and Matt hoped they wouldn’t run into anything.

A moment later they broke out into the faint light from the moon and stars behind the buildings. Matt holstered one revolver, wheeled the horse around, and reined to a halt. He started reloading his guns with swift, practiced ease. He didn’t know how much damage he had inflicted on the Kane bunch, but from the sound of the shots still filling the night air, the attack wasn’t over. Matt wanted to get back in the action.

Not only that, but his blood brother was out there in the street, maybe wounded and definitely in a bad place, and it might be up to Matt to see to it that Sam didn’t get shot full of holes!

Sam barely had time to recognize the horse as Matt’s rangy gray stallion before he ducked back down to give the animal plenty of room to leap over him. The horse landed on the other side of him and kept going, never slowing down as Matt opened fire on the gunmen along both sides of the street.

Sam was trying to make his numb right leg work so he could struggle onto his feet when he heard someone running toward him. He propped himself up on one hand and twisted in that direction, ready to fire the Colt in his other hand, but his finger eased off the trigger when he saw Red Mike Loomis approaching.

The burly young man reached down and grabbed hold of Sam’s arm. “I’ll help you,” he said. “How bad are you hit?”

“Don’t know,” Sam replied as Mike lifted him without much trouble. “Head for the other side of the street!”

With Mike’s strong grip supporting his right side, Sam set off at a hobbling run. It was almost like they were a team in a three-legged race, he thought crazily. His right leg dangled uselessly.

They headed toward a rain barrel that was big enough to shield one of them, but not both. “You can stay here,” Mike said as he lowered Sam to the ground behind the barrel. “I’ll find some other cover.”

“Be care—” Sam began, but he didn’t have a chance to finish. He heard the solid, meaty thump of a bullet striking flesh, and then Mike grunted and went down, collapsing at the edge of the raised boardwalk.

Sam bit back a curse and reached up to grab the top of the rain barrel. He experienced a tingling now in his right leg, an indication that feeling was coming back into it. The muscles still didn’t want to work, though. Hanging on to the barrel, Sam lifted himself on his left leg. Bullets thudded into the wooden barrel as he shoved hard on it. Water began to slosh out the top, and as the weight of the water in the barrel decreased, it moved easier. He toppled it, creating a miniature tidal wave that washed around his feet and Mike Loomis’s sprawled body.

Mike sputtered and spit as water went up his nose, so he wasn’t dead. The overturned barrel was between him and the gunmen, so he had a little protection now. Sam was back in the open, though. He hopped toward the boardwalk and let himself fall when he reached it. He rolled across the planks into the alcove where the building’s door was set back a few feet.

He had dropped his rifle in the street, but he still had his Colt. He thrust the revolver out of the alcove and triggered a couple of shots at the muzzle flashes of the raiders. Glass shattered as Kane’s men shot out the windows in the building. Sam returned the fire and then ducked back out of sight again.

A high-pitched yell split the night. Matt was taking a hand in the fight again. And of course he couldn’t do it without calling attention to himself, Sam thought as a grim smile tugged at his mouth. He reached for the fresh cartridges in the loops on his shell belt and thumbed some of them into his Colt. Fast shots banged out. More of Matt’s work, Sam knew.

He ignored the throbbing pain that now filled his leg as he pulled himself to the front of the alcove again. Watching as Matt drove once more between the two halves of Kane’s force, Sam felt a little awe at the way his blood brother took the fight to them so fiercely, so gallantly. And possibly so foolishly, too, but Matt Bodine had never been one to hold back. He gave himself fully to whatever he was doing.

“Matt!” Sam shouted. He braced the six-shooter against the boardwalk and fired twice. “Over here!”

Matt left the saddle in a flying leap as his stallion raced past the building. The jump carried him onto the boardwalk. He careened into the alcove, dropped to one knee beside Sam, and joined his blood brother in throwing lead at the men who had attacked the jail.

A hailstorm of lead came racketing back at them, forcing them to duck back deeper in the alcove. As they reloaded, Matt said, “It figures you’d be right in the middle of this ruckus, Sam.”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to come galloping in and jump your horse right over me like you were performing a trick in a Wild West Show!” Sam replied.

Matt grinned. “Well, it was either that or trample you, so I figured you wouldn’t mind if I showed off a little.” He grew more serious. “You know what’s goin’ on here, don’t you?”

“My guess is that Cimarron Kane and some of his kin are trying to help those prisoners in Marshal Coleman’s jail escape.”

“That’s it, all right,” Matt said. “I followed the whole bunch into town from the Kane ranch.”

“Kane was here earlier in the day,” Sam explained. “He thought he could come into town and bluster a little, and the marshal would release his cousins. Marshal Coleman’s not going to do it, though.”

Matt snapped the cylinder on one of his revolvers closed after refilling the chambers. “I didn’t know that.”

“Here’s something else you don’t know,” Sam said. “Those special marshals, Porter and Bickford, are in town, too, along with their deputies. They’re all crooked, though.”

“What do you mean?” Matt asked with a frown.

Sam quickly filled him in on the bribery and murder scheme being carried out by the special marshals, and the news brought a muttered curse from Matt.

“Where are those varmints now?” he asked.

Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. Porter and most of the deputies are here in town somewhere, as far as I know. Bickford was still down by the creek with the wagons the last time I saw him, but he could have regained consciousness by now.”

“Well, we’ll deal with them once we’ve handed Kane his needin’s. Where’s the marshal? Holed up inside the jail?”

“He must be. Someone is in there trying to hold off Kane’s bunch.” Sam paused, then added in a worried voice, “I think Hannah may be in there with him, too. They had two rifles going.”

Matt let out a little whistle of surprise. “Sorry, amigo. I know you set a lot of store by that gal. We need to do something to convince Kane to give it up. How’s that leg of yours?”

Enough feeling had returned to Sam’s leg so that he could move it now. He reached down and ran his hand over the leg, searching for a wound. When he didn’t find any, he pulled his foot up and felt of his boot.

“So that’s what happened,” he said. “One of them shot my boot heel off. The impact of the bullet made my leg go numb for a little while, but it’s getting to be all right now.”

“Then you’re not wounded?”

“I don’t seem to be.”

“That’s a stroke of good luck. Reckon you can get around?”

Sam nodded as he pulled off both boots, so that the lack of a heel on the right one wouldn’t unbalance him. “I think so, as long as I don’t have to move too fast.”

“All right, you can cover me while I make a run for the other side of the street.”

“You’ll never make it,” Sam warned.

“I will if you make those polecats duck.” Matt pressed one of his guns into Sam’s left hand. “Just keep ’em busy. Once I get over there, we’ll have ’em right where we want ’em.”

Sam had had the same sort of thing in mind, only his plan had included the element of surprise. That hadn’t worked out. Maybe having Matt on his side would. Matt Bodine was worth ten men in a fight.

“My rifle’s lying out there in the middle of the street where I dropped it,” Sam told his blood brother.

Matt nodded. “I’ll pick it up when I go by. That’ll give me better firepower.” He pressed his back against the wall of the alcove. “You ready?”

Sam made it to his feet and jerked his head in a curt nod.

“Then cut loose your wolf!” Matt called, and with that, he burst out of the alcove, leaped across the boardwalk into the street, and headed for the buildings on the opposite side at a dead run.