Moonshine Massacre

Chapter 28

Matt heard Sam’s guns start blasting behind him, but he didn’t look around or slow down. As he ran toward the middle of the street, he spotted the rifle Sam had dropped and angled toward the Winchester. He paused briefly to snatch it off the ground, but that took only a heartbeat.

Even so, it was long enough for one of the Kane gunmen to draw a bead on him. Matt felt a bullet tug at the back of his shirt, ripping it slightly without actually touching the flesh underneath. A couple of inches and a whisker of time earlier, and the bullet would have bored right through his body.

Now he was moving at top speed again, though. He heard several slugs whistle close behind him, but none of them tagged him. As he neared the boardwalk, he launched himself into a dive that carried him onto the planks. His momentum sent him rolling over and over into the shadows at the base of the darkened building’s front wall.

It didn’t take long for more bullets to come searching into the darkness for him, only a matter of seconds. He scrambled to his feet and into an alcove like the one Sam occupied across the street. Using the building for cover, he thrust the rifle’s barrel around the corner and started blazing away at the raiders. At the same time, Sam continued the barrage with both pistols, emptying the revolvers, reloading them, and emptying them again.

Someone else joined the battle, too. Matt had seen an apparently unconscious or dead figure lying behind an overturned rain barrel near Sam’s position, but had no idea who the man was. Clearly, though, he wasn’t dead, and if he had been knocked out, he had regained consciousness. He was taking part in the fight now, firing a six-shooter over the barrel.

The gunfire from the jail picked up with renewed intensity. Rifles cracked and spat lead at both of the front windows. Cimarron Kane and his men had gone from having the upper hand to being trapped in the middle of a veritable hailstorm of bullets. Even though they might still have the advantage in numbers, they were in a bad spot.

So Matt wasn’t surprised when he heard a harsh voice yell, “Grab the horses and let’s get out of here!” He snapped a shot in the direction of the man giving the orders, the same man whose voice he’d heard back at the Kane ranch, but he had no way of knowing if he hit his target.

A moment later, with hoofbeats pounding in the night air, a number of riders burst into the street. They didn’t try to run the gauntlet between Matt and Sam, but instead plunged into an alley, seeking the quickest way out of town. Matt threw lead after them and thought he saw one of the men sway in the saddle, but none of the riders fell and they didn’t slow down.

Matt leaped out of the alcove and ran toward the alley mouth. Muzzle flashes winked in the darkness as the fleeing men twisted around in their saddles and fired wild shots behind them. Matt brought the Winchester to his shoulder and hurried them along with several more rounds, until the rifle was empty.

“Matt!” Sam said as he limped hurriedly up to his blood brother. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Matt lowered the rifle. “They came close a few times but never hit me. How’s your leg?”

“A little sore, but better now. Can you go back up the street and check on Mike Loomis?”

“Red Mike?”

“Yeah. He’s the one behind that rain barrel. He was trying to help me earlier when he got hit.”

Matt nodded. “Sure, I’ll see how he’s doin’. Where are you goin’?”

“The marshal’s office,” Sam replied, and that didn’t surprise Matt at all. He knew that Sam wanted to make sure Hannah Coleman was all right.

As Sam hurried off, Matt turned and walked back to the rain barrel. The man behind the barrel was slumped wearily against it now.

“Red Mike?” Matt said.

The man slowly lifted his head like it was a struggle to do so. “B-Bodine?” he asked. “Is that you?”

“Yeah.” Matt hunkered on his heels next to the wounded man and braced the rifle’s butt plate against the ground to balance himself. “How bad are you hit?” he asked.

“Not too bad…I reckon,” Mike replied. “Feels like the slug…just ripped across my side. Reckon I…lost quite a bit of blood, though. Feel mighty…weak. Head’s sort of…swimmin’ around.”

Matt leaned over where he could take a look at Mike’s side and saw the large dark stain on the young man’s shirt. “You’ve lost some blood, all right,” he agreed. “Stay right there, and we’ll see about gettin’ the doctor to take a look at you.”

“I ain’t…goin’ anywhere,” Mike said with a faint chuckle.

Farther down the street, the door of the marshal’s office swung open before Sam could get there. Marshal Coleman stepped out onto the walk in front of it, holding a Winchester tightly in his hands.

“Sam? Is that you?” he called.

“It’s me, Marshal,” Sam replied.

“Are those varmints gone?”

“Yes, they rode out hell-bent-for-leather a few minutes ago, and there’s no sign of them coming back.”

Coleman’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Thank God. I thought at first we were goners, Hannah and me.”

“Then Hannah is in the office?” Sam asked tensely.

“Yeah.”

“Is she hurt?”

“Nope.” Coleman turned his head and called through the open door, “Come on out, honey. The shootin’s over.”

Sam hoped that was true, but he hadn’t forgotten about Ambrose Porter and the special deputies. He stepped quickly to Coleman’s side, put a hand on the lawman’s arm, and said, “You’d better get back inside, Marshal, and keep Hannah there for the time being, too.”

“What’s wrong?” Coleman asked with a frown. “You think Kane’s gonna come back?”

“No, but there might be another problem.”

Movement in the doorway of the marshal’s office caught Sam’s eye. He looked that direction and saw Hannah stepping out with a rifle in her hands. He was about to call out to her and tell her to go back inside when a shadowy shape glided up behind her and she suddenly let out a gasp of surprise and fear. The Winchester dropped to the planks with a clatter as it was torn from her hands, and Sam stiffened as he saw an arm go around her neck and jerk her back against the man who had come up behind her.

“Drop your gun, Two Wolves,” Ambrose Porter ordered as he tightened his left arm around Hannah’s throat and thrust the gun in his right hand toward Sam and Coleman.

“What the hell?” Coleman exclaimed as he turned toward this new and, to him, unexpected problem.

Sam had tucked the extra revolver Matt had given him behind his belt and still held his own Colt. He didn’t drop either gun. He kept the one in his hand pointed toward Hannah and Porter and told the crooked special marshal, “Forget it, Porter. Your little scheme is done for.”

A harsh laugh came from Porter. “I don’t think so. Look around, you damn ’breed.”

Sam glanced up and down the street. “I don’t see anything.”

“That doesn’t mean my men aren’t there. There are eight rifles trained on you right now, Two Wolves. You don’t have any choice but to do as I say.”

“Blast it, what’s goin’ on here?” Coleman demanded. “Marshal Porter, is that you?”

Sam didn’t wait for Porter to answer. He told Coleman, “It’s him, all right, but he’s a lawman in name only, Marshal. He and Bickford and their deputies are all criminals.”

“That’s a matter of interpretation,” Porter said.

“The hell it is,” Sam snapped. “Bickford told me all about how you’ve been taking payoffs to let some of the men you’ve arrested go free…and murdering the ones who wouldn’t come through.”

An angry growl came from Coleman. “Is that true, son?”

“One of the prisoners in the wagon told me all about it, and then Bickford confirmed it when he thought he had the drop on me.”

Coleman glared at Porter. “Why, you low-down skunk! Dishonoring the badge that way. Let go of my daughter, right now!”

“I can’t do that,” Porter said. “You and Miss Hannah and Two Wolves have to go in one of the cells. We’ll lock you up, and then we’ll be on our way. I was tired of this game, anyway.”

Sam knew that Porter was lying. The crooked lawman wouldn’t be content to lock them up and escape. He and Bickford were making too much money with their scheme.

No, if Porter succeeded in getting the three of them inside the jail, he would kill them and probably gun down the three men who were already locked up in there, too, so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. All the law-abiding people in town had their heads down at the moment, lying low because of Cimarron Kane’s attack on the jail and all the lead that had been flying around a few minutes earlier. If Porter insisted that Sam, Coleman, and Hannah had been killed in that fight, there would be little chance that anyone would contradict him. He and Bickford could still salvage their scheme and carry on with it for a while yet, extorting more money from the luckless prisoners they arrested.

“I won’t tell you again,” Porter said in a harsh voice. “Drop your guns, or I’ll kill the girl right now.”

“If you hurt her—” Coleman began.

“Don’t waste my time with threats, old man,” Porter interrupted coldly. “I told you, you’re covered. If I shoot the girl, a second later my men will fill you and the half-breed full of lead. Your only chance to survive is to do what I tell you.”

“He’s lying,” Sam said under his breath. “He intends to kill us anyway.”

Coleman sighed. “I know that.” He bent over and dropped his pistol into the dirt of the street. “But that’s my little girl he’s got. I have to go along with him.”

Sam knew that the marshal was right. Porter would kill them and maybe even try to wipe out the whole town if he was pushed too far. With his mouth twisted in a grim line, Sam dropped his Colt next to Coleman’s. Then he reached for the gun tucked behind his belt.

“Careful,” Porter warned.

Sam eased the revolver out and added it to the two lying in the street. Then he and Coleman backed away from the guns.

“Come on,” Porter ordered. “Into the jail.”

Miserably, Coleman asked, “What do we do?”

“Play along with him,” Sam said. Something had occurred to him. Porter hadn’t said anything about Matt, and when Sam glanced over his shoulder, he didn’t see any sign of his blood brother. Sam hoped that meant Matt was still on the loose somewhere nearby.

Because Matt Bodine was a hell of a secret weapon!