Moonshine Massacre

Chapter 33

By the time the three men finished eating breakfast in the hotel dining room and came back out onto the street, the temperature had risen even more. Sweat broke out in beads on a man’s forehead just from him moving around, and the sky was a washed-out silver blue, Matt saw when he glanced up at it. The ride out to the Harlow farm would be a hot one, he thought.

“Well, I’m going to toddle off to bed,” Grady announced. “Good day to you, gentlemen.” He went off down the street toward whatever whore’s crib he was sharing.

“You really have to go?” Sam asked his blood brother when Grady was gone.

“I do,” Matt said. “There’s no tellin’ what Kane will try next, and I want to be there to help the Harlows when he does.”

“All right,” Sam said. He stuck out his hand. “Thanks for showing up when you did last night. That made a real difference.”

The blood brothers shook hands with an odd formality. Matt said, “We’re back on opposite sides now, is that it?”

“Not opposite sides, really,” Sam said. “Just different trails right now.”

Matt nodded. He swung up into the saddle and said, “Trails have a way of comin’ back together.”

“That they do,” Sam agreed. He lifted a hand in farewell as Matt headed west out of Cottonwood.

The sun had risen and was a giant, brassy ball hanging in the eastern sky behind Matt as he rode. The dust kicked up by his horse’s hooves hung motionless in the air behind him because there was no breeze to stir it. From time to time, Matt took off his hat and sleeved sweat from his forehead. The oppressive feeling in the air didn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

Matt was nearing the spot where the trail to the Harlow farm branched off when he heard some distant popping sounds. That had to be gunfire, he thought as he reined in sharply, and as best he could tell, the reports were coming from the direction of the Harlow place. He bit back a curse as he gazed off to the south and saw a large ball of black smoke suddenly billow up over the horizon.

The Harlow cabin, which was built mostly of sod, wouldn’t cause a cloud of smoke like that if it was on fire, Matt knew. But if the moonshine still had exploded, it might.

Damn it! Matt thought. Cimarron Kane had gotten to the Harlows after all, while Matt was in Cottonwood. Kane had launched the next move in the game sooner than Matt expected. He had thought that after the defeat the outlaw had suffered the night before, Kane would lick his wounds for a while before striking again. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.

Matt wasn’t the sort to sit around and brood because things had gone wrong. He would do his best to put them right again. He urged his mount into a gallop, and a couple of minutes later, horse and rider swung onto the trail leading to the Harlow farm. Matt knew he might run right into Cimarron Kane and the rest of that murderous family, but at the moment he didn’t care. He knew what Kane looked like now, thanks to the description Sam had given him, and he wanted to get that varmint in his gunsights.

As Matt urged the stallion to a faster pace, he watched the black smoke climb higher in the sky ahead of him. There was no doubt in his mind now that it came from the Harlow farm. He lowered his gaze and searched for a pall of dust hanging in the air. That would indicate the location of the Kane bunch as they rode away from the farm.

But he didn’t see any dust coming toward him, which was strange. He figured that after the raid, they would head back to their own ranch, which meant they would have to ride north.

Instead, the air remained hot and clear ahead of him, except for the column of black smoke, which was thinning now. Matt slowed his horse all the way to a stop and listened intently for the sound of shots. He didn’t hear any. More than likely the fight was over, and he had a bad feeling that he wasn’t going to like the outcome.

He pulled his Winchester from the saddle sheath and galloped ahead again. The line of ridges came into view a few minutes later. The Harlow homestead was just on the other side of those ridges, he recalled from the day before. It was hard to believe that only about twenty-four hours had passed since he’d gone exploring the area around the homestead with Frankie Harlow.

Matt followed the trail through the cuts in the ridges, thinking that this would be a bad place to run into Cimarron Kane, but there was no sign of the outlaw and his relatives. When he emerged from the last of the cuts and swung toward the farm, he saw that the cabin was intact. Just as he had thought, the smoke rose from the mouth of the underground chamber where the still was located. Kane had managed to blow it up. Matt discounted the idea of an accidental explosion because of the gunshots he’d heard. There had definitely been a fight here.

A rifle suddenly cracked from one of the windows in the cabin, the slug throwing up dirt about twenty yards in front of Matt’s horse. Matt hauled back on the reins and slowed the animal. That had been a warning shot. Somebody in the cabin was trigger-happy, and he couldn’t blame whoever it was. Lifting his voice, he shouted, “Hold your fire! It’s me, Matt Bodine!”

The cabin door flew open. Thurman Harlow ran out, holding a rifle. “Mr. Bodine!” he called. “Come on in!”

Matt rode quickly up to the cabin and dismounted, his boots hitting the ground even before his horse had stopped moving. “What happened here?” he asked. “I heard the shootin’ and saw the smoke.”

“It was that damned Cimarron Kane!” the usually mild-mannered Harlow replied with unaccustomed vehemence. “He hit us again, and this time he managed to blow up the still. He had a bomb, I reckon you’d call it, that he tossed in there. Quint and Farrell barely got out in time before it blowed up.”

Matt frowned. Kane using a bomb like that reminded him of what he and Sam had seen those crooked marshals doing a few days earlier, when they first rode in to the area.

“They kept the rest of us pinned down,” Harlow went on, “all except for…” He had to choke out the next words. “Except for Frankie.”

Fear made Matt’s heart slug heavily in his chest. “Frankie,” he repeated. “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know,” Harlow replied miserably as he shook his head. “That son of a bitch Kane made off with her!”

Ambrose Porter was sullenly quiet as he sat in a cell by himself. The three crooked deputies who had been arrested shared one of the other cells, but Marshal Coleman had left Porter locked up alone. The whole bunch was quiet at the moment, Sam saw as he looked in through the little barred window in the cell block door.

Sam had returned to the office after bidding Matt farewell. Coleman came in a few minutes later, looking a little stronger this morning after getting a night’s sleep.

“Everything peaceful?” he asked as he went to the stove to pour himself a cup of coffee.

“Quiet as it can be,” Sam replied. “I made the morning rounds a little while ago.”

Coleman nodded. “Good man. You know what needs to be done, and you do it without anybody havin’ to tell you about it. That’s rare.”

“Just a matter of common sense,” Sam said with a shrug.

“Maybe so, but you’d be surprised in what short supply that quality is most of the time.”

Sam got some coffee for himself as Coleman went behind the desk and sat down. “What do you plan to do about Porter and those deputies?” Sam asked.

“Not much I can do except leave ’em locked up and let the circuit judge deal with ’em when he gets here next week, same as those Kane boys. You’ll still be around to testify at the hearin’, won’t you?”

Sam nodded. “I’m not planning on going anywhere.” He mulled over his next words for a long moment before saying, “Marshal, what would you do if you found out that somebody was running an illegal saloon here in town?”

Coleman frowned. “Well, I reckon it’d be my duty to close it down and arrest whoever was doin’ such a thing. The law’s the law, after all.” He took a sip of his coffee. “But as it happens, I don’t have any personal knowledge of such a thing goin’ on.”

“It could be happening, though, without you knowing about it.”

“I suppose it could,” Coleman said. “Thing of it is, I’ve got more important things to do with my time than goin’ and lookin’ for such a place, and I sure wouldn’t expect anybody to tell me about it if they knew anything.”

“I see,” Sam said slowly.

“I mean, it’s not like a place like that would really be hurtin’ anything,” the marshal went on. “As a lawman, I can’t pick and choose which laws I enforce, but there’s such a matter as priorities.” He took another sip of coffee. “A star packer can’t be everywhere at once, if you know what I mean.”

Sam understood. Coleman had to suspect that there was probably an illegal saloon operating somewhere in Cottonwood, but he wasn’t going to hunt it down. If he did, he’d be duty-bound to arrest not only the proprietor, who was probably his friend, but all the customers as well, and they would likely be friends of his, too. As Coleman had pointed out before, the new law put him in a bad spot, and all he could do was try to make the best of it.

“You’ve given me a lot to think about, Marshal,” Sam said.

“If there’s anything you feel like you have to tell me, Sam, you go right ahead…but remember, there’s an old sayin’ about discretion bein’ the better part of valor.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that,” Sam agreed. “I believe in it, too.”

A short time later, he went down the street to the café and brought back breakfast for the prisoners. Nelse, Dud, and Wiley Kane all ate hungrily, as did the three crooked deputies, but Porter refused the food.

“We can’t make him eat,” Coleman told Sam. “Just let him be stubborn, if that’s what he wants.”

When the meal was over, the customers began to complain about the heat in the jail. “It’s like a damn oven in here,” Wiley Kane said.

“There’s nothin’ I can do about that,” Coleman told him. “And it’s just as hot for me as it is for you. Anyway, those stone walls mean it’s probably cooler in there than it is outside.”

“Well, it still ain’t right,” Nelse insisted.

Coleman ignored their grousing and said to Sam, “Why don’t you go down to the creek and hitch up those wagons? Take the one with the wounded men over to Doc Berger’s so he can decide if any of them need to stay at his place.”

“Otherwise…?” Sam said with a lifted eyebrow.

“Otherwise, turn ’em loose,” Coleman declared. “I’ve been thinkin’ about it. Maybe they broke the law, maybe they didn’t, but none of it happened here in Cottonwood, so I don’t have any jurisdiction over them. Some of the ones who ain’t from around here may need help gettin’ back wherever they came from. Tell those fellas to come and see me, and we’ll try to figure somethin’ out.”

Sam nodded his understanding and left the marshal’s office to carry out those orders.

Doing so took most of the morning. Dr. Berger deemed two of the former prisoners badly enough injured that they needed to stay at his house so he could care for them. He cleaned the wounds and changed the dressings of the others and told them they could check back in with him if they needed to, as long as they were in Cottonwood.

Barnabas Smith turned out to a short, fair-haired man who hailed from Georgia. He had come west to Kansas after the war. After he was released, he followed Sam back toward the marshal’s office, his little legs moving quickly as he tried to keep up with Sam’s longer stride.

“What am I gonna do, Deputy?” he asked. “My farm’s a good forty miles from here, and I ain’t got no horse or mule to get me back there.”

“Maybe you could buy a horse,” Sam suggested.

“With what? I didn’t have much money on me when I was arrested, and Porter and Bickford took all of it.”

“I’m sure all the rest of those fellas are in the same predicament. Maybe you can get together with them and figure out something.”

“Did Porter and his bunch have any money on them? If they did, then by rights it ought to go to their victims, don’t you think?”

“The judge will have to decide that next week. All of you should probably stay around here anyway, in case you’re needed to testify.”

“Then the town ought to put us up in the hotel, don’t you think? Or at least provide someplace to stay and some meals.”

Sam smiled at the little man’s persistence. “All right, Barnabas. You can take it up with the marshal. Maybe he’ll have some suggestions.”

“I’ll do that.” Barnabas paused and pulled a bandanna from his pocket. He mopped sweat off his face and then squinted up at the sky. “I don’t like the looks of it. Whenever the day’s so hot and still like this, and the sky gets all flat, it means a storm’s comin’.”

Sam nodded. “I think you’re probably right. But at least you won’t be stuck in those wagons if it does. I imagine they’d leak in a hard rain.”

“More’n likely. We ain’t had a hard rain in these parts for a while. That’s just one more reason I think somethin’s buildin’ up.”

“We’ll wait and see,” Sam said. But the glance he cast at the sky was more apprehensive than it had been a few minutes earlier. Barnabas had put into words the worry that had been lurking in the back of Sam’s mind all day. These Kansas plains were notorious for the big storms that sometimes rumbled across them. Those storms had been known to drop torrential downpours of rain, and to spawn cyclones, as well. There wasn’t much out there on the flat and mostly treeless prairie to slow down a twister.

But maybe it wouldn’t come to that, Sam told himself. Cottonwood had already seen more than its fair share of trouble the past few days. Surely it wouldn’t be plagued with a bad storm on top of everything else.

But then he remembered that nature didn’t have any concept of fairness. It just was.

He headed for the jail to warn Marshal Coleman that a storm might be brewing. He looked to the west and saw a haze in the air. Was that a cloud gathering?

No, Sam decided a moment later, it wasn’t a cloud. Not a storm cloud, anyway.

That haze in the air was dust. Riders were headed toward town.

From the looks of it, a lot of riders.