Moonshine Massacre

Chapter 37

They had barely emerged onto the street when bullets began to whistle around their heads. The blood brothers led the way, crouching, running, firing, their deadly accurate shots ripping through the men who tried to stop them. Barnabas and their other half-dozen allies followed closely behind, fighting with enthusiasm and courage that partially made up for their lack of experience.

Dr. Berger’s house came into view. About a dozen men ranged around the place, mostly relatives of Cimarron Kane but including a couple of the crooked deputies, opened fire on the group led by Matt and Sam, forcing them to dive for cover. They traded shots for a couple of minutes before Cimarron Kane bellowed, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

The shots died away on both sides. Kane stepped out onto the porch of Berger’s house with the doctor’s sister in front of him as he held a gun to her head.

“Bodine! Two Wolves! I saw you there! I don’t know how you got out, ’breed, but it don’t matter! We still got hostages in here, so you better give up if you don’t want their blood on your hands!”

“Let them go and fight it out with us, damn you!” Matt shouted back at him.

Kane laughed harshly. “Go to hell, Bodine! We got the upper hand here!”

Matt and Sam looked at each other as they crouched behind a parked buckboard. “He’s right,” Sam said. “We can’t risk the hostages.”

The sky was so overcast now it was almost black. Lightning clawed its way through the clouds. But the air was still hot and stifling, heavy with the threat of rain that wouldn’t fall. The hair on the back of Matt’s neck was prickling again as he said, “I think we’ve got an even bigger worry.”

Sam frowned. “What are you—”

Then he heard what Matt had heard a second earlier. It was a low-pitched, rumbling sound, reminiscent of a freight train approaching at high speed. Sam’s eyes widened in horror, matching Matt’s expression, as both of the blood brothers turned to peer toward the southwest.

The twister barreling down on Cottonwood dipped down out of the clouds like a thick, sinuous snake. The madly whirling column of air was at least half a mile wide. From this angle, they couldn’t tell if it had already touched the ground, but if it hadn’t, it was about to.

Yells of fear came from the gunmen around the doctor’s house. Not very many people could stand and watch a giant tornado approaching without panicking, and these killers were no different. Most of them broke from cover and ran.

Matt and Sam weren’t sure where they were running to, and the men probably didn’t know themselves. But the blood brothers took advantage of the opportunity. They stood up and charged the house, with Barnabas and the others behind them. The roar of guns was drowned out by the earthshaking rumble of the twister, but the flames stabbing from gun muzzles competed with the flash of lightning. Men toppled and fell, riddled by the slugs fired by Matt, Sam, Barnabas, and the others.

That tornado was big enough to wipe out Cottonwood and everybody in it, Matt knew, but he couldn’t allow himself to think about that now. All he wanted was a chance to square off against Kane, Porter, and Grady. Sam felt the same way. Finish the fight, then worry about the twister.

Kane had ducked back into the house. He emerged now holding Frankie Harlow. Porter came next with Hannah clutched in front of him as a human shield. Grady brought up the rear with an arm around Prudence Berger. All three men opened fire on the charging Matt and Sam.

They had reckoned without the fighting spirit that burned inside all three women. Suddenly, they found themselves trying to hold on to a trio of wildcats. Frankie twisted around and slammed a fist into Kane’s throat, while Hannah clawed at Porter’s face. Prudence brought the heel of her shoe down hard on Grady’s foot, making him howl in pain.

Matt and Sam never slowed down, even when slugs were whipping around their heads. They hurdled the fence around the doctor’s front yard, bounded across the grass, and leaped onto the porch, crashing into the knot of struggling figures there. Guns flew out of fingers, and suddenly it was a hand-to-hand battle. Matt smashed his fist into Cimarron Kane’s face while Sam tackled Ambrose Porter and rolled across the porch with him.

Linus Grady was the only one who slipped away. He leaped off the porch and tried to run, only to find himself facing Marshal Coleman, who had freed himself from the cell and finally caught up to the others. Coleman had Bickford’s gun in his hand, and as Grady took a shot at him, Coleman fired. Grady staggered back a step as the marshal’s bullet drove into his body. He tried to lift his gun for another shot, but Coleman fired first. This time Grady went down as the lead ripped through his body.

The wind howled now as it rushed into the deadly, whirling funnel cloud. The few survivors of the gang tried to flee, but they were cut off by Thurman Harlow and his four sons, who had reached Cottonwood just ahead of the storm and were drawn to the far end of town by the gunshots. The two crooked deputies were already dead, so it was Harlows against Kanes in a fierce exchange of shots. Alf and Dex Harlow were hit but stayed on their feet. One by one, the Kanes went down, riddled by Harlow lead. The rivalry between the families had finally come to a bloody end.

Almost.

Cimarron Kane was still alive. He crashed a fist into Matt’s jaw and knocked the younger man aside. Kane reached for one of the fallen guns, but Frankie picked up a revolver and fired, the bullet burning a fiery line across Kane’s forearm. He cursed and rolled off the porch, then broke into a run as Matt scrambled up and went after him.

Meanwhile, Sam and Porter were still struggling. Porter had managed to get on top and pin Sam to the porch. His hands were locked around Sam’s throat, trying to squeeze the life out of him. Sam brought his cupped hands up and slapped them hard against Porter’s ears. Porter yelled in agony as his eardrums burst. Sam was able to buck him off. Porter rolled away and came up in a stumbling run. He wasn’t far behind Kane as both men reached the street.

They turned first to their left, only to find that direction blocked by the grim-faced Harlows, along with Barnabas Smith and the other former prisoners. Chests heaving, the two men looked the other direction along the street. The twister was almost on top of Cottonwood now, and if they went that way, they would be running right into its hungry maw.

Matt and Sam came to a stop about twenty feet away from Kane and Porter. “What’s it gonna be?” Matt shouted, raising his voice to be heard over the storm.

“You afraid to go down fightin’, Bodine?” Kane yelled back.

Matt turned and motioned to the Harlows, who were looking increasingly nervous as the tornado bore down on the town in its slow, steady, inexorable fashion. “We need four guns,” he said to Thurman Harlow.

“Son, we all better hunt a hole to hide in!” Harlow warned with a nod toward the twister.

“Not until this is over!” Matt insisted. Sam nodded in grim agreement.

“Give ’em your guns!” Harlow told his sons. The young men passed the revolvers to Matt and Sam.

Quickly, they checked the cylinders. Each gun had at least two rounds left in it. They turned and tossed two of the revolvers into the street near Kane and Porter.

“You’ll gun us down as soon as we reach for them!” Porter protested.

“Nope, it’ll be a fair fight,” Matt said. Behind the blood brothers, everybody was scattering, trying to find a place to ride out the storm. Over by the doctor’s house, Coleman and Dr. Berger were getting as many people as possible into the cellar underneath the house. Frankie and Hannah didn’t want to go, but their fathers forced them through the open door and down the steps into the cellar.

The tornado had almost reached the far end of the street. “Now or never!” Matt shouted at Kane and Porter.

The two men dived for the guns, snatching them out of the street. Porter rolled to the side and came up in a crouch, his gun belching flame as he fired at Sam, while Kane stood straight and blazed away at Matt. The blood brothers stood their ground as well, the revolvers roaring and bucking against their palms as they squeezed off a pair of shots apiece.

Both of Sam’s bullets punched into Porter’s chest and knocked him over backwards. He landed with his arms outflung as blood bubbled from the holes in his body.

Kane staggered as Matt’s slugs hit him, but he didn’t fall. He kept pulling the trigger, even after the hammer was falling harmlessly on empty chambers. Then crimson welled from his mouth and the gun slipped from his fingers. He took a step forward and pitched onto his face.

Matt and Sam were left standing in the middle of the street, watching as the twister bore down on them. It was too late to run now, even though Coleman was yelling at them to do so from the cellar door.

The three of them were the only ones alive to see what happened next. They watched in amazement as the twister struck the abandoned livery barn where Ike Loomis had his secret saloon. The old building exploded into splinters and kindling as the ferocious winds tore it apart.

But that was the only damage the tornado did. With the capriciousness of nature, the funnel cloud lifted into the air, passing over the rest of Cottonwood. The terrible roar suddenly died away and left an eerie silence behind it.

Then a barrel that had been plucked high into the sky by the twister came crashing down in the middle of the street, bursting apart and spraying gallons and gallons of the Harlows’ moonshine whiskey all around it. The sharp smell of the liquor filled the air.

And Matt and Sam started to laugh. Pretty soon, they were howling like crazy men as the twister vanished into the clouds and went on its way.

Luckily, no one had been in the old livery barn when the tornado struck it. The saloon’s patrons had fled as the storm approached, seeking safer places.

Ike Loomis took the loss philosophically. “Reckon I wasn’t meant to be a lawbreaker, even a law I don’t agree with,” he told Matt and Sam later that day. “My boy’s gonna be all right, so I’m more’n satisfied with the way things turned out.”

That seemed to be mostly true, although a couple of the former prisoners had been fatally wounded during the battle. They were the only casualties, though.

With Cimarron Kane and the rest of his relatives dead, the Harlows were free to rebuild their still without having to worry about being run out of business at gunpoint. Folks would have to venture out to their farm to buy the corn squeezin’s, though, as Marshal Coleman made plain when they all gathered at his house for supper that evening.

“There won’t be any saloons in Cottonwood, secret or otherwise, unless and until they change that law. I don’t have any control over what you do on your farm, Thurman, but I won’t have it here in town.”

Harlow nodded. “I reckon we can live with that.”

“Chances are, though, that the governor will send out some more of those special marshals, honest ones this time,” Coleman warned. Calvin Bickford was locked up down at the jail—in a cell where the wall wasn’t blown out—and the story of the vicious scheme he and Porter had hatched would reach Governor St. John soon enough. “I won’t tell ’em where to find you, but I don’t imagine it’ll take them long to figure out where the best liquor in this end of the state is comin’ from.”

“Well, we’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Harlow replied in his mild-mannered way.

Matt and Sam left Coleman, Harlow, Ike Loomis, and Barnabas Smith talking in the parlor while they walked outside with Frankie and Hannah. The storm had blown on through this part of the country, leaving behind clear skies, a million stars, bright moonlight, and a refreshingly cool breeze.

“Listen, Bodine,” Frankie spoke up before any of the others could say anything, “don’t you even start talking about you and Two Wolves moving on. The two of you are staying right here in Cottonwood for a while.”

“How do you figure that?” Matt asked with a grin.

“Frankie and I decided it,” Hannah said.

“The two of you made the decision, did you?” Sam asked.

Frankie nodded. “That’s right. And remember, you’ve seen both of us handle a gun, so you know we can back up what we say.”

Matt held up his hands, palms out in surrender. “I’ve taken enough chances lately. I don’t plan on arguin’ with you ladies.”

“Taking chances is right,” Frankie said. “I can’t believe you just stood there and waited to see what that twister was going to do! It could have blown you from hereto…to Mexico!”

Matt and Sam looked at each other. “Mexico,” Matt mused. “We haven’t been there in a while.”

“No, we haven’t,” Sam agreed.

Hannah linked her arm with his. “And you’re not going now,” she said.

“No, I suppose not,” Sam said.

But the seed had been planted, and the blood brothers knew that the time would come. For a few moments in recent days, Sam had given some thought to settling down, but he knew now that he wasn’t meant to do that just yet. The siren song of the frontier was still too strong, and one fine morning, when the wind was right and an eagle soared high in the sky, Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves would answer that call once again.

But for tonight, the only song came from the throat of Lobo, who sat on the porch and lifted his shaggy head to howl at the moon as he paid no attention to what the humans were doing in the shadows under the cottonwood trees.