Matt and Sam were still unarmed, even if they could have brought themselves to open fire on innocent people. But a panic-stricken citizen could shoot them just as dead as any owlhoot.
* * *
The rendezvous point was about a mile south of town where a dry creek bed cut across the plains. The stream had water in it just often enough to support a few scrubby mesquite trees with deep roots along its banks. Mallory’s men paused there to let everyone catch up as they left the devastated settlement of Buckskin. The flames shooting high in the air from the burning buildings were clearly visible from here. The terrain in this part of the Panhandle was so flat the fire was probably visible for twenty miles or more. Deuce Mallory sat and watched the dancing flames with a satisfied grin on his rawboned face. Once again he had struck a devastating blow against the forces that conspired to hold him down and tell him how to live. He hated rules and authority more than just about anything. Those flames represented his vengeance on everybody who had ever frowned at him in disapproval and tried to mold him into something he wasn’t, going all the way back to his stern, straitlaced storekeeper father and his simpering fool of a mother.
The gang had ridden away from Buckskin with a lot of loot, too. That made Mallory’s grin even wider.
The men who’d been given the chore of cleaning out the bank vault had carried away several large burlap bags full of greenbacks, along with a heavy canvas pouch stuffed to the gills with gold double eagles. Other men had plundered the cash from the general stores and the settlement’s other businesses. They had stolen money and jewelry from the families who resided in Buckskin’s finest homes. They had stolen something else from a few of those homes: the wives and daughters of the families who lived there. Mallory estimated that the gang had half-a-dozen sobbing, terrified female captives ranging from teenage girls up to middle-aged but still attractive married women.
Taking prisoners like that was a double-edged sword. The men liked to have their fun with the gals, of course, but losing their womenfolk sometimes made the survivors of a raid more determined to pursue the gang. That was why Mallory would order that the women be released after a day or two. That was long enough for his men to slake their lust, and once a posse had recovered the women, they were less likely to continue chasing the outlaws. The townies were more interested in getting the women safely home. Mallory had worked it all out in his mind. Killing the prisoners and leaving their bodies behind would just make the pursuers more determined than ever to catch up and try to avenge their loved ones. Mallory didn’t want that.
Besides, he enjoyed knowing that from then on those damned storekeepers would never be able to look at their wives and daughters again without thinking about all the men who’d ridden them. Hell, some of them would probably even give birth to outlaw babies! Mallory laughed in delight whenever he thought about how much squirming that would cause.
One of his lieutenants, a straw-haired man named Larrabee, moved his horse over next to Mallory’s and said, “Everybody’s here who’s gonna be, Boss.”
Mallory nodded. “How many men did we lose?”
“I make it eight.” Larrabee named them. “Some of ’em are dead for sure, and the others ain’t showed up so I reckon they probably are, too.”
It was a hard-and-fast rule—anybody who didn’t show up for the rendezvous in a timely manner got left behind. Mallory enforced it without exception.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll head for the Dutchman’s and count up the take there before moving on south.”
“Mexico’s still where we’re headed in the long run?”
Mallory nodded. “It’s a good place to spend some time while things cool off up here. Warm weather and warmer señoritas, eh, Larrabee?”
The other outlaw chuckled. “Whatever you say, Boss.”
Mallory glanced at the burning settlement as he turned his horse to head south, and again felt that fierce sense of satisfaction at the visible evidence of the destruction he’d caused.
“I say go to hell,” he whispered. “Each and every one of you.”
Chapter 5
Matt and Sam found themselves staring down the barrels of at least half-a dozen guns as some of the citizens of Buckskin rushed up in response to the man’s cries for help. Angry shouts filled the air, competing with the roar and crackle of the flames down the street.
“Kill the owlhoots!”
“Shoot ’em! Fill ’em full of lead!”
“No! String ’em up!”
“Somebody get a rope!”
“I say we blast the bastards!”
Finally, a voice of reason spoke up. “Hold your fire! If you go to shootin’ you might hit Birdie!”
“Yeah, a necktie party’d be better!”
One of the men squinted over his gun barrel at Matt and rasped, “Give us the deputy, mister. You won’t get away with holdin’ him hostage.”
The anger that had been building up inside Matt finally exploded. “You damn fools!” he raged. “We’re not holdin’ the deputy hostage! We want to get him to a doctor!”
“And we aren’t part of the gang that raided the town,” Sam added. “They tried to kill us, too. They dynamited the marshal’s office, for God’s sake!”
The stubborn looks remained on the faces of the townsmen. “They probably blew up the place tryin’ to break you out because you’re in cahoots with them,” one of the men said accusingly.
“Hand over the deputy,” another ordered, “or we’ll shoot anyway. I think Birdie’s already dead.”
As if the deputy had heard those words, he stirred suddenly. Lifting his head, he peered around. The flames made it plenty light enough in the street to see what was going on.
Although weak and thin, Birdie’s voice still held some of the fighting spirit he had unexpectedly displayed inside the jail. “Put those . . . damn guns down,” he commanded. “Bodine and Two Wolves are . . . tryin’ to help me . . .”
“Birdie!” one of the men said. “You’re alive!”
“Thanks to . . . these two men.”
The man who had originally yelled for help said, “We thought they were part of the gang—”
“Well, they . . . ain’t.” Birdie looked up at Matt. “The marshal . . . ?”
“Dead.”
Birdie closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and went on. “I reckon . .
. I’m in charge . . . then. You men . . . back off . . . The prisoners are still . . . in my custody.”
Birdie was in no shape to have anybody in custody, but Matt didn’t think it was a good time to point that out. Instead he asked the group of men, who were now looking confused and even a little ashamed of themselves, “Where’s the doctor?” “I saw him a few minutes ago in front of the hardware store,” one of the men replied. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
They formed a grim procession as they went down the street, with Matt and Sam in front along with the man taking them to the doctor and the rest of the townies trailing behind. Most of them had holstered their guns, but a few still held their weapons as if they weren’t ready to fully trust the blood brothers.
The doctor was no longer in front of the hardware store, but one of the men spotted him farther down the street and pointed him out to Matt. The sawbones was a gaunt, white-haired man with a harried look on his face. No surprise there, since Buckskin was now full of injured people needing his attention. The doctor was checking over a line of wounded citizens who had been laid out on the hotel porch. He glanced at Matt, saw the bloody figure in the young man’s arms, and grunted. “Put him down somewhere,” the doctor ordered. “I’ll get to him when I can.” Then he looked again and exclaimed, “Birdie?”
The deputy summoned up a faint smile. “Howdy . . . Doc.”
“Bring him over here,” the doctor ordered. “Set him down carefully. . . . Just like that.”
Matt lowered Birdie to the hotel porch. The doctor pulled aside the bloody shirt to reveal the bullet holes in Birdie’s torso.
/>
“No telling how much damage those slugs did,” the doctor muttered, “but it looks like they went all the way through anyway. He’s lost a lot of blood. I’ll do what I can for him, but I’m only one man and a lot of people are hurt.”
“Perhaps I could help,” Sam offered.
“You have medical training, young man?”
“No, but I have a lot of practical experience patching up bullet holes.” Sam waved a hand toward Matt. “My friend here seems to make a habit of getting shot.”
“Hey!” Matt protested. “I haven’t been ventilated all that many times. And you’ve stopped a bullet or two yourself.”
The doctor ignored him and said to Sam, “Some of the less seriously injured patients are down at the far end of the porch. If you’d go see what you can do for them, I’d appreciate it.”
Sam nodded. “Right away, Doctor.”
He hurried off to see if there were any of the wounded townspeople he could help. No one tried to stop him, so Matt supposed the angry citizens had decided that he and Sam weren’t part of the outlaw gang after all.
“Anybody know who was responsible for this?” he asked the men.
They looked at each other and shook their heads. “We don’t have any idea, mister,” one man replied.
“Never saw ’em before,” another put in. “And I don’t know if anybody got a good look at ’em anyway. The way they rode in shootin’ and killin’ like that, folks were just tryin’ to get out of harm’s way.”
Matt nodded. He understood what the men were talking about. In the middle of a battle like that, people didn’t worry about much of anything except survival. Some terrified wailing made Matt swing around to see what was happening now. A middle-aged man in a dressing gown over a nightshirt came stumbling up to the hotel. He must have already retired for the evening when the marauders charged into Buckskin. His thinning hair was standing up in crazy tufts and his pale face was twisted with horror.
“They took her!” he managed to gasp out. “They took my Lucinda!”
The doctor stepped over to him and grasped his arm. “Are you hurt, Mayor?”
The man shook his head and said, “No, I’m fine. Didn’t you hear me? Those bastards carried off my wife!” He put his hands over his face and began to shake with sobs.
Matt looked over at one of the townsmen who stood nearby. “That fella’s your mayor?”
“Yeah. Timothy Lowell’s his name.” The townie wore a sympathetic expression.
“From what he’s sayin’ it sounds like those owlhoots kidnapped his wife. Mrs. Lowell’s a fine-lookin’ woman.”
“Are any other women or girls missing?”
The townsman shook his head. “Mister, I just wouldn’t know. I’m a bachelor myself. Reckon maybe that’s a good thing tonight.”
Matt figured the hombre was probably right about that. The possibility that the outlaws had carried off some of the women of Buckskin came as no real surprise to him. Out here on the frontier, most decent women were safe from assault, even when confronted with the most hardened desperadoes. But there were always exceptions, and a bunch of murdering skunks like the ones who had hit this settlement were capable of just about anything. Matt didn’t live here, and after the treatment he and Sam had received from Buckskin’s marshal, he didn’t have any reason to be overly fond of the town. Even so, he felt outrage rising inside him. Those outlaws were worse than animals. Somebody needed to put a stop to their depredations.
These folks weren’t capable of doing it, though. Matt wasn’t sure they could even muster a posse to go after the raiders. A lot of men had been killed and others were wounded, and the ones who remained had their hands full trying to get those fires under control and care for the injured.
Anyway, a bunch of storekeepers and clerks wouldn’t be any match for a gang of ruthless hardcases who would as soon kill a man as look at him. The job of going after those outlaws required men who were pretty tough and gun-handy themselves.
At the moment, Matt could think of only two hombres in Buckskin who he knew fit that description.
And they were Onihomahan . . . Brothers of the Wolf.
Him and Sam.
* * *
By morning the fires were out in the settlement. Four buildings had burned to the ground and a dozen others had been heavily damaged by flames, including some residences. Twenty-three people were dead, not counting the outlaws who had been killed in the fighting, and another seven or eight were injured so badly that Dr. Lloyd Fentress didn’t expect them to pull through.
One of the survivors was Deputy Birdie Phillips. Fentress sent word to Matt and Sam that Birdie wanted to see them.
They had been up all night, helping with the wounded and fighting the fires.
Their faces were grimy with smoke, sweat, and dried blood, and their steps weary with exhaustion as they climbed the stairs to the second floor of the hotel, which had been turned into a makeshift hospital. They had poked around in the rubble of the marshal’s office and jail until they found their hats, but they hadn’t located their guns yet.
Dr. Fentress met them at the top of the stairs and pointed to a door down the corridor. “Birdie’s in Room Eleven. I told him he needed to rest instead of talking to you fellows, but he insisted.”
“Is he going to recover from his wounds?” Sam asked.
“I’m a physician, not a Gypsy fortune-teller,” Fentress snapped. “But I’ll say this . . . Birdie shouldn’t have lived this long. I’ve stopped the bleeding and cleaned and bandaged the wounds. The little varmint’s so stubborn; I’d say he’s got a chance.” The doctor’s gruff words didn’t completely conceal the admiration and affection he felt for the deputy.
Matt nodded, said, “Thanks, Doc. We’ll try not to tire him out too much.”
“You boys look like you could use some rest yourselves.”
Sam gave him a grim smile. “That’ll have to wait.”
They went down the hall and through an open door into the room where Birdie waited, halfway propped up in the hotel bed. Thick bandages were wrapped tightly around his body. His face was pale and drawn, but his eyes were open and he seemed alert enough.
“Are you fellas all right?” he asked.
Matt shrugged. “A mite banged up and mighty tired, but other than that I don’t reckon we can complain.”
Birdie smiled. “Looks like you came through that dynamite blast pretty good.”
“Thanks to you,” Sam said. “If you hadn’t thrown those sticks out into the office, we would’ve been blown to kingdom come.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Birdie agreed. “As it is, it feels like the whole world fell on me.”
“Not the whole world,” Matt said. “Just a wall.”
“And it must’ve been you two who dragged me out of there and got help for me.
You saved my life.”
“The least we could do,” Sam said.
“Not hardly. Not after the way the marshal locked you up when that brawl in the Red Queen wasn’t your fault.”
“You know that?” Matt asked.
Birdie nodded. “I figured as much. Buckner started a fight every time he came to town. Marshal Stryker knew that. He just wanted to be the one who locked up the famous Bodine and Two Wolves.”
Matt frowned. “You knew that but you didn’t do anything about it?”
“What could I do? I worked for Marshal Stryker. And he was a good lawman; too, don’t you think he wasn’t. He was just . . . ambitious.”
Sam said, “It’s all right. Don’t tire yourself out, Birdie. We promised the doctor we wouldn’t upset you.”
Birdie sighed. “I ain’t upset with you boys. I just hate to think about what those no-good outlaws have done to my town. Doc Fentress says they kidnapped some women?”
“Six that we know of,” Sam said. “Including Mayor Lowell’s wife.”
“My God.” Birdie shook his head. “Somebody’s got to go after ’em.”
“You think anybody in
this town is capable of tracking down an outlaw gang like that?” Matt asked.
Birdie looked him straight in the eye. “Nobody who lives here. But you two boys could do it.”
Matt opened his mouth to say something, but Birdie went on before any words could come out.
“I’ve heard plenty about you fellas. You’ve fought owlhoots and got mixed up in range wars and even helped out the Texas Rangers a time or two.”
“Maybe you should call in the Rangers now,” Sam suggested.
“That’d mean sendin’ a rider to the nearest telegraph office, and that’s more’n forty miles away. By the time any Rangers could get here, those owlhoots will be long gone and their trail will be cold. Now, though, it’d be fresh enough for somebody to follow it.”
“Somebody meanin’ us?” Matt said. He had already thought the same thing himself, but he was reluctant to agree with what Birdie was asking. The odds against him and Sam would be overwhelming....
Of course, that hadn’t stopped them on numerous occasions in the past. They’d ridden right into some dustups where they might as well have been charging Hades with a bucket of water—and they’d made it out alive.
“You can have the best horses in town, and if you need guns and ammunition, take whatever you need from Lowell’s Emporium.”
“Owned by the mayor, I reckon?”
Birdie nodded. “That’s right. I’ve already talked to him about this. He told me to deputize you and tell you that the town will pay whatever you ask if you can get those prisoners away from the gang. Pay you a bounty for every one of those bastards you kill, too.”
“You’re the marshal now?” Sam asked.
“That’s right.” Birdie chuckled. “Assumin’ I don’t die from gettin’ shot full of holes.”
Matt didn’t think that was going to happen. Birdie might look like a mousy little fella, but he had already demonstrated that he was tough as whang leather and full of piss and vinegar.
“I’d bet a hat you’ll pull through,” Matt said. “We ain’t deputies, though, and we ain’t bounty hunters.”
Texas Gundown Page 4
