Texas Gundown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  The Indian woman hurried from behind the bar, and three more women, all of them breeds, came running down the stairs. Those were the soiled doves who regularly worked for Van Goort, Matt supposed. The prisoners were still locked up. The man who had been guarding them ran down the stairs behind the whores. Fire trumped just about every other concern on the frontier.

  Matt hesitated just enough to let the others rush out ahead of him without being too obvious about it. They streamed across the courtyard in the Dutchman’s wake. As soon as Matt was alone in the trading post with the outlaw whose leg was broken, he turned and strode toward the table where the man sat.

  “Hey,” the owlhoot said, “ain’t you gonna help ’em fight that fire?”

  “Nope,” Matt said. With the speed that had made him one of the most respected—and feared—gunfighters on the frontier, he drew his right-hand Colt and walloped the outlaw with it, laying the barrel alongside the man’s head and driving him out of the chair where he sat. The outlaw sprawled on the floor next to the table, out cold.

  Moving quickly, Matt holstered his revolver and plucked a Winchester from a rack on the wall. He took a box of cartridges from a nearby shelf and thumbed the rounds into the rifle’s loading gate until the fifteen-shot magazine was full. Then, carrying the Winchester, he stepped onto the trading post’s porch and pushed through the hanging vines. Outside, men were running back and forth from the barn to the well, bringing back buckets of water that they flung on the raging flames. The blaze had spread quickly. Great tongues of fire licked out the barn’s doors.

  Matt didn’t know where Sam was, but he was willing to bet that his blood brother was somewhere close by. For a second, worry tickled the back of Matt’s brain.

  What if Sam hadn’t been able to get out of the barn before the flames spread?

  What if the fire had gotten out of control faster than Sam anticipated? He might be trapped in that inferno.

  The worry was short-lived. For one thing, Sam was too smart to let something like that happen, and for another, Sam’s voice suddenly rang out from the corral in a powerful shout.

  “Everybody freeze and drop your guns! You’re covered!”

  Just in front of the porch, Matt levered a round into the Winchester’s firing chamber and brought the rifle to his shoulder. “Do it!” he called. “I’ll ventilate the first man who tries anything!”

  The Dutchman dropped the bucket he was holding. Water splashed over his feet, but he didn’t seem to notice it. Gaping in shock, he turned first toward the corral and then toward the trading post. Several of the other men were looking back and forth, too, obviously confused.

  Van Goort’s confusion didn’t last long. “Kill them!” he screamed. “Kill them both!”

  Some of the guards hesitated, but others instinctively followed Van Goort’s orders and clawed for their guns as they dropped the buckets. Coolly, Matt lined his sights on one of the men trying to draw, and fired as the hardcase’s gun cleared leather. The slug from the Winchester plowed into the man’s chest and drove him backward off his feet.

  At the same time, gun flame lanced from the darkness of the corral. That would be Sam, Matt thought as he worked the rifle’s lever again and shifted his aim. As Sam’s Colt barked twice, another of the Dutchman’s guards spun off his feet. One of the gunmen got his iron out and triggered a shot that whistled past Matt’s ear. Matt returned the fire, and in the light of the burning barn saw the man double over and clutch his belly where the bullet had ripped into him. He pitched forward on his face.

  The glare from the flames made Van Goort’s men good targets. Matt and Sam each dropped another man before heavy fire from the remaining guards forced Matt to dive back onto the porch. He rolled behind some rocking chairs that sat there, and ended up on his belly. Splinters from the chairs rained down around him as bullets chewed into the furniture. Matt slammed three more shots from the Winchester as fast as he could work the lever, and saw two guards go down. Sam was still firing from the corral. Another of Van Goort’s men stumbled, fell to his knees, and then toppled over on his side. The deadly accuracy of Matt and Sam had accounted for more than half of the Dutchman’s guards. Van Goort suddenly thrust his arms in the air and screamed, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire! We surrender!”

  “Throw down your guns!” Matt shouted.

  Van Goort did so, and the men who worked for him followed suit. The Indian women put their hands in the air as well. The fight appeared to be over. Matt stood up and stepped off the porch again. Sam came to the corral fence and bent to duck between the rails. Both of the blood brothers still held their guns ready to fire at an instant’s notice.

  A shot suddenly blasted from the watchtower. Matt’s hat flew from his head.

  Sam pivoted smoothly, angled his Colt up, and fired in less than the blink of an eye. Matt was the faster of the two, but not by much.

  Sam’s shot was rewarded by a screech of pain. A rifle fell from the watchtower and landed on the ground at the structure’s base.

  “Blast it!” Sam burst out. “I just shot a woman!”

  Matt gestured with the barrel of his rifle, herding the Dutchman and the remaining guards together in a compact knot so he could cover them without any trouble.

  “Go check it out,” he told Sam, “but be careful.”

  Sam nodded and trotted over to the ladder leading up to the partially enclosed platform atop the tower. He holstered his revolver and began to climb. Matt couldn’t watch him, because he had to keep his attention focused on the men and women he had just taken prisoner. One of them might still try something. A moment later, he heard Sam’s startled exclamation; then Sam went, “Owww!”

  The meaty thud of a fist against flesh sounded.

  “Sam!” Matt called. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” Relief flooded through Matt as he heard his blood brother’s voice. “She was waiting for me with a knife and tried to stab me, but all I got was a little scratch. I had to knock her out, though. I hate hitting a woman.”

  “Better than letting her carve your gizzard out,” Matt replied. To the prisoners, he went on. “Move away from those guns you dropped.”

  “What about my barn?” Van Goort asked. “It’s going to be destroyed!”

  “I wouldn’t go lookin’ for a lot of sympathy, mister,” Matt snapped. “Not the way you were holdin’ those women captive and makin’ ’em whore for you.”

  Van Goort’s round, fleshy face was set in lines of fury. “You lied to me! You are lawmen, yah?”

  “No, we’re not lawmen. But our names aren’t Smith and Jones either. I’m Matt Bodine, and that’s my brother Sam Two Wolves.”

  The names of the blood brothers were well known all across the West. Also known was the fact that they hated outlaws and bad hombres of all stripes. The nervous looks on the faces of several of the guards testified that they knew they were lucky to still be alive. They wouldn’t want to push their luck any further than they already had by making enemies of the notorious Bodine and Two Wolves. Matt herded the prisoners into a small stone building that was used as a smokehouse. The thick walls, heavy door, and lack of windows insured that it wouldn’t be easy for them to get out of there, especially with the beam that could be dropped in a couple of brackets across the door to bar it closed. Evidently, the building had been used to lock up prisoners on occasion in the past.

  “Go let those women on the second floor loose,” Matt suggested to Sam, who had climbed down from the watchtower with the unconscious form of the lookout over his shoulder. “I’ll check the bodies of the ones we shot.”

  Sam nodded agreement and hurried into the trading post. Carefully, Matt made sure the men they had downed earlier were really dead. All of them were, which came as no surprise to Matt. He and Sam had been shooting to kill.

  One of the dead men, Matt noted with a grimace, had his arm in a sling. During the fracas, there hadn’t been time to shoot to wound. This man was one of the outlaws, one of the leads
they had to the gang that had raided Buckskin. Matt hoped he hadn’t hit the fella with the broken leg hard enough to bust his skull open. That didn’t prove to be the case, Sam reported when he came outside again, trailed by the former prisoners. The women from Buckskin were all laughing and sobbing with relief at being freed. Likely they still faced a lot of hard times, considering what had happened to them, but at least they were alive and no longer being held captive.

  “Let’s wet down the other buildings, just to make sure the fire doesn’t spread,”

  Sam suggested.

  Matt nodded. “Yeah. Then we’ll have a little talk with that fella inside.”

  The tone of his voice indicated that the conversation might not be a pleasant one. That would all depend on just how helpful the hombre wanted to be.

  Alice Fletcher, Cara Wilson, and the other women from Buckskin were more than happy to pitch in and help, carrying buckets of water from the well to throw on the other buildings in the compound. They let the fire go ahead and burn in the barn, until the place was gutted inside. Since the adobe walls wouldn’t burn, the flames began to die out once most of the wood and straw inside was consumed. Matt and Sam left the women to keep an eye on the dwindling fire, and went inside the trading post. The owlhoot with the broken leg was still unconscious, although he had begun to stir around a mite. A groan came from his lips as the blood brothers walked over to where he lay on the floor. Matt saw that Sam had taken the time earlier to use the man’s belt and tie his hands together behind his back.

  “I didn’t think he was going anywhere,” Sam commented, “but I wanted to make sure he couldn’t use his crutches.”

  “Smart thinkin’.” Matt hunkered on his heels next to the man and lightly slapped his cheeks, back and forth. “Wake up, mister. Time we had a talk.”

  The outlaw came around under Matt’s prodding. He blinked in fear, stared up at Matt and Sam, and asked, “Wh-who are you fellas? What do you want?”

  “My friend here is Matt Bodine,” Sam said.

  Matt jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Sam. “And he’s Sam Two Wolves.”

  The way the owlhoot swallowed hard told them that he had heard of them.

  “What’s your name?” Matt asked.

  “D-Dave. Dave Ash.”

  “Well, I tell you, Dave,” Matt drawled as he slipped one of his guns out of its holster. “We know you were ridin’ with Deuce Mallory and his gang when they hit Buckskin, a couple of days north of here. There’s no point in you tryin’ to deny it. That’d just be a waste of your breath and our time.”

  Sam knelt on the other side of Dave Ash and drew a hunting knife from its sheath at his waist. Lamplight gleamed on the razor-sharp blade as he turned it from side to side. “My father was a Cheyenne war chief,” he said. “The Cheyenne aren’t like the Apaches or the Comanches. We don’t torture folks for the fun of it.” Sam lowered the knife until the tip rested just under Ash’s chin. “We torture folks for a reason.”

  “I wouldn’t give him a reason if I was you,” Matt advised.

  Ash blinked again and quavered, “Wh-what do you want from me?”

  “We want you to tell us where Mallory was headed from here. We know he left you and that other fella behind because you were hurt. I reckon he had some destination in mind and didn’t want to wait.”

  “Tell us where we can find him,” Sam said.

  Ash gulped, then winced as that action caused his chin to move just enough so that the tip of Sam’s blade broke the skin. As a drop of blood welled out, he said,

  “Sweet Apple! That’s where Deuce was goin’! A town called Sweet Apple, down by the Rio Grande!”

  The blood brothers glanced at each other. “Heard of it?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah,” Matt said with a nod. “Supposed to be hell on wheels, despite the name.”

  “Deuce was gonna clean the place out, just like we did Buckskin!” Ash volunteered. “Then head right straight on across the border into Mexico.” He gave a trembling sigh as Sam took the knife away from his throat. “Are you boys gonna go after him?”

  “What do you think?” Matt asked in a hard voice.

  “If Sweet Apple is where I think it is, that’s a week’s ride or more away,” Sam pointed out. “We might not be able to catch Mallory’s gang before they hit the town, even if we didn’t have to take those women back to Buckskin first. As it is, they’ll probably be well into Mexico before we can get down there.”

  Matt grunted. “Good thing we’re not lawmen or army then. I don’t intend to let a little thing like a river stop us.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Sam said with a smile. “I feel pretty much the same way.”

  Ash summoned up the courage to ask, “What’re you boys gonna do with me and Warren?”

  “That the fella with his arm in a sling?”

  Ash managed to nod.

  “Well, him we’ll plant,” Matt said. “He didn’t make it through that little fracas outside. As for you—”

  Before he could go on and explain that Ash, along with the other prisoners, would be taken back to Buckskin and turned over to the law, the door of the trading post burst open and Alice Fletcher ran inside. The blonde looked scared as she said, “Mr. Bodine! Mr. Two Wolves! Someone’s coming! It sounds like a lot of horses!”

  Matt and Sam exchanged grim looks. A large group of riders approaching the trading post in the night probably didn’t mean anything good.

  It appeared that their trip to Sweet Apple was going to be delayed even more.

  Chapter 11

  Matt and Sam followed Alice back outside. They could hear the horses for themselves now. Matt judged that there were at least a dozen of them, maybe more. He noticed with grim satisfaction that the women had all picked up guns that had been dropped earlier by the Dutchman’s men. The hellish ordeal they had gone through hadn’t completely broken their spirits. Even the brief taste of freedom they’d had tonight had been enough to restore their courage. That was the way it was with most folks. Once they’d had their freedom taken away, then gotten it back, they would fight like wildcats to make sure that no one ever took it from them again.

  Matt tossed the Winchester to Sam, who caught it easily. “Climb up in that tower. You can cover the whole compound from there.”

  Sam nodded and set off at a run toward the ladder leading up to the watchtower.

  “Onto the parapets there by the gates, ladies,” Matt told the women. “We have to protect the gates more than anything else.”

  They didn’t hesitate to follow his orders. Matt joined them, climbing onto the parapets and filling both hands with his six-guns.

  As isolated as it was, the Dutchman’s trading post had been built for defense. Even so, Matt had his doubts that he and Sam could hold the place against a determined force of attackers with only a handful of inexperienced women. He sure as hell intended to try, though.

  The glow from the burning barn had lit up the night sky and had probably been visible for miles around. It had served as a beacon for whoever those riders were. A band of renegade Comanche maybe. Most of the Comanche were on the reservation up in Indian Territory now, after U.S. cavalry troops under Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie had pretty much put an end to the Indian Wars in Texas with their victory in the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon a few years earlier. Even so, from time to time a group of warriors anxious to recapture the glories of the past would slip off the reservation and set off on a bloody raid. Or it could be another gang of vicious outlaws like the one headed up by Deuce Mallory. That made more sense than any other explanation. The Dutchman’s place was known far and wide as a haven for owlhoots and killers. Whoever the riders were, they would get a hot-lead welcome from the defenders inside the trading post. Matt’s hands tightened on his guns as he peered over the top of the wall into the darkness.

  The hoofbeats slowed and then stopped. The strangers were being cautious.

  They weren’t going to ride right up to the gates. Instead only a couple o
f them walked their horses forward. One of the men lifted his voice in a hail as they neared the gates.

  “Hello, the fort!”

  Matt frowned. There was something familiar about that voice, but he couldn’t place it. Crouched down so that the wall would protect him in case the strangers opened fire, Matt called back, “Stay where you are! Who are you, and what’s your business here?”

  A moment of silence answered him, and then that familiar voice asked, “Bodine? Matt Bodine?”

  Matt’s frown deepened. How’d that hombre know who he was? Without confirming his own identity, he said again, “Who are you?”

  “Timothy Lowell. The mayor of Buckskin.”

  One of the women on the parapet cried out in a ragged voice, “Timothy! Oh, God, Timothy!”

  That would be the mayor’s wife Lucinda, Matt thought. A feeling of relief washed through him as he straightened.

  “Lucinda!” The mayor spurred forward, not being cautious any longer. “Open the gates, damn it! That’s my wife in there!”

  “Take it easy, Mayor,” Matt called down. He didn’t holster his irons just yet. “Are those some of the men from Buckskin with you?”

  “Yes, blast it! Birdie shamed us into forming a posse and coming after you to help you. We’d camped for the night when we saw the light from a big fire and thought we ought to find out what it was. Now let us in! Is my wife all right? Lucinda, can you hear me?”

  “I’m all right, Timothy,” she told him. She was sobbing. All the women were as they realized that rescuers from their hometown were right outside the walls. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

  Matt slipped his Colts into leather and called, “Hang on, Mayor. I’ll get the gates open.”

  When he reached the bottom of the steps leading up to the parapet, he found that Sam had climbed down from the watchtower, too. Together, they lifted the heavy bar from the gates and swung them open. The posse from Buckskin rode into the compound. Several of the men leaped from their saddles and embraced the women. For now, at least, the reunions were happy ones.