Texas Gundown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Matt looked, and a grin broke out on his rugged face. “Yeah, I reckon that’d do the trick, all right. Now the question is, which one of us goes after it?”

  “Well, it was my idea—” Sam began.

  “So you think you should be the one to carry it out.” Matt nodded. “I completely agree. I’ll stay here and cover you.”

  “Actually, I was going to say that since I came up with the idea, I should be the one to stay here and let you get all the glory.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Matt said with a shake of his head. “You deserve the chance to shine for a change, Sam. You shouldn’t be so modest.”

  Sam glared at his blood brother for a moment, then sighed and said, “Oh, all right.” He holstered his gun. “I always was a faster and better runner than you anyway.”

  Matt just grinned and shook his head. “Not gonna work.”

  Sam grimaced, took a deep breath, and then burst from cover as Matt thrust the barrel of his Colt around the tree trunk and started blazing away at the cabin. Sam streaked toward the ridgeline, angling away from the cabin as he ran. His arms pumped at his sides and his hat flew off. Matt didn’t know if the wind had blown the hat off or if a bullet had plucked it from Sam’s head. Matt kept up his covering fire, emptying the revolver at the cabin.

  He aimed a little high, though. He didn’t know who was in there or why they were shooting at him and Sam, but he didn’t like to kill anybody without being sure there was a good reason. Normally, taking shots at them would be reason enough, but even though Matt couldn’t explain it, in this case he felt like he ought to be absolutely certain before he shot to kill.

  Sam disappeared into some trees that grew along the base of the bluff. A moment later, Matt spotted him climbing the slope about a hundred yards to the right of the cabin. The bluff rose almost straight up for about twenty feet, but rocks protruded here and there, as did the roots of some scrubby bushes growing out of the bluff. Those things gave Sam enough footholds and toeholds so that he was able to climb to the top without much trouble.

  Matt’s revolver was empty. He had enough cartridges in the loops of his shell belt to reload it once, but that was all. He thumbed in the fresh rounds and snapped the cylinder closed. He held his fire, though, figuring it was best to wait until his shots might make a difference.

  He watched as Sam made his way along the bluff. Whoever was in the cabin with that rifle couldn’t see Sam now, and wouldn’t have been able to see him climb the bluff. But the rifleman had to have seen which way Sam was headed, and could probably figure out what he was doing. Matt figured it was worth one more attempt to talk some sense into the trigger-happy varmint.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, you in the cabin! We’re not lookin’ for any trouble!

  Hold your fire and—”

  Whatever Matt was going to suggest next was drowned out in a fresh fusillade of shots from inside the cabin. Splinters and chunks of bark flew from the tree as the rifleman poured lead at it. Matt cursed again and tried to make himself as skinny as possible, so that all of his body was shielded by the tree trunk. He was getting a mite annoyed with that fella, whoever he was.

  When the firing died away again, probably so that the rifleman could reload,

  Matt risked a quick look around the tree. He saw Sam crouched atop the bluff, watching. Matt gave him a curt nod, signaling him to go ahead with their plan. Sam returned the nod. He stood up and took off his shirt, revealing his powerful, brawny musculature.

  Holding the shirt in his hands, Sam crept toward the gray, oblong object hanging from the branch of a scrubby tree on top of the bluff. He struck quickly, wrap- ping the buckskin shirt around the thing as he grabbed it and yanked it loose from the tree. Then he turned and ran toward the edge of the bluff. Matt thought he could hear the angry buzzing even from this distance.

  When Sam reached the edge, he sailed off it, flying through the air and landing with a solid thump on the roof of the cabin where the smoke was coming from the chimney. Matt watched anxiously as Sam rolled over, keeping the shirt wrapped around the hornets’ nest as he did so. Sam surged to his feet, lunged over to the chimney, and dropped the nest down the opening. Then he fell backward on the roof and waved the shirt around, trying to drive away the hornets that had escaped from the released nest.

  Most of the furious insects would have still been in the nest, which must have busted open as soon as it hit the bottom of the fireplace inside the cabin. The shooting stopped, to be replaced immediately by high-pitched yells of pain and rage.

  The door leading into the dogtrot from the side of the cabin where the rifleman was located suddenly burst open and a man raced out, waving his arms frantically around his head. He had long white hair and a white beard. What appeared to be a black cloud followed him, swarming around him. He sprinted toward the nearby creek and dived in, throwing water up around him in a great silvery splash. The old-timer stayed under the surface of the creek for so long that Matt began to worry that he had hit his head, knocked himself out, and drowned. Finally, though, the old man came up gulping for air.

  By that time, the furious hornets were gone, and Matt Bodine stood on the creek bank instead, the gun in his hand pointed toward the old-timer.

  The man sputtered and pawed his sodden white hair out of his eyes. “You got me, you damn-blasted owlhoot!” he said. “Go ahead and shoot me, why don’t you? See if I care!”

  “If you didn’t care whether you live or die, you wouldn’t have been tryin’ to ventilate my brother and me,” Matt pointed out. “And by the way, I’m not an owlhoot. Neither of us are.”

  Welts were starting to come up on the old man’s hands and face where the hornets had stung him. He ducked his head under again. Matt knew the water in these mountain creeks was cold all year round. The cold would help numb the stings so that they didn’t hurt as much, so he waited patiently for the old-timer to come up again.

  By the time he did so, Sam had climbed down from the roof of the cabin and trotted over to join Matt. “You all right?” Matt asked him.

  “I got stung a few times,” Sam replied, “but I’ll live. Who’s the old geezer?”

  Matt looked at the white-haired man, who had surfaced and was sputtering and gasping again. “Don’t know. He hasn’t told me who he is or why he was shootin’ at us.”

  “Because you’re outlaws!” the old-timer yelled. “Prob’ly part o’ that damned Mallory gang!”

  That caught the blood brothers’ interest. “Mallory’s been through here?” Matt asked.

  “Who the hell do you think burned down my barn?”

  “We don’t have any idea,” Sam said, “or at least we didn’t have until you made that comment, sir.”

  The old man blinked and frowned. “Sir?” he repeated. “What sort o’ trickery are you tryin’ to pull, Injun? You are a Injun, ain’t you?”

  “I’m half Cheyenne,” Sam replied with pride in his voice. “My father was Medicine Horse, a great chief.”

  “Cheyenne?” The old-timer grunted. “This here’s Comanch’ and Apache country. What’n blazes are you doin’ down here, boy?”

  “We’re lookin’ for Deuce Mallory and his gang,” Matt told him.

  The man raked his fingers through his long white hair. “I knowed you two was outlaws. I just knowed it.”

  “Damn it, we’re not outlaws!” Matt was starting to lose patience. “Are you addled or something? We’re on Mallory’s trail because we want to bring him to justice.”

  The old man looked back and forth between Matt and Sam. “The two o’ you agin upwards o’ thirty hardcases and killers? ’Tain’t likely, I’m thinkin’!”

  “What’s your name, sir?” Sam asked.

  “Name o’ Alby. Alby McCormick.”

  “Well, why don’t you come out of that creek, Mr. McCormick?” Sam suggested. “You must be getting a little cold by now.”

  “My feet and legs is about plumb froze off,” McCormick admitted. He climbed out of the
water. Matt and Sam continued to cover him as he did so, even though he appeared to be unarmed. He had left his rifle in the cabin when he ran out with the hornets swarming around him.

  When he was dripping on the bank, McCormick went on. “That was a damned dirty trick, throwin’ that nest down the chimney like that.”

  “I wanted to use a stick of dynamite,” Matt said, “but we didn’t have any.”

  “Them buzzin’ little bastards must’a stung me a hunnerd times or more. You’ll be lucky if I don’t die.”

  “I’m not sure their stingers could even penetrate the hide of a leathery old pelican like you.”

  “Old pelican, is it?” McCormick fumed. “You young whippersnapper! I’ve whipped better men than you with one hand tied behind my back! I’ll do it again, too, if you just give me half a chance, you dad blasted, ring-tailed rannihan! Lemme get my dewclaws on a gun again and I’ll dust your britches with lead, you—”

  “All right,” Sam snapped. “That’s enough. Both of you.”

  “He started it,” Matt said.

  Sam gestured with his gun. “Come along, Mr. McCormick. We’ll go back to your cabin. You should probably get some dry clothes on.”

  The old-timer frowned. “Might still be some hornets in there.”

  “I’ll fix a torch and smoke them out.”

  “Yeah, that might work,” McCormick said with a nod.

  Despite the old man’s bluster, Matt figured he was pretty much harmless as long as he was disarmed. Still, Matt kept his gun out as the three of them went over to the cabin. Matt and McCormick watched as Sam wrapped some dry grass around a branch and then set it on fire as a makeshift torch. Sam waved it around inside the cabin so that the smoke would drive out any hornets who still happened to be in there. When it was safe, he motioned for Matt and McCormick to come in.

  “You sure you fellas ain’t owlhoots?” the old man asked.

  “Positive,” Matt said. “I’m Matt Bodine, and my blood brother here is Sam Two Wolves.”

  McCormick’s eyes widened. “Matt Bodine the gunfighter?” he asked with a note of awe in his voice.

  “I never claimed to be a gunfighter, but I’ve been in my share of shootin’ scrapes,” Matt replied with a shrug.

  “And Sam Two Wolves,” McCormick said. “I’ve heard o’ you, too. Can’t believe I was takin’ potshots at a couple o’ gunnies like you two.”

  “If you ran afoul of Mallory and his gang and lived to talk about it, I don’t sup- pose we can blame you for being a little trigger-happy,” Sam said. “They’re as cold- blooded a bunch of killers as we’ve ever run across.”

  “You can sure as hell say that again.” The old-timer waved a gnarled hand to- ward the fireplace. “There’s coffee in the pot. You boys help yourselves while I put on some dry duds.”

  A short time later, the three of them were seated at McCormick’s rough-hewn table with cups of strong black Arbuckle’s in front of them. Sam said, “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

  “I was mindin’ my own business, as usual, when a couple o’ fellas rode up. I run some stock up in the high pastures, not enough so’s you’d call me a real cattleman or anythin’ like that, just enough to get along. Do a mite o’ huntin’ and trappin’, too, and they’s plenty o’ fish in the creeks hereabouts. Any man who goes hungry in the Davis Mountains must have a real hankerin’ to starve, that’s all I got to say about that.”

  “What about the two men?” Sam prodded.

  “Oh, yeah, them. They claimed they wanted to buy some supplies, but I figure they was just lookin’ the place over, tryin’ to see if there was anythin’ worth stealin’. Reckon they decided there wasn’t, ’cause one of ’em up an’ took a shot at me without no warnin’. But he didn’t take me by surprise, no, sir, ’cause I’m natural suspicious like.”

  “We got that idea when you started shooting at us with no warning,” Matt said.

  McCormick ignored the comment and went on. “I can still move right spry when I want to. I got inside the cabin here and started puttin’ up a fight, and I reckon they figured it’d be more trouble to root me out that it was worth. Anyway, they set my barn on fire and then rode on. I seen ’em join up with about thirty other men, on down the canyon a ways.”

  “How do you know it was Deuce Mallory’s gang?” Sam asked.

  “One of the fellas called the other one Deuce, and I seen wanted posters on him once when I was in Fort Davis. I got a good memory for faces, yes, sir, I do.”

  “Did they say anything else while they were here?” Matt asked.

  “Not much. After I traded a few shots with them skunks, I heard ’em talkin’ amongst themselves. Mallory said he didn’t want to waste no time on me, since he was in a hurry to go eat an apple. I ain’t got no earthly idea what he meant by that.”

  Matt and Sam looked at each other. “We do,” Sam said.

  “The gang’s headed for Sweet Apple,” Matt added.

  “Sweet Apple?” McCormick repeated. “That hellhole of a town down on the border?”

  “That’s right. He plans to raid the settlement and then cross the border into Mexico.”

  “I’ve heard tell that Sweet Apple’s a real rip-roarin’ place. Ol’ Mallory might be bitin’ off more’n he can chew if he plans to hit that town. O’ course, if’n he takes the folks by surprise, he can prob’ly get away with it.”

  “That’s why we’re going to try to get there first,” Sam said. “We’d like to warn the citizens and the local authorities.”

  “Local authorities?” McCormick shook his grizzled head. “From what I hear, there ain’t no law in Sweet Apple. No marshal, no deputy, no nothin’.”

  “When did Mallory’s gang come through here, Mr. McCormick?”

  “Two days ago, it was. You boys’ll have to ride like hell to get in front of him and warn the folks in Sweet Apple. I don’t hardly reckon it can be done.”

  Matt and Sam exchanged grim looks. The old-timer wasn’t telling them anything that they didn’t already know.

  Unless something happened to delay Deuce Mallory and his gang, the outlaws would strike the town before Matt and Sam could get there.

  Hell would be paying another call, this time in Sweet Apple.

  Chapter 20

  The village of Arroyo Seco lay some fifteen miles below the border in Mexico, in the foothills of a small mountain range. It was a farming community, a single street of mud-daubed adobe buildings with a public well at one end and a small church at the other. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of other villages just like it, stretching from one end of the country to the other. Today, however, one thing made Arroyo Seco different from all the other villages.

  Today Diego Alcazarrio was coming.

  A small boy noticed the dust first. Earlier, he had spotted a rattlesnake lying next to an abandoned building, coiled in the shadow of a half-collapsed wall. The boy ran to get his father, who, like most of the other men in Arroyo Seco, was a farmer and worked the terraced fields on the slopes of the foothills above the village. The boy’s father came back with him, carrying the hoe he used on the crops. Now it would be put to a more deadly use if the snake was still there. It was. The hour was early and the air at this elevation was cool enough so that the snake was a little sluggish. As the humans approached, the wedge-shaped head lifted slightly from the thick coils. The obsidian eyes were of little use to the serpent, but the scent glands in its nose told it that a potential threat was drawing near. The rattles at the end of its tail gave a faint, lazy buzz.

  The boy pointed it out and his father told him to stay back. Carefully, the farmer approached the snake and lifted his hoe to strike. He wished the hoe had a longer handle. He wished he owned a gun so that he could use it to shoot the snake and look like a hero in the eyes of his son. But the hoe was all he had so it would have to do.

  Several other children and a few adults had gathered to watch him kill the snake.

  The farmer swallowed, took a deep breat
h, and brought the hoe down as the snake’s rattle began to buzz louder.

  He missed.

  The hoe struck the snake behind the head, but it was only a glancing blow, just enough to annoy the snake. The rattler struck with blinding speed, stretching out nearly its full length. Only sheer terror made the farmer move swiftly enough to avoid being bitten. He let out a yell and went backward, tripping over his own feet and falling. He dropped the hoe and scrambled backward, putting even more distance between himself and the angry rattler as the snake once again drew itself up into a tight coil. The snake’s head was up now. Its tongue flickered in and out of its mouth, sensing the air, and its rattles blurred back and forth furiously.

  The boy paid no attention to his father’s humiliating failure to kill the snake. He was watching the dust he had noticed a few moments earlier, drawing steadily closer to the village. The cloud boiled up from the hooves of galloping horses. The boy heard the rolling rumble and might have thought it to be distant thunder—had not the sky been clear.

  When he had first seen the snake, something inside him turned cold with atavistic fear, though his simple, uneducated mind had no concept of such a thing. Now, as he watched the riders come toward Arroyo Seco, he felt even colder in- side, as if these strangers were even more dangerous than the big rattlesnake. In a people who lived so close to the earth, instinct seldom lied. It certainly didn’t in this case.

  The riders swept into the village, scattering some of the crowd that had gathered. They brought their horses to a halt. Dust swirled around them for a moment, and as it began to clear away the boy stared at the strangers. The men’s mounts were big, fine animals wearing expensive saddles and silver-studded trappings. The men’s tight trousers and brightly embroidered charro jackets and huge sombreros spoke of wealth, too, as did the well-cared-for guns they wore. From time to time, the Rurales visited Arroyo Seco and the boy had stared at their rifles and uniforms, too, but these men were much more impressive than the Rurales.

  The big, barrel-chested man who had ridden at the head of the group looked at the farmer sprawled on the ground, several yards away from the angrily buzzing rattlesnake. He laughed and said, “Having trouble, amigo?”