In flowery prose under the byline of J. Emerson Heathcote himself, the story told how Seymour Standish, late of Trenton, New Jersey, had arrived in Sweet Apple a little over a week earlier and quickly established a dubious reputation as Seymour the Lily-Livered, the Most Cowardly Man in the West. But through a bizarre set of circumstances, Standish had taken on the job of town marshal, in addition to being a traveling salesman for Standish Dry Goods, Inc., also of Trenton, New Jersey, the job that had brought him to Texas in the first place. To the enormous surprise of everyone—no doubt including Standish himself—he had actually done a good job as marshal, heading off some saloon brawls, surviving an ambush at- tempt, and knocking out a local bully.
“This is damn near the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” Matt declared. “Whose idea was it to make a rabbity traveling salesman the marshal of Sweet Apple?”
“It makes sense in a bizarre way,” Sam said. “What’s more important to most gunfighters than anything else?”
Matt nodded. “Their reputation. I see what you’re gettin’ at. Folks’d laugh at a man who went out of his way to kill some cowardly little worm.”
“From the sound of this newspaper story, though, Marshal Standish is getting a reputation of his own.” Sam shook his head. “If he’s not careful, that’ll get him killed.”
Matt folded the paper and slapped it against his leg. “Well, there’s nothin’ in here about Mallory’s gang attacking the town, so I reckon that answers our question about whether or not they’ve raided Sweet Apple yet.”
“Unless Mallory hit the town today,” Sam pointed out. “That’s yesterday’s paper.”
“Yeah. Maybe those folks over in Sweet Apple are just a hell of a lot luckier than they know. We’ll head over there first thing in the morning, and if Mallory hasn’t gotten there yet, we can warn this Marshal Standish.”
“You mean we’ll tell the Most Cowardly Man in the West that a gang of thirty or forty vicious outlaws is on its way to kill him and loot the town he’s supposed to protect?”
A grim chuckle came from Matt. “I reckon that’ll be a good test of just how much Seymour Standish has grown in the job.”
* * *
A train whistle blew as Matt and Sam led their horses out of the livery stable the next morning. The blood brothers had had a good night’s sleep in the hotel and a hearty breakfast in the place’s dining room. Now they were about ready to hit the trail again, but at the sound of the shrill whistle, Sam said, “We’re idiots.”
“Speak for yourself,” Matt said. “But, uh, how come you think we’re idiots?”
“We were going to spend the next two days in the saddle when we could take the train and be in Sweet Apple before the day is over.”
“We didn’t know that,” Matt pointed out. “We hadn’t checked the schedule at the train station.”
“Only because we were too dumb to think of it!”
“Well, let’s go down there and take a look now. If that’s a westbound pullin’ in, it sure would be quicker to catch a ride on it.”
By the time they reached the depot, the train had rolled in and steamed to a stop with the locomotive positioned to take on water from the elevated tank. It was in- deed a westbound. Matt held the horses while Sam hurried into the station to buy tickets and arrange to have their horses loaded onto one of the cars. Luckily, there was room for both of them and the four animals.
With the reins in his hand, Matt stood beside the steps leading down from the station’s platform. The rails were only a few yards away. The puffing and hissing of steam made the horses a mite skittish. Matt spoke to them in a quiet voice to calm them down.
While he was doing that, his eyes noted a couple of women on the platform. Young ladies actually, probably around twenty years old. Both wore traveling out- fits. One was a blonde; the other had coppery red hair under her neat little hat. They had climbed down from one of the passenger cars and were strolling around the platform. Stretching their legs before boarding the train again, Matt thought, al- though it wasn’t really proper to think of legs where young women were concerned. Those were limbs they walked around on. And mighty pretty limbs, too, Matt was willing to bet.
Pretty or not, Matt had other things on his mind besides women, so his attention drifted away from them. A few minutes later, Sam came out of the station. He held up the tickets to show that he had gotten them. Matt nodded then his head snapped around as a loud, angry voice came from the other end of the platform. “Come on, darlin’, ain’t no need for you to act like that! My pard an’ me just want you and your friend to come have a drink with us.”
Matt saw two men confronting the pair of attractive young women he had noticed earlier. The men were large, unshaven, and roughly dressed. Each carried a big gun on his hip. Matt’s eyes narrowed as the two women tried to step around the men, only to have the hombres move to block them.
“Just leave us alone,” one of the women said. The blonde, Matt noted. “Or you’ll be sorry, you saddle tramps!” the redhead added in an angry tone that indicated her temper matched her hair.
One of the men stepped closer to her, glowering at her. “No call for you to talk to us like that,” he said.
Matt looked around, saw a post nearby, and wrapped the horses’ reins around it, pulling them tight. Sam had almost reached the end of the platform. He looked surprised when Matt bounded up the steps to meet him.
“What are you—” Sam began.
Matt nodded toward the two men and two women. Sam turned, saw their tense, angry attitudes, and understanding dawned on his face.
“We’re going to take cards in that game, aren’t we?” he asked.
“Unless those two varmints fold pretty quick like, we are,” Matt replied in a hard voice. He strode toward the other end of the platform.
The conductor appeared next to one of the passenger cars and hollered,
“’Boooooard!”
The blonde said, “We have to get on the train.” She tried again to get around the men blocking her and her friend.
One of them reached out and grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Not until you’ve had that drink with us, gal,” he said with an ugly grin.
As Matt and Sam passed the conductor, Matt looked over at the blue-uniformed man and snapped, “Hold that train.”
The conductor started to say, “Young fella, I can’t—”
“He said to hold the train,” Sam put in, his voice just as flinty as his blood brother’s had been. “We have tickets, and so do those two young ladies.”
The conductor swallowed, no doubt recognizing the dangerous looks on the faces of the two big, muscular young men. “All right, but make it fast,” he said to their backs. They were already past him by the time he spoke.
“Let go of her!” the redhead said as she reached for the man who had hold of her friend. The other man grabbed her arm and yanked her toward him.
That was a mistake. She hauled off and punched him in the face.
The man let out a yelp of pain and surprise and jerked back. Blood dribbled from his nose, where the redhead’s hard little fist had connected solidly. “You damn hellcat!” he yelled. “I’ll paddle your behind!”
“No, you won’t,” Matt said from behind him. “Step away from those ladies, both of you.”
“Right now,” Sam added.
The men swung around, fury on their beard-stubbled faces. “You two boys run along,” one of them said with a sneer. “This ain’t none o’ your business.”
“We’re making it our business,” Matt said. “Leave those ladies alone, or you’ll answer to my brother and me.”
The redhead snapped, “You don’t have to do this. We can take care of ourselves.”
The two hardcases ignored her, and so did Matt and Sam. The other man said,
“Brother? He looks like a stinkin’ half-breed to me.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Sam said. “I prefer to think of it as having the best of two different h
eritages.”
“Well, I think you stink, Injun!”
Sam glanced over at Matt and commented, “His inventory of insults seems to be rather limited.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “I reckon that’s because he’s a half-breed, too—half-pig, half- skunk.”
The man’s face contorted with hate and rage. “I’ll kill you, you bastard!” he howled as he clawed at the revolver on his hip.
Matt didn’t want bullets to start flying here on the station platform. There were too many innocent people around for that, including the two young women. So, moving with the same sort of blinding speed he would have used if he’d been making a draw of his own, he stepped forward and slammed a fist into the man’s face before the hombre could clear leather.
All of Matt’s considerable muscle power went into the blow. It landed cleanly on the man’s jaw and sent him flying backward. He crashed into the blonde and knocked her down as she let out a startled cry.
The other man lunged at Matt, swinging a fist at his head. Sam intercepted him and grabbed his arm. Pivoting smoothly, Sam hauled on the man’s arm, stuck his hip out, and executed a neatly done wrestling throw. The man yelled in surprise as he found himself flying through the air upside down. He landed on the platform on his back with a jarring impact that took his breath away and left him half- stunned.
With the fight knocked out of both of the lecherous hardcases, Matt and Sam turned to the two young women. The blonde was picking herself up off the plat- form. Sam moved to help her, but she pulled away, saying in a cool voice, “That’s not necessary.”
“None of that display was,” the redhead added. “We could have handled those two ourselves.”
“Yeah, you looked like you were doing a fine job of it,” Matt shot back, stung a little by their ingratitude.
“We were getting around to it,” the redhead said. Her hand moved near the stylish little bag she carried, and a pistol appeared in it as if by magic. Matt blinked in surprise, and when he looked over at the blonde he saw that she was holding a gun as well.
“If they’d pushed us much farther, we would have ventilated the varmints,” she said.
“But our fathers taught us not to kill anybody we don’t have to,” the redhead added.
Matt and Sam both stared. The two young women might be dressed like Easterners, but clearly they were both frontier gals. They held the guns like they knew how to use ’em and wouldn’t hesitate to do so.
“Uh, gentlemen,” the conductor said nervously from behind Matt and Sam, “we’re falling behind schedule. Can the train leave now?”
Matt turned and nodded. “I reckon.” He glanced over his shoulder at the women. “Were you ladies ready to go?”
“More than ready,” the blonde said. “I wish we hadn’t even gotten out here to stretch our legs.”
She didn’t say “limbs,” Matt noted. Another indication that they weren’t the prissy Eastern girls they appeared to be at first glance.
As they put their guns away, Matt thought about offering his arm to the redhead, but he figured she’d just refuse it. She had defiance and independence written all over her pretty face. He and Sam moved aside and let the two women go ahead of them toward the steps leading up to the vestibule at the front of the passenger car where they had been riding.
Behind them, the two hardcases groaned and started trying to struggle to their feet. They lurched upright, snarled, and reached for their guns.
Instinct warned Matt and Sam at the same moment, or maybe it was the whisper of gun metal on holster leather. They whirled, their hands streaking for the Colts.
The two hardcases had called the tune, and now they’d have to dance to it. Gun-play could no longer be avoided. So Matt and Sam intended to win this fight they had been forced into.
The two hardcases had their guns drawn before Matt and Sam cleared leather.
But it was the guns of the blood brothers that spoke first. Matt’s twin Colts roared at the same time, sending two bullets crashing into the chest of the hombre on the left. Sam’s revolver blasted a fraction of a heartbeat later. The man on the right doubled over as the slug from Sam’s gun ripped into him. Each of the hardcases managed to get a shot off, but the bullets thudded harmlessly into the thick planks of the station platform. The two men hit those planks themselves a second later, collapsing in death.
“Good Lord!” the conductor gasped as he stared wide-eyed at Matt and Sam. “I never saw shooting like that before.”
Matt walked along the platform to check on the two men, even though he was sure they were dead. Sam turned to the two young women, who stood at the top of the steps, looking as stunned as the conductor was. “I’m sorry you had to see that, ladies,” Sam said. “Those fellows didn’t give us much choice, though.”
“I never saw anybody so slick on the draw,” the redhead said. “Who are you, mister?”
“My name is Sam Two Wolves.” Sam inclined his head toward Matt. “That’s my blood brother, Matt Bodine.”
The conductor’s eyes widened even more, although that didn’t seem possible.
“Bodine and Two Wolves! The notorious gunfighters?”
“I don’t know how notorious we are,” Sam said in a mild tone, “and we never sought a reputation as gunfighters—”
“They’re both dead,” Matt said, interrupting as he strolled back along the plat- form. He had holstered his left-hand Colt and was replacing the spent cartridge in the right-hand gun. “I looked through the lobby, and I think I saw a fella with a tin star on his shirt runnin’ up the street. Reckon you’ll have to hold that train a little longer, Mr. Conductor.”
Chapter 24
The nervous conductor fidgeted and fumed as the train was delayed a little more than half an hour while the marshal of Marfa questioned Matt and Sam and the two young women. The lawman’s eyes narrowed in suspicion when he found out who Matt and Sam were. Their reputation had preceded them, even in this new, isolated little settlement in far West Texas.
But the marshal recognized the names of the young women, too, when the red-head introduced herself as Jessica Colton and the blonde said that she was Sandra Paxton.
“Your pa wouldn’t be Shad Colton, now would he?” the lawman asked Jessica.
“That’s right, Marshal.”
He looked over at Sandra. “So that would make your pa—”
“Esau Paxton, that’s right,” she said. “Jessie and I have been at school back East. We’re on our way home.”
“And our folks are expecting us,” Jessica put in with a toss of her head. “So we’d like to get this train moving again as soon as possible.”
“Yes, ma’am, I understand, Miss Colton,” the marshal said. “But I got a couple o’ dead men layin’ here, and from what I’m hearin’, you and Miss Paxton were involved in them gettin’ that way.”
“It’s not the ladies’ fault at all, Marshal,” Sam said. “Those men accosted them, and Matt and I put a stop to it. The fight was over. They were the ones who insisted on bringing guns into it.”
“So you killed ’em both?”
“Wasn’t time for anything fancy,” Matt drawled. “They had their guns out first.”
“That’s the way it happened, Marshal,” the conductor said. “I saw the whole thing.”
“So did we,” Sandra said. “Mr. Bodine and Mr. Two Wolves had no choice but to protect themselves.”
Jessica said, “Hell, we would’ve shot those two polecats ourselves if we’d had a chance.”
Matt managed not to chuckle, but he couldn’t stop the grin that stretched across his face. All he could do was look down at the station platform in a feeble attempt to hide the amused expression. Jessie Colton sure had a fierce nature about her.
The marshal asked a few more questions, then said, “Well, I reckon it’s pretty cut-and-dried what happened here. We’ll have to have an inquest, but the verdict’s gonna be that you boys ventilated these two skunks in self-defense. They’ve been hangin’ aroun
d town for a couple of weeks, gettin’ drunk and causin’ trouble, so nobody’s gonna be too upset that they’re dead.”
“So we can be on our way?” Sam asked.
The lawman rubbed his jaw and grimaced. “Well, you really ought to stay here and testify at the inquest. . . .”
“We can’t do that,” Matt said. “We have to get to Sweet Apple.”
“We’ve given you our statements,” Sam said. “Write them up and read them into the record when you have the inquest. That ought to be sufficient.”
“It’ll have to do,” Matt said. “We’re gettin’ on that train.”
“Hang on a minute,” the marshal urged. “I’ll get the ticket clerk from inside the depot. He can write up what you said, and you boys can sign the statements. You can wait that long, can’t you?”
Matt and Sam looked at each other and shrugged. “I’ll write the statements,” Sam offered. “You can see about getting the horses loaded on the train, Matt.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Jessie Colton sighed. “So we’re going to have to wait even longer?”
“It won’t take but a little while, Miss Colton,” the marshal assured her. “If your pa asks about it, tell him we got things handled just as fast as we could.”
The lawman seemed worried about offending Shad Colton. Matt and Sam didn’t know why, since neither of them had ever heard of the man before. Obviously, Colton was some sort of big skookum he-wolf in these parts. Sandra’s father, Esau Paxton, seemed to be regarded pretty much the same way.
It didn’t take long for the remaining two chores to be taken care of. Sam wrote out the statements while Matt got the horses loaded. Then Matt and Sam both signed the statements and gave them to the marshal.
“This ought to take care of it,” the lawman said with a grateful nod. “If there are any more questions, you boys said that you’re headed for Sweet Apple?”
Texas Gundown Page 21
