Blood Bond

by William W. Johnstone

  Matt grunted. “At least four of them, I figure. Maybe more.”

  “I would say four. But you’re right; maybe more.”

  “There are Apache here,” Matt said. “But there are a lot of Navajo and Zuni too. Hualapai and Kaibab are to the west of us.”

  “Those behind us are not Indians,” Sam said. “We’d probably have never spotted an Indian.” He smiled. “At least you wouldn’t have,” he needled his friend.

  Matt silently agreed with the first part of Sam’s statement. He ignored the second part. The blood brothers were always sticking the needle into each other and had been for years. Neither took it seriously. Matt pulled his Winchester out of the boot, shucked a round into the chamber, eased the hammer down, and rode with the rifle laid across his saddle horn. Sam Two Wolves did the same.

  Sam pointed to the west and Matt cut his eyes. The ruins of an ancient pueblo could be seen. “Navajo?” he asked.

  Sam shrugged and gave the reply that most Indians of any tribe would. “Those who came before us.”

  “Let’s cut straight south,” Matt suggested. “Keep your eyes open for Los Gigantes Butte. We want to swing to the west of that.”

  “We’re running low on water. This would not be a good time for us to get caught up in a trap.”

  “Lukachuka Creek is south and west of the butte.” Then Matt remembered what a drifting cowboy had told him a long time back. “There’s supposed to be a tank in the rocks just up ahead,” he told Sam. “If the cowboy knew what he was talking about and it isn’t dry.”

  “Your words are so comforting, brother.”

  Matt twisted in the saddle, looking behind him. Those following them were no longer trying to hide their presence. The dust trail was clearly visible. “I don’t like it,” he stated.

  “Neither do I. Let’s find that tank and find it quick.”

  “And full,” Matt added.

  It wasn’t full, but there was more than enough water to fill their canteens, water the horses, fill a coffee pot, and still have enough for several days should they have to defend the place.

  The tank was located high in the rocks, with graze for the horses and good cover for both man and beast.

  Neither Matt nor Sam were too worried about the men following them. If anything, the men following should be worried about what would happen should they catch up with Matt and Sam. Matt’s reputation as a gunhandler had begun when he was just a boy. He killed his first man at age fourteen; the bully prodding the boy into a fight. The bully had not even managed to clear leather.

  Less than a year later, the bully’s brothers came after Matt Bodine. They got lead in the boy, but when the smoke drifted away, Bodine was standing over their bodies, his hands filled with Colts. When he was sixteen, rustlers hit his father’s ranch. Bodine’s guns put two more in the ground and left two others badly wounded and wishing they had taken up farming for a living.

  At seventeen, Bodine went off to live with the Cheyenne for a year. He’d been spending forbidden time with them since he was a boy—often for weeks at a time.

  At eighteen he was riding shotgun for gold shipments. Outlaws tried twice to take the shipment. Four more men were planted in unmarked graves.

  At nineteen, he began scouting for the Army.

  Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, the guns of Matt Bodine became legend in the west. His guns as well as his fists were much-feared. Bodine knew Indian wrestling, boxing, and down and dirty, kick and stomp barroom brawling.

  Bodine’s mother was a school-teacher and she saw to it that the boy was very well educated.

  Sam Two Wolves—a half-breed, his mother was from Vermont—did not have the name of a gunfighter, but he was still just as feared as Bodine and better educated, having been schooled at a university back east. His mother’s dying wish.

  Sam’s father was the famed war chief, Medicine Horse, who died on Last Stand Hill during the Custer fight. Medicine Horse rode up to Custer unarmed except for a coup stick, wishing to die rather than live in disgrace.

  Matt and Sam had witnessed the Custer fight, from atop a hill overlooking the valley of the Little Bighorn. And they would spend their lives trying to forget the awful sight.

  “I wonder who those guys following us are, and what they want?” Matt said, his back to a rock, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  “If I had a crystal ball I’d tell you,” Sam replied, without opening his eyes. He was stretched out flat on his back, in the shade of a boulder.

  It was the fall of the year, and it was hot. Not the blistering heat of full summer, but still hot enough to kill a man if he wasn’t careful.

  A bullet whined wickedly off a rock and went howling off in another direction.

  Without opening his eyes or getting up from his prone position, Sam said, “Well, now we know what they want—us!”

  “Yeah. But why?” Matt had taken his rifle and moved to a guarded position where he could look out over the land below them.

  “I’m certain your sordid reputation has something to do with it. What would my poor mother think? Me keeping company with a notorious gunfighter?” Sam choked back laughter and rolled to his knees, picking up his rifle.

  “Very funny.” But Matt could not conceal his grin. “I can see it now.”

  “See what?”

  “The inscription on our single tombstone: Here lies the Injun and the white guy!”

  “Single tombstone! Ye Gods! You think I’m going to be buried with you?”

  Matt chuckled. “If we go out together, we probably won’t have much to say about it, right?”

  “What a dismal thought. Brother? What are we going to do about this slight problem facing us?”

  “How about us finding out what they want?”

  “What are you going to do—invite them up for coffee?”

  Matt ignored that. “Hey!” he shouted. “What’s the matter with you guys? What’s the idea of shootin’ at us?”

  A bullet was his reply.

  Matt tried again. “I think you people got the wrong guys. We haven’t done anything to you.”

  “Give us the gold and you can ride on!” the voice bounced around the rocks.

  “Gold?” Sam said. “What gold?”

  “We don’t have any gold!” Matt shouted. “I told you, you got the wrong people!”

  “You a damn liar. We been trailin’ you two all the way from Green River. You thought you’d throwed us off when you left the fork of the Walker just inside the Territory. But I want that poke you mined out. And we’ll take that woman with you, too, mister. Then you can ride on. We know she’s nothin’ but a stray. She ain’t worth dyin’ over.”

  Sam sat straight up, his back against the boulder. “Woman?”

  “I told you to cut your hair,” Matt said, grinning at him.

  “Idiot! My hair is no longer than yours.”

  “What woman?” Matt yelled. “There’s nobody up here but Sam and me.”

  “Have Sam sing out!”

  “What do you want, you nitwit?” Sam yelled.

  Silence for a few moments. “You boys show yourselves,” the man yelled. “If you ain’t Wellman and the girl, you can ride on out.”

  “You believe that, Matt?”

  “’Bout as much as I believe in fairy tales. They were going to rob those people, Sam.” Raising his voice, he yelled, “Hell with you, mister. I got no reason to take the word of a damn thief.”

  “Here we go,” Sam muttered. “Robin and his Hood strike another blow for the poor and downtrodden.”

  “We’ll starve you out!” the outlaw yelled.

  “Not likely,” Matt called. “We have plenty of food.”

  “You’ll die of thirst then!”

  “No, we won’t. The tank was full. But you boys are gonna get mighty thirsty if you hang around long.”

  Matt and Sam could hear cursing from below them.

  “We’ll make a deal with you!”

  “I don’t deal with
scum.”

  “Then die, you bastards!”

  The air around Matt and Sam was suddenly and viciously filled with howling, whining lead. Both pulled their saddles over their upper torsos to help against any flattened ricochets and let the outlaws bang away. Their horses were just below them, in a small depression, safe from any stray bullets.

  They made no attempt to return the fire. The gunfire stopped and the sounds of galloping horses reached them. Both lifted up to where they could see and looked out. The outlaws were fogging it away from the rocks. Five of them, heading west.

  “They must have picked up our trail at the fork, thinking it was the man and the girl,” Sam said. “We took the east fork. Now those scum are heading west to pick up the trail.”

  Matt looked up at the sky. It would be dark in a couple of hours. “No point in taking off after them now. We might ride smack into an ambush. We’ll spend the night and pick up their trail in the morning.” He met Sam’s eyes. “If that’s all right with you, that is.”

  The half-breed smiled. “Oh, I think I’ll tag along with you. Somebody has to watch your back trail.”

  Matt reached down for the blackened coffee pot and began cussing. One of the outlaw’s slugs had torn the pot apart.

  “Now that irritates me,” Sam said. “Anybody who would deprive a man of his coffee is just no damn good!”

  Chapter 2

  Both men were still griping as they saddled up and rode out the next morning. Western men like their coffee and they like it often. To wake up without a pot of coffee strong enough to dissolve a horseshoe was just a lousy way to start the day.

  “I get my hands on those damn thieving bums,” Matt said, “I’m gonna make them wish they’d never ridden up to that tank.”

  “I sure would like a cup of coffee,” Sam said wistfully. “Where do you suppose is the nearest town?”

  “The way we’re heading, there’s supposed to be a trading post just built. Some guy named Hubbell built it. But it’s a good ninety miles from here. Three days without coffee,” he added.

  Sam cussed in Cheyenne and then switched to English. He was very graphic in both languages.

  * * *

  They crossed Lukachuka Creek and made camp in Chinle Valley. They did not push their horses or themselves, for this was rugged country and they wanted to spare their horses. The tracks of the outlaws were easy to follow and from the way they were traveling, the thieves were also taking it easy, not wanting to come up with a lame horse and be set afoot in this country.

  They reached the trading post during the late afternoon of the third day. A number of horses were tied at the hitchrails in front of the long and low building. The place appeared to be full of customers. Odd for this sparsely populated land.

  Matt and Sam reined up in back of the building. Both men slipped the hammer thongs from their guns as soon as their boots touched the ground.

  Sam took one look at the hoof-chewed ground around the hitchrails and said, “Those are our people, all right. See the chipped out place on that shoe?”

  “Yeah. Come on. I want a drink first and then we’ll see about settling up for a new coffee pot.”

  The adobe and stone post bore the scars of many Indian attacks. The wooden support posts of the porch roof were embedded with arrow heads. Sam Two Wolves looked at the broken shank of one.

  “Apache,” he said.

  “Yeah. They have attacked as far north as the middle of Utah Territory; they back off when they get into Ute country.” He stepped up to the porch and grinned. “They might not serve you in here, you know?”

  “I hope they try that,” his blood brother replied, a dangerous glint in his dark eyes.

  The bartender didn’t even blink when Matt and Sam ordered whiskey with a beer chaser. But he, along with everyone else in the dark barroom, did notice the tied down twin guns of the strangers.

  Two Wolves and Bodine took their drinks to the far end of the bar, where their backs would be facing a wall and they could get a good look at everybody in the place.

  It wasn’t a pleasant view.

  “Did you ever see so many ugly people gathered in one place in all your life?” Sam said, raising his voice so all could hear.

  The buzz of conversation stopped abruptly and both men could feel the hot burn of very unfriendly eyes swing toward them.

  “For a fact,” Matt said. “If a beauty contest was held in this place, nobody would win.”

  “You got a fat mouth,” a voice came from out of the smoky murk of the room.

  “Who owns that horse with the Four-V brand?” Matt asked, knowing full well that somebody had used a running iron to make the brand, probably out of a double-W.

  “I do,” the same voice replied. “If it’s any of your damn business. Which it ain’t.”

  “You owe us a coffee pot,” Matt told him.

  “Huh?” A chair was pushed back and boot heels and jingling spurs moved closer to the bar. “I don’t owe you nothin’, mister. But I just might decide to give you a skint head if you don’t shut your mouth.”

  “The only thing you’re going to give me is a new coffee pot. Now buy it from the man, set it on the bar, shut your big mouth and set your butt back in the chair you just vacated.”

  The outlaw yelled out a violent oath and lumbered toward the bar, heading straight for Matt, his big hands balled into fists. Sam stepped aside, his hands by his side, so he could watch the crowd and grab iron if anybody tried to interfere.

  Matt opened the dance with a short, straight right fist to the man’s mouth. The blow knocked the outlaw spinning. He crashed into a table and sent beer mugs and cards and poker chips flying. He bounced to his boots and charged Bodine, screaming filth at him.

  Bodine stuck out one boot and tripped the outlaw. He slammed into the bar, belly-high, and knocked the wind out of himself and a plank out of the bar just as Bodine slugged him twice above the kidney, with a left and right, bringing a squall of pain.

  The outlaw staggered and turned, his eyes filled with pain and confusion.

  Bodine hammered him twice in the face with a left and right combination and then drove his fist into the man’s belly. As the burly outlaw slowly sank to his knees, Bodine grabbed him behind the head and brought his knee up, all in one fast, practiced movement. Knee connected with nose and nose got flattened.

  Bodine turned his back to the man and faced the bartender as the outlaw fell on the floor, blood pouring from his broken nose. “Fill up the beer mug, friend. I just worked up a thirst.”

  “You just worked yourself up for a killing, is what you just done,” a voice spoke from the murky depths of the barroom. “That there is Ray Porter, the Idaho gunslick, and this room is filled with his men. What do you think about that, hotshot?”

  Bodine drained half his beer, set the mug on the bar—when Porter had crashed into it he had knocked it somewhat askew, spilling all the drinks that were there—and looked at the room full of gunslicks.

  “Three days ago, me and my buddy here,” he jerked a thumb toward Sam, “was ridin’ south, just north of the Los Gigantes Buttes, when we decided to camp near a tank. This jerk,” he pointed to the unconscious gunhand from Idaho Territory, “and four other jerks started shooting at us. They gave it up after about an hour, but not before they shot up my coffee pot. Now, I’m fixin’ to get a couple of dollars out of this hombre’s pocket and buy me a new coffee pot. And if anybody feels like they want to stop me, just come on. Now, does anybody want to start this dance?”

  “That just plumb breaks my heart,” a man said, pushing his chair back and standing up, his hand close to the butts of his guns. “But I tell you what you should have done, mister. You should have carried two coffee pots. But it don’t matter no more. ’Cause you ain’t gonna be needin’ ’em after today.”

  He grabbed for his guns and Bodine cleared leather, cocked, and shot him just as the man’s hands gripped the butts and he began his lift. The slug took the man directly in the cent
er of the chest, piercing the heart. He was dead as he hit the floor.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” a man whispered hoarsely. “He’s as fast as Smoke Jensen.”

  “What’s your name, buddy?” another asked.

  “Matt Bodine. And this is my brother, Sam Two Wolves.”

  Someone sighed in the crowd. Another cleared his throat nervously. Another man cussed softly; cussing his bad luck to be in the same room with Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves with both of them on the warpath. Still another slowly stood up, his hands in plain sight and walked to the door. “I’m gone,” he said, and put his hand on the batwings. Just before he stepped outside, he said, “I’ll be takin’ me a bath and a shave out back.”

  Another man stood up, walking carefully. “Tell that boy to fill another tub, Harry. I feel the need for a soak myself. I’ll get my extra set of longjohns from the saddlebags and join you in a minute.” He walked to the batwings and the both of them were gone.

  “A man shouldn’t oughta plug another man’s coffee pot,” a gunhand said. “Hard enough rollin’ out on a cold mornin’ with coffee waitin.’ Plumb discouragin’ without it. You hep yourself to some greenbacks from Porter, Matt. He owes you a coffee pot.”

  “Thank you.” Matt knelt down and pulled a wad from Porter’s pocket. He took two dollars and handed them to the barkeep. “One coffee pot, please.”

  “Yes, sir, Mister Bodine. I’ll be back in a jiffy. Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “Coffee, beans, flour, and bacon. We’ll settle up when I leave.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “And grind the coffee coarse,” Sam told him. “We like it stout.”

  “Yes, sir, Mister Two Wolves.”

  Matt turned to face the crowd. “One of you tell Porter that we’re riding to join up with the man and the girl that Porter wants to rob. Tell him if I see his ugly face again, I’ll kill him on the spot, no questions asked.”

  * * *

  “My back was getting sort of itchy riding away from that place, brother,” Sam said.

  “I do know the feeling. And I don’t think my words changed any minds back there.”

  “No. They’ll be coming after the man and the girl, whether we’re along or not. They smell gold. Some of Porter’s men must have linked up with him back at that trading post.”