Sam stood up and holstered his gun. He held out a hand to Mike, who would probably make a good ally in a fight. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”
Mike hesitated, but only for a second. Then he and Sam clasped wrists and Sam helped him to his feet. “I dropped my gun,” Mike said as he shuffled around with his feet in the area where he had fallen. “Wait a minute…Here it is!”
Mike picked up his gun. Then he and Sam trotted through the shadows toward the other end of Main Street. Sam could tell now that most of the muzzle flashes he saw came from the area around the marshal’s office and jail.
The street was deserted. The citizens of Cottonwood must have scurried for cover when the shooting started. Sam counted muzzle flashes and figured that about a dozen men were scattered along both sides of the street, using water troughs, parked wagons and buckboards, and building corners and alcoves for cover as they kept up a steady fire directed at the squat stone building that housed the marshal’s office and jail.
That told Sam the attack was directed against Marshal Coleman, and since the shooting had started before Porter and the other deputies hurried back to town, he concluded that the raiders had to be Cimarron Kane and some of Kane’s kinfolks. Kane was the only one who had a reason to attack the jail, that reason being his three cousins who were locked up there.
As Sam and Mike Loomis drew up at the corner of a building to watch the fight, Sam saw muzzle flame bloom like a crimson flower at one of the front windows flanking the door into the marshal’s office. He felt a surge of relief go through him. The shot meant that Coleman was still alive, and although he might be wounded, he was in good enough shape to pull a trigger.
But then an instant after that shot, orange flame spurted from the other window, and Sam’s heart sank a little at that sight. Coleman hadn’t had time to move from window to window, and he wouldn’t have had any reason to, anyway. The second shot meant somebody else was in there helping Coleman defend the place, and the most likely person that could be was Hannah.
Sam wondered for a second where Ambrose Porter and the other men were. Maybe once the corrupt special marshal had seen what was going on, he had decided to stay out of the fight and allow Cimarron Kane to do his dirty work for him and dispose of Marshal Coleman.
Sam knew he couldn’t afford to waste any time pondering that. Coleman was heavily outnumbered, and if someone didn’t come to his aid soon, the attackers might overrun the jail. Sam didn’t think Kane and the others would be too careful about who they shot if they went storming in there. He had to do something to stop them now and worry about Porter later.
Leaning closer to Mike Loomis, he said quietly, “We’ll split up. I’ll go across the street, and you take this side. We’ll hit them from behind at the same time and take them by surprise.”
Mike gave him a grim nod. “All right. But we’re pretty outnumbered, Two Wolves. You know that, don’t you?”
Sam grinned at him and said, “Then we’ll try to whittle down the odds as quickly as we can. Give me a minute to get over there and get set.”
“Sure. I’ll wait for you to hit those varmints, and then I’ll go at the same time.”
That sounded like a workable plan to Sam. Clutching the Winchester, he darted out from the cover of the alley and began racing across the broad, dusty street.
Too late, he realized that Cimarron Kane must have posted a lookout to make sure that no one snuck up behind them while they attacked the jail. Sam was less than a third of the way across the street when someone yelled a warning. A couple of shots rang out from behind a wagon. One of the bullets went well wide of him, but the other came close enough that he felt the hot breath of the lead as it whistled past his cheek. He began firing the rifle from his hip as he ran, cranking off rounds as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever.
He was still only halfway across the street when something slammed into his right foot and knocked it out from under him. His momentum carried him forward, and although he tried to keep his balance by pinwheeling one arm as fast as he could, it was a lost cause.
He fell, tumbling forward and rolling over and over as a small cloud of dust rose around him.
Sam came to a stop on his belly with the dust choking him and stinging his nose and eyes. His right leg was numb, and he didn’t know how badly he was hurt. But he couldn’t move, he was stuck out in the open, and Kane’s men knew he was there, an easy target. It seemed unlikely that things could get any worse.
That was when he heard thundering hoofbeats right behind him and jerked his head around to gaze over his shoulder at the gigantic, looming figure of a madly galloping horse about to pound him to a red ruin under its hooves.
Chapter 27
When Matt reached the western end of Cottonwood’s main street, he saw that the fighting was concentrated around the far end of town. That was where the marshal’s office was located, and he was more convinced than ever that Kane and his relatives had come to bust Dud, Nelse, and Wiley Kane out of jail. From the muzzle flashes he saw, it looked like Kane’s bunch had split up and hunted cover on both sides of the street as they laid siege to the jail.
Matt drew his left-hand gun as he clamped his knees tighter on the stallion’s flanks. The attackers wouldn’t expect somebody to come roaring down the middle of the street between them, raking them with gunshots in both directions.
The stallion lunged ahead, responding gallantly as Matt leaned forward in the saddle and urged him on to greater speed. Suddenly, Matt saw someone dart out from his right and try to cross the street in front of him. At first he thought the man must be one of Kane’s bunch, changing position for some reason, but then he saw more muzzle flashes as Kane’s men opened fire on the running figure. The man made it almost to the middle of the street before he tumbled forward off his feet, evidently hit.
Matt couldn’t slow the charging stallion in time, and he wasn’t sure he could even veer the animal around the fallen man. So he jammed his left-hand Colt back in its holster, grabbed the reins, and hauled up on them, lifting the horse into a jump.
The stallion responded instantly, rising into the air with a grace belying its rangy ugliness, and it was only at the last instant that Matt caught a glimpse of the face looking up at him and recognized it as that of his blood brother, Sam Two Wolves.
Then the stallion soared up and over Sam and landed running full tilt, and Matt dropped the reins again and jerked out his left-hand Colt. He was between the forces arrayed along both sides of the street, so he began firing—right, left, right, left, spraying slugs among the places where the raiders had taken cover.
Matt never slowed his mount. As the hammers of his revolvers fell on empty chambers, he used his knees to guide the stallion into a sharp turn that carried them into the mouth of an alley near the marshal’s office. The horse pounded along the passageway through thick, almost impenetrable shadows, and Matt hoped they wouldn’t run into anything.
A moment later they broke out into the faint light from the moon and stars behind the buildings. Matt holstered one revolver, wheeled the horse around, and reined to a halt. He started reloading his guns with swift, practiced ease. He didn’t know how much damage he had inflicted on the Kane bunch, but from the sound of the shots still filling the night air, the attack wasn’t over. Matt wanted to get back in the action.
Not only that, but his blood brother was out there in the street, maybe wounded and definitely in a bad place, and it might be up to Matt to see to it that Sam didn’t get shot full of holes!
Sam barely had time to recognize the horse as Matt’s rangy gray stallion before he ducked back down to give the animal plenty of room to leap over him. The horse landed on the other side of him and kept going, never slowing down as Matt opened fire on the gunmen along both sides of the street.
Sam was trying to make his numb right leg work so he could struggle onto his feet when he heard someone running toward him. He propped himself up on one hand and twis
ted in that direction, ready to fire the Colt in his other hand, but his finger eased off the trigger when he saw Red Mike Loomis approaching.
The burly young man reached down and grabbed hold of Sam’s arm. “I’ll help you,” he said. “How bad are you hit?”
“Don’t know,” Sam replied as Mike lifted him without much trouble. “Head for the other side of the street!”
With Mike’s strong grip supporting his right side, Sam set off at a hobbling run. It was almost like they were a team in a three-legged race, he thought crazily. His right leg dangled uselessly.
They headed toward a rain barrel that was big enough to shield one of them, but not both. “You can stay here,” Mike said as he lowered Sam to the ground behind the barrel. “I’ll find some other cover.”
“Be care—” Sam began, but he didn’t have a chance to finish. He heard the solid, meaty thump of a bullet striking flesh, and then Mike grunted and went down, collapsing at the edge of the raised boardwalk.
Sam bit back a curse and reached up to grab the top of the rain barrel. He experienced a tingling now in his right leg, an indication that feeling was coming back into it. The muscles still didn’t want to work, though. Hanging on to the barrel, Sam lifted himself on his left leg. Bullets thudded into the wooden barrel as he shoved hard on it. Water began to slosh out the top, and as the weight of the water in the barrel decreased, it moved easier. He toppled it, creating a miniature tidal wave that washed around his feet and Mike Loomis’s sprawled body.
Mike sputtered and spit as water went up his nose, so he wasn’t dead. The overturned barrel was between him and the gunmen, so he had a little protection now. Sam was back in the open, though. He hopped toward the boardwalk and let himself fall when he reached it. He rolled across the planks into the alcove where the building’s door was set back a few feet.
He had dropped his rifle in the street, but he still had his Colt. He thrust the revolver out of the alcove and triggered a couple of shots at the muzzle flashes of the raiders. Glass shattered as Kane’s men shot out the windows in the building. Sam returned the fire and then ducked back out of sight again.
A high-pitched yell split the night. Matt was taking a hand in the fight again. And of course he couldn’t do it without calling attention to himself, Sam thought as a grim smile tugged at his mouth. He reached for the fresh cartridges in the loops on his shell belt and thumbed some of them into his Colt. Fast shots banged out. More of Matt’s work, Sam knew.
He ignored the throbbing pain that now filled his leg as he pulled himself to the front of the alcove again. Watching as Matt drove once more between the two halves of Kane’s force, Sam felt a little awe at the way his blood brother took the fight to them so fiercely, so gallantly. And possibly so foolishly, too, but Matt Bodine had never been one to hold back. He gave himself fully to whatever he was doing.
“Matt!” Sam shouted. He braced the six-shooter against the boardwalk and fired twice. “Over here!”
Matt left the saddle in a flying leap as his stallion raced past the building. The jump carried him onto the boardwalk. He careened into the alcove, dropped to one knee beside Sam, and joined his blood brother in throwing lead at the men who had attacked the jail.
A hailstorm of lead came racketing back at them, forcing them to duck back deeper in the alcove. As they reloaded, Matt said, “It figures you’d be right in the middle of this ruckus, Sam.”
“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to come galloping in and jump your horse right over me like you were performing a trick in a Wild West Show!” Sam replied.
Matt grinned. “Well, it was either that or trample you, so I figured you wouldn’t mind if I showed off a little.” He grew more serious. “You know what’s goin’ on here, don’t you?”
“My guess is that Cimarron Kane and some of his kin are trying to help those prisoners in Marshal Coleman’s jail escape.”
“That’s it, all right,” Matt said. “I followed the whole bunch into town from the Kane ranch.”
“Kane was here earlier in the day,” Sam explained. “He thought he could come into town and bluster a little, and the marshal would release his cousins. Marshal Coleman’s not going to do it, though.”
Matt snapped the cylinder on one of his revolvers closed after refilling the chambers. “I didn’t know that.”
“Here’s something else you don’t know,” Sam said. “Those special marshals, Porter and Bickford, are in town, too, along with their deputies. They’re all crooked, though.”
“What do you mean?” Matt asked with a frown.
Sam quickly filled him in on the bribery and murder scheme being carried out by the special marshals, and the news brought a muttered curse from Matt.
“Where are those varmints now?” he asked.
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. Porter and most of the deputies are here in town somewhere, as far as I know. Bickford was still down by the creek with the wagons the last time I saw him, but he could have regained consciousness by now.”
“Well, we’ll deal with them once we’ve handed Kane his needin’s. Where’s the marshal? Holed up inside the jail?”
“He must be. Someone is in there trying to hold off Kane’s bunch.” Sam paused, then added in a worried voice, “I think Hannah may be in there with him, too. They had two rifles going.”
Matt let out a little whistle of surprise. “Sorry, amigo. I know you set a lot of store by that gal. We need to do something to convince Kane to give it up. How’s that leg of yours?”
Enough feeling had returned to Sam’s leg so that he could move it now. He reached down and ran his hand over the leg, searching for a wound. When he didn’t find any, he pulled his foot up and felt of his boot.
“So that’s what happened,” he said. “One of them shot my boot heel off. The impact of the bullet made my leg go numb for a little while, but it’s getting to be all right now.”
“Then you’re not wounded?”
“I don’t seem to be.”
“That’s a stroke of good luck. Reckon you can get around?”
Sam nodded as he pulled off both boots, so that the lack of a heel on the right one wouldn’t unbalance him. “I think so, as long as I don’t have to move too fast.”
“All right, you can cover me while I make a run for the other side of the street.”
“You’ll never make it,” Sam warned.
“I will if you make those polecats duck.” Matt pressed one of his guns into Sam’s left hand. “Just keep ’em busy. Once I get over there, we’ll have ’em right where we want ’em.”
Sam had had the same sort of thing in mind, only his plan had included the element of surprise. That hadn’t worked out. Maybe having Matt on his side would. Matt Bodine was worth ten men in a fight.
“My rifle’s lying out there in the middle of the street where I dropped it,” Sam told his blood brother.
Matt nodded. “I’ll pick it up when I go by. That’ll give me better firepower.” He pressed his back against the wall of the alcove. “You ready?”
Sam made it to his feet and jerked his head in a curt nod.
“Then cut loose your wolf!” Matt called, and with that, he burst out of the alcove, leaped across the boardwalk into the street, and headed for the buildings on the opposite side at a dead run.
Chapter 28
Matt heard Sam’s guns start blasting behind him, but he didn’t look around or slow down. As he ran toward the middle of the street, he spotted the rifle Sam had dropped and angled toward the Winchester. He paused briefly to snatch it off the ground, but that took only a heartbeat.
Even so, it was long enough for one of the Kane gunmen to draw a bead on him. Matt felt a bullet tug at the back of his shirt, ripping it slightly without actually touching the flesh underneath. A couple of inches and a whisker of time earlier, and the bullet would have bored right through his body.
Now he was moving at top speed again, though. He heard several slugs whistle close behind him, but none o
f them tagged him. As he neared the boardwalk, he launched himself into a dive that carried him onto the planks. His momentum sent him rolling over and over into the shadows at the base of the darkened building’s front wall.
It didn’t take long for more bullets to come searching into the darkness for him, only a matter of seconds. He scrambled to his feet and into an alcove like the one Sam occupied across the street. Using the building for cover, he thrust the rifle’s barrel around the corner and started blazing away at the raiders. At the same time, Sam continued the barrage with both pistols, emptying the revolvers, reloading them, and emptying them again.
Someone else joined the battle, too. Matt had seen an apparently unconscious or dead figure lying behind an overturned rain barrel near Sam’s position, but had no idea who the man was. Clearly, though, he wasn’t dead, and if he had been knocked out, he had regained consciousness. He was taking part in the fight now, firing a six-shooter over the barrel.
The gunfire from the jail picked up with renewed intensity. Rifles cracked and spat lead at both of the front windows. Cimarron Kane and his men had gone from having the upper hand to being trapped in the middle of a veritable hailstorm of bullets. Even though they might still have the advantage in numbers, they were in a bad spot.
So Matt wasn’t surprised when he heard a harsh voice yell, “Grab the horses and let’s get out of here!” He snapped a shot in the direction of the man giving the orders, the same man whose voice he’d heard back at the Kane ranch, but he had no way of knowing if he hit his target.
A moment later, with hoofbeats pounding in the night air, a number of riders burst into the street. They didn’t try to run the gauntlet between Matt and Sam, but instead plunged into an alley, seeking the quickest way out of town. Matt threw lead after them and thought he saw one of the men sway in the saddle, but none of the riders fell and they didn’t slow down.
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