A horse tied to a hitchrail dumped a load of road apples in the street.
“Sing, ladies,” Esther Willowby said.
John Lee took off his gunbelt and handed it to his foreman. “No one interferes,” he gave the orders.
“Sing me home,” Childress said.
John Lee pushed open the batwings and stepped out. “I’m gonna stomp your guts out, Bodine.”
The church ladies lifted their voices in Christian song.
“Then come on and try,” Bodine told him.
Josiah ordered another beer. Nameit was sure an interesting town.
Chapter 12
John Lee stepped up and tried to fake Matt out. Matt wouldn’t have any of that. He sidestepped and popped John in the belly. It was like hitting a tree.
“When the roll is called up yonder,” the church ladies sang sweetly.
“Bastard!” John Lee said, and swung a big fist. Matt ducked and popped the man in the mouth.
John’s head jerked back from the impact and he glared at Matt, but with new respect in his eyes. Bodine could punch like the kick of a mule.
“Oh, Lord!” Childress hollered. “I don’t wanna die.”
“When the roll is called up yonder. . . .”
“Lord,” Reverend Willowby prayed. “I ask You to take pity on this poor wretch of a man . . .”
John Lee hit Matt on the side of the head and knocked him sprawling. Matt scrambled out of the way as John tried to kick his face in. Rolling, Matt came to his boots, knowing that this was no simple bare-knuckle fight. John was out to kill him any way he could. If that’s the way it was going to play, that suited Matt just fine.
“. . . that will soon be entering the Pearly Gates,” the preacher said.
“I ain’t ready to go!” Childress said.
“Hush, boy,” a citizen told him. “The man’s prayin’ for your evil soul.”
John Lee charged in and Matt hit him twice, a left and right combination to the jaw that stopped the rancher cold in his boots, then backed him up, blood leaking from his mouth.
“This is becoming rather boring, brother,” Sam called from his position on the bench. “Can’t you pick up the pace some?”
“When the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there!” the ladies sang.
John swung a right, Matt ducked, and John’s big left fist caught him on the side of the head and Matt heard birds chirping and singing. He backed up, shaking his head.
John sensed victory and came in swinging. Matt back-heeled him and the big man hit the ground. Matt kicked him in the side, bringing a grunt of pain from the man. John rolled away, giving both of them time to clear their heads.
For all his size and strength, John was very quick on his feet and had obviously done some boxing in his time. He covered up and decided to duke it out for a change. That was a mistake, for Matt was not only a skilled boxer, but had grown up in Cheyenne villages, learning Indian wrestling.
Matt hit the big man twice in his already busted mouth and then ducked a looping punch and kicked the bigger man on the knee. John howled in pain and automatically grabbed at his knee. Matt grabbed the man’s head with both hands and brought the head down and his knee up. Knee impacted with nose, and the nose spread out all over John’s face with a crunch and a gush of blood.
John staggered back, fighting for time and for air, sucking it in through his bloody mouth. Matt didn’t let up. He followed John’s backing up, hammering at the man’s belly with left and right punches, and occasionally busting John’s mouth and jaw with solid connections.
In the saloon, Pukey slipped a .45 out of leather, after checking to see if the Ranger was looking. The menacing voice of Harry Street stopped him cold.
“I’ll kill you, Pukey,” Harry told him. “I gave my word and it stands.”
“And I give mine,” Trest said. “You shove that Hogleg back into leather or you’ll die where you stand.”
“Okay, boys,” Pukey said. “I’m out of it.”
What strange moral codes they live by, Josiah thought, then returned his gaze to the fight in the churned-up street.
“I ask that you accord the same saving grace to this poor wretch as you did the thief on the cross, oh Lord,” Willowby intoned.
“Lead me Home, precious Lord,” the ladies warbled.
“How about ‘My Ship is on a Stormy Sea’?” Sam asked, getting into the spirit of things.
Willowby looked at him. “I thought you were an Indian?”
“Half. But I was baptized a Presbyterian.”
“You don’t say? Well, I’ll be damned!”
Childress tugged at his leg. “Don’t forget me, preacher.”
John connected and knocked Matt flat on his butt, blood leaking from his mouth. John swung a boot at Matt’s face, and Matt grabbed the boot and twisted, spilling the big man into the dirt. Matt was the first up and he kicked John in the belly as the rancher rose. The air whoosed out of him and he sat down hard on his behind.
Matt took aim and the toe of his boot connected with John Lee’s chin. Teeth busted, and John fell back, blood pouring from his ruined mouth. His eyes rolled back into his head. He sighed and was out of it.
Matt walked over to a horse trough and stuck his head in the water, clearing the cobwebs from his brain and the blood from his face.
Max walked out of the saloon and motioned for some of the boys to help him. They carried John Lee off to the shaded boardwalk and stretched him out.
“Do you hear the mighty flapping of wings, boy?” Willowby asked.
“I hear them,” Childress said.
“Those are the angels coming to carry you home, boy.”
“Buzzards would be more like it,” Josiah said, walking up.
“Angels, brother!” Willowby thundered.
“Angels don’t want this trash,” Josiah countered, pointing to Childress.
Childress spat a bloody glob at the Ranger’s boots.
“Our Lord is a forgiving Lord, brother,” Willowby said.
“I ain’t your brother and don’t give me none of that New Testament crap. I’m an Old Testament man. I believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
“Vengence is mine, sayth the Lord.”
“Mine too, if I find the son of a bitch who done me a hurt,” Josiah told him.
“You heathen!” Willowby shouted.
“Windbag,” the Ranger replied.
Childress died in the dirt while the Ranger and the preacher were debating theological differences. Josiah finally walked away from the sputtering preacher and went to Matt’s side, looking at his face.
“He tagged you a couple of times,” the Ranger observed. “But nothin’ like what you give him.” He looked down at the broken teeth that lay in the torn-up dirt. “He’ll not forgive you for this, Bodine. I think John Lee is a mighty vain man about his looks.”
“I hope he likes soup,” Sam said. “He’ll sure be eating it for awhile.”
The church ladies hummed a sad melody as the body of Childress was toted off to be fitted for a pine box. His fancy guns lay in the dirt.
John Lee was still unconscious. A wagon was hired to carry him back to Broken Lance range.
“How do you like our little town?” Matt asked Josiah.
The Ranger grinned and cocked his head to one side. “Interestin’ little place. First town I ever seen that was picked up and set down intact, lock, stock, and horse troughs by a cyclone.”
“Strange things happen,” Sam said. “I guess you might say it was done by the hand of God.”
“Damn shore done by somebody’s hands,” Josiah said drily.
Not a shot was fired in anger for two weeks. The Broken Lance hired guns stayed out of Nameit and the town continued to grow as settlers moving west found it a pleasant place. Some of the smaller ranchers who had been driven out by John Lee returned to try to pick up the pieces of their lives. After a visit to the settlement, Josiah found he had orders and he drifted on, saying
he would be back from time to time to check on things.
After careful interviewing and much thought, Jeff Sparks hired Bam Ford and Pen Masters. The men proved to be good cowboys with no aversion to hard work.
And Nameit had a doctor. Young Dr. Wilbur Winters with a fresh degree in medicine was on his way to El Paso, passing through on a stage. The stage stopped to change teams, Wilbur took a break, and decided he liked Nameit. With a preacher, a schoolteacher, and a doctor, the town of Nameit was solid settled now.
One of his first patients was Cindy Lee.
“You’re pregnant,” Wilbur told her.
“Hell, I knew that!” she said crossly. “When’s the baby due?”
“You’re asking me?” Wilbur said.
She had been driven into town in a buggy, accompanied by her husband and a dozen Broken Lance riders.
Dodge had ridden in, accompanied by half a dozen Circle S hands, among them, Gene and Lia and Lisa Sparks. The girls had come to town to shop.
“I’ll stay with the Broken Lance people,” Sam volunteered. “You stay with the Circle S bunch.”
Matt smiled. “I might get the impression that you’re avoiding Lisa.”
“You’d be right. That woman has matrimony on the mind. And so does Lia. You be careful, brother, or you’ll find yourself roped, tied, and branded.”
“Not as long as I know the way out of town and have a fast horse.”
The brothers had a lot of country to travel before they would entertain the thought of marriage.
It had been two weeks since any of the Circle S crew had visited town, and Matt was anxious to catch up on what had been happening at the ranch.
“Quiet,” Dodge told him over beer. “Ever since you laid that whuppin’ on John Lee, he’s pulled in his horns. I’d a give a month’s pay to have seen it.”
Gene grinned. “That Texas Ranger stopped by the ranch. He said Childress won’t be giving us anymore trouble.”
“Childress was a loudmouth punk,” Matt said. “John Lee put him up to bracing me.”
“Josiah paid you a high compliment, Matt,” Dodge said. “He said you’re the man who is faster than him.”
“That’s a compliment I hope he keeps to himself.”
“Oh, he will. But them gunnies out at Broken Lance won’t. The word’s already spread. Two of them guns John Lee hired pulled out. They hauled their ashes the day after you dropped Childress and whupped John Lee. Pen Masters said they was pretty fair hands with a short gun themselves.”
“I wish they’d all leave,” Matt said, after taking a pull of beer.
“Speaking of Broken Lance people,” Gene said. “Here they come.”
The batwings squeaked open and the saloon filled with Broken Lance guns, including Nick, who looked like he was on the prod. The young man gave Matt a dirty look and gave Gene an even dirtier one. Then his eyes touched on young Jimmy and a smirk crossed his face. He whispered something to one of the gunnies and both men laughed.
Jimmy flushed and tensed. Dodge touched his arm. “Just stand easy, boy,” the foreman said. “You ain’t no gunhand.”
Matt put his back to the bar to face the Broken Lance crowd. Sam pushed open the batwings and stepped inside, holding a greener in his left hand.
“Cain’t a man even sit down an’ enjoy a drink without havin’ to look down the barrels of a damn express gun?” Tanner griped from his chair.
“It isn’t pointed at you or anybody else,” Sam told him.
“I always figured a man who carried one of them was a coward,” Nick sneered.
He was standing too close to Sam to have said that. Sam hit him with a right that knocked the smartmouth off his boots and stretched him out flat on the saloon floor. With a snarl and a curse on his bloody lips, Nick made a grab for his guns. He sighed and paled when Sam beat him to the draw in a no-contest show of speed.
Sam smiled at the young punk. “Take his guns out of leather,” Sam told a Broken Lance rider. “Then get him to his boots.”
Sam laid the greener on the bar, then took off his gunbelt and pulled his second .44 from behind his sash. Just as Nick was getting to his boots, Sam walked over and busted him smack in the mouth with a hard right fist. The rancher’s son hit the floor for the second time in as many minutes. With blood leaking from his mouth, Nick shook his head and cussed, springing to his boots and wading in after Sam, both fists flailing the air.
Sam sidestepped and clubbed the punk on the side of his face with a right then followed that with a left to Nick’s belly. He hooked a boot behind Nick’s foot and sent him crashing to the floor.
Nick rolled and came up with a chair in his hands. He hurled the wooden chair at Sam. The chair missed and Al caught it before it could shatter the mirror.
Nick screamed his rage and frustration and charged Sam. Sam waited until the last possible split second, stepped aside, and Nick slammed into the bar, knocking the wind from him. Sam hammered at the punk’s kidneys with hard fists, bringing a scream of pain from the young man.
Sam grabbed the punk by his long hair and jerked him away from the bar. With one hand in his hair and the other holding onto the seat of his jeans, Sam propelled the yelling and cussing punk out of the saloon and deposited him in a horse trough just as Lisa and Lia came walking up from one directon and Cindy waddling up from another.
The Broken Lance rider who had escorted Cindy to the doc’s office grabbed for iron and Matt, standing by the batwings, drilled him dead center in the chest. The gunny tumbled off the boardwalk and died with his face in the dirt.
As soon as Matt jerked iron, Dodge cleared leather with both Peacemakers, holding the Broken Lance riders in the saloon at ease. Sam hauled Nick out of the water and threw him into the center of the street. The punk rolled in the dirt and came up looking like a mudball.
“Lousy greasy Injun bastard!” Nick yelled at Sam. “I’ll kill you for this.”
Sam walked over to him and kicked him in the mouth. Nick’s front teeth now joined his father’s front teeth, still lying somewhere in the dirt of the street. Nick stretched out in the dirt, unconscious.
“John Lee will hang your scalp on his saddle horn for this,” Cindy squalled at Sam, her face becoming ugly and mottled.
“Pick up your rabid skunk and your dead gunslick and get out of town,” Matt told the Broken Lance riders, turning from the batwings to face them. “I’ll not bar any of you from town, but don’t come in here looking for trouble. Pass the word, boys. No trouble in Nameit.”
“You’ve played hell this time, Bodine,” Harry Street said. “You know John Lee will not let this pass easy. And I ain’t threatenin’ you none by sayin’ it. I’m just statin’ a fact, is all. He’s a revenge-seekin’ man, he is.”
“Harry,” Matt said, “I’m going to give you and the other boys some advice. You know there’s a Texas Ranger working slow circles around this area. If this situation busts wide open, he’ll call for help and you all know what that means. Shoot a Texas Ranger and his buddies will track you through the gates of hell. Best thing you boys could do is draw your pay and ride.”
Harry Street hesitated, then slowly shook his head. “I ain’t never quit a job of work, Bodine. No point in startin’ now.”
“Attacking ranches and trying to burn them out, Harry? That’s what you call a job of work? Attacking women?”
Harry Street’s grin held little humor. “I heard about some ol’ boys attackin’ the Circle S. Course I wouldn’t know nothin’ about who done it. Seems they run up on a Mex cook with a shotgun. Them boys lost. ’Pears to me them women you speak of can take care of themselves.”
“I’ve said all I can say then, Harry.”
“If a couple of the boys escort Nick and his bride back to the ranch, you mind if the rest of us finish our drinks?”
“Don’t mind at all, Harry. Long as there is no trouble.”
“It won’t come from none of us, Bodine.”
“Nor from any Circle S hand,” Dodge s
aid.
“Fair enough. Enjoy your drinks, boys.” Matt walked out on the boardwalk and stood with Sam, watching as the unconscious form of Nick Lee was loaded into the buggy beside his still-squalling wife. The body of the hired gun was tied facedown across his saddle, and the parade headed out of town, escorted by several Broken Lance riders.
“Wonder where the nearest dentist is?” Sam said.
“El Paso, probably. Maybe Fort Worth. Brother, if this doesn’t blow the lid off things, I don’t know what will.”
“We said that when you whipped John Lee, remember?”
“Yeah, we sure did. What’s he waiting on, Sam?”
Sam chuckled. “He might be waiting on some false teeth!”
Chapter 13
Matt and Sam were awakened about ten o’clock by Lomax banging on the front door. “They hit the Flying V ’bout two, three hours ago, boys. Burned down the barn, scattered the horses, and put lead in Ed Carson. He ain’t a-gonna make it, I’m thinkin’. Chookie’s over gettin’ the doc now. Gary rode in to tell us, but he couldn’t ride no more. He caught one in the shoulder.”
“I’ll saddle the horses,” Sam said, stepping around Matt and slinging his gunbelt around his lean waist and sticking the second .44 behind his sash.
They were in the saddle ten minutes later, the doctor right behind them in his buggy. Jeff Sparks had left ten hands behind at his ranch, and he had led the ride over to the Flying V, Lisa driving her mother in the buggy, Lia on Lightning.
“I say we ride over to the Broken Lance and burn the goddamn place to the ground and kill every dirty son there!” Sparks said, his voice tight with anger.
“Not while I’m wearing this badge,” Matt told him.
“Nor me,” Sam told them.
“Whose side are you on?” Sparks yelled at the brothers.
“I won’t even dignify that with a reply,” Sam told the rancher.
Sparks’s shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sam. I truly am. But what the hell can we do?”
“Did you get lead in any of the attackers?” Matt asked.
“Killed four,” Gary said, a bloody bandage on his left shoulder. Noah was inside with his father. “We stretched ’em out over yonder. John Lee’s hired some new men, Matt. We ain’t never seen any of them dead gunslicks before. And their horses got brands that we ain’t never seen.”
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