Blood Bond: Arizona Ambush

by Johnstone, J. A. ; Johnstone, J. A.

  He blinked as beads of sweat popped out on his forehead and trickled down into his eyes. The heat was getting worse.

  Already his mouth felt like cotton.

  The shooting had stopped again. The bushwhackers were going to wait and let the sun do their work for them, Sam thought. How long could he stand it before he was forced into the open?

  With no warning, more shots abruptly blasted out. Instinctively, Sam lowered his head even more, but after a second he realized that he didn’t hear any bullets ricocheting off the rocks around him.

  Not only that, but the sound of the shots was different as well. They were coming from somewhere else on the ridge.

  And they weren’t directed at him.

  The duller boom of six-guns being fired came to his ears. It sounded like quite a battle was going on up there.

  Sam risked a look and caught a glimpse of two figures on horseback vanishing over the top of the ridge. They were moving fast, and the shots that still rang out hurried them on their way.

  Were those the bushwhackers, Sam wondered, or had whoever was trying to come to his aid been forced to flee?

  Either way, he knew this might be the only chance he had to get out of this trap. He leaped to his feet and broke into a long-legged sprint toward his horse.

  No bullets came searching for him. When he reached the horse, he yanked the Winchester from the saddleboot, worked the lever to throw a round into the chamber, and whipped around toward the ridge, ready to return fire if any came his way.

  Silence had fallen over the valley again. Sam turned his head to look all around him, searching for any other sign of a threat. He didn’t see any, but he didn’t relax his vigilance.

  Movement on the ridge caught his eye. He picked out two riders working their way down the slope. They were too far away for him to make out any details, but something about them was familiar.

  When they reached the floor of the valley and rode toward him, he realized what it was. He recognized the two horses: a buckskin and a paint.

  That was Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman riding toward him.

  Sam’s forehead creased in a frown as he thought about the two cowboys. From the looks of it, they had rescued him from the bushwhackers.

  But there had been two bushwhackers, too, Sam reminded himself. It was possible Stovepipe and Wilbur could have been the men he had seen retreating over the ridge. They could have pretended to flee, circled around, and be riding toward him now intending to claim that they had saved his bacon.

  But why would they do that? Maybe to gain his trust, Sam thought.

  However, there was no doubt in his mind that the hidden riflemen wanted him dead. Those shots had come too close to be any sort of warning or ruse.

  Which meant that if Stovepipe and Wilbur had been the ones shooting at him, they might be riding up to Sam now in apparent innocence so they could blast the life out of him as soon as they got close enough.

  Those thoughts went through his head in a flash. He looked at the approaching cowboys again.

  Their rifles were booted, and their Colts were holstered. They were in rifle range now, so Sam brought the Winchester to his shoulder, leveled it at them, and called out, “Hold it right there, you two!”

  Stovepipe and Wilbur reined in. Stovepipe leaned forward in the saddle with a puzzled frown on his craggy face.

  “Why in Hades are you pointin’ that rifle at us, Sam?” he asked. “It appears to me we just done you a mighty big favor, the sort that usually prompts a fella to say gracias instead of threatenin’ to ventilate somebody.”

  “I’m just trying to make sure I have everything sorted out the right way,” Sam said. “What are you doing out here? Following me?”

  Stovepipe surprised him by answering, “Yep. That’s exactly what we were doin’.”

  Sam’s frown deepened as he asked, “Why would you do that?”

  Stovepipe rested both hands on his saddle horn and grinned. He said, “Because Wilbur and me, we got a hunch that you might be lookin’ for the same fellas we are.”

  Sam was curious enough now that he lowered the rifle slightly.

  “Come on over here so we can talk easier,” he said. “But don’t try anything funny, because I’ll be watching you.”

  “We wouldn’t dream of it,” Wilbur said.

  They hitched their horses into motion again and rode slowly toward Sam. He kept the rifle pointed in their general direction and his finger was ready on the trigger.

  When they were close enough, he called, “All right, stop there. Now dismount one at a time.”

  Stovepipe looked at Wilbur, who shrugged.

  “All right, I’ll go first,” Stovepipe said. “Don’t get trigger-happy now, Sam.”

  The lanky cowboy swung down from the saddle. Holding on to his horse’s reins with one hand, he raised the other hand to shoulder height.

  “See? Not tryin’ anything funny.”

  “Now you, Wilbur,” Sam said.

  Wilbur dismounted and didn’t make any threatening moves, either.

  Once they were both on the ground, Sam lowered the rifle to his waist. He could still fire from the hip with blinding speed if he needed to.

  “What’s this about us looking for the same men?” he asked.

  “Well, in order to tell you about it, I’m gonna have to ask you to believe a couple of things we can’t prove right now,” Stovepipe drawled. “The first bein’ that we ain’t who we seem to be.”

  “You mean you’re not a couple of drifting grub-line riders?” Sam asked. “Yeah, I had started to figure that out.”

  “Truth of it is,” Stovepipe went on, “we’re lawmen. . . sort of.”

  That took Sam by surprise, but he tried not to show it.

  “How can you sort of be lawmen?”

  “We ain’t federal marshals or Rangers or even local badge-toters. We’re private operators, I reckon you could say. Range detectives. We work most of the time for the Cattlemen’s Protective Association.”

  Sam knew about the CPA. It was a loose-knit organization with members stretching from Montana to the Rio Grande. In fact, he and Matt both belonged to it, that is, assuming their ranch managers had remembered to send in their dues. The blood brothers didn’t keep track of such things.

  “If you work for the CPA, you ought to have papers showing that,” Sam said.

  Stovepipe shook his head.

  “Well, see, that’s why I said we couldn’t prove it right now. We ain’t exactly workin’ for the CPA on this case. They’ve loaned us out, I reckon you could say?”

  “Loaned you out?” Sam repeated. “To who? And what case are you talking about?”

  “We’re workin’ for the War Department in Washington,” Stovepipe said. “Undercover-like, which is why we got no bona fides on us sayin’ who we are.”

  Beside him, Wilbur spoke up.

  “Are you sure we ought to be tellin’ him all this, Stovepipe? For all we know, he could be part of the gang.”

  “Then who was that shootin’ at him a while ago?” Stovepipe wanted to know.

  Sam wasn’t sure whether to believe anything they had told him, but he said, “For what it’s worth, that wasn’t the first time somebody tried to bushwhack me. It’s the third attempt in the past week, and I’m convinced they were all by the same bunch.”

  Stovepipe let out a low whistle.

  “Sounds like you’ve made yourself some powerful enemies, Sam.”

  “Yeah, and I still don’t have any idea why.”

  “Oh, shoot, we can tell you that.” Stovepipe looked over at Wilbur again.

  The smaller man shrugged and nodded, telling him to go ahead.

  “It’s about two things, Sam,” Stovepipe said. “Money ... and guns.”

  Chapter 24

  Sam looked at the two of them intently for a moment, then said, “You’re going to have to explain that.”

  Stovepipe nodded.

  “Figured I’d have to. You see, abou
t a month ago a shipment of rifles—brand-new Trapdoor Springfields—were on their way to the garrison at Fort Defiance when the wagon they were in was waylaid.” Stovepipe’s face grew grim. “The troopers ridin’ escort with the guns were wiped out.”

  “Do the authorities believe that the Navajo did that?” Sam asked.

  “Nope,” Stovepipe replied with a shake of his head. “One of the troopers was shot to pieces but lived long enough to talk to some freighters who came across the massacre. Before he died he said it was white men who jumped ’em, and the shod hoofprints around the place indicated that, too.”

  “But just because it wasn’t Indians who stole the rifles,” Wilbur put in, “that don’t mean those guns won’t wind up in Navajo hands before it’s all said and done.”

  “The Navajo are peaceful people,” Sam protested. “They’ve been mistreated, but despite that all they want is to be left alone.”

  “I ain’t gonna argue with you about how they been treated,” Stovepipe said. “But you’re a mite too young to remember a Navajo headman name of Manuelito. He wasn’t a very peaceful fella. From what I’ve heard, even the other Navajo were a mite nervous around him. He gave Kit Carson a pretty good fight over in New Mexico Territory a while back.”

  “I’ve heard of Manuelito,” Sam said. “That was nearly twenty years ago.”

  Stovepipe nodded.

  “Yeah, but there are still some firebrands among the Navajo who think the ol’ boy had it right. They think tryin’ to get along with the white men ain’t worked out too well for their people, and it’s ’way past time to start killin’ again.”

  Sam thought about Juan Pablo and the fierce resentment he felt toward the whites. It wouldn’t take much to get him to be in favor of a new Navajo war, and there were bound to be others like him among the clans.

  “So you think whoever stole those rifles intends to sell them to the Navajo,” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense. What would they use to pay for them? Sheep? Blankets?”

  “Didn’t say nothin’ about anybody payin’ for those Springfields. But they could still wind up in Navajo hands, like Wilbur said.”

  “Only if the thieves want to start a war.”

  Stovepipe shrugged.

  Those same thoughts had gone through Sam’s mind earlier. Judging by what these two self-proclaimed range detectives were telling him, he had been on the right track.

  But he wanted to see if their thinking matched up with his, so he said, “Where does the money come in?”

  “The money’s to be made when somebody comes in and grabs all this reservation land once the government rounds up the Navajo again and marches ’em back to Bosque Redondo or some other hellhole. This is the largest reservation in the whole blamed country. It ain’t just in Arizona. It stretches over into New Mexico and up into Colorado and Utah as well. Millions and millions of acres. If they throw the whole thing open for settlement, instead of just the isolated patches here and there, it’d be worth a fortune.” Stovepipe shrugged. “Leastways, it could be, if there was a way to get water in here from the Colorado to the west and the Rio Grande to the east. Wouldn’t be easy, but with a big enough payoff waitin’ for ’em, you can bet folks’d figure out a way to do it.”

  It was a long speech, but everything Stovepipe said lined up with the theory that had formed in Sam’s mind.

  He thought about the marks he and Juan Pablo had found on the ground at the base of that bluff where the first bushwhack attempt had been made.

  “The stolen rifles were in one wagon?” he asked.

  “That’s right. Twelve crates with forty guns in each one. Nearly five hundred Springfields.”

  “A crate with forty rifles in it would be pretty heavy, wouldn’t it?”

  “I reckon so,” Stovepipe said. His deep-set eyes narrowed. “I’m startin’ to get the feelin’ you know more than you’re tellin’ us, Sam. We’ve laid our cards on the table. Now it’s your turn.”

  Sam drew in a deep breath and let it out. He had to make the decision whether to trust these two men. His instincts told him that they had been truthful with him, and the facts they had provided went a long way toward explaining everything that had happened over the past week or so.

  “All right,” he said as he made up his mind. “I think a friend of mine and I nearly stumbled right into those rifles being delivered to whoever they’re intended for.”

  “You’re talkin’ about Matt Bodine?” Stovepipe asked.

  Sam’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

  “How do you know about Matt?”

  Wilbur said, “We’ve been workin’ out here on the frontier for quite a while, mister. You reckon we never heard of Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves?”

  “You were mixed up in that Joshua Shade business a while back,” Stovepipe added. “Reckon that varmint might not have ended up at the end of a hangrope where he belonged if not for you two fellas.”

  “Where is Bodine?” Wilbur asked. “He’s not dead, is he?”

  “Not that I know of,” Sam said. “But he was wounded, and I had to leave him with somebody while I went looking for the men who bushwhacked us. I think that’s tied in with those rifles you told me about.”

  “So where’s Bodine now?”

  “With some Navajo about a day’s ride northwest of here.”

  Stovepipe and Wilbur looked at each other again.

  “You better tell us the rest of it,” Stovepipe said.

  For the next five minutes, Sam did so, explaining how someone had opened fire on him and Matt, wounding Matt and leading to them being discovered by Caballo Rojo, Juan Pablo, and the rest of the Navajo.

  “I think the bushwhackers must have tried to kill us because we came along just as they were about to deliver those rifles to someone,” he said. He told Stovepipe and Wilbur about the marks he had found on the ground at the base of the bluff. “Those were definitely wagon tracks I saw, and they looked like it was heavily loaded. And a crate full of Springfields would have left an impression on the ground like that, too.”

  Sam grunted and shook his head.

  “And I thought at first that it was a coffin.”

  “Not a coffin,” Stovepipe said, “but in the wrong hands, what was in it sure might fill a bunch of ’em.”

  “I backtracked the bunch to Flat Rock,” Sam went on. “I think they must’ve gotten spooked and postponed the deal. They probably have the rifles hidden somewhere close to the settlement. The boss, whoever he is, put guards on the trail outside town to see if anybody followed them. When I did, they tried to kill me again.”

  “And they trailed you out here today and tried again, more’n likely,” Stovepipe said.

  “And why did you follow me?”

  “Just keepin’ an eye on you,” Stovepipe said. “To tell you the truth, we sorta thought you might attract trouble like a magnet, given your reputation for gettin’ mixed up in things.”

  “And we weren’t completely convinced you weren’t mixed up somehow with the gang we’re lookin’ for,” Wilbur added.

  Stovepipe winced.

  “Now, you didn’t have to go and tell him that.”

  “Just like you didn’t have to tell Lady Augusta that I like her,” Wilbur shot back.

  Sam said, “So when somebody tried to kill me, that convinced you that I wasn’t one of the gang?”

  “Didn’t figure they’d be shootin’ at you if you was one of ’em,” Stovepipe said.

  Wilbur nodded at his companion.

  “That’s what he said. If I had as many thoughts crammed into my head as Stovepipe does, I swear I’d go plumb crazy. That’s why I mostly let him do the figurin’ .”

  “And what I’m studyin’ on now,” Stovepipe said, “is what brought you out here today, Sam. The hombres out at the Devil’s Pitchfork don’t cotton much to strangers.”

  “Especially ones with Indian blood,” Sam said. “I know. But I got curious about those cattle that were stolen from out here. Boyd and Lowry bl
amed the rustling on the Navajo, but that just doesn’t seem right to me. Caballo Rojo and his people are the closest ones to the settlement, and I spent enough time with them to know they wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  “Most of ’em probably wouldn’t,” Stovepipe agreed. “But all it takes is a handful who take after Manuelito.”

  Sam shrugged.

  “Maybe. But the whole idea is to increase the tension between the white settlers and the Navajo until a shooting war is inevitable. The men behind it are even going to give the Navajo those rifles to make it unavoidable. Right?”

  “That’s the way it looks to me,” Stovepipe replied with a nod.

  “So rustling cattle and making it look like the Navajo are responsible would just up the stakes.”

  “He’s right, Stovepipe,” Wilbur said. “I reckon he’s about as good a detective as you are.”

  “I never claimed to be no genius. What you say makes sense, Sam. The same bunch is playin’ the settlers and the Indians against each other to set up a land grab.” Stovepipe rubbed his beard-stubbled chin. “Question is, what are we gonna do about it?”

  “The first step is to find out who they are,” Sam said. “Maybe if we track those stolen cows that will tell us something.”

  “It sure might.” Stovepipe inclined his head toward his horse. “All right if we mount up again? We’ve all decided to trust each other?”

  Sam slid his Winchester back in the saddleboot.

  “I think so. And we’ll come closer getting to the bottom of this if we work together.”

  Stovepipe nodded and said, “Sounds good to me.”

  All three of them swung up into their saddles. As they started looking for the tracks left by the stolen herd, Wilbur said, “You know, there’s somethin’ that’s botherin’ me. You said you left your partner Bodine with the Navajo, Sam?”

  “That’s right.”

  “There’s got to be at least a few members of that clan who are workin’ with the gang that stole the rifles.”

  That same worry had started gnawing at the back of Sam’s thoughts.

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “And if that’s true, they might want to get rid of Matt just to make sure he doesn’t stumble over what’s really going on.”