The gunny pushed back his chair and stood up, his hands by his guns. Pearl-handled, Sam noticed. “I think you just insulted me, Breed.”
“Settle down, Chuckie,” a man said.
“Settle down, hell!” Chuckie said, his face flushed. “That damn half-breed or whatever he is said something bad about me. I think.”
Sam took a bite of his sandwich and chewed. Matt noticed that his brother held the sandwich in his left hand, his right hand close to the butt of his gun. Sam was proficient with either hand, but, as today, normally wore only one gun.
“What’s your part in all this, Bodine?” another man called out.
“None, as long as it stays one on one.”
“It ain’t none of our affair,” another said. “We’re out of it.”
“The bread could be a bit fresher,” Sam said, after taking another bite. “But other than that, I have to say it’s a pretty good sandwich.”
“Damnit, man!” Chuckie hollered. “Will you pay attention to me and stop all that chompin’?”
Sam looked at the man, and Matt knew then that his brother was going to do something foolish. What, he didn’t know. But Sam had a tendency to place more value on human life—even an outlaw’s life—than Matt. Sometimes. “I seldom pay much attention to the braying of a jackass.”
“Chuckie, man, back off!” J. B. Adams urged. “He ain’t done you no hurt.”
“He’s part Injun, and I don’t like Injuns.” Chuckie made a half turn and faced Sam fully. “I hope you like that sandwich, Breed. ’Cause your belly’s about to be full of lead.”
“I really doubt it,” Sam’s words were softly spoken, but carried well to the man. “Why don’t you take the advice of your friends and sit down? There is no need for a shooting.”
“Sam Two Wolves,” Chuckie sneered. “Big shot gunhand. Hell, you’re yellow clean through.”
The others in the room started watching Matt Bodine. They knew that if trouble started, and it was only a heartbeat away, if any of them took a hand in it, Bodine would fill both hands with iron and start shooting. At this close range, the barroom would be very quickly filled with dead and dying men. Bodine and Sam would take lead, but that wouldn’t help those lying dead on the floor, and no one could be sure it wouldn’t be them. All in all, it was a very bad situation, especially for Chuckie, for the most experienced gun-handlers knew that Sam Two Wolves was just a shade behind Matt Bodine when it came to skills as a pistolero. To a man, they wished Chuckie would shut his flappin’ trap and sit back down.
The batwings pushed open, and Bull Sutton’s bulk filled the space. The man quickly sized up the situation and immediately stepped to one side. Several of his hands went with him. He was not going to interfere. Matt read it right when he figured Bull wanted to see Sam in action, wanted to know just what he might be up against should the brothers decide to ride for the Circle JC. He moved to the bar, and Matt noted that for a big man, Bull Sutton was mighty light on his boots. That was something worth bearing in mind.
The barkeep quietly placed a bottle and several glasses in front of Bull.
“I said I wanted a beer,” Matt reminded the man.
“Give him a beer,” Bull told the barkeep. “Chuck Babb is quick with a short gun, Bodine,” Bull whispered.
“He’s not quick enough.”
“The breed that good?”
“He’s that good.”
Chuckie cussed Sam for a moment. Then he stood tense, his hands by his guns. Sam laid his half-eaten sandwich on a table and faced the man square, after pulling a hand on the back of a chair. “This doesn’t have to be,” Sam finally spoke.
“Yeah, Breed,” Chuckie replied, his voice hoarse. “It has to be.”
Sam arched an eyebrow and waited.
“Are you gonna grab iron?” Chuckie called.
“It’s your play,” Sam told him, his voice calm. “I never wanted this trouble.”
Chuckie began to have doubts. Sam was just too calm and collected. But he made no move to wipe the perspiration from his face. Any more now would be taken as a move toward a gun. He silently cussed the situation. The damn breed was just too sure of himself. He just stood there, waiting, his face showing no emotion at all.
“A hundred dollars on Chuckie,” Bull said softly.
“You’re on,” Matt took the bet.
“Chuckie killed that Utah gunhand, Rodman, down on the flats,” Bull said.
Matt chose not to reply. He’d watched Sam put his left hand on the chair back and wondered what his brother had in mind. Matt lifted his beer mug with his left hand and took a sip, always keeping one eye on the men in the saloon. And the men knew it. Bull had placed both hands on the bar. They all were familiar with the unwritten rules of gunplay.
Chuckie lost his composure and began cussing Sam, the spittle flying from his lips. Sam waited, his face impassive.
“Now!” Chuckie screamed, and grabbed for his guns.
3
Chuckie’s first mistake had been in bracing Sam. His second mistake was in reaching for both guns, for that cut his speed down by a half second.
When Chuckie’s hands lifted and just before they closed around the butts of his guns, Sam sidestepped and threw the chair. The chair slammed into Chuckie’s chest and knocked him backward, his two shots going wild, the booming reports sending men jumping and cussing and hollering and scrambling for the floor and under tables.
Sam leaped across the short space and collided with Chuckie, riding him down to the floor, his fists hammering into the man’s face and body.
His face bloody and his eyes wide and wild, Chuckie wrestled Sam away and got to his feet. He tossed Sam to one side and grabbed at a hideout gun behind his belt at the small of his back. A gunhandler, one of his own buddies, tore the gun from him and tossed it to another man.
“Fists, Chuckie,” the gunslick told him. “He could have killed you three times over. Now settle it with fists.”
“Damn your eyes!” Chuckie told the man.
The hired gun shrugged his shoulders and stepped back. He might hire out his gun, but a man had to have some honor.
Chuckie took a wild swing at Sam, and Sam ducked it, busting Chuckie hard in the gut. The air whooshed out of the man, and Sam hit him twice to the jaw, left and right. Chuckie went down in a sprawl of arms and legs and came up cussing and swinging. Sam backed up and let him come on. He rocked Chuckie’s head back with brutal jabs to the mouth and nose. Blood was dripping from the man’s nose and mouth, and one eye was discolored and closing.
Chuckie took a wild swing just as Sam was planting his boots. He hit Chuckie flush in the mouth with a left and followed that with a booming right to the side of the jaw. The gunless gunhand went down and didn’t move.
Sam looked at the unconscious man for a moment, shook his head in disgust, and then returned to the bar and picked up his half-eaten sandwich. He met the barkeep’s eyes. “Beer,” he said. “Right now.”
The barkeep looked at Sam, new respect in his eyes. Chuckie had not managed to land even one good punch. The barkeep shrugged his shoulders and pulled a brew, sliding the full mug down the bar to Sam.
Bull Sutton counted out one hundred dollars in gold coin and placed the money in front of Matt.
“Sam didn’t draw,” Matt said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Bull said. “It was a good and fair fight, and the breed won. Take the money.”
Matt pocketed the coins.
“Your brother’s got nerve, Bodine. I hate to see good men get killed needlessly.”
Matt started to remind him that he was ever so anxious to see a gunfight, but he held his tongue on that. “Neither of us intend to get killed, Bull.”
Bull finished his whiskey and placed the shot glass on the bar. He turned to leave, then paused and looked back at Matt. “No man ever does, Bodine.”
The Flying BS crew had left, with Chuckie tied in the saddle. The man was still too addled to ride alone. He was babbling and cussin
g. “I sure showed that damn Injun,” he mouthed.
“Yeah, you sure did,” a friend told him. “You showed your butt is what you done.”
Sam and Matt went walking. This time, the men of the town were just a bit friendlier when meeting the brothers. But no one was friendly enough to invite them to supper.
They stopped in at one of the two large general stores, both owned by the same man, but on opposite sides of the street.
“Isn’t this rather inconvenient?” Sam asked the proprietor.
“Yeah, it is. But if I didn’t do it this way, only one of the ranches would do business with me. Then pretty soon neither of them would, and then nobody at all would. There are little ranches all around here that side with one or the other of the big two. Bull and John would spread the word, and I’d soon be out of business. Don’t you see?”
Matt and Sam both blinked at that explanation. Matt said, “If . . . yeah, right. We see. Two boxes of .44’s, please.”
“Which side are you on?”
“Neither one!” Sam said, exasperated with the whole silly thing.
“Then I can’t serve you, boys. I just can’t risk it. Go across the street to the other store. Maybe my old woman will wait on you.”
Matt and Sam looked at each other, shook their heads, and then trooped out of the store and walked across the street to the other general store. Owned by the same man who had just refused to serve them.
“I’m getting fed up to the neck with this,” Matt said. The brothers stood on the boardwalk after leaving the second general store. The lady had refused to serve them.
A citizen passing by stopped and took in their disgusted looks. “There’s an old trading post up yonder on the river, boys. It’s only a few miles out of town. North of here. Right pleasant ride, it is. The trading post is run by a cantankerous old mountain man name of Ladue. Ladue don’t kowtow to nobody, and he’ll serve anybody.”
“That’s the best suggestion we’ve heard so far,” Sam said. “Let’s go.”
Matt nixed that. “In the morning. It’s too late now. And something tells me that night isn’t the safest time to be riding around in this part of the country.”
Sam smiled. “There are occasions when you do make sense, brother.”
“Damnest mess I ever did see,” Ladue told the brothers the next morning. “Growed-up men actin’ like children.”
Ladue’s place was long and low, was dimly lit, and was packed to overflowing with every conceivable item one might name. And in the rough bar part of the post, you either drank rye whiskey or nothing.
“Sutton and Carlin don’t bother me none, though,” the old mountain man continued. “I told both of ’em I’d serve whoever I damn well pleased to serve, and if that stuck in their craw, they could just live with it. I also told the pair of ’em that if they tried to throw their weight around and scare off my regular customers, I still got my Sharps that I killed many a warrin’ Injun with and not no small number of white men. And I would get lead in both of them. I ain’t seen hide nor hair of either of ’em since then.”
Matt and Sam both smiled at the man who looked to be about as old as dirt. This was one man who would shoot first and think about the ramifications of it later. Or he might not think about it at all.
“Rye,” Matt told him.
“Water for me,” Sam was quick to order.
“I come out here in ’15, I think it was,” Ladue said. “So that would make me about eighty-five, I think. But I don’t rightly know. I do know that I got enough teeth left to gnaw on a steak. Ain’t been no further east than Saint Louie since then. Don’t want to go no further east, neither. Too damn many people.” He looked hard at Sam. “You shape up to have some Cheyenne in you, right?”
“Yes. My father was Medicine Horse. My mother was white.”
“I knowed Medicine Horse. Slept in many of his camps. He was a fine and honorable man . . . for an Injun. And you know I don’t mean no insult by that.”
“I know,” Sam said with a smile. Sam knew that his father’s thinking had been years ahead of most Indian leaders’. Too far reaching for most of the other chiefs. But, in the end, Medicine Horse knew that the Indian ways could be no more and had elected to die in battle.
Ladue looked at Matt. “You been adopted into the Cheyenne tribe, ain’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know about the breed yonder, but you got the stamp of a gunslick on you, boy.”
“My name is Matt Bodine. This is my brother, Sam Two Wolves.”
“Well, now,” Ladue said with a chuckle. “I remember now. Medicine Horse did marry him a lady from back East. Sure did. Heared of both of you. Things just might be gettin’ interestin’ ’round here.”
“We’re not taking sides,” Sam told him. “If we had any sense, we’d move on.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Ladue said, refilling their glasses. “This one’s on the house.” He grinned at Sam. For a man his age, he did have a respectable set of choppers. “Even the water. Too much of that ain’t good for you, son. So why don’t you just saddle up and ride on?” He chuckled. “Oh, I know. You’re both young and full of it. I was the same way. First time I tangled with a grizzly I began to realize I wasn’t immortal.”
“You fought a grizzly?” Sam asked. “What happened?”
Matt stifled a groan and hid his grin. He had known a lot of mountain men and knew they could tell some tall tales.
“Well, sir, it was like this. I was afoot, runnin’ my traps just off the northern-most curve of the Snake, when the bear popped up sudden-like. He’d been stuffin’ hisself with berries, and I disturbed him, I reckon. I clumb up a tree since I was told that a grizzly don’t climb trees. Only problem was somebody forgot to tell the bear that. So, whilst I was climbin’ down one side, he was climbin’ up the other. We met in the middle and I jumped. Damn bear landed right on top of me. Well sir, we clumb to our feet and the fur flew and the snot got flung. I shot him once, and when that didn’t even stagger him, I whopped him upside the head with my good rifle and lit a shuck outta there, with that bear hot on my heels. And a griz can cover some ground, too. I got the scars on my behind to prove it. He’d swipe, I’d jump and holler, and he’d roar. Finally, I just couldn’t run no more. So I stopped and turned around and whupped out my good knife. I faced that bear, all reared up on his hind legs. I told that bear, ‘Mister Bear, I ain’t got a damn thing agin you, but this here fight’s gonna be settled right here and now. You want to leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone. If you wanna fight, come on. Well, he come on.” Ladue stopped to take a drink of rye. He sighed and wiped his mouth. “That shore was a hell of a fight,” Ladue finally said.
“Well . . . what happened?” Sam asked.
“Well, son . . . that griz killed me!”
While Ladue was cackling and coughing and slapping his knee, Sam looked at Matt, a disgusted expression on his face. “I just had to ask, didn’t I?”
Stocked up on ammo and a few personal items, which the stores in town had refused to sell them, Sam and Matt decided to spend the day just getting familiar with the country. Both knew they ought to leave; just pack up their few possessions and ride on out. But they were reluctant to do that. Both of them had more than their share of curiosity—plain ol’ nosiness, Sam called it—and neither one of them liked to be pushed and crowded as they had been since their arrival.
“So Robin and his hood are off again,” Sam said, as the brothers rode through the land.
“Something like that,” Matt said.
“And don’t ask who is the hood. You are.”
Matt smiled. “But a nice one.”
“Do you suppose it’s gold?” Sam asked.
“I thought of that. I don’t reckon so. The more I think about it, and it sure isn’t any of our business, maybe it’s just two men who don’t get along.”
“If parents don’t want their kids to see one another, why don’t they threaten to disown them, or send them away
to school back East?” Sam questioned. “This whole thing is stupid. Let’s get out of here.”
“If we head back to the hotel right now, we can put some miles behind us by sundown.”
“Let’s do it.”
Their minds made up, halfway back to town the brothers were confronted by a dozen riders, all of them riding horses with the Circle JC brand. Matt knew several of the men, and knew them all for hired guns. One of them, Will Jennings, was a two-bit, back-shooting killer.
“Well, well,” Jennings said, after the dust had settled. “If it isn’t Matt Bodine and his greasy Injun brother.”
“On second thought,” Sam muttered.
“Yeah,” Matt returned the whisper.
The Circle JC riders had fanned out, effectively blocking the road. Trouble was in the air, and both brothers smelled the intangible odor.
“Relax,” Will said. “There ain’t gonna be no trouble this time unless you boys start it.”
“Well, that’s nice,” Matt replied. “What’s your beef with us?”
“You’re fence-stragglers,” another Circle JC rider said. “If you ain’t for us, then you got to be agin us.”
“That is not logical,” Sam said. “How about if we just don’t give a damn one way or the other?”
“Nobody asked you,” another rider said. “So why don’t you just shut your trap?”
The blood brothers exchanged glances. First the Flying BS crew wanted trouble with them, now the Circle JC boys were on the prod. It didn’t make sense.
“Exactly what do you want?” Matt asked the gang. “Both of us are a little confused about that.”
“We get orders, we carry them out,” a heavy-set and bearded rider said.
Matt was getting mad and so was Sam. “Orders to do what?” Matt asked.
“To run you two out of the country,” Jennings said. “Or to kill you if it come to that. And I’ll tell you flat out now, I hope it do. I’m lookin’ forward to stretchin’ you out on the ground, Bodine.”
“I wouldn’t count on that, Jennings,” Matt said. “Not unless you back-shoot me.”
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