Paxton shook his head stubbornly, but stayed in his chair and didn’t say anything.
“Furthermore, Your Honor,” Addison went on, “you will see Esau Paxton’s signature on this contract, signifying his agreement to those very terms.”
Paxton couldn’t hold it in. He didn’t stand up, but he said, “That’s not what I meant. And if that’s what it says, that’s not what I thought it said. That’s not what we agreed it would say beforehand.”
The slender, dignified Everett Sloane rose to his feet and said, “Your Honor, I apologize for my client. But I ask you to understand how upset he is over what has now been revealed as the fraud perpetrated by his former partner.”
“Fraud!” Shad Colton bellowed as he shot to his feet. “What the hell do you mean by fraud?”
“Mr. Colton!” Judge Clark thundered in a voice that threatened to shake the town hall’s rafters. “There will be no profanity in this courtroom unless I’m the one usin’ it, damn it!”
He began to pound the gavel on the table as the cowboys from the rival ranches shouted and shook fingers at each other. Matt and Sam watched tensely, ready to step in if any of the punchers left their chairs and tried to start a brawl, but the crashing of Clark’s gavel finally began to quiet down the uproar.
When the judge could be heard again, he said, “Fraud’s a mighty serious charge, Mr. Sloane. What do you mean by making it?”
“It’s quite simple, Your Honor,” Sloane replied, echoing what Colonel Addison had said earlier. “My client and Mr. Colton agreed before that contract was drawn up that the water from the creek would be split equally, but then Mr. Colton or his attorney changed the terms of the agreement and fooled Mr. Paxton into signing it.”
“That’s a lie!” Colton shouted. “I never did anything o’ the sort! Hell, I never even read the contract after it was drawed up! I don’t reckon Esau did either. We knew what it was supposed to say.”
“I warned you about the profanity.” The judge leaned forward in his chair. “But I’m going to let it pass for now because I want to hear more about this agreement you made with Mr. Paxton. Was it your intention to share the water from the creek?”
“Don’t answer that, Shad,” Addison said quickly. He turned back to the judge and waved the papers in his hand. “Your Honor, I submit that any further discussion of anything that was said before this contract was executed is irrelevant and immaterial. Any verbal agreements—and I am not stipulating that such agreements did in fact exist—were superceded by this written, signed contract, which does in fact contain language specifying that it is the sole and binding agreement between Mr. Shadrach Colton and Mr. Esau Paxton concerning the division of property theretofore held by them jointly!”
The words came out of Addison like a rushing river and left him even redder in the face than usual when he was finished. He plucked a handkerchief from his breast pocket with his free hand and used it to mop sweat off his forehead.
The big room was filled with considerable hubbub again. Judge Clark gaveled the spectators into silence once more, then gazed with narrow, steely eyes at Addison and said, “I have a question for you, Colonel. Did you draw up that contract?”
Addison shook his head. “I did not, Your Honor.”
“Then who did?”
Colton said, “Am I allowed to answer, or do I still have to keep my trap shut?”
Clark jerked the gavel at him to indicate that he should go ahead.
“Old Marcellus Reilly drew up the contract,” Colton said. “He was my lawyer before the colonel here took over the job.”
“And where is Mr. Reilly now?” Clark asked.
“In the graveyard over at Marfa.”
“Mr. Reilly passed away last year, Your Honor,” Addison explained. “That was when I began to represent Mr. Colton.”
“So you don’t know if this fella Reilly changed the terms of the agreement to favor his client and then slipped it past Paxton, is that right?”
Addison said, “With all due respect, Your Honor, you’re engaging in pure speculation and as such, it’s irrelevant and immaterial to the case at hand.” He brandished the contract again. “All that matters is what is written here, including the signatures of Mr. Colton and Mr. Paxton. It was Mr. Paxton’s responsibility to make certain that the terms of the contract were what he had agreed to before he signed it.”
Paxton’s face was gray and drawn now. Matt thought he looked like a man who knew he was beaten.
It was pretty clear what had happened, Matt figured, even to somebody like him who wasn’t educated in the law. Colton’s original lawyer had pulled a fast one. He’d changed the agreement when he wrote it up so that Colton owned the creek. If Paxton had noticed that and refused to sign, Reilly could have claimed it was an honest mistake in the wording and had the contracts redrawn. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as the old saying went.
But Paxton hadn’t noticed and had signed the contract the way Reilly drew it up, and that was that. The creek belonged to Colton, and Paxton’s cows had no right to drink out of it.
Whether or not Colton had known all along what his lawyer was up to, Matt couldn’t have said. He knew there was plenty of bad blood between the ranchers. But somehow, trying a sneaky legal trick like that didn’t sound like something Colton would do. It was possible that Colton hadn’t even known about it until after old Marcellus Reilly was dead. Then he might have looked over the contract and discovered what it really contained. That seemed like the most likely explanation to Matt.
The question now was, what would the judge do about it? Clark couldn’t very well set aside the contract and give Paxton part of the ranch. Like Addison had said, checking the contract before he signed it was Paxton’s lookout.
Clark leaned back in his chair and didn’t even try to quiet down the racket in the town hall this time. His high forehead corrugated in a frown of consternation. Whatever he decided here, one side or the other was going to explode in outrage.
Then, suddenly, everyone in the room turned to look at the open windows as somebody started screaming in the street outside. “What the hell?” Matt muttered as he turned toward the doors. The caterwauling sounded like a couple of panthers going after each other.
Or a couple of really angry women, he realized as he stepped out onto the porch with Sam and saw the battle taking place down the street. One of the combatants, he saw to his surprise, was that Eastern girl who had come to Sweet Apple with Seymour’s Uncle Cornelius. The other was Maggie O’Ryan, who was going after Rebecca Jimmerson with all the hot-blooded ferocity she’d come by honestly with her Irish and Latin heritage.
Seymour was trying to break them up, but not having any luck at it. The way he was dancing around, he really didn’t have any idea what to do to stop the two young women from fighting.
Matt couldn’t help but grin as he watched. After a second, he said, “You reckon we ought to go give Seymour a hand?”
Sam was smiling, too. “I reckon we should,” he said. “Otherwise, those ladies are liable to really hurt each other.”
The blood brothers had just stepped down from the porch to the street when they heard the hoofbeats. Their heads jerked around, instinct warning them that all hell was about to break loose. They saw the riders, two dozen, maybe more, sweep around a corner and charge down the street, guns blazing. They seemed to be headed straight for the town hall, and Matt recognized the burly, bearded figure in the lead.
“Alcazarrio!” he yelled as he slapped leather.
Chapter 17
Seymour recognized Diego Alcazarrio from the bandido chieftain’s previous attack on Sweet Apple, but Alcazarrio’s identity barely had time to sink in before an even more urgent realization hit Seymour.
Maggie and Rebecca were right in the path of the galloping horses. In a matter of seconds, they would be ridden down, crushed under the slashing hooves.
He had no gun, so he couldn’t even hope to stop the raiders. The way they were charging down
the street, he couldn’t have turned aside their attack even if he had been armed.
So Seymour did the only thing he could. He lunged at Maggie and Rebecca, who had stopped fighting and were staring at Alcazarrio’s men in shock. Grabbing an arm of each girl, Seymour began trying to hustle them out of the way, half-urging them to run, half-dragging them.
He saw the boardwalk right in front of them, twenty feet away, then ten, then five . . . the hoofbeats were deafeningly loud now, as were the shots that rang out . . . as Seymour shoved Maggie and Rebecca toward safety.
The next instant something crashed into his shoulder and sent him flying through the air. One of the horses had struck him as it galloped past. He slammed into the edge of the boardwalk and felt pain shoot through him. Dust clogged his mouth and nose, making it impossible to breathe as he landed in the street.
As Seymour rolled over a huge shape loomed above him. One of the bandits had reined in, and now the man’s horse reared up on its hind legs, its steel-shod front hooves pawing at the air and threatening to come down and crush the life out of Seymour. He scrambled frantically out of the way as the hooves thudded against the street where he had been a second earlier. Seymour ignored the pain that filled his body. There was no time for it.
He caught hold of the edge of the boardwalk and pulled himself up. As he came upright, panting with exertion and agony, he heard a harsh voice say, “Hasta la vista, gringo!” and looked up to see the Mexican raider pointing a gun at his head. Seymour’s eyes barely had time to widen in shock and fear before flame spouted from the barrel of the revolver.
Both of Matt Bodine’s Colts fairly leaped into his hands as he opened fire on the onrushing bandit horde. Beside him, Sam’s revolver roared defiance, too. Behind them, the cowboys from the Double C and Pax began to hurry out of the town hall to see what all the shooting was about. Howls of surprise and outrage came from their mouths as they reached for their guns, only to remember that they had surrendered their weapons as they went into the hearing.
The baskets containing the guns that had been collected were still sitting right there on the boardwalk. The delay required to retrieve the guns was crucial, though. The bandits overran the building while many of the would-be defenders were still unarmed. Horses leaped onto the boardwalk. Men screamed as they went down before the trampling hooves. Glass shattered as a fusillade of shots drove several men back through the front windows, their bodies filled with lead. Diego Alcazarrio himself led the charge into the town hall, leaping his horse to the porch and then ducking his head so that the mount could crash on through the doors and into the building.
Matt and Sam had gone down in the first few moments of the battle, creased in several places by flying bullets. Neither was seriously hurt, but the press of people kept them from getting up. They were in imminent danger of being crushed by the crowd as the melee spread along the front of the town hall. Both of them were big, strong young men, though, and at last they were able to fight their way back to their feet. Matt had emptied his Colts, but he used them as clubs, swinging them in powerful strokes against the heads of the mounted bandits. Several of the bandidos came crashing down from their saddles.
Sam had drawn his bowie knife and was using it to carve out an open space around him in the middle of the battle. Blood flew through the air and spattered his face as the razor-sharp blade sliced through the flesh of his foes. It must have been like this in the middle of the chaos atop the ridge overlooking the Greasy Grass, during the epic battle in which Medicine Horse had lost his life after counting coup on Yellow Hair.
There was no counting coup here, only killing. And trying to stay alive . . .
Maggie O’Ryan found herself on the porch of Mayor Abner Mitchell’s general store. She hurt all over from the tumble down the stairs and the damage that Rebecca Jimmerson had inflicted on her during their fight. But she couldn’t even think about that, because when she picked herself up and turned around after Seymour had practically thrown her and Rebecca onto the porch, she saw one of the bandits about to shoot the man she loved.
She didn’t waste time screaming Seymour’s name. Instead, she snatched up a shovel from a barrel that sat on the porch and held an assortment of farming implements for sale. The price tag hung from a string tied to the handle of the shovel. Maggie flung the tool like a spear, putting all her strength behind the throw.
The shovel’s blade hit the raider in the throat just as he pulled the trigger. Although it didn’t hurt him badly, that was enough to make him jerk the gun a little to one side as it exploded. Seymour fell anyway, blood streaming from his scalp.
Now Maggie screamed, “Seymour!”
The bandit leaped from his horse. He was bleeding from a scratch on his neck where the shovel had hit him. “You damned little hellcat!” he growled at Maggie. He reached for her, but she sprang back and grabbed another tool from the barrel, this time a pitchfork. The bandit lunged at her again, trying to knock the pitchfork aside with his gun. He failed, and his eyes bugged out in horror as Maggie rammed the sharp tines into his belly. She put all her weight behind the blow and drove the pitchfork deep.
The mortally wounded bandit cursed and fell to his knees. He tried to lift his gun again so that he could kill this spitfire who had just struck him down, but blackness engulfed him before he could pull the trigger. He started to pitch forward, but stopped before he could fall all the way to the boardwalk, propped up by the handle of the pitchfork buried in his belly.
Still terrified and shocked by the knowledge that she had just killed a man, Maggie started to turn away, only to have strong arms wrap around her. A grinning face leered into hers from only inches away. “You are coming with me, little one,” the bandido said, and then his fist crashed into Maggie’s jaw, knocking her out cold before she could even begin to struggle against his cruel grip.
Rebecca Jimmerson stumbled along the street, looking for a place to hide. She had lost track of where Maggie was, and didn’t care about that jealous, crazy bitch anyway. Maggie had ruined everything by bursting into the hotel room just as she was about to kill Seymour and earn that three thousand dollars.
At the moment, Rebecca wasn’t thinking about the blood money Cornelius Standish had promised to pay for his nephew’s death. All she cared about was finding someplace where she would be safe from all those marauding Mexicans. She reached the corner of a building and turned to run down an alley.
She hadn’t even gotten started, though, before an arm like a steel band went around her waist and scooped her right off the ground. She shrieked as she felt herself lifted into the air.
Then with an impact that seemed to jolt every bone in her body, she was dropped down onto the back of a galloping horse. The man who had snatched her up still had hold of her. His arm was so tight around her that she couldn’t struggle, couldn’t even breathe. Her head swam dizzily from lack of air.
Dust filled her nostrils, along with the smell of horse and unwashed human flesh. She would have gagged if she’d had any breath to do it with. A voice chattered something in her ear, but she didn’t understand the words. She didn’t know if her captor was speaking Spanish or if her brain was just so stunned that it refused to work.
She passed out, fully expecting that she would never wake up.
Guided by some instinct, Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves moved as they fought their way through the chaos in front of the town hall until they found themselves back-to-back. Matt threw a glance over his shoulder, saw Sam’s bloody, grinning face, and grinned right back at him. They were ringed by bandits who had dismounted and were now closing in on them, guns ready. This looked like the end. In a matter of seconds, the blood brothers would be filled with lead.
But at that moment, a man on horseback leaped his mount through the window behind them. All the glass had already been broken out or shot out, but the window frame exploded in a shower of splinters. Matt was directly in the path of the horse, but Sam shoved him out of the way with a swift hand to th
e shoulder. The horse clipped both of them with glancing blows that knocked them off their feet.
A deep voice bellowed orders in Spanish, saying to follow him. The words were punctuated by a woman’s frantic screams. Matt rolled to the side, and as he did so, bullets chewed up the ground next to him. He was about to spring to his feet when a heavy, suffocating weight landed on top of him, driving him back down to the ground. Matt felt whatever it was jerk several times, probably from bullets thudding into it.
Unable to breathe, Matt squirmed over onto his back and found himself staring into the dead face of Colonel Hugh Addison, Shad Colton’s lawyer. Addison’s body was riddled with bullets and a good-sized chunk of his head had been shot away. He’d probably been dead when he fell on Matt. Realizing that and remembering the way Addison’s corpse had soaked up more lead, Matt knew that even dead, the lawyer had saved his life.
Matt got his hands on Addison’s shoulders and rolled the lawyer’s body aside. A lot fewer guns were going off now, but hoofbeats still filled the air. As Matt struggled up to his knees, he saw that the raiders were streaming out of Sweet Apple, departing as swiftly and unexpectedly as they had shown up. A few of the bandits turned in their saddles to fling a few final shots at the town.
Matt swayed to his feet and grabbed a nearby hitch rail to steady himself. The wooden rail cracked and broke. It had been shot up until it was barely standing. Matt stumbled over to the boardwalk, looking for Sam. Finding out whether his blood brother was dead or alive was the only thing in Matt Bodine’s mind right now.
“Matt! Matt!”
Then Sam was there beside him, covered with blood but still on his feet. They grabbed each other, slapped each other on the back. Sam pulled away and asked, “Are you all right?”
Ride for Vengeance Page 17
