Early in the morning like this was a good time for an ambush, when most men were still groggy from a night’s sleep. On the lookout for some sort of treachery on Alcazarrio’s part, Matt moved swiftly to Shad Colton’s side and knelt to put a hand on the cattleman’s shoulder. Colton started up out of sleep, opening his mouth to yell in alarm, but Matt’s hand clamped over his mouth before any sound could come out.
“Quiet!” Matt whispered as he leaned over to bring his mouth close to Colton’s ear. “I think some riders are out there.”
“Alcazarrio?” Colton asked tensely as Matt took his hand away.
“Could be, but there’s really no tellin’. Let’s wake everybody up, but be quiet about it.” He paused, then added, “It’s nearly time to get up anyway.”
Colton rolled out of his blankets, and he and Matt moved quickly through the camp, rousing the other men from sleep as noiselessly as possible. Gil Cochran, hearing the others moving around, came in from his guard post and asked, “What’s goin’ on?”
“Bodine thought he heard something,” Paxton told his foreman.
Cochran gave a little snort and said, “He did, did he? Well, I didn’t hear anything, and there’s nothin’ wrong with my ears.”
“Nobody said there was,” Matt told him. “I might’ve been mistaken.” He didn’t want the distraction of an argument with Cochran right now. “It won’t hurt anything to get ready for trouble anyway.”
He detailed a couple of the men to keep an eye on the horses and mules. It would be well nigh catastrophic if their mounts, pack mules, and the horses they had brought along for the prisoners were stampeded.
In the fading shadows, Matt suddenly heard the sound of hoofbeats approaching. This noise was distinct and grew steadily louder.
“Just two men, I make it,” Colton said in a whisper.
Matt nodded. “That’s what it sounds like to me, too. But don’t let your guard down. Where there are two men, there could be more.”
Everyone clutched their rifles, and an air of tension gripped the camp. A moment later, the hoofbeats stopped, and a man’s voice called softly in Spanish, “Hello the camp! All right to come in?”
“Come ahead,” Matt replied in the same language, “but don’t try anything.”
The man who had spoken chuckled and said in English, “I can tell by your accent that you are a gringo, Señor, no?”
“That’s right. What do you want?”
“My amigo and I are only a pair of lonesome travelers, Señor. We would share your coffee and your company, con permiso.”
The soft hoofbeats sounded again, and two tall shapes loomed up out of the darkness. The pair of riders both wore low-crowned sombreros. Matt could tell that much about them, but not much else. He recalled that most of Alcazarrio’s men had worn the taller, steeple-crowned sombreros, but that didn’t have to mean anything.
“We don’t have any coffee brewing,” Matt said as the strangers reined in. “You should’ve been able to tell that by the smell.”
“Ah, perhaps it was wishful thinking on our part, as you gringos say. Well, if you have no coffee, perhaps you would be willing to share what is in those chests over there on the ground, next to the horses.”
That was what they’d been after all along, Matt thought, getting close enough to make sure this was the party from Sweet Apple delivering the ransom to Diego Alcazarrio.
Several of the men reacted to the challenging words by lifting their rifles, and Shad Colton said, “You just keep your cotton-pickin’ paws off those chests, mister.”
If the spokesman was worried about being threatened, he didn’t show it. The sky was light enough now for Matt to start making out some details about him and his companion. The men were roughly dressed, looking more like farmers than bandits. They were armed with rifles and six-guns and had bandoliers full of ammunition slung across their chests.
“You do not want to cause trouble, amigo,” the man said with his eyes fixed on Matt, obviously sensing that he was the leader of the group. “My men are hidden in the brush with their rifles pointed at you, and if anyone fires, all of you will be cut down immediately.”
“Sounds like a bluff to me,” Paxton said in a cool voice. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”
“How do you know I am not?” the man replied. “The price for guessing wrong will be your life, amigo.”
“I’m not your friend, damn it!”
The man shrugged. “True. Shall we conduct our business?”
“We don’t have any business with you,” Matt said. “Our business is with Diego Alcazarrio.”
The stranger leaned over in the saddle and spit contemptuously. “Alcazarrio!” he said. “People speak of him as if he were the only important man in this part of Mexico.”
“Then you’re not part of his bunch?” Matt asked.
“We are our own men!” There was a note of fierce pride in the stranger’s voice. “And we want what is in those chests!”
Matt saw how it laid out now. He’d been afraid that something like this might happen. Sweet Apple had a large Mexican population, being so close to the Rio Grande, and a lot of those Mexicans had family south of the border. The story of Alcazarrio’s attack on the settlement and the kidnapping of the four young women had already spread, and by now there were probably plenty of folks down here who knew that Matt and his companions were escorting chests full of gold coins to Villa Rojo.
If these strangers weren’t members of Alcazarrio’s band—and Matt believed that they weren’t—then they had to be local, freelance bandidos, probably half-starved and desperate. Desperate enough to try to bluff a much larger group in order to get their hands on that gold?
“All right,” Matt said to his companions. “Lower your guns.”
Paxton and Colton and several of the other men stared at him in disbelief. “Have you gone loco?” Colton demanded. “We can’t give those chests to them!”
“It doesn’t matter how many men they have,” Paxton said. “We’ll fight if we have to.”
“They’ve got the drop on us,” Matt said. “It won’t help anybody for you fellas to get wiped out.” He moved over to the chests and stood beside them. “We’ll make this between these two hombres and me instead.”
“Señor!” the spokesman said sharply. “What foolishness is this?”
“No foolishness. You want what’s in the chests, you’ll have to come through me to get it. But these other fellas will stay out of it, so there’s no need to hurt them. You got that, Colton? Paxton? Whatever happens, you don’t interfere.”
“You are insane, Bodine,” Paxton muttered.
Matt kept his attention focused on the two men on horseback. “Well, what’s it gonna be?” he challenged them.
The second man, who hadn’t spoken during the encounter, suddenly spit out a curse in Spanish and clawed at the gun on his hip. The spokesman yelled, “Pablo, no!” but it was too late. His partner’s gun was already flashing up.
That revolver never got the chance to speak. Matt didn’t even seem to move, but in the shaved instant of time between two heartbeats, both Colts had appeared somehow in his hands. The right one blasted first, sending a bullet smashing like a pile driver into the chest of the man who had drawn first. The slug’s impact knocked the man backward off his suddenly skittish horse.
The other bandit must have hoped that he could get his own gun out and firing while Matt was distracted with killing his companion. If that was the plan, it was a complete failure. Matt’s left-hand gun roared hard on the heels of the first shot. This bullet didn’t quite go where Matt wanted it to. He’d figured on putting it through the second man’s heart, but the hombre had time to move a little and the slug ripped through his right lung instead. The bandit slewed around in the saddle but didn’t fall. Even as he began drowning in his own blood, the hatred he felt for this gringo made him try again to lift his gun and squeeze off a shot.
Head shots were tricky in this uncertain
light, but Matt had time since to his battle-heightened senses his opponent seemed to be moving in slow motion. Matt fired a second shot from his right-hand Colt. The bullet smashed through the bridge of the bandit’s hawklike nose, bored through his brain, and exploded out the back of his skull. The man was dead before he hit the ground like an empty bundle of clothes.
Matt was the only one left standing, because the rest of his party had hit the dirt in case the bandit had been telling the truth and riflemen were hidden in the brush to open fire on them. They would make a hard fight of it if that proved to be the case.
Instead, the only sounds in the early morning stillness were the echoes of the shots Matt had fired, rolling away across the wasteland. After a moment, Shad Colton climbed to his feet and said, “You guessed right, Bodine. There were only two of ’em.”
“But you couldn’t have known that for certain,” Paxton snapped as he got up, too. “You could have gotten us all killed, and then where would our daughters and those other two young women be?”
“Sam would’ve stepped in and gotten them away from Alcazarrio,” Matt said with complete confidence in his blood brother. “But I hadn’t heard a damned thing from out there in the brush, and I didn’t think they could sneak up on us like that without making some sort of sound.”
“That’s a hell of a lot to wager on your hearin’,” Cochran said. “I don’t like folks bettin’ with my life.”
“Well, you’d better get used to it,” Matt said as he holstered his left-hand Colt and began reloading the spent chambers in the right. “We’re all wagerin’ our lives in this game, and we have been ever since we crossed the border.”
Sam lifted his head and stiffened as he was about to lift his saddle onto his horse. Seymour was beside him, getting ready to saddle the dun, and he noticed Sam’s reaction.
“What’s wrong?”
“I heard something. Sounded like pistol shots. Three of them.”
“From up ahead?” Seymour asked.
“Yeah. The direction Matt and the others are.”
Sam and Seymour had talked at length the night before about the dangers they might be facing down here in Mexico. It wasn’t just Alcazarrio’s band of so-called revolutionaries they had to worry about. There was also the threat of renegade Apaches and other bandits. If word had spread about the ransom being delivered to Villa Rojo—and it seemed likely that it had—other greedy men might try to get their hands on it.
“Just three shots? That’s all you heard?” Seymour’s face wore a worried frown as he asked the question.
“Yeah. That’s a good sign. If somebody jumped Matt and the others, they must have taken care of them without much trouble.”
Seymour shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything. My senses will never be as keen as yours, Sam.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Sam said. “I wouldn’t have any idea how to get along in New Jersey.”
That wasn’t strictly true. Sam had been educated back East, in one of the finest colleges, and he possessed the uncanny knack of being able to fit in wherever he was, in whatever sort of society he found himself. He could have donned evening clothes and gone to the opera and been just as comfortable as if he’d been wearing buckskins and attending a Cheyenne ceremony. Well, almost. But Seymour didn’t have to know that.
“Rise and shine,” Sam called as he moved through the camp. “It’ll be light soon, and we’ll hit the trail.”
Quite a few complaints came from Cornelius Standish and his three companions. They weren’t used to riding that much, and they certainly weren’t accustomed to sleeping on the ground with only a blanket roll to lie on and a saddle for a pillow. All four of them hobbled around cursing for a while before their stiff, sore muscles began to loosen up a little.
Sam didn’t pay much attention to their bitching, since it would have been all right with him if they had gotten discouraged and turned around to go back to Sweet Apple. He still didn’t trust any of them as far as he could throw them. But Standish and the others managed to saddle their own mounts, and when Sam called for everybody to mount up and move out, the four of them were ready to ride.
A short while after sunup, Sam caught a whiff of something and hipped around in the saddle to see that Daniel McCracken had lit a cigar. Sam motioned for Seymour to keep going and then turned his paint, falling back so that he was riding alongside McCracken.
“Better put that out,” he said, nodding to the stogie.
“Why the hell should I do that?” McCracken snapped.
Sam explained, “We’re in hostile country now. There could be fifty Apaches out there watching us right now, and you’d never catch sight of them unless they wanted you to.”
“And what the devil does that have to do with me enjoyin’ a smoke?”
“Well, maybe there aren’t any Apaches out there. If that’s the case, we’d like to keep it that way. That cigar’s got a pretty potent aroma to it, and an Indian could smell it from a long way off.”
McCracken sneered. “Yeah, and you’d know about that, wouldn’t you, Two Wolves?”
Sam didn’t let the man’s words bother him. He’d heard much worse in his life. He just said, “I’ve never smelled one quite that strong before, that’s all.”
“It’s a special blend,” McCracken said. “Expensive.”
The smoke from the stogie smelled like burning garbage to Sam, but he didn’t say that. He just said, “Put it out. It’s dangerous to all of us for you to smoke it.”
Cornelius Standish had been listening to the exchange as he rode nearby. Now he snapped, “For God’s sake, put it out, McCracken. If I can do without smoking while we’re down here, so can you.”
McCracken glowered, but he pinched out the cigar, stuck it back in his vest pocket, and said, “It’s my last one anyway. I’ll save it until we’re done with this fool’s errand.”
“Fine,” Sam said. He gave the man a curt nod and heeled the paint into a trot that carried him up beside Seymour again.
“What was that about?” Seymour asked.
“I didn’t want McCracken smoking that stogie,” Sam explained. “The smell might’ve drawn attention that we don’t want.”
“I’m glad you’re along, Sam,” Seymour said. “I never would have thought of that.”
“If you ever find yourself in a situation like this again, you’ll remember,” Sam predicted. “You learn pretty fast, Seymour.”
He didn’t explain what he had just learned. The smell of McCracken’s stogie had taken him back several days, to that clump of brush where the man who’d bushwhacked the two Double C cowboys had hidden. Sam had found a cigar butt there that must have come from the man who’d killed Rusty and Bill, and while he hadn’t really noticed anything about it at the time other than the fact that it stank, now that he’d smelled that gasper McCracken set fire to, he knew they were the same. And the tobacco was a special blend, McCracken had boasted, meaning that he was probably the only one in these parts who smoked it . . .
That was proof enough as far as Sam was concerned. McCracken had ambushed and killed the two cowboys in order to stir up more trouble between the Double C and Pax. That ruckus had gotten Matt and Sam out of town, and while they were gone, a second attempt had been made on Seymour’s life. There was no doubt about it now. Those three “dry-goods salesmen” were really hired killers.
And there was only one man they could be working for.
Cornelius Standish.
As if Sam and the posse didn’t have enough to worry about, trying to rescue those prisoners from Alcazarrio, they had also taken four vipers into their bosom, so to speak, Sam thought.
That was all right, he told himself. He and Matt had stomped plenty of snakes in their lives. When the time came, they would stomp these scaly varmints, too. He didn’t think Standish and the others would make their move until they got to Villa Rojo. But when the fighting started, that would be a prime opportunity for them to get rid of Seymour.
&
nbsp; Still, he would have to take some extra care between now and then, just in case Standish tried his double cross early.
Seymour would be safe enough here in broad daylight, with all the members of the posse around him, Sam decided. He said, “I’m going to scout on ahead and see if I can tell how Matt and the others are doing.”
“Be careful,” Seymour admonished him. “Don’t let any of Alcazarrio’s spies spot you.”
Sam smiled. “Don’t worry about that. I may not be an Apache, but I’m pretty good at not being seen unless I want to be, too.”
He found two hastily dug graves where the group with the “ransom” had camped the night before. Sam sat his saddle and frowned at the two mounds of dirt and rocks for several moments before he sighed and dismounted. It didn’t take him long to uncover the faces of the two dead strangers. With a sense of relief, Sam scraped the dirt back into the graves.
He hadn’t figured that Matt was one of the dead men. The bond between the two blood brothers was so strong that Sam knew each of them would be aware of it when the end came for the other, even if they weren’t together at the time. But he’d wanted to make sure that Paxton or Colton or one of the other men hadn’t been killed.
The distant shots he’d heard had been spaced very close together. Sam thought that these two must have tried to steal the ransom, and Matt had taken care of them before they ever got a shot off. Such a display of gun-handling wasn’t unusual at all for Matt Bodine.
Sam pushed on, riding through arroyos and along the base of ridges, never skylining himself and taking advantage of every bit of cover he could find. When he came to a spire of rock, he dismounted and climbed it, leaving his field glasses in his saddlebags because he didn’t want to take a chance on a reflection from the lenses.
His naked eyes were enough to spot the plume of dust maybe a half mile ahead. It was just the right size to be made by the horses of the party delivering the “ransom.” Sam lifted his eyes to the horizon. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw something far ahead, maybe ten miles or more away.
Ride for Vengeance Page 21
