Blood Bond 3 (24 page)

“What's he sayin'?” Bam asked.

“That's a Cheyenne war chant,” Bodine told him. “He's telling John Lee to come on, and that it's a good day for him to die.”

John Lee and his men struck the town hard, just as dawn was busting the darkness. They had walked their horses in close, then mounted up and charged, several of the raiders carrying lighted torches to fire the town. Those men were the first to die, for the townspeople knew that in these tinder-dry conditions, if one or two of the closely built buildings were to catch fire, the entire town would go.

One house was fired, but the women quickly formed a bucket brigade and caught the flames before they could do anything except very minor damage.

The raiders all wore long dusters and masks over their faces, their hats pulled down low. It was impossible to tell one from another.

One raider charged out of the alley between the general store and the café and rode his horse up onto the boardwalk. Matt blew him out of the saddle and slapped the frightened horse on the rump, sending it racing riderless up the street to the edge of town.

The wounded raider raised up on one elbow and leveled a .45 at Bodine. Standing on the boardwalk on the other side of the alley, Sam finished the man with a .44 slug to the head.

Two raiders came riding straight up the street, guns blazing. Matt, Sam, Bam, and Pen fired as one, and two more horses lost their riders. The hired guns lay motionless in the dirt.

Doc Winters stepped out of his office and took aim with his express gun. A rampaging raider took both barrels in the chest, the charge blowing him out of the saddle and very nearly tearing him in two. Doc Winters reloaded and crouched down behind a horse trough, saying some very uncomplimentary things about crazy ranchers, hoodlums, hired thugs, and the like. He eared back the hammers and waited for another target.

“Stand or deliver, Campbell,” Vonny yelled at one raider who had lost his mask. Campbell turned and Vonny shot him out of the saddle. The hired gun staggered to his boots in the street, and Vonny gave him another taste of law west of the Pecos. Dexter Campbell would never hire his gun out again, unless it was for the devil.

Copper's horse panicked and threw him. He jumped to his boots and ran into the back of a building, crashing through the back door. A housewife was waiting with a pot of scalding coffee. She threw it in his face, and Copper screamed as his face seemed to catch on fire. He staggered howling out the back just as the woman's husband ran through the house to the back door, took aim with his .40-90 Sharps rifle, and blew a hole in the man large enough to stick your fist through.

A teenage boy, hiding in the loft of the barn at the livery, grabbed up a pitchfork and threw it at a masked man just below him. The tines caught him in the chest and drove right on through. The raider died without uttering a sound, pinned to the dirt of the street.

Harry Street wheeled his horse at the sight of Matt Bodine standing on the boardwalk, a .44 in each hand. He leveled his .45 at Bodine. He never got to pull the trigger. Josiah drilled him clean between the eyes. The huge man toppled from his saddle into the dust.

Giddings and Tidwell charged up the street and dismounted, intent on looting the general store. The manager of the store met them at the door with a shotgun. His first blast ended any trouble Tidwell might have had with indigestion, and the second blast ruined Giddings's complexion by taking off part of his face.

“Heathens,” the store manager said, and closed the front door.

Dusty Jordan was shot off his horse by Pen Masters. Bam put a slug into Winslow just as the outlaw put the spurs to his horse. The horse jumped, and Winslow lost his balance, tumbling from the saddle. He landed headfirst in a horse trough, knocking himself out, and drowned.

Matt recognized Kingman and called to him. The man charged Matt with his horse, riding up onto the boardwalk. Matt reached up, jerked the gunman from the saddle, and threw him through the big front window of the saloon. Kingman landed on a table, crushing it, and came up cussing. He turned and for one very brief moment, in the dim light, saw Al standing by the bar, a shotgun in his hands. The twin muzzles of the shotgun blossomed in flames, and that was the last thing Kingman ever saw.

Mark Hazard's horse was shot out from under him, the gunman falling to the ground. In the excitement and noise of the battle, he did not notice that the muzzle of his .45 jammed deep into the ground, filling the barrel. He rose to his knees and took aim at Sam. When he pulled the trigger, the pistol exploded, and Mark lost a hand and part of his face. He lay screaming on the ground, bleeding to death.

The townspeople, once all the outlaws were inside the town, rolled wagons across the road and many of the alleyways, containing the raiders. Dave Land, seeing any escape by horseback blocked, jumped from the saddle and ran into the church. Reverend Willowby met him with a rifle and proceeded to read to him from the Scriptures, punctuated by .44-40 rounds.

Dean Waters tried to jump a wagon. His horse, smarter than the rider, refused, and Dean went flying, butt over elbows. He cleared the wagon and hit the ground on the other side. A woman stepped out of her quarters and conked him on the head with a poker, then hit him again for insurance.

Doc Winters shot Lou Witter in his big butt with buckshot as the raider was lumbering across the street. Witter hit the ground, squalling, his rear end ruined and his pants smoking from the hot buckshot.

Jack Morgan came face to face with Matt Bodine, and Matt laid a .44 across the man's face twice, breaking his jaw and knocking him out.

Riggs exited his saddle and tried to make a run for the alley. Chookie's rifle barked, and Riggs fell like a rag doll to lie still in the street. Pate ran into the guns of Barlow and Gilley, the slugs turning him around and around in the street. Wheeler came nose to nose with Parnell, and the Circle S cowboy's .45's belched fire and flame. Wheeler sat down on the ground and quietly expired.

Matt ran around to the back of the saloon and spotted John Lee. The man was standing alone, his guns in leather, his hands by his side.

“Don't let it end this way, John Lee,” Matt told him. “You're a sick man. Maybe the doctors can help you. I won't draw on you.”

The sounds of battle were fading as the last of the raiders were either killed or surrendering to the townspeople. Dust and gun smoke hung heavy and choking in the morning air.

“Come on,” Matt urged. “It's over. Give it up, John.”

“Kill me,” the rancher urged.

“No,” Matt told him, seeing Sam quietly slipping up behind the man. “I won't shoot you. You're a sick man.”

“Then I'll kill you,” John Lee said.

Sam laid the barrel of his .44 across the back of John Lee's head, and the rancher crumpled to the ground.

One final shot was fired in the day's battle. A dying outlaw in Doc Winters's office shot Monty Brill in the head. When asked why he did it, he said, “I wanted to go out knowin' I kilt one of the fastest guns around.”

“But he wasn't armed!” Doc Winters said.

“So what?” the outlaw said, then closed his eyes and died.

Of the nineteen hired guns that surrendered, twelve survived the day and night, the others dying of their wounds. Two more died the following day. The local undertaker did his best to keep the smile off his face.

When the Rangers arrived to take the men off for trial—it was state now, something about conspiracy and the shooting of a Texas Ranger and about two dozen other charges—Ranger headquarters decided to come in force. They sent two Rangers.

John Lee was a babbling broken man. He was in chains not so much to keep him from hurting other people as to keep him from hurting himself. His herd had been stopped in New Mexico and turned back. There was going to be a lot of settling up, and the herd was impounded until everything was over.

Josiah told Noah Carson and Jeff Sparks to “look after the herd and don't let nothin' happen to it.” It was said with a smile and received with one.

Someone set the John Lee mansion on fire a couple of nights after the battle in Nameit. The mansion, the bunkhouse, and all the other buildings burned slap to the ground. But the Rangers never did find the safe that was in John Lee's study, and Nick just dropped out of sight—flat disappeared. Without his wife. Cindy, it was later reported, was taken in by some of Nick's mother's people over in Louisiana. No one who lived west of the Pecos ever saw her again.

The town of Nameit endured, although its name was soon changed. It's still right there about two, three miles west of the Pecos River on a old trail that's been a federal highway for years.

Vonny and Conchita got married. So did Lisa and Noah. Lia was busy casting her charms for Doc Winters; odds were he'd take the bait before long. Gene took to sparkin' the daughter of a rancher, and he was in love, walking into walls and falling off his horse and everything else that went with it.

Rawhide O'Neal, Dean Waters, and Carl Jergens were hanged. The others got long prison sentences.

Taylor and Cloud went back to work down south. Barlow stayed on and took over as foreman of the Flying V. Chookie and Parnell and Gilley and the others drew their time and drifted, as cowboys are wont to do.

Pen Masters and Bam Ford joined up with the Texas Rangers.

At the crossroads, Josiah Finch sat Horse and looked at Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves. “Well, boys, where are you off to this time?”

“We'll drift, see some country. We might run into you again,” Matt said.

The Ranger shook hands with them both, and with a smile, said, “Boys, you can say you been to Hell, and you been to Texas. Which one do you prefer?”

With a grin, Sam told him.

Josiah chased them both for about a mile, cussing and hollering, but with a big grin all the time, knowing it was all in fun. The last he saw of Matt and Sam—for this go-around—was the blood brothers on the crest of a small rise, hats in their hands, waving them.

“Texas, by God!” Matt yelled.

In the small town where I grew up, there were two movie theaters. The Pavilion was one of those old-timey movie show palaces, built in the heyday of Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin—the silent era of the 1920s. By the 1950s, when I was a kid, the Pavilion was a little worn around the edges, but it was still the premier theater in town. They played all those big Technicolor biblical Cecil B. DeMille epics and corny MGM musicals. In Cinemascope, of course.

On the other side of town was the Gem, a somewhat shabby and run-down grind house with sticky floors and torn seats. Admission was a quarter. The Gem booked low-budget “B” pictures (remember the Bowery Boys?), war movies, horror flicks, and Westerns. I liked the Westerns best. I could usually be found every Saturday at the Gem, along with my best friend, Newton Trout, watching Westerns from 10
A.M.
until my father came looking for me around suppertime. (Sometimes Newton's dad was dispatched to come fetch us.) One time, my dad came to get me right in the middle of
Abilene Trail,
which featured the now-forgotten Whip Wilson. My father became so engrossed in the action he sat down and watched the rest of it with us. We didn't get home until after dark, and my mother's meat loaf was a pan of gray ashes by the time we did. Though my father and I were both in the doghouse the next day, this remains one of my fondest childhood memories. There was Wild Bill Elliot, and Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, and Tim Holt, and, a little later, Rod Cameron and Audie Murphy. Of these newcomers, I never missed an Audie Murphy Western, because Audie was sort of an antihero. Sure, he stood for law and order and was an honest man, but sometimes he had to go around the law to uphold it. If he didn't play fair, it was only because he felt hamstrung by the laws of the land. Whatever it took to get the bad guys, Audie did it. There were no finer points of law, no splitting of legal hairs. It was instant justice, devoid of long-winded lawyers, bored or biased jurors, or black-robed, often corrupt judges.

Steal a man's horse and you were the guest of honor at a necktie party.

Molest a good woman and you got a bullet in the heart or a rope around the gullet. Or at the very least, got the crap beat out of you. Rob a bank and face a hail of bullets or the hangman's noose.

Saved a lot of time and money, did frontier justice.

That's all gone now, I'm sad to say. Now you hear, “Oh, but he had a bad childhood” or “His mother didn't give him enough love” or “The homecoming queen wouldn't give him a second look and he has an inferiority complex.” Or “cultural rage,” as the politically correct bright boys refer to it. How many times have you heard some self-important defense attorney moan, “The poor kids were only venting their hostilities toward an uncaring society?”

Mule fritters, I say. Nowadays, you can't even call a punk a punk anymore. But don't get me started.

It was, “Howdy, ma'am” time too. The good guys, antihero or not, were always respectful to the ladies. They might shoot a bad guy five seconds after tipping their hat to a woman, but the code of the West demanded you be respectful to a lady.

Lots of things have changed since the heyday of the Wild West, haven't they? Some for the good, some for the bad.

I didn't have any idea at the time that I would someday write about the West. I just knew that I was captivated by the Old West.

When I first got the itch to write, back in the early 1970s, I didn't write Westerns. I started by writing horror and action adventure novels. After more than two dozen novels, I began thinking about developing a Western character. From those initial musings came the novel
The Last Mountain Man: Smoke Jensen.
That was followed by
Preacher: The First Mountain Man.
A few years later, I began developing the Last Gunfighter series. Frank Morgan is a legend in his own time, the fastest gun west of the Mississippi . . . a title and a reputation he never wanted, but can't get rid of.

For me, and for thousands—probably millions—of other people (although many will never publicly admit it), the old Wild West will always be a magic, mysterious place: a place we love to visit through the pages of books; characters we would like to know . . . from a safe distance; events we would love to take part in, again, from a safe distance. For the old Wild West was not a place for the faint of heart. It was a hard, tough, physically demanding time. There were no police to call if one faced adversity. One faced trouble alone, and handled it alone. It was rugged individualism: something that appeals to many of us.

I am certain that is something that appeals to most readers of Westerns.

I still do on-site research (whenever possible) before starting a Western novel. I have wandered over much of the West, prowling what is left of ghost towns. Stand in the midst of the ruins of these old towns, use a little bit of imagination, and one can conjure up life as it used to be in the Wild West. The rowdy Saturday nights, the tinkling of a piano in a saloon, the laughter of cowboys and miners letting off steam after a week of hard work. Use a little more imagination and one can envision two men standing in the street, facing one another, seconds before the hook and draw of a gunfight. A moment later, one is dead and the other rides away.

The old wild untamed West.

There are still some ghost towns to visit, but they are rapidly vanishing as time and the elements take their toll. If you want to see them, make plans to do so as soon as possible, for in a few years, they will all be gone.

And so will we.

Stand in what is left of the Big Thicket country of east Texas and try to imagine how in the world the pioneers managed to get through that wild tangle. I have wondered about that many times and marveled at the courage of the men and women who slowly pushed westward, facing dangers that we can only imagine.

Let me touch briefly on a subject that is very close to me: firearms. There are some so-called historians who are now claiming that firearms played only a very insignificant part in the settlers' lives. They claim that only a few were armed. What utter, stupid nonsense! What do these so-called historians think the pioneers did for food? Do they think the early settlers rode down to the nearest supermarket and bought their meat? Or maybe they think the settlers chased down deer or buffalo on foot and beat the animals to death with a club. I have a news flash for you so-called historians: The settlers used guns to shoot their game. They used guns to defend hearth and home against Indians on the warpath. They used guns to protect themselves from outlaws. Guns are a part of Americana. And always will be.

The mountains of the West and the remains of the ghost towns that dot those areas are some of my favorite subjects to write about. I have done extensive research on the various mountain ranges of the West and go back whenever time permits. I sometimes stand surrounded by the towering mountains and wonder how in the world the pioneers ever made it through. As hard as I try and as often as I try, I simply cannot imagine the hardships those men and women endured over the hard months of their incredible journey. None of us can. It is said that on the Oregon Trail alone, there are at least two bodies in lonely, unmarked graves for every mile of that journey. Some students of the West say the number of dead is at least twice that. And nobody knows the exact number of wagons that impatiently started out alone and simply vanished on the way, along with their occupants, never to be seen or heard from again.

Just vanished.

The one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old ruts of the wagon wheels can still be seen in various places along the Oregon Trail. But if you plan to visit those places, do so quickly, for they are slowly disappearing. And when they are gone, they will be lost forever, except in the words of Western writers.

The West will live on as long as there are writers willing to write about it, and publishers willing to publish it. Writing about the West is wide open, just like the old Wild West. Characters abound, as plentiful as the wide-open spaces, as colorful as a sunset on the Painted Desert, as restless as the ever-sighing winds. All one has to do is use a bit of imagination. Take a stroll through the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona; read the inscriptions. Then walk the main street of that once-infamous town around midnight and you might catch a glimpse of the ghosts that still wander the town. They really do. Just ask anyone who lives there. But don't be afraid of the apparitions, they won't hurt you. They're just out for a quiet stroll.

The West lives on. And as long as I am alive, it always will.