Deadly Road to Yuma (4 page)

Matt Bodine’s eyes snapped open in the darkness. He didn’t know what had awakened him, but he had a feeling it couldn’t be anything good. His instincts wouldn’t have roused him from slumber otherwise.

He sat up in bed. A little moonlight filtered in around the curtain over the hotel room’s single window. The window was open to let in some fresh air, and the curtain swayed in and out with the currents of the night breeze.

Before turning in, Matt had hung both gunbelts over the back of the chair next to the bed, so that the holstered Colts were within easy reach. He swung his legs out of the bed and stood up, plucking one of the irons from leather at the same time.

In bare feet, wearing only the bottoms from a pair of long underwear, Matt padded over to the window and used the Colt’s barrel to ease the curtain aside so that he could look out.

His room was at the rear of the hotel, as was Sam’s next door. The windows looked out on an alley.

Nothing was moving in that alley, Matt saw as he peered down from his window. He judged that the hour was after midnight, and the town was quiet and peaceful.

Well, maybe not so quiet
or
peaceful, he thought a second later as he heard a gurgling sound from somewhere overhead. It was followed by a thump on the roof.

That wasn’t right. Matt stuck his head out the window.

To his right, no more than a couple of feet away, a ladder leaned against the hotel. That would be the ladder used by the lookout Sheriff Cyrus Flagg had posted up there.

Sam’s window was on the other side of the ladder, and at that moment, Sam poked his head out, too, and looked toward his blood brother.

“You hear something?” Sam asked in a half whisper.

Matt nodded and gestured with the thumb of his free hand toward the roof. Sam brought his right hand into view, holding a six-gun. He gestured with the barrel, pointing upward.

Matt nodded and swung a leg over the windowsill.

His brain was working swiftly. Given the fact that something was going on up there on the roof, it made sense that what he had heard that woke him up was somebody climbing the ladder, since it was right outside his window.

That in itself wasn’t suspicious; someone sent by the sheriff could have been going up there to relieve the man on duty and take over as lookout.

But coupled with the noises he had heard, the choked gurgle followed by a thump, the situation didn’t seem near that innocent.

In fact, it was downright ominous, Matt thought as he clung to the edge of the window with one hand and reached for the ladder with his foot.

With the lithe agility he’d been blessed with since birth, he swung over to the ladder. In absolute silence, he started climbing toward the roof. As he looked up, he saw a flare of light. Someone had just lit a match. He smelled the faint tang of brimstone from the lucifer.

Matt smelled something else, too, a metallic, coppery scent that he recognized.

That was the smell of freshly spilled blood—and a lot of it.

Matt’s head rose above the level of the short wall that ran around the roof. He saw a man standing several yards away with his back turned, holding a lit match over his head that he moved back and forth three times.

Between Matt and the hombre with the match lay another man, facedown in the middle of a dark, spreading pool.

Matt didn’t need anybody to explain to him what had happened here. The varmint with the match had cut the throat of the other man. That was the only thing that would have produced so much blood.

The dead man had to be the guard Sheriff Flagg had posted up here.

Which meant the killer, in all likelihood, was one of Joshua Shade’s men…

In the back of Matt’s brain, he realized that Shade must have managed to sneak some scouts into the settlement after all, or else he wouldn’t have known about the guard on top of the hotel.

That guess was confirmed a second later when, from the corner of his eye, he saw another match being waved back and forth at the far end of the next block, from the roof of the bank.

He didn’t stop to think about that consciously, though. Instead, he went into action, swarming up and over the wall and onto the roof. Almost noiselessly, he lunged past the dead man at the outlaw who had just sent that signal with the match.

Not quite noiselessly, though, because a bare foot scraped on the rooftop and warned the killer. He started to swing around as he dropped the now-burned-out match and clawed at the gun on his hip.

Matt’s arm was already raised, and he struck first before the man could drag iron. The Colt in Matt’s hand smashed down on the man’s head, crumpling his hat and maybe denting his skull.

The outlaw’s knees unhinged, dropping him like a poleaxed steer. He fell in a limp heap next to the man he had killed a couple of minutes earlier.

Matt whirled as he heard a noise behind him, but it was just Sam climbing from the ladder onto the roof. “What the hell happened here?” Sam demanded.

“This fella just killed the guard Sheriff Flagg posted up here,” Matt explained as he gestured with his gun toward the man he had knocked out. “He was using a match to signal somebody in the hills when I walloped him.”

“Shade,” Sam said in a flat, hard voice.

“Yeah, that’s what I figure, too. Another of his men sent a signal from the top of the bank. They were letting Shade know that the lookouts were taken care of.”

“That means Shade is about to attack the town.”

“That’s right,” Matt said. “You go warn folks.”

“What are you going to do?”

“See if I can catch up with the hombre who sent the signal from the bank.” Matt started toward the ladder, then paused. “You might use this gent’s belt to lash his hands behind his back. Wouldn’t want him coming to and joining the party later on.”

“How come I get that job?”

Matt was already swinging a leg over the roof and onto the ladder. He grinned and said, “Because I’m closer to the ground.”

Then he started down the rungs as fast as he could go, skipping some of them and practically bouncing off of the ladder as he descended.

For a second, he had considered stopping at his room to get his trousers, rather than running around Arrowhead in his long underwear, but he’d decided not to take the time to do that. Modesty was one thing; catching the son of a bitch who had no doubt murdered the lookout on top of the bank was another.

Anyway, he had five rounds in the Colt he clutched in his hand, with the hammer resting on an empty chamber as it usually did. If five bullets weren’t enough for him to deal with one man, then he was in a lot more trouble than a pair of pants could fix.

As soon as his feet hit the dirt in the alley, Matt sprinted toward Main Street. When he reached it, he turned to his right, toward the bank. At the end of the block, he took a left-hand jog, since the bank was on the opposite side of the street from the hotel.

Nobody was on the street at this time of night, although lights still glowed from some of the saloons and a few horses were tied at the hitch rails.

Matt darted into the alley behind the block of buildings where the bank was located. He made no sound except the soft slap of his feet against the dirt.

That was enough to warn the man who had just reached the bottom of the ladder leaning against the rear wall of the bank, though. Matt could barely see him in the shadows, but he recognized the movement as the man spun toward him.

Matt dropped into a crouch and ran forward. At that same instant, Colt flame bloomed in the darkness as the man loosed a wild shot at him. The bullet whined past Matt’s head.

The revolver in Matt’s hand roared as he returned a shot of his own. In the flicker of illumination from the muzzle flash, he saw a man in the charro jacket and broad-brimmed, steeple-crowned sombrero of a Mexican.

The man staggered against the wall, but he didn’t drop his gun. He pulled the weapon up from its momentary sag and fired again, flame lancing from the barrel.

This slug came close enough for Matt to feel its warmth as it whispered past his cheek. Might have been nice to take this hombre alive, he thought, but he reminded himself that there was already one prisoner on top of the hotel.

So he didn’t take any chances. He pulled the trigger three times, and all three bullets hammered the outlaw against the wall. The man hung there for a second, finally dropping his gun, and then pitched forward.

Matt ran lightly toward him and bent to retrieve the fallen Colt. As he straightened, he heard shouts along Main Street, along with the clamorous ringing of a bell. The bell was probably meant to summon Arrowhead’s volunteer fire company, but tonight it served as a warning of a danger that might be even greater than an out-of-control blaze.

Matt had no doubt in his mind that at this very minute, Joshua Shade and his band of ruthless killers were sweeping toward Arrowhead like a plague of locusts.

Sam knew that Matt was right about tying up the unconscious outlaw, so he pulled the man’s belt off, jerked his arms behind his back, and lashed the wrists together with it. He didn’t worry about how rough he was being either, or about how uncomfortable the hombre would be when he came to.

The smell of blood filled Sam’s nostrils, and it seemed to him that the killer was getting off lightly.

When he was finished with that, he pulled the man’s revolver from its holster and then hurried over to the ladder. Climbing down with a gun in each hand was awkward, but Sam managed.

If Joshua Shade was about to launch one of his infamous raids on Arrowhead, Sam knew that he might have need of both weapons before this night was over.

About the time his feet hit the ground, he heard a couple of shots from down the street. By the time he had run around the hotel to the front porch, several more shots had blasted out.

Sam was worried about Matt, but he knew his blood brother could take care of himself. Spotting a big brass bell hanging from the roof over the hotel porch, he ran to it and began ringing it, not with the ringer attached to it, but rather with the two guns in his hands, batting the bell back and forth and making it peal loudly.

At the same time he shouted, “Wake up, wake up! Outlaws! Outlaws! Joshua Shade!” He let out a shrill, yipping war cry that would have done his Cheyenne father proud, and then loosed a shot into the air.

Between the yelling, the war cry, the bell ringing, and the shots, that was plenty to alert the citizens of Arrowhead that something was very wrong. Men poured out of the saloons, abandoning their drinks and their poker games, to run into the street and shout questions at each other. The hotel doors swung open behind Sam, and the proprietor hurried out with a shotgun in his hands.

The man swung the Greener’s barrels toward Sam, who called quickly, “Don’t shoot! It’s me, Sam Two Wolves!”

The hotelman recognized Sam and blurted, “What the hell’s going on?”

“Joshua Shade and his gang are about to attack the town,” Sam replied, thinking as he did so that he and Matt were going to look mighty foolish if that turned out not to be the case. They would be the two little boys who cried wolf, like in the old fairy tale he remembered his mother reading to him.

In this case, a murdering, crazed lobo wolf named Joshua Shade.

Sam didn’t think they were wrong, though. No other explanation made sense, considering the murder of the lookouts and the signals sent from atop the hotel and the bank.

Sheriff Cyrus Flagg ran out of the sheriff’s office in a nightshirt that flapped around his thick calves, testifying that he’d slept in the back room of the office. He had a Winchester in his hands. The men on the street had started to stream toward the hotel, so he joined them.

“In the name o’ all that’s holy and half that ain’t, what’s goin’ on here, Two Wolves?” the lawman demanded of Sam as he came to a stop in front of the hotel.

“Your lookouts have been murdered, Sheriff,” Sam replied, his face grim. He didn’t know for sure that the sentry on top of the bank was dead, but it seemed pretty likely considering the signal that had been sent from there.

“Murdered!”

Sam nodded. “Matt and I think that Joshua Shade is about to attack the town.”

That brought cries of fear and alarm from the men gathered in the street. “What’re we gonna do, Sheriff?” one of them asked Flagg.

The sheriff thought for a second, then said, “Spread out all over town. Bang on doors and tell folks to get ready, if they ain’t already. Make it quick, though, and then hunt some cover. It won’t be long until Shade and his bunch are here, I reckon.”

“We’ll give those owlhoots a lot hotter welcome than they’re expectin’!” one man said.

Sam wasn’t so sure of that. Even up in the hills, Shade might have heard the shots and realized that the townspeople were aware of the threat.

Would that be enough to make him call off the attack?

Sam didn’t know, and the citizens of Arrowhead couldn’t afford to take that chance. They had to be as ready for trouble as they could get in the next few minutes…because it was probably already on the way.

More than forty strong, the gang swarmed down out of the hills with Joshua Shade in the lead. He was bare-headed, and the wind whipped his longish hair around his lean face.

Beside him rode his second-in-command, a heavily mustached outlaw named Willard Garth. As they galloped toward Arrowhead, Garth raised his voice and asked, “What about those shots we heard, Joshua? You think they know we’re comin’?”

“It doesn’t matter, Brother Willard,” Shade replied. “The Lord has told me that tonight is the night we need to deliver His message to that sinful town up ahead, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do!”

“And clean out the bank while we’re at it, eh, Boss?” Garth said with a wolfish grin.

“It takes money to do the Lord’s work!” Shade said, then gave a maniacal howl of laughter.

Even if the settlers knew they were coming, it wouldn’t matter. There wouldn’t be time for them to mount an effective defense before the raiders were right on top of them. The gang still had enough of an element of surprise, even if the men sent into town to kill the lookouts had been discovered.

Besides, Shade and Garth knew that the citizens of Arrowhead didn’t represent any real danger. They were storekeepers, blacksmiths, and clerks. There might be a few tough cowboys from the nearby ranches in the saloons, but when you stopped to think about it…

Just how many real fighting men could there be in a place like this anyway?

Sam was about to go looking for Matt when he spotted his blood brother running along the street toward the hotel. Matt reached the porch and bounded up onto it.

“I suppose you were responsible for those shots I heard a couple of minutes ago?” Sam said.

Matt grinned humorlessly. “Who else?”

“What about the lookout on top of the bank?”

“Dead,” Matt said as even the bleak grin disappeared. “Throat cut just like the other fella. Poor son of a bitch probably died before he even knew what was goin’ on.” He looked around at the men running here and there in the street as they got ready for the attack. “Looks like you did a good job spreadin’ the word.”

“It’s not that hard to do with shots going off.” Sam jerked his head toward the hotel lobby. “Come on. It’ll take Shade a few minutes to get here. We’ve got time to get dressed and get the rest of our guns.”

“Good idea,” Matt agreed. “I feel half naked with only one Colt.”

“You
are
half naked,” Sam pointed out as they went into the hotel. “So am I.”

“What’d I tell you?”

They hurried through the lobby, getting spare keys from the hotel owner as they did so since the doors of their rooms were locked and the keys were inside with the rest of their gear. The proprietor was standing behind the desk, lining up shotgun shells on top of it. He was a mild-looking little man, but his voice held a note of fierceness as he explained, “If any of those owlhoots get in here, I’ll give them a buckshot reception!”

“Well, nobody can say you’re not hospitable,” Matt told him.

A minute after he and Sam entered their rooms, they emerged into the hallway again, stamping their feet to settle them in their boots. The blood brothers were dressed now, had their hats on, and their gunbelts strapped around their waists. Each carried a fully loaded Winchester.

“We’d better take the high ground while we can,” Matt said. “You want the hotel or the bank?”

“Let’s both take the hotel,” Sam suggested. “If the gang was holed up in the hills, they’ll reach this end of town first. Might be a good idea to pull the ladder up once we’re up there, too. We can always let it back down after the fight’s over.”

“Assumin’ we’re still alive,” Matt said.

“I always assume that.”

They went out the back door of the hotel this time. The ladder was still there in the alley, propped against the wall. Matt went up first, and as he reached the top of the ladder and swung a leg over onto the roof, he heard something that sounded a little like distant thunder.

Hoofbeats. A large group of riders was galloping toward Arrowhead, and the men weren’t far off now.

Sam was right behind him, and he heard the hoofbeats as well as he stepped onto the roof. “Sounds like a big bunch.”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed. He trotted over to the front of the building, looked down, and saw Sheriff Flagg in the street. Cupping his free hand next to his mouth, Matt called, “Better get inside, Sheriff! Here they come!”

Flagg waved his Winchester in acknowledgment of the warning and hurried toward the sheriff’s office. Matt and Sam stood at the edge of the roof, peering northward into the darkness.

“You see ’em?” Matt asked after a moment.

“Not yet,” Sam replied, “but they’re coming. The hoofbeats are louder now.”

Matt looked down again. The street was pretty much clear now, the townspeople having scattered to hunt cover. He worked the Winchester’s lever, jacking a cartridge into the rifle’s firing chamber.

“Let ’em come,” he said.