Deadly Road to Yuma (16 page)

Maggie Winslow couldn’t breathe because her heart had crept right up into her throat and lodged there, choking her.

That was what it felt like anyway as she rode into Pancake Flats not long after dark.

Her face burned with shame because she had to ride astride, with her skirt pulled up over her calves. It had been bad enough when she was forced to ride like that in front of the leering outlaw called Jeffries, whom she hated because of the way his arm had pressed up against the underside of her breasts, and because of the vile things he had whispered in her ear when no one else could hear.

This was worse, though, because now decent people would witness her shame, instead of just a bunch of terrible outlaws. And of course she was worried about Ike and Caleb. Having to ride away and leave her husband and son in the clutches of those beasts was like having part of her soul ripped away.

But the only possible way to save them was to do what Garth told her, no matter how ashamed or frightened she was. She had been prepared to give her body to the outlaws if she had to. Surely she could act as a spy for them.

She spotted the closed-in wagon Garth had told her to look for. It was being pulled into what appeared to be a large livery barn. Two men shoved the doors shut behind it as Maggie reined the horse to a halt. She heard the solid
thunk!
of a bar being dropped into place on the other side of those doors.

Maggie nudged her horse forward again. She headed for the railroad station at the far end of the street. Garth wanted to know when the next westbound train was due to arrive. Maggie figured that information would be chalked onto the board next to the ticket window. If not, she could ask the clerk.

Before she could reach the station, however, four men emerged from a building with a sign fastened to it that read simply
SALOON
, and began to cross the street in front of her. She pulled the horse to a stop to let them go by, but to her dismay, one of the men stopped, looked at her, and said with a big grin, “Hey, fellas, look what we got here.”

The other three men stopped as well to leer up at Maggie. From the way they swayed slightly, she knew they were all drunk, or at least had been drinking quite a bit. They wore big hats and range clothes, and each man had a holstered gun on his hip.

Cowboys from one of the nearby ranches, in town to blow off steam. That’s what they had to be. Maggie wished she hadn’t encountered them, but now that she had, all she could do was try to avoid trouble.

“Please let me pass,” she said. The way they were standing in the street, she couldn’t get around them very easily, and she wasn’t that good a rider. She was afraid that if she tried to rein the horse to the side, she might hit one of the cowboys.

“Aw, you don’t want to ride off just yet, sweetie,” the first cowboy said. “We just met.”

“We haven’t been introduced,” Maggie said in a brittle voice.

“That’s right, we haven’t. My name’s Dub. What’s yours?”

Maggie didn’t answer the question. Instead, she said, “Please, I have business to attend to.”

“You’re a workin’ girl, are you?” one of the other men asked with a leer.

“No, I—” Maggie began before she realized what he meant. When she did, she gasped and felt her face turning hot. “Of course not! I just need to go down to the railroad station—”

“You can’t be leavin’ already,” Dub said. “You just got here. I seen you ridin’ down the street.” He reached for the horse’s harness. “Why don’t you come on back into the saloon and have a drink with us? We’d sure admire to spend some time in your company, wouldn’t we, boys?”

“We sure would, Dub,” one of the other men said. Ugly grins were plastered on their faces.

“No!” Maggie said, pulling back on the reins. “Let me go!”

Dub’s face turned uglier. “You don’t want to be standoffish like that. Just be friendly to us, and we’ll let you go in a little while—”

“You’ll let her go now,” a new voice said.

They would need supplies if they were going to stay holed up in the livery barn until the trestle was repaired and the train could reach Pancake Flats. They still had some jerky left from the trip, but it wouldn’t last long. There was the matter of fresh water, too.

Matt had volunteered to slip out the back and fetch everything they needed while the other three stayed there to guard Joshua Shade. Thorpe had already unlocked the wagon to check on the prisoner, found him as loco and filled with hate as ever, and locked it up again.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Sam asked before Matt left the barn. “I could come with you.”

Matt shook his head. “That would leave just the marshal and Everett here. I’ll be fine.”

Earlier, he had noticed a general store that appeared to be open despite the hour. Hoping that it still was, Matt circled the barn and came out onto the street. He glanced one way toward the general store, and was pleased to see that its windows were still lit up.

Then, hearing loud, raucous voices, he looked the other way…

And saw four cowboys blocking the path of a young woman on horseback. She seemed scared as she tried to pull her mount away from the men, but one of the cowboys had hold of the horse’s harness. “Let me go!” she cried, and she sounded scared, too.

The cowboy holding the horse leered up at her and made some rude comment about letting her go in a little while.

By that time, Matt was already striding toward them. He didn’t think about what he was doing. He just acted according to his instincts, which just weren’t about to allow him to let those hombres bother the woman any longer.

She was young and pretty, Matt couldn’t help noticing, with pale blond hair hanging loose around her shoulders, but that didn’t matter. He would have done the same if she had been old and gray and wrinkled. Where Matt came from, men didn’t mistreat women.

If they did, they risked dying for it.

“You’ll let her go now,” he said.

He hadn’t sneaked up on them; they would have been able to see him coming if they hadn’t been so busy ogling the young woman. He didn’t raise his voice all that much, but it carried clearly and made the cowboys turn sharply toward him. The woman glanced over her shoulder at him, and Matt saw that her eyes were wide with fear.

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” he told her. “These gents won’t bother you anymore.”

“You’re talkin’ mighty big considerin’ that there’s one o’ you and four of us,” the man holding the horse shot back.

“The way I see it, I’ve got you outnumbered,” Matt drawled.

“How the hell do you figure that?”

Matt shrugged. “One man counts for more than four polecats, at least where I come from.”

“Why, you son of a—”

Matt held up his left hand to stop the cowboy, while keeping his right close to the butt of the Colt on that side.

“Watch your language, amigo,” he said softly. “There’s a lady present.”

A voice in the back of his head warned him that he shouldn’t be getting in more trouble while he and Sam and Thorpe and Everett still had the problem of Joshua Shade to deal with. But there were some things in life that a man just couldn’t walk away from, and as far as Matt Bodine was concerned, this was one of them.

The cowboy let go of the horse’s harness at last. He took a couple of steps to the side, his face contorted with anger and his right hand held out in a clawlike shape above the butt of his gun, ready to hook and draw. He said, “All right, mister, you wanted trouble, you got it. You don’t know who you’re messin’ with here.”

“A drunk, from the looks of it.” Matt nodded toward the other cowboys. “Why don’t you just go with your friends and find someplace to sleep it off? That way, nobody has to get hurt.”

“It’s too late for that,” the cowboy insisted. “My name’s Dub Branch, and I’m the slickest draw in these parts. What do they call you?” He sneered. “I like to know who I’m about to kill.”

One of his friends said, “Uh, Dub, maybe you better think twice about this. That fella don’t look like he’s got much back-up in him.”

“That’s right,” Matt said. “The Good Lord plumb left it out of me. And by the way, the name’s Bodine. Matt Bodine.”

The eyes of all four cowboys widened in surprise, as did the eyes of the young woman, who still hadn’t moved on. Matt didn’t want any gunplay to start while she was still close by, so this was one time he was hoping that his reputation would be enough to make a potential opponent decide not to fight after all.

Dub Branch didn’t want to give up that easy, though. He said, “Hell, anybody can call himself Matt Bodine! We don’t know that you’re really him.”

“Dub, I’ve heard about Bodine,” one of the others said. “This fella matches the description. And look at those two irons he packs. He’s a gunslinger, all right.”

“Aw, it’s all for show!” Branch insisted. “And I’m gonna prove it right now! Any o’ you boys with me?”

One of the cowboys said, “I’ll back your play, Dub.”

Matt glanced at him, saw that he wasn’t as drunk as the others. And the man had a certain cool fatalism in his eyes that marked him as a dangerous hombre. If Matt had to take both of them, he’d go for the other man first, then Branch.

“Thanks, Court.” Branch moved to one side while Court went the other way, spreading out so that Matt would have a harder time getting lead in both of them before one of them dropped him.

That was their plan anyway.

But that wasn’t now it worked out, because as Branch cried, “Get him!” and both men slapped leather, Matt palmed out both guns and fired so fast that it seemed the Colts had appeared in his hands by magic.

The right-hand gun roared, sending a bullet into Court’s chest just as he cleared leather. The impact rocked him back and then sent him reeling.

Matt held his fire with the left-hand gun, which was lined up on Branch’s shirt pocket. Branch’s Colt was only halfway out of the holster.

“Let it slide, Dub,” Matt said while keeping watch on Court out of the corner of his eye. “Let it slide, and you won’t have to die tonight.”

Instead, Branch screamed, “You bastard!” and hauled his iron out the rest of the way. Matt waited until it was coming up before firing a single shot that ripped through Branch’s throat, severed his spine, and dropped him in the dirt of the street like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Look out!” the woman cried.

Matt had already seen Court regain his balance and swing up the gun he still held. Matt fired before the man could squeeze the trigger. This slug went into Court’s forehead, leaving a black hole over his right eye. Court went over backward, arms and legs flinging out to the side as he died.

From the size of the pool of blood forming around Branch’s head, Matt knew the reckless cowboy wasn’t a threat anymore. He looked at the remaining two punchers, who seemed cold sober now, shocked out of their drunken haze by the deaths of Branch and Court.

“You fellas want to take a hand in this game?” Matt asked them.

Both men practically broke their necks shaking their heads so hard as they backed away. They held up empty hands and one of them stammered, “N-no, sir, Mr. B-Bodine!”

“When the marshal asks you about this, you’ll tell him the truth about what happened, won’t you?”

“Y-yes, sir! You don’t have to worry about that. Dub and Court were damn fools, that’s what happened!”

“Damn fools,” the other puncher repeated, “to go up against Matt Bodine!”

Matt nodded. “Best go fetch the undertaker then, if this burg’s got one.” The two surviving cowboys hustled away up the street as he pouched the left-hand iron and began reloading the two chambers he had emptied in the other Colt. When that was done, he replaced the expended round in the second gun.

Then he looked up and saw that the young woman was still sitting there on her horse. She wore a long gingham dress, not the sort of outfit that was suitable for riding. She stared at Matt and said, “You’re Matt Bodine.”

He smiled as he holstered the left-hand gun, then touched the brim of his Stetson and gave her a polite nod.

“Yes, ma’am. You’ve got the advantage of me.”

“My name is…Jessica Devlin.”

He noted the slight hesitation, and wondered briefly if the name she had just given him was the right one. It didn’t really matter, though, so he didn’t press her on it. He just said, “I wish we’d met under better circumstances, Miss Devlin.”

“Yes. So do I. But I…I thank you for your help.” She looked nervous, a little like a wild animal that’s realized it’s being stalked. “I…have to go now.”

Matt tugged on his hat brim. “Ma’am.”

She turned her horse and kicked it into a trot that carried her toward the railroad station. Matt watched until she got there safely and dismounted, then turned toward the general store again.

He still had to pick up those supplies and get back to the barn. Sam was probably wondering what those shots had been about.

And knowing Sam, he’d just assume that Matt had been mixed up in the fracas…

Maggie’s heart wasn’t choking her anymore, but it still pounded a mile a minute in her chest. She had heard the outlaws talking about Matt Bodine, about what a deadly gunman he was, and now she had seen the proof of that with her own eyes.

If she hadn’t witnessed it, she wouldn’t have believed that a man could draw and fire even one pistol that fast and with such accuracy, let alone two. And Bodine’s companion, the half-breed called Two Wolves, was supposed to be almost as good with a gun, according to the outlaws.

No wonder they’d been able to fight off the two attempts to rescue Joshua Shade. Bodine and Two Wolves were alone now, though, except for the marshal and one deputy. They couldn’t outfight what was left of the gang. Their only real hope of getting their prisoner out of here lay in catching the train.

Maggie understood that was why Garth wanted to know when the next train was due. They had to free Shade before the train arrived.

She glanced up the street as she dismounted by the train station. Matt Bodine still stood there, obviously keeping an eye on her to make sure no one else bothered her.

She started to lift a hand and wave to him to let him know that she was all right, but she didn’t do it. She didn’t want to be friendly toward him. It was bad enough that she was helping Shade’s gang, after he had risked his life to keep those cowboys from molesting her. What she was doing now might allow the outlaws to kill him later on.

She had no choice, though. Not as long as they had Ike and Caleb in their power.

Maggie almost wished Matt Bodine hadn’t stepped in when those men accosted her. She certainly wished he hadn’t asked her what her name was. For some reason, she hadn’t wanted to admit the truth. So she had given him the name of her best friend back in Ohio instead. Jessica would never know the difference.

Pausing at the top of the steps leading to the station platform, Maggie glanced up the street again. Bodine was gone. She felt oddly relieved.

The ticket window was still open, but as Maggie hurried toward it, she saw the clerk reach up to pull down the shutter that would close it off for the night. She looked at the board next to the window, saw that nothing was written on it, and hurried forward to catch the clerk’s attention before he could pull down the shutter.

“Sir! Please, wait a minute!”

The clerk hesitated, and for a second Maggie thought he was going to ignore her plea and close up anyway. But then he let go of the shutter, sighed, and asked, “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

“I need to know when the next westbound train will arrive, please.”

The clerk laughed. “I don’t have any passengers headin’ west for a week at a time, or sometimes even more, and now tonight there’s all sorts of folks wantin’ to catch a train goin’ in that die-rection.”

Maggie tried to look only idly curious as she said, “Someone else wanted to know about the westbound?”

“That’s right. A deputy United States marshal, of all things. He didn’t give me any details, but I reckon he must have a prisoner he’s got to deliver, from the looks o’ the wagon he had with him.”

“What about the train?” Maggie asked, trying to curb her impatience.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told that lawman, missy. There won’t be no westbound train through here, nor eastbound neither, until the work crews get through repairin’ the trestle over Bowtie Canyon. That’s gonna be another couple o’ days at least.”

“No train?” Maggie didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more worried. If the marshal and his companions were stuck here in Pancake Flats with their prisoner for several days, would Garth attack the town in an attempt to free Joshua Shade? She wouldn’t put anything past the outlaws, but she didn’t think there were enough of them left to risk a raid such as that.

“That’s right, no train,” the clerk said, talking to her now like she was a not-very-bright child. “When I hear any different, I’ll put the news on the chalkboard. Now, would you like to buy a ticket for when the train
does
run?”

“What? Oh.” Maggie shook her head. “No, thank you.”

The clerk rolled his eyes, as if wondering why she had bothered him about it if she didn’t want a ticket. He reached for the shutter and said, “Good night, then,” rolling it down with a solid thump before Maggie could change her mind and ask him anything else.

She didn’t know how Garth, Jeffries, and the other outlaws would take this news, but there was no doubt in her mind that she would go back and pass it along to them, as Garth had instructed her to do. For a second while she was talking to Matt Bodine, she had considered telling him everything and throwing herself on his mercy, begging him to rescue Ike and Caleb somehow.

If anyone could do such a thing, it would be Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves, she sensed.

But it was too big a risk. She couldn’t disobey Garth’s orders, because she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to cut Caleb’s throat, and he might do the same to Ike. Or he might just leave Ike somewhere in the wilderness to die slowly and painfully from his head injury. Maggie couldn’t take a chance on either of those things happening.

So she went back to her horse, swung up into the saddle without worrying now about riding astride so that her calves were exposed, and sent the horse back up the street at a fast trot. She was thankful she had learned how to ride a horse as a girl, back on her family’s farm.

As she passed the general store, Matt Bodine was stepping out of the establishment. He raised a hand to wave at her, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She didn’t have time to stop and chat, and anyway, as long as her husband and son were prisoners, Bodine was one of the enemy.

She didn’t look back as she rode out of town, heading north.

Now that was mighty funny, Matt thought as he watched Jessica Devlin—if that was her real name—leaving Pancake Flats. She had ridden into the settlement—not wearing riding clothes—gone to the train station, spent a few minutes there, then mounted up and ridden right back out of town.

From the looks of it, she had come to find out the train schedule. Matt couldn’t think of any other reason why she would have stopped at the depot. The clerk must have told her about the trestle being out.

Well, it was none of his business, Matt told himself. Carrying the bag of supplies he had picked up at the store in his left arm so that his right hand was free in case he needed to slap leather, he headed back to the livery barn.

He went around back and kicked the door. “It’s me, Sam,” he called through it. A moment later, he heard the bar being lifted; then the door swung open.

Matt stepped inside quickly. In the dim light of the lantern that had been lit earlier, he saw Sam and Everett flanking the door, each of them holding a Winchester. Marshal Thorpe was beside the wagon, the shotgun in his hands.

“Any trouble?” Sam asked as he closed the door behind Matt.

“Not a bit.” Matt hesitated. “Oh, wait a minute. I had to shoot a couple of hombres who were botherin’ a woman.”

Sam sighed. “I heard those shots and wondered if they had anything to do with you. I figured that chances were they did.”

“I knew that’s what you’d think,” Matt said as he set the supplies down on the wagon seat. “But you’d have done the same thing, Sam. They’d been drinkin’, and they would have molested the gal if I hadn’t come along.”

“What gal?”

Matt shrugged. “I don’t know. Somebody from around here, I guess. She told me her name—Jessica Devlin. But it didn’t mean anything to me.”

“Me either,” Everett put in. “I don’t know everybody in these parts, but I don’t recollect any Devlins hereabouts.”

Sam said, “I’ll bet she was young and pretty, wasn’t she?”

Matt smiled. “Well, now that you mention it…”

Thorpe said, “You shouldn’t have gotten mixed up in a shooting, Bodine. Lopez is liable to try to throw you in jail for killing a couple of locals.”

Matt shook his head. “No, there were a couple of other punchers there, and they said they’d tell the marshal what happened. I gave those fellas every chance not to turn it into a corpse-and-cartridge session.”

Thorpe grunted and said, “You walk a fine line, Bodine. All you gunslingers do. If it was up to me, I’d disarm the lot of you so you couldn’t go around killing each other.”

“Not in our lifetime, Marshal,” Matt said with a shake of his head. “And if something like that ever happened, I might just have to hunt me a new place to live, because this sure wouldn’t be the same country I grew up in.”

“Just try to stay out of trouble the rest of the time we’re here,” Thorpe said.

“Sure, Marshal. I always do.”

Sam just rolled his eyes at that.

A mile north of town, Maggie Winslow was riding along when several dark shapes suddenly appeared out of the shadows around her. She hadn’t seen them coming, and she gasped as she instinctively jerked back on the reins.

“Take it easy, girl,” Garth’s harsh voice said. Maggie recognized it instantly, and even though she knew the man was a cold-blooded killer, she relaxed a little.

Better the devil you know, as the old saying went, than one you didn’t know.

“What did you find out?” Garth asked. “Is there a train comin’ in tonight?”

“First, tell me about Ike and Caleb,” Maggie said with more than a hint of stubbornness in her voice. “Are they all right?”

“Sure they are. The tyke’s sound asleep.”

“What about Ike? Is he awake?”

“Not yet,” Garth admitted grudgingly. “I’m sure he’s gonna be fine, though. Like I told you, when a fella gets walloped on the head like that, he needs some time to sleep it off.”

Deep down, Maggie didn’t believe him, no matter how much she wanted to. She had a terrible feeling that Ike would never wake up, that she would never hear her husband’s laugh or feel his arms around her again.

But there was nothing she could do for him other than what she was already doing, so when Garth asked again about the train, she said, “There won’t be a train. Not tonight, and probably not tomorrow either. A flash flood washed out a trestle east of here, at a place called Bowtie Canyon. The trains aren’t running in either direction until it gets repaired.”

One of the other men who had met her was Gonzalez, who seemed to be at Garth’s side most of the time. Maggie suspected that was because the Mexican was ambitious and was watching for a chance to take over the gang. Jeffries was the same way.

Gonzalez said, “That’s lucky for us, no? Gives us more time to figure out a way to get the rev’rend away from them.”

Garth didn’t answer Gonzalez. Instead, he asked Maggie, “Where are they holdin’ Joshua? The local jail?”

She shook her head. “No, I saw the wagon they have him in. They were taking it into a barn, probably the local livery stable.”

“Are you sure they weren’t just puttin’ it away after lockin’ up Joshua somewheres else?”

“I don’t think so. The door on the back was still locked. I saw the padlock, and it was fastened. And the way the marshal and the other men were watching, they were still on guard. To tell you the truth, I didn’t see a jail, and I looked up and down both sides of the only street.”

“So the place is too small to have a jail,” Garth mused. “They’re fortin’ up inside the livery instead. That ain’t a bad idea. What’s the buildin’ made of?”

“Adobe.”

“What about the roof?”

“I’m not sure. Some sort of tile.”

Gonzalez made a disgusted sound. “So we can’t burn ’em out very easy.”

“How many windows does the place have?” Garth asked.

Maggie took a deep breath. She hadn’t even realized that she’d been noticing such things, but she was certain she was right as she replied, “I don’t know, but not many. I didn’t see any on the front, and maybe one or two on the sides.”

“So they can cover ’em all,” Garth said. He scratched his jaw in thought. “If we rush the place, we’re gonna lose a lot of men, especially with Bodine and Two Wolves in there.”

Maggie caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She hadn’t said anything so far about meeting Matt Bodine, and she decided it would be better not to. She didn’t want Garth and the others suspecting her of some sort of double cross, even though her encounter with Matt Bodine hadn’t had anything to do with Joshua Shade.

“We’ll have to think of some other way to flush ’em out into the open,” Garth went on. “At least we’ve got a little bit of time.”

He reached toward her. Maggie flinched, but Garth just took hold of her wrist, pulled her hand toward him, and pressed something into her palm. She felt the crinkle of money.

“Ride on back to town,” he told her. “Find a hotel or a boardin’ house or some such place to stay. Keep your eyes and ears open, and if you hear anything about a train comin’, you hightail it out here and let us know.”

“How…how will I find you?”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll be keepin’ an eye on you, and if you start in this direction, we’ll know it.”

“What about Ike and Caleb?”

“We’ll look after them.”

Maggie took a deep breath and then shook her head. “No. Not unless you let me take Caleb with me.”