“Why would I tell the marshal?” Sam asked as he regarded Matt steadily.
“Because you’re friends with him…and because of the way we both know how you feel about Hannah, whether you want to admit it or not.”
Sam felt his face growing warm as he frowned. “You’re wrong about Hannah,” he insisted. “And as for the marshal, well, enforcing the law is his job, not mine.”
“Even if he talks you into pinnin’ on a tin star as his deputy?”
“I won’t say anything about the Harlows or about Loomis’s place,” Sam promised. “That just wouldn’t be right.” He paused. “What about Cimarron Kane wanting to take over the whiskey business around here?”
Matt smiled slightly. “I reckon you can say anything you want to about Kane. That won’t bother me a bit.”
Sam nodded. He picked up the reins, grasped the saddle horn, and swung up into the saddle. “I’ll be seeing you, Matt,” he said. “You know where to find me if you need me.”
“Likewise.” Matt held up his hand. “So long.”
Sam gripped Matt’s hand. “So long.”
He rode away without looking back. There was no point in thinking about the circumstances or the decision that each of them had made. Sam knew how strong-willed Matt Bodine was. It was almost impossible to change Matt’s mind once he’d made it up. And to be fair, Sam thought with a wry smile, he himself could be a mite stubborn at times.
He headed for Cottonwood, retracing the trail he and Matt had followed the night before. When he reached the spot where the Kanes had ambushed Frankie, he reined in and studied the place in broad daylight this time.
It was a good place for an ambush, Sam thought, with a view of the road and adequate cover on top of the ridge. He was a little surprised that Cimarron Kane hadn’t stood his ground the night before, since there had been at least half a dozen bushwhackers with only him and Matt to oppose them.
However, the blood brothers had been moving fast enough and spraying so much lead at the top of the hill, Kane might not have been able to tell exactly how many men had ridden to Frankie Harlow’s rescue. He could have believed that the odds were much closer to even, in which case staying on the hill and getting pinned down in a cross fire would have been a dangerous thing for him and his companions to do. So Kane had chosen the better part of valor and lit a shuck out of there.
That line of reasoning told Sam that Cimarron Kane was a man who liked to have the odds on his side. Sam tucked that bit of information away in his brain, because you never knew what might turn out to be important in a fight.
He reached Cottonwood by mid-morning and went first to Loomis’s livery stable to put up his horse. Ike Loomis greeted him with a nod and the shift of an unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
“You boys been stayin’ out of trouble here in Cottonwood?” Loomis asked around the stogie as he took charge of Sam’s horse.
“That’s right. You stay on top of everything that’s going on in this town, don’t you?”
“Yep. Mike gives me a full report ever’ night. Lord knows, there ain’t much goes on anywhere in Cottonwood that I don’t know about.” Loomis frowned slightly. “I don’t know where that partner of yours is, though.”
“He’s tending to some business of his own,” Sam said, leaving it at that. He could tell that the liveryman was extremely curious about Matt, but Loomis didn’t probe for more information, and Sam didn’t offer it.
He left the stable and started toward the marshal’s office, intending to check with Coleman and see if there had been any more trouble in town. Before he reached the squat stone building, though, the sudden pounding of hoofbeats made him stop and look around while he was still in the street.
Half a dozen riders pounded toward him, and it appeared that they didn’t intend to slow down. Sam got a good look at the man who rode slightly in the lead. The hombre sat tall in the saddle and wore black trousers and a black coat over a white shirt. A black Stetson with a curled brim was crammed down tightly on snow-white hair that grew down around his shoulders. He was clean-shaven, with a craggy, hawklike face that years of exposure to the sun had burnished to a copper not unlike Sam’s own skin tone, although this man didn’t look like he had any Indian blood in him.
Sam took all that in, then had to move quickly to get out of the way before the horses trampled him. When he reached the boardwalk, he turned to follow the riders with his eyes. The men following the leader all had hard, hawkish countenances, too.
Sam had a hunch he was looking at Cimarron Kane and some of his kin.
That hunch grew stronger when the men drew rein in front of the marshal’s office. The tall, white-haired man dismounted and handed his reins to one of his companions. Then he went inside and left the others sitting there on their saddles.
Sam continued toward his destination. He still wanted to speak to Marshal Coleman, and he wasn’t going to let Cimarron Kane stop him.
One of the men on horseback made a move to do just that, however, edging his horse closer to the boardwalk as Sam approached.
“Hey, you! What’re you doin’?”
Sam nodded toward the door of the office. “Going to see the marshal.”
“No, you ain’t. Our cousin’s in there right now, and he’s got important business with that damn lawman. You just get on outta here.”
Sam shook his head and said, “I don’t think so.” He kept walking.
The man moved fast as he got off his horse and hopped onto the boardwalk to block Sam’s path. He stuck his jaw out belligerently and demanded, “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“I heard you.”
“Well, you must not’ve understood.” The man’s lip curled in a sneer. “And I reckon now I see why. You’re a Injun, ain’t you, or at least a filthy half-breed?”
With an effort, Sam controlled his temper. “Just step out of my way, please. I’m not looking for any trouble.”
“You talk mighty fancy for a redskin. You go to mission school, boy?”
It wouldn’t do any good to mention the prestigious university back east he’d attended, Sam thought. The man sneering at him had probably never even heard of it. Sam said, sharper this time, “Step aside.”
Fury darkened the man’s face. “No Injun’s gonna talk to me that way,” he said. “Come on, boys, let’s teach this red son of a bitch a lesson.”
With potential odds of five to one facing him, Sam didn’t waste any time thinking about how it sure would have been nice to have Matt at his side right now. He just went to work, and the first thing he did was to improve those odds by twenty percent.
He brought his left fist rocketing up in a terrific punch that landed squarely in the middle of the man’s sneering face. The impact of that blow lifted the hombre completely off his feet, sent him sailing backward through the air, and brought him crashing down onto the boardwalk in a crumpled, senseless heap.
By the time the man hit the planks, Sam had used his own momentum that had been behind the punch to help him whirl toward the men still on horseback. His right hand dipped to his Colt and palmed it out in a draw so swift that it would have shaded nine out of ten men. The revolver came level in Sam’s rock-steady hand as he pointed it at the other four men, none of whom had had a chance to do anything other than sit there and gape foolishly at what had just happened.
“The first man who reaches for a gun, I’ll blow him out of the saddle,” Sam warned.
“The hell you will!” a voice grated from his left. Sam’s eyes flicked in that direction for a second and saw the tall, white-haired man standing in the open doorway of the marshal’s office. The man had a long-barreled Remington revolver in his hand, and the gun was pointed right at Sam’s head. “Drop your gun, you son of a bitch,” the man went on, “or I’ll kill you where you stand!”