A few minutes later, he spotted the yellow glow of a lighted window several hundred yards ahead of him. He stopped and looked around until he found a scrubby bush sturdy enough for him to tie his horse’s reins to it. Then he started toward the light, moving at a careful walk.
Matt was still about a hundred yards away from the house, too far to make out any real details about it, when dark shapes began cutting between him and the light. Men were moving around up there for some reason. He stopped in his tracks and waited to see what was going to happen.
The sound of voices drifted to him through the night air. One of them was particularly harsh and compelling as it shouted what must have been orders. That was probably Cimarron Kane, Matt thought, although he had no way of knowing if that guess was correct. After a few moments, he heard hoofbeats as well. It sounded like a large number of horses milled around for a minute or so and then took off toward the southeast, the pounding of their hooves rolling across the prairie like the sound of distant drums.
Matt stood there for a second or two, thinking furiously. Cottonwood was southeast of here, and other than the settlement, Matt couldn’t think of anywhere else those riders would be going.
And when a group of horsemen that big started moving around at night, usually they were up to no good.
He turned and ran back to where he had left his own horse. Jerking the reins free, he bounded into the saddle and headed the stallion southeast at a run. The riders he had heard had been moving fast, and Matt didn’t want them to get too far ahead of him.
Of course, he also had to be careful about getting too close to them. He slowed his mount from time to time and listened intently until he picked up the sound of hoofbeats, telling him that he was on the right trail.
The stars told him they were still headed southeast. After half an hour or so, Matt spotted more lights up ahead and knew that they came from Cottonwood. He had no doubt now that the town was their destination.
He could think of only one reason for Cimarron Kane to be paying a visit to the settlement with a number of his hardcase relatives backing him up. Kane was going to set free the prisoners in Marshal Coleman’s jail. He had to be planning on busting them out. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have waited until after dark like this.
Matt didn’t know exactly how many men Kane had with him, but it was certain they would outnumber Coleman and possibly Sam. The marshal wouldn’t stand a chance against a bunch of gun-hung hombres like that if it came down to a fight. Maybe Coleman and Sam could fort up inside the jail and try to hold them off, but eventually Kane and the others would bust in and overwhelm them.
Sam and Coleman were going to have an unexpected ally, though, Matt thought as a grim smile tugged at his mouth. And it was going to be an even bigger surprise for Cimarron Kane when Matt Bodine took a hand in this fight.
The lights of the settlement drew steadily closer. Matt held the stallion to a walk now, once again listening intently for any sounds in the night. Would Kane and his companions charge the marshal’s office and jail in a head-on attack, he wondered, or would Kane try to be sneaky about it and slip up on the building without anybody noticing?
Matt didn’t hear the horses moving ahead of him anymore. That meant Kane’s bunch had stopped. Matt reined to a halt as well. A moment later he heard a couple of horses jogging easily toward the settlement. That brought a frown to his face as he thought about what it might mean.
It would be easier for Kane and the others to free their cousins if they didn’t have to lay siege to the jail, Matt decided. In order to accomplish that, their best bet would be to catch Marshal Coleman and Sam outside the building and deal with them there. They could do that by staging some sort of distraction that would draw Sam and Coleman into the open. A brawl, say, or maybe even a gunfight. Something like that would make a mighty good distraction.
No sooner had that thought crossed Matt’s mind than he heard a shot, followed a couple of seconds later by another one. The shots made him stiffen in the saddle. They sounded like they came from the same gun, and they had been fired from somewhere along the southern edge of town, down by the creek. That couldn’t be Kane’s men, Matt thought. They hadn’t had time to reach the creek, and anyway, they were after the prisoners in Marshal Coleman’s jail. This gunfire had to signify some other trouble.
But Cimarron Kane was fast to take advantage of it. A distraction was a distraction, whether he had staged it or not. Matt heard a yell and a sudden swift flurry of hoofbeats and knew that Kane and his men were attacking the town.
He jabbed his heels into the stallion’s flanks and sent the horse galloping after them. As he rode hard, he leaned forward in the saddle and drew his right-hand Colt.
Whatever this ruckus turned out to be, Matt Bodine intended to be right in the middle of it.
Chapter 26
At the sound of the shots from town, Ambrose Porter snatched his pistol from its holster and spun in that direction. “Jenkins! Mahaffey!” he barked. “Stay here and guard these wagons! Whatever you do, don’t let anyone come near them. The rest of you, come with me!”
As he issued the orders, he grabbed the padlock from where it hung in the open hasp, slapped the hasp closed, and clicked the padlock shut. Then he took off at a run toward Cottonwood’s main street with the deputies trailing behind him, except for the two men he’d left with the wagons.
As Sam watched from his hiding place behind the lead wagon, he was a little surprised by Porter’s swift reaction. That was the way a real lawman would have acted when he heard trouble breaking out, Sam thought. Porter had no reason to care what happened to Cottonwood and its citizens.
Or maybe he did, Sam realized. For all Porter knew, some of the prisoners had escaped from the unlocked wagon. They could have gone into town, found Marshal Coleman, and told him all about the murder and bribery scheme. The shooting could mean that Coleman was trying to arrest the deputies Porter hadn’t brought with him to the creek. Porter had to find out exactly what all that commotion was about.
There was still a lot of gunfire going on. As Sam stepped out from behind the wagon, he saw orange muzzle flashes winking in the night around the settlement’s buildings.
The two men Porter had left behind were watching the town, too, their attention drawn by the shooting. That was their mistake. Moving with the speed and silence of a striking panther, Sam smashed the brass butt plate of the rifle he carried into the back of one deputy’s head. The blow drove the man forward to land in a senseless sprawl, out cold.
The other deputy had time to yell in surprise and make a grab for the gun on his hip. Sam swung the rifle one-handed and used the barrel as a club this time. It landed against the man’s skull with a solid thud. The second deputy folded up, unconscious just like his companion.
Sam started toward Cottonwood, but he had taken only a single step when a voice called urgently from the wagon. It belonged to Barnabas, who must have pulled himself up to the window and watched as Sam knocked out the two guards.
“Hey! Deputy! Porter locked us in here! Come back and let us out!”
Sam turned to look back at the vehicle. “Just stay there,” he told Barnabas. “I’ll come back later and see about you turning you loose.”
“But Porter and Bickford are murderin’ crooks! You know that now!”
“You’re safer in there!” Sam said again as he broke into a trot toward town. “I’ll be back!”
Despite everything that had happened, he still didn’t know for sure which of the men locked up in the wagons were actually innocent of any lawbreaking, if indeed any of them were. It was better to leave them right where they were, and then he and Marshal Coleman could sort everything out later.