Lobo turned and started barking at him then. The little bundle of gray and brown fur was definitely angry or scared or both, Sam thought. He bounded onto the porch and rapped his knuckles sharply against the doorjamb. Lobo kept barking.
Marshal Coleman opened the door a few seconds later and looked out at Sam through the screen. Sam felt relief go through him as he saw that the lawman seemed to be unhurt. Coleman didn’t look happy, though. He frowned as he glanced down at the dog and said sharply, “Hush, Lobo!”
Lobo gave a little whine, but he stopped barking.
Coleman looked at Sam and asked, “What is it?”
“There’s a lot of dust outside of town, Marshal,” Sam reported. “Appears to be a big bunch of riders coming.”
“Why are you tellin’ me about it?”
It was Sam’s turn to frown. “Well…I thought you’d like to know.”
“People come and go all the time,” Coleman said stiffly. “I don’t reckon it’s anything to worry about. Just go on back to the office, Sam.”
“It could be Cimarron Kane and his family coming back to cause more trouble,” Sam pointed out.
Coleman waved a hand in dismissal. “On a hot day like this? I don’t reckon even Kane’s that crazy. No, Sam, just go on back to the office and don’t worry so much.”
Why was Coleman so insistent that he go back to the office? Sam wondered. He had just been there a few minutes earlier, and everything seemed fine.
Unless Coleman didn’t really care where he went. The marshal just wanted him to get away from here, Sam realized. That meant if there was something wrong, it was probably going on right here, and Sam knew that Coleman would want to protect Hannah above all else…
But who or what could be threatening her?
Lobo had stopped barking, but he continued to make angry little growling noises deep in his throat. He stood stiffly next to Sam’s boots, and suddenly, as Coleman pushed open the screen door and snapped at Sam, “Well, go on,” Lobo shot forward through the narrow gap. He darted past Coleman’s feet, prompting a startled exclamation from the marshal, and raced across the room, snarling.
Coleman jerked around, lines of terror suddenly appearing on his weathered face. “No!” he cried.
Sam jerked the screen door open and rushed inside even as the wicked crack of a gunshot sounded. Somewhere inside the room, which was dimly lit because all the curtains were pulled, Hannah screamed. Sam shouldered Coleman aside and drew his gun at the same time. He caught a glimpse of Hannah struggling with a man, holding on to his arm and trying to keep him from shooting again. Down around the man’s feet, Lobo nipped furiously at his ankles.
“Drop the gun!” Sam ordered as he raised his Colt, but the man ignored the command. Instead, he slashed a brutal backhanded blow across Hannah’s face, knocking her away from him. At the same time, the small-caliber pistol in his hand jerked up and gouted flame and lead again.
Sam was in the line of fire and might have been hit if someone hadn’t knocked him aside. He heard Coleman grunt in pain, and realized that the marshal had shoved him out of the way and taken the bullet meant for him. There was no time to see how badly Coleman was hurt, though, because there was still the threat of the intruder to deal with. Sam snapped a shot at him, but the man twisted aside just in time to avoid the bullet. Sam couldn’t pull the trigger again because Hannah cried out, “Dad!” and lunged toward her wounded father, putting herself in the line of fire.
The intruder didn’t worry about endangering her. His pistol cracked again, and what felt like a giant fist slammed into the side of Sam’s head just above his left ear. The impact made him stumble back a step. The room spun crazily around him. He felt his legs folding up beneath him, but couldn’t seem to stop them. As he fell, he tried to raise his gun for another shot, but everything was such a blur he couldn’t find his target.
He heard Lobo’s pained yelp, though, and Hannah’s sobs. He realized he was lying on his back. A figure loomed over him. His vision cleared enough for him to recognize Linus Grady glaring down at him over the barrel of the gun. The gambler didn’t look so affable now. In fact, he looked like the Devil himself.
“You should have done what the marshal told you and gone back to the office, Sam,” Grady said. “Of course, you’d have died anyway, but you could have postponed it for a while.” Grady drew back the pistol’s hammer. “This way I can go ahead and dispose of you now.”
He pulled the trigger, and the red flame spurting from the muzzle was the last thing Sam saw before oblivion claimed him.
Chapter 35
It was close to midday by the time the group of riders Matt was following approached Cottonwood. The heat was worse than ever, and Matt had breathed so much dust he felt like the insides of his mouth, nose, throat, and lungs were coated with the stuff.
He had been staying well back of the riders, so when they came to a halt outside the settlement, he was able to stop, too, before he was close enough to risk being spotted. He reined in, dismounted, and reached into his saddlebags for a pair of field glasses he carried. He knew he would have to be careful using the glasses and not let sunlight reflect off the lenses. Some of Kane’s men might spot the flash and figure out that they were being followed.
Stealing forward through the tall buffalo grass, Matt dropped to his hands and knees when he was only a couple of hundred yards behind the riders. From there he crawled even closer, then stood up in a crouch and trained the glasses on the men.
His heart leaped in a combination of relief and anger when he spotted Frankie Harlow seated on one of the horses in front of Cimarron Kane. Kane’s arm was around Frankie’s waist, holding her tightly to him, but as far as Matt could tell, she seemed to be all right. The field glasses brought them close enough so that he could see the outrage on Frankie’s face. She was mad as hell.
Kane didn’t seem worried about that. He was talking to a couple of his men, and after a moment the two men spurred off toward the town. The rest of the group sat there, obviously waiting for the men to come back. Matt figured that Kane had sent the pair into Cottonwood to check on something, although he wasn’t sure what.
Slowly, Matt moved the glasses so that he could take a good look at the rest of the men. They were a rough, hard-bitten bunch, much like their leader, Cimarron Kane himself.
Then Matt saw something that made him stiffen in surprise. Sitting on one of the horses not far from Kane was Calvin Bickford, the corrupt special marshal who had escaped from Sam the night before.
The fact that Kane had used a bomb to blow up the Harlows’ moonshine still had reminded Matt of Bickford and Porter, but the possibility that there was actually a connection between them hadn’t occurred to him. He had no idea what that connection might be, but from the looks of it, Kane and Bickford were plenty friendly.
That didn’t bode well, Matt thought, but he would have to sort it all out later. Right now, all that mattered was getting Frankie out of Kane’s hands…literally.
A few minutes later, the two men Kane had sent into town returned. They talked excitedly to Kane for a moment, and then Kane hitched his horse into motion and waved for the rest of the men to follow him. They rode unhurriedly toward the settlement. They weren’t attacking Cottonwood, Matt realized.
Instead, they were riding in like they already owned the place.
Something was terribly wrong, and Matt didn’t know what it was. He lowered the field glasses, dropped again onto his hands and knees, and crawled back to where he had left his horse. After tucking the field glasses in his saddlebags, he patted the stallion on the shoulder and murmured, “You’re gonna have to stay here, fella. I need to get into town without anybody seein’ me, so I’ll have to do it on foot.”