A flurry of popping sounds drifted through the night air.
“Yeah, I hear it,” Sam replied. “That’s gunfire, coming from somewhere up ahead.”
“Damn it, I knew that gal was gonna run into trouble! I just knew it!” Matt jabbed his boot heels into his horse’s flanks and sent the animal leaping ahead at a gallop. “Come on!”
They rode hard toward the source of the gunshots. To Matt’s way of thinking, there was only one explanation that made any sense: Frankie Harlow had run into the group of special marshals, and they had opened fire on her, probably when they called on her to halt and she kept going.
It wasn’t a running fight, though, Matt knew, because he and Sam were drawing closer to the shots. Frankie must have forted up somewhere and tried to hold off the marshals. Fear gnawed at Matt’s vitals. Would Bickford and Porter and their hired guns toss a bomb at her, not knowing that she was a woman?
And even if they did know, would it make any difference to them?
Matt and Sam swept around a bend in the trail and suddenly spotted orange muzzle flashes spouting in the shadows up ahead to their right. There was enough silvery moonlight to reveal that the buggy was lying on its side in the road about a hundred yards ahead of them. The horses weren’t hitched to the vehicle anymore and weren’t even in sight. The team must have broken loose when the shooting started and the buckboard overturned, Matt thought. That would have occurred as Frankie was trying to flee from the bushwhackers.
Because an ambush was exactly what it had been, Matt saw in that fleeting second. Half a dozen riflemen were firing down at the buckboard from the cover of a tree-topped ridge to the north. They must have been hidden there, waiting for Frankie to come along. Then they had opened fire on her as she drove the buckboard past them…the dirty bastards.
The only good thing he could see was that Frankie was still alive. Muzzle flashes came from behind the buckboard as she returned the bushwhackers’ fire. She might be hurt, but she was still capable of putting up a fight. From the sound of the sharp cracks, she’d had a rifle with her in the vehicle.
Matt pulled his Winchester from its saddle sheath and called to Sam, “We’ll split up and come at that ridge from different directions!”
“Right!” Sam called back, indicating that he understood. The blood brothers had ridden together for so long and found themselves in so many desperate battles that it didn’t take much for each of them to know what the other was thinking.
They veered their horses apart and headed for the ridge, Matt going to the left and Sam to the right. They guided their horses with their knees and opened fire on the bushwhackers as they charged.
The gunmen must have spotted their muzzle flashes right away and realized that this was a new threat. Several of them switched their attention to Matt and Sam. At least that drew some of the fire away from Frankie Harlow, Matt thought as a slug whipped past his head, close enough for him to hear it. He sprayed the trees along the ridgetop with bullets as fast as he would work the rifle’s lever, and off to his right, Sam was doing the same thing.
Matt lowered the Winchester, snatched the reins out of his mouth where he had put them, and hauled his mount to the right so that he wouldn’t come between Frankie and the bushwhackers and ride right into her line of fire. Sam changed his angle of attack, too, heading farther north so that he could circle the eastern end of the ridge and get behind the hidden gunmen. If he could pull that off, they would have the bushwhackers in a cross fire.
The men on the ridge must have figured that out, too, because the muzzle flashes from up there abruptly ceased. They didn’t want to be trapped. Matt hauled his horse to a stop and listened, and a moment later he heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats from the far side of the ridge. The bushwhackers were getting out of there while they still had a chance to do so. If they had waited, they might have been pinned down. That would have been a neat job of turning the tables on them, despite the odds, Matt thought.
Instead, the varmints were taking off for the tall and uncut, and Sam wouldn’t be in position yet to stop them.
All the shooting had stopped now. Frankie must have realized that the bushwhackers had given up, too. Matt swung his mount around and rode slowly toward the wrecked buckboard. He hoped that Frankie would have seen how he and Sam threw themselves into the battle on her side and would know that they were friends.
She might suspect that, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Another shot suddenly blasted from behind the buckboard. The slug kicked up dirt ten yards in front of Matt’s horse.
“Don’t come any closer!” a woman’s voice called. “I’ve got a bead on you, mister, and I’ll drill you if you do!”
Matt reined in and said, “Hold your fire. I’m on your side, Miss Harlow.”
There was a moment of silence, then she said, “You know who I am?”
“Frankie Harlow, right? We haven’t been introduced, but my friend and I heard about you back in Cottonwood. My name’s Matt Bodine.”
“Did you just happen to come along here when that bunch opened up on me, Matt Bodine?” Frankie’s voice held a definite edge of suspicion.
Better to be truthful with her, Matt decided. “No, Sam and I were following you. That’s Sam Two Wolves, by the way. Reckon he’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Following me?” Frankie repeated. “What for?”
“We wanted to make sure you got home safe.”
Matt heard a snort of disdain from behind the buckboard. “Likely story. That’s why strange men always follow a gal at night, because they’re so concerned about her safety.”
“It’s true,” Matt insisted. “You see, we know what you had on that buckboard earlier.”
Again, suspicion was sharp in Frankie’s voice as she declared, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were delivering some of the moonshine that you and your family brew to Ike Loomis’s hidden saloon in that old abandoned barn.” A little impatience crept into Matt’s voice as he added, “Does that make it clear enough?”
