Matt shrugged. “There have never been any guarantees in life that I know of.”
“You’re a maddening man, Matt Bodine.”
He grinned in the darkness. “So I’ve been told.”
“All right, if that’s the way you want it…” He let go of her arm and she started to get up. Then she leaned closer and went on. “Just so you’ll know for sure what you might be missing…”
She kissed him again, her lips finding his with an unerring instinct despite the thick shadows inside the barn.
The kiss lasted a long time, and when it was over, Matt’s heart was pounding hard in his chest. Blood roared in his ears. He barely heard Frankie slip away from him and leave the barn.
But by the time a couple of minutes had gone by, he had calmed down enough so that he had no trouble hearing Sam say, “You gave her your word that you’d help her and her family, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Matt said.
“Oh, come on, Matt! You know good and well you haven’t been over there for the past ten minutes whispering to some cat. That was Frankie Harlow. She came out here to convince you to help them. Thing of it is, she probably didn’t realize that you didn’t need any extra convincing. You would have thrown in with them just from what you’d seen so far.”
“You think whatever you want to think, Sam. But just so you’ll know, I’m not goin’ back to Cottonwood with you in the mornin’. Reckon I’ll stay out here for a while and see how things go with Cimarron Kane and his bunch.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Sam said, and Matt heard the disapproval in his blood brother’s voice.
“We’ve ridden different trails before,” he pointed out. “It’s nothing new.”
“Nope,” Sam agreed.
“Nothing to worry about.”
“I didn’t say I was worried.”
“Well…that’s good.”
Matt stretched out in the hay, rolled over, and tried to go back to sleep. He had a hard time of it, though, because whether he wanted to admit it or not, he
And that couldn’t be good for anyone.
Things didn’t look any better when Matt woke up the next morning. An awkward silence lay between him and Sam. As longtime trail partners, they could sometimes ride for hours without either of them saying a word, and those quiet stretches never seemed to bother them. It was different this morning, though. The fact that they couldn’t find anything to say to each other spoke volumes.
Farrell Harlow came out to the barn while the blood brothers were tending to their horses and told them, “Frankie says to come on in for breakfast.”
“Tell your sister we’ll be right there,” Matt said as he poured some grain from a bucket into a feed trough for their mounts.
Farrell grunted in acknowledgment and started to turn away, then paused.
“Is it true that you’re as fast on the draw as folks say you are, Mr. Bodine?”
“Well, I don’t know what everybody says,” Matt replied with a faint smile, “but I reckon I’m fast enough to still be alive.”
“I’ve heard that you can outdraw anybody except maybe Smoke Jensen or Frank Morgan.”
“I wouldn’t know. Never met those fellas. Wouldn’t have any reason to draw against them if I did, from what I know of them. They don’t go around huntin’ trouble any more than I do.”
“Men like you, they always find it, though.”
Matt shrugged. “Sometimes it seems like that, don’t it?”
A few minutes later, he and Sam went into the house. “Mornin’, boys,” Thurman Harlow said from the stove, where he was pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Sleep good?”
“Fine,” Sam said. “We’re obliged to you for the hospitality, Mr. Harlow.”
“Think nothin’ of it. One good turn deserves another, I always say, and you done us a mighty good turn when you run off those bushwhackin’ Kanes before Frankie got hurt.”
Frankie stood by the stove, too, cooking flapjacks in a big iron skillet. As she turned them, she said curtly over her shoulder, “Sit down, you two. Pa, fetch them some coffee.”
“Sure,” Harlow agreed. He gestured toward a jug that sat on a nearby shelf. “You fellas care for a little sweetenin’ in it?”
Matt shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“Black is fine,” Sam added.
“Yeah, it’s a mite early, even for ’shine as good as we make,” Harlow agreed.
The four brothers weren’t in the cabin’s main room. “Where are your sons?” Sam asked.
“Out tendin’ to chores.” Harlow didn’t explain what those chores were, but Matt thought they might have something to do with brewing whiskey. He hadn’t seen any evidence that the family’s still was located inside the
