haze of powder smoke floated in the air. Several men crouched behind the barn, using it for cover as they fired toward the cabin. Farther along the flat ground in front of the ridge, more men lay belly-down and squeezed off shots from the prone position at the still.
Matt did a quick head count. Three men at the barn, four keeping the Harlow brothers pinned down at the still. Those odds weren’t
Judging from the amount of fire coming from the defenders, Frankie’s father and all of her brothers were still in the fight, although it was possible some of them could be wounded.
He leaned closer to her. “Are you a good shot?”
She snorted and asked, “What the hell do you think?”
“I’ll take the three hombres behind the barn,” Matt said. “When I open up on them, you throw lead at the ones who’re goin’ after the still. You don’t have to worry about hittin’ ’em, just spook ’em real good and make them run for their horses. By that time, I ought to be finished with the others, and I can take over.”
She glared at him. “Take over!” she repeated. “I hit what I aim at. We’ll just see who kills their men first—and I’ve got one more than you do!”
“Fine,” he muttered. “You ready?”
“Ready,” she said, and although her voice was steady, he thought he heard the faintest hint of a quiver in it. He wondered fleetingly if she had ever killed a man before.
He drew a bead on one of the men at the barn. It was about a hundred and fifty yards from the edge of the field, but that wasn’t too long a shot for a marks-man of Matt Bodine’s skill. He wanted to make sure of his first shot, so he let his breath out softly and waited an extra heartbeat, then squeezed the trigger.
The Winchester cracked and kicked hard against his shoulder. As he worked the lever, he saw the man he had targeted driven forward against the barn wall by the slug smashing into his body. Before the man could even hit the ground, Matt had shifted his aim and was ready to fire again. As his rifle blasted, Frankie opened up beside him, peppering the other group of men.
Matt’s second shot wasn’t quite as accurate as his first. It didn’t drill the gunman he’d aimed at through the body, but broke the man’s arm instead. Matt saw him slump against the barn and clutch at the wounded limb.
“Bodine!” Frankie yelled.
Matt still had a third man to put out of the fight. He worked the Winchester’s lever, but before he could draw a bead, Frankie cried out again.
“Bodine! Now!”
Matt jerked around and saw that there was a new element in the fight. A couple of men had appeared at the top of the ridge, above the entrance to the chamber, and each of them carried a blazing torch in his hand. Matt felt a surge of alarm at the sight, remembering all those barrels of moonshine stored down below. If flame ever reached that volatile liquid…
“Drop them before they can toss those torches in there!” he told Frankie.
She must have figured that out already, because she was blazing away at the two men even as the words came out of Matt’s mouth. He added his shots to the effort, cranking off several rounds as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever, just as Frankie was doing.
Suddenly he felt the wind-rip of a bullet past his ear and then heard other slugs rustle through the cornfield. He and Frankie were coming under fire from the man at the barn and the ones who had laid siege to the still. Matt stopped shooting and thrust out an arm, sweeping Frankie backward so that she sprawled among the plants.
“Stay down!” he told her.
“But the still—”
Matt cast a desperate glance toward the ridge and saw the two men throw their torches into the chamber. The coils of black smoke they gave off twisted out of the opening. Two of the other gunmen were up now, shooting through the opening, probably trying to keep the Harlow brothers from putting out the torches. The other two and the man at the barn kept scything lead through the corn at Matt and Frankie.
Matt rolled onto his belly and drilled the man at the barn through the middle of his body. The man folded up and collapsed. The other four stopped shooting and ran for the barn and the horses. Frankie took a hurried shot at them, but missed. As Matt twisted in that direction, he saw why the sudden change on the part of the attackers. The two torches now lay in front of the chamber’s entrance. The Harlow brothers had dared that hail of lead to grab them and throw them back outside before the flames reached those barrels of moonshine.
Matt snapped a couple of shots at the fleeing gunmen, too. One of them stumbled, but stayed on his feet. Then the two men on top of the ridge opened fire on Matt and Frankie and forced them to scramble deeper into the cornfield. A moment later, hoofbeats pounded as the men reached their mounts, leaped into saddles, and lit a shuck out of there.
Matt leaped to his feet and ran out of the corn in time to see Thurman Harlow emerge from the cabin and let loose with a blast from both barrels of the shotgun he held, but the men were already too far away for the buckshot to reach them. Dust rising from the other side of the ridge testified to the fact that those two men were getting out, too.
Angry shouting drew Matt’s attention to the chamber where the still was located. He saw all four Harlow brothers come through the entrance, and so did Frankie. “Thank God,” she breathed. One of her brothers was limping, but they were all alive and relatively unscathed, from the looks of it. A couple of them finished the job of stomping out the flames from the torches.
Matt whistled for the stallion. The horse came through the field with Frankie’s bay trailing along behind it. Matt and Frankie grabbed the reins and led the animals toward the cabin. Frankie’s brothers were converging on the cabin as well.
They all got there about the same time. “Pa!” Frankie said as she hurried toward him. “Are you all right?”
“Fine as frog’s hair,” Thurman Harlow replied in his mild-mannered voice. “Those varmints shot up the place mighty good, but I kept my head down as much as I could and didn’t get hit.”
