Leaning closer to Mike Loomis, he said quietly, “We’ll split up. I’ll go across the street, and you take this side. We’ll hit them from behind at the same time and take them by surprise.”
Mike gave him a grim nod. “All right. But we’re pretty outnumbered, Two Wolves. You know that, don’t you?”
Sam grinned at him and said, “Then we’ll try to whittle down the odds as quickly as we can. Give me a minute to get over there and get set.”
“Sure. I’ll wait for you to hit those varmints, and then I’ll go at the same time.”
That sounded like a workable plan to Sam. Clutching the Winchester, he darted out from the cover of the alley and began racing across the broad, dusty street.
Too late, he realized that Cimarron Kane must have posted a lookout to make sure that no one snuck up behind them while they attacked the jail. Sam was less than a third of the way across the street when someone yelled a warning. A couple of shots rang out from behind a wagon. One of the bullets went well wide of him, but the other came close enough that he felt the hot breath of the lead as it whistled past his cheek. He began firing the rifle from his hip as he ran, cranking off rounds as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever.
He was still only halfway across the street when something slammed into his right foot and knocked it out from under him. His momentum carried him forward, and although he tried to keep his balance by pinwheeling one arm as fast as he could, it was a lost cause.
He fell, tumbling forward and rolling over and over as a small cloud of dust rose around him.
Sam came to a stop on his belly with the dust choking him and stinging his nose and eyes. His right leg was numb, and he didn’t know how badly he was hurt. But he couldn’t move, he was stuck out in the open, and Kane’s men knew he was there, an easy target. It seemed unlikely that things could get any worse.
That was when he heard thundering hoofbeats right behind him and jerked his head around to gaze over his shoulder at the gigantic, looming figure of a madly galloping horse about to pound him to a red ruin under its hooves.
Chapter 27
When Matt reached the western end of Cottonwood’s main street, he saw that the fighting was concentrated around the far end of town. That was where the marshal’s office was located, and he was more convinced than ever that Kane and his relatives had come to bust Dud, Nelse, and Wiley Kane out of jail. From the muzzle flashes he saw, it looked like Kane’s bunch had split up and hunted cover on both sides of the street as they laid siege to the jail.
Matt drew his left-hand gun as he clamped his knees tighter on the stallion’s flanks. The attackers wouldn’t expect somebody to come roaring down the middle of the street between them, raking them with gunshots in both directions.
The stallion lunged ahead, responding gallantly as Matt leaned forward in the saddle and urged him on to greater speed. Suddenly, Matt saw someone dart out from his right and try to cross the street in front of him. At first he thought the man must be one of Kane’s bunch, changing position for some reason, but then he saw more muzzle flashes as Kane’s men opened fire on the running figure. The man made it almost to the middle of the street before he tumbled forward off his feet, evidently hit.
Matt couldn’t slow the charging stallion in time, and he wasn’t sure he could even veer the animal around the fallen man. So he jammed his left-hand Colt back in its holster, grabbed the reins, and hauled up on them, lifting the horse into a jump.
The stallion responded instantly, rising into the air with a grace belying its rangy ugliness, and it was only at the last instant that Matt caught a glimpse of the face looking up at him and recognized it as that of his blood brother, Sam Two Wolves.
Then the stallion soared up and over Sam and landed running full tilt, and Matt dropped the reins again and jerked out his left-hand Colt. He was between the forces arrayed along both sides of the street, so he began firing —right, left, right, left, spraying slugs among the places where the raiders had taken cover.
Matt never slowed his mount. As the hammers of his revolvers fell on empty chambers, he used his knees to guide the stallion into a sharp turn that carried them into the mouth of an alley near the marshal’s office. The horse pounded along the passageway through thick, almost impenetrable shadows, and Matt hoped they wouldn’t run into anything.
A moment later they broke out into the faint light from the moon and stars behind the buildings. Matt holstered one revolver, wheeled the horse around, and reined to a halt. He started reloading his guns with swift, practiced ease. He didn’t know how much damage he had inflicted on the Kane bunch, but from the sound of the shots still filling the night air, the attack wasn’t over. Matt wanted to get back in the action.
Not only that, but his blood brother was out there in the street, maybe wounded and definitely in a bad place, and it might be up to Matt to see to it that Sam didn’t get shot full of holes!
Sam barely had time to recognize the horse as Matt’s rangy gray stallion before he ducked back down to give the animal plenty of room to leap over him. The horse landed on the other side of him and kept going, never slowing down as Matt opened fire on the gunmen along both sides of the street.
Sam was trying to make his numb right leg work so he could struggle onto his feet when he heard someone running toward him. He propped himself up on one hand and twisted in that direction, ready to fire the Colt in his other hand, but his finger eased off the trigger when he saw Red Mike Loomis approaching.
The burly young man reached down and grabbed hold of Sam’s arm. “I’ll help you,” he said. “How bad are you hit?”
“Don’t know,” Sam replied as Mike lifted him without much trouble. “Head for the other side of the street!”
With Mike’s strong grip supporting his right side, Sam set off at a hobbling run. It was almost like they were a team in a three-legged race, he thought crazily. His right leg dangled uselessly.
They headed toward a rain barrel that was big enough to shield one of them, but not both. “You can stay here,” Mike said as he lowered Sam to the ground behind the barrel. “I’ll find some other cover.”
