“Be care—” Sam began, but he didn’t have a chance to finish. He heard the solid, meaty thump of a bullet striking flesh, and then Mike grunted and went down, collapsing at the edge of the raised boardwalk.
Sam bit back a curse and reached up to grab the top of the rain barrel. He experienced a tingling now in his right leg, an indication that feeling was coming back into it. The muscles still didn’t want to work, though. Hanging on to the barrel, Sam lifted himself on his left leg. Bullets thudded into the wooden barrel as he shoved hard on it. Water began to slosh out the top, and as the weight of the water in the barrel decreased, it moved easier. He toppled it, creating a miniature tidal wave that washed around his feet and Mike Loomis’s sprawled body.
Mike sputtered and spit as water went up his nose, so he wasn’t dead. The overturned barrel was between him and the gunmen, so he had a little protection now. Sam was back in the open, though. He hopped toward the boardwalk and let himself fall when he reached it. He rolled across the planks into the alcove where the building’s door was set back a few feet.
He had dropped his rifle in the street, but he still had his Colt. He thrust the revolver out of the alcove and triggered a couple of shots at the muzzle flashes of the raiders. Glass shattered as Kane’s men shot out the windows in the building. Sam returned the fire and then ducked back out of sight again.
A high-pitched yell split the night. Matt was taking a hand in the fight again. And of course he couldn’t do it without calling attention to himself, Sam thought as a grim smile tugged at his mouth. He reached for the fresh cartridges in the loops on his shell belt and thumbed some of them into his Colt. Fast shots banged out. More of Matt’s work, Sam knew.
He ignored the throbbing pain that now filled his leg as he pulled himself to the front of the alcove again. Watching as Matt drove once more between the two halves of Kane’s force, Sam felt a little awe at the way his blood brother took the fight to them so fiercely, so gallantly. And possibly so foolishly, too, but Matt Bodine had never been one to hold back. He gave himself fully to whatever he was doing.
“Matt!” Sam shouted. He braced the six-shooter against the boardwalk and fired twice. “Over here!”
Matt left the saddle in a flying leap as his stallion raced past the building. The jump carried him onto the boardwalk. He careened into the alcove, dropped to one knee beside Sam, and joined his blood brother in throwing lead at the men who had attacked the jail.
A hailstorm of lead came racketing back at them, forcing them to duck back deeper in the alcove. As they reloaded, Matt said, “It figures you’d be right in the middle of this ruckus, Sam.”
“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to come galloping in and jump your horse right over me like you were performing a trick in a Wild West Show!” Sam replied.
Matt grinned. “Well, it was either that or trample you, so I figured you wouldn’t mind if I showed off a little.” He grew more serious. “You know what’s goin’ on here, don’t you?”
“My guess is that Cimarron Kane and some of his kin are trying to help those prisoners in Marshal Coleman’s jail escape.”
“That’s it, all right,” Matt said. “I followed the whole bunch into town from the Kane ranch.”
“Kane was here earlier in the day,” Sam explained. “He thought he could come into town and bluster a little, and the marshal would release his cousins. Marshal Coleman’s not going to do it, though.”
Matt snapped the cylinder on one of his revolvers closed after refilling the chambers. “I didn’t know that.”
“Here’s something else you don’t know,” Sam said. “Those special marshals, Porter and Bickford, are in town, too, along with their deputies. They’re all crooked, though.”
“What do you mean?” Matt asked with a frown.
Sam quickly filled him in on the bribery and murder scheme being carried out by the special marshals, and the news brought a muttered curse from Matt.
“Where are those varmints now?” he asked.
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. Porter and most of the deputies are here in town somewhere, as far as I know. Bickford was still down by the creek with the wagons the last time I saw him, but he could have regained consciousness by now.”
“Well, we’ll deal with them once we’ve handed Kane his needin’s. Where’s the marshal? Holed up inside the jail?”
“He must be. Someone is in there trying to hold off Kane’s bunch.” Sam paused, then added in a worried voice, “I think Hannah may be in there with him, too. They had two rifles going.”
Matt let out a little whistle of surprise. “Sorry, amigo. I know you set a lot of store by that gal. We need to do something to convince Kane to give it up. How’s that leg of yours?”
Enough feeling had returned to Sam’s leg so that he could move it now. He reached down and ran his hand over the leg, searching for a wound. When he didn’t find any, he pulled his foot up and felt of his boot.
“So that’s what happened,” he said. “One of them shot my boot heel off. The impact of the bullet made my leg go numb for a little while, but it’s getting to be all right now.”
“Then you’re not wounded?”
“I don’t seem to be.”
“That’s a stroke of good luck. Reckon you can get around?”
Sam nodded as he pulled off both boots, so that the lack of a heel on the right one wouldn’t unbalance him. “I think so, as long as I don’t have to move too fast.”
“All right, you can cover me while I make a run for the other side of the street.”
“You’ll never make it,” Sam warned.
“I will if you make those polecats duck.” Matt pressed one of his guns into Sam’s left hand. “Just keep ’em busy. Once I get over there, we’ll have ’em right where we want ’em.”
Sam had had the same sort of thing in mind, only his plan had included the element of surprise. That hadn’t
