Right now, though, Sam was going to try a different tactic. He said, “You’re making a mistake, Porter.”
“By eliminating some of the witnesses against me?” Porter shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s because you’ve forgotten about Matt Bodine.”
Porter’s eyes narrowed. “Bodine,” he repeated. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“Didn’t you see him out there, fighting Kane’s men? He’s still on the loose.”
Porter made a dismissive gesture. “Of course I saw him, the grandstanding young fool. I told some of my men to hunt him down and kill him before I ever grabbed the girl. He’s probably already dead by now.”
“I haven’t heard any shots from outside,” Sam said. “Have you?”
Porter frowned a little as worry appeared in his dark eyes. It was true. Since Cimarron Kane and his men had fled, there had been no more shooting in the streets of Cottonwood.
“You may wind up needing some leverage to get out of here,” Sam went on. “You won’t have any if we’re dead.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Porter shot back with a sneer. “All I need is you, Two Wolves, not these other two.”
Sam took a quick step so that he shielded Coleman and Hannah from Porter’s gun. “You can’t get to them without coming through me,” he said.
Suddenly, it was a standoff of sorts, even though Sam and Coleman were unarmed. Tension filled the room…
Only to be broken suddenly by the roar of gunshots that ripped through the night outside.
It didn’t take Matt long to find the first of Porter’s deputies. The man was slinking along the street, obviously searching for something. Probably him, Matt thought wryly. He stepped out of the dark maw of an alley mouth as the man went past it, and the butt of his gun thudded against the deputy’s head. The man never knew what hit him.
Matt grabbed the man under the arms and dragged him into the thick shadows. It was a moment’s work to bind the man’s hands behind him with his own belt and cram his own bandanna in his mouth as a gag. Then, confident that this deputy was out of the fight, Matt resumed the hunt.
A minute later, he lay in the deep darkness underneath a parked wagon and listened as two sets of footsteps approached. The men whispered back and forth to each other.
“…that hombre Bodine,” one of them was saying.
“I’ve heard he’s mighty fast with a gun,” the other man replied.
“Yeah, but there’s eight of us and only one of him.”
Seven, now, Matt thought with a grim smile. There were only seven of them still in the fight.
“You reckon Porter’s really gonna burn down the whole town, like he said?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. That’s one way of makin’ sure there’s nobody left to talk about what we’ve been doin’.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of killin’s,” the other man said, sounding worried.
A callous laugh came from the first man. “One killin’ or two hundred, you can only swing for it once.”
“Yeah, but how the hell do you go about murderin’ a whole town?”
“Mighty quietlike, that’s how you do it. With knives, one house at a time. That way, folks don’t panic. They won’t even know they’re about to die until it’s too late.”
The two men had stopped beside the wagon where Matt was hidden. He fought the urge to slither out from under the vehicle and shoot both of the bastards in the head. Gunfire would draw too much attention right now, though. He had to be patient and, just like that son of a bitch had said, mighty quietlike.
“Stay here,” the first man went on to his companion. “If you see Bodine, kill him.”
“Yeah,” the second man muttered, “if he don’t kill me first.”
“You knew there’d be risks when you agreed to go along with Bickford’s plan,” the other one snapped. “You were quick enough to take your share of the money, too.”
“Don’t worry, if I see Bodine, I’ll ventilate the bastard. Count on it.”
“Yeah,” the first man said. His footsteps moved off as he continued to search.
So he was the object of a hunt, Matt mused. That came as no surprise. Porter knew he was out here and wanted him dead.
But Matt was doing some hunting of his own. Noiselessly, he moved closer to the man who stood beside the wagon with his back to the vehicle. Reaching out, Matt suddenly grabbed hold of the man’s ankles from behind and jerked his legs out from under him. The man opened his mouth to yell in alarm, but his face slammed into the street before he could get out more than a peep.
Matt was on him with the speed of a striking snake, driving a knee into the small of the man’s back to keep him pinned to the ground, then hammering both clubbed fists into the back of his head. The man went limp.
Matt took hold of his ankles again and dragged him under the wagon, then left him there. That was two of the varmints, he thought, but there were still six of them out there in the shadows, thirsty for his blood.
He wasn’t going to be able to continue hunting them down one by one, either, because just then a man yelled, “Hey, over here! It’s Bodine!”
