Coleman nodded. “Doc Berger’s house and office is on Second Street, right around the corner from the hotel. Reckon you can take Mike over there?”
Matt had been reloading his guns. Finished with that chore, he holstered the weapons and nodded. “Sure.”
“I’ll stay here to keep an eye on things while you fetch that lantern, Marshal,” Sam said.
“By things, you mean them crooked deputies we shot?”
Sam grunted. “That’s right. And you’d better sing out before you go through the office door, just to be sure Hannah knows it’s you.”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
Coleman and Matt set off in different directions along the street. Sam slipped fresh cartridges into the gun he had taken from Ambrose Porter, which luckily was the same caliber as his Colt.
Matt called, “Hey, Mike, it’s me, Matt Bodine,” as he trotted up to the rain barrel where he had left Red Mike Loomis. When he saw the figure slumped on the ground, his first thought was that the burly youngster had bled to death. Quickly, Matt dropped to a knee next to him and searched for a pulse in Mike’s neck. After a moment he found one, weak but fairly steady, and felt relief go through him.
Even though Red Mike was a big man, Matt got his arms around him and was able to lift him. Teeth clenched against the strain, he started carrying Mike toward the doctor’s house.
Several men emerged from one of the buildings as Matt came to it. “Bodine!” one of them called. “Let us help you.”
He recognized them as townspeople as they gathered around him and took Mike out of his arms. They carried the wounded man quickly toward Doc Berger’s place. The doctor himself met them before they got there, hurrying toward the scene of battle with his black bag in his hand.
“Who’s that you’ve got there?” the medico asked.
“Mike Loomis,” Matt told him.
“How bad is he hurt?”
“That’s your department. He caught a bullet in the side and lost a lot of blood.”
Berger nodded and said to the men carrying Mike, “Take him down there and put him on the table in my examining room. I’ll be right there.” Berger turned back to Matt. “Is anyone else wounded?”
“All those special deputies are shot up pretty bad.”
The doctor started to hustle in that direction. “I’d better see to them—” he began.
“No hurry, Doc,” Matt drawled. “They’re either dead or soon will be, and it’s no great loss either way.”
Berger paused and frowned at him. “What are you talking about, young man? I don’t particularly like that liquor law any more than anyone else, but those are lawmen!”
“Not hardly. They wore badges, but that doesn’t make ’em real lawmen. They were all crooks, Doc, just like Porter and Bickford. Murderin’ scum, each and every one of ’em.”
“What in blazes are you talking about?”
Matt took hold of the medical man’s arm. “Come on back to your place and see to Red Mike, and I’ll tell you all about it on the way.”
Berger still looked upset and confused, but he allowed Matt to lead him back toward his house where he had a patient waiting for him.
Back at the jail, Marshal Coleman emerged carrying a lantern that spilled its yellow glow in a circle around him. Sam joined him, and one by one they checked the bodies sprawled in the street. There were six of them, each one shot full of holes. Four of the men were already dead, one died with a final rattle of breath in his throat as Sam and Coleman checked on him, and the sixth man was unconscious but still breathing.
“Doc might be able to save this one,” Coleman said. “Where are the others? I thought there were ten of those deputies.”
“Two of them are with the prison wagons down by the creek,” Sam explained. “I knocked them out and left them tied up there. I don’t know about the other two, but Matt might be able to tell us what happened to them. They’re either around here somewhere, dead or knocked out, or else they realized the jig was up and lit a shuck.”
“What a massacre,” Coleman said as he shook his head slowly. “There’s been more powder burned and more blood spilled in the past two days than Cottonwood usually sees in a month of Sundays.”
“I’m sorry Matt and I brought so much trouble to your town with us, Marshal.”
“Oh, hell, none of it was your fault, son. You just happened to be here.”
Sam wasn’t sure about that. Over the years he had come to believe sometimes that he and Matt traveled under a cloud. It wasn’t a storm cloud, though.
It was a cloud of gun smoke.
Chapter 31
The citizens of Cottonwood were coming out again all over town now that the shooting was over. The undertaker showed up with his wagon and a couple of helpers to load the bodies of the dead deputies, but before he could take charge of the corpses, Marshal Coleman commandeered him and his wagon to transport the wounded deputy down to Doc Berger’s.
