slammed into the side of Sam’s head just above his left ear. The impact made him stumble back a step. The room spun crazily around him. He felt his legs folding up beneath him, but couldn’t seem to stop them. As he fell, he tried to raise his gun for another shot, but everything was such a blur he couldn’t find his target.
He heard Lobo’s pained yelp, though, and Hannah’s sobs. He realized he was lying on his back. A figure loomed over him. His vision cleared enough for him to recognize Linus Grady glaring down at him over the barrel of the gun. The gambler didn’t look so affable now. In fact, he looked like the Devil himself.
“You should have done what the marshal told you and gone back to the office, Sam,” Grady said. “Of course, you’d have died anyway, but you could have postponed it for a while.” Grady drew back the pistol’s hammer. “This way I can go ahead and dispose of you now.”
He pulled the trigger, and the red flame spurting from the muzzle was the last thing Sam saw before oblivion claimed him.
Chapter 35
It was close to midday by the time the group of riders Matt was following approached Cottonwood. The heat was worse than ever, and Matt had breathed so much dust he felt like the insides of his mouth, nose, throat, and lungs were coated with the stuff.
He had been staying well back of the riders, so when they came to a halt outside the settlement, he was able to stop, too, before he was close enough to risk being spotted. He reined in, dismounted, and reached into his saddlebags for a pair of field glasses he carried. He knew he would have to be careful using the glasses and not let sunlight reflect off the lenses. Some of Kane’s men might spot the flash and figure out that they were being followed.
Stealing forward through the tall buffalo grass, Matt dropped to his hands and knees when he was only a couple of hundred yards behind the riders. From there he crawled even closer, then stood up in a crouch and trained the glasses on the men.
His heart leaped in a combination of relief and anger when he spotted Frankie Harlow seated on one of the horses in front of Cimarron Kane. Kane’s arm was around Frankie’s waist, holding her tightly to him, but as far as Matt could tell, she seemed to be all right. The field glasses brought them close enough so that he could see the outrage on Frankie’s face. She was mad as hell.
Kane didn’t seem worried about that. He was talking to a couple of his men, and after a moment the two men spurred off toward the town. The rest of the group sat there, obviously waiting for the men to come back. Matt figured that Kane had sent the pair into Cottonwood to check on something, although he wasn’t sure what.
Slowly, Matt moved the glasses so that he could take a good look at the rest of the men. They were a rough, hard-bitten bunch, much like their leader, Cimarron Kane himself.
Then Matt saw something that made him stiffen in surprise. Sitting on one of the horses not far from Kane was Calvin Bickford, the corrupt special marshal who had escaped from Sam the night before.
The fact that Kane had used a bomb to blow up the Harlows’ moonshine still had reminded Matt of Bickford and Porter, but the possibility that there was actually a connection between them hadn’t occurred to him. He had no idea what that connection might be, but from the looks of it, Kane and Bickford were plenty friendly.
That didn’t bode well, Matt thought, but he would have to sort it all out later. Right now, all that mattered was getting Frankie out of Kane’s hands…literally.
A few minutes later, the two men Kane had sent into town returned. They talked excitedly to Kane for a moment, and then Kane hitched his horse into motion and waved for the rest of the men to follow him. They rode unhurriedly toward the settlement. They weren’t attacking Cottonwood, Matt realized.
Instead, they were riding in like they already owned the place.
Something was terribly wrong, and Matt didn’t know what it was. He lowered the field glasses, dropped again onto his hands and knees, and crawled back to where he had left his horse. After tucking the field glasses in his saddlebags, he patted the stallion on the shoulder and murmured, “You’re gonna have to stay here, fella. I need to get into town without anybody seein’ me, so I’ll have to do it on foot.”
He checked both his Colts, thumbing a cartridge into the empty chamber on each weapon where the hammer usually rested. He made sure all the loops in his shell belt were full, and then stuffed his pockets full of ammunition, too. There was no telling how many bullets he would need before this day was over, but he was betting that it would be a lot.
Matt hung his hat on the saddle horn, rubbed the stallion’s nose one last time, then turned toward Cottonwood. He moved in a crouch through the tall grass, then dropped once again into a crawl as he drew near the edge of the settlement.
He didn’t look behind him, but if he had, he might have seen the dark gray clouds building along the southwestern horizon. A little puff of cooler air stirred the buffalo grass for a few seconds, but Matt’s attention was focused on the task in front of him, and he didn’t notice.
When Sam regained consciousness, his first thought was one of surprise at still being alive. His next was the realization that his head hurt like hell.
That, at least, came as no surprise. He remembered Linus Grady shooting him. The small-caliber slug must have just grazed his skull, with enough of an impact to knock him out but not enough to penetrate into his brain. However, there was the matter of that second shot Grady had fired down at him at point-blank range.
Somehow he’d survived, and Sam was thankful for that. As the pain in his head subsided to a dull ache, he began to wonder where he was.
After a moment, he figured out that he was lying on rough planks. His cheek was pressed against them, since he was sprawled on his belly. He forced his eyes open and saw a stone wall about six feet away from him. Something about it looked familiar. Without moving his head, he managed to lift his gaze along the wall until it came to a small, barred window.
He was in jail.
That was why the wall looked familiar. He had seen it before. He was in one of the cells inside Cottonwood’s jail. Curiosity overwhelmed him, and he lifted his head for a better look around. The movement made a fresh burst of pain explode inside his skull. He couldn’t hold back the groan that came from him.
