a pair of Colts. Sam was fast on the draw and accurate in his aim, but Matt was in a whole other league when it came to lead-slinging. His speed rivaled that of famous gunfighters such as Smoke Jensen, John Wesley Hardin, and Frank Morgan. Matt’s name wasn’t quite as well known as those others, perhaps because of his relative youth.
Matt and Sam both owned lucrative ranches in Montana, but except for brief visits, they hadn’t been home in years. The ranches were run by top-notch managers, and that allowed Matt and Sam to do the thing they loved best—drift. Both were fiddle-footed hombres, always eager to see what was on the other side of a river or over the next hill.
The fact that they didn’t know exactly where they were wasn’t going to stop them from riding on. The destination mattered less than the getting there, and as long as they were moving, Matt and Sam were happy.
But that didn’t mean they weren’t alert. Matt suddenly stiffened in the saddle and said, “I just saw the sun reflect off something on that bluff over yonder.”
He nodded toward an upthrust of rocky ground several hundred yards northwest of them.
“So did I,” Sam agreed. He looked around in case they needed to find some cover. The reflection could be nothing ...
But it could also be the sun glinting off a pair of field glasses, or worse, a rifle barrel.
“There’s an arroyo off to our left,” Sam began. “Maybe we’d better—”
A buzzing sound, like a giant bee that had just flown between them, interrupted him. Both young men recognized the sound, having heard similar ones all too many times in the past. That buzz was a heavy-caliber slug cutting through the air, and it was followed an instant later by a distant boom.
“Head for the arroyo!” Sam finished as he and Matt kicked their mounts into a gallop. The horses, big, strong animals with plenty of sand, raced toward the gully that twisted its way across the arid landscape.
Matt saw dust fly in the air as another bullet struck the ground to their right. The arroyo was about fifty yards away, and it wouldn’t take the racing horses long to cover that much ground.
Even so, several more slugs whipped past the heads of Matt and Sam as they leaned forward in their saddles to make themselves smaller targets. There had to be more than one rifleman up there on the bluff shooting at them.
Why they were being bushwhacked like this was a whole other question, one that didn’t really matter at the moment. They could worry about who the would-be killers were and why they wanted Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves dead once they were safely behind some cover.
The arroyo was only about twenty yards away when Matt was hit by what felt like a giant fist punching him in the right side. The terrible impact drove him so far to the left that he couldn’t stay in the saddle.
He was stunned, but a part of his brain continued working. He had been shot before, so he knew one of the rifle bullets had hit him and reacted accordingly.
When he felt himself slipping off the horse, he kicked his feet free of the stirrups so neither of them would catch and hang up when he fell. If that happened, he would wind up being dragged over the rough ground, and probably that would be just as bad or worse than being shot.
Suddenly there was nothing under him but air, and a split second later he crashed into the ground, landing on his left shoulder. Momentum tumbled him over and over as more bullets kicked up dust and gravel around him.
Chapter 2
Zack Jardine was down by the wagon, keeping an eye on the unloading, when rifle shots began to crash from the top of the nearby bluff.
Jardine’s head jerked up and he grated out a curse. He saw powder smoke spurting from the places in the rocks where he had posted guards to keep an eye on the semi-arid landscape around them.
The men seemed to be shooting at something southeast of the spot where the guns were being unloaded. Jardine swung around, looked in that direction, and saw two men riding hellbent-for-leather, several hundred yards away.
Rifle in hand, Jardine broke into a run toward the trail leading to the top of the bluff. He was a big man, heavily muscled and handsome in a rugged, cruel way, and he didn’t like running in the hot sun.
He glanced toward the men on horseback when he was halfway up the trail and saw one of them tumble off his horse, probably hit. The other one was still mounted, though.
Jardine reached the top. Angus Braverman was one of the riflemen, Doyle Hilliard the other. Jardine figured Braverman was the one who’d started shooting. He was impulsive, reckless ... a damned fool, some might say.
“You opened the ball,” he shouted at Braverman and Hilliard. “You’d better kill both of them. I don’t want either of them getting away!”
To help ensure that, Jardine lifted his own rifle to his shoulder. He sighted at the distant figures and started cranking off rounds as fast as he could work the repeater’s lever.
He paused only long enough to wave an arm at the men he’d left below and yell, “Kill them!”
Everybody forgot about the crate of rifles they had just lifted down from the wagon and got busy trying to ventilate those two unlucky hombres who had wound up somewhere they shouldn’t have been.
From the corner of his eye, Sam saw his blood brother go down. He hauled back on the reins as hard as he could, but by the time his horse skidded to a halt, he was already a good ten yards past the spot where Matt had fallen.
Sam threw himself out of the saddle and ran toward Matt, holding the reins and pulling the horse with him. Bullets thudded into the ground and kicked up dust.
As he ran, Sam felt a hot streak on the side of his neck and gritted his teeth. He knew a slug had just come within an inch or so of ending his life.
But the thought of abandoning Matt to his fate never entered Sam’s mind. Not even when Matt lifted his head and bellowed, “Blast it, Sam, get out of here!”
Sam ignored that and stooped to get an arm around Matt. He had been blessed with great strength, so he was able to lift Matt without much trouble.
