“Savages?” Matt repeated with a frown.
“Yes, the Indians I caught skulking around early this morning when I got to the store to open up. They looked like they were going to try to sneak into the saloon.” Reilly swallowed and looked up at Lady Augusta. “Are you all right? I knew your life would be in danger when I saw those Navajo.”
Matt and Sam exchanged a quick look. Sam said, “You’re sure it was some Navajo you saw, Noah?”
“What? Why, of course I’m sure! I’ve seen plenty of them around town in the past. I know a Navajo when I see one.”
Matt said, “And you got a good look at them?”
“I was close as I am to any of you. I had to be, for them to have hit me and knocked me out the way they did.” Reilly lifted a hand toward Lady Augusta. “Dear lady, did they harm you? How in the world did you escape from those red savages?”
Lady Augusta looked confused.
“I don’t understand, Mr. Reilly,” she said. “It wasn’t the Navajo who carried me off. It was Zack Jardine and two of his men.”
Reilly stiffened in alarm. Matt saw him start to reach for something under his coat. One of Matt’s Colts seemed to appear in his hand as if by magic.
“Whatever you’re reachin’ for, you’d better leave it right where it is, mister,” Matt said. “And while you’re at it, you can start explainin’ why the story you’re trying to tell us doesn’t match up with any of the facts.”
“Why, I ... I ...”
Sam sighed and shook his head. He had liked the little storekeeper.
“You should’ve kept your mouth shut and claimed you didn’t know what happened, Noah,” he said. “You probably would’ve gotten away with it, then. Now, though, it’s pretty obvious that you cooked up this whole deal with Jardine. Were the two of you partners?”
Reilly’s face hardened.
“Partners, hell!” he spat with such concentrated venom that it seemed impossible it could have come from such a mild-looking hombre. “The entire thing was my idea! And if we had pulled it off, I would have been the ruler of the whole Four Corners!”
Matt shook his head.
“This is America, mister. We don’t have kings.” He glanced at Lady Augusta and smiled. “No offense, Your Ladyship.”
“None taken, I assure you. Why do you think I came to America in the first place? I didn’t want a bloody king, either!”
By that evening, another wagon had gone out to pick up the crates of guns and returned with them. They were locked up at the moment in the back room of the now-closed general store.
Matt, Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur sat on the bench in front of the saloon and watched the day’s light fade, taking with it some of the scorching heat.
The four of them had been over the whole thing, hashing out what they knew and what they could guess, and they were convinced that they had a pretty accurate picture. Noah Reilly hadn’t offered any sort of detailed confession after the things he had said that morning, but he was locked up, too.
A rider had carried word to Fort Defiance, and Matt and Sam expected an officer and a cavalry detail to show up in a day or two and take charge of everything, including the lone surviving member of the gang.
“Here’s what I can’t believe about the whole thing,” Wilbur said. “You weren’t in on the end of it, Stovepipe. I’m used to you bein’ the one who rounds up the head varmint.”
“I reckon I did my share,” Stovepipe said. He looked at Matt and Sam. “Couldn’t interest you boys in a job, could I? You seem to be good at gettin’ to the bottom of things. The Cattlemen’s Protective Association could use you.”
“Not a chance,” Matt said with a smile and a shake of his head. “Sam and I don’t cotton to workin’ for wages.”
“You just gonna keep on driftin’ like a pair of fiddle-footed cowboys?”
“That’s the plan,” Sam said.
“But not just yet,” Matt added. “I’m gonna go call on Miss Elizabeth Fleming and take her to supper at that cafe you fellas told me about.”
“And I’m gonna go talk to Lady Augusta,” Wilbur put in.
“You’ll get so tongue-tied and start sputterin’ so much she’s liable to think you got the hydrophobia,” Stovepipe told her partner.
“Dang it, there you go again, always tryin’ to interfere in my love life!”
“I’m just tryin’ to keep you from gettin’ your feelin’s hurt. Anyway, you can’t go makin’ calf-eyes at that gal. Soon as the army gets here and takes charge of them guns, you and I got more work to take care of.”
“More work? Where?”
“I dunno,” Stovepipe admitted. “We’ll have to find us a telegraph office and check in with the boss. But you know how it is, Wilbur ... hell’s always poppin’ somewhere.”
That was true, Sam thought. Hell was always popping somewhere, especially wherever the blood brothers went.
But that’s the way it was with brothers of the wolf.
