Blood Bond: Deadly Road to Yuma

Matt nodded to Sam and shucked his irons. Beside him, Sam drew his Colt as well. They eared back the hammers on the weapons, and even in the noisy street, the men closest to them heard those ominous metallic sounds.

“Oh, hell!” one of those men exclaimed as he glanced over his shoulder. “It’s Bodine and Two Wolves! They’re behind us!”

That news flashed through the crowd like wildfire. Men turned and started to reach for their pistols or lift their rifles they held, but they froze as they found themselves staring down the menacing barrels of the blood brothers’ revolvers.

“I’ve got six in each wheel, gents,” Matt said into the sudden silence, “and so does Sam here. That’s eighteen shots. Tell me…which eighteen of you want to die?”

“You can’t kill a man with every shot!” one of the mob blustered.

“Care to bet your life on that, amigo?” Matt drawled as a reckless grin played around his wide mouth.

Hightower turned his horse and forced his way through the crowd until he confronted Matt and Sam. Glaring at them, he said, “I’ve always heard that you two were law-abiding men. Why are you taking the side of a vicious murderer?”

“Because we are law-abiding men,” Sam replied. “We want to see Shade hanged just as much as you do, Mr. Hightower, but you should leave it to the law to do it.”

“The law!” Hightower made a slashing motion with his hand. “You can’t count on the law! Out here the only real law is what a man carries on his hip!”

“I reckon that’s always been true,” Matt said. “But things have started to change. I don’t like it all the time either. In the long run, though, there’s nothin’ we can do about it, because nothin’ stays the same forever.”

Hightower stared at them for a long moment, then said, “You really think the law will take care of Joshua Shade?”

“I do,” Sam said.

“So do I,” Matt said.

Hightower hesitated a moment longer, then sighed and nodded. “All right. I know Cyrus Flagg is an honest man, and I’ll trust him—and you boys—for now.” The rancher’s voice hardened. “But the law had better do its job…or the rest of us will take care of it ourselves.”

“You mean there’s not gonna be a hangin’?” one of the men asked in a disappointed tone.

“Not tonight,” snapped Hightower. “We’ll see about tomorrow or next week.” He lifted his reins. “Come on, boys. Diamond H, follow me!”

Loud mutters of discontent came from the crowd, but it began to disperse rapidly once Hightower and his punchers had galloped off. Matt and Sam lowered the hammers on their guns, but didn’t holster the weapons until everyone had drifted off to the saloons or their homes.

The jail door swung open. “Get in here while the gettin’s good,” Flagg urged from inside.

The blood brothers went into the jail. Flagg slammed the door behind them, lowered the thick bar across it, and heaved a sigh of relief. Back in the cell block, Shade was yelling, but the three of them had learned not to pay any attention to that.

“How long do you reckon we can keep dodgin’ this particular bullet?” Matt asked.

“Until the judge gets here, I hope,” Flagg replied. “Once folks see that Shade’s gonna get what’s comin’ to him, I think all this lynch fever will settle down.”

Matt grunted. “Yeah, well, I’ve got a hunch it’s gonna be a long week.”

In the deep gully cut by the San Francisco River, about a quarter of a mile from Arrowhead, Willard Garth asked, “Damn it, when’s the shootin’ gonna start?”

Gonzalez, who was the stealthiest of them all now that the men who had slipped into the settlement the previous night to dispose of the lookouts were dead, said in a tone of disgust, “There ain’t gonna be no shootin’. That mob of gutless gringos broke up and went home because they were afraid of Bodine and Two Wolves and the sheriff.”

“No lynching?” Jeffries asked.

Gonzalez put his sombrero on and shook his head. “Nada.” Using the shadows for concealment, he had slipped into the town on foot and gotten close enough in an alley to see and hear everything that went on during the confrontation in front of the jail.

Jeffries turned to Garth. “Now what the hell are we going to do? We’re in the same situation we were in before. We can try to break Joshua out of that jail—”

“And get the gang shot to pieces in the process,” Garth interrupted. “I know, damn it, I know.”

It wasn’t fair. He had come up with a plan all on his own, a plan that actually might have worked, and now it was ruined because a bunch of cowards wouldn’t stand up to an old sheriff and a couple of cheap gunslingers.

He became aware that all the men were staring at him in the moonlight, waiting for him to make a decision. All he could think of to say was, “We’ll just have to wait for a better time.”

“And how will we know when that is?” Jeffries asked. “We can’t just waltz into town and ask somebody what’s going on.”

“We’ll find somebody to, uh, to spy for us…”

“Like we did before?” A cold laugh came from Jeffries. “Maybe we’d better stop killing our informants so quickly.”

“But the last ones died so good,” Gonzalez said.