Then, hearing loud, raucous voices, he looked the other way…
And saw four cowboys blocking the path of a young woman on horseback. She seemed scared as she tried to pull her mount away from the men, but one of the cowboys had hold of the horse’s harness. “Let me go!” she cried, and she sounded scared, too.
The cowboy holding the horse leered up at her and made some rude comment about letting her go in a little while.
By that time, Matt was already striding toward them. He didn’t think about what he was doing. He just acted according to his instincts, which just weren’t about to allow him to let those hombres bother the woman any longer.
She was young and pretty, Matt couldn’t help noticing, with pale blond hair hanging loose around her shoulders, but that didn’t matter. He would have done the same if she had been old and gray and wrinkled. Where Matt came from, men didn’t mistreat women.
If they did, they risked dying for it.
“You’ll let her go now,” he said.
He hadn’t sneaked up on them; they would have been able to see him coming if they hadn’t been so busy ogling the young woman. He didn’t raise his voice all that much, but it carried clearly and made the cowboys turn sharply toward him. The woman glanced over her shoulder at him, and Matt saw that her eyes were wide with fear.
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” he told her. “These gents won’t bother you anymore.”
“You’re talkin’ mighty big considerin’ that there’s one o’ you and four of us,” the man holding the horse shot back.
“The way I see it, I’ve got you outnumbered,” Matt drawled.
“How the hell do you figure that?”
Matt shrugged. “One man counts for more than four polecats, at least where I come from.”
“Why, you son of a—”
Matt held up his left hand to stop the cowboy, while keeping his right close to the butt of the Colt on that side.
“Watch your language, amigo,” he said softly. “There’s a lady present.”
A voice in the back of his head warned him that he shouldn’t be getting in more trouble while he and Sam and Thorpe and Everett still had the problem of Joshua Shade to deal with. But there were some things in life that a man just couldn’t walk away from, and as far as Matt Bodine was concerned, this was one of them.
The cowboy let go of the horse’s harness at last. He took a couple of steps to the side, his face contorted with anger and his right hand held out in a clawlike shape above the butt of his gun, ready to hook and draw. He said, “All right, mister, you wanted trouble, you got it. You don’t know who you’re messin’ with here.”
“A drunk, from the looks of it.” Matt nodded toward the other cowboys. “Why don’t you just go with your friends and find someplace to sleep it off? That way, nobody has to get hurt.”
“It’s too late for that,” the cowboy insisted. “My name’s Dub Branch, and I’m the slickest draw in these parts. What do they call you?” He sneered. “I like to know who I’m about to kill.”
One of his friends said, “Uh, Dub, maybe you better think twice about this. That fella don’t look like he’s got much back-up in him.”
“That’s right,” Matt said. “The Good Lord plumb left it out of me. And by the way, the name’s Bodine. Matt Bodine.”
The eyes of all four cowboys widened in surprise, as did the eyes of the young woman, who still hadn’t moved on. Matt didn’t want any gunplay to start while she was still close by, so this was one time he was hoping that his reputation would be enough to make a potential opponent decide not to fight after all.
Dub Branch didn’t want to give up that easy, though. He said, “Hell, anybody can call himself Matt Bodine! We don’t know that you’re really him.”
“Dub, I’ve heard about Bodine,” one of the others said. “This fella matches the description. And look at those two irons he packs. He’s a gunslinger, all right.”
“Aw, it’s all for show!” Branch insisted. “And I’m gonna prove it right now! Any o’ you boys with me?”
One of the cowboys said, “I’ll back your play, Dub.”
Matt glanced at him, saw that he wasn’t as drunk as the others. And the man had a certain cool fatalism in his eyes that marked him as a dangerous hombre. If Matt had to take both of them, he’d go for the other man first, then Branch.
“Thanks, Court.” Branch moved to one side while Court went the other way, spreading out so that Matt would have a harder time getting lead in both of them before one of them dropped him.
That was their plan anyway.
But that wasn’t now it worked out, because as Branch cried, “Get him!” and both men slapped leather, Matt palmed out both guns and fired so fast that it seemed the Colts had appeared in his hands by magic.
The right-hand gun roared, sending a bullet into Court’s chest just as he cleared leather. The impact rocked him back and then sent him reeling.
Matt held his fire with the left-hand gun, which was lined up on Branch’s shirt pocket. Branch’s Colt was only halfway out of the holster.
“Let it slide, Dub,” Matt said while keeping watch on Court out of the corner of his eye. “Let it slide, and you won’t have to die tonight.”
