They had almost reached the water tank by now, and before they could continue the conversation, someone shouted, “Hold it! Who’s out there?”
The blood brothers both heaved sighs of relief as they recognized Marshal Asa Thorpe’s voice. Matt called, “It’s us, Marshal—Bodine and Two Wolves.”
“Just the two of you?”
“That’s right.”
“Come ahead then!”
Holding a rifle, Thorpe stepped out from behind the shed the railroad used to store tools and a handcar.
“Where’s Shade?” Sam asked.
Thorpe lowered the rifle and jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the shed.
“Tied up around behind that tool shack,” the marshal said. “Gagged, too. Everett and I got tired of listening to his line of bull. Everett’s standing guard over him.”
“You run into any problems gettin’ out of town?” Matt asked.
Thorpe shook his head and said, “No. You fellas did a good job of drawing all the attention to yourselves. We made it out the back of the barn with nobody seeing us and rode straight here. How about you? Are either of you hurt?”
“Nope,” Matt replied as he and Sam swung down from their saddles. “Plenty of lead got tossed around, but none of it landed on us.”
“We led the pursuit a good two miles east of the settlement,” Sam added. “Then we abandoned the wagon just like we planned and circled around to get back here.”
“No one followed us either,” Sam said. “We made sure of that.”
Thorpe nodded. “It’s nice to have a plan work out for a change. Now all we have to do is wait for the train to show up in the morning.”
Even though it was dark, Matt and Sam exchanged a glance. Thorpe sounded optimistic, and the blood brothers wanted to feel that way, too…
But they had seen too much trouble in their young lives to believe it was going to be that simple.
Sam pulled his Winchester from the saddle boot and nodded toward the water tank.
“I believe I’ll climb up there and stretch out on that little platform,” he said. “Should be able to see a long way from there.”
Matt gathered up the reins and asked, “Where are the horses?”
Thorpe pointed to the north. “There’s a little wash about fifty yards in that direction. It’s just deep enough to hide them, and there’s a little grass in the bottom for them to graze on. Still handy enough to get to in a hurry, though, if we need to.”
Matt nodded. “I’ll take these over there and picket them, too.”
Sam was already climbing the rungs that were nailed to one of the thick posts holding up the water tank. He reached the platform next to the long spout that could be lowered when a train stopped to take on water in its boiler. He lay down on his belly, facing back toward Pancake Flats. From there, he had a good view of the tracks as they dwindled into the distance.
The night was cool, which was good because it would help keep him awake, Sam thought. He was tired, but there would be time enough to rest when Joshua Shade was safely behind the walls of Yuma Prison, awaiting his fate. That ought to be by sundown of the next day, Sam figured.
Whenever it was, it couldn’t be too soon to suit him and Matt. Once again, they had landed up to their necks in danger, despite all their good intentions.
But as long as that kept happening, Sam thought with a wry grin in the darkness, at least life wouldn’t get boring.
The town of Pancake Flats looked normal in the morning as the sun rose, scattering its widespread golden light over the Arizona landscape. All the bodies had been hauled into the livery stable and stacked like cordwood, and frightened citizens working at gunpoint had shoveled dirt over the pools of blood in the street.
Everybody in town had been disarmed and rounded up, just as Garth had ordered, and herded into the hotel. There were enough of them that they outnumbered their captors by quite a bit. They could have overwhelmed the outlaws if they had all attacked at once.
But nobody wanted to be among the ones who would die if they tried such a thing. That fear and indecision kept anybody from even making the attempt until it was too late. Once they were all gathered together, unarmed, under the guns of the lawless men, the only thing that would happen if they tried to fight back was a massacre.
That was what the townspeople told themselves anyway. It was easier than dying.
Once all the signs of the previous night’s violence had been covered up, the men who had done the work were marched back into the hotel. If anyone wondered what had happened to the woman who had registered as Jessica Devlin, nobody said anything about it.
She was nowhere to be seen, though.
Garth singled out the ticket clerk who worked at the Southern Pacific depot. Gesturing with the gun in his hand, he said, “Come along with me, hombre.”
The clerk hung back like he wanted to melt into the crowd of prisoners in the hotel lobby. “Wha…what do you want with me?” he asked.
