A Hundred Ways to Kill

Book 16: Blood Bond

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

These blood brothers are gunslingers with a conscience—and red-hot lead. Sharp-shooting adventure from the greatest Western writers of the 21st century.
 
Young Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves became blood brothers on the day the rancher's son saved the warrior's life, forging a bond no one could ever break. And as years passed, a legend grew of the Cheyenne and the white man who rode together—and who could jerk killing iron with the best of them . . .
 
A Hundred Ways to Kill
 
Heading west to San Diego some honest pilgrims pay good money to keep their wagon train safe, but their guards soon turn against their charges and head off to Mexico with six young girls captive. When word reaches Tombstone—where Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves are wearing out their welcome gambling with Wyatt Earp—they know they have to do something about it.
 
But it's going to take more than their bravery and shooting skills to rescue those girls from the merciless white slavers. On the way to Mexico, Matt and Sam ride into a war party of Apaches. They'll be facing outlaws and furious Apaches at the same time. For two blood brothers, the idea is to rescue those girls and blast their way North to freedom—no matter how many bullets it takes, or how many guns are shooting back . . .
 
Praise for the novels of William W. Johnstone
 
“[A] rousing, two-fisted saga of the growing American frontier.”—Publishers Weekly on Eyes of Eagles
 
“There's plenty of gunplay and fast-paced action.”—Curled Up with a Good Book on Dead Before Sundown

Release date: October 24, 2011

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 417

Sample

In September 1880, some of the most dangerous men in Tombstone, Arizona—meaning some of the most dangerous men in the world—undertook a desperate mission of mercy into Mexico. It began in Cactus Patch, a small town some miles northeast of Tombstone.

Too much whiskey, too much smoke in the air, too many losing hands of poker: Bob Farr had had enough of all three. He pushed his chair back from the card table and stood up. Three men remained seated: Joe Spooner, Don Brown, and Lee Lindsey.

“Where you goin’, Bob?” Joe Spooner asked.

“Get me some air,” Farr said.

“Going back to the ranch?”

“No, just stepping outside to clear my head. Maybe a break will change my luck.”

It was a friendly game of poker. The four men had been playing for small stakes. But even small stakes are big when you don’t have much money. Ranch hands like Bob Farr and the others worked hard for low wages.

Bob Farr went to the front entrance of Shorty Kirk’s small saloon. He pushed open one of the double doors, went outside. He was in his early twenties, of medium height, slim, wiry. Farr was a clean-lined, clean-cut young fellow.

He felt slightly sick at his stomach. The whiskey wasn’t sitting right, but then, Shorty Kirk’s whiskey was none too good.

A fan of murky yellow light shone out through the saloon doorway, spilling across the ground. A line of horses was tied up at the hitching post at the front of the building. Bob stepped to the side, away from the door. Sweat misted his face. He leaned against the wall, tilting his head back, closing his eyes.

The earth moved beneath him. He had the spins. He opened his eyes, straightening up. That worked a little better for him. Not much, but better.

Bob rubbed his face, trying to restore some feeling to it. He wiped his sweaty palms off on his jeans.

It was about ten o’clock. The night air was fresh after the smoky stuffiness of the saloon. Bob Farr breathed deeply, filling his lungs with it. After a while, the queasiness went away.

Somewhere across the street, a dog barked. Bob looked around. Cactus Patch was a mighty small town, more of a crossroads with a handful of buildings scattered around it. Some were adobe, others wooden frame, log cabin, or sod dugout.

Cactus Patch lay on a shelf at the foot of the west slope of a mountain overlooking Sulphur Spring Valley in Pima County, southwest Arizona Territory. Its nearest neighbor was Tombstone, whose silver-rich earth had birthed a roaring mining boomtown.

Unlike many villages and settlements which had lately sprung up around Tombstone, Cactus Patch long predated the silver strike. A freshwater spring sited near a mountain pass brought it into being decades earlier, a vital part of the area’s traditional cattle- and sheep-raising culture.

It featured a trading post, café, and two saloons, largely serving the small ranches in the gorges and side canyons honeycombing the foothills. It survived, but never flourished. Its growth was held in check by the Apaches, a dread power in the land until recent years, and still a threat.

A three-quarter moon hung midway between the eastern horizon and the zenith. The big, bright, orange-yellow September moon sailed through thin, hazy clouds.

Shops and stores were closed, dark, as were most of the dwellings. Cactus Patch folk were early risers, up and doing well before dawn. Inside the saloon were a handful of men—the poker players and a few solitary drinkers.

The street was bright where moonlight shone down on it; shadows were black dark. Stray breezes lifted off the western flat, blowing through the pass.

A girl ran out of an alley into the middle of street. She stopped, looking around, as if uncertain of which way to turn.

She was young, slim, with gently rounded curves outlined against a thin dress. Long pale hair streamed down her back. She breathed hard, panting, gasping.

She seemed played out. She lost her footing, tripped, and fell sprawling into the street, in a tangle of arms and legs. The ground was hard, stony. She cried out.

She raised herself up, looking back the way she had come, toward the alley on the east side of the street. Moonbeams fell on her, lighting her up in a silver wash. She looked about fifteen. Her face was the face of fear, dark eyes wide and staring, mouth gaping. She seemed unaware of Bob Farr’s presence.

There were few females in Cactus Patch, and even fewer young, good-looking ones. Bob knew them all by sight, and this wasn’t one of them. She was a stranger.

Where had she come from? This was hard country, thinly populated, and no place for young women to be traveling alone by night. Or in the daytime, either.

The girl rose, swaying, stumbling. Her thin dress was torn in more than a few places and showed a lot of leg: long, slender calves and rounded thighs.

A man came out of the alley, rushing to her. She gathered herself to run, but he was on her before she could make a break.

He was a big man, solid, thick bodied, a full-grown adult. Even by moonlight you could see he was some twenty years her senior. Mean faced, too.

He wore a white five-gallon hat, black vest over light-colored shirt, and chaps over denims. Shirtsleeves were rolled up past the elbows, exposing brawny forearms. A belt gun was holstered low on his right side, his spurred boots showed sharp-pointed toes. A short dog whip hung by a thong from his left wrist.

He caught the girl by the arm, causing her to cry out in pain. She struggled to break free. He pulled her back, lifting her off her feet and flinging her to the ground. He loomed menacingly over her, his shadow falling across her.

“Got ya, you blamed hellion! Give me a good hard run across half the county,” he said, snarling. “No little bit of a gal gives Quirt Fane the slip! I’ll learn ya what happens to runners—”

He lashed out at her with the short, thin whip, the lash curling around the curve of her hip. She shrieked, her voice weak, quavery. “Help! Help me, somebody, please—”

He slipped his hand free of the short whip’s looped thong and clubbed the girl with the pommel’s knobbed end, clipping her neatly behind an ear. The move, brutally efficient, was carried out with smooth, practiced ease. The girl fell unconscious.

Generally, on the frontier or elsewhere, it is wisdom not to interfere between a man and a woman. Bob Farr had once seen a saloon girl fly into a fury, trying to claw the eyes out of a deputy who had just cold-cocked the pimp-husband who’d been slapping her silly, slamming her with brutal open-handed blows that rocked her head from side to side, leaving her face swollen, and red-raw. It had been a lesson to Bob about the virtue of minding one’s own business.

But a decent, red-blooded young fellow such as he could only stand for so much.

This was no lovers’ quarrel, nor even some particularly fierce example of harsh family discipline. This was way out of line. Something was wrong here—bad wrong.

Bob would have acted sooner if he hadn’t been more than a little drunk. And from the time the girl had run into view and the man clubbed her down, everything happened so fast.

Quirt Fane stood with his back to him. Bob pushed off from the wall, starting forward. He moved quickly, long striding, light-footed. He was on the man before the other was aware of his presence.

The big hombre outweighed Bob Farr by fifty, sixty pounds. Bob grabbed him by the shoulder hard and spun him around. His right fist came up from hip level, striking out.

Knobby knuckles connected with the point of Quirt Fane’s chin, a powerful blow that landed right on the button with an audible thud. Quirt rocked back on his heels, knocked flat to the dirt street. The whip fell from his hand, the hat from his head.

Quirt sat up, blood trickling from the corner of a split, now-fat lip. He shook his head to clear it.

The girl stirred, moaning as if in the throes of a bad dream.

Quirt remembered his gun and reached for it. Bob Farr stood over him, hand resting on the butt of a holstered gun. “Try it,” he said.

Quirt Fane thought better of it. Instead, he raised the hand to his swollen jaw, rubbing it. “Back off, cowboy.”

“Like hell!” Bob said.

“You don’t know what you’re mixing into,” Quirt said warningly, voice thick with menace.

“You tell me,” Bob suggested.

“You’re in over your head. Get out while you still can.”

“You’re the one who’s flat on his ass on the street.”

“Lucky punch. You hit me when I wasn’t looking.”

“A mite different from beating up some pore little ol’ girl, ain’t it?”

“What’s it to you? She’s my woman. Don’t go mixing in what don’t concern you.”

“Funny, she don’t seem willing,” Bob pressed.

“Fool gal gets some crazy notions sometimes. I got to knock sense into her,” Quirt said.

“Maybe you need some sense knocked into you.”

“And you’re the one who’s gonna do it, huh?”

“Looks like.”

“You figured wrong, sonny. Dead wrong.” Fane then spoke as if to someone behind Bob Farr:

“Take him, Dorado!”

Bob smiled thinly, with contempt. “That dodge’s got whiskers—”

He was brought up short by the sound of a gun hammer clicking into place. The soft scuff of shoe leather against street grit sounded behind him.

“You’re covered, amigo,” a voice said, with a thick accent.

Bob was mousetrapped and knew it. Quirt wasn’t alone; he had a sideman who had come up through the alley. Quirt was grinning now, an ugly grin that did not bode well for Bob Farr.

Bob stepped back and to the side, looking behind him.

Quirt’s sideman stood in the mouth of the alley: Dorado.

A black bolero hat topped a raw-boned, hollow-eyed face. The hat had a gold-colored hatband. Black hair parted in the middle fell to jawline length. He had dark shiny eyes, high cheekbones, and a mustache with the ends turned down framing the mouth.

A gun held at hip height was leveled on Bob Farr, a golden gun. It gleamed with an unearthly glow in the moonlight.

It was El Dorado, “the Golden Man,” a Mexican bandit with a golden pistol. Bob had heard of him. Who hadn’t? A gold-crazy bandido who decked himself out in gold ornaments: earrings, rings, bolo tie holder, belt buckle. And a golden gun—solid gold.

“Where are the horses?” Quirt Fane asked.

“Tied to a tree in back of the buildings,” Dorado said. He looked down at the girl sprawled motionless in the street. “What happened to her?”

“She’s all right. She started hollering. I had to quiet her.”

“You can carry her, too.”

Quirt picked himself up, dusted himself off. He slipped the whip handle thong around his left wrist, and pulled on his hat.

“And this one?” Dorado asked, indicating Bob Farr with a lazy wag of his gun.

“I’ll take care of him myself,” Quirt said ominously.

A man came out of the saloon: Pace Hutchins, one of regulars. “Coming back in, Bob? Hey! What’s going on here—?”

Pace fumbled with his gun. Dorado fired first, the blast shattering the stillness of the night. Pace crumpled, falling backwards through the swinging doors into the saloon.

Bob Farr saw his chance and took it. A slim chance, a long shot, but better than nothing. His hand plunged for his gun.

Quirt lashed out with the whip, striking Bob across the face, going for his eyes. Bob turned his head away, raising his left arm to ward off the blow.

The girl was awake. Maybe she’d just come to, or maybe she’d been shamming for a while, playing possum. She jumped up and ran, angling across the street.

Bob Farr drew. Dorado shot him in the back. Bob staggered forward. Quirt’s gun was in his hand. He fired into Bob’s middle at point-blank range. Bob folded, dropping.

Others in the saloon rushed to the door, shouting. Somebody shot at Quirt, and missed. Quirt blasted back, scoring on someone inside, but he couldn’t see whom. A pained outcry was choked off.

Quirt looked away, for the girl. She was far up the other side of the street, running fast. He swung the gun toward her but an outburst of shots from the saloon forced him to turn his attention in that direction.

“Dorado, don’t let the girl get away! Shoot her if you have to—”

Bullets tore the air around Quirt and Dorado, too close. Those in the saloon could shoot, too. Dorado ducked back into the alley, out of the firing line. He reached around a corner of the building, laying down covering fire for Quirt.

“Let’s go, Quirt! Vámonos!”

“The girl—!”

“Forget her, save yourself!”

Gunfire from the saloon was getting hotter. Cursing, Quirt bent low, almost doubled, throwing lead as he scrambled for the alley.

He ducked into it just before Shorty Kirk cut loose at him with a shotgun blast. Quirt reached safety just in time. He followed Dorado to the far side of the alley, making a beeline for where the horses were tethered.

Men poured out of the saloon just as Quirt and Dorado were riding away. They fired at the fugitives, but they were too far away. The outlaws were swallowed up by darkness.

The regulars at Shorty Kirk’s saloon took stock. Joe Spooner had been drilled through the arm, a clean shot that missed the bone and vital blood vessels. Pace Hutchins had been tagged in the side and thigh. He nearly bled to death before the thigh wound was staunched. A long recovery lay ahead, yet he would live.

But Bob Farr was dead.

“This is the showdown. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

It was the final call at the Oriental Saloon. Dawn was breaking and a marathon all-night poker game had reached its climax.

The big players were seated at a round table in the gaming room, a space separate from the saloon proper. The scene had the bleak aspect of sunrise elbowing aside the revels of the night.

Life was lived at a fever pitch and death was always near at hand in Tombstone in Arizona Territory. Tombstone, boomtown! A fortune of silver ore lay below the surface of the earth; a fortune in silver had already been pried out from underground. Fresh fortunes remained to be found and taken. Riches were being extracted daily.

Even now, the morning shifts at the big mines such as the Tough Nut and the Contention had already been several hours on the job. Rock-hard miners labored in shafts and tunnels beneath rock-hard earth.

Working underground with pick and shovel was one way to gather riches; working the honey traps of Tombstone was another. The town was top-heavy with saloons, brothels, and gaming places. The gambling halls ranked high and low, from bucket-of-blood dives in canvas tents to pleasure palaces like the Oriental, located on the main thoroughfare of Allen Street.

For the Oriental, the dawn hour was ebb tide. The regular customers had long since cleared out. The saloon girls had gone to bed—not to ply the harlot’s trade, but to get good day’s rest before sundown spelled the start of another working day.

Now, apart from the poker players, only a hardcore element remained of spectators determined to watch the high-stakes game reach its finish. They were staffers mostly, house men, barkeeps, faro dealers, even a few saloon girls.

All kept their distance—a respectful distance—from the big-money players. “Not safe to crowd the players at that table,” a barkeep said, “they’re a touchy bunch.”

Among the players, Sam Two Wolves held three of a kind: three queens, a four, and a three. Like the others, he played his cards close to the vest, literally.

Heaped in the center of the green baize table was the pot, the treasure all were playing for. It anted up to over four thousand dollars, cash money.

Play had ebbed and flowed since the early evening hours, gold coins and greenbacks passing back and forth across the table. A night of intent play had unwound into dawn, culminating in this, the final hand. The showdown.

It was as if the game existed by night to be banished by the light of day, like some ghostly phantom. Now the time had come to show what was on the other side of the cards.

Those still in at the last hand: Sam Two Wolves, Wyatt Earp, Johnny Ringo, and Buckskin Frank Leslie.

They were names well-known thoughout the West and beyond, all skilled and deadly practioners of the Way of the Gun.

Others sat at the table, some no less renowned: Matt Bodine, Curly Bill Brocius, Morgan Earp. They had been in the game earlier, but had been busted out or folded their hands. They stayed to watch the last turn of the cards.

Sam Two Wolves was a man of two worlds, half red man and half white. His father was a Cheyenne Indian, his mother a onetime New England schoolmarm. His copper-hued, beardless chiseled face showed dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a hawklike nose. He wore white man’s garb—a button-down long-sleeve shirt and denims. He was armed with a holstered belt gun and a knife.

But then, who didn’t go armed in Tombstone? From preachers to prostitutes, everyone in town carried a firearm. Even respectable ladies went about with a derringer hidden in a beaded reticule handbag.

More unusual was the fact that Sam Two Wolves sat with his back to the front entrance. Nobody wanted to sit with their back to the entrance, not since Wild Bill Hickok had done so in a card game in Deadwood and been shot in the back. Yet Two Wolves occupied that universally unpopular seat, unconcerned. He had someone watching his back.

That someone was Matt Bodine. Thirty, lean, rawboned, handsome, and clear-eyed, wearing two guns on his hips, that was Matt Bodine. He and Sam Two Wolves were friends, partners, and more: They were blood brothers, Brothers of the Wolf.

Their sacred pact had been sealed in blood in boyhood days, when they were both growing up in the Northern Range, uneasily straddling two societies, that of the white man and the Cheyenne Indian.

But that fragile separate peace with the outside world came crashing to an end in July 1876. The annihilation of General George Custer and his 7th Cavalry regiment by the forces of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Battle of the Little Big Horn meant the end of the way of life shared by the young Brothers of the Wolf.

To stay in their homeland would compel them to choose sides in the war between the reds and the whites, fighting to a bitter end. Abandoning home and ranch, the Brothers went into self-imposed exile, far from their home grounds. The West was big enough for them to make new lives in.

Sam Two Wolves and Matt Bodine were fighting men, shootists, and adventurers. Fighting men, not outlaws. They were resolved to stay “on the side of the law,” more or less. It was sometimes a shifty, slippery borderland, in a world where the unjust too often bent the law to their own devices and those outside the law often had their own peculiar brand of integrity.

Yes, Sam Two Wolves could rest easy knowing that Matt Bodine had his back, just as Matt was secure in the same confidence.

Two Wolves wielded a deadly gun, filling graves on Boot Hills throughout the West. Matt Bodine was a gunman of an even higher order of magnitude, with a lightning-fast draw and unerring accuracy. His bullets hit their mark as surely as a compass needle points north. He took his place in the front rank of such fabled gunhawks as Wes Hardin, Billy the Kid, Mysterious Dave Mather, Sartana, Colonel Douglas Mortimer, and Johnny Cross.

Few were his equals. Yet, now, at the card table, sat not one or two but possibly three gunfighters who were or might be his match. They were Johnny Ringo, Wyatt Earp, and Buckskin Frank Leslie.

Fate, fortune, or a combination of both had brought such masterful gunhawks together in Tombstone at the same time. Unlikely though such a concentration might seem to later ages, the history books will affirm the truth of such a gathering.

Tombstone was where the action was, the bonanza boomtown with fortunes waiting to be made. Its proximity to the Mexican border was a factor, too. Borders mean smuggling, gunrunning, robbery, rustling. Tombstone’s badmen liked to say they worked “a two-way street, running north and south.”

One who well knew the truth of that statement was Ringo. John Ringo, thirty-six, first made a name for himself in Texas’s Mason County War. A natural-born loner, he was a man of few words—brooding, a thinker. To the amazement of his associates, he actually read and enjoyed books!

A handsome man with dark hair and hooded eyes, Ringo could be likeable enough when he tried, but he didn’t try too often. He was a heavy drinker in a time and place where drinking to excess was not the exception but the rule. He was touchy when sober (which was rare enough), but when he was in his cups, he had a hair-trigger temper. Not long ago in the Tombstone area, he had shot and killed a man who refused his offer of a drink of whiskey. He was a dead shot and lightning-fast draw with the twin ivory-handled .44s worn on his hips.

Ringo had many acquaintances, few friends. His closest friend in all the world also sat at the table: Curly Bill Brocius. Curly Bill had a big black mop of curly hair, a big mustache, and a big, friendly grin. He was genuinely good-natured, which only made him more dangerous. He could genuinely like a man, yet kill him at the drop of a hat, if needed. A solid gunman with plenty of sand, he did not rank among the killer elite of gunfighters.

He was a rustler, robber, outlaw. He and Ringo were the undisputed leaders of a loose-knit gang of over half-a-hundred rustlers and outlaws known locally as “The Cowboys.” The band numbered many Texans, Southerners, and ex-Rebels—or, rather, not so ex-, even though fifteen years had passed since war’s end.

Seated across from Ringo at the round green table was a remarkable man who in many ways was Ringo’s opposite—yet perhaps not so opposite as that, despite surface appearances.

He was Wyatt Earp, the keystone arch of the fighting Earp clan. His older brother Virgil was assistant deputy sheriff of Pima County, the vast tract of land in southeast Arizona Territory of which Tombstone was a part.

Wyatt, thirty-one, was tall, athletic, clean lined, with fair, almost blondish, hair and mustache. His eyes were icy: “Gunsight Eyes.” He had been a shotgun messenger and range detective. As a fighting lawman in the wild and woolly cow towns of Ellsworth, Wichita, and Dodge City, he’d made the peace and kept it—at gunpoint, as needed. Even his enemies acknowledged his fearlessness.

Wyatt was not so wedded to the law that he hadn’t had run-ins with it himself. The big iron on his hip was a Colt Peacemaker, a weighty piece useful both for shooting and clunking heads. Wyatt did plenty of both. He held down the post of assistant deputy sheriff in Tombstone. The job didn’t pay much. He beefed up his finances by working as a Wells Fargo shotgun messenger and card slick.

His long-fingered cardplayer’s hands were no less gunfighter’s hands, uncallused by hard work. Wyatt liked to dude it up, dressing like a townsman, with a long-tailed black coat, fancy brocaded vest, white shirt, and string tie.

There was no love lost between Wyatt and Ringo. Bad blood? Not necessarily, not yet. But hard feelings. They’d crossed trails before. In Wichita, Wyatt had rousted and pistol-whipped friends of Ringo’s. Strictly in the line of duty, Wyatt’s defenders said, but the Cowboy faction saw it differently.

“Ringo’s always half on the prod anyway, Wyatt’s more even-tempered—he don’t gun a man less’n it’s needful. Needful for him, that is.” So said Frank Leslie, another cardplayer sitting in on the last hand of this marathon poker game. But he didn’t say it there and never said it to Wyatt’s face.

Nashville Franklin Leslie was better known as Buckskin Frank, due to his penchant for wearing fringed leather vests and jackets. He had been an Indian scout for the army, gambler, brawler, shotgun messenger, gunman and, of all things, a wizard bartender. He made a dazzling show out of building and pouring drinks and was much in demand by the high-line saloons of Tombstone. He didn’t go looking for trouble, but it seemed to find him, not least because of his habit of romancing other men’s attractive wives.

It was estimated that he’d killed between ten and fifteen men in gunfights. Was he as fast and deadly as Matt Bodine, Ringo, or Wyatt Earp? None of them pushed too hard to find out.

Beside Wyatt and seated at the big table was younger brother Morgan Earp, twenty-four.

In all, a tableful of Tombstone’s rising men. Some played for the fun of a sociable game; others were out for blood—not just at the card tables, either. Now came the last hand, for a $4,000–plus pot.

It was down to Sam Two Wolves, Ringo, Wyatt, and Buckskin Frank. The others at the table had either thrown in their hands or sat it out.

“Show.”

Cool, nonchalant, professional, Wyatt showed his hand. “A straight. Can you beat it?”

Sam Two Wolves responded in kind. “Three ladies.” Three queens.

Morgan Earp started. He began swearing under his breath, not so far under that it couldn’t be made out. He swore violently, feelingly, with real emotion. He was a good-looking youngster, the handsomest of the Earp brood, though his face was now ugly with passion.

“Hell, Morg, the way you’re carrying on, one’d think it was your money that was lost,” Wyatt said mildly.

“All you Earps share and share alike,” Ringo said.

“Yes and no.” Wyatt was noncommittal.

“If one of you gets a job with Wells Fargo, another does. If one of you gets a lawdog’s post, the others wind up as special deputies,” Ringo went on.

In fact, that’s what Morg was, a special deputy.

Ringo held his cards in his right hand, pouring from a bottle with his left. It was one of many such bottles he’d consumed this night. He threw in his hand. “That beats me.”

He had two kings, and two aces.

Curly Bill exploded in amazement. “Two pair?! You threw in all those hundreds of dollars and try to get away by bluffing with a lousy two pair?!”

“Thought it was worth a try,” Ringo said, shrugging. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“That’s a mighty big bluff!”

“Who knows? Might’ve pulled it off with deeper pockets.”

“What’re you holding, Frank? Show,” Wyatt said.

“Why not? You paid for a look-see,” Buckskin Frank said. He had three jacks, two deuces. “Full house.”

Morg resumed swearing. Frank’s big hands reached out to rake in the pot. Matt and Two Wolves exchanged glances as Frank gathered up the cash.

“Oh, well. Hard come, easy go,” Matt said, sighing.

“Couple years’ wages for an honest cowpoke,” Curly Bill said.

“Honest cowpoke? You got any?” Morg cracked.

“Nothing but. Got about a hundred or so,” Bill said. The Cowboys, of which he and Ringo were the head, were cutthroats. Ringo laughed.

“That’s Tombstone for you, men. Get rich quick, get dead faster,” Buckskin Frank said.

The game was over. Chairs were pushed back from the table, their occupants rising to stretch out. Groans sounded as muscles stiff and sore from sitting hunched over a deck of cards all night got a workout. Weary eyes were rubbed, gaping mouths yawned.

“Aren’t you gonna give us a chan. . .