Gunsight Crossing

Book 3: Blood Bond

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

No one wants to be in the sights of these blood brothers. Rip-roaring Western adventure from the bestselling author of Brotherhood of the Gun. 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 . . . Gunsight Crossing Wise in the ways of a lawless land, the blood brothers deal out their own brand of frontier justice. And when they ride a hot and dusty trail into Texas looking for some excitement, they find it in spades. Big John Lee owns the biggest spread west of the Pecos, but he’s hired a crowd of tough gunners to claim more than his legal share. Bodine and Sam Two Wolves decide to throw their lot in with the men of the Circle S, who were next on John Lee’s land-grabbing list. It certainly won’t be the first time they use their Colts to deal out death sentences in burning powder and hot lead—but if they’re not careful, it might well be their last . . . 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 as this old-time hero proves again that a steady eye and quick reflexes are the keys to survival on the Western frontier.”— Curled Up with a Good Book on Dead Before Sundown

Release date: November 19, 2014

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 286

Sample

“Do you have any idea at all where we might be?” Sam asked.

“Of course I do,” Matt said with a smile. “We’re in New Mexico Territory.”

“You said that last week!”

“It’s a big territory.”

And it was hot. The hard-packed and rutted road upon which they traveled eastward flung the heat back at them. They had seen jackrabbits, a few eagles soaring high in the brilliant blue of the sky, and nothing else for two days.

“But I think it’s time to cut south,” Matt said.

“I think it’s time to do something,” Sam Two Wolves agreed. “We’re running out of food, and if we don’t find water soon, we’re going to die out here in this godforsaken place.”

Matt laughed at his blood brother, but he knew the truth lay like shining steel in his words. They were going to be in serious trouble if they didn’t find water, and find it very quickly.

Matt Bodine and Sam August Webster Two Wolves were blood brothers, bonded by the Cheyenne ritual that made them as one. They were also Brothers of the Wolf; they were Onihomahan: Friends of the Wolf. The two men could and often did pass as having the same mother and father—which they did not. Both possessed the same broad shoulders, lean hips, and heavy musculature. Sam’s eyes were black, Matt’s were blue. Sam’s hair was black, Bodine’s was dark brown. They were the same height and very nearly the same weight. Both wore the same type of three-stone necklace around their necks, the stones-pierced by rawhide. Both were ruggedly handsome men. Both had gone through the Cheyenne Coming of Manhood; they had the scars on their chests to prove it.

“You really think God has forsaken this country?” Matt asked.

“No. Of course not. But I think that perhaps He ignores it more than other sections.”

The brothers cut south.

The horses suddenly pricked their ears and became restless.

“Indians?” Matt asked.

“I hope not,” Sam replied. “This is Comanche and Apache country—I think.” He stood up in the stirrups and sniffed the air. It was moist. “Water,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘I think’? You don’t know what tribes are around here?”

“I am Northern Cheyenne, idiot! From a thousand miles north of this desolation. Am I supposed to know everything about every tribe in North America?”

A stranger would think the two disliked each other. They loved each other as brothers. The constant poking and ribbing was their way of showing the affection both felt for the other. As many trouble-hunters had learned painfully, quickly, and sometimes fatally, mess with one and you had the other with whom to deal.

“You’re half Cheyenne,” Bodine corrected. “And I don’t expect you to know anything. Without me, you’d have been lost two weeks ago.”

“Bah” Sam said contemptuously. “You couldn’t find your way to an outhouse if you had the squirts.”

Both men were excellent trackers and woodsmen, and both had the reputation of gunfighters, although neither had ever sought nor wanted that title.

The next day, the young men crossed a road that headed south by southwest. It looked well-traveled, but neither Matt nor Sam were looking for company, so they elected to go on for another day. They topped a ridge and saw another road, this one running north and south, and just beyond that, a river.

“What river is that?” Matt asked.

“I have no inkling whatsoever. Texas was your idea, not mine.” Sam sat his saddle and tried to look solemn. But his dark eyes were twinkling at the thoughts of whatever adventure lay ahead of them. The two young men were full of the juices of youth and had never run from anything in their lives.

Matt called him a very vulgar name in Cheyenne and with a whoop, they went galloping their horses toward the beckoning waters of the river.

Matt stood guard while his I-tat-an-e, Cheyenne for brother, took a bath, soaping himself generously and diving under the waters several times to rinse off. He climbed out, dried and dressed, and Matt took his turn. They both needed it: it had been about ten days since they’d bathed and shaved. But a shave was going to have to wait.

It was growing late in the afternoon, and both men were weary from the long, hot, almost waterless miles and days behind them. Sam made camp while Matt rode out to shoot some rabbits for their supper. Their supplies were growing dangerously low.

Matt killed two jackrabbits, and Sam had the last of their potatoes and onions ready for stewing when his brother returned. While the stew was bubbling and thickening, the young men drank coffee and relaxed.

“You have any idea what this river is called?” Sam asked.

“I hate to say it, but it may be the Pecos.”

“The Pecos!” Sam sat up. “If that’s the case, we’re almost out of New Mexico.”

“Yeah. Want to cut south and follow the river come first light?”

“Why not?”

The two young men were wandering, entirely aimlessly, trying to get their minds settled before returning to their home range in Montana. They had witnessed the awful carnage at Little Bighorn the past year, the battle in which Sam’s father, Medicine Horse, had charged Custer with a deliberately empty rifle and counted coup on Custer—striking him with his coup stick—before dying. Matt and Sam had laid on a ridge and watched through the swirling dust as the troopers of the Seventh fell.

Even though both young men were moderately wealthy in their own right—they both owned ranches and Sam’s white mother had left him quite an estate for the time—Matt and Sam knew they had to drift for a time. After seeing the slaughter at Little Bighorn, neither man felt at peace with himself.

“Riders coming,” Sam said, his palm to the ground. “Several of them.”

“I heard them before you did,” Matt lied.

“Ha! You couldn’t hear a bumblebee until it stung you on the rear.”

Matt and Sam got to their boots. Both men wore two guns. Matt carried both of his in leather, tied down, while Sam carried one in leather on his right side and another butt-forward on his left side, tucked in a sash he wore around his waist.

“They don’t look friendly,” Sam observed.

“Looking for trouble, I’d say.” Bodine moved away from Sam to lessen the odds of both of them being taken out at once should shooting start.

“Slow it down!” Bodine yelled. “We don’t need all that damn dust in our stew.”

Instead of easing up, the four riders kicked their horses into a gallop and came charging into the camp, knocking over the stew and scattering the blankets. They made their mistake when they slowed, turned around, and came back for another go at the camp.

Bodine reached up and jerked one out of his saddle while Sam was doing the same thing to another. The men hit the ground hard, on their backs, jarring their teeth and having the wind knocked from them. One mounted cowboy made the mistake of grabbing iron. Bodine put a .44 slug in his shoulder. The last rider sat his saddle, wanting to get into action, but not in a terrible hurry to get shot.

The shoulder-shot cowboy moaned and passed out, falling from his saddle.

A big black-headed fellow got to his boots cussing. While Sam kept a .44 on the last cowboy in his saddle, Bodine hit the big fellow twice in the belly and then came up with an uppercut that stretched him on the ground.

“You want a piece of it?” Bodine asked the other cowpoke, who was getting up.

“I reckon not. But John Lee ain’t gonna like this a-tall.”

“I don’t give a damn what John Lee likes or dislikes,” Bodine told him. “But I’ll tell you what you’re going to do.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Bodine stepped forward and knocked the man on his rear, bloodying his mouth and momentarily crossing his eyes.

“Yeah,” Matt told him. “You ready to listen?”

“I reckon so. Beats gettin’ my lights punched out.”

“Coffeepot’s smashed and the cook pot fell into the coals. Heat cracked it,” Sam said.

Bodine reached down and removed the man’s guns from leather. “Now listen carefully. You ride—I don’t care where—and you get back here with a new coffeepot, a new cook pot, and some meat and vegetables to go in it.” He pointed to the shoulder-shot puncher. “And take that punk with you. The others will stay here for insurance.”

“Are you crazy, man?” Bloody-mouth asked. “Do you know who you’re foolin’ with?”

Matt jerked iron and jacked the hammer back, placing the muzzle of the .44 on the man’s forehead. The sharp odor of urine filled the late afternoon air as Bloody-mouth peed in his long-handles.

“If I have to tell you again, I’m going to be talking to a corpse,” Matt told him. “Now ride, you bastard!”

Bloody-mouth got gone. Matt boosted the shoulder-shot puncher into his saddle and slapped the horse on the rump.

Matt turned toward the kid in the saddle as the black-headed man moaned and started to rise. He looked down the muzzle of the .44 in Sam’s hand and changed his mind. “You guys are crazy! Where’s Val?”

“He went to get us some food,” Sam told him. “After a brief altercation with my brother, he quickly realized the boorishness of your actions and felt very apologetic about it.”

“What the hell did you say?”

“Shut up!”

“I understood that.”

“Get off your horse,” Matt told the young puncher. “Now, use your thumb and forefinger only and toss your guns over to me.”

Two revolvers hit the ground.

“What’s your name?” Matt asked him.

“Childress.”

“What the hell was the point of coming in here and hoorahin’ us?”

“Just funnin’, that’s all.”

“You call destroying someone’s camp fun?”

“You shouldna oughta told us to slow up. You don’t tell Broken Lance riders to do nothin’. And you’re gonna find that out the hard way damn quick.”

“I doubt it,” Matt told him. “Now get that coffee pot you got tied behind your saddle and make us some coffee.”

“I’ll be damned iffen I will!”

Bodine moved toward him. “Do it!” his cohort yelled. “We ain’t got a whole lot of choice in the matter. And be sure to get that coffee sack outta your saddlebags.”

Both Sam and Bodine smiled. Childress probably had a spare six-shooter in there and black head was telling him to use it.

Sam put the muzzle of his .44 against the black-haired man’s ear. The sound of the hammer jacking back was very loud in the quiet. “If he comes out of there with iron in his hand instead of coffee, you’re dead.”

“Forget it, Childress,” the man called. “Just make the damn coffee.”

“Do you have a name?” Sam asked him.

“Blackie.”

Childress slowly took his coffee and his pot and made coffee, using water from his canteen. The aroma of the spilled stew wafted deliciously around the camp.

“I was looking forward to that stew,” Bodine remarked, sitting on a weathered log that had drifted down the river from only God knew where and how long ago.

“You ain’t gonna look forward to John’s visit,” Blackie said. “ ’Cause shortly after he gets here, you both gonna be dead men rottin’ on the ground.”

“You’ll be right there with us,” Matt told him, then his gaze cut to Childress. “And so will you.”

The bullying punchers exchanged worried glances. There was something in Bodine’s manner that led them both to believe he meant exactly what he said. And Sam Two Wolves had the same demeanor.

“You two related?” Blackie asked.

“Brothers,” Sam told him.

“Don’t see too many men wearin’ necklaces,” Childress said with a nasty smirk.

“They show us to be members of the Cheyenne tribe,” Bodine informed him. “We’ve both endured the Coming of Manhood.”

“Is that ’posed to mean something?” the young punk asked.

“It means something,” Blackie said, the words softly spoken. “Now shut your mouth, Childress. We’re in a lot more trouble here than you might think.”

“Wise man,” Sam told him. “You want some coffee?”

“I’d appreciate a cup.”

The men drank coffee and lounged for nearly an hour. They all heard the thunder of many hooves long before the riders topped the crest of the hill and stopped, looking down at the small camp. Sam and Bodine stood up and picked up Henry rifles, chambering rounds and keeping the hammers back.

“Don’t do nothin’ stupid,” Blackie said. “If John was comin’ in hostile, he’d done been shootin’. Just relax.”

“I’m very relaxed,” Bodine told him. “Are you relaxed, I-tat-an-e?”

“I am so at ease I might fall asleep any moment.”

“You guys are crazy!” Childress said. “John Lee is one of the fastest guns ever. And that’s Rawhide O’Neal next to him. Down at the end there, that’s Pen Masters—”

“Shut up, Childress!” Blackie told him. “Just shut your damn mouth!”

“You know somethin’ I don’t?” Childress asked.

“Yeah,” Blackie said sourly. “I shore do. Just be quiet.”

The cowhand Matt had sent for the pots, pans, and food rode beside John Lee as the men left the column and headed down the slope. Four riders fell in behind them.

“I sent you for pots and pans and food,” Matt told Val. “And you bring back an army. Tell me, do you know the difference between a cow’s tail and a pump handle?”

“Huh?” Val asked.

“You don’t?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“I’d hate to send you out for water, then,” Matt grinned the words.

Sam laughed. John Lee and the others did not see the humor in it. John Lee said, “You boys need to be taught a lesson, I’m thinking.”

“You’re wearing a gun,” Matt told him. “Why don’t you get your butt and your mouth out of that saddle and let’s see what you can do besides flap your gums.”

John looked like he was about to have a stroke. He sputtered for a moment. Nobody talked to him like that. He’d show the young pup a thing or two.

“That’s Matt Bodine, boss.” Blackie tossed the words out before John could leave the saddle.

One of the riders behind John expelled air slowly. Another one grunted. All of them kept their hands in sight.

“So it figures that’s got to be Sam Two Wolves with him,” Blackie added.

John Lee was a man used to getting his own way. He’d come out to that part of New Mexico and Texas years back, when life on the frontier meant facing death every day. It took hard and rough men to stay. The graveyard at his ranch was filled with men who’d died riding for the Broken Lance. But John Lee was not an ignorant man. He knew that if anyone started shooting, he’d be the first one Bodine would blow out of the saddle.

Everyone in the West had heard of Matt Bodine. Killed his first man at age fourteen. A year later, the man’s brothers came to avenge the killing. When the smoke drifted away, Matt was standing amid the bodies, both hands filled with Colts. When he was sixteen, rustlers hit the ranch. Matt killed two more and wounded two others. He’d lived with the Cheyenne for more than a year. Then he was a guard, riding shotgun for gold shipments. Four more men went to rest in lonely graves. He scouted for the Army and put more so-called bad men in the ground.

Sam Two Wolves was just as fast as Matt Bodine and jut as quick on the temper as he was on the trigger. John had heard the stories about Sam’s high education at an Eastern university and about his white mother’s wealth. John quickly surmised he was in the middle of a very volatile situation there.

“We didn’t bring any cookin’ utensils,” John said.

“That’s too bad,” Bodine told him. “ ’Cause we’re getting hungry.”

“And when we get hungry our tempers get short,” Sam added.

“Why didn’t you bring what I asked for?” Matt’s eyes met those of John Lee.

John wanted to tell him to go right straight to hell. But he wisely kept his mouth shut.

“I’ll tell you why,” Matt said. “Because you allow your men to ride roughshod over anything and anybody and think it’s funny when other people’s possessions are destroyed. You thought you were going to come out here with your pack of hyenas and leave our bodies for the buzzards and the coyotes. You think you’re God Almighty. Untouchable. I don’t like people like you. At all.”

Pen Masters rode down the slope. “Come on, Matt,” the gunfighter said. “You and me know each other from our days back on the Tongue. I don’t want this to turn into no shootin’. Not over some damn pots and pans.”

“It isn’t about pots and pans, Pen,” Matt told him. “You know that.”

“Matt,” the gunfighter said, “you’re the fastest man with a gun I’ve ever seen. But you’ll be shot to ribbons if you start anything here.”

“And you’ll all be dead,” Sam spoke. “And Lord of the Manor there,” his eyes touched John, “will be the first to go.”

“Copper!” John said. “Go on back to the ranch and fetch a goddamn coffeepot and other crap. Bring some food. We’ll wait here for you.”

The puncher left at a gallop. John’s eyes were hard and mean as he looked at Bodine. “I don’t take water from no man,” he told Bodine. “Maybe my boys were wrong in what they done. So I’ll replace your gear and provisions. Then you best ride on out of this area. No man wants to die before his time, Bodine. But if you ever brace me again and talk to me like you just done, as God is my witness, one of us will die. Come on, boys. Copper don’t need no nursemaid to find his way back.”

He wheeled his horse and rode away. Pen stayed for a moment, looking at Bodine while Blackie and Childress mounted up and rode off.

“Back off of this one, Bodine,” he warned, not in an unfriendly tone. “John Lee runs this part of the country. He owns everything and everybody. John Lee says ‘frog,’ people jump.”

“Then maybe he needs somebody to muddy up his pond,” Matt replied.

Sam grinned. He had a hunch that he and Matt were going to stick around for a time.

“So what’s the plan?” Sam asked, as Pen rode away.

Matt shrugged his shoulders. “What plan? I just took a dislike for the man, that’s all.”

“He’s easy to dislike,” Sam agreed. “Be interesting to see if our gear is replaced.”

“Oh, I think it will be. I’m sure he considers himself to be a very honorable man . . . and he might be in a very peculiar and self-serving fashion. I think as soon as our gear is replaced, we’d best pull out. That fellow back on the trail told us there was a little two-bit town about ten miles south of the New Mexico line. Half a dozen stores and a fleabag hotel. What do you think?”

“I’m game.”

Within the hour, the puncher called Copper rode back in and dropped a sack on the ground. “I ain’t got a thing in the world agin you fellers, so I’m gonna give you some friendly advice. Get gone. John Lee is all of a sudden hirin’ hardcases and payin’ fightin’ wages. And it ain’t ’cause of the Comanches neither. Quanah Parker and his bunch shot their wad a couple of years back. They’s still Injuns around, but not many. I don’t know what’s goin’ on, but was I you boys, I wouldn’t stick around and get caught up in the middle of it.”

Copper turned his horse and rode off.

“The Southern Cheyenne rode with Quanah and his bunch for a time,” Sam said. “But not many of them. Most of the others were Kiowa, Kwahadi, and Arapaho.”

“What do you think about Copper’s claim to know nothing about what John Lee is up to?”

Sam did a squatting motion, cupped his hands to indicate a large mound, and made a mooing sound. Cheyenne for bullshit.

John Lee had returned more than had been destroyed. There was a side of bacon, some flour and beans, potatoes and onions, and a skillet, cook pot, and coffeepot. Matt and Sam quickly packed up and headed south.

It was well after dark when they ro. . .