William Johnstone - Blood Bond - Deadly Road to Yuma

The outlaw’s knees unhinged, dropping him like a poleaxed steer. He fell in a limp heap next to the man he had killed a couple of minutes earlier.

Matt whirled as he heard a noise behind him, but it was just Sam climbing from the ladder onto the roof. “What the hell happened here?” Sam demanded.

“This fella just killed the guard Sheriff Flagg posted up here,” Matt explained as he gestured with his gun toward the man he had knocked out. “He was using a match to signal somebody in the hills when I walloped him.”

“Shade,” Sam said in a flat, hard voice.

“Yeah, that’s what I figure, too. Another of his men sent a signal from the top of the bank. They were letting Shade know that the lookouts were taken care of.”

“That means Shade is about to attack the town.”

“That’s right,” Matt said. “You go warn folks.”

“What are you going to do?”

“See if I can catch up with the hombre who sent the signal from the bank.” Matt started toward the ladder, then paused. “You might use this gent’s belt to lash his hands behind his back. Wouldn’t want him coming to and joining the party later on.”

“How come I get that job?”

Matt was already swinging a leg over the roof and onto the ladder. He grinned and said, “Because I’m closer to the ground.”

Then he started down the rungs as fast as he could go, skipping some of them and practically bouncing off of the ladder as he descended.

For a second, he had considered stopping at his room to get his trousers, rather than running around Arrowhead in his long underwear, but he’d decided not to take the time to do that. Modesty was one thing; catching the son of a bitch who had no doubt murdered the lookout on top of the bank was another.

Anyway, he had five rounds in the Colt he clutched in his hand, with the hammer resting on an empty chamber as it usually did. If five bullets weren’t enough for him to deal with one man, then he was in a lot more trouble than a pair of pants could fix.

As soon as his feet hit the dirt in the alley, Matt sprinted toward Main Street. When he reached it, he turned to his right, toward the bank. At the end of the block, he took a left-hand jog, since the bank was on the opposite side of the street from the hotel.

Nobody was on the street at this time of night, although lights still glowed from some of the saloons and a few horses were tied at the hitch rails.

Matt darted into the alley behind the block of buildings where the bank was located. He made no sound except the soft slap of his feet against the dirt.

That was enough to warn the man who had just reached the bottom of the ladder leaning against the rear wall of the bank, though. Matt could barely see him in the shadows, but he recognized the movement as the man spun toward him.

Matt dropped into a crouch and ran forward. At that same instant, Colt flame bloomed in the darkness as the man loosed a wild shot at him. The bullet whined past Matt’s head.

The revolver in Matt’s hand roared as he returned a shot of his own. In the flicker of illumination from the muzzle flash, he saw a man in the charro jacket and broad-brimmed, steeple-crowned sombrero of a Mexican.

The man staggered against the wall, but he didn’t drop his gun. He pulled the weapon up from its momentary sag and fired again, flame lancing from the barrel.

This slug came close enough for Matt to feel its warmth as it whispered past his cheek. Might have been nice to take this hombre alive, he thought, but he reminded himself that there was already one prisoner on top of the hotel.

So he didn’t take any chances. He pulled the trigger three times, and all three bullets hammered the outlaw against the wall. The man hung there for a second, finally dropping his gun, and then pitched forward.

Matt ran lightly toward him and bent to retrieve the fallen Colt. As he straightened, he heard shouts along Main Street, along with the clamorous ringing of a bell. The bell was probably meant to summon Arrowhead’s volunteer fire company, but tonight it served as a warning of a danger that might be even greater than an out-of-control blaze.

Matt had no doubt in his mind that at this very minute, Joshua Shade and his band of ruthless killers were sweeping toward Arrowhead like a plague of locusts.

Chapter 7

Sam knew that Matt was right about tying up the unconscious outlaw, so he pulled the man’s belt off, jerked his arms behind his back, and lashed the wrists together with it. He didn’t worry about how rough he was being either, or about how uncomfortable the hombre would be when he came to.

The smell of blood filled Sam’s nostrils, and it seemed to him that the killer was getting off lightly.

When he was finished with that, he pulled the man’s revolver from its holster and then hurried over to the ladder. Climbing down with a gun in each hand was awkward, but Sam managed.

If Joshua Shade was about to launch one of his infamous raids on Arrowhead, Sam knew that he might have need of both weapons before this night was over.

About the time his feet hit the ground, he heard a couple of shots from down the street. By the time he had run around the hotel to the front porch, several more shots had blasted out.

Sam was worried about Matt, but he knew his blood brother could take care of himself. Spotting a big brass bell hanging from the roof over the hotel porch, he ran to it and began ringing it, not with the ringer attached to it, but rather with the two guns in his hands, batting the bell back and forth and making it peal loudly.

At the same time he shouted, “Wake up, wake up! Outlaws! Outlaws! Joshua Shade!” He let out a shrill, yipping war cry that would have done his Cheyenne father proud, and then loosed a shot into the air.

Between the yelling, the war cry, the bell ringing, and the shots, that was plenty to alert the citizens of Arrowhead that something was very wrong. Men poured out of the saloons, abandoning their drinks and their poker games, to run into the street and shout questions at each other. The hotel doors swung open behind Sam, and the proprietor hurried out with a shotgun in his hands.

The man swung the Greener’s barrels toward Sam, who called quickly, “Don’t shoot! It’s me, Sam Two Wolves!”

The hotelman recognized Sam and blurted, “What the hell’s going on?”

“Joshua Shade and his gang are about to attack the town,” Sam replied, thinking as he did so that he and Matt were going to look mighty foolish if that turned out not to be the case. They would be the two little boys who cried wolf, like in the old fairy tale he remembered his mother reading to him.

In this case, a murdering, crazed lobo wolf named Joshua Shade.

Sam didn’t think they were wrong, though. No other explanation made sense, considering the murder of the lookouts and the signals sent from atop the hotel and the bank.

Sheriff Cyrus Flagg ran out of the sheriff’s office in a nightshirt that flapped around his thick calves, testifying that he’d slept in the back room of the office. He had a Winchester in his hands. The men on the street had started to stream toward the hotel, so he joined them.

“In the name o’ all that’s holy and half that ain’t, what’s goin’ on here, Two Wolves?” the lawman demanded of Sam as he came to a stop in front of the hotel.

“Your lookouts have been murdered, Sheriff,” Sam replied, his face grim. He didn’t know for sure that the sentry on top of the bank was dead, but it seemed pretty likely considering the signal that had been sent from there.

“Murdered!”

Sam nodded. “Matt and I think that Joshua Shade is about to attack the town.”

That brought cries of fear and alarm from the men gathered in the street. “What’re we gonna do, Sheriff?” one of them asked Flagg.