trouble.”
“We’re peaceable men,” Matt added.
“Oh, yeah?” one of the men said with a sneer. “Prove you ain’t part of Shade’s gang!”
“It’s very difficult to prove a negative assumption—” Sam began, stopping when Matt shook his head.
“You’ve got my word on it, and that’s proof enough,” Matt said.
“Why should we believe you ain’t lyin’?”
“Because I’m Matt Bodine…and I don’t take kindly to bein’ called a liar.”
Murmurs of “Bodine!” came from several of the men. The name of Matt Bodine was well known across the frontier, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, from the Rio Grande to the Milk River.
“They say that Bodine travels with a Injun,” one of the men said. “This fella looks part redskin anyway.”
“My name is Sam August Webster Two Wolves,” Sam said, introducing himself. He was proud of his Cheyenne heritage and never denied it.
“Yeah, Two Wolves, that was it!” the man said excitedly. “That’s the name o’ Bodine’s sidekick!”
Sam grimaced, and Matt couldn’t help but chuckle at that description of his blood brother.
“Can we put our hands down now?” he asked. “You’ll take my word for it that we’re not workin’ for that hombre Shade, whoever he is?”
“Joshua Shade is a pure-dee hydrophobia skunk,” growled the old-timer who had been sitting on the saloon porch. He pushed aside the batwings and sauntered into the saloon. He had put away his whittling knife. “Put them guns down, boys. Now that I’ve heard these young fellas’ names, I recollect seein’ pictures of ’em in the rotogravures. They’re Bodine and Two Wolves, all right.”
Matt lowered his hands. “Well, I’m glad somebody around here has sense enough to believe us.”
“I got more sense than you’d think to look at me,” the old-timer drawled. He lifted one corner of the bib front on his overalls that had come unbuttoned and fallen down.
Pinned underneath it was a sheriff’s badge.
“I’ve also got a responsibility to protect this town,” he went on. “I’m the law hereabouts. Name of Cyrus Flagg.”
Sam lowered his hands as well and said, “We’re pleased to meet you, Sheriff Flagg.”
The lawman motioned to the other men in the saloon. “Go on about your drinkin’ and gamblin’ and whorin’,” he instructed them. “I’m gonna buy these two boys a drink.”
“We’d be much obliged for that,” Matt said.
“As well as for interceding on our behalf,” Sam added.
“Figured it was the least I could do, seein’ as how it was me who put these fellas up to throwin’ down on you in the first place.”
“And why was it exactly you did that, Sheriff?” Matt asked.
“Let’s have a sit-down, and I’ll tell you all about it,” Flagg suggested.
He gestured toward an empty table in the corner and called to the bartender to send over three beers. Matt, Sam, and Flagg took chairs at the table, and a moment later a pretty blonde in a low-cut, spangled dress came over carrying a tray with three foaming mugs on it.
The young woman smiled and bent over as she placed the tray in the center of the table, providing a good view of her creamy breasts in the provocative outfit.
“Yeah, they’re pretty as a couple o’ speckled pups, Amelia,” Flagg said. “Maybe later one o’ these boys’d like to take a closer look at ’em. Right now, though, the beer’s all we need.”
“You’re a spoilsport, Sheriff,” the blonde said with a pout.
“Yeah, that’s what folks tell me all the time. Now shoo.”
Amelia flounced off. Flagg sighed and picked up one of the mugs of beer.
“Gals just don’t understand that there’s a time an’ place for ever’thing,” he said. “A fella ain’t all that interested in romance when he’s just had a pair o’ Greeners and half a dozen six-guns pointed at him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that—” Matt began with an appreciative glance toward Amelia as she walked off.
“You were going to tell us about Joshua Shade,” Sam said, breaking in. “And about why you set that trap for us.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a trap,” Flagg said. “I just believe in takin’ precautions, ’specially when a lobo like Shade’s roamin’ around the countryside with a whole band o’ gun-wolves taggin’ after him.”
Sam took a healthy sip of his beer and found that while it wasn’t really cold, it was pleasantly cool. As he set the mug back on the table, he said, “I take it that Joshua Shade is an outlaw.”
“You’ve heard of him then,” Flagg said.
“Not before we rode in here today.”
“But we’ve been over in Texas for a spell,” Matt added. “They have their own badmen over there.”
“An abundance of them,” Sam said.
Flagg pushed his plug hat back on his thinning, reddish-gray hair. “None as bad as Shade, I reckon, and I’d bet my last dollar on that. Shade’s a plumb devil, and he’s been raisin’ hell all up and down the eastern half o’ the territory for months now.”
“Have you had trouble with him here?”
Flagg shook his head and said, “Not so far, and I’d just as soon keep it that way. But we heard that him and his gang were spotted between here and Springerville a few days ago, so we know he’s in these parts. When I spotted you fellas ridin’ down the hill, I thought you might be scouts for the gang, so I passed the word for ever’body to get off the street without bein’ too obvious about it, and told the fellas in here to be ready and get the drop on you.”
“Well, it worked,” Matt said. “We weren’t expectin’ trouble, so we walked right into it.”
Sam didn’t say anything about noticing some odd behavior on the part of the townspeople as they rode in. He had noticed, but it hadn’t done any good. He and Matt had still found themselves staring down the barrels of those shotguns.
“Is that the way Shade operates?” he asked Sheriff Flagg. “Sending men ahead to scout out the towns he raids, I mean.”
Flagg nodded. “Yep. A couple o’ strangers ride in, take a look around town, have a drink maybe, then ride back out and tell Shade where the sheriff’s office is, and the bank, and anything else he needs to know. Then, a day later, Shade and his bunch come roarin’ in with all guns a-blazin’ and take over the town. They kill the local star
