Blood Bond 5 (11 page)

“I'm not. But you'd better brace yourself. What Sam and me have to say is going to come as a real shock to both you and Bull.”

“Not no more than that put-up fight I just witnessed.”

“I wouldn't count on it,” Matt said drily.

When Matt got Sam off to himself, he told him what had transpired and asked him to ride for Bull's spread and have him meet them at the creek, and to say nothing to anyone else. Especially any of his kids.

“Incredible,” Sam said.

John Carlin told his family and hired guns to head back to the ranch and cool off, having said the latter rather drily and with more than a note of sarcasm. Daniel stayed with his father in town, both of them on the pretense of having business to take care of.

All the parties concerned met at the creek about an hour before sundown. John and Bull stood glaring at each other, a few yards apart, absolutely no love lost between them. But at Matt's request, they had looped their gunbelts over their saddlehorns.

“This had better be good, boys,” Bull said. “I got supper waiting, and it's a fine one.”

“Damn waste of time if you ask me,” John grumbled.

“No doubt about it in my mind,” Sam said, after looking first at John and then at Bull.

“Nor mine,” Matt said. “Let's sit, gentlemen. Nature placed these logs just perfect for that.”

Matt spoke four words, and the two ranchers came off the logs as if propelled out of a cannon.

“We're what?” Bull screamed.

“You're out of your goddamn mind!” John shouted.

“Oh, there's more,” Sam picked it up. “There were three of you. Singer is another.”

Both men sat down on the logs so hard their teeth clicked together. Daniel Carlin and Connie Sutton moved closer together and held hands. Their faces were pale.

“Go squat down by the creek and look at your reflections in the water together,” Matt urged them. “Go on. Do it.”

Reluctantly, the ranchers moved to the creek and knelt down, staring at their reflections. They looked at each other, then back at their reflections.

“Both orphans, right?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Bull said, his tone softer. “We came from the same part of the country. But I knew my mother. Her name was Estelle.”

“And my mother's name was Claire,” John said.

“How about your fathers?” Matt asked.

“I don't know anything about him,” Bull said. “Except he was a big bear of a man with dark curly hair.”

“Same with me,” John said. “Mother said he was a big strong man. I had an older brother, I know that. But I never saw him. I have no idea where he might be.” He looked at Bull. “My mother said my father had dark curly hair. Were you a woods colt, Bull?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too.”

Bull smiled ruefully. “Poppa got around, didn't he?”

“Looks like it. We do kinda resemble, Bull.”

“I have to say that's right. And come to think of it, Singer bears a strong likeness to us. You trust your kids, John?” he asked abruptly.

“Hell, no! At least not after today. I been doin' some strong thinkin', too. And I think my kids are playin' me for a sucker.”

“Yeah, me too,” Bull said with a sigh. “But I have to say that since I fired all those damn gunhands, my wife and I have, ah, well, ah . . . You know what I mean. We're, ah, closer.”

John grinned at him. “My wife hasn't had much to do with me for some years, Bull. You reckon if I fired those gunslicks it might improve my situation at home?”

“It damn sure did for me.”

John nodded his big head. He looked at his son. “Dan, this then is what you've been tryin' to tell me for some time. My kids are traitors toward me, right?”

“I'm afraid so, Dad. But I don't know if you can fire those gunfighters.”

“You want to explain that, boy?”

The young man looked over at Matt. Matt said, “They might just laugh in your face, John. For I have a hunch they're working for your kids, Bull's kids, and for Singer.”

“What a sorry damn mess!” Bull said.

“Dad,” Connie said. “If you and Mr. Carlin are half brothers . . . what does that make Dan and me?”

“Half first cousins,” Sam told her. “No . . . full second cousins.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “No . . . I'm going to have to think about this for awhile.”

“What it means is, havin' kids just might be chancy,” Bull said. “But, hell, people marry first and second cousins all the time.” He sighed. “I ain't got no objections to you two gettin' hitched. You, John?”

“Not a one. You have my blessin's.” He laughed out loud and slapped his knee. “Bull, can you just imagine a hundred years from now someone tryin' to look up this family tree!”

Bull looked at him and busted out laughing.

Connie glanced at Dan. “Do I call your father ‘Poppa' or ‘Uncle John'?”

That set both fathers off again, and they laughed until tears were running down their eyes.

The laughter stopped abruptly when Bull's hat was blown off his head, and a rifle slug spat bark into John's face. Everybody hit the ground, pistols in hand.

“I told you we should have met at that other spot, brother,” Sam said.

“Don't gloat,” Matt said. “It doesn't become you.”

“I'm not gloating, I assure you. I landed in a damn mud puddle.”

John chuckled at the expression on Sam's face. “You OK, son?”

“Fine, Dad.”

“You all right, baby?” Bull called to his daughter.

“I'm fine, Dad. I just wish I could get to my rifle.”

John grinned at his new-found half brother. “She'll do, Bull. She'll do.”

Bull returned the grin and then jacked back the hammer on his .45, looking around for a target.

Matt tossed Connie a pistol, and she caught it and deftly spun the cylinder, checking for loads.

“Now I feel better,” she said.

Dan tried to shift positions, and a bullet whistled past his head, so close he could feel the deadly heat. “Don't anybody try to move,” he called softly. “They've got us down cold.”

Matt saw what he thought was a boot sticking out from behind a thick stand of brush and aimed about two feet up from the boot. He squeezed off a round, and a wild shriek of pain ripped the late afternoon air.

“Oh, Christ! My knee's tore up bad! Oh, God, it hurts. Somebody get me out of here and to a sawbones.”

John and Bull fired as one, and the shrieking stopped as the bullets found their mark. The ambusher did not need a doctor anymore.

Sam suddenly rolled to his right and reached the safety of rocks, leaving in his wake a hail of gunfire and bullets ripping up the ground inches behind him.

“Watch the breed,” a familiar voice called. “He's gonna tr y slippin' up around us.”

“Clement,” John whispered, his voice shaky. “My own son is tryin' to kill me.”

“Hell with the others,” another all-too-familiar voice called out. “Kill John and Bull.”

Bull turned anguished eyes toward John. “Randy,” he whispered hoarsely. “Dear God in Heaven, what kind of kids did we produce?”

“Well, it's all out in the open now,” John said. “We can legally kick them out.”

“How?” Matt questioned. “All we've heard are voices. None of us have seen anybody. No judge would honor that.”

John and Bull both did some fancy cussing.

“It'll be dark in about thirty minutes,” Connie called. “If we can hold out 'til then, we have a chance.”

“Somebody kill that bitch!” a wild voice screamed from outside the little earth-depression where the party was trapped.

“Ross,” Bull said, the words tinged with bitterness. “My youngest son. Who wants to kill his sister.” His sigh was clearly audible to the others.

Connie put a round in the general direction of her brother's voice.

“Holy cow!” Ross yelled. “I damn near got shot.”

Connie carefully placed another round, and her brother bellered out his surprise and shock.

“Are you hit?” yet another voice was added.

‘Marcel,” John said.

“No,” Ross called. “But if it'd been an inch closer, I'd a been dead.”

John emptied his pistol at the brush where Marcel's voice had sprung. Wild cussing cut the fading light, and the sound of boots hitting the ground came to those pinned down.

Sam's guns began roaring, and a man began screaming in pain. Matt chose that time to roll to his left and into a thin stand of cottonwoods. He came to his knees just as an unfamiliar face about twenty-five feet away turned toward him, eyes wide with surprise.

They were not surprised for long as Matt put a .44 slug between the gunhand's eyes. His head snapped back, and the hired gun stretched out on the ground.

“That's it!” a voice yelled. “Let's get out of here.”

Seconds later, the sounds of fast-running horses were fading from the area.

“That was my son Pete who yelled that last bit,” John said, walking to Matt's side in the trees. “The traitorous little shit!”

“I've never seen any of these people,” Bull called, standing over the body of a dead gunny. “Somebody's brought in men and kept them hidden out.”

“Who the hell can we trust?” John asked, as the group gathered by the man Sam had filled with lead.

“If these words had come out of my mouth this morning,” Bull said. “Somebody would have had me put in the loony bin. But, John, I reckon we can trust each other.”

John nodded his big head and stuck out his hand. Bull took the peace offering.

“I don't know how to handle this,” John said. “What do I say to my kids when I get back home? How do I act?”

The sounds of horses galloping turned the group around. About ten minutes of light remained. Tom Riley reined up and jumped down from the saddle, Van Dixon with him. “We heard the shooting,” Tom said. “What the hell's going on here?”

“We were ambushed,” Matt said quickly, before anyone else could speak. “We were meeting out here to call an end to the war and someone slipped up on us. None of us ever got a glimpse of a face.”

“You don't have any idea as to who it might have been?” Tom asked.

“Not a clue,” Bull said.

“Nothing,” John added.

Tom looked at both men. He took a longer, closer look, then he shook his head. “You know, I don't want to start a fight between you two, but I just now noticed something: you two damn sure resemble.” He quickly held up a hand. “Now, don't fly off the handle at me. Lots of folks resemble. I was just voicin' a thought, that's all.”

Sam took a chance and said, “They should resemble, Tom. They're half brothers.”

Tom Riley's mouth dropped open, and he leaned up against a tree, clearly stunned by Sam's remark. “Brothers!” he blurted.

Van Dixon stood speechless, staring first at Bull, then at John.

Bull sized up the man as being genuinely shocked and said, “Matt and Sam put it together, Tom. Up until a few seconds ago, none of us really knew what side you stood on. Now I reckon you're neutral. It was our kids who ambushed us.”

“Your . . . kids?” Tom said. He quickly recovered and looked at Matt and Sam. “All right, smart boys, you tell me what the hell is going on?”

Quickly and succinctly, Sam leveled with the man. The marshal was so shaken by the revelations he had to look around and find a large rock to sit on.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he muttered. He took off his hat and fanned himself. “I ain't ready for this. And you think Miles Singer is also your brother?”

“Yes,” Bull spoke. “The resemblance is just too uncanny to be coincidence. But it took Matt and Sam here to point that out to us. He's got the same Kentucky drawl as me and John. Same features, same build, same everything, including being totally unreasonable about damn near anything and stubborn as a Missouri mule.”

Tom nodded his head in absolute agreement with the last remark.

“We think the kids of Bull and John, with the exception of Dan and Connie here, are in this with Singer, and the gunfighters are working for them,” Sam said.

Tom stuck his hat back on his head and stood up. “And you really didn't see any of the men who attacked you today?”

“No,” John said. “But me and Bull know the voices of our sorry kids, and the boys were damn sure here taking part in it. I heard Clement and Marcel and Bull heard Randy and Ross.”

“That's no good in a court of law.”

“We know it,” Bull said. “John, I got a plan. You better stay in town tonight, and I'll ride in in the morning, and we'll meet at Lawyer Sprague's office at say, oh, nine o'clock. I'm changing my will leaving everything to Connie and Roz and adding that under no circumstances will any of the other kids get any part of the ranch or my money, no matter what happens. I think Sprague can set it up so it's ironclad. You do the same, and then we'll have Tom and his deputies ride out to your place, and you can order the gunhands out. What do you say?”

“Sounds good to me. And just as soon as the gunhands leave, I'm kicking all my kids out except for Daniel.”

“The girls, too?” Tom asked, worry on his face.

“They're in it just as strong as the boys,” Dan said. “Connie and I have known it for months.”

Both Bull and John did some cussing and kicking and stomping around for a moment. Bull said, “I'll give 'em all some money to tide them over. I'll set up accounts in Denver for them all. But from this moment on, I disown them all.”

“Denver sounds good to me, too,” John said. “What do we do about Singer?”

“I don't know. Let's face that after we deal with our no-count kids.”