Brotherhood of the Gun by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-04-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

“You told me you never met Smoke Jensen,” Matt said to Wellman, after they had left the cafe.

“I lied. If I’d a told the truth you’d a been pesterin’ me for weeks on end about him. You’d have never shut up.”

“This is true,” Sam said solemnly. “Bodine can certainly be a pest and he rattles on and on about the most trivial of matters.” He tried, but could not hide his smile.

“What’s he like?” Matt asked, giving his blood brother a dirty look and otherwise ignoring him.

“You see?” Sam said. “It’s started already. You should never have brought it up.”

“We all make mistakes,” Wellman admitted.

“Jensen’s a quiet sort of fellow. Very much in love with his wife and devoted to his kids. He’s a decent man who don’t like thugs and punks and outlaws and trash. He wasn’t nothing but a kid when he rode into that minin’ camp up on the Uncompahgre lookin’ for the men who raped and kilt his wife and murdered they baby boy. I don’t know how many men he kilt that day. Some say fifteen, others say thirty. But he’s a bad man to mess with. Just like you, Bodine. You and Jensen got a lot in common. He’s a little taller and heavier than you. And he might be a tad quicker pullin’ iron. Now is that enough to suit you?”

“I’d like to meet him.”

Wellman muttered something under his breath.

“What’d you say, Dick?” Bodine asked.

“I said I don’t know ifn I want to be in the same town was you two to get together—bein’ the peaceful sort of man that I am.”

Sam and Bodine were still chuckling as they went to the hotel for night’s sleep in a bed.

* * *

It was becoming a pattern: no one knew the whereabouts of Lake or Porter. It seemed the outlaws had gone into deep hiding somewhere along Arizona’s hoot-owl trail. But nobody knew where.

Or if they did, they weren’t talking.

The trio pulled out the following morning, following the stagecoach road toward Tuscon, about fifty miles away. Before leaving Benson, they had inquired as to waterhole and spring locations along the way, and found the information to be right on the mark. They kept the Empire Mountains to the south of them and made the ride without seeing any sign of Apaches.

Tucson was where Wellman felt they might pick up the trail of the outlaws, more than likely in one of the rougher saloons, where a man placed his life in the hands of the Almighty just by pushing open the batwings and stepping inside.

“You want to take Mex town, Sam?” Wellman asked. “I think they’ll probably talk to you whilst they wouldn’t to me or Matt.”

“I’ll give it a whirl.”

“I’ll take the miner’s hangout and you get all spiffed up, Matt, and take the saloon where the fancy-dans gather. We ought to come up with something.”

Bodine bathed and got a shave and a haircut and his clothes laundered before heading to the Hall, as the better of the saloons in town was called.

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