The hotel clerk peeked nervously around the doorjamb. “Are you gentlemen all right?”
Matt lowered the hammer on his gun and slid the iron back into leather. “I reckon we will be. You’re gonna need the undertaker here, though.”
“Someone’s already run to fetch him. The marshal, too.”
For the marshal of a nice, peaceful town, Marsh Coleman was having to deal with a lot of trouble today, Matt thought.
Grady still looked shaken and disheveled, but he had caught his breath. “Let’s get this money picked up,” he suggested. “Several hundred dollars of it belong to you.”
Matt was about to say that he didn’t care about the money, but then he remembered that he had won it fair and square. He started gathering it up, along with Grady.
By the time Marshal Coleman came hurrying into the lobby, gun in hand, Matt and Grady had the money straightened out and sorted. Matt’s winnings were rolled up and tucked into his pocket.
“Bodine!” Coleman exclaimed. “I didn’t know you were mixed up in this.”
“And I should have known,” Sam said as he appeared behind the lawman. “Are you all right, Matt? I heard a commotion down here, but I didn’t know there had been a shooting.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Matt told his blood brother. “I’m sorry about this, Marshal. That fella there on the floor took exception to losing.”
Coleman grunted. “Violent exception, from the looks of it. Who shot him?”
“I did,” Grady answered without hesitation. “It was self-defense, Marshal. He would have killed me.”
Coleman looked at Matt. “Is that true?”
“Yeah, Stone was doing his damnedest to bash Grady’s brains out against the wall.”
“He had already almost crushed me with that table,” Grady added.
Coleman nodded as he holstered his gun. “Well, then, from the sound of it there won’t be much doubt about the verdict at the inquest. There’ll have to be an inquest, though. Can’t just let a killing go.”
“I understand,” Grady said. “Let me know when it is, Marshal, and I’ll be there.”
“Thanks. You been around here for a while, Grady, and you seem like a law-abiding sort, for a gambler.”
“I always try to abide by the law, Marshal. And for the record, I didn’t cheat, and neither did Mr. Bodine. Stone lost that hand fair and square.”
“Yeah,” Coleman said with a look at the corpse on the floor. “I’d say he lost the biggest hand of all.”
Chapter 7
The undertaker arrived a few minutes later, along with a couple of his helpers. It took all three of them, along with some volunteers, to lift Stone’s body onto a door from a back room in the hotel that was taken off its hinges. Then, with much grunting and groaning and straining, they carried the corpse out to the undertaker’s wagon.
“I believe I’ll go see the doctor,” Linus Grady said. “He might need to tape up these ribs of mine. I’m pretty sure none of them are broken, but a couple might be cracked.”
When the gambler was gone, Marshal Coleman said to Matt and Sam, “You boys try to stay out of trouble the rest of the day. Hannah would be mighty disappointed if you didn’t make it for supper tonight.”
“We’ll be there, don’t worry about that,” Sam said quickly. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Coleman nodded. “All right. See you then.” He paused, looked back over his shoulder, and added, “I’ll let you know about the inquest, Matt. You’ll probably have to testify, too.”
“Whatever you need, Marshal,” Matt assured him.
As the blood brothers went upstairs, Sam asked, “What happened?”
Matt explained, then said, “I was gonna try to make Stone settle down without killin’ him, but I don’t reckon I can blame Grady for doin’ what he did. It wasn’t me that Stone had hold of.”
“It would be nice to ride into a town without all hell breaking loose.”
“Yeah,” Matt said, then added with a grin, “You reckon that’ll ever happen to us?”
Sam didn’t reply.
It was past the middle of the afternoon by now, so they didn’t have to wait too awfully long before heading over to the marshal’s house for supper. Matt took advantage of the opportunity to wash up a little and put on a clean shirt. When he went downstairs to meet Sam in the lobby, though, he frowned at his blood brother and said, “You look different somehow.”
Sam frowned and said, “No reason for me to look different.”
“You do, though,” Matt insisted. Suddenly he leaned closer and sniffed. “No, I’m wrong. You don’t look different. You smell different. You took a bath!”
“No, I didn’t,” Sam protested.
“Yeah, you did. I smell lye soap and lilac water!” When Sam shook his head, Matt went on. “I can go ask the clerk if you had a tub and some hot water sent up.”
“Oh, all right, all right,” Sam said. “So I took a bath. So what? We’ve been on the trail for a long time. You don’t exactly smell like a rose.”
“I don’t stink…but I don’t smell flowerdy, neither.”
Sam jerked his hat brim down over his eyes. “Shut up,” he muttered. “Let’s just go. And you don’t have to say anything about this to Hannah and her father.”
“I don’t intend to. It’s downright embarrassin’.”
Sam glared at him and then stalked out. Matt chuckled and followed.
Dusk was beginning to settle over Cottonwood as they walked along Main Street and then turned onto Third. There were houses on only one side of the street, so they didn’t have any trouble finding the neat, white frame structure belonging to Marshal Coleman. It had a nice, well-cared-for yard, and a porch with a couple of rocking chairs on it that looked out at the seemingly endless prairie rolling away across the street. They walked past a small flower bed and went up the steps onto the porch.
A small, shaggy, gray and brown dog that had been lying there stood up and barked in greeting, his stub of a tail wagging frantically. Coleman appeared at the open front door and pushed back the screen door.
“Howdy, boys,” he said. “Come on in.” To the dog, he added, “Hush there, Lobo.”
Matt looked down at the appealingly ugly mutt and said, “Lobo?”
“He thinks he’s a wolf,” Coleman said in apparent seriousness.
Matt and Sam went inside, and both young men immediately noticed the wonderful smells in the air, a mingling of savory roast beef, fresh-baked bread, and—
“Is that apple pie I smell?” Matt asked with a hopeful expression on his face.
“Sure is,” Coleman replied. “You won’t find a better apple pie in the whole state of Kansas than the one Hannah makes.”
Matt licked his lips. “I can’t wait to sample it.”
“You’ll have to save a little room for it, then.”
“You’re a wise man, Marshal.”
Coleman took their hats and ushered them into the living room. The house was simply but comfortably furnished. There were woven rugs on the floor and lace doilies on the tables. Framed photographs stood on the mantle above the fireplace. In one of them, a much