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.
The sheriff thought for a second, then said, “Spread out all over town. Bang on doors and tell folks to get ready, if they ain’t already. Make it quick, though, and then hunt some cover. It won’t be long until Shade and his bunch are here, I reckon.”
“We’ll give those owlhoots a lot hotter welcome than they’re expectin’!” one man said.
Sam wasn’t so sure of that. Even up in the hills, Shade might have heard the shots and realized that the townspeople were aware of the threat.
Would that be enough to make him call off the attack?
Sam didn’t know, and the citizens of Arrowhead couldn’t afford to take that chance. They had to be as ready for trouble as they could get in the next few minutes…because it was probably already on the way.
More than forty strong, the gang swarmed down out of the hills with Joshua Shade in the lead. He was bare-headed, and the wind whipped his longish hair around his lean face.
Beside him rode his second-in-command, a heavily mustached outlaw named Willard Garth. As they galloped toward Arrowhead, Garth raised his voice and asked, “What about those shots we heard, Joshua? You think they know we’re comin’?”
“It doesn’t matter, Brother Willard,” Shade replied. “The Lord has told me that tonight is the night we need to deliver His message to that sinful town up ahead, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do!”
“And clean out the bank while we’re at it, eh, Boss?” Garth said with a wolfish grin.
“It takes money to do the Lord’s work!” Shade said, then gave a maniacal howl of laughter.
Even if the settlers knew they were coming, it wouldn’t matter. There wouldn’t be time for them to mount an effective defense before the raiders were right on top of them. The gang still had enough of an element of surprise, even if the men sent into town to kill the lookouts had been discovered.
Besides, Shade and Garth knew that the citizens of Arrowhead didn’t represent any real danger. They were storekeepers, blacksmiths, and clerks. There might be a few tough cowboys from the nearby ranches in the saloons, but when you stopped to think about it…
Just how many real fighting men could there be in a place like this anyway?
Sam was about to go looking for Matt when he spotted his blood brother running along the street toward the hotel. Matt reached the porch and bounded up onto it.
“I suppose you were responsible for those shots I heard a couple of minutes ago?” Sam said.
Matt grinned humorlessly. “Who else?”
“What about the lookout on top of the bank?”
“Dead,” Matt said as even the bleak grin disappeared. “Throat cut just like the other fella. Poor son of a bitch probably died before he even knew what was goin’ on.” He looked around at the men running here and there in the street as they got ready for the attack. “Looks like you did a good job spreadin’ the word.”
“It’s not that hard to do with shots going off.” Sam jerked his head toward the hotel lobby. “Come on. It’ll take Shade a few minutes to get here. We’ve got time to get dressed and get the rest of our guns.”
“Good idea,” Matt agreed. “I feel half naked with only one Colt.”
“You are half naked,” Sam pointed out as they went into the hotel. “So am I.”
“What’d I tell you?”
They hurried through the lobby, getting spare keys from the hotel owner as they did so since the doors of their rooms were locked and the keys were inside with the rest of their gear. The proprietor was standing behind the desk, lining up shotgun shells on top of it. He was a mild-looking little man, but his voice held a note of fierceness as he explained, “If any of those owlhoots get in here, I’ll give them a buckshot reception!”
“Well, nobody can say you’re not hospitable,” Matt told him.
A minute after he and Sam entered their rooms, they emerged into the hallway again, stamping their feet to settle them in their boots. The blood brothers were dressed now, had their hats on, and their gunbelts strapped around their waists. Each carried a fully loaded Winchester.
“We’d better take the high ground while we can,” Matt said. “You want the hotel or the bank?”
“Let’s both take the hotel,” Sam suggested. “If the gang was holed up in the hills, they’ll reach this end of town first. Might be a good idea to pull the ladder up once we’re up there, too. We can always let it back down after the fight’s over.”
“Assumin’ we’re still alive,” Matt said.
“I always assume that.”
They went out the back door of the hotel this time. The ladder was still there in the alley, propped against the wall. Matt went up first, and as he reached the top of the ladder and swung a leg over onto the roof, he heard something that sounded a little like distant thunder.
Hoofbeats. A large group of riders