Since you have a lot of samples (I guess you keep them in separate catalogue) it would be much more convenient to avoid specifying desired columns. Therefore you can open terminal in samples catalogue and run (assuming there are only sample files):
paste * | awk 'BEGIN {OFS="\t"; FS="\t"}; {j=$1; for (i=2;i<=NF;i+=2) {j=j FS $i} print j}' > count_matrix
It will work as code above without selecting tons of columns ;)
What language/method would you like to use? This can be done using shell, R, python, perl, etc.....you name it. What are you familiar with?
Sorry I didn't specify. I'm familiar with R and Linux but prefer to make the count table in Linux since there are a lot of samples (about 3200).