The Loner: The Bounty Killers (11 page)

“Sorry, Marshal,” The Kid said. He stepped down from the boardwalk, put his foot in the stirrup, and swung up onto the buckskin’s back. “But this is better for everybody.”

He wheeled the horse around and sent it galloping out of Las Vegas without looking back. He hoped Fairmont wouldn’t stay mad at Carly too long for helping him. It was the best way, and once the marshal thought about that, he might see it, too.

As he rode through the night with the wind in his face, The Kid thought about what he would do next. One thing was certain: no matter where he went, he would be in great danger as long as those wanted posters with his name and description and the ten thousand dollar price on his head were circulating.

Claudius Turnbuckle’s wire had said he was going to Santa Fe to straighten everything out. That was where the true problem lay, and that was where the solution would be found as well. As he thought about it, his path seemed clear.

He would pick up that big black horse he had left hidden outside the settlement, and head for New Mexico Territory, to whatever fate awaited him in Santa Fe.

Chapter 15

Several days later, The Kid was in northern Arizona, near the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. He had heard of the magnificent canyon but had never been there. Although he was tempted to detour to the north and have a look at it, having circled south of the imposing natural landmark, he didn’t want to take the time to do so.

Since leaving Las Vegas, nobody had tried to kill him . . . but The Kid knew better than to believe his luck would last.

He was riding the black through hills covered with a thick pine forest and leading the buckskin. Flagstaff was somewhere to the south of him, but he intended to avoid the town, as he had avoided other settlements on his journey. He didn’t want to run the risk of being recognized by another small-town lawman who might try to lock him up.

His plan was to steer clear of civilization as much as possible until he reached Santa Fe. By the time he got there, Claudius Turnbuckle ought to have reached the territorial capital, too. The Kid would get in touch with him somehow and find out if the lawyer had been successful in quashing the charges against him.

He didn’t relish the idea of spending the rest of his life as a fugitive. But he liked the thought of being locked up even less.

Once the sun set, night fell quickly amidst the towering trees. As dusk settled down, The Kid found a clearing at the base of a rocky bluff that would make a suitable campsite.

A spring trickled from the stone wall and formed a small pool of clear, cold water. There was plenty of grass for the horses, and The Kid thought the trees were thick enough that he could risk a small fire to cook some of the supplies that Carly had stuffed in his saddlebags before she brought the buckskin to him.

Eventually he would have to pick up more provisions from a small hamlet or isolated trading post, but he had enough to last a couple more days.

The nights got cold at that elevation, so after his meager supper, The Kid was glad he had his coat as he hunkered next to the tiny fire he built. He held out his hands toward the flames to catch what little warmth they gave off.

He had ridden out of Las Vegas without his hat. When he stopped for supplies, he would see if he could find another one similar to it. A man got used to wearing a hat and felt a little naked without one.

The same thing was true of a gun. At least it was for men like The Kid.

He had guns: his own Colt, the pearl-handled revolver he had taken from Pronto Pike, which was tucked away in one of his saddlebags, the Winchester, and the heavy Sharps carbine he normally carried, along with a good supply of ammunition for all of them.

Some might say he was armed for bear, not that he expected to encounter one. For The Kid, packing that much iron was just the usual state of things.

The buckskin pricked up his ears, and a second later, so did the black.

The Kid noted the horses’ reactions and frowned. He was still nursing the last of the coffee in his tin cup. He set it aside and came to his feet. Moving over to the buckskin, he stroked the horse’s shoulder and murmured to him. “You hear something, fella?” The Kid asked in a voice barely above a whisper. “Or maybe smell something?”

The buckskin couldn’t answer, of course. Not in words. But the way the horse lifted his head and looked into the thick shadows under the trees, The Kid knew
something
was out there.

A mountain lion, maybe. Horses and mountain lions were mortal enemies. The same was true of wolves.

The Kid bent over and reached for the Winchester from where he had leaned both of his long guns against one of the saddles on the ground. As he closed his hand around it, a swiftmoving shape leaped out of the darkness at him, teeth bared in a snarl.

The Kid snatched the rifle up quickly so the beast’s teeth closed on the barrel, not on his flesh. The next second, the animal’s weight slammed into him and knocked him off his feet. As he fell, he grabbed hold of the thick, shaggy coat and hung on.

In the firelight, he saw that the creature struggling to sink its fangs into him wasn’t a mountain lion or a wolf or even a bear.

It was a dog, and he would have sworn it was the
same
dog he had tossed off that rock slab more than a week earlier when he encountered that gang of bounty hunters.

He had his left hand on the dog’s throat, holding off the teeth, and he still clutched the Winchester in his right. He raised the rifle and brought the butt smashing down on the dog’s head.

The blow stunned the dog and gave The Kid time to throw the animal off and roll to the side. He came to his feet in a blur of speed and brought the Winchester to his shoulder, the barrel lined on the dog, which had regained its feet and was gathering itself for another spring.

“You pull that trigger, mister, and I’ll kill you.”

The words that came from behind him, uttered in a loud, clear voice, made The Kid’s finger freeze on the Winchester’s trigger for two reasons.

One was the obvious threat behind them. The other was the fact they were in a woman’s voice.

He heard footsteps and a crackle of brush as she stepped out of the undergrowth beneath the pines. She said, “Hold, Max,” and the dog settled down on its haunches but still looked like he wanted to tear The Kid’s throat out and gnaw on his bones.

“Put the rifle on the ground,” the woman ordered.

“How do I know you’ve even got a gun?” The Kid asked.

He heard the metallic ratcheting of a revolver being cocked not far behind his head.

“That a good enough answer for you?”

“Yeah, I suppose so.” The Kid bent over and placed the Winchester on the ground at his feet.

“Back away from it.”

He did so, keeping his hands in plain sight. Depending on how much trigger-pull her gun required, it might not take much to put a bullet in his head.

“All right, turn around.” To reinforce the order she had given a moment earlier, the woman said again, “Max, hold.”

The Kid turned to face her. A shock went through him as he recognized the poncho and the broad-brimmed brown hat.

He had thought that dog looked familiar. So did his captor. “I thought you were dead,” he told her.

Her mouth tightened in a grim line. “Not hardly. What you really mean is that you thought you killed me.”

“You were trying to kill me at the time,” The Kid pointed out.

She had a blued-steel Colt Lightning pointed at him from a distance of about four feet. Too far for him to jump her before she could pull the trigger.

While keeping the revolver leveled and rock steady, she brought her left hand up and cuffed her hat back so it hung behind her head on its chin strap, revealing a head of closely cropped auburn hair and a narrow, scabbed-over wound that started on the side of her head and disappeared into the hair above her right ear. “Your bullet just grazed me,” she said. “It knocked me out cold and I had a headache for three days afterward, but I wasn’t dead.”

The Kid grunted. “I can see that. Where’s the rest of your bunch?”

“I don’t have a bunch. I was just traveling in the same direction as those men.”

The Kid had a hunch there was more to it than that, but he didn’t press her on it. He had more important things to worry about.

“So you’re alone,” he said.

“Don’t let that give you any ideas,” she snapped. “I’ve killed men before, and I won’t mind doing it again if I have to.” She nodded toward his gunbelt. “Unbuckle that belt and set it down, slow and easy.”

The Kid knew if he allowed her to disarm him, his chances of getting away would plummet. She was a woman, but her face held a hard competence that told him gender didn’t matter a whole lot in this case. Female or not, she couldn’t be soft and feminine and survive for very long as a bounty hunter. She had to be plenty tough.

He said, “All right . . . McCall.”

The use of the name he guessed belonged to her surprised her enough that the gun in her hand jerked a little. It was what The Kid was watching for. He moved as soon as the reaction hit her. A quick shift to the right put him out of line for a split second—long enough for him leap forward, bat the barrel even farther to the side, and grab the woman.

“Max!” she cried.

Knowing the big dog would spring to the attack, he tightened his grip on the woman, whirled around, and took her with him. The dog was already in midair, trying to leap onto his back, but he gave the woman a shove that sent her right into the animal’s path. They crashed together and both of them went sprawling.

The Kid sprang back and whipped out his Colt as the dog scrambled up again.

“Call him off!” The Kid told the woman. “I don’t want to shoot him, but I will if I have to.”

From her knees, the woman said sharply, “Max! Down!”

The dog subsided into a snarling crouch.

The woman had dropped her gun when she fell. It lay a couple feet to her right. The Kid saw her eyeing it and said, “Don’t try it.”

“How do you know my name?” the woman demanded. “What did you do, paw through my saddlebags after you stole my horse?”

“You mean after you tried to kill me?” The Kid shot back.

“The wanted posters say dead or alive. I take prisoners in alive when I can, but if they put up a fight . . .” She gave an eloquent shrug.

“To answer your question,” The Kid went on, “yes, I looked through your saddlebags. I found the envelope with the picture of the little girl in it.”

“You son of a bitch,” she whispered. “You had no right.”

The Kid ignored that. “Who is she? She can’t be your daughter. I can’t imagine a woman like you ever having children.”

“Why not? Because I’m a bounty hunter?”

“Let’s just say you don’t strike me as the maternal type.”

“Go to hell. What did you do with the picture? Do you still have it?”

The Kid started to think maybe he’d been wrong. The raw edge of need in her voice as she spoke of the little girl’s picture told him she might be a relative after all.

“I sent it back to the address in Kansas City,” he said, softening his tone a little. “Along with the money I found in the saddlebags. I thought you were dead at the time, remember? I figured the little girl and whoever’s taking care of her might need the cash.”

A surprised frown creased the woman’s forehead. “You did that?”

“Regardless of what you think about me, McCall—and I’m a lot of things that aren’t very good, I’ll admit that—I’m not a thief.”

“You took my horse.”

“I thought you were dead,” he said again, “and I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then asked, “Can I stand up?”

“Don’t get too fancy about it. And don’t try for any weapons you’ve got under that poncho. Why do you wear it, anyway?” Before she could answer, he went on, “Wait, don’t tell me. It helps hide the fact that you’re a woman, doesn’t it? Just like the short hair.”

“Go to hell,” she repeated as she climbed to her feet. “Why I do things is my business.”

“Like following me all the way from Nevada?”

A wolfish smile curved her wide mouth. “I want that ten grand.”

“For the little girl back in Kansas City?”

“Shut up about her, would you?”

“More of your business?”

“Damn right.”

The Kid shook his head. “Dress like a man, cuss like a man . . . Do you chew tobacco and drink rotgut whiskey, too?”

“I never picked up the habit of chewing. A drink would be pretty good right now, though.”

The Kid couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t have any whiskey to offer her, though, and wouldn’t have even if he did.

“What in blazes am I going to do with you?” he asked.

“Better go ahead and kill me,” she advised, “because if I get the chance, I’m sure as hell going to kill you.”

Chapter 16

The dog was a problem. The Kid was going to have trouble dealing with the woman as long as he had to worry about the dog.

The simplest thing to do would be to shoot the beast. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that in cold blood. The dog was doing what it had been trained to do—help capture fugitives from the law. The dog had no way of knowing that The Kid had been wrongly accused.

The woman ought to be able to understand that, though.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Those wanted posters are wrong. They’re all a mistake.” He had made that same argument so many times in the past few months the words seemed to echo hollowly in his head. “I never killed any prison guards,” he went on. “My lawyer is working on clearing my name right now.”

“Yeah, the prisons are full of innocent men,” she jeered.

“I was innocent. Damn it, I
am
innocent.” Well, not really, he thought, but close enough in this case. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll have to make sure you don’t follow me again.”

“By gunning me down?”

And that was the problem right there, he thought with a sigh. He wasn’t the cold-blooded killer he was accused of being. “I’ll tie you up, leave you here, and take your horse with me. You’ll be able to get loose eventually.”