The Loner: Seven Days to Die

by J. A. Johnstone

  The Loner:

  SEVEN DAYS TO DIE

  The Loner:

  SEVEN DAYS TO DIE

  J. A. Johnstone

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 1

  Somewhere not far off, a wolf howled in the night.

  The lonely sound brought a hint of a smile to the face of the man who had once been Conrad Browning. He leaned forward to stir the little fire where his coffeepot bubbled, careful not to look directly into the flames as he did so. That could ruin a man’s night vision.

  Not being able to see well if danger threatened could ruin a man’s life. It could end it, in fact.

  The man who was now Kid Morgan settled back on the flat rock he was using as a seat and listened to the wolf sing its solitary song. He felt a bond of kinship with the beast. The wolf was probably a loner, too—at least The Kid liked to think that was the case.

  But maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe the wolf had a mate.

  The Kid’s mouth tightened into a thin line. He shook his head. Couldn’t be. The long, ululating wails directed at the night sky had such a mournful sound to them he knew the creature must have experienced pain and loss.

  Like him.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” he said aloud as he reached for the coffeepot, using a piece of leather to protect his hand as he grasped its handle.

  He wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or the wolf.

  “It’s been a year,” he whispered as he poured coffee into his cup. “A year.”

  In some ways it seemed much longer than that, in others only the blink of an eye since he’d been a happily married, successful businessman with a beautiful wife he adored.

  Now he was a wanderer, a man with no home and a new name, not the one he’d been born with. Tragically, his wife had died at the hands of evil men. Conrad Browning had died in the crucible of that tragedy, and from the ashes had risen Kid Morgan, the gunfighter. The avenger. The man who rode alone.

  In the months since then, he had settled the score with the people responsible for Rebel’s death, and although he had drawn no satisfaction from his actions, the knowledge that justice had been done had eased some of his nightmares.

  It was bleak comfort, but better than nothing.

  Once that grim chore was done, The Kid had wanted only to be left alone, but trouble kept drawing him in. There were people who needed help, and he hadn’t been able to turn his back on them.

  Once he would have, without a second thought, but after being married to Rebel and forming a friendship with his long-estranged father, Frank Morgan, he no longer possessed the smug, self-righteous callousness that had plagued him while he was growing up. Despite his desire for solitude, when he saw innocent people being threatened or taken advantage of, he had to take a hand.

  In those moments, he knew what it was like to make contact with another human being again. In recent weeks, he had wanted to put away the grief for a while, to reach out and smile and laugh and be happy, even if only for a few minutes.

  He couldn’t allow that. When somebody died, people talked about a suitable period of mourning. Well, for him a suitable period was the rest of his life. Out of respect for what he’d lost, the grief could never go away.

  That’s why he was sitting in that isolated camp in the rugged mountains of New Mexico Territory. As far as he knew, he was the only human being within a dozen miles or more…and that was just the way he wanted it.

  He sipped his coffee. He’d already eaten a scanty meal of biscuits and jerky. His plan was to nurse the cup of coffee for a little while before turning in.

  His buckskin gelding, which had been grazing a few yards away, suddenly lifted its head and made a soft nickering sound. The horse’s ears pricked forward.

  He noticed it, as he would anything else that might be a sign of danger. Moving with the smooth, efficient grace of a panther, he stood and set the cup on the rock. He reached down and picked up his Winchester from the ground where he’d placed it next to the bedroll he had already spread out.

  With a bare whisper of noise, he slid into the brush, leaving the tiny fire crackling behind him.

  The buckskin whinnied louder, scenting another horse. Fine, thought The Kid. If somebody was out there in the darkness, he wanted to draw them in, making them easier to deal with.

  He wore a black hat, black coat, black trousers and boots, helping him blend into the shadows. He waited patiently.

  Time stretched out, but time didn’t have much meaning for him anymore. He didn’t have anywhere he had to be at any particular time. He didn’t have anywhere he had to be, period. No one he knew would be looking for him.

  Conrad Browning’s lawyers were aware that he was alive, but they didn’t know where he was. They ran the businesses and banked the profits, and that was the way it would be for the foreseeable future.

  Frank Morgan knew, too, but Frank was even more of a drifter than his son. People even called him The Drifter, in fact. He was one of the last truly fast guns. He was off somewhere, doing whatever it was he did. He had made it clear, the last time he and The Kid saw each other, that he would respect his son’s desire for privacy.

  So whoever was skulking around, it wasn’t a friend of his, The Kid told himself. It might not necessarily be an enemy…but he was going to assume the worst until he learned otherwise.

  After a few more minutes, he heard the thud of a horse’s hoof against the earth. A moment later, brush rustled. Then a man’s voice spoke. The Kid couldn’t make out the words, but he understood some of the reply from a second man.

  “…around here somewhere, I tell you. I caught a glimpse of his fire.”

  So there was more than one of them. And they were looking for him. They had tracked him by his campfire.

  He had considered making a cold camp, but he didn’t think it was necessary. He had believed he was alone on the mountainside.

  Obviously, that had been a mistake.

  “Spread out.” That was a third voice. “Lewis, over there. Hargrove, take the left flank. Murphy, go right. Kinnard and I will take the middle.”

  So there were at least five men searching for him. Or rather, searching for somebody, The Kid corrected. He didn’t think they had reason to be after him, but he’d been mixed up in enough trouble over the past year he was bound to have left some enemies behind him.

  Maybe he ought to confront them, demand to know who they were looking for. If it came to a fight, five-to-one odds were pretty steep, but he had faced worse.

  A cold smile tugged at his mouth as the searchers came closer, making their way up the slope. They were making qui
te a bit of noise. The buckskin had given The Kid some advance warning, but even if that hadn’t happened, he would have heard the men long before they reached his camp.

  He could see the fire from where he crouched in the brush. The flames had died down to embers, but they still glowed redly. The scent of wood smoke hung in the air along with the smell of Arbuckle’s coffee. It was enough to lead one of the men right to the camp.

  “I found it,” the man called eagerly.

  A moment later, The Kid’s keen eyes vaguely made out the dark shapes of the others as they converged on the clearing and stepped out into the open.

  “He was here,” one of the men said excitedly.

  “He’s still here somewhere,” said another. “His horse is unsaddled and hobbled right over there. He can’t be far off. We’ll spread out and look for him.”

  “Hey, where’d Haggarty go?” one of the men asked.

  “Who gives a damn about Haggarty? If he wandered off, that means there’ll be one less of us with a claim on that reward money, don’t it?”

  “Yeah, you’re right, Deke. I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

  Reward? What was going on? There was no reward on The Kid’s head, at least not as far as he knew. He had broken plenty of laws…in fact, he had killed men in cold blood…but he had never been charged with anything.

  Those manhunters had the wrong man.

  Maybe he ought to step out and tell them that, he thought. But would they believe him? Or would they just start shooting and ask questions later?

  He decided to lie low and wait them out. If they spread out like their leader had said, he might be able to jump them one at a time and put them out of action. He didn’t want to kill anybody unless he had to, but he would defend himself.

  Once again the man in charge—Deke, that was his name—separated the others. They moved off, heading up the heavily forested hillside.

  One of them moved straight toward the spot where The Kid waited in the brush.

  Chapter 2

  With infinite patience, The Kid remained motionless. The searcher was going to pass just to his right. Silently, he lifted the Winchester, waited until the man stepped past him, and slammed the rifle butt against the back of the man’s neck.

  You could kill somebody like that if you hit them hard enough, but The Kid eased off so the blow wasn’t fatal. The man dropped like a rock, out cold. He’d never had a chance to cry out.

  He hadn’t made much noise falling down, but it was enough to alert one of the other men. He turned and bounded through the brush toward The Kid, calling softly, “Hargrove, you all right?”

  There was no time to do anything except confront the man. The Kid used the Winchester again, whipping the stock around so it smashed across the man’s jaw. He went down, groaning as he fell.

  “Over there!” Deke yelled. “Hargrove and Murphy must have cornered him!”

  Things were about to get worse. But at least The Kid had whittled down the odds a little.

  A crashing in the brush made him wheel to his left. As he did so, Colt flame blossomed like a crimson flower in the night, and he heard a solid thunk! as a slug struck a tree trunk near him.

  “Don’t kill him!” Deke again shouted orders. “They want him alive!”

  They? Who were they?

  The Kid didn’t have time to ponder that, as one of the men charged him. He went low, thrust out a booted foot, and his leg swept the man’s legs out from under him. With a startled yell, the man plunged headfirst into a pine tree. The Kid winced at the sound of skull hitting bark.

  The man didn’t get up, didn’t even move.

  “Hargrove! Murphy! Lewis! Answer me, damn it!”

  “Deke, I don’t like this. You know what he’s like. He might’ve killed all of them by now.”

  “Shut up! There’s five of us and only one of him.”

  “There was five of us. You heard. They didn’t answer.”

  A bitter curse came from Deke. The two men were to The Kid’s right. He circled behind them as they cast back and forth, looking for their companions and the man they were hunting.

  It was pathetic, thought The Kid. They weren’t professional manhunters, that was for sure. Probably cowboys whose heads had been filled up with the thought of getting their hands on some reward money.

  He didn’t want to hurt them, but he knew they were dangerous. They would spook easily and start shooting again, and a bullet didn’t care who pulled the trigger. They might actually spray enough lead around to hit him by accident.

  He moved up in the shadows behind one of the men and drew his Colt. Pressing the revolver’s barrel against a suddenly stiffening back, he ordered in a low, harsh voice, “Don’t move, mister, or I’ll blow your spine in two.”

  The Kid heard a sharp intake of breath. “Oh, my God,” the man said. “Deke! He’s got me, Deke!”

  The Kid shoved the gun harder into the man’s back. “I didn’t tell you to yell, Kinnard.” He plucked the man’s name out of his memory.

  “You…you know who I am?”

  “Yeah. And if you don’t get the hell off this mountain and take your friends with you, I’ll show up some night when you don’t know I’m anywhere around. You know what’ll happen then, don’t you, Kinnard?”

  The Kid made his voice as rough and threatening as he could. At the same time, he had to make an effort not to laugh. Grim and dangerous though it was, it was a game of sorts, a game he was about to win.

  “Drop your guns,” he went on. “I want to hear them hit the ground.” Then he raised his voice. “Deke! You better come up here where I can see you, Deke, or I’ll kill your partner.”

  For a moment there was no response. Then The Kid heard a defeated sigh.

  “Take it easy. There’s no need for anybody to die.”

  “Then why’d you come up here hunting me?” The Kid ground the gun barrel into Kinnard’s back, drawing a yelp of pain from him. “Drop your guns, I said. You, too, Deke. Step out where I can see you and get those guns on the ground.”

  “You got to do what he says, Deke,” Kinnard pleaded. “He knows who we are, damn it!”

  With a rustling of brush, Deke stepped into the open. He put his rifle on the ground, drew a revolver from a holster at his waist and dropped it as well. Kinnard threw his rifle down and fumbled his gun from its holster. It thudded to the ground.

  “That’s it,” Deke said. “We’re disarmed.”

  “No hide-out guns?”

  “No. I swear.”

  The Kid didn’t believe him, but it didn’t really matter. He said, “Deke, sit down next to that tree. Kinnard, take your belt off and use it to tie him to the trunk.”

  “What…what’re you gonna do to me?” Kinnard asked.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t do what I tell you.”

  Cursing, Deke sat down where The Kid ordered. Kinnard lashed him securely to the narrow trunk of a fairly small pine. When that was done, Kinnard asked nervously, “What about me?”

  “Turn around,” The Kid said.

  Kinnard started to blubber. “Oh, God. Oh, no, mister, please don’t kill me. Please. You can’t—”

  The Kid flipped the Colt around and shut him up with a quick rap from the gun butt. Kinnard’s knees unhinged and dumped him on the ground at Deke’s feet.

  “Your other three men are scattered along the slope here, knocked out,” The Kid told Deke. “One of them hit his head pretty hard against a tree. I hope he’s not hurt too bad.”

  Deke glared up at him. “You made the worst mistake of your life, Bledsoe.”

  “I sort of doubt that,” The Kid said. “And I’m not—”

  The crash of a gunshot interrupted him. What felt like a giant fist smashed into his body and drove him forward. He ran into a tree and bounced off. His balance deserted him. He felt himself falling and couldn’t stop it.

  The Kid smacked face-first into the ground. Pain filled him and made his head spin crazily. He heard footsteps
approaching him. Forcing his eyes open, he saw a pair of booted feet stop right beside him. The man bent over him and said in an icy voice, “Yeah, you made a mistake, all right, you just didn’t know it. You turned your back on me.”

  “Haggarty!” Deke cried. “Haggarty, you got him! Let me loose, and we’ll get the others and take him in.”

  Haggarty laughed. “And split the reward six ways when I earned it by myself? The hell with that.”

  “You can’t collect if he’s dead.”

  “He’s not dead. I just creased him. He’s stunned now, but he’ll live.”

  “You gotta let me loose, anyway,” Deke persisted. “You can’t just leave us all up here like this!”

  Haggarty grunted. “Get yourself loose. I don’t have time for you.”

  A hand grasped The Kid’s shoulder, rolled him onto his back. A fresh burst of agony shot through him.

  “I’ve been watching,” the dark, looming shape that was Haggarty said. “I knew you were a dangerous man, Bledsoe, but I wasn’t sure you could take all five of them like you did. Once I saw that, I knew I couldn’t give you a chance.”

  The Kid forced his tongue out of his mouth and licked his lips. He husked, “I…I’m not…”

  Before he could get the words out, he saw a gun butt whipping down toward his head.

  The night exploded in a burst of shooting stars, and that was the last thing The Kid knew.

  Chapter 3

  Bledsoe.

  Who the hell was Bledsoe?

  The question echoed in The Kid’s brain as consciousness slowly seeped back into it. Then pain overwhelmed curiosity and he forgot all about Bledsoe. Instead, he fought not to be sick as nausea roiled his stomach.

  He felt a horrible pounding inside his skull and realized he was hanging head down. That torture was his pulse, he figured out after a moment. It felt like imps from hell banging on the inside of his head with ball-peen hammers.