The Loner: The Bounty Killers

by J. A. Johnstone

  She shook her head. “No. There are a couple lying over yonder who look like they were killed by the explosion.”

  That made five, counting the man who had been blown to smithereens. Two men unaccounted for, thought The Kid. They might still be running . . . or they might be lurking around trying to figure out what had happened—and who was to blame.

  “Let’s go take a look at the cabin,” The Kid suggested. “Maybe whoever’s in there can tell us what’s going on here.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” McCall asked. “We stopped those men from blowing up the place. That’s enough. Let’s find our horses and light a shuck out of here.”

  The Kid shook his head. “I want to know what it was about.”

  “Damn it, I’m in charge here! I’ve got the gun.”

  “Not the only one,” The Kid said, and he showed her the Colt he had taken away from the man he’d killed. The handle was still a little slick with blood, but he didn’t have any trouble holding it.

  For a second he thought McCall was going to shoot him with the Winchester. After that tense heartbeat—during which he didn’t know what he would do if she threw down on him—she nodded and said, “All right, if it’s that important to you, let’s go check out the cabin.”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” The Kid said. Most of the dust had cleared, and he was acutely aware that they were out in the open as they walked around the boulders. The cabin appeared to be undamaged. The rocks had shielded it from most of the force of the blast.

  As they approached, the door swung open and the barrel of a rifle thrust out. The Kid and McCall tensed.

  “Don’t come any closer!” a man’s voice yelled. It was reedy with age and strain. “I’ll shoot if I have to!”

  “We saw plenty proof of that, old-timer,” The Kid called. “We’re on your side, though. You don’t have to be afraid of us.”

  “How can you be on my side?” The question came from the dark interior of the cabin. “I don’t know you. You ain’t got no earthly idea who I am!”

  “That’s true,” McCall muttered. “I’m glad to see that somebody else is thinking straight around here.”

  “That explosion could have destroyed your cabin,” The Kid said. “With you in it. Thanks to us, it didn’t.”

  “Well, I’m obliged to you for that, I reckon. But that don’t mean I’m dumb enough to trust you. Who are you, anyway?”

  “My name’s Morgan. This is McCall. We were riding through when we heard the shots.”

  “How come you got mixed up in my troubles? They ain’t none o’ your business.”

  McCall said, “Again, somebody who’s thinking straight.”

  The Kid ignored her. “We didn’t like the look of the odds. We liked them even less once the fellow showed up with the dynamite.”

  “Yeah, that bunch would’a been glad to blow me hell-west and crosswise,” the unseen old man responded. He finally stepped into the doorway. He was twisted sideways and held the rifle in his right hand while resting the barrel across what appeared to be the stump of his left arm. That sleeve of his faded flannel shirt was pinned up where most of the limb was missing.

  The ease with which the old-timer handled the rifle told The Kid the injury wasn’t a new one. The missing arm might not have been caused by an injury. He could have been born that way.

  He was short, stocky, and mostly bald. A fringe of white hair circled the back of his head, running from ear to ear. A thick white beard jutted from his chin and hung down over his chest. He wore overalls, the flannel shirt, and work boots that laced up.

  He stared at McCall for a second before exclaiming, “Good Lord! You’re a woman, ain’t you, Red?”

  “That’s right,” she told him. “Does that bother you, mister?”

  “Shoot, no. It’s just that it’s been a long time since I seen a female, that’s all, stuck off under this rim like I am.” His eyes narrowed as he peered at her. “Don’t recollect seein’ a gal totin’ firearms since I knowed that bawdy ol’ wench, Calamity Jane. Got to say you’re a whole heap prettier’n Calam ever was. She had away o’ comfortin’ a man, though, when he needed it . . .”

  “That’s about enough of that,” McCall snapped. “Who are you, mister?”

  “See, I done told you, you don’t know me from Adam’s off ox. I’m Chester Blount. Name mean anything to you?”

  The Kid shook his head. “I can’t say that it does.”

  “Well, no reason it should. I’ve always lived a quiet life. Until Spud Guthrie decided he had to have Dos Caballos Canyon there.” He inclined his bald head toward the mouth of the canyon that had been closed off by the camouflaged gate.

  “I never heard of Spud Guthrie, either,” The Kid said, “but he doesn’t sound like a very pleasant sort.”

  Chester Blount chuckled. “Oh, he ain’t, and that’s the blessed truth. Them was Guthrie’s men tryin’ to kill me. Are you claimin’ that you blowed ’em up, mister?”

  “We did. Some of them, anyway.”

  “How in blazes did you manage that? Sounded like the world was comin’ to an end for a second there. Way the ground shook, I was pert near afraid the whole rim was about to come down on top of me.”

  “They had a crate of dynamite they were going to use to blast you out,” The Kid explained. “The whole crate sort of... went off.”

  Blount let out a low whistle. “I hope to smile it did. Kill all the varmints?”

  “It looks like a couple of them got away.”

  Blount stiffened and frowned. “The two o’ you best take off for the tall and uncut, then, whilst you still got a chance to do so. Them boys’ll run straight back to Guthrie, and when he hears what happened here, he’ll saddle up the other thirty or forty of his gun-wolves and come callin’. He ain’t been too unfriendly so far, but this’ll really piss him off.”

  That comment startled a laugh of disbelief out of The Kid. “Sending seven hardcases after you with a crate of dynamite isn’t being too unfriendly?”

  “You don’t know Spud Guthrie. That sawed-off little runt is the meanest man to ever walk the face o’ the earth. If you don’t believe me, you just stick around here and see what happens.”

  McCall said, “If that’s true, then you can’t stay here, either, Mr. Blount. We have an extra horse. You can come with us.”

  Blount had lowered his rifle as they talked, but now he raised it again. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere!” he snapped. “I been prospectin’ Dos Caballos for nigh on to ten years now, and I ain’t leavin’ just when I’m about ready to finally make a good strike!”

  Those words explained a lot, The Kid thought. Blount was a prospector, always on the lookout for the bonanza of gold or silver that would make him rich, and like most of his breed, he was probably a little touched in the head. He would cling stubbornly to his belief that someday he would strike it rich.

  Even though that belief might get him killed.

  “Take it easy,” The Kid told the old-timer. “McCall’s right. If this man Guthrie shows up with an army of hired killers, you won’t stand a chance. Why don’t you come with us now, and you can always come back later once things have cooled off a little.”

  “They ain’t gonna cool off,” Blount insisted. “And I can’t leave, ’cause if I do, when I come back Dos Caballos won’t be there.”

  “Won’t be there?” The Kid repeated with a frown. “Where is a canyon going to go?”

  “Underground,” the old-timer said. “Guthrie’s gonna blast the sides and collapse the whole blamed thing.”

  Chapter 20

  The Kid and McCall stared at Blount. What the old man said sounded crazy.

  “Why in the world would he do that?” The Kid asked after a moment.

  Blount waved a hand toward the top of the looming cliff. “Guthrie’s Rafter G spread is up yonder, on top of the rim. It’s a good ranch, but his herds have grown so fast he’s runnin’ short of grass and water. Now, it just so happens he owns some l
and down here on the flats with plenty o’ grass and water, but there ain’t no good way to get his stock to it. He’d have to drive the critters nigh on to a hundred miles to get a good-sized herd down off the rim. Only other way would be to bring ’em single file down one of the narrow trails, and that’d be a recipe for disaster.” Blount shook his head. “That’s when he brung in some engineerin’ fella who told him that if he blasted the sides of the canyon and made ’em collapse into the canyon itself, he could haul in some dirt and make a nice, wide trail out of it. Then his herds could get up and down off the rim without no trouble.”

  It was an audacious scheme, The Kid thought, and fraught with obstacles, but he’d had enough engineering training in college to know that it might actually work.

  “But Guthrie’s main problem is that you own Dos Caballos Canyon, right?” he asked Blount.

  The old-timer nodded. “Dang right. I filed on it more’n ten years ago, when I decided I was gonna prospect. I got a nose for gold. I know it’s in there.”

  “If you own the canyon, why don’t you just sell it to Guthrie?” McCall asked. “If it’s that important to him, he’d probably give you a good price.”

  Blount snorted. “No offense, ma’am, but wasn’t you just listenin’? I’m gonna make a good strike in there, and it’ll make me a lot richer than Spud Guthrie ever could.”

  “And how long did you say you’d been looking for that strike?”

  “Ten years,” Blount replied proudly.

  “Didn’t you ever stop to think that if you haven’t found it in that amount of time, you probably never will?”

  The old man glared at her. “You say that ’cause you ain’t got no faith. I do.”

  “There’s a difference between having faith and being muleheaded,” McCall said as she returned the glare. “Come on, Kid. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Hang on,” The Kid said. “Did Guthrie offer to buy you out, Mr. Blount?”

  Blount nodded. “He did. I turned him down flat.”

  “What did he do then?”

  “Well, he tried to run me out, o’ course. Several times whilst I was workin’ up in the canyon, somebody took potshots at me. They come close enough I could tell they was tryin’ to scare me, not kill me. When I didn’t leave, they started comin’ closer.”

  “Until today, when he sent men to kill you.”

  “Yep. I seen them varmints comin’ and hotfooted it for the cabin. Barely made it here ’fore they started shootin’ at me. I guess Guthrie figured I might fort up, so he sent along that fella with the dynamite, too.”

  “That backfired on him,” The Kid said with a glance toward the crater behind the boulders.

  “Thanks to you two,” Blount said. “I reckon if you hadn’t come along when you did, I’d be tryin’ to kick down the Pearly Gates right about now. Either that or shakin’ hands with the Devil.”

  “You’re welcome,” McCall said. “But from here on out, you’re on your own, old-timer. If you were smart, you’d light a shuck and put this place far behind you.”

  Blount shook his head. “It’s too late for that. Some of Guthrie’s men are dead. He ain’t gonna stand for that. I told you he was a mean sidewinder. He’ll have to kill me now. I wouldn’t never be able to run far enough or fast enough to get away from him.”

  “Then what are you going to do?” The Kid asked.

  “Stay here and fight,” Blount declared. “Do as much damage to the son of a buck and his hired guns as I can until they get me.” He shrugged. “It ain’t been that good of a life, I reckon, but it’s sure enough been a long one. I ain’t got no kick comin’. At least I’ll go out scrappin’.”

  “There’s something else you can do,” The Kid said.

  “What’s that? ’Cause I ain’t seein’ it.”

  “Sell a half-interest in Dos Caballos Canyon to me.”

  “Damn it!” McCall exploded. “Have you forgotten that you’re my prisoner, Morgan?”

  “Not anymore,” The Kid said. “Not unless you want to shoot me and cut my head off, like you keep threatening to do. I’d have to try to stop you from doing that.”

  She glanced at the gun in his hand, and he knew she was trying to gauge just how serious he was.

  Blount looked back and forth between them, a baffled expression on his leathery face. “What the hell are you folks talkin’ about? Buyin’ the canyon? Takin’ folks prisoner and cuttin’ off their heads? That’s loco!”

  Without taking her eyes off The Kid, McCall said, “Morgan’s a fugitive from the law. He’s wanted for breaking out of prison and killing a couple guards over in New Mexico Territory. There’s a ten thousand dollar reward for him.”

  “The part about killing the guards is a lie,” The Kid said. “I never did that. And the only reason I broke out of prison was because I’d been locked up by mistake. They thought I was somebody else.”

  Blount scratched at his beard. “That’s a pretty wild story,” he said dubiously.

  McCall grunted. “It gets even wilder. Morgan claims he’s really some sort of tycoon who just pretends to be a gunfighter.”

  “I never used the word tycoon,” The Kid said. “But my real name is Conrad Browning, and I do have a lot of lucrative business interests.”

  “If that’s true,” Blount said, “then what in blazes are you doin’ runnin’ around the frontier lookin’ like some sort o’ saddle tramp?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  McCall snorted to indicate her disbelief. She said, “You gave me your word, Morgan.”

  “That I’d go to Santa Fe with you. I still will . . . but only after we help Mr. Blount settle his troubles.”

  “It ain’t that I don’t appreciate the offer,” Blount said. “But why would you want to help an old codger like me? An hour ago, you hadn’t ever laid eyes on me.”

  “That’s true,” The Kid admitted. “I guess you could just say . . . I used to know somebody who would have wanted me to help you.”

  That was the way it had been since Rebel’s death. Once his need for revenge had been satisfied, at least as much as it could be, The Kid had wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his sorrow.

  Time and again, he had run into people who were in trouble, usually through no fault of their own. He knew Rebel would have wanted him to help them. He even seemed to hear her voice at times, speaking to him and urging him to do the right thing, even though it went against what he really wanted.

  It had happened enough that he was growing to accept it. He had wanted to be a loner, holding the world at arm’s length . . . but it kept crowding in on him, refusing to allow him to sink into an abyss of solitude and grief.

  When you came right down to it, he thought, trouble might well be the only thing that was keeping him alive. Maybe he had to risk his life in order to save it.

  It was too much for him to figure out. All he really knew was that he couldn’t ride away and leave Chester Blount to face death alone.

  “You can’t do anything to help him,” McCall argued. “You heard what he said. Guthrie has dozens of gunmen working for him. And you’ve got an appointment with the law in Santa Fe.”

  “One that I’ll keep when the time comes,” The Kid said. “Think about it, McCall. This is a pretty isolated area. Pike’s not going to be looking for us here. If we hole up here for a while, maybe he’ll get tired and stop searching for us.”

  “Who’s Pike?” asked Blount.

  “An added annoyance,” McCall snapped. “You might have something there, Kid. We lay low for a while, then make a run for Santa Fe. There’s just one problem with the idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  She gestured curtly toward the rim. “Guthrie’s gunhawks will probably kill us!”

  “Well,” The Kid said, “we’ll just have to make sure that they don’t.”

  Chapter 21

  Claudius Turnbuckle was a tall, burly, balding man with muttonchop whiskers. Dressed in an expensive suit and bowler h
at, he made an impressive figure as he strode determinedly across the plaza in front of the Territorial Courthouse in Santa Fe.

  For the past few years, the imposing brick building had served as the territorial capitol. The previous capitol building had burned down, and a new one was being built. According to one of the clerks in the hotel where Turnbuckle was staying, the fire’s origin was mysterious and likely arson, motivated by the fact that nearly everybody in town had thought the old capitol building with its Victorian design was ugly as sin and out of place in the predominantly Spanish architecture of Santa Fe.

  Turnbuckle didn’t give a damn about any of that. He wanted to see Governor Miguel Otero face to face to plead Conrad Browning’s case. It was absurd to think that a man such as Conrad should be a wanted fugitive, but so far, Turnbuckle hadn’t had a chance to persuade the territorial governor of that fact.

  Turnbuckle went into the building and proceeded down marble-floored hallways to the governor’s spacious office. Otero’s aides had turned him away a couple of times since he’d been in Santa Fe, but Turnbuckle wasn’t going to be stopped any longer, even if he had to pick up one of those slick-haired political flunkies and toss him out a window.

  In fact, he almost hoped that would happen. It would feel good to cut through some of the red tape by force. Of course, he couldn’t give in to that impulse. And in the long run, it probably wouldn’t help Conrad.

  Turnbuckle took off his hat as he entered the outer office. The clerk who sat at the desk there recognized him and sighed. “Governor Otero doesn’t have any time available today to meet with you, Mr. Turnbuckle,” he said. “As I’ve explained to you, and the governor’s aide Mr. Blanton has explained to you, you’ll need to make an appointment to speak to the governor, and the earliest you’ll be able to do that is the middle of next month.”

  “The middle of next month is too late,” Turnbuckle said. “My client could be dead by then, murdered by bounty hunters who are after him on false charges.”

  “I realize that’s your claim, but you’ll have to present proof to the governor.”