The Loner: The Bounty Killers

by J. A. Johnstone

  The man cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Blount! Blount, can you hear me?”

  His voice was surprisingly deep for a man of his size and carried like a foghorn.

  “I hear you, Guthrie!” Blount replied through the single window in the front of the cabin.

  “You killed some of my men!”

  “Only because they tried to kill me first!”

  The contrast between Guthrie’s bullfrog-like bellows and Blount’s rather high-pitched voice would have been humorous if the situation hadn’t been so deadly serious, The Kid thought.

  “I’m gonna give you one more chance!” Guthrie said. “Get on that mule of yours and ride away, and you can have safe passage out of here. Just don’t ever come back!”

  “You can go to hell!” Blount responded. “Dos Caballos is mine and always will be!”

  “I’ve got twenty men out here, you old fool! If we charge that cabin, I don’t care who you’ve got helping you! We’ll overrun you and kill you!”

  “Not without a whole heap o’ you buzzards dyin’ first!” Blount shouted defiantly. “And I reckon I’ll be aimin’ at you first thing, Spud!”

  The scornful tone of the old-timer’s voice told The Kid that Guthrie probably didn’t like being called by his nickname. Probably didn’t care for being reminded of his lack of stature. Another indication of that was the tall crown on the hat Guthrie wore.

  That hat was a mighty tempting target, and a faint grin tugged at The Kid’s mouth as he lined the Winchester’s sights on it.

  “All right, Blount!” Guthrie roared. “You called the tune, now you can damned well dance to it!”

  He lifted an arm to signal for his men to attack. Even though The Kid couldn’t see them, he knew they were probably spread out through the trees in a skirmish line. Blount and McCall couldn’t hope to pick off more than a few of them as they charged.

  But The Kid could see the whole field, and he thought it was time to send a signal of his own.

  He squeezed the Winchester’s trigger.

  Chapter 23

  As the rifle cracked, Spud Guthrie’s hat leaped from his head. Guthrie leaped, too, bouncing in the saddle and clapping a hand to his suddenly uncovered cranium. As he came back down on leather, he grabbed the reins and whirled his horse around to dash back into the timber.

  At the same time, the two men who had ridden out with him whipped their rifles to their shoulders and started blazing away at the ledge where the shot had come from.

  The Kid ducked low behind the rock. From their angle, the two gunmen couldn’t get a clear view of him, nor could they ricochet their slugs off the cliff face behind him.

  He waited until their weapons fell silent, then thrust his Winchester over the top of the rock again and cranked off four swift shots, aiming just short so the bullets kicked up dust under the hooves of the horses.

  The animals spooked. The men had to fight to get them under control. The Kid probably could have picked them both off, but instead he held his fire and allowed Guthrie’s men to retreat into the woods.

  The message he had sent was clear. With a field of fire commanding the entire area in front of the cabin, he could kill the men at will if they charged. Combined with the damage that McCall and Blount would do by firing from inside the cabin, it was possible they might be able to wipe out the whole party.

  Guthrie was smart enough to know that, too. He came back to the edge of the trees and called, “Blount! Blount!”

  “Speak your piece!” Blount shouted back from the cabin.

  “Tell your man to hold his fire!”

  “He already is, ain’t he? Hurry it up, ’fore we get impatient!”

  “I want the bodies of my men!” Guthrie said.

  Blount hesitated in answering, but after a moment he called, “All right! You can take ’em! There ain’t nothin’ left of the one who was standin’ right over that dynamite when it blew, though!”

  “We’ll come out and get the others! Hold your fire!”

  Several men emerged from the pines and cast nervous glances toward the ledge where The Kid had them covered. They hurried forward, picked up the bodies of the two men who had been killed in the explosion and the two who had died in the fighting afterward. They carried the corpses back into the cover of the trees.

  “I’m leaving!” Guthrie yelled. “But I’ll be back! You can’t win, Blount! You can’t hold out against all of us!”

  “Maybe not, but a bunch of you will die before you root me out!” Blount followed the declaration with a cackling laugh.

  Guthrie didn’t respond to that. The Kid kept watching, and a few minutes later, the group of riders reappeared, moving away from the area. Some of the men had doubled up, so their horses could be used to carry the bodies.

  “They’re gone!” he shouted down to the cabin when Guthrie and his men were out of sight.

  McCall and Blount emerged and waved up at him to show they had heard. “You need me to spell you?” the bounty hunter called.

  “Not yet,” The Kid replied. “I’m fine.”

  He settled back to keep watch. As his eyes scanned the landscape, he muttered, “I hope you’re satisfied, Rebel. I’ve gotten myself mixed up in trouble that’s none of my business . . . again.”

  A warm breeze blew past him. It was almost like the caress of fingers against his cheek.

  The rest of the afternoon passed quietly. As the sun was setting, The Kid climbed down from the ledge. Once night had fallen, he wouldn’t be able to see well enough from up there to do any good.

  That same thought had probably occurred to Guthrie.

  When he made it to the bottom of the cliff, he went into the cabin and said, “We all need to get out of here.”

  “What are you talkin’ about, Kid?” Blount asked from the stove, where he was cooking some flapjacks.

  “Guthrie and his men are liable to come back as soon as it’s good and dark,” The Kid explained. “If we let them catch us here in the cabin, we won’t be able to hold out against them.”

  “Dadgummit, this has been my home for ten years! I can’t just abandon it.”

  The Kid shook his head. “You can take anything of value with you, but it’s a bad idea to stay.”

  McCall asked, “Where do you think we should go, Kid?”

  “I was thinking we could hole up in the canyon. The entrance is pretty narrow. They can’t come at us all at once if we’re in there.”

  McCall thought it over and nodded. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “It’s a terrible idea!” Blount said. “Guthrie’s such a snake, he’s liable to burn the cabin down!”

  “Let him,” The Kid said. “I know you don’t like the idea, Mr. Blount, but Dos Caballos will be a lot easier to defend.”

  “Damn it!” Blount sighed. “I reckon you’re right. But I don’t have to like it.”

  “We’ve got three horses and a mule. We’ll gather up as many of your belongings as we can and take them with us.”

  They postponed supper for the time being and got busy. Blount didn’t say much and obviously was still upset, but he didn’t argue anymore. Within half an hour, they had the old-timer’s gear loaded and were ready to make the move.

  A red glow remained in the western sky. The Kid knew they didn’t have much time. He led the buckskin and the extra horse McCall had brought from Las Vegas. McCall followed, leading the black, and Blount brought up the rear with the mule. Max bounded ahead of his human companions, on the alert for any sign of danger.

  When they reached the mouth of the canyon, Blount unlatched the brush-covered gate.

  “How did you build such a thing with only one arm?” McCall asked.

  “Lots of time, sweat, and determination,” Blount replied. “Gimme a hand here, Kid. I can open and close this gate by myself, but it’s a heap easier with two people.”

  They swung the gate back and took the animals into the canyon, then pulled the gate shut behind them. It wouldn’t
keep out anybody who really wanted in, but it would slow down an attack. Somebody would have to open the gate, and after a few of Guthrie’s men got picked off trying to do that, it might discourage them into giving up.

  The Kid didn’t believe it, though. Guthrie’s pride had been wounded too badly to turn back now.

  “Is there any way to climb down these walls?” The Kid asked as they moved deeper into the canyon.

  “Nope,” Blount replied. “Maybe in daylight, if a fella was half fly. But sure as sin, nobody could do it in the dark.”

  “What about the other end of the canyon?”

  “Ain’t no way out there, or in, neither. We’re boxed up good an’ proper in here.”

  McCall said, “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, Kid. Guthrie can just lay siege to the place and starve us out.”

  “He can try. We’ll have to hope fate deals us a trump card.”

  McCall’s snort made it clear just how unlikely she thought that was.

  The Kid already had the glimmering of a plan drifting around in the back of his mind.

  Blount led them to a trickle of a creek where they built a campfire. A big rock jutted out from the canyon wall to shield the fire from the canyon mouth. The old man boiled coffee and they ate the flapjacks they had brought with them. It was a meager supper, but they might have to make their provisions last for quite a while.

  From the other side of the rock next to the fire, they could see the entrance to the canyon and agreed to take turns standing guard. Blount suggested that he take the first watch and McCall the second, since The Kid had spent most of the afternoon hunkered on the ledge. “That way you can go ahead and get some rest,” the old-timer said.

  The Kid agreed. He was tired, and it would feel good to stretch out on his bedroll.

  Even though he hadn’t been born and bred a frontiersman—far from it, in fact—he had developed many abilities over the past few years, including the ability to fall asleep almost instantly when he had the chance. He dropped into a deep, dreamless slumber that didn’t end until McCall touched him on the shoulder long after midnight.

  The Kid came awake just as quickly as he fell asleep. He was fully alert as he sat up and asked quietly, “Any trouble?”

  “Not a bit. Guthrie hasn’t tried anything.”

  The Kid was a little surprised to hear that. He hadn’t thought the rancher would wait very long to launch another attack on the cabin.

  Blount snored loudly from his bedroll nearby. McCall laughed and said, “I’m not sure how you slept through that.”

  “Just tired, I guess.” The Kid buckled on his gunbelt and picked up his rifle. “I’ll take over now.”

  “I’ll come with you for a minute.”

  The Kid wondered why McCall would do that, but didn’t argue. They walked around the rock, and Max followed them.

  “I sat on that log there,” McCall said, pointing to the deadfall that was barely visible in the starlight. “It’s not real comfortable, but when you lean back against the rock, it’s better than the ground.”

  “When you’re standing guard, you don’t need to be too comfortable,” he said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  They settled themselves on the log. Max lay down at their feet, resting his head on his paws.

  The Kid sensed that McCall had something on her mind. He didn’t press her. If she had something to say, she could get around to it in her own way and in her own sweet time.

  After a couple minutes of silence, she asked, “What did you say your real name is, Kid?”

  “Conrad Browning,” he replied. “You believe that now?”

  “Well, I don’t know. But after being around you for awhile, I can tell that you’re not like any of the other fugitives I’ve ever gone after. It’s not just that you’re an educated man. Some of them were, too. But there’s a gentleness about you that I never saw in any of them.”

  “I’m not a gentleman.”

  “That’s not what I said. I said you had a gentleness. I don’t think you want people to see it, but it’s there. If it wasn’t”—her voice caught for a second—“if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of sending that picture and the money to my mother in Kansas City.”

  “It wasn’t mine,” The Kid said with a shrug.

  “No, but most men wouldn’t have done it.” She paused. “Anyway, you’ve told me your real name, so I reckon I ought to tell you mine.”

  “It’s not McCall?”

  “That part of it is. But my first name is Lace.”

  The Kid didn’t say anything for a second. Then he repeated, “Lace. Sort of a soft name for a hard-as-nails bounty hunter.”

  “I wasn’t always a bounty hunter. My mama . . . she worked in a house in St. Louis. You know?”

  “I know,” The Kid said. “You don’t have to tell me any of this if you don’t want to.”

  “If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t be telling you,” she snapped. Her tone softened again as she went on, “I was born there. She wanted a better life for me than she had, so she moved to Kansas City and tried to find a real job there. It was hard for her, though, and after a while . . . well, she went back to it. With all that, I don’t guess anybody would be real surprised to hear that I turned out the same way.”

  The Kid didn’t say anything, although actually he was a little surprised.

  “I wound up in a family way,” she went on. “One of my customers, a man named McCall, offered to marry me. I took him up on it. I wanted my child to have a name. He turned out to be a pretty bad sort, though. He didn’t treat me good. After a while I found out he was even worse than I thought when I happened to see a wanted poster with his picture on it. The man on the poster had a different name, but McCall was one of the names he was said to use sometimes. I went home, and the next time he raised his hand to me, I was ready. I shot the son of a bitch.”

  “You killed him?” The Kid asked.

  “No, I just put a bullet in his knee, and while he was rolling around on the floor screaming, I went and found a policeman and told him there was a wanted fugitive in my house. They hauled him off, and I claimed the reward. I got it, too. That was enough for me to be able to set my mama and my little girl up so they’d be all right.” She laughed. “That was how I found out I liked bounty hunting a lot better than I liked being a whore.”

  “And that’s what you’ve been doing for the past few years?”

  “Five years,” she said. “I already knew how to fight. I taught myself how to ride and shoot and found that I really took to it. Then I met Pronto, and he made me even better at it.”

  “Pike?”

  “Yeah. We got along just fine at first, before I realized how loco he really is. That seems to be a failing of mine, Kid. I can’t see what a man’s really like until I’ve been with him for a while.” She turned to look at him. “I’m hoping it’ll be different with you.”

  “You’re not with me,” The Kid pointed out.

  She cuffed the hat off her head and leaned toward him.

  “The hell I’m not,” Lace McCall said, and a second later her arms were around his neck and her mouth was pressed hotly to his.

  The Kid’s first instinct was to pull away from her. But something kept him from doing it, and after a moment, as an old familiar arousal surged up inside him, he realized he was feeling things that he hadn’t experienced in months—an unexpectedly urgent need to slide his arms around Lace and pull her to him so their bodies came together with an intensity that set the blood pounding in his head.

  It wasn’t right, a part of his brain insisted. It wasn’t right at all.

  But he couldn’t deny what he felt, couldn’t ignore the need. It had been too long. Lace might be hard as nails most of the time, but she softened in his embrace.

  He didn’t get the chance to find out what was going to happen next.

  At that moment an explosion lit up the night and shook the earth . . . literally.

 
Chapter 24

  Lace sprang away from him and jumped to her feet, her hand going to the gun on her hip.

  The Kid was up, too, with his Colt in his hand. His eyes searched the canyon mouth, but evidently the explosion hadn’t come from there.

  Chester Blount came running around the rock, yelling, “My cabin! The bastards blowed up my cabin!”

  The old-timer was right, The Kid decided. A garish orange glow in the sky to the west of the canyon marked the location of a fire, where Blount’s cabin was . . . or had been, The Kid thought.

  Spud Guthrie’s men had come back to finish what they had started earlier in the day. The Kid wondered how long it would take Guthrie to discover that nobody was in the cabin.

  The rancher probably wouldn’t explore the ruins until morning. When he realized there were no bodies in the charred debris, he might figure that Blount and his allies had abandoned the cabin and the canyon. Guthrie wouldn’t find out different until he and his men tried to waltz into Dos Caballos and got a hot lead welcome.

  Then they would lay siege to the canyon, and it would be only a matter of time before the three defenders were starved out.

  There had to be a better way, and The Kid thought he had an idea what it might be.

  But it required acting immediately, not waiting for morning.

  “Take it easy, Mr. Blount,” he told the old-timer. “The cabin can be rebuilt. One way or another, I’ll see to it that it is.”

  “You can believe him,” Lace added dryly. “He’s a rich man, after all.”

  Blount snorted. “No offense, Kid, but that’s mighty hard to believe.”

  “None taken,” The Kid assured him. “You’ll see, once we get out of here and Guthrie is dealt with.”

  “Who’s gonna deal with him?”

  “I am.”

  Lace and Blount both looked at him. Lace asked warily, “Just what are you up to, Morgan?”