The Loner: The Bounty Killers

by J. A. Johnstone

  When The Kid came out of the trees into an open stretch, he heeled the buckskin into a run that carried them east, roughly parallel to the edge of the Mogollon Rim a couple of miles to the south.

  With him fleeing in that direction, Guthrie’s men likely wouldn’t think that he had any connection to Blount and the canyon that Guthrie craved. The Kid wanted to keep it that way.

  All he had to do was outride a couple dozen hardcase killers who wanted to see him dead.

  As if that wasn’t going to be enough of a chore, Spud Guthrie chose that moment to wake up, twist around, and drive an elbow into The Kid’s belly as hard as he could.

  Chapter 26

  The sudden attack took The Kid by surprise. He bent forward in the saddle, the breath knocked out of his lungs by Guthrie’s vicious blow.

  Guthrie was squirming like a wildcat, almost toppling The Kid out of the saddle. He grabbed the horn at the last second and managed to stay mounted.

  Still gasping for air, he launched a left uppercut that caught Guthrie under the chin as he spewed obscenities. The rancher’s teeth clicked together, and he screeched in pain as he bit through his tongue.

  The Kid hammered another punch into Guthrie’s face. Guthrie sagged backward. The Kid wrestled him around, looped his left arm around the rancher’s throat, and drew his gun. He pressed the barrel into Guthrie’s back.

  “Settle down, you little snake!” The Kid hissed into Guthrie’s ear. “I’m damn close to blowing your spine in two and being done with it.”

  Guthrie stopped fighting. He couldn’t talk very well with The Kid’s forearm pressing into his throat like an iron bar, but he managed to rasp, “Who . . . who the hell are you? What do you want with me?”

  “Right now I want you to stop fighting so I don’t have to kill you. As for who I am, let’s just say I’m a friend of Chester Blount’s.” The Kid paused, then added with grim humor, “How’s your hat, Spud?”

  “You!” Guthrie said. “You son of a—You were the maverick up on that ledge this afternoon!”

  “That’s right. I could have killed you then. I drilled your hat on purpose. Don’t make me regret deciding to let you live.”

  “But . . . but that cabin . . .”

  “We weren’t in it,” The Kid said. “Blount’s fine.”

  Guthrie cursed bitterly at the news.

  The Kid had kept the buckskin moving, guiding the horse with his knees since both his hands were occupied. But he knew he couldn’t keep on that way. Guthrie’s men weren’t far behind him, and they would be riding hard.

  “Take off your belt and put your hands behind your back,” The Kid ordered.

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’ll kill you if I have to,” The Kid warned. “If I keep you propped up in front of me, your men won’t know you’re dead. They’ll have to hold their fire for fear of hitting you. So you can be a live hostage or a dead one, Guthrie. It’s up to you.”

  Guthrie realized The Kid meant it. He fumbled with his belt and pulled it off. The Kid holstered his gun but kept his tight grip around Guthrie’s neck. He looped the belt around Guthrie’s wrists and jerked it tight, binding the rancher’s arms behind his back.

  With that done, The Kid was able to take hold of the reins and urge the buckskin into a gallop again. They made better time, but when he looked back, he spotted a dark mass in the distance—the riders from the Rafter G giving chase.

  Coming to an area of more rugged terrain cut by rocky ridges and gullies, The Kid was forced to slow down and ride back and forth to avoid some of the obstacles. He worked the buckskin into a brush-choked ravine. The shadows were so thick no starlight penetrated. Taking a bandanna from his saddlebags, he wadded it up, and forced it into the mouth of a bitterly protesting Guthrie to serve as a gag.

  “Take it easy,” he whispered into the rancher’s ear. “I can cut your throat without making a sound.”

  He could have if he’d had a knife . . . which he didn’t. But Guthrie didn’t have to know that.

  They waited in silence for about fifteen minutes. Then The Kid began to hear hoofbeats not far away.

  The riders came closer. The Kid knew they had to be the hired killers from the Rafter G. The men passed close enough to the ravine for him to hear them arguing.

  “Damn it, Nebel, we don’t know that he came this way,” a man protested.

  “He was headed in this direction when he left the flats,” another man replied.

  “Why would he grab the boss in the first place? Ransom, maybe?”

  “Could be. Spud’s the richest hombre in these parts.” The gunman called Nebel laughed. “Hell, his wallet’s damn near as big as he is.”

  Guthrie made angry noises until The Kid closed a hand around his throat.

  The voices faded as the searchers rode on past, but The Kid heard one of the men say, “I think we ought to check out that canyon.”

  “Dos Caballos?” Nebel asked. “We blew up that old codger and his friends. They didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  The Kid smiled grimly. That was exactly what he wanted them to think.

  After a moment, he couldn’t make out the voices anymore, and the hoofbeats soon faded to nothingness. The Kid waited another half hour, then, satisfied that his decoying tactics had worked, he emerged from the ravine and sent the buckskin back toward the Rafter G.

  When he came to the trail that led down off the rim, he dismounted and hauled Guthrie down from the horse’s back. “You’re going in front,” he told the rancher. “Try anything funny, and you’ll be the one who makes it to the bottom of the rim in a hurry.”

  With The Kid leading the buckskin and prodding Guthrie along, the three of them started the descent. It was bad enough having to follow the trail in darkness, but with his hands tied behind him, Guthrie had it even worse. He had to move very slowly to keep his balance and find each spot to place his feet.

  It seemed to take forever to reach the bottom. The Kid lifted Guthrie onto the horse and felt the man trembling as he did so. Likely Guthrie didn’t want to live through anything like that again any time soon.

  For that matter, neither did The Kid.

  The eastern sky was gray with the approach of dawn by the time they reached the entrance to Dos Caballos Canyon. The Kid gave the cry of a hoot owl, something Frank Morgan had taught him how to do, and a moment later the brush-covered gate began to swing open.

  “Kid!” Lace called softly. “Kid, is that you?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, “and I’ve got Guthrie.”

  “Good Lord!” The exclamation came from Chester Blount. “I didn’t really believe you could do it.”

  The Kid took hold of the heavy gate and helped Lace open it. Then he led the buckskin through with the prisoner on its back. He and Lace closed the gate while Blount glared up at Guthrie in the gray gloom.

  “Bet you thought I was blowed to smithereens, didn’t you, you snaky little varmint?” Blount demanded. “Well, I ain’t, and pretty soon you’re gonna be answerin’ for all the no-good things you done. Some o’ them fellas who disappeared just before you gobbled up their range was friends o’ mine. I’ll bet once the law starts pokin’ around, they’ll find that them skallyhooters who work for you are mighty good with a runnin’ iron, too!”

  Blount hadn’t said anything before about suspecting Guthrie of being behind a wave of murder and rustling in the area, but The Kid wasn’t surprised.

  Guthrie still had the gag in his mouth. He made angry sounds through it at Blount’s accusations.

  “Let’s get him back to the camp,” The Kid said. “I want to get him tied up good and proper, so he can’t get away.”

  “I got that other horse o’ yours right here,” Blount said as he led the animal forward. “The names I need to remember when I get to Phoenix are John Stafford in San Francisco and Conrad Browning, right?”

  “That’s right,” The Kid told him. He shook hands with the old man. “Good luck.”

  “You
two are the ones who’re gonna need it,” Blount said. “You’ll be stuck here in this canyon with a viper in your midst and a whole heap o’ killers right outside just waitin’ for a chance to ventilate you.”

  “We won’t give them that chance,” The Kid promised. “You’d better get started. It’ll be a while before they decide to come look here, but there’s no point in waiting.”

  Blount mounted up, and The Kid and Lace opened the gate again. The Kid kept one eye on Guthrie while they were doing that, but the rancher didn’t try anything. His shoulders seemed to droop in defeat.

  It could be just a ruse. The Kid wasn’t going to let down his guard.

  When Blount was gone and the gate was securely fastened again, The Kid and Lace escorted Guthrie to the camp on the other side of the big rock. While The Kid covered him, Lace used several pieces of rope to hogtie Guthrie. They set him down with his back against the rock, confident that he couldn’t get loose.

  “You’ve had some practice at tying up prisoners,” The Kid commented.

  Lace smiled. “Yeah. Once I’ve got my hands on a man, he doesn’t get away . . . unless I want him to.”

  The Kid didn’t ask what she meant by that. He had a hunch he might find out.

  Chapter 27

  It was the middle of the morning before The Kid heard horses approaching the canyon. “Riders coming,” he called to Lace.

  She hurried around the rock to where he was standing watch, leaving Guthrie trussed up on the other side and the dog to keep an eye on him. “I told Max if Guthrie opens his mouth to yell, he can chew on him a little,” she informed The Kid with a grin.

  Carrying their Winchesters, they trotted up to the gate to look out. A group of about a dozen men came into sight, riding toward the canyon from the east. The Kid knew they had probably come down the treacherous trail he and Guthrie had descended the night before. He didn’t actually recognize any of them, but the hard stamp of their faces told him they were some of Guthrie’s hired killers.

  “That whole gun crew’s probably split up to search in all directions for Guthrie,” Lace said quietly. “You think they’ll ride on past?”

  “They might,” The Kid said. “But in case they don’t, we’d better get behind some cover.” He nodded toward a couple thick-trunked pine trees that would give them a good view of the gate. In a crouching run, he and Lace moved over and got situated behind them. They waited as the hoofbeats got louder.

  The riders stopped just outside its entrance, as The Kid thought they would. One of them ordered, “A couple of you get down and open that damn gate the old man built.”

  The voice was familiar. The Kid thought it belonged to one of the gunmen he’d heard talking the night before, while he and Guthrie waited in the brushy ravine.

  That was confirmed a second later when someone asked, “What would the boss be doin’ in there, Nebel?”

  “Damned if I know,” Nebel replied, “but we’re gonna look every place we can find.”

  From the way he gave orders, Nebel was probably Guthrie’s segundo, or at least the boss of the hired hardcases. There might be a regular foreman who supervised the cowboys doing the actual work of running the ranch.

  From The Kid’s position, he could see the latch that held the gate closed. He drew a bead on it with his rifle and waited. A moment later, through a gap in the brush, he saw a hand reach for the latch.

  He drilled a .44-40 slug right through the hand.

  The man screamed and jerked it back. A second later, shots roared as the men outside the gate acted instinctively, pulling iron and blazing away through the brush.

  The Kid had already ducked back behind the tree, and Lace was safely behind the trunk of the other pine. A few bullets knocked bark off the trunks, but that was all. Most of the slugs whined off harmlessly up the canyon.

  “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Nebel roared, cutting short the fusillade. “We don’t know who’s in there!”

  “Must be that old codger,” one of the other men said.

  “We blew him up,” a third gunnie protested.

  Nebel said, “We blew up his cabin. We don’t know for sure that he was inside it. Besides, he had some help yesterday, and we don’t know who or how many.” He paused. “We gotta get that gate open.”

  “And get shot like Benson?” a man asked. “He may not ever be able to use that hand again.”

  There was a moment of silence while Nebel thought about it. Then he said, “Rope it. We’ll pull the damned thing down.”

  That would probably work, The Kid thought, and if it did, the gunmen could charge through and overwhelm him and Lace before they could stop all of them. They couldn’t run that risk, so he called out, “Nebel! Can you hear me?”

  Surprised silence greeted the shout. After a moment, Nebel said, “Who the hell is that?”

  “It doesn’t matter who I am,” The Kid said. “The important thing is that I’ve got your boss in here, and if you try to come through that gate, he’s a dead man!”

  Again, Nebel didn’t respond right away. Seconds dragged by before the gunman said, “You’ve got Guthrie?”

  “That’s right,” The Kid said.

  “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

  “Somebody took him right out of his own ranch house last night, didn’t they? And knocked out the cook while they were there. How would I know that if it wasn’t me who grabbed him?”

  Nebel didn’t have an answer for that. When he spoke up again, it was to ask, “What do you want?”

  “Turn around and ride away,” The Kid said. “Leave this canyon alone. If you bust in or try anything else, Guthrie will be dead long before you can get your hands on him.”

  “You’ll die, too, you son of a bitch, you and whoever else is in there with you!”

  “Maybe. So will a lot of your men.”

  “That’s a dead end canyon. You can’t get out. You’ve trapped yourself in there, you fool. We can sit out here until you starve.”

  “Guthrie will starve first,” The Kid pointed out. “You don’t think we’ll be sharing our rations with him, do you?”

  “I don’t know for sure that he’s even still alive. I want some proof you’ve got him, damn it!”

  The Kid had been expecting that. He looked over at Lace and nodded. She dashed back around the rock to the campsite, and when she reappeared, she was prodding Guthrie ahead of her at the point of her Winchester.

  His feet were untied so he could walk, but his hands were still lashed tightly behind his back. He didn’t have a gag in his mouth, so when Lace poked him in the back with the rifle, he was able to yell, “Nebel!”

  “Is that you, boss?” Nebel sounded slightly surprised to hear Guthrie’s voice.

  “Damn right it’s me,” the rancher replied. “I want you to come in here and kill this bastard who kidnapped me! Not the girl, though. I got something special planned for her.”

  Guthrie grunted in pain as Lace jabbed him hard in the kidney with the rifle barrel. “You don’t have anything special, you weaselly little varmint,” she told him.

  “There’s a girl in there, too?” Nebel called.

  “And she can shoot just as good or better than any of you,” The Kid replied. “If you don’t believe me, just try to get in here. You know now we’ve got Guthrie, so back off!”

  Nebel hesitated again. “Boss?”

  Guthrie sighed through clenched teeth. “Do what they say, I reckon . . . for now. They’re both loco enough to kill me.”

  “You mean there’s only two? Where’s the old man? Is he dead?”

  “No, he rode off—”

  The Kid motioned to Lace, and she drove the barrel of her Winchester into Guthrie’s back again, hard enough to knock him to his knees as well as silencing him. She put a boot in his back and shoved him down onto his face.

  The Kid didn’t want Nebel thinking too much about where Chester Blount might have gone, or else the gunman might realize Blount was fetching the
law from Phoenix. To forestall that, The Kid called, “The old-timer was plenty glad to sell me his claim and be shut of all the trouble! He’s halfway to Mexico by now!”

  He heard some muttering from the men outside the gate. They knew that Blount had refused Guthrie’s offer to buy him out, otherwise the rancher wouldn’t have resorted to attempted murder to get his hands on Dos Caballos Canyon.

  But it was possible Blount could have accepted someone else’s offer, as much to spite Guthrie as anything else, so they couldn’t discount the possibility The Kid was telling the truth.

  After a few minutes, Nebel called, “We’re leaving, but this ain’t over. If you’re smart, you’ll let the boss go and then light a shuck out of here! You might get clear with your lives that way.”

  The Kid didn’t believe that for a second. Nebel would leave riflemen hidden in the trees to watch the canyon mouth. If he and Lace so much as showed their faces, they would be gunned down instantly.

  Hoofbeats thundered away. Lace reached down, grabbed Guthrie’s arm, and hauled him to his feet.

  “Now what do we do, Kid?” she asked.

  “Now we wait,” he said.

  The siege was on.

  Chapter 28

  By late afternoon, Guthrie was raving like a lunatic. He couldn’t stand being tied up and started cursing The Kid and Lace, spewing vile profanities. Even the threat of setting Max on him didn’t shut him up.

  So The Kid stuffed the gag in Guthrie’s mouth again. He had to jerk his hand back to keep Guthrie from biting him.

  “If I ever saw a man who could pass for a hydrophobic skunk, it’s him,” Lace said with a nod toward the rancher. “How does anybody get so twisted and evil?”

  The Kid didn’t answer. In the days after Rebel’s death, he had come so close to giving in to his despair that he could have wound up just as warped as Guthrie. Clinging to the memories of his wife had kept him sane.

  “I guess I shouldn’t talk,” Lace went on. “I was mixed up with Pronto Pike, after all. If anything, he’s even worse than Guthrie.”