“Yeah, well, you probably told them not to go around trying to murder anybody they happened to come across, too, and look how well they followed those orders.”
Culhane laughed. “I reckon you got a point there, son.” He turned his head toward the man on the ground. “Clyde! Get back up there and tell the rest of the boys I said no more shootin’ unless they’re shot at first. If anybody gets trigger-happy again, I’ll kick his ass from here to Texarkana, personal-like!”
Clyde hesitated. He called to The Kid, “Is ... is it all right if I get up, mister?”
“Go on,” The Kid said. “Deliver Ranger Culhane’s message for him.”
That put an end to Clyde’s hesitation. He scrambled to his feet and ran up the slope, slipping and staggering from rock to rock in his haste. The Kid could hear him panting from the exertion.
“All right, Culhane,” The Kid went on. “Get down from that horse and come around here.”
“That bit about not gettin’ trigger-happy goes for you, too, you know.” Culhane swung down from the saddle and let the reins dangle so the horse, if it was well-trained, would stay where it was. Keeping his empty hands in plain sight, Culhane walked around the massive stone slab.
The Kid backed away, watching intently for any telltale signs that Culhane was about to make a grab for the holstered revolver with staghorn grips he wore on his hip. The Ranger kept his hands half raised.
“Reckon the first thing we better clear up is who you are, amigo,” Culhane said when he was behind the rock.
“No, the first thing we need to get clear is that if any of your men try to sneak up and pull something funny, you’ll die. I’ll see to that.”
“I believe you.” Culhane nodded. “But believe me, those boys ain’t gonna try nothin’. You got ’em plenty spooked. Reckon you could’ve killed Clyde and those other three without much trouble, and they know it.”
The Kid sensed that Culhane was telling the truth. He didn’t really want to be on the bad side of the Texas Rangers. They were a legendary organization, probably the West’s most famous outlaw hunters, and once a man’s name was written down in their book, they never stopped pursuing him.
“That’s right, I could have killed them, but I didn’t, because I’m not one of the men you’re looking for. My name’s Morgan. I’m just passing through these parts.”
“Morgan, Morgan ...” Culhane mused. “Don’t recall seein’ that name on any reward dodgers lately.”
“That’s because I’m not wanted,” The Kid said.
That hadn’t always been the case. For a while there had been a bounty on his head in New Mexico Territory, but that was a mistake and had been all cleared up.
“You got nothin’ to worry about from us, then. We’re after a gang of desperados led by a man named Warren Latch.”
“I told you, I never heard of him. What did they do?”
Culhane’s rugged face took on a bleak cast. “A few nights ago they raided a town northwest of here called Fire Hill. Name’s fittin’, because they burned the place to the ground and killed a bunch of folks in the process. They were after a shipment of cash that was bein’ held in the safe at the stage station.”
“There are still stagecoach lines around here?”
“The railroad don’t go everywhere just yet.”
In his previous life as wealthy businessman Conrad Browning, The Kid had built numerous spur lines, but he knew Culhane was right. Some settlements were too small to make running the steel rails to them profitable.
“Latch is the sort of outlaw who’s kill-crazy,” the Ranger went on. “He wasn’t just tryin’ to steal that money. He wanted to loot as much else as he could from the town and then destroy it and the folks who lived there. Came pretty close to doin’ it, too. Only one or two buildin’s were still standin’ when I got there. The rest were just ashes.”
That was the fire he had seen several nights earlier, The Kid thought. It had to be. The glow was large enough to have been an entire settlement going up in flames.
“Only about a hundred people lived there,” Culhane continued, “and more’n half of ’em were killed in the raid, either by bullets or by the fires Latch’s men started.”
“How do you know it was Latch’s gang that was responsible?” The Kid asked. The grim story had caught his interest, despite his continuing resolve not to get mixed up in any trouble.
“Some of the survivors got a good look at him,” Culhane explained. “This ain’t the first job Latch’s bunch has pulled. They’ve held up trains and robbed banks all over West Texas, and we’ve got a good description of him. The senseless killin’ matches what he’s done in the past, too, although I got to say he outdid himself this time. He never tried to wipe out a whole town before.”
“If this only happened a few nights ago, they got the Rangers on the job pretty fast,” The Kid commented.
“That’s because I happened to be in Fort Stockton on some other law business when a rider come gallopin’ in the next mornin’ with the news of what had happened. I wired my cap’n in San Antonio and told him about it, and he said for me to rattle my hocks over there as fast as I could and try to pick up Latch’s trail. Some of the men from town who could ride wanted to come with me, and as it turns out, the cattleman whose money got stole from the stage station was puttin’ together a posse, too. So I sort of combined everything and took command.”
“How many men do you have?”
“Twenty-four, countin’ me.” Culhane smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. “And before you ask, Latch’s bunch is forty or fifty strong, so I’m mighty glad you didn’t ventilate any of my boys. We’re already outnumbered. The odds don’t need to be any worse than they already are.”
Culhane was more than outnumbered, The Kid thought. Considering what Latch’s men had done to the town of Fire Hill, they had to be hardened killers. A bunch of store clerks and cowboys wouldn’t be any match for them.
Culhane might have been thinking the same thing. He regarded The Kid with a shrewd, intent expression. “You got the look of a fightin’ man about you, Morgan. I’m sure sorry for the little misunderstandin’ we had, and I’d be mighty happy if you was to throw in with us—”
“Forget it.” Hearing about what Latch’s gang had done at Fire Hill outraged The Kid’s sense of justice ... but that sense had taken a beating over the past couple years. Along with a helping hand from Fate, he had brought justice to the people responsible for his wife’s murder ... but Rebel was still dead, wasn’t she? Going after Warren Latch wouldn’t bring the people he had killed in Fire Hill back to life, either.
“I could sure use the help,” Culhane tried again.
The Kid was about to shake his head and tell the Ranger to go back to the posse, while he rounded up the buckskin and pack horse and rode in the opposite direction as fast as he could. He would have stuck to that decision, too ...
If gunfire hadn’t suddenly erupted at the top of the escarpment.
Chapter 7
Culhane jerked his head in that direction as he reached for the gun on his hip. “Son of a—”
“Hold it!” The Kid snapped as he leveled the Winchester at the Texas Ranger. “If this is some kind of trick—”
“No trick,” Culhane said. “I swear to you, none of those posse men would try anything. It sounds to me like somebody else jumped ’em!”
Culhane had a point. The shooting continued, fast and furious. The Kid had been in enough gun battles to know the real thing when he heard it.
“Damn it, Morgan, I need to get back up there!”
The Kid nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll come with you.” He didn’t know where the offer came from. Volunteering to help the posse had been the furthest thing from his mind only moments earlier.
But something about the sound of gunshots drew him. He had a difficult time turning away while bullets were flying.
Culhane ran around the rock, grabbed his horse, and mounted in a hurry. The Kid’s buck
skin and pack horse had drifted onto the flats to graze on the sparse grass. He didn’t take the time to go after them. He followed Culhane on foot, leaping agilely from rock to rock, carrying his rifle.
Since the slope was so rugged, The Kid climbed it almost as fast as Culhane did on horseback. Looking up, he saw men scrambling over the rim and dropping below it for cover. They turned and fired back toward the west.
Culhane noticed that, too. He reined in before he reached the top and dropped out of the saddle, dragging his rifle from its sheath. He went to his knees at the rim and peered over.
A second later, his black hat leaped from his head and went flying into the air.
“Great jumpin’ Jehosophat!” Culhane yelled. Reaching up, he felt his head as if he couldn’t believe his hat was gone.
The Kid knelt beside him. “Are you hit?”
“No, but one of the blasted varmints sure as blazes ventilated my hat!”
Even under the circumstances, The Kid had to chuckle at Culhane’s indignation. The Ranger had come within bare inches of having his brains splattered all over the landscape, and he was worried about his hat.
Or maybe that was just his way of not thinking about how close he had come to death.
Angrily, Culhane thrust the barrel of his Winchester over the rim and triggered a couple swift shots before ducking back down again.
“Marchman!” he yelled at one of the posse members ranged along the ragged brink of the escarpment. “Any of our men been killed yet?”
The man shook his head and called back, “We’ve got a couple wounded, but nobody’s dead!”
“Let’s try to keep it that way!” Culhane urged.
The Kid spotted Clyde not far off. The man kept shooting nervous glances toward him. To Culhane The Kid said, “You’d better make sure those fellas know that I’m on your side now.”
“Are you, Morgan?” Culhane asked. “On our side, I mean?”
“For now,” The Kid said with a nod.
To prove it, he slid his rifle over the rim and sighted on the dozen or so horsebackers who were throwing lead at the posse. They were riding back and forth about a hundred yards away, apparently untouched. The men from Fire Hill couldn’t draw a bead on moving targets.
That wasn’t the case with Kid Morgan. He settled his cheek against the smooth wood of the Winchester’s stock and squeezed the trigger. The rifle cracked, and one of the bushwhackers jerked in the saddle and started to slide off his horse. The man managed to grab his saddle horn and stay mounted, but he slumped far over in obvious pain as he turned his horse and galloped farther away.
Several of the posse men let out exultant whoops.
“We got one of the buzzards!” a man shouted.
Culhane looked knowingly at The Kid. The Ranger was well aware who had winged that outlaw. “Hold your fire and listen to me!” he shouted. When he had the men’s attention, he went on, “This fella with me is Morgan! He’s not one of Latch’s men after all. He’s throwin’ in with us!”
The members of the posse didn’t celebrate that news, but some of them nodded in acknowledgment of it. The Kid felt more confident that at least they wouldn’t turn on him at the first opportunity.
“Now pepper those damned bushwhackers, and pepper ’em good!” Culhane ordered.
The shooting resumed. The Kid squeezed off another shot and saw a man’s arm jerk. A round from Culhane’s rifle made another man’s hat fly from his head.
“Turnabout’s fair play!” the Ranger said with satisfaction.
He and The Kid seemed to be the only ones scoring any hits, but after a few minutes that was enough. The riders stopped shooting, turned their horses, and spurred away, putting ground between themselves and the posse as fast as they could.
Seeing that, some of the posse members started to stand up, no doubt figuring they were safe.
“Blast it, stay down!” Culhane bellowed at them. “There may be some sharpshooter out there with a long-range rifle just waitin’ for you woolly sheep to stand up and take a bullet through the head!”
The men dropped back into cover along the ragged edge of the escarpment as The Kid’s estimation of Culhane’s abilities grew. Obviously, this wasn’t the Ranger’s first dance.
“That was some good shootin’ you done,” Culhane said to him. “You can handle a Winchester. How are you with that short gun on your hip?”
“I get the job done,” The Kid said.
In truth, he was one of the fastest and deadliest pistoleers left on the frontier, his skill with a Colt probably exceeded only by his father, Frank Morgan.
“I’ll just bet you do,” Culhane said with a nod. “And I’m glad you’re with us now, instead of against us, Morgan.”
The men crouched and knelt there, sweating in the heat, for a good ten minutes longer before Culhane said, “All right, I reckon it’s safe to move around again. Some of you hombres start roundin’ up those horses.”
The Kid saw a number of saddle horses scattered across the plains along the edge of the escarpment. It was easy enough to figure out what had happened.
The posse had been dismounted, watching the confrontation at the bottom of the slope instead of paying attention to what was behind them. The outlaws jumped them, stampeding the horses and forcing the men to scramble for cover.
Culhane waved one of the men over to him. “Marchman, what in blazes happened up here?” he demanded.
“It’s not our fault, Ranger,” the man replied in a surly voice. “They hit us from behind, when we weren’t looking.”
“Of course they did! They figured a bunch of greenhorns like you wouldn’t have enough sense to keep an eye on your back trail ... and they were right!”
Marchman glared. He was a short, thick-bodied man in town clothes. He wore a narrow-brimmed hat that he took off in order to wipe sweat from his flushed face and mostly bald head with a bandanna. “This isn’t a troop of Rangers you’re talking to, Culhane.”
“Don’t forget that we’re volunteers.”
Culhane grunted disgustedly. “I ain’t likely to forget you fellas ain’t Rangers. Rangers wouldn’t have got took by surprise and bushwhacked that way.”
Marchman’s broad face flushed with anger. “I’m gonna go see to the wounded.”
“You do that,” Culhane told him. “Make yourself useful.”
Marchman strode off.
When the man was gone, The Kid commented, “Rode him a little hard, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, and I reckon I know better.” Culhane sighed. “I just get mighty frustrated with the whole bunch. It ain’t easy trackin’ down a gang like Latch’s with a bunch of storekeepers and forty-a-month punchers.”
The comment unwittingly echoed what The Kid had thought earlier. He let his gaze roam over the members of the posse, and didn’t like what he saw.
About half of them were townsmen from Fire Hill. Business owners, clerks, bartenders, and the like, he assumed.
The rest were cowboys, some of them so young they might not be out of their teens. A few of those ranch hands might be fairly tough and competent, but not enough to match up with a gang of ruthless outlaws.
Clyde and Hogan were townies. They hovered close to Marchman as the burly man used strips of cloth torn from a shirt to bind up a man’s wounded arm.
Culhane saw where The Kid was looking. “Ed Marchman owned the general store in Fire Hill. Clyde Fenner clerked for him, and Jack Hogan drove the wagon that brought in the merchandise Marchman sold. I reckon they’re all three out of a job now, since the store’s gone. The fella who got shot through the arm is Woody Anderson, Fire Hill’s blacksmith. Same goes for him.”
Culhane pointed out several of the other men and told The Kid their names. The Kid knew he wouldn’t remember most of them, but nodded anyway.
One of the young punchers came up to them. “Ranger Culhane, I can’t find my horse.”
“Well, keep lookin’, boy,” Culhane said. “Maybe one of your grandpa’s hands wi
ll find it if you can’t.”
“All right.” The youngster nodded. He was undersized, with a freckled face and a shock of red hair.
As the young cowboy moved off, Culhane said quietly, “That’s Nick Burton, old Marcus Burton’s grandson.”
Culhane said the name like he expected The Kid to know who Marcus Burton was, but The Kid didn’t have any idea and said as much.
“Burton’s the owner of the M-B Connected, the biggest spread in these parts,” Culhane explained. “It was his money Latch was after. Burton sent some of his men after the outlaws, and the kid came along with ’em.”
“Was that his idea, or his grandfather’s?”
Culhane snorted. “It was the old man’s idea. Claimed he wanted to have a member of the family represented on the posse, so he saddled me with the boy. Nick can at least ride, and he claims he can shoot, but I got a hunch he’s gonna be more hindrance than help in the long run. I needed those M-B Connected hands to come along, so I agreed to it.”
Before Culhane could say anything else about the members of his posse, a man came up behind them and rasped, “We’re wasting time, Culhane. We need to get after them.”
The Kid looked over his shoulder at the newcomer. . .
And saw something out of a nightmare.
Chapter 8
The man had been horribly burned, that much was obvious at first glance. The skin visible on his face was red and raw. Strips of cloth, crisscrossed here and there, were wrapped around his head as bandages, covering the worst of the burns. Ugly yellow stains marked where pus from leaking sores had soaked through.
The Kid could tell from the way the bandages lay flat against the right side of the man’s head that his ear was completely gone. Part of his nose looked like a lumpy, roasted potato that had been left in the fire too long.
He wore a hat, but it sat awkwardly on the bandages covering the top of his head. His hands were thinly wrapped, so he could still carry the rifle he had with him. The Kid saw more bandages peeking out through gaps between the man’s shirt buttons and speculated that most of his body was swathed in cloth.
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