Brutal Vengeance

by J. A. Johnstone

  “Culhane’s badly injured,” Marchman said. “He’s not running things around here anymore. That’s what we have to decide now.”

  Abel Gustaffson said, “What are you talking about?”

  Marchman leveled a finger at The Kid. “He thinks he’s in charge now.”

  “That’s what Ranger Culhane wanted,” Nick said. “We all heard him say so.”

  “We’re not Texas Rangers. He’s not in charge of us, and we can do what we think is best.”

  Some of the men looked dubious about that. Everybody in Texas knew the power of the Rangers, and they didn’t want to go against the wishes of anybody who wore the famous star-in-a-circle badge.

  “Get on with what you want to say, Marchman.” The Kid was tired, and he didn’t have any patience for nonsense.

  “I’m saying that somebody else should be in charge of this posse, somebody who has a personal stake in bringing Latch and his men to justice. Not some gunfighter who’s probably a bounty hunter just like this redheaded woman!”

  “You make that sound like you’re calling me an impolite name, mister,” Lace said in a quiet, dangerous tone.

  Marchman shook his head. “Sorry,” he muttered. “But we’ve all heard the talk. You’re after the rewards for Latch and his men, and Morgan’s a well-known killer, the next thing to an outlaw himself. The rest of us are out for justice, not blood money!”

  “Justice ... or revenge?” The Kid asked.

  “It’s the same ... thing.” Vint Reilly stepped forward. It hurt just listening to how he had to force the words from his damaged throat.

  “Vint’s right,” Abel Gustaffson added. “If we’re having a vote, I think he should be the one to lead this posse since Culhane can’t anymore.”

  Marchman looked surprised. “Wait a minute—”

  “You thought you’d ... just appoint yourself ... as leader?” Reilly asked. “You lost ... a building ... some merchandise ... Some of us here ... lost a lot more than that.”

  “Now, Vint, I know that,” Marchman said. “And I’m not trying to stir up trouble.”

  That was exactly what he was trying to do, The Kid thought. Marchman had chafed under Culhane’s command right from the start, and now he wanted to wield some power himself.

  “I’m not sure why we’re even talking about this,” The Kid said. “We all want the same thing. We want Latch and his men either dead or behind bars.”

  “Marchman’s right ... about one thing,” Reilly said. “You don’t have ... a stake in this, Morgan. When there’s a decision ... to be made ... you might pull back instead of ... going all out.”

  “I won’t risk anybody’s life needlessly, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Let’s put it to a vote,” Gustaffson urged. “I say we put Vint Reilly in charge of this posse.”

  Marchman looked flustered. “But Vint’s hurt, too. He’s badly burned, so badly he’s been nipping at that bottle of painkiller ever since we left Fire Hill!”

  “His mind seems clear to me,” Gustaffson said. “He knows what’s got to be done. And from what I’ve heard, he’s kept up with everybody, right from the start.”

  Thad put a hand on his father’s arm. “Pa, I’m not so sure—”

  Gustaffson jerked his arm away. “I’m your father! Are you gonna argue with me, boy?”

  Thad glanced at Bill and then shook his head. “No, sir, I reckon I’m not.”

  “Neither am I,” Bill put in. “But that doesn’t mean you’re right, Pa.”

  “You’ll do as I say, that’s all I care about,” Gustaffson snapped. He looked at the others. “How about it? Put it to a vote?” Gustaffson flung a hand toward Reilly. “Are you going to vote against a man who’s lost as much as Vint has?”

  Nick said, “I think we should do what Ranger Culhane wanted and put Mr. Morgan in charge. He’s done more to bust up Latch’s gang than any of the rest of us. Him and Miss McCall, anyway. That’s the way the M-B Connected is voting.”

  He turned to look at the group of punchers who rode for his grandfather, and despite his small size, he seemed a lot bigger right then. One by one, the cowboys nodded their agreement.

  “What about ... the rest of us?” Reilly demanded of the men from Fire Hill.

  Marchman still looked torn. He had wanted the power for himself, but at the same time, he didn’t want The Kid taking control of the posse.

  The Kid could tell that was what was going through the man’s mind.

  Grudgingly, Marchman said, “I can go along with putting Vint in charge. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a good man.”

  Not surprisingly, Fenner and Hogan spoke up, agreeing with their boss. That was all it took to break the logjam. The other men from Fire Hill went along with naming Reilly as the new leader of the posse. The vote of Abel Gustaffson and the reluctant votes of his sons gave Reilly the victory.

  “When Culhane wakes up, this little election of yours won’t mean a damned thing,” Lace said hotly. “So you’d better enjoy it while you can.”

  “Take it easy,” The Kid told her. “It’s not important. We’re going after Latch either way.”

  “Yes, but—” She stopped and blew out an exasperated breath. “Fine. But I’m still going after that bounty.”

  “I don’t think anybody here is fool enough to try to stop you,” The Kid said with a smile.

  Chapter 25

  The posse was divided after that, the men from the M-B Connected gathering on one side of the fire while the others clustered around Vint Reilly and asked him what his plans were.

  “We’ll push on ... as fast and hard as we can,” Reilly said. “We’ve only got ... a couple more days to catch Latch and what’s left of ... his gang.”

  The Kid agreed with that. Time was running out on them. But for tonight, anyway, there was nothing more they could do.

  The blood that had splattered on his head had dried to a sticky mess in his hair, so he got a clean shirt from his saddlebags and told Lace, “I’m going upstream to see if I can find a little pool or something where I can clean up. Can you stay here and keep an eye on Culhane?”

  “Of course. You go ahead, Kid.”

  He followed the stream around a couple bends and then heard a noise he recognized as that of a waterfall. A moment later he came upon the place.

  The creek flowed over a bluff and fell straight down for about twenty feet into a pool at the base of the bluff. In the moonlight, he could see it was big enough to bathe in. He hoped it was deep enough.

  He stripped off his bloodstained shirt first and washed it out as best he could. The water was chilly, telling him it came from springs deep in the earth. When he thought he had gotten most of the blood out of the fabric, he spread the shirt on a rock to dry.

  The Kid took off his boots and socks, followed by his trousers. He waded into the pool clad only in the bottom half of a pair of long underwear.

  The water was cold enough to take his breath away when he plunged his whole body into it. Coming up for air, he took a deep breath and dived underwater again, keeping his head under the surface as he scrubbed at the blood on his skin and in his hair.

  Raising up a few moments later, he was surprised to see someone standing on the bank at the edge of the pool. For a split second he wished he hadn’t left his gunbelt coiled on the same rock as his trousers, but then he recognized Lace.

  “Sorry if I startled you, Kid. I would have called out, but I saw that you were under the water, and didn’t know if you could hear me.”

  “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be watching Culhane.”

  “Culhane’s asleep. He’s not going anywhere, and nobody’s going to hurt him.” She started to unbutton her shirt. “Besides, you’re not the only one who’s gotten grubby enough to need a bath.”

  The Kid didn’t believe for a second that a bath was the only reason Lace was there.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me to turn around?” he said as she took off her shirt and r
eached for the waist of the riding skirt.

  “Well, now, there wouldn’t be a lot of point in that, would there?” She pushed the skirt down over her hips and stepped out of it, leaving her wearing only a thin shift and her boots. “I mean, after all we’ve been through together ...”

  “Then I won’t turn around or close my eyes.”

  “Fine by me.” Sitting down on one of the rocks, she took off her boots. “How’s the water?”

  “Cold.”

  “That’s all right. It was a hot day. I could use something to cool me down.”

  “This ought to do it,” The Kid said.

  “That’s what I’m hoping.” She stepped into the pool.

  He noticed she shivered a little from the temperature of the water as she walked toward him. He ducked his head under the surface and continued washing his thick, fair hair in an attempt to get all the blood out of it.

  When he came up, he didn’t see Lace. He knew she hadn’t left, so he wasn’t surprised when she broke the surface a few feet from him. Her red hair was dark in the moonlight as water plastered it to her head.

  “Let me help you,” she said. “Turn around.”

  The Kid did as she told him, but not before he noticed how the wet shift clung to her body. Her nipples, hardened by the cold water and perhaps by something else, stood out plainly against the thin fabric.

  She moved up behind him and started rubbing her hands over his shoulders and through his hair. “You looked pretty gruesome earlier,” she said quietly. “All that blood on you like that.”

  “I’m just glad it wasn’t mine.”

  “I am, too.” She continued washing his hair but paused in her speaking before she went on. “I should have stayed in touch and told you I was out hunting bounty again, Kid.”

  “It takes two people to stay in touch. I didn’t do any better job of it than you did.”

  “I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me ... and for my family.”

  “Thank Conrad Browning the next time you see him, whenever that is,” The Kid said gruffly.

  “I would, if I thought I was ever going to run into him again. But the only one I see is this stubborn Kid Morgan.”

  The Kid didn’t say anything to that. He wasn’t going to get into a debate with her over whether or not he should resume his life as Conrad Browning. He had made up his mind on the matter, and that was that.

  After a moment, Lace went on. “Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t write more often and let you know how we were doing. I can’t believe it was just blind luck that brought us together again.”

  “What else would you call it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know ... Fate? Destiny?”

  “I’m not sure I believe in those things anymore.”

  “You don’t believe the world ever makes sense? You think things just happen without any real reason for them?”

  The Kid took a step away and turned to face her. “What kind of reason could there be for Warren Latch to burn a whole town to the ground and kill so many people there? How could there be any plan behind them murdering Abel Gustaffson’s wife and daughters?” He shook his head. “You can’t tell me that makes any sense. It’s just evil. You can’t explain it, you can’t predict it, and most of the time you can’t stop it.”

  “Is that any reason not to try?”

  He smiled in the moonlight. “I never said that. Maybe we can’t win in the end ... but we can always try.”

  She looked at him silently for a moment. “You know, my hair could use washing, too.”

  “Go ahead. Nobody’s stopping you.”

  She made a fist and punched him lightly on his bare chest. “So it’s all right for me to wash your hair, but you won’t return the favor?”

  “I didn’t say that, either.” He moved closer to her again and lifted his hands to run his fingers through the wet strands of her hair. He started massaging her scalp.

  She closed her eyes and tilted her head back a little as she made a small sound of pleasure in her throat. The gap between them shrank until their bodies were pressed against each other.

  The Kid could feel every contour of her shape through the thin shift. He moved his hands to the back of her head and cupped it as he brought his mouth down on hers. As soon as he’d seen Lace standing at the edge of the pool, he had known it was what she intended to happen.

  Other women had offered themselves to him in the past, after Rebel was murdered. He had turned down all of them ... except Lace. There was something different about her, something that drew him.

  He would never stop grieving for his lost love, for the woman who, along with Frank Morgan, had totally transformed his life from what it had been before he met them.

  But time had moved on and so had he. The human need for closeness was still inside him, as it was in Lace. They reached out to each other, seeking to discover if it was the right time and place ...

  There was no doubt about the answer.

  Slim Duval and Mitch Holton picked up three more men from the gang as they fled the canyon where the trap that was supposed to wipe out the posse had gone so terribly, horribly wrong.

  Five men out of twenty-two were all that remained from the group Warren Latch had left behind. What had started out as an unstoppable force of forty men had dwindled to a little more than half of their original number.

  It was possible that damned posse outnumbered them now, Duval thought bitterly as he and his companions rode through the night.

  “You think we’re gonna be able to find the rendezvous in the dark?” Holton asked, breaking into Duval’s sour reverie.

  “What? Of course we can find it. I know this country.” Duval hoped his resentful certainty was correct. The way things had been going recently, he wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

  The raid had started out profitable and gone so well, right up until the time they had ridden out of Fire Hill, leaving the settlement in flames behind them. It was almost like they had been cursed ever since.

  Duval was too much of a hardheaded realist to believe in curses, but that was what it seemed like. The posse had dogged the gang’s trail with more stubborn persistence than he had seen in any other posse. And every time Latch’s men tried to do something about it, they wound up suffering more losses than they inflicted.

  “No need to bite my head off,” Holton said in a surly tone. “You can’t blame a fella for bein’ worried, the way things have been goin’, Slim.”

  That was exactly what Duval had just been thinking. So the gang’s bad luck was on the minds of the other men, too. How could it not be? Almost half of the men who’d set out from San Antonio would never be coming back.

  He forced a smile onto his face. “Sorry, Mitch. Reckon my nerves are worn a little thin.”

  “Mine would be, too,” one of the other men put in, “if I had to go back to Warren Latch and tell him that I failed to stop that posse ... again.”

  Duval almost pulled his gun, twisted around in the saddle, and shot the mouthy son of a bitch. With an effort, he controlled the impulse. The gang had lost enough men already without them starting to kill each other.

  “If you want to be in charge next time, Jenkins, I’ll talk to Warren and see if I can convince him to go along with that.”

  “What?” The man sounded surprised. “Hell, no! I never said I wanted to be in charge of anything, Slim. I’m sorry if that’s what it sounded like.”

  “That’s what it sounded like, all right,” Duval snapped. “Maybe you’d better start paying more attention to what comes out of that piehole of yours.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Jenkins muttered. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not sure the boss will try to stop that posse anymore,” Holton said. “Maybe it would be best if we just cut and run and try to beat them back to San Antone.”

  That would have been the smartest course of action all along, Duval reflected.

  Latch took the posse’s stubbornness as a personal insult. The way he
saw it, the pursuers from Fire Hill were violating the natural order of things, which was that Warren Latch ought to be able to do whatever he damned well pleased and get away with it.

  They ought to be getting close to the rendezvous, Duval thought as he scanned the horizon. Sure enough, the moon provided enough light for him to spot a pair of hills crowded so close together they looked like the humps on a camel’s back in a picture he had seen in a book one time.

  People called that landmark Camelback Hill, even though there were actually two hills. At the base of it was a hollow where Latch and the rest of the gang would be camped.

  Duval pointed out the landmark to his companions, and a short time later they rode up to the camp, where a large fire was burning. Latch strode forward to meet them, followed by several others.

  “Slim?” Latch said in a questioning tone. “I only see ... five of you.” Latch’s voice hardened. “Where are the others?”

  Duval didn’t answer immediately. In the process of dismounting, he finished swinging down from his horse before he sighed. “We lost them, Warren.”

  “Lost them?” Latch repeated. “What do you mean, lost them? Did you get separated—”

  “They’re dead, all right?” Duval broke in, knowing it was a mistake to speak that way to Latch, but too tired and dispirited to control his own anger. “That damned posse broke out of our trap and killed the rest of them!”

  Latch stared at him, obviously thunderstruck by the news. In the flickering light from the fire, the outlaw leader’s lean face slowly darkened with fury. “You let them escape ... again?” Latch’s voice trembled. “You had the high ground, you had cover, all you had to do was shoot them!”

  “We got some of them,” Duval protested. “But the rest of the bunch scattered too fast for us to do much damage, and then somehow”—he’d been struggling to figure it out, but couldn’t—“some of them got behind our men on the north slope and started a rock slide that wiped them out.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I didn’t see the bodies, but I saw the slide and heard them screaming, and then all the shooting stopped over there. What else was I supposed to think?” Duval scrubbed a hand wearily over his face before he went on. “I took some of the men and we tried to circle around there and find out what happened. We ran right into a bunch of those bastards. We hit ’em hard, but they hit us harder. All we could do, the few of us who were left, was get out of there while we were still alive.”