The Devil's Badland: The Loner (22 page)

He had to call several more times before James responded, “Browning! Over here!”

The Kid followed his voice, and a minute later came up to the brush-choked opening of the canyon. James and Meggie hurried out. When The Kid swung down from the saddle and then turned toward them, Meggie took him by surprise and threw her arms around him.

“Mr. Browning, are you all right? We thought we heard some shooting a few hours ago, but it was a long way off.”

“That was me,” The Kid said, “but I’m fine. And I have horses and supplies for you now. You can start back to Val Verde.”

“Don’t we need to wait until morning?” James asked as Meggie stepped back.

The Kid glanced at the sky. “It’ll be light in another couple of hours, but I don’t see any reason to wait that long. I’ve started to learn my way around these mountains. I think you should head due north. That’ll take you back to the Southern Pacific line, and when you hit it, you can follow it all the way to Val Verde.”

“What about Tarleton and those hired guns?”

“I scattered their horses pretty good. I think you’ll be halfway back to town before they could start after you, even if they wanted to. Which they won’t.”

“Why not?” Meggie asked. Then, before he could answer, she said, “You’re not coming with us, are you?”

The Kid smiled and shook his head. “Like I said, I’ll point you in the right direction. Both of those horses have rifles in the saddle boot, so you’ll have guns and food. There’s some water in those canteens, but if you come to a creek or a spring, it’d be a good idea to fill them up. You’ll make it through just fine.”

“And what are you going to do?” Meggie asked tensely.

“I’m not finished here yet,” The Kid said.

By the time dawn grayed the eastern sky, The Kid had taken James and Meggie to the northern tip of the Hatchet range, pointed them in the right direction, and said farewell to them. Meggie hugged him again, and James shook hands and said with grudging gratitude, “Thanks for everything you’ve done, Browning. You never gave up on gettin’ us away from those—” He glanced at his sister and finished, “Varmints. I just wish…well, shoot, I can’t believe I’m sayin’ this…I wish ol’ Devil Dave had made it out, too.”

“So do I,” The Kid agreed with a nod as he shook James’s hand. “Keep your eyes open, find the railroad, head east. You’ll be all right.”

James nodded. “I reckon we will be.”

The Kid watched them ride off, then turned and headed south again, riding along the eastern slope of the mountains with the rugged peaks to his right. He was alone again, and that was the way he liked it. No more innocents would get hurt as he finished what he’d set out to do.

The sun peeked over the horizon a short time later, spilling orange and gold light over the land. The Kid kept an eye on the desert, thinking that he might spot some of Tarleton’s men searching for their horses. It wasn’t long before he noticed a couple of dark specks out there that quickly resolved themselves into the figures of two men trudging along. He circled around so that he could come at them out of the sun, then trotted the buckskin toward them.

They must have taken him for one of their group, because they stopped and just stood there as he approached, shading their eyes in an effort to make him out against the glare of the rising sun. He was within twenty yards of them before they realized their mistake.

One of the men howled, “That’s Browning!” and they both slapped leather.

The Kid reined in, pulling the buckskin to the side. His gun came smoothly out of its holster. He had reloaded, filling all six chambers in the cylinder since he had plenty of ammunition. In little more than the blink of an eye, the Colt roared three times, the reports blending in with the single shot each of the gunmen got off before The Kid’s lead smashed them off their feet.

Neither of those return shots came anywhere close to The Kid. He threw his left leg over the buckskin’s back and slid down to the ground on the horse’s right side. Keeping the revolver in his hand trained on the fallen men, he walked toward the sprawled shapes.

One of the men was already dead. Blood leaked from the mouth of the other one as he looked up at The Kid and tried to talk. All he managed to get out was a curse before his eyes rolled up in their sockets and his head fell to the side. A final breath rattled in his throat as his bloody chest stopped rising and falling.

The Kid thumbed fresh cartridges into the Colt to replace the expended ones, then turned back to the buckskin and caught up the reins. He swung into the saddle and rode on, leaving the two dead gun-wolves where they had fallen.

His destination was the little oasis where the killers had made their camp the night before. He suspected that he’d find Tarleton and Pamela there, since he couldn’t see either of them walking through the desert looking for the scattered horses. They would rely on the men they were paying to bring their mounts back to them.

With his injured leg, Hogan wouldn’t be tramping around the desert, either, which meant only two men were left out there, plus Trace. Slowly but surely, he was taking care of them. If he could live a while longer, soon the only ones left would be the two people most responsible for what happened to Rebel.

He would take them back and turn them over to the law, he told himself. He wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer, despite what had happened in the past.

Dust spiraling up into the air off to his left caught his eye. He turned and saw two men on horseback galloping toward him. A couple of the hired guns had caught their horses faster than he’d expected them to. That guess was confirmed a second later when powdersmoke spurted from the riders and bullets began kicking up dust not far away.

The Kid leaped out of the saddle and pulled his horse into a tight turn. He hauled down on the reins. The buckskin lay down. The Kid stretched out on the ground behind the horse. He hated using the buckskin for cover, but there was nothing else out there on those flats. He pulled the Winchester from the saddle boot, feeling the buckskin’s quivering flank as he did so.

“Take it easy, boy,” he said. He lay the rifle’s barrel across the buckskin’s body, drew a bead on one of the charging gunmen, and fired.

Unfortunately, the two men veered away from each other, splitting up just as The Kid pulled the trigger, so his first shot passed harmlessly between them. That was a smart move. He wouldn’t have time to get both of them before they were on top of him. He rolled away from the buckskin and slapped the horse on the rump.

“Get out of here!” he shouted. He wanted the buckskin out of the line of fire.

The horse lunged to its feet and raced off. The Kid wound up prone. Bullets struck the ground close enough to spray dirt and gravel over him. He braced himself on his elbows, aimed the Winchester at the man on his right, and pulled the trigger again.

This time his shot was true. The gunman flung his arms out to the sides as the bullet drove deep in his chest. He turned a backward somersault off the horse.

The Kid quickly levered the Winchester and shifted his aim, but he didn’t have time to fire. The second rider was only a few feet away. In desperation, The Kid rolled to his left, away from the flashing hooves. Shots slammed out as the gunman raced past. A fiery finger traced a burning path along The Kid’s side as one of the slugs grazed him.

One of the horse’s rear legs struck the Winchester’s barrel and sent the rifle spinning out of The Kid’s hands. He forced his brain and body to ignore the pain of the wound in his side as he shoved himself up on one knee and palmed out the Colt. The rider twisted around, realizing he had overrun his enemy, and managed to get one more shot off before The Kid’s revolver blasted twice.

Both bullets ripped into the man’s right side. He folded up and toppled out of the saddle as his horse started to run again. With a foot caught in the stirrup, the wounded man bounced along behind the horse. After a hundred yards or so, that foot slipped free. The horse kept going, leaving its wounded rider behind.

The Kid climbed to his feet and looked around. His buckskin had gone about two hundred yards and then stopped. The horse looked at him quizzically. The Kid whistled, unsure the sound would carry that far. It did, and the buckskin responded immediately, trotting toward him.

While he waited for the horse, The Kid grimaced and lifted his shirt to take a look at the wound in his side. The bullet had plowed a very shallow furrow, not much more than a burn. A little blood welled from it. The injury was painful but not serious, he decided.

He reloaded the Colt, slid a couple of rounds into the Winchester’s loading gate, and checked the first man he’d shot. The hired gun was dead.

The buckskin trotted up to The Kid and nuzzled his shoulder. The Kid patted the animal’s shoulder and said, “Sorry about using you for cover, fella.” He grasped the reins and led the buckskin over to the man who’d been dragged by the stirrup. That one was dead, too, bloody and battered almost beyond recognition.

Not so much so, however, that The Kid couldn’t tell who he was. Or rather, who he wasn’t. So far, The Kid hadn’t seen any sign of Jack Trace among the men he’d encountered. He really wanted to catch up to the little gunslinger. If Trace hadn’t betrayed Dave Whitfield, things might not have played out as they had. The rancher might even still be alive if not for Trace’s treachery.

Trace was either still out there on the desert somewhere, or back at the camp with Tarleton and Pamela. The Kid mounted up painfully and headed toward the foothills. He had chopped the odds down far enough to go ahead and confront the two masterminds behind all the hell he had gone through.

He entered the hills a good distance north of the campsite he had raided the night before. He rode into the mountains and began working his way around so that he could come at the camp from above.

When he was close, he dismounted and went the rest of the way on foot, pausing on a little ridge that overlooked the pool surrounded by pine trees and grass. A man sat in the shade of the trees, and after a moment The Kid was able to see him well enough to recognize the gunman called Hogan. The man’s right leg stuck out straight in front of him. Someone had tied a couple of branches onto it to serve as crude splints. Hogan’s head leaned back against the trunk. It looked like he was asleep.

That wasn’t the case, though, because after a moment, Hogan’s left hand came into view as he lifted a bottle of whiskey to his mouth. He took a long swig, then lowered the bottle to his side again.

The Kid didn’t see any sign of Tarleton or Pamela.

A frown creased his forehead as he studied the camp. He’d been convinced that the two of them would be there. The idea of them tramping around the desert looking for the runaway horses just didn’t ring true for him. They were the sort of people who relied on others to do any physical labor for them.

After a few minutes, The Kid accepted the evidence of his own eyes. Hogan was alone.

Carefully, The Kid moved closer. He drew his gun and leveled it at Hogan as he stepped out of the brush.

The gunman didn’t seem surprised to see him. In fact, Hogan chuckled and said, “I was wonder-in’ when you’d get here, Browning.”

“Where are the others?”

“Gone.” Hogan lifted the bottle again and waved it at the campsite. “You don’t see ’em anywhere around here, do you?”

“They just left you here?”

Hogan took another pull on the bottle, which was almost empty. “I can’t very well walk, not with this leg you busted for me.” A bleak bitterness filled his voice.

“So they abandoned you.” Actually, the idea wasn’t that hard to accept, now that he thought about it. Pamela and Tarleton weren’t the sort to take pity on anyone, especially when that person was no longer useful to them. “I thought they’d wait here until the others rounded up the horses and brought them back.”

“What others? They’re all dead except for Pamela and Tarleton and Trace. I reckon you killed the ones who went lookin’ for the horses, since you’re here and still alive.”

The Kid frowned again. “Wait a minute. The numbers don’t add up. There should be at least one more man out there somewhere.”

Hogan shook his head. “No, the other fella—name of Horrigan, if that matters—died early this morning from being busted up when you stampeded those horses through the camp. You killed two men, and Loomis got run over and had his head stove in, then and there.” More of the whiskey gurgled down Hogan’s throat. “You pretty near wiped us out, Browning. Any normal man would’ve given up when he saw the odds against him, but you just kept on comin’ until nearly everybody was dead.”

The Kid nodded, willing to accept what Hogan told him. The man was too drunk to be lying, he decided.

“So Pamela and Tarleton decided to go with Trace and hunt for the horses?”

“Yeah.” Hogan laughed humorlessly and shook his head. “She said she loved me, but once she saw I was crippled, it didn’t take her any time at all to realize she’d been wrong about that. She started playin’ up to Trace instead.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” The Kid moved so that he could look around the tree where Hogan was sitting. “They didn’t even leave you a gun?”

“Nope. Just this bottle. Hell of a note, ain’t it?”

“Once I get back to civilization, I’ll send somebody out here to find you.”

Hogan drained the last of the booze from the bottle and then slung the empty across the camp. “The hell with that!” he said as he leaned forward. “I’ll be dead by then, and you know it. Kill me, Browning.” He tapped his forehead. “One shot, right here. Get it over with, damn you. Finish what you started.”

The Kid had lowered his gun. He shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not? Too merciful for you, you son of a bitch?”

“That leg of yours will heal. You might not ever walk right again, but it won’t kill you. You won’t die of thirst, either, with that pool right there. I’ll leave enough supplies to hold you for a few days. You’ll get hungry, but you won’t starve to death.”

“Forget it. You know how much my life’ll be worth once word gets around that I’m a cripple? I got enemies. They’ll come for me.”

The Kid shook his head again. “Sorry.”

Hogan closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and groaned. The Kid pouched his iron and started to back away. Hogan sat up again, twisted around, and grabbed hold of the tree. He used it as support and struggled to pull himself to his feet.

“Damn it, Browning, kill me!” he raged.

The Kid turned and walked away.

Hogan started after him, stumping along on his one good leg and the splinted, injured one. He whimpered in pain from the shattered knee. After making it only a couple of steps, he stumbled and fell, landing on his belly. His fingers clawed at the ground.

“Damn you, Browning! Damn you!”

“Too late,” The Kid said without turning around.

He heard Hogan yelling for a while as he rode out into the desert, but then the sounds faded. Maybe Hogan would make it, maybe he wouldn’t. It was out of The Kid’s hands now.

Quite a few tracks led away from the campsite, but there was only one set of three. Those footprints had to belong to Pamela, Tarleton, and Trace. The Kid followed them, knowing that it wouldn’t take him long to catch up since he was on horseback and they were afoot.

Half an hour later he saw something lying on the ground up ahead. As he kicked the buckskin into a fast trot, he realized the shape was that of a man lying facedown. The hombre was too big to be Jack Trace, and as The Kid came closer, he recognized the dark suit that Anthony Tarleton had been wearing.

Tarleton didn’t move as The Kid approached. He had to be either dead or unconscious. Otherwise, he would have heard the hoofbeats. The Kid reined to a halt about twenty feet away and drew his gun. He didn’t think Tarleton was trying some sort of trick, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility.