Authors: J. A. Johnstone
Brutal Vengeance (10 page)
The Kid noticed a blacksmith shop as well and wondered if any of the horses had shoes that needed tending to. That would take more time, but it might mean less trouble later.
Another building bore the sign H
AMPTON’S
S
ALOON—
L
IQUOR AND
C
IGARS.
Culhane wanted the men to avoid the saloon, but that might be difficult to manage. Some of the cowboys from the M-B Connected were already looking mighty thirsty.
AMPTON’S
S
ALOON—
L
IQUOR AND
C
IGARS.
Culhane wanted the men to avoid the saloon, but that might be difficult to manage. Some of the cowboys from the M-B Connected were already looking mighty thirsty.
The Ranger headed for the store and said over his shoulder, “All right, everybody follow me now. We ain’t got much time—”
He stopped short as the trading post’s front door opened and a woman hurried out onto the building’s high porch. The sun flashed on red hair under her hat. Two men emerged from the building right behind her, moving fast. One of them reached out and grabbed her arm.
“Hold on there, lady!” he said in a loud, raucous voice. “Hell, Rudy and me are just tryin’ to be friendly.”
The woman tried to pull away. “Let go of me!”
The two men laughed, and the second one reached for her as well.
They weren’t laughing a second later when the metallic sound of The Kid’s revolver being cocked cut through the air. They looked around in surprise as he leveled the Colt at them and said coldly, “You heard the lady. Let her go.”
Chapter 16
He was being showy, and he knew it. The Colt was a double-action model. He didn’t have to cock it in order to fire it. All he had to do was pull the trigger.
But at the same time, it was an effective tactic. The sound of a gun being cocked was enough to freeze the blood of many men.
It was in this case. As the two men stared at The Kid, their hands fell away from the woman.
She stepped away from them, straightened her clothes, and sniffed disdainfully. Her auburn hair was cut short under the bottle-green hat she wore. A traveling dress of the same shade hugged the supple curves of her body. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but had an undeniable attractiveness about her that instantly drew a man’s eye and held it.
Beside The Kid, Culhane said, “Morgan, what are you doin’? This is none of our business.”
“I can’t stand by and do nothing while a woman’s being mistreated, Ranger. Can you?”
“Well, now that you mention it ... no. But we don’t need to be gettin’ in any gunfights with these folks, either.”
“There’s not going to be any gunfight.” The Kid’s lips curved in an icy smile as he looked at the two men on the store’s porch. “Is there?”
The men were typical small-town roughnecks, the sort who worked at odd jobs part of the time and stayed drunk the rest. But they wore guns, and they could be dangerous.
One of them said belligerently, “You got no call to mix in this, mister. We weren’t gonna hurt the lady. We just thought she might be willin’ to give us a kiss. We don’t see many like her here in Stubbtown.”
“I’ll give you something.” The redhead stepped closer to the men and brought her hand up in a pair of stinging slaps that cracked across the men’s faces. “That’s what I’ll give you!”
They fell back a step, probably more shocked by the blows than they were hurt. The woman glared at them for a second before turning away as if they were beneath contempt.
She nodded to The Kid. “Thank you, sir. It’s not often one encounters such gallantry out here on this rude frontier.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” He lowered the hammer on his gun and pouched the iron. Moving the buckskin closer to the porch, he went on, “Can I see you safely to your destination?”
Culhane said, “Morgan, blast it—”
“Why, thank you,” the redhead told The Kid with a smile. “That would be very nice.”
That wasn’t how it worked out, though. With a roar of anger, one of the humiliated roughnecks let his wounded pride get the best of him now that The Kid’s gun was holstered. The man got a running start by taking a couple steps and launched himself off the high porch in a diving tackle aimed at The Kid. The impact of the crash drove The Kid right out of the saddle and off the buckskin’s back.
The two men fell heavily to the ground, causing the horses closest to them to dance around skittishly. The Kid knew he was in danger of being stepped on. Despite the fact that the fall had knocked the breath out of him, he brought the base of his right hand up sharply under the roughneck’s chin, driving the man’s head back.
The Kid rolled away, heaved himself up on his hands and knees, and dragged several deep breaths of air into his lungs.
His opponent, finding himself in just another brawl, recovered quickly. He threw himself at The Kid again, knocking him backward almost underneath the hooves of the nervous horses again.
“Give ’em room!” Culhane bellowed at the men with him. “Move those horses back!”
As the posse men reined their mounts back, the roughneck began slugging at The Kid, who was able to block only some of the blows. A couple times, a knobby fist slammed into his jaw as the man knelt on top of him.
The Kid shrugged off the punishment and shot his hands up, grabbing the front of the man’s shirt. A powerful heave sent the roughneck flying over his head to go rolling in the dusty street.
The Kid rolled over and scrambled up, barely making it to his feet first. Quickly looking around, he had a fraction of a minute to see Culhane holding a gun on the second roughneck before the first man charged him again, arms windmilling as he threw wild punch after wild punch.
Ducking low, The Kid let the savage blows go over his head. He lunged forward, planting his head in the man’s belly as he wrapped his arms around the man’s thighs and heaved again. With a startled yell, the roughneck crashed down on his back with bone-jarring, tooth-rattling force.
The Kid levered himself up and drove a knee into the man’s belly. Their positions were reversed, and he didn’t intend to waste his advantage. Moving his fists almost too fast to see, he smashed punch after punch into the man’s face.
It didn’t take long to knock all the fight out of him. The man’s eyes swelled shut, and blood gushed from his flattened nose. He pawed feebly at The Kid and whimpered, “No more! No more!”
“Morgan!” Culhane’s voice lashed out at The Kid. “That’s enough, blast it! You’re gonna kill him!”
“Better than letting him ... kill me,” The Kid said a little breathlessly as he stopped pounding his fists into the roughneck’s face.
He heaved himself to his feet and left the man bleeding in the dirt as he looked around for his hat. The black Stetson lay a few feet away. It was dusty, but at least it hadn’t been stepped on by any of the horses. He picked it up, slapped it against his leg to get some of the dust off, and settled it on his head.
His jaw ached where he’d been punched. He figured he would have a bruise there by the time the day was over.
The fight had drawn some of the citizens of Stubbtown out of the buildings. They stood around watching with avid interest. Just the arrival of the posse would have been enough to break the monotony of life in that wide place in the trail. A brawl on top of it was a bonus.
None of the townspeople seemed upset that The Kid had handed a beating to the roughneck. There was a good chance he and his friend had a history of bullying folks.
Culhane told the man still on the porch, “Take your pard and get out of here, mister. In case you didn’t notice this badge on my shirt, I’m a Texas Ranger, and this is a legally appointed posse. Interferin’ with a peace officer is against the law, and the two of you are lucky I don’t arrest you. Now skedaddle!”
The man was only too happy to get out of it without a beating ... or worse. He hurried down from the porch and went to his friend, grunting with effort as he lifted the groggy roughneck to his feet. Together, they stumbled toward the saloon.
Culhane holstered his gun. He motioned toward the store and told the other members of the posse, “All right, get in there and get what supplies you want. We ain’t got all day.”
The Kid got his buckskin and pack horse and tied their reins to the hitch rack in front of the store. He glanced up at the redheaded woman, who’d moved to the edge of the porch.
She said to Culhane, “Excuse me, sir. Did I hear you say that you’re a Texas Ranger?”
Culhane raised a finger to the brim of his hat and nodded politely. “Yes, ma’am, that’s right. Asa Culhane, by name.”
“I’m Lucille Morrison,” she said. “I want to thank you and your man there for stepping in to help me.”
“Don’t thank me,” Culhane replied with a shake of his head. “Jumpin’ into the middle of this ruckus was all Morgan’s idea. Although I got to admit that I probably would have if he hadn’t beat me to it, Miz Morrison.”
“It’s Miss Morrison,” the redhead told him with a smile. “I’m not married. And that’s the crux of the problem I find confronting me now.”
Culhane frowned. “You said the crutch of the problem ... ?”
“No, crux. The center. The very thing that’s causing me trouble. That being the lack of a husband.”
The Ranger shook his head. “I’m mighty sorry, ma’am, but I ain’t followin’ you at all. If you’re lookin’ for a husband among this bunch, you’re out of luck. We’re a posse, hot on the trail of a bunch of murderin’ outlaws.”
“But you seem to be heading toward San Antonio,” the woman persisted.
“Well, yeah, in that general direction, right enough,” Culhane admitted.
The redhead clutched her bag tighter and smiled. “Then it shouldn’t be any problem for you to take me with you.”
Culhane’s eyebrows rose in shocked surprise. The Kid’s face remained expressionless. He’d expected the woman to suggest something along those lines.
Culhane said, “I’m sorry, Miss Morrison, but I told you, we’re after a mighty bad bunch of owlhoots. The last thing in the world you want to do is come along with us.”
“But I have to get to San Antonio, and I don’t think it would be safe for a woman to travel alone all that distance. When you find those badmen you’re pursuing, I’ll stay back, well out of the way. You won’t be put to any trouble.”
Culhane gave a stubborn shake of his head. “No, ma’am. It’s a loco idea, and I won’t do it.”
“Then you mean to leave me stranded here in this terribly dreary place?”
Culhane looked like he was starting to get mad now. “Look, ma’am, I don’t know how you came to be here—”
“I was abandoned here,” the redhead broke in. “Lied to and then abandoned by an evil man.”
A sort of understanding began to dawn in Culhane’s eyes. “This hombre promised to marry you, did he?”
A flush spread over the woman’s peaches-and-cream complexion. “That’s right, and I believed him,” she said in obvious embarrassment. “I traveled with him this far—it’s scandalous, I know, but there’s nothing I can do about that now—and then he stopped to sit in on a poker game at that saloon down the street. Fortune smiled on him, and he won a considerable amount of money. Our plan was to go to El Paso and open a store there, and I thought this windfall would make it easier for us. But then this morning”—her voice hardened—“I woke up and he was gone. So was our buggy.”
“I’m sure sorry to hear about that, but I’m afraid it don’t change anything. We don’t have any spare horses, and even if we did”—Culhane smiled faintly—“you ain’t exactly rigged out for ridin’.”
“I have a little money,” the redhead said. “I thought it might be wise to keep a little my so-called fiancé didn’t know about.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “As it turns out, I was right. I can buy a horse of my own, along with a saddle and whatever gear I need. I just need the protection of a group of honorable men.” She gave the Ranger a dazzling smile. “And it’s obvious that’s what I’ve found in you gentlemen.”
Culhane took off his hat, ran a hand over his thinning hair, and grimaced as indecision warred inside him. He glanced at The Kid. “What do you think, Morgan?”
The Kid looked up intently at the woman for a long moment before saying, “I think Miss Morrison could use a helping hand. If she can keep up, I think we should take her along.”
“Oh, I can keep up, Mister ... Morgan, was it?” She gave him the same smile. “I assure you I won’t be a hindrance.”
Culhane clapped his hat back on his head. “No offense, ma’am, but you’d better not be. If you are, we’ll leave you behind and you’ll have to shift for yourself. And you ain’t got much time to get ready to ride with us, either. We’ll be pullin’ out of this burg as soon as my men finish pickin’ up some supplies. If you’re gonna buy a horse and an outfit, you’d better get busy.”
“There’s a livery stable down the street,” The Kid said. “I’m still in good shape on supplies, so I’ll give the lady a hand.”
“I would appreciate that very much, Mr. Morgan.” She started down the steps.
Culhane was still mounted. He swung down from the saddle and stepped aside to let the redhead pass. The Kid joined her, and as he did, Culhane said in a low voice, “Don’t lose track o’ time, Morgan.”
“Don’t worry,” The Kid assured him. “I won’t.”
He fell in alongside the woman, and they walked toward the livery stable at the other end of the street. When they were out of earshot of Culhane, the redhead said, “Thanks for not giving me away, Kid.”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” he snapped. “I might still tell Culhane the truth. It all depends on what explanation you have for that load of crap you just handed him, Lace.”
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