Brutal Vengeance (11 page)

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Authors: J. A. Johnstone

BOOK: Brutal Vengeance
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Chapter 17
A low, throaty laugh came from her. “You saw through me right away, didn’t you?”
“As soon as I laid eyes on you,” The Kid said. “It hasn’t been that long since I saw you, remember?”
“Almost a year.”
The Kid shook his head. “That’s not long enough.” In fact, he was unlikely to
ever
forget Lace McCall. She had come close to killing him ... and she had also saved his life.
And she was the only woman he’d made love with since Rebel’s death.
Lace was a bounty hunter, and they had met in New Mexico Territory when there was a price on The Kid’s head. She had intended to collect that bounty, but in the end she had helped him to clear his name.
She had been seriously wounded, and the last time he’d seen her, she had been recuperating from those injuries.
He had covered the cost of her medical care—Conrad Browning was a rich man, after all, whether The Kid still claimed that identity or not—and had provided money to make sure Lace’s daughter back in Kansas City was taken care of properly.
But he hadn’t been back to visit her. He had been consumed by a quest of his own. Since it had come to an end, he hadn’t felt like seeing anybody from his past.
Fate had taken that decision out of his hands.
“I’ll bet you can guess what I’m doing here,” Lace said as they approached the livery stable.
“I suspect it has something to do with a man named Warren Latch. How big is the bounty on his head?”
“Ten thousand dollars. And the rewards on the other men I know are in his gang add up to several thousand more dollars, at the very least. Bringing them in would be a nice big haul for me, Kid.”
He stopped walking, and so did she.
“I offered to take care of you—”
“The hell with that,” she snapped, interrupting him. “I don’t need anybody to take care of me. Men used to offer to do that when I was working in the whorehouse, and when I finally believed one of them, it didn’t work out too well.”
The Kid remembered the story she had told him in an isolated camp in New Mexico ...
“I wasn’t always a bounty hunter. My mama ... she worked in a house in St. Louis. You know?”
“I know,” The Kid said. “You don’t have to tell me any of this if you don’t want to.”
“If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t be telling you,” she snapped. Her tone softened again as she went on. “I was born there. She wanted a better life for me than she had, so she moved to Kansas City and tried to find a real job there. It was hard for her, though, and after a while ... well, she went back to it. With all that, I don’t guess anybody would be real surprised to hear I turned out the same way.”
The Kid didn’t say anything, although actually he was a little surprised.
“I wound up in a family way,” she went on. “One of my customers, a man named McCall, offered to marry me. I took him up on it. I wanted my child to have a name. He turned out to be a pretty bad sort, though. He didn’t treat me good. After a while I found out he was even worse than I thought. I happened to see a wanted poster with his picture on it. The man on the poster had a different name, but McCall was one of the names he was said to use sometimes. I went home, and the next time he raised his hand to me, I was ready. I shot the son of a bitch.”
“You killed him?” The Kid asked.
“No, I just put a bullet in his knee, and while he was rolling around on the floor and screaming, I went and found a policeman and told him there was a wanted fugitive in my house. They hauled him off, and I claimed the reward. I got it, too. That was enough for me to be able to set my mama and my little girl up so they’d be all right.” She laughed. “That was how I found out I liked bounty hunting a lot better than I liked being a whore.”
“And that’s what you’ve been doing for the past few years?”
“Five years,” she said. “I already knew how to fight. I taught myself how to ride and shoot and found that I really took to it ...”
 
 
That was putting it mildly. Lace was as good a shot as any man The Kid had ever seen with the exception of himself and his father, and she could sit a saddle all day without getting weary. He wouldn’t count her out in a bare-knuckles brawl, either. She packed quite a punch.
But she’d also been packing some fairly serious bullet wounds the last time he’d seen her.
“The doctor said you probably wouldn’t ever be in good enough shape to go back to bounty hunting.”
Lace shrugged and shook her head. “I’m here, aren’t I? Doctors don’t know everything. I’m fine. Hell, I was laid up for so long I thought I’d go crazy. I feel a lot better now than I did when I was laying around doing nothing.”
“Why the long, involved story you told Culhane about being abandoned here by some lothario?” The Kid asked.
Lace grinned as mischievous lights sparkled in her green eyes. “Pretty convincing, wasn’t it? I made it up on the spot to get that Texas Ranger to go along with what I wanted, once I realized I could get a whole posse to help me.”
“Nobody here in Stubbtown knows any different?”
“How could they? I just rode in a little while ago.” Lace laughed. “Stubbtown. What a horrible name. Would you want to admit you were from Stubbtown?”
“Probably not.” The Kid had to admit it.
“I left my horses at the livery stable and changed into this getup.” She gestured at the hat and traveling dress. “I planned to ask some questions about Latch, and thought I might be more likely to get honest answers if nobody knew I was hunting bounty. Now that’s not necessary. You’re on his trail, so I’ll just come along with you and the posse.”
She was a quick thinker, he had to give her credit for that.
“By the time anybody who lives here heard your story and started to question it, you’ll be gone,” he said.
“That’s the idea.” She gave him an intent look. “How about it, Kid? Is it going to work?”
“Do you know what Warren Latch did a few days ago?” he asked grimly. “Do you know what he’s capable of ?”
“Damn right I know,” Lace said. “I have contacts at the Ranger post in San Antonio. When Culhane wired there about what happened at Fire Hill, I got wind of it. I knew they were headed in this direction. That’s why I set out to intercept the gang somewhere along the way.”
The Kid grunted. “One woman against a gang of forty killers.”
“I thought I’d figure something out when the time came,” she said with a smile. “And so I have. What I don’t know is how Latch got past me.”
“It’s a big countr y,” The Kid pointed out.
“Yeah, I guess so. And you still haven’t answered my question, Kid. Do I get to come along ... or are you going to tell Culhane the truth?”
“Even if I did, he might take you along. We’ve whittled down the odds a little, but Latch’s bunch still outnumbers the posse by quite a bit. If I tell Culhane how good you are in a fight, he’s liable to offer you a job as a temporary Texas Ranger!”
Lace shook her head. “No thanks. I want to be able to collect all the bounties I can.”
They couldn’t stand out there in the street much longer, The Kid realized. They had already been talking for several minutes, and Culhane was liable to start wondering what was going on.
“If Culhane decides you can’t come along, you’ll just find some other way of going after Latch, won’t you?”
Lace smiled. “You know me, Kid.”
“Yeah, I do.” He started toward the stable again. “Come on.”
“Thanks, Kid. I’ll see to it you don’t regret it.”
Not sure what she meant by that, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He didn’t regret the things they had done, but he wasn’t interested in any sort of long-term romance, either.
“Are you going to keep up this ridiculous masquerade as a spurned woman?” he asked as they walked side by side.
“I almost have to, don’t I? At least for the time being.”
“You mean until you capture Latch and can claim the ten grand?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Lace laughed.
“Will you go along with that, Kid?”
“Why not? I just hope it doesn’t backfire on you.”
“I won’t let it.”
Life had a way of dealing harshly with the plans people made, though. The Kid knew that all too well.
Inside the shadowy stable, Lace opened her bag and slipped a coin to the Mexican hostler. “Thanks for taking care of my horses, Felipe. If you hear any odd stories about me, for all you know they’re true,
comprende
?”
Felipe bobbed his head. “
Sí, señorita
. Though we have known each other only a short time, you have always been the soul of honesty with me.”
“That’s right,” Lace said with a smile. “Kid, help me get these horses ready. I still have to go back to the store and see if I can buy a riding outfit. Wouldn’t do for Lucille Morrison to gallivant around in boots, jeans, and a buckskin shirt, now would it?”
“Go tend to that,” The Kid told her. “I’ll saddle your horse and get your supplies back on the pack horse.”
“That’s mighty generous of you.”
“Just trying to speed things up so we can get back on Latch’s trail.”
“Warren Latch?” Felipe asked as his eyes widened. He made the sign of the cross. “I have heard of that one. It is said he is very much like the Devil himself.”
“That’s not far wrong,” The Kid said.
“Señorita, you should not have anything to do with a man such as this Latch,” Felipe advised.
“I don’t have any choice,” Lace said. “He’s got something I want.”
“What is that, señorita?”
“His head,” Lace said.
Chapter 18
When Lace emerged from Brennaman’s Trading Post and Emporium a short time later, she had traded the green traveling outfit for a brown, divided riding skirt, a gray shirt, and a brown vest that matched the skirt. So did the flat-crowned Stetson she wore with the strap taut under her chin. On her feet were short riding boots.
The Kid was mounted on his buckskin by then, sitting the saddle in front of the store as he held the reins not only of his pack animal but also Lace’s, along with her saddle mount. As he handed the reins over to her, she asked, “Where are the others?”
“They pulled out a few minutes ago,” The Kid explained. “I told Culhane I’d wait for you and that we would catch up in a little bit.”
She swung up easily into the saddle. “Let’s go. We don’t want to let them get too far ahead.”
The Kid gestured at the rifle in Lace’s saddle boot. “How are you going to explain a genteel lady like Lucille Morrison being able to use a Winchester?”
“I’ll think of something. I always do, don’t I?”
“That’s true.” As they turned away from the store and started riding along the street, The Kid went on, “Where’s Max?”
The big, shaggy cur had been Lace’s inseparable companion during the ruckus over in New Mexico Territory. She shrugged. “He’s back in Kansas City with my mother and Linda Sue. It’s a good thing for a kid to have a dog around, and besides, Max is getting a little too old to go traipsing around with me all over the frontier, chasing outlaws. He deserves some time to lay on the porch in the sun.”
“Sounds good,” The Kid said.
Lace shot a glance over at him. “That’s not for us. People like us don’t get that luxury, Kid. We’ll never see those so-called golden years. We’ll meet somebody who’s faster or trickier or just plain meaner, and we’ll end up in a shallow grave somewhere, or with the coyotes scattering our bones. Sorry if you hadn’t figured that out by now, but that’s the way things happen for people like us.”
“You’re probably—”
Before The Kid could finish his sentence, a man stepped out from the mouth of the alley they were passing, pointed a revolver at them, and started pulling the trigger.
The shots were so loud The Kid couldn’t hear the slug whistle past his ear, only inches away, but he sensed it. By that time his Colt was in his hand, coming up so swiftly it was only a blur. The gun roared and bucked.
The man in the alley mouth twisted halfway around as The Kid’s bullet punched into the left side of his chest. He struggled to stay on his feet and bring his gun back around toward the two riders, but the bullet had ripped through his heart, pulping it. With a groan, the man dropped to his knees and toppled sideways.
It was the first chance The Kid had to get a good look at the man. He recognized the roughneck he’d had the brawl with earlier. The man had a friend, he recalled—
“To your left!” Lace called.
She had pulled her rifle from its sheath, and the Winchester snapped to her shoulder with the same sort of speed The Kid had demonstrated with the Colt. The repeater cracked as The Kid turned his head. He heard another shot at the same time and saw dust spurt in the street just in front of the buckskin.
Across the street, the man who had been crouched on the roof of a building lurched to his feet and doubled over from the pain of the rifle round that had bored into his guts. He dropped his own Winchester and followed it, falling from the roof and turning over once in midair to come crashing down on his back.
He had gotten off one shot at The Kid and Lace, and the cost of it had been his life.
The Kid was out of the saddle in a flash. He told Lace, “Cover me. I’ll check them.”
He was relatively sure both bushwhackers were dead, but a man who wasn’t careful about such things all too often wound up a corpse himself.
A quick look confirmed what The Kid thought. Neither of the roughnecks would ever bully anyone again.
The shots had drawn plenty of attention, although the citizens of Stubbtown were looking out curiously from the relative safety of the buildings, not venturing into the street.
However, once the gunfire stopped and didn’t resume for a minute or two, they began to emerge.
The Kid replaced the round he had fired from the Colt and slid the revolver back into leather. He looked up at Lace. “That was pretty good shooting. You got that Winchester out and working in a hurry.”
She shrugged. “Not fast enough to keep that bastard from almost ventilating you.”
“Close doesn’t count,” The Kid said with a smile. He looked over at a man who was approaching him.
“Are they both dead?” the townie asked.
“That’s right,” The Kid said. “Is there going to be trouble over this?”
The man shook his head. “I don’t see why there would be. Rudy Tomlinson and Jake Rivers were first-class sons of bitches—beg your pardon for my language, ma’am—and nobody in town’s gonna be sorry to see them dead. Some of the people they ran roughshod over would probably be glad to buy you a drink, in fact, to thank you.”
“We don’t have time for that,” The Kid said. “Is there any law here?”
“Not a bit, not even a constable.”
“Then there’s nothing to keep us from riding on.”
“Not a thing,” the townsman agreed. “We’ll put these two in cheap pine boxes and plant them. The whole town’s liable to turn out to bid them good riddance.”
“You do that.” The Kid took hold of the buckskin’s reins and swung up in the saddle. “We have to be riding.”
“I never saw anybody get a gun out as fast as you did, mister,” the man went on in obvious excitement. “And ma’am, I never would have believed a lady could shoot like that.”
“Well, then, you’re easily surprised,” Lace told him. She turned her horse and added, “Let’s go, Kid. I don’t want that posse getting too far ahead of us.”
The Kid knew what she meant. She didn’t want the posse accidentally capturing Warren Latch and his gang before she got a chance to be in on it and claim the reward. Lifting a hand briefly in farewell to the townsman, The Kid sent the buckskin loping after Lace and her horses.
It took them half an hour of brisk riding to catch up to the posse. When they did, several of the men stared at Lace with surprised expressions.
She didn’t look like the rough-and-tumble bounty hunter The Kid had first met in New Mexico Territory, but her appearance was considerably different than it had been when the posse men first laid eyes on her in Stubbtown.
The riders all paused as The Kid and Lace joined them. Culhane tugged on the brim of his Stetson. “Ma’am.”
“Ranger Culhane,” she replied. “Thank you again for allowing me to accompany you.”
“Could be you were right about bein’ able to keep up. From the way you rode up, I’d say this ain’t your first time on a horse.”
Lace smiled. “Indeed it’s not. I grew up on a farm. You’ll find that I won’t hold you back.”
What she told Culhane wasn’t strictly true, The Kid reflected, since actually she had grown up in a whorehouse, but she was right about not holding them back. And when it came down to a fight with Latch’s gang, Lace would be worth two or three of the posse men, at the very least.
Culhane allowed everyone to rest the horses for a few minutes, then the posse moved out again. As they rode at the head of the group, Culhane said quietly to The Kid, “I thought I heard a few shots, ’way back yonder about where that settlement is.”
“You did,” The Kid agreed. “Those hombres who were bothering Miss Morrison when we rode in took exception to having their needings handed to them. They tried to settle the score by bushwhacking us as we rode out.”
Culhane’s eyes narrowed. “I reckon the fact that you two are here means there are two less troublemakers in Stubbtown.”
“You reckon correct,” The Kid said.
He felt eyes on him and glanced over his shoulder to see Nick Burton staring at him with open admiration. He hoped Nick wouldn’t say anything about him being Kid Morgan, but he supposed it didn’t really matter.
Nick’s gaze moved from The Kid to Lace, and his eyes showed admiration there as well, although of a different sort. Nick wasn’t the only member of the posse she affected like that, The Kid thought with a faint, amused smile as he faced forward again. Lace wasn’t the prettiest woman he had ever seen, but she was one of the most compelling.
“You didn’t leave Reilly back there at the settlement like you said you were going to,” The Kid commented quietly to Culhane.
“I thought about it,” the Ranger said. “But I asked around, and there ain’t no sawbones back there, so there didn’t seem to be any point to makin’ him stay. He would have put up a fuss about it, anyway.”
The Kid knew that was true. He looked at Reilly, who was riding beside Abel Gustaffson.
The hatred radiating from both men was so strong he could almost see it in the air around them.
It didn’t take long for the posse to reach more rugged terrain. The wooded hills were small starting out, barely worthy of being called hills, but The Kid found them a refreshing change from the miles and miles of flat, mesquite-dotted prairie. The sun still beat down hotly, but somehow the presence of more green vegetation made the air seem slightly cooler.
“We ain’t that far from San Antone now,” Culhane commented late that afternoon. The Kid noticed a worried edge had crept into the Ranger’s voice. “We need to catch up to Latch before he and his gang get to Bexar. If we don’t, they’re liable to split up and we won’t ever be able to track ’em down.” Culhane glanced over his shoulder at the posse and added quietly, “This bunch has already held together for longer than I thought they would.”
“You can try pushing them harder,” The Kid said. “Like you told me before, they’ll stick. Too many of them have personal scores to settle with Latch for them not to.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right about that,” Culhane said. “But the trail’s gettin’ harder to follow now that we’re in these hills. That’ll work against us.”
The Kid knew he was right about that.
A short time later, the situation became more difficult when the terrain suddenly got more rugged without any warning. The ground dropped into a deep, narrow canyon with steep hills on both sides. The slopes were covered thickly with cedars and junipers.
Culhane reined in and signaled a halt. As the posse came to a stop, the Ranger leaned forward in his saddle and frowned. “I don’t much like the looks of this place,” he said to The Kid, “but the trail leads down into that canyon.”
Trampled grass and broken branches on some of the bushes testified that a large group of riders had passed through there in the fairly recent past.
Lace rode up alongside them. “They’re less than a day ahead of us.”
Culhane shot her a narrow-eyed look. “And how would you know that, ma’am?”
The Kid could tell by the look on her face she knew she had made a mistake. He could practically see the wheels of her brain spinning as she tried to come up with an answer.
“I told you my father was a farmer,” she said. “What I didn’t mention was that before he married my mother and took up farming, he did some scouting for the army. He taught me quite a bit. I guess you could say I was a tomboy back then.”
“Uh-huh.” It was obvious Culhane wasn’t sure whether to believe her, but he didn’t seem too suspicious as he went on, “Well, ma’am, you’re right about those outlaws bein’ less than a day ahead of us. I hope you’re ready for some hard ridin’, because we’ll be pushin’ on until it’s too dark to see.”
“That’s fine with me, Mr. Culhane,” she replied with a smile. “The sooner I get back to San Antonio, the better.”
The Ranger turned in his saddle to address the posse. “The trail leads down into the canyon. We’re gonna follow it, but keep your eyes peeled. This is a good spot for an ambush.”
He waved the men forward. The Kid drew his Winchester from its saddle boot, and noticed that Lace did the same. Nick Burton and some of the other men followed their example.
Nick moved his horse alongside Lace’s as the posse descended into the narrow canyon. He nodded toward the rifle she held. “Do you know how to use that, ma’am?”
She gave him an indulgent smile. “I’ve shot a rifle before, Mister ...?”
“Burton, ma’am, Nick Burton. But you should call me Nick. Mr. Burton’s my pa. Or my grandpa, although folks usually call him Old Man Burton, on account of he’s had a big ranch north of Fire Hill for so long. Well ... where Fire Hill used to be, I guess you’d have to say.”
The Kid and Culhane were riding in front of Lace and the youngster. As The Kid listened to Nick babbling on, he thought that was one more indication of just how smitten with her the young man was.
There was no telling how long Nick might have gone on, but at that moment he was rudely interrupted by the crack of a shot. The flat
whap!
of a bullet passing close by The Kid’s head and Nick’s cry of pain sounded together.

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