Aaron asked, “What are we gonna do now?”
“Do you know where we are, McKinney?” Luke asked.
“Nine or ten miles east of Stanton, I’d say,” the outlaw replied with a sigh. “Once we met up at the rendezvous, we rode pretty hard for a while before we stopped. You don’t remember any of that because you were out cold and tied over your saddle. Creager wanted to go ahead and finish you off as soon as he shot you off your horse while we were talking, but I wouldn’t let him. I said we couldn’t do anything until we’d talked it over with the whole gang.”
“I’m obliged to you for that. You saved my life, McKinney. That squares any debt that was between us.”
“I don’t know about that. You looked after my boy Aaron and saved his life more than once. That carries a lot of weight with me.”
Thad said, “We can talk about it all night, but like Aaron asked, what now?”
“Stanton’s not so far away that we can’t walk it,” McKinney said with a frown.
When Luke realized he could see that frown, he knew dawn couldn’t be far off. Gray light had begun to appear in the sky to the east.
“Walk nine or ten miles?” Thad said. “The sun will be up before we get there. You know how hot it gets out here as soon as the sun rises, Pa.”
“We’ll just have to deal with that.” McKinney drew a deep breath. “In fact, we’d better go ahead and get started while it’s still cool.”
It was more than just cool. The air held a definite chill, as it always did at that time of the early morning. The dry air heated up and cooled off extremely quickly, depending on whether the sun was up.
McKinney was right. Since they didn’t have anything except the clothes they wore and the guns they carried, there was no reason to tarry. Luke and McKinney knew how to steer by the stars, so they didn’t have any trouble knowing which way to go. They walked around the knob where they had taken cover and headed west.
“We can get horses in Stanton,” McKinney said as the sky grew lighter, sounding almost as if talking to himself and trying to figure out their course of action. “It won’t be easy to beat Creager to Singletary, but we have to try.”
“Why?” Thad wanted to know. “Everybody there hates you or looks down on you, Pa. It’s been that way ever since the newspapers started writin’ about you and the gang. I understand why you want to catch up to Creager and kill him, but what does the bank in Singletary matter? Let him clean it out. Then we can take that money from him when he’s dead.”
“I lived close to that town for a lot of years, boy,” McKinney snapped. “Bought supplies and did business there many a time. Maybe the townsfolk don’t feel the same way about me anymore, but I’ve still got some loyalty to them. Besides, there’s your mother to think about.”
“What about her?” Aaron asked. “If she’s out at the ranch, nothing will happen to her. It’d just be pure bad luck if she happened to be in town at the same time as Creager and the rest hit the bank.”
“You don’t understand—” McKinney began, then broke off with a shake of his head.
“Then make us understand,” Aaron challenged. “Tell us what it is you’re not tellin’ us, Pa.”
For a long moment, McKinney didn’t answer as they trudged across the sandy ground. Then he sighed and said, “Creager knows where the ranch is. I never figured there was a reason to keep it a secret from him. But one day he saw the picture of your mother that I carry with me all the time.” He touched his shirt pocket, apparently without thinking about what he was doing, and Luke took that to mean the photograph was still there. “When Creager saw it, he said some things . . . things that make me believe he might stop there before he goes on to town, especially now that he’s got even more of a grudge against me.”
Thad made an angry sound deep in his throat. “You should’ve gone ahead and killed him, Pa, right then and there.”
“I know it,” McKinney said. “But I passed it off like he didn’t mean anything by it and figured just to be sure, I’d never let the gang get anywhere close to the place. That’s one of the reasons I never came back.”
Aaron said, “Wait a minute. You carry a picture of Ma around with you?”
McKinney smiled at his younger son. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I figured you didn’t gave a damn about her,” Aaron said bluntly. “Or about us, neither. If you had, you never would’ve run off like you did.”
McKinney winced a little at the boy’s words, almost as if he’d been slapped. He shook his head. “The reason I left is because I cared about her. About you and Thad, too.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” the youngster argued. “If you cared about us, why’d you abandon us?”
Thad said, “Leave him alone. You hectoring Pa that way isn’t going to do any of us any good.”
“You must know the story,” Aaron flared back at him. “Probably think I’m too young to know. Just a damn little kid is how you think of me.”
“Stop it,” McKinney said. “Thad doesn’t know any more than you do.” He paused. “But maybe it’s time you did.”
For a moment, neither of his sons responded.
Then Thad said, “You don’t owe us any explanations, Pa.”
“The hell he doesn’t!” Aaron said.
With a parent’s habitual sharpness, McKinney said, “Watch your language, son.” Then his tone softened as he went on. “I’m going to tell you boys the truth. I figure you’ve got it coming.”
Luke understood why McKinney felt that way. The outlaw knew it was a distinct possibility they wouldn’t make out of their situation alive. It was still miles to the settlement, and a lot could happen in the hours it would take to cover that distance. If they didn’t survive, Three-fingered Jack wanted to make sure there were no more secrets between him and his sons.
“I wasn’t always a horse rancher and farmer,” McKinney went on. “I took that up after I met your ma and married her. Before that . . . well, let’s say that I wasn’t the most law-abiding fella you’d ever meet.”
“You were an outlaw,” Aaron said in an accusatory tone.
“Guilty as charged. Except I was never actually charged. The law never caught up to me. There were wanted posters out on me, but under another name, and the descriptions and the likenesses on them didn’t really match up that well to the real thing.” McKinney held up the hand missing two fingers. “And in those days, I didn’t have this to be a dead giveaway to who I was. Your ma did that.”
“What!” Thad exclaimed. “Ma cut off your fingers?”
“That’s crazy!” Aaron added. “She’d never do that!”
McKinney threw back his head and laughed. The sound was full of genuine amusement despite the grisly subject they were discussing. “Oh, but she did. It was an accident. Before you were born, Aaron, and you were too little to remember it, Thad. She wanted to learn how to chop wood, so I was showing her.” He chuckled again. “I should’ve just told her I’d take care of the wood chopping. Then that ax wouldn’t have had a chance to miss. She sure was upset and embarrassed.”
“That’s all there is to it?” Thad said. “An accident while she was trying to chop wood?”
“Yep. They weren’t cut off by an Apache or anything dramatic like that.”
Aaron asked, “How come you never told us? You knew we were curious what happened to your fingers.”
“Yeah, I know. You pestered me enough about it. But I just told you, your ma was embarrassed and upset. She made me promise I’d never tell anybody what happened. And I never did, until now.”
They walked on in silence for several moments, then Aaron muttered, “That don’t have anything to do with why you ran off and left us.”
“No, it doesn’t,” McKinney admitted. “I never planned on doing that at all. But then . . . a fella I used to know showed up in Singletary and happened to see me walking out of the general store. He recognized me and came up to me, said it was good to see me again and that I ought t
o throw in with him and his pards. It wasn’t much of a question. It was more of a threat.”
“Creager,” Luke guessed.
“What?” McKinney shook his head. “No, it wasn’t Creager. It was a man named Abe Gibson. He’s dead now. A posse killed him up in Utah less than six months later. Creager was part of his bunch, though.”
“This Gibson, he was the boss?”
“Yeah. By the time he was killed, I was sort of his second-in-command, so when he went under, the other boys looked to me to take over.”
Aaron said, “Now hold on. When Gibson came up to you in town, why didn’t you tell him to go to hell?”
“There you go with the language again,” McKinney said.
“But you didn’t have to go back to bein’ an outlaw,” Aaron argued. “You could have told him no.”
“I could have . . . and if I had, he was going to send one of those old wanted posters to Sheriff Collins and write on it where the sheriff could find me.” McKinney shook his head. “Amelia . . . your ma . . . never knew the truth about what I’d been. I felt like I couldn’t let her find out. I knew it would hurt her if I just up and disappeared, but I figured it would hurt her even more if the truth came out.”
“That’s bull,” Aaron said without hesitation. “You just didn’t want to be arrested and sent to prison.”
Thad said, “You’ve got no call to talk to Pa like that, Aaron—”
“I reckon he does,” McKinney said. “Maybe he’s right. I never cottoned to the idea of being locked up, I know that. Maybe I was selfish and did things all wrong. But that’s the way it was, and I can’t change any of it now.” His voice hardened. “But I can stop that bastard Creager from hurting your mother, and from hurting my friends in town as well.” He increased his pace. “Come on. Let’s cover as much ground as we can before it gets hot.”
* * *
Despite that resolve, the sun came up, of course, and the temperature began to rise with it. Within half an hour after the rays first struck his back, Luke’s shirt was soaked with sweat.
His head hurt, too, and he knew the growing heat would just make it worse. He wished he had his hat, but he supposed McKinney had left it where it fell when Creager shot him off his horse. It would have been uncomfortable to wear over the makeshift bandage on his bullet-creased head, anyway.
In addition to everything else, his boots weren’t made for walking—none of their boots were—and each step had become painful. Luke knew he would have blisters on his feet by the time they reached Stanton. Unless some miracle provided four horses for them, or at least two, taking one step after another was the only way to get there.
About an hour after sunup McKinney called a halt for them to rest. They had come to some scrubby greasewood bushes, and when they sank down on the sandy ground on the west side of the bushes, the vegetation provided a little shade from the already relentless sun.
“I sure am thirsty,” Thad said after he’d sat there panting for a few seconds.
“I reckon we all are,” his father said, “but it’s best not to think about it.” He reached over, picked up a pebble from the ground, brushed the sand off of it, and tossed it to Thad. “Suck on that. It’ll keep your mouth from feeling so dry.”
“Really?” Thad sounded unconvinced.
“Yep. It’s an old trick. I’ll bet Luke knows it.”
“I do,” Luke agreed. He found a pebble of his own and popped it into his mouth. “Doesn’t help all that much . . . but anything is better than nothing, right?”
McKinney and Aaron followed suit, picking up pebbles of their own. The four of them sat there, sweating and sucking on rocks.
It was a toss-up which of them was the most miserable, Luke thought with grim amusement.
Eventually, Thad spat out the stone into his hand and said, “I’ve got to take a leak.”
“If you just wait, your body will suck up that moisture,” McKinney said. “You may need it.”
“Tell that to my bladder.” Thad got to his feet and stumbled back around to the other side of the greasewood clump.
After a moment, McKinney chuckled. “Yeah, it’s mighty hard for a fella to win an argument with his bladder. Guess I’ll surrender, too.” He stood up and went around the bushes to join Thad.
“How about you?” Luke asked Aaron.
“I’m fine,” the youngster snapped. He lowered his voice until it was barely above a whisper. “But I do want to talk to you about something.”
“Something you don’t want your pa and your brother to hear?” Luke guessed.
“Yeah. It’s about that story Pa told . . . about why he ran off and became an outlaw.”
“You’re thinking maybe you judged him a mite too harshly?”
Aaron glared at the ground in front of them and said, “No. He should’ve figured out somethin’ different instead of going along with what that fella Gibson wanted and abandoning us. But . . . from the sound of it, he really did believe he was doin’ the right thing for Ma and Thad and me. He didn’t come right out and say it, but it could be that Gibson threatened to hurt us if Pa didn’t do what he wanted. That seems like something an outlaw might do, don’t it?”
“It certainly does,” Luke agreed.
“Then if that was true . . . and it might have been . . . Pa would have thought he was protecting us by going along with Gibson.”
Luke nodded. “It’s a feasible theory.”
“You mean you think I’m right?”
“You could be. Only one person really knows.”
Aaron took a deep breath. “You think I ought to ask him?”
“That’s up to you. It depends on how much you need to know before you forgive him, or if you even want to forgive him.”
“I don’t know what I want,” Aaron said miserably. “But I sure wish I’d never got mad and made up all those blasted reward posters. If I hadn’t, you never would have seen one of them and decided to go after the bounty on Pa.”
As Aaron was speaking, Luke heard the soft scrape of boot leather on the ground and saw a shadow move into view next to the bushes, then the next instant an icy voice cut through the hot air.
“Is that true, Luke? You’re nothing but a damned bounty hunter?”
CHAPTER 32
Luke looked up at Three-fingered Jack McKinney. The outlaw stood tensely, his hand close to the butt of his gun.
In a calm voice, Luke said, “We don’t need to have a shoot-out, McKinney. I don’t want to kill you, and I don’t want to take a chance on either of your boys getting hit by a stray bullet.”
“You ain’t killin’ anybody, mister,” Thad said as he stepped around the other side of the greasewood clump and pointed his gun at Luke. He thumbed back the hammer. “Let me shoot him, Pa.”
“Stop that,” McKinney said. “Put your gun away, Thad. You’re not shooting anybody. You’re not a killer.”
“But you heard him! He’s not one of us. He’s a bounty hunter! That’s even worse than a lawman.”
“Both of you just quit it!” Aaron cried. “This is my fault. All my fault!” He twisted his head to look at Luke. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jensen. I never should’ve said anything—”
“It’s all right, Aaron. Your pa was going to find out sooner or later, wasn’t he?”
McKinney snorted disgustedly. “Yeah, when you shot me in the back so you could collect the blood money on my head.”
Aaron scrambled to his feet and glared at his father. “Mr. Jensen’s only here because of me. I’m the one who put out a reward on you.”
McKinney stared at him in obvious disbelief. After a couple of heartbeats, he said, “Why in blazes would you do that? And where’d you get the money?”
“It wasn’t just money,” Luke said dryly. “An almost new harmonica was involved, too.”
McKinney glanced at him, looking angry and confused. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Aaron didn’t wait for Luke to answer. “It was me, Pa. I put up wanted poste
rs around the county offering all the money I’ve got to my name, hoping somebody would get curious enough to find out there are other rewards for you and go after you. I thought you needed to be brought to justice for your crimes . . . but especially for abandoning us.”
With his gun still pointing toward Luke, Thad said, “The kid’s always been a little off in the head, Pa.”
“Don’t talk about your brother like that,” McKinney said sharply. “Aaron’s smart as a whip. He’s just not old enough to know all that much about how the world really works, that’s all.”
“I’m learnin’ more all the time,” Aaron said.
McKinney nodded. “Yeah, I can see that you are. Why did you trail along with . . . Jensen.” He turned to Luke. “Is that your real name?”
“It is. Luke Jensen.”
“Why did you come with Jensen?” McKinney asked Aaron again.
“Because I wanted to see the look on your face when he caught up with you and arrested you.”
Luke heard the pain in McKinney’s voice as the man said, “You really hate me that much?”
“I had a lot of time to learn to hate you. Five years.”
Luke said, “I’m going to stand up, McKinney. Please tell your boy not to shoot me.”
“Thad, lower that gun,” McKinney said as he glanced at his older son. “I’ll deal with Jensen.”
“Don’t trust him, Pa!” Thad exclaimed.
“I never said I was going to trust him. I said I’d deal with him.” McKinney nodded to Luke. “Go ahead and get up if that’s what you want, Jensen. But keep your hands away from those guns if you know what’s good for you.”
With a wry smile, Luke said, “That’s the problem. Too many times in my life, I haven’t known what was good for me. Or I’ve known but couldn’t do it. But I’ve managed to muddle through anyway.” He climbed to his feet, making sure he didn’t do anything Thad would mistake for a threat.
The young man was nervous as a cat, and those nerves, combined with his inexperience, made him very dangerous indeed.
“You have to look at this situation from a practical standpoint,” Luke went on. “If you’re going to stop Creager and the rest of the gang from hurting people you care about, you’re liable to need my help. Right now, I have a lot bigger grudge against Creager than I do against you, McKinney.” Luke lifted a hand and touched the bandanna tied around his head. “Honestly, I might be willing to forget about those bounties on you if it meant I’d get another shot at that ugly ape.”
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