The Loner: The Bounty Killers

by J. A. Johnstone

  The buckskin couldn’t answer, of course. Not in words. But the way the horse lifted his head and looked into the thick shadows under the trees, The Kid knew something was out there.

  A mountain lion, maybe. Horses and mountain lions were mortal enemies. The same was true of wolves.

  The Kid bent over and reached for the Winchester from where he had leaned both of his long guns against one of the saddles on the ground. As he closed his hand around it, a swiftmoving shape leaped out of the darkness at him, teeth bared in a snarl.

  The Kid snatched the rifle up quickly so the beast’s teeth closed on the barrel, not on his flesh. The next second, the animal’s weight slammed into him and knocked him off his feet. As he fell, he grabbed hold of the thick, shaggy coat and hung on.

  In the firelight, he saw that the creature struggling to sink its fangs into him wasn’t a mountain lion or a wolf or even a bear.

  It was a dog, and he would have sworn it was the same dog he had tossed off that rock slab more than a week earlier when he encountered that gang of bounty hunters.

  He had his left hand on the dog’s throat, holding off the teeth, and he still clutched the Winchester in his right. He raised the rifle and brought the butt smashing down on the dog’s head.

  The blow stunned the dog and gave The Kid time to throw the animal off and roll to the side. He came to his feet in a blur of speed and brought the Winchester to his shoulder, the barrel lined on the dog, which had regained its feet and was gathering itself for another spring.

  “You pull that trigger, mister, and I’ll kill you.”

  The words that came from behind him, uttered in a loud, clear voice, made The Kid’s finger freeze on the Winchester’s trigger for two reasons.

  One was the obvious threat behind them. The other was the fact they were in a woman’s voice.

  He heard footsteps and a crackle of brush as she stepped out of the undergrowth beneath the pines. She said, “Hold, Max,” and the dog settled down on its haunches but still looked like he wanted to tear The Kid’s throat out and gnaw on his bones.

  “Put the rifle on the ground,” the woman ordered.

  “How do I know you’ve even got a gun?” The Kid asked.

  He heard the metallic ratcheting of a revolver being cocked not far behind his head.

  “That a good enough answer for you?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so.” The Kid bent over and placed the Winchester on the ground at his feet.

  “Back away from it.”

  He did so, keeping his hands in plain sight. Depending on how much trigger-pull her gun required, it might not take much to put a bullet in his head.

  “All right, turn around.” To reinforce the order she had given a moment earlier, the woman said again, “Max, hold.”

  The Kid turned to face her. A shock went through him as he recognized the poncho and the broad-brimmed brown hat.

  He had thought that dog looked familiar. So did his captor. “I thought you were dead,” he told her.

  Her mouth tightened in a grim line. “Not hardly. What you really mean is that you thought you killed me.”

  “You were trying to kill me at the time,” The Kid pointed out.

  She had a blued-steel Colt Lightning pointed at him from a distance of about four feet. Too far for him to jump her before she could pull the trigger.

  While keeping the revolver leveled and rock steady, she brought her left hand up and cuffed her hat back so it hung behind her head on its chin strap, revealing a head of closely cropped auburn hair and a narrow, scabbed-over wound that started on the side of her head and disappeared into the hair above her right ear. “Your bullet just grazed me,” she said. “It knocked me out cold and I had a headache for three days afterward, but I wasn’t dead.”

  The Kid grunted. “I can see that. Where’s the rest of your bunch?”

  “I don’t have a bunch. I was just traveling in the same direction as those men.”

  The Kid had a hunch there was more to it than that, but he didn’t press her on it. He had more important things to worry about.

  “So you’re alone,” he said.

  “Don’t let that give you any ideas,” she snapped. “I’ve killed men before, and I won’t mind doing it again if I have to.” She nodded toward his gunbelt. “Unbuckle that belt and set it down, slow and easy.”

  The Kid knew if he allowed her to disarm him, his chances of getting away would plummet. She was a woman, but her face held a hard competence that told him gender didn’t matter a whole lot in this case. Female or not, she couldn’t be soft and feminine and survive for very long as a bounty hunter. She had to be plenty tough.

  He said, “All right . . . McCall.”

  The use of the name he guessed belonged to her surprised her enough that the gun in her hand jerked a little. It was what The Kid was watching for. He moved as soon as the reaction hit her. A quick shift to the right put him out of line for a split second—long enough for him leap forward, bat the barrel even farther to the side, and grab the woman.

  “Max!” she cried.

  Knowing the big dog would spring to the attack, he tightened his grip on the woman, whirled around, and took her with him. The dog was already in midair, trying to leap onto his back, but he gave the woman a shove that sent her right into the animal’s path. They crashed together and both of them went sprawling.

  The Kid sprang back and whipped out his Colt as the dog scrambled up again.

  “Call him off!” The Kid told the woman. “I don’t want to shoot him, but I will if I have to.”

  From her knees, the woman said sharply, “Max! Down!”

  The dog subsided into a snarling crouch.

  The woman had dropped her gun when she fell. It lay a couple feet to her right. The Kid saw her eyeing it and said, “Don’t try it.”

  “How do you know my name?” the woman demanded. “What did you do, paw through my saddlebags after you stole my horse?”

  “You mean after you tried to kill me?” The Kid shot back.

  “The wanted posters say dead or alive. I take prisoners in alive when I can, but if they put up a fight . . .” She gave an eloquent shrug.

  “To answer your question,” The Kid went on, “yes, I looked through your saddlebags. I found the envelope with the picture of the little girl in it.”

  “You son of a bitch,” she whispered. “You had no right.”

  The Kid ignored that. “Who is she? She can’t be your daughter. I can’t imagine a woman like you ever having children.”

  “Why not? Because I’m a bounty hunter?”

  “Let’s just say you don’t strike me as the maternal type.”

  “Go to hell. What did you do with the picture? Do you still have it?”

  The Kid started to think maybe he’d been wrong. The raw edge of need in her voice as she spoke of the little girl’s picture told him she might be a relative after all.

  “I sent it back to the address in Kansas City,” he said, softening his tone a little. “Along with the money I found in the saddlebags. I thought you were dead at the time, remember? I figured the little girl and whoever’s taking care of her might need the cash.”

  A surprised frown creased the woman’s forehead. “You did that?”

  “Regardless of what you think about me, McCall—and I’m a lot of things that aren’t very good, I’ll admit that—I’m not a thief.”

  “You took my horse.”

  “I thought you were dead,” he said again, “and I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, then asked, “Can I stand up?”

  “Don’t get too fancy about it. And don’t try for any weapons you’ve got under that poncho. Why do you wear it, anyway?” Before she could answer, he went on, “Wait, don’t tell me. It helps hide the fact that you’re a woman, doesn’t it? Just like the short hair.”

  “Go to hell,” she repeated as she climbed to her feet. “Why I do things is my business.” />
  “Like following me all the way from Nevada?”

  A wolfish smile curved her wide mouth. “I want that ten grand.”

  “For the little girl back in Kansas City?”

  “Shut up about her, would you?”

  “More of your business?”

  “Damn right.”

  The Kid shook his head. “Dress like a man, cuss like a man . . . Do you chew tobacco and drink rotgut whiskey, too?”

  “I never picked up the habit of chewing. A drink would be pretty good right now, though.”

  The Kid couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t have any whiskey to offer her, though, and wouldn’t have even if he did.

  “What in blazes am I going to do with you?” he asked.

  “Better go ahead and kill me,” she advised, “because if I get the chance, I’m sure as hell going to kill you.”

  Chapter 16

  The dog was a problem. The Kid was going to have trouble dealing with the woman as long as he had to worry about the dog.

  The simplest thing to do would be to shoot the beast. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that in cold blood. The dog was doing what it had been trained to do—help capture fugitives from the law. The dog had no way of knowing that The Kid had been wrongly accused.

  The woman ought to be able to understand that, though.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “Those wanted posters are wrong. They’re all a mistake.” He had made that same argument so many times in the past few months the words seemed to echo hollowly in his head. “I never killed any prison guards,” he went on. “My lawyer is working on clearing my name right now.”

  “Yeah, the prisons are full of innocent men,” she jeered.

  “I was innocent. Damn it, I am innocent.” Well, not really, he thought, but close enough in this case. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll have to make sure you don’t follow me again.”

  “By gunning me down?”

  And that was the problem right there, he thought with a sigh. He wasn’t the cold-blooded killer he was accused of being. “I’ll tie you up, leave you here, and take your horse with me. You’ll be able to get loose eventually.”

  “Leaving me on foot in the middle of nowhere is the same as killing me, isn’t it?”

  “Not hardly, to use your words,” The Kid said. “I’ll leave your guns where you can find them. It’s not more than ten miles to Flagstaff. That’s a long walk, but it won’t kill you.” It was the best solution he could come up with.

  “I’ll track you down,” she vowed. “You won’t be able to hide your trail from me. And when I catch up to you again, I won’t sic Max on you. I’ll just go ahead and put a bullet in your dirty hide.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. Take off that poncho.”

  Her face hardened. “Try to mess with me, Morgan, and I’ll kill you, I swear it. But not until I’ve taken a knife to you and made you wish you were already dead.”

  He spat out a curse. She was no lady, so he didn’t worry about watching his language. “That’s not what I want,” he told her. “I just want to make sure you don’t have any other guns or knives hidden under that thing.”

  Glaring at him, she took hold of the bottom of the poncho and pulled it up and over her head, revealing that she wore a butternut-colored man’s shirt under the voluminous garment. Her breasts weren’t overly large, but they were big enough they could be spotted easily if she weren’t wearing the poncho.

  “Turn around.”

  She did as he told her. He stepped forward and plucked a knife from a sheath on her left hip. The shirt and the buckskin trousers were tight enough for him to see she didn’t appear to be carrying any other guns.

  “All right, go hug that tree over there.”

  She cursed him in a low, monotonous voice as she followed the order.

  He circled wide around the dog, which continued to stare at him with open hostility. He had some cord in his saddlebags and paused to crouch and fumble it out by feel while he kept his Colt leveled at the woman.

  Approaching the tree as McCall put her arms around it, he angled in so he could still cover her. “Put your hands out as far as they’ll go.”

  “Why should I cooperate with you?” she wanted to know.

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll rap you on the head with the barrel of this gun, knock you out, and tie you up anyway. Do what I tell you and you’ll avoid another headache.”

  “You are one gold-plated son of a bitch, you know that, Morgan?”

  The Kid chuckled. “So I’ve been told.”

  “Anyway, you can’t knock me out. If Max sees you hurt me, he’ll come after you. There won’t be any stopping him. He’s barely controlling himself now.”

  The Kid knew she was telling the truth. He had seen the way the dog’s muscles trembled a little with the need to attack.

  “Then do what I tell you, and there won’t be any need for me to shoot him.”

  She sighed and muttered another curse, then thrust her hands out as The Kid had told her to.

  Moving fast so she couldn’t pull back, he whipped the cord around her wrists, then yanked it tight.

  She let out a yelp of pain. “Careful, you bastard.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Oddly enough, the words were true. Despite the threat she represented, he couldn’t work up any hatred for her, or any desire to cause her pain.

  He holstered his gun and finished binding her wrists together, tying the knots so she would be able to work them loose, but would take her a while to do so.

  “Keep the dog here with you,” he warned her. “I will shoot him if I have to.”

  She glared at him around the tree trunk and didn’t say anything.

  He gathered up his gear, well aware of the hostile stares directed at him by both McCall and the dog. When he saddled the black, she broke her silence by saying, “You’re stealing my horse again.”

  “I don’t have any choice in the matter,” The Kid told her. He smiled. “Anyway, it’s a fine horse.”

  “You’re going to wind up at the end of a hang rope.”

  “I’ve been worse places,” The Kid said.

  He mounted up and looked for her horse. It took him a while to find it. She had left it several hundred yards away and approached the camp on foot.

  When he rode back up to the camp leading the chestnut gelding, he stiffened in the saddle as he looked at the tree where he had left her.

  She was gone.

  He thought for a second he must be looking at the wrong tree. The fire had died down and wasn’t giving off much light anymore.

  As he reined the black to a halt, he realized it was the right tree. McCall just wasn’t tied to it anymore. There was no sign of her or the dog in the clearing.

  The slight rustle of pine boughs was the only warning he had.

  He twisted in the saddle and looked up as his hand flashed to his gun. The Colt hadn’t cleared leather yet when McCall plunged down from a branch above and slammed into him. The diving tackle knocked him off the horse with barely enough time to kick his feet free of the stirrups.

  When he hit the ground with her weight driving down on top of him, the impact knocked the breath out of his lungs and left him gasping for air as his head spun. He lashed out with a fist but didn’t connect.

  A second later something rough struck his head with stunning force. As he fought to hold on to consciousness, he caught a glimpse of her raising the broken branch she was using as a club. He threw a hand up in time to catch it as it descended in another blow.

  McCall was like a wildcat, punching, writhing, digging her knee into his belly. She wrenched the branch out of his hand and hit him again with it. The Kid felt his awareness slipping away.

  A terrible growl sounded in his ear. He felt the hot animal breath against his face.

  “Give up, damn you!” McCall said. “Give up or he’ll rip your throat out, and I won’t stop him!”

  Under the circu
mstances, The Kid knew he had no choice except to surrender. But he didn’t get a chance to give up.

  He passed out first.

  It was an utterly revolting development, he thought when he regained consciousness. For the second time in only a week, he had been knocked out . . . by a woman! The memory of being tackled and then pounded into oblivion by McCall came flooding back to him, along with the pain in his head.

  His arms and shoulders hurt, too, and it took him a moment to figure out the reason why. He was sitting on the ground at the base of a tree, and his arms had been wrenched back behind the trunk so his wrists could be lashed together.

  His head hung forward on his chest. His eyes were closed. But he could see a shifting red glare against his eyelids that came from a campfire larger than the one he had built earlier. He felt the warmth of the flames against his face.

  He hauled his head upright. It seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. His eyelids were equally heavy, but he forced them up, then winced as the glare from the fire struck his eyes. A groan welled up his throat and escaped from his mouth.

  “So, you’re awake, are you?”

  He recognized McCall’s voice, and she sounded smugly satisfied with herself. The Kid turned his head a little and saw her sitting beside the fire. She wore her hat and poncho again, and she had a Winchester cradled across her knees.

  “I was starting to think maybe I’d walloped you too hard with that branch.”

  He tried to talk, couldn’t do it, then tried again and rasped out, “Yeah, I’m sure you’d have been brokenhearted if I was dead.”

  She grinned at him. “You’d have been easier to handle, no doubt about that, but you sure would have started to stink before we got to Santa Fe. I probably would’ve wound up cutting off your head and just taking it with me. I hate doing that.”

  The Kid thought she looked and sounded serious.

  He heard a soft panting sound and looked toward it. The big ugly dog sat a few feet away. He would have sworn that the beast was grinning at him. “You two are proud of yourselves, aren’t you?”