A man this badly injured belonged in a hospital, not out riding with a posse through the wilds of West Texas.
“Well, how about it?” he said in a tortured croak. “Are we going after them or not?”
“We’re goin’, Mr. Reilly, but we can’t leave until everybody’s rounded up their horses,” Culhane said.
“I’ve got my horse,” Reilly said. “If I can catch him, you’d think these others could round up their mounts.”
“You’re sure right about that. I reckon it won’t be much longer now.”
Reilly shook his head balefully and turned away. The Kid noticed the other men moved back to give him room as he walked through the posse toward the horses that had been gathered so far.
“Ain’t that the most pitiful thing you ever saw in all your born days?” Culhane asked.
“You weren’t as sharp with him as you were with the others,” The Kid pointed out.
“Well, how in Sam Hill could I be? You saw the way the fella looks, and you don’t even know the whole story!”
“What is it?”
Looking at the burned man, Culhane said, “His name’s Vint Reilly. He ran the stage station in Fire Hill.”
“So it was his safe Burton’s money was in.”
The Ranger nodded. “That’s right. I reckon he feels some responsible for what happened, although when you come right down to it, there’s not a blessed thing he could’ve done to stop it. He and a couple guards were at the station when Latch’s gang hit town. The other two hombres were killed almost right away. Reilly got out and headed for his house.”
“He abandoned his responsibility?”
Culhane frowned. “The man’s wife was home by herself. He wanted to get to her and protect her. There wasn’t nothin’ he could’ve done to protect the money at that point.”
“Sorry,” The Kid muttered. “I didn’t mean for it to sound like that.” If he had been able to save his wife, he would have turned his back on anything else in the world. “What happened?”
“When Reilly got there, they’d already set fire to the place, but he was able to get inside to try to get her out. He was too late. She was already dead. Shot in the head. From what the marshal at Fire Hill told me, Latch and his varmints started shootin’ into houses as soon as they hit town, and Reilly’s was one of the first places they came to. I reckon it’s possible Miz Reilly was the first person in town they killed. But Reilly didn’t know that until after he got inside the house. He tried to get her body out anyway, but the roof collapsed and trapped ’em both. Marshal Hyde barely got in there and dragged Reilly out before he burned up.”
“Looks like he came pretty close to it anyway.”
“Yeah. I didn’t want him to come along. The local sawbones said he oughtn’t even be out of bed, let alone ridin’ with a posse. But Reilly’s bound and determined to be there when we catch up to Latch. Says he’s got a score to settle. I don’t know about you, Morgan, but I can’t argue with that.”
“No.” The Kid slowly shook his head and thought about his own quest for vengeance that had nearly consumed him. “I can’t, either.”
“I don’t know if he’s gonna make it. The doc gave him some pain medicine he keeps nippin’ at, but even with that, he’s got to be goin’ through hell. I expect we’ll wake up one mornin’ and find him dead.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” The Kid said as he looked at Vint Reilly pacing around impatiently. The need for revenge was a powerful motivating force, able to keep a man going long past the time when reason said he couldn’t continue. He knew that from experience.
He looked back at Culhane. “You say there’s a marshal at Fire Hill?”
“Yeah, Alonzo Hyde. He survived the fire and the shootin’.”
“How come he didn’t come along with the posse?”
“He would’ve, but he’s an old man. Anyway, somebody had to stay there to see to the buryin’ and protect what’s left of the town. Folks will be goin’ through the rubble tryin’ to see if there’s anything they can salvage. Maybe they’ll try to clear things off and rebuild. I don’t know about that. Wouldn’t surprise me none if everybody up and moved away and let what’s left of the town go back to the earth. Might be the best thing.”
The Kid thought that was right. Sometimes you could come back from a loss, but other times it was better to just let it all go. If he had died after avenging Rebel’s murder, he wouldn’t have counted it any great loss.
But he had managed to help quite a few people since then, he reminded himself. He supposed that was worth something.
“I’m going to hike back down there and get my horse and my pack animal,” he told Culhane. “I’ll be ready to ride by the time the rest of you are mounted.”
The Ranger nodded. “Thanks for your help, Morgan. I’m glad you’re ridin’ with us. And again, I’m sorry about that little dustup earlier.”
“Just ride herd on that posse of yours, Ranger. We don’t want any more ... little dustups.”
By the time the horses were rounded up, The Kid had hiked down off the escarpment and whistled for the buckskin. The horse answered the call, and The Kid swung up into the saddle and rode after his pack horse.
The posse members picked their way down the slope, led by Culhane, and joined The Kid on the flats.
“Forty men can’t help but leave a trail,” Culhane said as they rode east by southeast.
The Kid wasn’t any great shakes as a tracker, but even he could see the wide swath of hoofprints they were following.
“And Latch don’t really care if anybody comes after him,” the Ranger went on. “Fella’s arrogant as all get-out. Thinks he can do whatever he wants to and get away with it.”
Ed Marchman, who was riding on Culhane’s other side, grunted. “So far he’s been right about that.”
“The law will catch up to him sooner or later,” Culhane responded. “That’s one thing about the Rangers ... we don’t never give up.”
“Sooner or later doesn’t do us one damned bit of good,” Marchman said. “It’s already too late to save our town, and all of our people who were killed.”
“Latch will answer for that,” Culhane insisted.
Maybe, The Kid thought, but it wouldn’t change anything. It was just something these men had to do in hopes of easing the pain inside them. Whether it would or not was pretty doubtful.
Of course, the punchers from the M-B Connected didn’t have such a personal stake in it. Their homes hadn’t been destroyed, and their loved ones hadn’t been killed.
But the man they worked for had been stolen from, and if they were like most cowboys, they rode for the brand. That would be enough motive for them to go after Warren Latch.
The Kid looked at Vint Reilly and saw the way the stagecoach station manager was swaying in his saddle. Every so often Reilly slipped a small brown bottle from his saddlebags and took a tiny swig from it.
That would be the pain medicine Culhane had mentioned, The Kid thought. Laudanum, more than likely. He was surprised Reilly wasn’t passed out in a drugged stupor.
Reilly was taking just enough medicine to make the pain bearable, but not enough to blunt it too much. He embraced the pain, relying on it to keep him awake and alert. To keep him going, along with his need for vengeance.
The kindest thing anybody could do for him might be to draw a gun and put a bullet through his head, The Kid mused.
But every man had the right to choose his own hell.
The Kid’s horse drifted away from Culhane’s mount. He didn’t realize he was riding next to Nick Burton until the young man said, “Mr. Morgan, isn’t it?”
The Kid looked over at him and nodded. “That’s right.”
“Are you the one they call Kid Morgan?”
The Kid’s eyes narrowed in surprise. “How’d you know that?”
He spoke quietly, hoping Nick would keep his voice down.
“I’ve read about you. In the dime novels.”
&nb
sp; The Kid smiled. When Conrad Browning had been casting about for a new identity to conceal the fact that he was still alive and on the trail of his wife’s murderers, he had come up with Kid Morgan, basing his appearance and actions on the sort of characters he had read about in those lurid, yellow-backed tales.
Most people didn’t want to admit they had never heard of Kid Morgan, so to make themselves sound savvy, they pretended to know all about him and helped spread the deception when they gossiped about him.
Somewhere along the way, the carefully cultivated fiction had become fact. Conrad had settled into his life as Kid Morgan and preferred to live that way now. The few times he had adopted the identity of Conrad Browning again had not worked out well.
In an odd way, his life imitating art had become art imitating life, if you could call such fantastical scribblings as the dime novels art. In the past year or so, books featuring the totally made-up exploits of one Kid Morgan, Gunfighter, had begun to appear, published by companies back east.
The same thing had happened to his father, back when Frank Morgan first began to acquire a reputation as a fast gun. The Kid wasn’t completely surprised it was happening again.
Nick was digging around in his saddlebags. “I brought one with me, but I haven’t had a chance to start reading it yet.” He pulled out a slim volume with a yellow cover, not much bigger than a pamphlet, and held it out toward The Kid. “Here.”
The Kid took it, his eyebrows lifting as he read the title on the cheaply printed book, Kid Morgan and The Drifter, or, Brothers on the Trail. As he rocked along in the saddle, he opened the book and skimmed through the pages of densely packed type. “This is about me and Frank Morgan.”
“Yeah,” Nick agreed eagerly. “I never knew you and The Drifter were brothers.”
The Kid laughed and handed the dime novel back to the youngster. “That’s because we’re not. I hate to disappoint you, Nick, but Frank Morgan is definitely not my brother.”
“Oh. You mean they made it all up?”
“That’s what they do.”
“But have you ever met The Drifter?”
“Our trails have crossed a few times,” The Kid evaded. “He’s quite a bit older than me.”
“Is he as fast as everybody says he is?”
The Kid gave him an honest answer. “Yeah. He’s the fastest I’ve ever seen.”
“Faster than you?”
“Faster than me.” The Kid nodded, adding, “But not by much.”
“And I get to ride with you and fight outlaws with you,” Nick said. “The fellas back at the boarding school in Philadelphia would never believe this.”
Obviously, the young man had a bad case of hero worship, The Kid thought. That wasn’t good. It could prove to be a distraction, and where they were, getting distracted at the wrong moment could get somebody killed in a hurry.
“Why don’t you put that up,” The Kid suggested, “and if it’s all right with you, we’ll just keep this between ourselves.”
“You don’t want the rest of the posse to know who you really are?”
“I’d just as soon they didn’t.”
Nick thought about it, nodded, and slipped the dime novel back in his saddlebag. “All right, Kid ... I mean, Mr. Morgan. We’ll just leave it at that.”
“I’m obliged to you.”
“But when I get back to the ranch, will it be all right if I send letters to some of my friends from school and tell them about this?”
The Kid laughed. “I don’t see why not.”
That was assuming Nick made it back to his grandfather’s ranch alive, The Kid thought as he grew more solemn.
From what he had heard about the men they were chasing, it was possible none of them would make it out of this pursuit alive.
Chapter 9
Slim Duval was sitting with his back against a rock, sipping from the silver flask in his hand, when Latch came up and tapped the toe of his boot against Duval’s foot.
“Get up,” Latch said. “We have things to do.”
“What?” Duval looked around. The gang had made camp and eaten supper, and he was ready to get some sleep after spending another long day in the saddle. “I thought we were done for the day.”
“You thought wrong. Now get up.”
Duval shrugged, screwed the cap on the flask, and slipped it into an inner coat pocket. He pushed himself to his feet.
As the member of the gang who had been with Latch the longest and also as the second-in-command, he was the only one of the outlaws who could get away with failing to follow an order from Latch instantly and without question. Anybody else would be subject to a reprimand that was always painful and occasionally fatal.
Duval was the closest thing Latch had to a friend, however, so he cut him some slack. As they headed for the horses, Duval asked, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. I just feel drawn to take a ride. I think there’s something waiting out there for us.”
Duval had experience with Latch’s hunches. It was another part of the man’s crazed personality, claiming he sometimes heard voices speaking to him from out of nowhere, telling him what to do.
“One of those ghosts been talking to you again?” Duval asked.
It was a mistake. Latch stopped short and turned sharply toward him. “Don’t you say anything about that. I know what I hear, damn you!”
“Sorry, boss,” Duval said quickly. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You know I believe those voices are there.”
“Of course they are. I’m not crazy enough to imagine things like that.”
That was where he was wrong, Duval thought. Warren Latch was plenty loco enough to imagine such things.
But Slim Duval was way too smart to express that opinion where Latch could hear it.
As he started toward the horses again with his long duster swinging around his legs, Latch went on, “ As a matter of fact, no one has told me to take a ride tonight. It’s just a feeling on my part. It may be somebody trying to communicate with me, but if that’s the case, I can’t see or hear them.”
“So it’s a hunch,” Duval said. “I’m fine with that, Warren. Nobody has better hunches than you do.”
“You’d do well to remember that,” Latch snapped.
“I’m not likely to forget it.”
They saddled their horses, Latch throwing his own hull on his mount. He wasn’t one to pawn off a chore onto anybody else when he could do it himself.
A burly Mexican named Ortiz wandered over to them. He frowned at the horses they were getting ready to ride.
“We are going somewhere, jefe?” he asked Latch.
“Slim and I are going to do some scouting,” Latch said. “The rest of you will stay here. Post guards as usual. We’ll be back later.”
“Sí, señor.”
The two men swung up into their saddles and rode off into the night. Duval let Latch take the lead, thinking it was possible they might just ride around aimlessly for a while and then return to camp.
Either that, or Latch’s instincts would actually lead them to something.
When they had gone a short distance, Duval asked, “Doesn’t it worry you, leaving that bunch of robbers and cutthroats back there with the loot from our last three jobs? What if they decide to move the camp and take all the money with them?”
“They won’t do that,” Latch said with supreme confidence. “They know if they did, I would hunt them down and kill them all, even if I had to follow them to the ends of the earth.”
Duval didn’t doubt it for a second. And Latch was right. The rest of the men knew that, too.
“Another week and we’ll be in San Antonio,” Duval mused.
It was where they always went when they had accumulated enough loot. The city was large enough a group of men could get lost in the population, especially if they didn’t ride in together. The gang would stop outside town and divvy up the money, then scatter in twos and threes, or sometimes just a single man, to enter the ci
ty inconspicuously.
Duval looked forward to playing poker at the Buckhorn and the other saloons downtown and visiting the warm, brown-skinned señoritas in the brothels.
Of course, in San Antonio, a man with money could have any sort of woman he wanted, from blond Scandanavians to ebony-tressed Chinese to dusky Africans. Duval had sampled the charms of all of them in his time.
As for what Latch did while he was in San Antone, Duval had no idea. The man always disappeared with no explanation of where he could be found.
Weeks would go by, weeks spent in idle dissipation by the Cajun gambler, and then one day Latch would be there, finding him in some unknown manner and saying it was time for them to ride again. The word would go out to the other members of the gang, and they would rendezvous at a place Latch selected, then set out on another long raid.
“Let slip the dogs of war,” Duval thought, recalling that quote from something he had heard somewhere. Maybe not war in the commonly accepted sense of nation against nation, but it was safe to say Warren Latch was at war with the whole world. And Duval and the other members of the gang were his dog soldiers.
Those were fine thoughts for a dark night, he told himself as he shook them out of his head.
Anyway, it wasn’t a completely dark night, he suddenly realized. A dim yellow light was burning several hundred yards in front of them.
Damned if Latch’s hunch hadn’t led them to something, after all.
“Is that where we’re going?” Duval asked quietly.
“I want to see what’s there,” Latch replied.
As they rode closer, a dog began to bark. Latch reined in, and Duval followed suit. Their eyes, well adjusted to the darkness, could make out a double cabin with a covered dogtrot in between. Beyond it lay a barn and a corral, along with a couple sheds. This was a small ranch of some sort, far from the nearest town.
“Chances are these folks won’t have much money, Warren,” Duval said. “I don’t know if they’d be worth bothering with—”
At that moment, a door in one side of the cabin opened, letting out more light. A figure stepped into the doorway, foolishly silhouetted against the glow of a lamp in the room.
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