Читать книгу Dead Man's Gold - J.A. Johnstone - Страница 6

New Mexico Territory, 229 years later

The man who called himself Kid Morgan reined the buckskin to a halt as he topped a ridge dotted with gnarled mesquites and clumps of hardy grass. This was a dry, rugged land, inhospitable to men and animals and hard on vegetation.

The Kid leaned forward in the saddle and watched as a wagon raced from right to left across the flats in front of him. A couple of hundred yards back, three men on horseback galloped after the vehicle, steadily gaining on it.

The Kid’s eyes narrowed. The riders weren’t shooting at the wagon, just chasing it. He didn’t know what was going on, and these days he made it a policy to mind his own business. Over the past year, he had experienced quite a bit of tragedy and strife in his life, and now he wanted nothing but to be left alone. To drift aimlessly, not caring about anything. He wasn’t looking for trouble.

Although a person wouldn’t know that to look at him. The walnut grips of the Colt .45 holstered on his right hip showed signs of considerable use. Saddle sheaths were strapped to both sides of the buckskin’s rig; the stock of a Winchester repeater stuck up from one of them, while an old Sharps Big Fifty was snugged in the other one. In addition to the three guns, The Kid carried a Bowie knife in a sheath attached to his belt on the left side, angled slightly so that he could reach across his body and draw it in a hurry if he needed to.

Yeah, he was armed for trouble, and the eyes under the shade of the broad-brimmed brown hat were keen, always watchful for any signs of danger. But just because he was alert didn’t mean he was going to go rushing blindly into every ruckus that came his way.

He kept telling himself that, anyway.

The wagon was just about even with him. Two men swayed back and forth on the driver’s seat as the vehicle careened along. The terrain looked absolutely flat from up there on the ridge, but The Kid knew that it was rougher than it appeared when you were actually down there driving a wagon over it. The man handling the reins lashed at the rumps of the team with the trailing ends of the lines, trying to urge the horses on to greater speed.

He might as well give up, thought The Kid. That wagon wasn’t going to be able to get away from men on horseback. It just wasn’t fast enough.

The pursuers still hadn’t opened fire. Evidently they just wanted to overhaul the wagon and stop it. The Kid had no idea why. None of his affair, he told himself again. He lifted the buckskin’s reins, poised to turn the horse away and ride back down the far side of the ridge when the wagon jolted particularly hard over a rough spot, and the driver’s hat flew off.

Long red hair that was bright in the sunlight spilled down the figure’s back.

“Well, hell,” The Kid said softly.

So that was a woman at the reins, he thought…although it might be a man with really long hair; it was hard to be sure at this distance. But he knew in his gut it was a woman, just as he knew that now he couldn’t ignore what was going on, couldn’t just turn and ride away.

Couldn’t because the beautiful blond ghost who haunted him wouldn’t want him to.

He reached for the Winchester and pulled it from its sheath. Working the rifle’s lever to throw a bullet into its firing chamber took only a second. Kid Morgan brought the Winchester to his shoulder, nestled his cheek against the smooth wooden stock, and rapidly cranked off three rounds, placing them about halfway between the wagon and the three riders, who had closed to within fifty yards.

Those horsebackers might not hear the shots over the pounding of their mounts’ hoofbeats, but they couldn’t miss the way dirt and rocks sprang into the air where those slugs smacked into the ground in front of them. The Kid knew by the way they reined in so sharply that they had seen the bullets hit. One of the men hauled back on the reins so hard his horse stumbled and went down in a welter of kicking legs. Dust billowed around the fallen man and horse.

The other two men yanked their mounts around and pulled rifles from saddle boots. If they had simply turned and ridden away, The Kid would have let them go. But they clearly wanted to make a fight of it. He heard the sharp crack of shots and then the whine of a bullet passing over his head.

They had called the tune, he thought. Let them dance the dance.

Shooting uphill or downhill, either one, was tricky, which was why the first hurried shots from the riders on the flats were high. The Kid didn’t give them the chance to correct their aim. Rapidly, but without rushing, he fired four shots of his own. One of the men hunched over in the saddle but didn’t fall. The other twisted around and then, as his horse bolted, toppled off the animal’s back. His foot hung in the stirrup, though, so the horse dragged him as it continued to run back the way it had come. His foot didn’t come loose for a couple of hundred yards. When it did, he lay there motionless on the sandy ground.

The wounded man who was still mounted didn’t try to keep the fight going. Instead he turned his horse and kicked it into a run after the one that had dragged off his companion. The Kid’s eyes narrowed as he lowered the Winchester and watched the man flee. He might have been able to hit the hombre again, even at that range, but he didn’t attempt the shot.

Maybe that was a mistake. Letting an enemy go usually was, thought The Kid. But that hombre didn’t know who he was. Besides, the man was wounded and might not live.

The wagon had kept going without slackening speed. It was vanishing in the distance to the east, its location marked by the plume of dust raised by its wheels and the team’s hooves. The Kid glanced in that direction, then clicked his tongue at the buckskin and heeled the horse into motion.

The horse that had fallen had managed to get back to its feet and apparently was unhurt. It was wandering around aimlessly near its former rider, who still lay on the ground. The Kid headed for that man first, because he might be alive and pose a threat. The one who’d been shot and dragged was dead, more than likely.

The Kid held the Winchester ready for instant use as he approached the fallen man. When he was close enough, he brought the buckskin to a stop, dismounted, drew the Colt with his right hand and used the left to slide the rifle back in its saddle sheath. He kept the revolver trained on the man as he walked over to him.

When he was still several yards away, The Kid could see that the man’s head was twisted at an odd angle. He must have landed wrong and broken his neck, The Kid thought. He stepped closer, saw the glassy, lifeless eyes, and knew that the man was dead. The hombre wore range clothes and had a hard-featured, beard-stubbled face. Might have been an outlaw, might not have been. The Kid didn’t know, had never seen the man before. But the other two had been quick to shoot at him, and those hadn’t been warning shots, like the first ones he’d fired. He had no doubt that the trio had been up to no good by chasing the wagon.

A whistle brought the buckskin to The Kid’s side. He mounted up and rode across the flats to check on the other man. As he had thought, that one was dead, too, drilled through the body by one of the slugs from The Kid’s Winchester. A bloody froth drying around the man’s mouth told The Kid that he’d ventilated at least one of the man’s lungs.

This fella had the same hardcase look to him, The Kid noted. He supposed that they’d intended to rob the pilgrims in the wagon.

The buckskin pricked up his ears and tossed his head. That caught The Kid’s attention. He turned to look and saw that the horse was reacting to the approach of the wagon, which was rolling steadily toward him at a much slower pace than it had been making earlier. The people on it realized that they weren’t being chased anymore and had turned around to see what was going on.

Curiosity like that could get folks into trouble, The Kid reflected. It would have been smarter for them just to be thankful that someone had stepped in to help them and keep going.

He hoped they didn’t want to spend a lot of time being grateful. He wasn’t looking for gratitude.

The wagon came to a stop beside the other dead man. The passenger climbed down from the seat and knelt beside the corpse, probably checking to make sure the man was dead.

The Kid put a foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the buckskin. He thought about waving to the people with the wagon and then riding on without talking to them.

The driver hopped to the ground, and strode toward him. Now that The Kid was closer, there was no mistaking the fact that the slender but well-curved figure of the driver belonged to a woman. The long red hair swayed around her face and shoulders in the hot wind that blew across the flats.

The man he had once been had prided himself on being a gentleman. There was enough of that left in Kid Morgan to keep him from turning his back on the woman and riding away. Instead, he hitched the buckskin forward at a walk to meet her.

She moved like a young woman, and as he came closer, he saw that estimation was correct. She was in her mid-twenties, he guessed, with a lightly freckled face that was attractive without being classically beautiful. She wore trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, and The Kid was somewhat surprised to see that she had a gunbelt strapped around her waist. It was unusual enough to see a woman in pants; to run across one who was packing iron was even more uncommon.

She stopped and put her hands on her hips, which meant her right hand was pretty close to the butt of the holstered revolver she wore. He supposed that she didn’t fully trust him, which probably wasn’t a bad attitude. While civilization had spread across much of the land, there were still some wild places left, and this remote area of southern New Mexico Territory certainly fit that description. Outlaws still roamed here, Mexican banditos sometimes raided across the border, and occasionally even bands of bronco Apaches from the mountains south of the Rio Grande ventured this far north in search of plunder. It was smart to operate under the assumption that anybody you met might mean you harm.

He reined in and held up a hand to show her that he didn’t. With a polite nod, he called, “Hello.”

She didn’t return the greeting. Instead, she asked bluntly, “Is that other man dead?”

“He is,” The Kid replied.

She glanced over her shoulder at the man who’d been on the wagon with her. He still knelt next to the first dead man. Then she looked at The Kid again and said with an intensity he hadn’t expected, “Good. I wish you’d gone ahead and killed the third one, too.”