As the air gradually cleared, he saw that ten men had ridden into town, all of them wearing range clothes and sporting guns in tied-down holsters. They fancied themselves Coltmen, whether they actually were or not.
One man was a little better dressed than the others, so the stranger pegged him as Dan Hammersmith, the rancher whose herd had been the victim of rustlers.
Hammersmith cast a frowning glance at the stranger, who had replaced his hat and stood with a hip braced against one of the posts supporting the awning over the porch. Hammersmith said something to the rider beside him, who shook his head. The second man was probably indicating he had no idea who the tall stranger was.
Hammersmith jerked a hand in a curt gesture. The stranger’s identity clearly didn’t matter to him. He hitched his horse into motion and started leading his men along the street toward the cantina.
“Hold on a minute,” the stranger called as he straightened from his casual pose and stepped down from the saloon’s porch.
Instantly, some of the cowboys put their hands on their guns. The stranger ignored them as he walked toward Hammersmith. He didn’t figure they would draw and fire without their boss giving the order.
“What the hell do you want, mister?” the leader snapped. “This ain’t a good time to be askin’ for a job, if that’s what you’re doin’.”
The stranger shook his head. “I’m not interested in work. Are you Hammersmith?”
“That’s right. What’s it to you?”
“I hear you’ve got a grudge against the fella who owns the cantina down yonder.”
“That’s right. What business is it of yours? Are you friends with that greaser thief Flores?”
“Never met the man,” the stranger said. “Never even seen him, just like I never saw you until now. Whatever problems you have, I’m not part of them.”
Hammersmith scowled. “The biggest problem I have right now is you’re interferin’ with what we’ve got to do. We’re about to clean out that rat’s nest, and if you don’t like it, you can go to hell!”
Mutters of agreement came from his men.
“I don’t care what you do,” the stranger said. “But you see that horse over there?” He pointed to the dun standing at the hitch rack in front of Mahoney’s with his head drooping in weariness.
“What about it?” Hammersmith demanded.
“That’s my horse, and he’s tired and hot. He needs some water and the chance to rest for a while before I ride out again. But if you and those men holed up in the cantina start shooting at each other, my horse is liable to get hit by a stray bullet.”
“Well, then, get him off the damned street!” Hammersmith bellowed.
The stranger shook his head. “He’s fine where he is. I’ll be leaving in an hour or so. Flores and his men will still be waiting for you in the cantina then.”
The rancher’s eyes widened in amazement. “You want us to
“It seems like a reasonable request to me,” the stranger said.
With his face turning purple with rage, Hammersmith demanded at the top of his lungs, “Just who in blazes do you think you are?”
“They call me Kid Morgan.”
Chapter 2
The Kid rode away from the little settlement an hour later. He had finished his beer, let the dun drink from a water trough once he’d cooled off some, and even bought a few supplies from the extremely nervous proprietor of the general store.
During that time, Dan Hammersmith and his men waited just outside the western end of town. When The Kid finally left, he rode past them, feeling hatred radiating as they glared at him.
Outnumbered ten to one, there was no question he would have been killed if Hammersmith had decided to force the issue and ordered his men to slap leather.
But the rancher had looked into The Kid’s eyes and known that if he did that, he would be the first to die in the fracas. None of the cowboys were anywhere close to fast enough on the draw to stop The Kid from getting lead into him.
So Hammersmith had turned his horse and barked orders at his men and they withdrew to the western end of the street to wait reluctantly.
Facing them down had been a foolish stunt, and The Kid knew it. It was the sort of thing a man with a death wish might do.
He didn’t have a death wish, he told himself as he rode away.
He just didn’t give a damn anymore.
A few days earlier, he had been in the town of Val Verde, east of there, standing in front of a tombstone in the graveyard behind the mission with his hat in his hand. He hadn’t spoken aloud, and he wouldn’t have known what to say to his late wife, anyway.
Good-bye, maybe, because he was putting his former life, with all its tragedies and disappointments behind him, once and for all. Conrad Browning was just as dead as the woman in that grave.
He had made that decision once before, but things kept pulling him back to his former existence. First the need for revenge, then the prospect of family, a prospect that promised at least a degree of healing.
Instead, all the scabs on the old wounds had been brutally ripped away again, and the only way to deal with the pain was to put it behind him.
So it was Kid Morgan, the gunfighter, who rode away from Val Verde, leaving Conrad Browning buried back there.
In the few days since then, he had drifted farther west, through the arid, but starkly beautiful, reaches of southern New Mexico Territory. He hadn’t run into any trouble until today, and his reputation as a deadly gunman had ended that before it well and truly began.
While he was still in earshot, revolvers and rifles and shotguns began to roar in the settlement. The Kid didn’t look back. There was nothing he could have done to stop what was happening. The hatred between the two sides was too deeply ingrained. It was a shame that men had to die, but they had gone into it with their eyes open.
The Kid hoped William Mahoney was keeping his head down, along with all the other citizens who weren’t part of the fight. Innocent people shouldn’t have to die because of somebody else’s hate. Of course, they often did.
The heat eased a little as the sun lowered toward the horizon. A range of rugged hills bulked to the north, but the flats where The Kid rode stretched endlessly to the south. It was dry, treeless country, except for some scrubby mesquites and the occasional stunted cottonwood that grew along the washes where streams ran part of the year. Clumps of hardy grass dotted the landscape, along with saguaros that reared their spiny arms, sentinel- like, over the sandy ground.
That part of the territory was sparsely populated, and for good reason. There was enough graze to support cattle—if you had an abundance of rangeland and a small enough herd. Farther south, along the border, were deposits of silver, gold, and copper.
Mostly, it was a route for people going somewhere else. The original Butterfield stage line had gone through there more than forty years earlier, and nowadays the Southern Pacific’s steel rails spanned it, linking El Paso and California.
The Kid was several miles north of the railroad, riding roughly parallel to it. He knew it well, since Conrad Browning had been a stockholder in the Southern Pacific, but he had no interest in it now. Back to the northeast was a spur line the Browning financial interests had built, but The Kid had even less interest in that.
He could still be curious when he saw something unexpected, though. His eyes narrowed as he spotted a line of pale blurs a mile or two ahead of him, and reined the dun to a halt. He wasn’t sure what those things were, but they were moving. Slowly, to be sure, but they were definitely creeping along.
He reached inside his saddlebags and brought out a telescope. Extending the cylinder, he lifted it to his right
