“I didn’t expect to see you,” Duff said.
“Nae, I dinna think you would. Would you be tellin’ me where I might find my deputy?”
“Malcolm is dead.”
“Aye, I thought as much. Killed him, did ye?”
“It seemed the thing to do.”
“There is an old adage: If you want something done right, do it yourself. I should have come after you a long time ago, instead of getting my sons and my deputies killed.”
“That night on Donuum Road, I was coming to give myself up,” Duff said. “None of this need have happened. Your sons would still be alive, Skye would still be alive. But you were too blinded by hate.”
“We’ve talked enough, Duff MacCallister,” Somerled said. He cocked the pistol and Duff steeled himself.
Suddenly the room filled with the roar of a gunshot—but it wasn’t Somerled’s pistol. It was a shotgun in the hands of Elmer Gleason. Gleason had shot through the window, and the double load of 12-gauge shot knocked Somerled halfway across the room.
“Are you all right, Mr. MacCallister?” Gleason shouted through the open window. Smoke was still curling up from the two barrels.
“Aye, I’m fine,” Duff said. “My gratitude to ye, Mr. Gleason.”
Gleason came around to the front of the cabin and stepped in through the front door.
“Seein’ as how I saved your life, don’t you think me ’n you might start callin’ each other by our Christian names?”
“Aye, Elmer. Your point is well taken.”
“Sorry ’bout tellin’ you he was your friend. But that’s what he told me, and I believed him.”
“And yet, you were waiting outside the window with a loaded shotgun.”
“Yes, sir. Well, considerin’ that the fella you went to meet in Chugwater was from Scotland, and wasn’t your friend, I just got to figurin’ maybe I ought to stand by, just in case.”
“Aye. I’m glad you did.”
Gleason leaned the shotgun against the wall and looked at the blood that was on the floor of the cabin.
“I reckon I’d better get this mess cleaned up for you,” he said.
“Elmer, I’m sure you don’t realize it, but you just did,” Duff said.
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THE LONER: RATTLESNAKE VALLEY
by J. A. Johnstone
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Chapter One
Kid Morgan reined his horse to a halt and looked at the bleached white skull on the ground in front of him. He rested his hands on the saddlehorn and leaned forward to study not only the grotesquely grinning skull but also the two long bones laid across each other that accompanied it.
“Skull and crossbones,” The Kid muttered. “Pirates.”
More than a dozen years earlier, in what seemed now like a previous, half-forgotten lifetime when he had still been known as Conrad Browning, The Kid had read a novel called
The question was, what was that ominous symbol doing here in the mostly arid landscape of West Texas, hundreds of miles from the sea?
The Kid lifted his head. Keen eyes gazed at his surroundings. A broad valley bordered by ranges of low, brush- covered hills fell away to his left and right and stretched in front of him for at least twenty miles to the east before the hills closed in sharply and pinched it off, leaving only a narrow opening for the trail. Beyond the hills, what appeared to be an endless stretch of sandy wasteland was visible through the gap. Behind The Kid was the pass through which he had just ridden in the rugged gray mountains that closed off the western end of the valley.
In stark contrast to the desert, the mountains, and the scrubby hills, the valley itself was an unexpected oasis of green. A line of trees marked the meandering course of a river that rose from springs in the mountains and flowed eastward, watering the rangeland on either side of it before the desert wasteland swallowed it whole at the far end of the valley. The grass that covered the range might not have been considered lush in some parts of the world, but here in West Texas, it certainly was. Not surprisingly, The Kid saw cattle grazing here and there, hardy longhorns that could not only survive but actually thrive on the graze they found here. A man who had been riding for days through sandy, rocky country that wasn’t much good for anything, as The Kid had, would find the sight of this valley mighty appealing.
Except for the skull and crossed bones in the trail that looked for all the world like a warning to keep out.
A tight smile pulled at the corners of Kid Morgan’s mouth. Even before the events that had changed his life so dramatically, he had never been the sort of hombre who took kindly to being told what to do. He lifted the reins and heeled the buckskin he rode into motion again.
As he did, movement stirred
The Kid’s horse was used to gunfire and the smell of powdersmoke, but the sound and scent of the snake must have spooked it. The buckskin tossed its head, shied away, and tried to rear up.
