Read Online Kid Calhoun by Joan Johnston - Free Book Online

she could when the outlaws rode past her. They had been gone for several minutes before she could force her trembling legs to stand, and several minutes more before she could force herself to go to her uncle.
    Booth was lying on the porch in a pool of blood. She put her hand over her mouth to force back the gag that threatened. She knelt beside him, afraid to touch him because he was wounded in so many places. “Booth.”
    Anabeth had been so certain her uncle was dead that she gasped when his eyes fluttered open. “Booth! You’re alive!” Her heart leaped with joy that quickly turned to horror when she reached for his hand and encountered torn flesh instead.
    “Booth, you need a doctor.”
    “No doctor,” he rasped. “Too late for that.”
    “Don’t say that!” Anabeth clasped Booth’s good hand in hers and brought it to her cheek. Booth couldn’t die! He was the only family she had left.
    Anabeth saw the despair in her uncle’s eyes, the knowledge that the end was near. Booth’s face was ashen, his breathing shallow. Her uncle was right. It was too late for a doctor to do him any good now.
    “I’m so sorry, Booth.”
    “For what?”
    “For being where I wasn’t supposed to be. If I hadn’t distracted you—”
    “It wasn’t your fault, Kid. What happened was goingto happen whether you were here or not.” He saw the disillusionment, the loss of innocence in her eyes. “You take the gold and you go to Colorado. You hear me? You get away from here as quick as you can.”
    His eyes dulled and Anabeth felt panic at the realization he hadn’t long to live.
    “Watch out for Rankin,” Booth rasped.
    The tears in her uncle’s eyes frightened her. “I promise you they’ll suffer for what they’ve done to you, Booth. Every single one of them. Especially Rankin. I swear it, Booth.
I swear it!”
    “No, Kid! You have to get away!” A moan of pain was torn from his throat.
    “Booth? What can I do? How can I help?”
    He grasped her arm and she leaned down, putting her ear near his lips. He whispered something, words that made no sense.
    “What did you say? I don’t understand.”
    He whispered them again. The same meaningless words.
    She wanted to shake him. It seemed so important to him for her to understand, but he wasn’t making any sense. “Booth, I don’t understand!”
    “Kid …”
    Anabeth stared at him for a moment before she realized he was dead. His eyes glazed. His thick black eyelashes looked unreal. His chest no longer rose and fell. His fingers went slack in hers.
    “No.” Anabeth denied his death. “Please, Booth.” She felt anguish too painful to bear. “Noooooo!”
    Later Anabeth was never sure how she got through the next several hours. She searched through the bushes until she found Booth’s two pearl-handled revolvers. She would use Booth’s own guns to wreak the vengeance she had sworn.
    Somehow she managed to get Booth on his horse and back to the valley. There she dug a hole behindthe stone house and buried her uncle beside her father, covering the grave with stones to mark it well.
    She sat beside Booth’s grave, refusing to give in to the grief, nursing the desire for revenge instead. Outlaw or not, her uncle hadn’t deserved such a gruesome death. And for what? For a cache of gold that Anabeth hadn’t been able to find in a very thorough search of the valley. The secret of Booth’s horde had died with him.
    Anabeth vowed that Wat Rankin and the rest of Booth’s outlaw gang were going to pay for their treachery. She couldn’t go to the law. The law would only be glad to be rid of one more outlaw. So she needed a strategy, some cunning plan to avenge her uncle’s murder.
    The answer came to her like a flash of lightning in a mountain thunderstorm. Crisply defined, overwhelming, and absolutely beautiful in its simplicity.
    Booth’s gang would be looking for Kid Calhoun. But they knew nothing about Anabeth. Finally, she was going to realize her dream of