Read Online The Devil's Badland: The Loner by J. A. Johnstone - Free Book Online

to look back at the graveyard one last time.
    It was empty, no mysterious woman to be seen anywhere.
    But Conrad had a feeling she would be back, and when she was, he intended to be there and get some answers from her.
     

    When Conrad got back to the hotel, he studied the situation for a few minutes, then asked Mr. Rowlett, the proprietor, if he could switch rooms.
    “But Room Twelve is the best in the house,” Rowlett said.
    “I know, but I’d rather be on the front,” Conrad told him.
    Rowlett frowned. “It’ll be noisier. You’ll be right over the street.”
    “That’s what I want,” Conrad insisted.
    “Well, of course, if that’s your preference…” The hotel man turned to look at the rack of keys. “Let’s see…I can put you in Room Seven. That overlooks the street.”
    Conrad nodded. “That’ll be fine.”
    Rowlett gave him the key to Room Seven. He went upstairs to move his gear across the hall. Once he was in the new room, he went to the window and looked out, prepared to go downstairs and ask to move again if he didn’t like what he saw.
    The view was all right, though. He could see the graveyard behind the church from there.
    For the next two days, Conrad spent most of his time at the window of his hotel room, watching the cemetery. He moved the room’s single chair over to the window and sat there for hours on end, dozing occasionally but for the most part alert. He left his self-appointed post to go downstairs and take his meals in the hotel dining room, and he slept at night, since he couldn’t see what was going on in the graveyard, but other than that he barely took his eyes off the place.
    Not too surprisingly, the woman in the shawl didn’t show up. Those flowers Conrad had seen on Rebel’s headstone had been placed there recently. It might be a week or more before the woman came to visit the grave again. If it took that long, or even longer, Conrad didn’t care. He would wait as long as it took.
    The presence of Angeline Whitfield in the hotel could have been a distraction, if he had allowed it to be. She ate in the hotel dining room, too. While she waited for the wagon her father was supposed to send to Val Verde, Conrad saw her there at nearly every meal. She smiled politely at him. He could tell that she wanted to come over and talk to him, but she didn’t. Knowing that his wife had died recently caused her to be discreet. She hadn’t totally lost interest in him, though. He could tell that, as well.
    Around the middle of the afternoon on the second day, a flash of bright red hair in the street caught Conrad’s eye. He took his attention away from the graveyard long enough to look down and see Margaret MacTavish at the reins of a wagon coming into town. Her little brother Rory sat beside her on the wagon seat, and James MacTavish rode alongside. Hamish wasn’t with them, so Conrad supposed that he had stayed out at the ranch.
    As Conrad watched, Margaret pulled the wagon to a stop in front of the general store across the street. The MacTavishes had come to Val Verde to pick up supplies.
    Conrad frowned as he looked back along the street. Another wagon was entering the edge of town, flanked by several riders. Conrad recognized Dave Whitfield and the gunman called Trace among them.
    A grimace tightened Conrad’s mouth. He had known that Whitfield was due to arrive today to pick up his daughter, but it was sheer coincidence that the MacTavishes had come to town on the same day, and practically the same time, at that. Coincidence, or pure bad luck. In this case, they might be one and the same.
    Conrad glanced at the cemetery. His job was to stay here and wait for the mysterious woman to show up again, he told himself. Surely no real trouble would break out between the MacTavishes and Whitfield’s bunch right there in the middle of the settlement.
    But he couldn’t be sure of that. He recalled how hotheaded James MacTavish was. It would be easy for Trace to goad the young man