Read Online The Killing Shot by Johnny D. Boggs - Free Book Online Page B

EVEN
    â€œSee, the boys been betting on when my cussedness would get the better of me, and I’d kill you,” Pardo said. “You’re walking around pretty good now. Amazing what a few days of rest, grub, and good coffee’ll do for a fellow.”
    â€œ Good coffee?” the tall man from the prison wagon said, and Pardo cackled, but the mirth ended a second later. Pardo tested the Colt in his holster, just letting this hombre called Mac know that he still might die. Today. In the next minute.
    â€œWhere you from?” You didn’t ask a man where he hailed from, didn’t even ask his name, you just let him tell you if he had a mind to, but nobody had ever accused Bloody Jim Pardo of being polite.
    â€œGrew up on a farm in Johnson County,” he answered easily as he lifted the blackened coffeepot off the fire and filled his cup.
    Pardo took his hand away from his revolver. “Hell, Mac, we was neighbors.” He found a tin cup on the ground, held it out for the stranger to fill. “I growed up on a Cass County farm myself.”
    The man didn’t seem nervous. Just topped Pardo’s cup with miserably bad coffee—making it was never one of Three-Fingers Lacy’s strongest talents—then sat across the fire on a boulder, sipping casually. Like they were in some café in Tucson, talking about the weather or the parson’s sermon last Sunday.
    â€œYou fight in the war?” Pardo asked.
    He shook his head. “Too young.”
    â€œHow old are you?”
    â€œThirty-four.”
    â€œLook older. Well, maybe not older, but experienced.”
    â€œI’ve done some traveling.”
    â€œMe too.” Pardo laughed. “’Course, me, I’m four years older than you. I fought in the war.”
    â€œEverybody knows that about Jim Pardo. You rode with Quantrill.”
    He set the cup down. “You got a problem with that?”
    The man had a disarming smile. “Not at all. My mother used to sing praises of Captain Quantrill, said he was saving us all from damned Yankee tyrants. Too bad how it all had to end.”
    Pardo frowned. He remained silent for a long time, staring at the small fire, then spit on a coal, and watched it bubble and disappear. “Yeah. ’Course I rode with some boys as young as you would have been then. I reckon your mother wouldn’t allow you to fight those invaders.”
    â€œMy brother fought. Somebody had to work the farm. That was me.”
    Pardo started scratching the palm of his right hand against the Colt’s hammer. “Who’d your brother ride with?”
    â€œFirst Missouri.”
    He spit again. “Some real outfit, eh, not irregulars like me and Quantrill. Not bushwhackers. Not murderers.”
    â€œI don’t know about that. My brother was killed somewhere down in Tennessee. Ask my mother, and me, the war was being fought in Missouri.”
    â€œAnd your ma? Where’s she now?”
    â€œDead. When Paul, that was my brother, died, it pretty much killed her, too. I buried her the next fall.”
    â€œWhat about your pa?”
    â€œI never knew him. Lightning strike got him when I was a baby.”
    â€œNo family, eh?”
    He shook his head.
    â€œThat’s too bad, Mac. Me? Kansas redlegs, gutless bastards, got my pa killed. All I got now is Ma. Had me a kid brother, but he died of fever when he was just a tot. Would have been about your age now, I reckon.” Pardo’s eyes became slits. “So, Mac, let me guess. You grow up, hating Yankees, go down to Texas, get into trouble at Fort Concho, and light a shuck to Arizona. That’s your story as I remember.”
    â€œMcKavett. Not Concho.” The man smiled. Smart fellow, this Mac. He knew Pardo was trying to trap him.
    â€œWhat did you do?”
    â€œRobbed the paymaster. Killed a guard.”
    Laughing, Pardo reached for the cup, took another sip. “Yankees don’t care much