Read Online The Loner: Inferno #12 by J.A. Johnstone - Free Book Online Page A

Horace.”
    “I agree,” The Kid chimed in. “I’ll be glad to stand a shift on watch.”
    “I reckon we all will,” Dunlap said with a nod. “I’ll go around and talk to folks, get volunteers first and then figure out how many more men we need.”
    Jessica spoke up. “Women can stand guard, too, Horace.”
    “Oh, I don’t reckon that’d be a good idea,” the wagonmaster replied in a blustering tone.
    “Why not?” Jessica asked. “Not just any of the women, of course, but I can handle a rifle and so can some of the others. And my eyesight and hearing are just fine, thank you. I don’t know what else you’d need to stand guard.”
    “Shootin’ at targets ain’t the same thing as shootin’ at somebody.”
    “I know that. I promise you, if I have one of those bloodthirsty Apaches in my sights, I won’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”
    That was easy for her to say, The Kid mused, but he had his doubts, too. He knew how difficult it was for most people to take a human life. He had been the same way at one time.
    But he had gotten over it. Putting the barrel of a Winchester to the head of one of the men who’d killed Rebel and pulling the trigger had taken care of that.
    Anybody who had lived on the frontier for very long and who was honest with themselves knew there were some people who just didn’t deserve to go on breathing perfectly good air. The Kid had met more than his share of them.
    The meeting broke up as Dunlap went to arrange the guard duties. The Kid had volunteered to take one of the first shifts, so he didn’t bother spreading his bedroll under one of the wagons just yet. He could do that later.
    He checked on the dun, then took his Winchester and moved out a short distance from the circle of wagons. He hunkered down in a clump of greasewood where he wouldn’t be visible and attuned his senses to the night around him.
    If there was anything out of place—a sound, a flicker of movement, even a smell that shouldn’t have been there—The Kid would know it.
     
     
    The three hours he spent standing watch passed in slow, tedious boredom. Of course, that was good, The Kid reminded himself. Excitement would have meant danger not only for him but for the members of the wagon train.
    After his shift, he slept fitfully under one of the wagons for a few hours and was up again at dawn with the others, sipping coffee and getting ready to move out. Two more days would bring them to Raincrow Valley, according to Dunlap. From there, The Kid didn’t know where he would go, but he would deal with that when the time came.
    He and Harwood and Farnum rode out again in front of the wagons. The landscape was empty, and except for the dust cloud from the wagons behind him, The Kid might have been the only living thing within a thousand miles.
    Around midmorning, he saw buzzards circling ahead of him. For such ungainly birds on the ground, they wheeled through the air with a beauty and grace in striking contrast to their grim mission.
    They began to descend.
    A few minutes later, The Kid spotted them surrounding a dark shape lying on the ground several hundred yards away. Knowing there was no hope, he heeled his horse into a run anyway.
    The buzzards took off again as the dun came pounding up. They squawked in protest as they spiraled into the air. He reined in and looked down at the man staked to the ground.
    The Apaches had worked him over good with their knives, hacking and mutilating and peeling away much of his skin. His eyelids had been cut off so his lifeless eyes could only stare up into the blazing sun.
    The Kid wondered if the man had still been alive when the Apaches left him there. It was a question that would never be answered. He was dead as hell now.
    The Kid didn’t have a shovel, so he waited for the wagons to get closer. The buzzards had been at the corpse already, and he didn’t want them desecrating it anymore. When the wagons were within earshot, The Kid drew his Colt and squeezed off