The big gundown Read Free Page A

behind the barn. I’ll bury them, although it’s more than they deserve. I ought to just leave them for the buzzards.”
    Whether the dead men were buried or not wasn’t what concerned The Kid. What he was worried about was that they might have friends who would come looking for them.
    But the darkness came up and carried him away again before he could say anything more.

Chapter 3

    For an unknowable time after that, The Kid drifted in and out of consciousness. He woke up once and it seemed that he had been lying there in the bed for years. He woke up the next time and it was if only moments had passed since the thunder of guns and the acrid tang of gunsmoke filled the air. Sometimes he recognized the blurry faces of the man and woman who fed him and changed his bandages and took care of him, and other times they seemed like perfect strangers to him.
    And there was the little boy—Cyrus? Was that his name?—who stood and watched with a tentative smile on his face, sometimes with a fat little puppy clutched in his arms. The Kid remembered…something…about a puppy, but he wasn’t sure just what it was.
    He knew he was sick because he could see the fear in the eyes of the woman as she leaned over him and wiped his forehead with a cool, damp rag. She was afraid he was going to die.
    The Kid wasn’t afraid. The only thing death meant to him was that he would see the woman he loved again. He would see Rebel…unless, of course, all the blood on his hands meant that he would be headed down instead of up. It might be the Devil waiting for him on the other side, instead of St. Peter.
    To be honest, The Kid wouldn’t be surprised either way.
    Finally, the time came when The Kid opened his eyes and not only was his vision clear, but his mind was, too. He remembered everything in detail: the way he had approached the ranch, just drifting, looking for a place where he could water his horse and maybe get a hot meal; the man he had seen sneaking into the back of the barn; the ominous sound of the shot he’d heard a moment later. Curiosity had driven The Kid to slip through the rear door of the barn himself. He had found a man who looked like a rancher, probably the owner of this place, sprawled on the ground with a pool of blood around his head. The wound wasn’t as bad as it looked, and as the man began to come around, The Kid had told him to stay put, then gone to see what the screams and the other shots were about.
    Rage had filled him as he saw how the woman was being manhandled. When the intruders threatened the pups and kicked the little boy, The Kid knew that if he didn’t step in, those bastards wouldn’t leave anybody alive when they rode off and left the ranch behind them.
    The Kid didn’t go out of his way to look for trouble. He didn’t have to. It always seemed to find him. But he didn’t turn his back and walk away from it, either.
    He heard yipping and looked toward the open doorway. The boy was just outside, playing with the pups. He had a short piece of rope in his hand, and all four puppies had hold of it, trying to pull it away from him. The Kid smiled. It looked like fun.
    Growing up in a fancy house on Boston’s Beacon Hill, he’d never had a dog. His stepfather, the man he had believed for many years was his real father, was a good man, but he hadn’t been much for animals, especially not in the house. That was just one of the things The Kid had missed growing up and had not even realized until years later.
    Frannie Williams laughed and came into The Kid’s view as she crossed the room to stand in the doorway and look out at her son playing with the puppies. “I swear, Cyrus, you spend so much time with those pups I think you’re going to start growling and yipping just like them.”
    The boy looked up at her and grinned. “I wouldn’t want to be a dog, Ma. I like eatin’ the food you fix for us!” He glanced past her skirts then and spotted The Kid watching them. “Ma! Mr. Morgan’s awake