The big gundown Read Free Page B

again!”
    Frannie turned quickly from the door and came across the room toward the bed. She wore an anxious expression as she bent over The Kid.
    “Mr. Morgan, how do you feel?” She rested a hand on his forehead. “You’re cool! The fever’s broken at last.”
    The Kid’s brain was working again, but his mouth didn’t want to, at least at first. He struggled to say, “How…how long…”
    “How long have you been here?” Frannie guessed. “Four days. You were so sick we thought we were going to lose you.”
    The Kid let his head sag back against the pillow. He wasn’t surprised by what she had just told him. He had sensed that he’d lost a considerable chunk of time while he was out of his head with the fever.
    “But you’re going to be all right now,” she went on. “The fever’s broken, and I’ll bet you’ll be up and around before you know it.”
    The Kid hoped that was true. For a man who lived the life he did, to be flat on his back was just asking for trouble.
    “Those men…”
    Frannie’s expression clouded at The Kid’s words. Cyrus had come inside and followed her over to the bed. She looked at him now and said, “Run on back outside and play, Cyrus.”
    “But, Ma, I want to talk to Mr. Morgan,” he protested.
    “There’ll be plenty of time for you to talk to Mr. Morgan later. Now, scoot like I told you.”
    Cyrus went outside, but on the way, he muttered, “I’m all the time havin’ to scoot .”
    Frannie turned back to The Kid. Keeping her voice low, she said, “If you’re talking about those horrible gunmen, Sean buried them, like he said he would.”
    “Where?”
    “Up in our north pasture.”
    “But still on your range.”
    She frowned. “Of course. He wouldn’t have taken them onto somebody else’s land to bury them.”
    “Why didn’t he…take them to the nearest town?”
    “That would be Bisbee, which is two days from here by wagon.” Frannie shook her head. “It may not be the height of summer yet, Mr. Morgan, but it’s still too warm to spend two days on the road with some dead men.”
    The Kid couldn’t argue with that. He was worried, though, that if friends of the dead men came looking for them, they might find the graves and figure out what had happened. That could mean bad trouble for the Williams family.
    “Did he dig four graves…or just one?” The Kid didn’t know Sean Williams, didn’t know how smart the rancher was.
    “He didn’t actually dig any graves. He hollowed out under the bank of an arroyo a couple of miles from here and then caved it in on top of the bodies. No one knows they’re there except for the vaqueros who work for us.”
    “You can trust them?”
    Frannie nodded. “Of course. All four of them have been with us for five years, ever since we came here. I’d trust them with my life. More importantly, I’d trust them with the lives of my husband and son.”
    “That’s just what you’re doing,” The Kid muttered.
    Frannie crossed her arms. “I know that. Sean said we might be in danger if anybody found out what happened here. That’s why he was so careful to put the bodies where nobody would ever find them. He led their horses about five miles from here and turned them loose, too.” She sighed. “It’s ridiculous. We’re only a few years away from a brand-new century, and yet out here, it seems like nothing has changed. We have to worry about Apaches and banditos raiding from across the border, we have gunmen like those four passing through, and the only law that really means anything…”
    “Is the law of the gun,” The Kid finished for her as her voice trailed off.
    “I mean no offense, Mr. Morgan, truly I don’t,” she said quickly. “You saved our lives, and I can’t ever repay you for that. But if you hadn’t been faster on the draw than those men…if you hadn’t been better at killing than they were…well, I guess none of us would still be here. It’s a shame that life comes down to