The Killing Season Read Free

reward dodger that had been widely circulated by the Pinkertons on Frank and Jesse James. Among the names of men who had ridden with the infamous outlaws, Nathan had found the name of one of the killers he sought. Following a bank robbery by the James gang, Nathan had found the hideout of the outlaws and had led a sheriffs posse to it. While Frank and Jesse had escaped, Nathan had confronted the man he had sworn to kill and had forced a shootout. At loose ends, not knowing where he might find the seventh man, Nathan answered an advertisement in a Kansas City newspaper and took a position with the Kansas-Pacific Railroad between Kansas City and Hays. It had been his duty to repair telephone lines torn down by Indians or outlaws and to warn train crews of damaged track. After serving with distinction for a few months, Nathan had resigned because he had seen nor heard nothing of the seventh and last man he had sworn to kill. Riding south into Indian Territory, he had been taken prisoner by the ruthless El Gato and his band of thieves and killers.
    Nathan had soon learned that the killer he sought was not among the renegades, and as he plotted his escape, he had learned that El Gato had a girl he planned to sell into slavery, in Mexico. Talking to her, Nathan had learned that her name was Mary Holden, that she longed to escape. But before Nathan could make a move, he had been forced to ride with El Gato and his outlaws on a winter raid into Kansas. Slipping away during a blizzard, Nathan had returned to El Gato’s camp, overpowering the two men El Gato had left behind. He had then taken Mary south, to Fort Worth, Texas. Nathan had been in Texas often enough to have become friends with the post commander, Captain Ferguson, and the officer, assuming Mary was Nathan’s wife, had assigned them a cabin. By the time Nathan and Mary had left Forth Worth, riding north, Nathan Stone had done the very thing he had vowed never again to do. He had become involved with a woman, more committed than he had ever been, but still burdened with his oath to kill the last of the seven renegades who had murdered his family in Virginia.
    While at Forth Worth, Nathan had learned by telegraph that Texas outlaw John Wesley Hardin had been involved in shootings in several south Texas towns and was believed to be riding north. One of several men who had been riding with Hardin had been identified as Dade Withers, the seventh and last man on Nathan’s death list. He and Mary had ridden to Fort Dodge and then to Hays without finding a trace of Hardin. Fifty miles east of Hays, on their way to Abilene, they had ridden into a holdup involving a Kansas-Pacific train. As he had traded lead with the outlaws, Nathan had been seriously wounded. But the train crew had remembered him from his Kansas-Pacific days, and taking Mary and the wounded Nathan aboard, had reversed the train and backed it to Abilene. The railroad, grateful for Nathan’s daring, had paid all his medical bills and presented him with a reward. When he had recovered, he had been offered the task of taking a posse after the outlaws, for they had become an expensive nuisance, destroying track and stopping trains bearing army payrolls. But Nathan had declined, determined to find that seventh man, so the Kansas-Pacific had hired other men to trail the train robbers.
    Again Nathan had taken Hardin’s trail, and he had found evidence that the outlaw and his companions had reached Wichita with a trail herd. But there the men had split up, and Nathan had trailed Dade Withers west, knowing only that the man rode a horse with an XIT brand. Reaching Fort Dodge, Nathan and Mary had learned that a lone outlaw had robbed the mercantile at Dodge City, just west of the fort. At the mercantile, Nathan had learned the outlaw had ridden south on a horse bearing an XIT brand. He had not been followed, for he had struck exactly at sundown, so when Nathan had taken the trail the next day at first