The Loner Read Free

you…in the name of El Señor Dios, who will send me to Hell…end it now. Spare me…this pain.”
    “You didn’t spare me any.” The Kid straightened and drew his gun. “But I reckon I can give you what you want…if you give me what I want.” He looked over his shoulder at the girl, who watched with wide, dark eyes. “Run along for right now. Go find somebody to help you. And tell the people in the village that it’ll be all right. I’ll be gone soon.”
    She hesitated, then started tentatively toward the door. She was running by the time she went through it. A moment later, a shot blasted behind her in the cantina.
    Kid Morgan walked out, untied the reins of a buckskin horse from the hitch rail, and swung up into the saddle. He turned the horse and rode at an easy pace out of the village.
    Although he was glad he had caught up to the three men in time to save the girl from whatever they had planned for her, their deaths didn’t ease the pain inside him. He wasn’t sure anything could do that unless he could figure out how to turn back time. To go back to a better place, a better time, to the world he used to know…
    To the man he used to be.

Chapter 2

    Six weeks earlier

    Nevada was beautiful this time of year. But then, any setting would be beautiful as long as Rebel Callahan Browning was in it, Conrad Browning thought.
    “Here’s to you, my dear,” he said as he raised a fine crystal champagne flute. “You make a lovely view even lovelier.”
    “Why, Conrad, what a sweet thing to say.” His wife smiled at him. The sunlight filtered down through the branches of the pine tree under which Conrad had spread the blanket he’d taken from the buggy. The golden glow struck highlights from her blond hair where it fell in thick waves around her shoulders. Her face was flushed with happiness. Or maybe it was just the champagne, Conrad thought.
    She clinked her glass against his, and they both drank. He didn’t need alcohol to become intoxicated these days. His wife’s beauty and the clear, high country air were more than enough to cause that.
    The remains of a picnic lunch were spread out on the blanket in front of them. Conrad had packed the lunch in a wicker basket, placed it in the buggy along with the blanket, and then surprised Rebel with his suggestion that they take a drive up here into the hills overlooking Carson City, Nevada.
    “What about work?” she had asked with a puzzled frown.
    “I’m the boss, aren’t I? I think I can take half a day, or even a whole day, off if I want to.”
    “Yes, of course,” Rebel had said. “But it’s just so…unlike you.”
    “I’m not myself since we moved out here.”
    It was true. Conrad had felt himself changing ever since they’d left Boston behind and come to Carson City. He wished they had made the move earlier. He slept better, breathed easier, and was coming to realize that even though he had been raised in the East, this was now home to him.
    It was all Frank Morgan’s fault. Or perhaps it was better to say that Frank deserved the credit, although for a long time Conrad had been unwilling to give his father the least bit of credit for anything. All he had done was blame him for his mother’s death.
    Conrad Browning was practically a grown man before he found out that his father was Frank Morgan, the notorious Western gunfighter known as The Drifter. Frank hadn’t known he had a son either, because Conrad was the product of a brief marriage when he was a young man, a marriage that his beloved Vivian’s father had ended abruptly. Vivian had gone on to marry again and to found a business empire that stretched across the continent. She and her second husband had raised Conrad, who had taken his stepfather’s last name.
    Several years earlier, during a trip West, outlaws had murdered Vivian. Those same outlaws had kidnapped and tortured Conrad. He had Frank Morgan to thank for saving his life. Conrad had been in no mood to thank the man, however.