The Loner Read Free Page B

Conrad held a hand down to Rebel. “Weren’t we, my dear?”
    “That’s right,” she said as she grasped his hand and let him help her to her feet.
    The man who had spoken before grinned and said, “Don’t let us run you off, folks.” He was a narrow-shouldered man with a ginger beard and a cuffed-back hat. The well-worn walnut grips of a revolver jutted up from the holster on his hip. The men with him were similar sorts, all dressed in range clothes. Some were bearded, some clean-shaven, but they all had hard-bitten faces. Conrad had seen plenty just like them, men who were no better and no more honest than they had to be. Just like the outlaws who had sliced off the top of his left ear to torture him while he was their prisoner. He wore his sandy hair long to cover up that disfigurement.
    Conrad tried to ignore the cold ball of fear that had formed in his belly. He wasn’t afraid for himself so much as he was for Rebel. Outnumbered as the two of them were, if the men decided to attack them, they could probably overpower him and do whatever they wanted to her.
    Some of them would die in the process, though. He made that vow to himself, even as he tried to keep what he was feeling from showing on his face.
    “That’s all right,” he said as he reached down to pick up the basket. “We were leaving anyway. Got to get back to town.”
    “Live in Carson City, do you?”
    “That’s right.” Conrad felt a little better now that he had the basket in his left hand where his right could swoop into it and snatch out the Colt. There was a Winchester in the buggy. He wondered if Rebel could reach it while he gave her some covering fire. If she got her hands on the rifle, they could give a better account of themselves. Rebel was a better shot with a Winchester than he was, and she had the fighting spirit of a girl who had grown up on the frontier.
    If those varmints started any trouble, they’d get a warmer reception than they likely expected, Conrad thought.
    But then the spokesman surprised him by reaching up, tugging on his hat brim, and nodding pleasantly. “Guess we’ll be ridin’ on then,” he said. “You folks have a pleasant day.” He turned his horse, hitched it into motion, and jerked his head at the other men to indicate that they should follow him.
    Conrad slipped his right hand into the basket and closed it around the butt of the Colt, just in case this was some sort of trick. That didn’t appear to be the case, though. The men rode on around the shoulder of the hill, soon going out of sight.
    Rebel reached down, grabbed the corners of the blanket, and gathered the whole thing into a bundle with the leftover food inside. Conrad took the revolver out of the basket. Rebel crammed the blanket in to replace the gun.
    “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
    “Indeed,” Conrad said. He tucked the Colt behind his belt. “Those men could still be lurking around.”
    Rebel shuddered. “Did you see the way they were looking at me? Especially that big, ugly one?”
    “Not really,” Conrad admitted. “I was watching their shoulders most of the time.” That was where a tiny hitch could be seen just before most men went for their guns. Frank had taught him that. With some men, the tell was in their eyes, but experienced gunfighters could control that. Not the shoulder hitch, though.
    “Well, it wasn’t good,” Rebel said. “I thought for sure they were going to—” She stopped and shook her head. “Let’s just say I was trying to figure out how fast I could get to that Winchester in the buggy.”
    A grim laugh came from Conrad as he set the basket in the back of the buggy. “I must admit, the same thought was going through my mind, my dear.”
    Moments later, he had the vehicle rolling back down the hill toward Carson City, behind the big buckskin horse hitched to it. There was still no sign of the six riders. Conrad sighed with relief as he glanced over at his wife. That encounter had turned out