The Loner: The Blood of Renegades Read Free

couldn’t find them.

Chapter 3
     
    Conrad, Arturo, and their unexpected companion didn’t stop until they had gone at least a mile. Conrad kept checking behind them. He was ready to stop and throw up a screen of rifle fire to cover their getaway, but the gunmen didn’t come after them.
    When they finally reined in, the horses were fatigued by the hard run. The young woman’s horse was in the worst shape. She had been fleeing from her pursuers before Conrad and Arturo joined the chase.
    She wasn’t in much better shape. Trying to dismount, she half fell out of the saddle and had to grab hold of a stirrup to keep herself from dropping to the ground.
    Conrad had already slid his Winchester into the saddle boot and swung down from the black. He reached out to grasp her arm and steady her. “Arturo,” he said, “get one of the canteens.”
    Arturo turned around on the buggy seat, found a canteen in their boxes and bags of supplies, and brought the water over to them. Conrad unscrewed the cap and held the canteen to the young woman’s mouth. She grabbed it with both hands and gulped down as much water as she could, but Conrad pulled the canteen away after a couple swallows.
    “Take it easy,” he told her. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
    “I . . . I . . . Thank you,” she gasped. “If you hadn’t come along . . . I wouldn’t have made it much farther.”
    While Conrad waited a moment before he gave her another drink, he took advantage of the opportunity to have a good look at her. She was tall and slender, and hair a little lighter in color than honey flowed all the way down her back to her hips. She wore men’s clothing: a rough cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up a couple turns on tanned forearms, brown twill trousers with suspenders that went over her shoulders, and work boots that laced up. Despite the clothing, no one would ever take her for anything but female.
    “What’s your name?” Conrad asked.
    She’d been breathless when she dismounted, but she was starting to recover. “Selena. Selena Webster.”
    “I’m Conrad Browning. This is my friend Arturo Vincenzo.”
    Conrad handed her the canteen. She took a long drink but not enough to make her sick. As she gave him the canteen, she said, “I can’t thank you enough for helping me, but I’m afraid you’ve just doomed yourselves. Like Jackson Leatherwood said, when you interfere with Father Agony’s men, you’ve signed your own death warrant.”
    Despite the perilousness of their situation, Conrad laughed. “Father Agony?” he repeated. “That’s a pretty melodramatic name, don’t you think?”
    Selena smiled, but there was no real humor in the expression. “That’s what some of his wives call him. His name is Agonistes Hissop.”
    “The man’s parents had odd taste in nomenclature,” Arturo said.
    “Or else they were readers and admirers of Milton’s Samson Agonistes ,” Conrad said. “Agonistes being from Greek for ‘one who struggles for a worthy cause.’”
    Selena gave him an odd look. He didn’t bother explaining he had taken a number of courses in the classics during his university days.
    “The man’s parents raised a monster,” Selena said after a moment. “His name is hardly the worst thing about him.”
    “He’s the elder Leatherwood and who the others work for?” Conrad guessed.
    Selena nodded. “He has a ranch about twenty miles northwest of here in a place called Juniper Canyon. It’s more like his own little town, because a lot of his followers live there as well. He’s a very rich, important man, and he doesn’t let anyone forget it.”
    “You mentioned his . . . wives,” Conrad said. “I seem to remember reading in the newspaper that the Mormon Church outlawed polygamy almost ten years ago.”
    That brought a laugh from Selena. “Just because Father Agony is a saint doesn’t mean he agrees with everything the church leadership does. He believes he’s a prophet, like Joseph Smith, and that