The Loner: The Bounty Killers Read Free

gall. Rebel had been abducted from their home in Carson City. Later Conrad had burned it down to make it look as if he, too, had died so the men responsible for Rebel’s death wouldn’t expect him to come after them.
    He wasn’t going back to that part of Nevada, he decided. He might never visit Carson City or Buckskin again, and that would be just fine with him. There was nothing left for him in either place.
    It would be a good idea, though, to get in touch with his personal attorney, Claudius Turnbuckle in San Francisco. Claudius would be able to contact the territorial authorities in New Mexico and find out why those wanted posters had been issued. The Kid needed to get the price on his head lifted as soon as possible, before too many bounty hunters set out on his trail.
    Las Vegas had a telegraph office, he recalled. He could backtrack and send a wire to Claudius from there, so the lawyer could get started toward clearing up the mess.
    The Kid rode east toward the little settlement.
    It didn’t take him long to reach the edge of the mountains. He paused in the foothills and looked out over the vast sprawl of desert and plains in front of him. He could make Las Vegas in a day if he pushed the buckskin.
    But it was too late in the day to start across. The sun was almost touching the rugged peaks behind him. Better to wait and get a fresh start in the morning, he told himself.
    His eyes narrowed as he spotted a thin haze of dust hanging in the air. That meant riders. He couldn’t tell if they were coming toward him or going away from him.
    The Kid’s frown deepened as he watched the dust for several minutes. Definitely coming toward him, he thought. More than one or two riders, maybe as many as half a dozen.
    Of course, they weren’t necessarily looking for him. They could be on their way somewhere else and not have anything to do with him at all. But it wasn’t a well-populated or widely-traveled area The Kid was riding through. He was simply drifting. He’d wanted to put Arizona, and his troubles there, behind him.
    The sight of that dust definitely made him suspicious. All the more reason to hole up somewhere for the night, he told himself. If those riders were looking for him, he didn’t want to run right into them.
    With that in mind, he rode north along a rocky ridge until he came to a spot where several large boulders clustered, and he could make a small fire without it being seen. There wasn’t much graze for his horse, or water for either of them, but his two canteens were nearly full and he had a little grain left in the pouch that he carried. He and the buckskin could get along just fine until morning.
    As dusk began to settle over the rugged landscape, The Kid unsaddled his horse and found enough dried brush to build a tiny fire just big enough to boil some coffee. He had jerky and some stale biscuits in his saddlebags. That would do for a meal.
    It was a far cry from the times he had dined in the finest restaurants in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, he thought as he hunkered on his heels next to the fire. Those days had been more comfortable, but he didn’t miss them. He felt like he had never been fully alive until he came west.
    He couldn’t see the dust anymore in the fading light. The riders might have stopped to make camp for the night, or he might have just lost sight of the dust their horses raised. Either way, The Kid didn’t care. He wanted to steer clear of them, whoever they were.
    And yet, as he finished his meager supper and sipped his coffee, doubts began to nag at his mind. Maybe it would be better to know who the men were. If they weren’t looking for him, he could stop worrying about them. If they were . . . he’d have some warning, and he could start figuring out how to deal with that.
    To determine who they were and what they were after, he’d have to find their camp. When he gazed along the line of foothills to the south, he picked out an orange glow that came from a