Vengeance Road Read Free

been in his late thirties or early forties. He had one heck of a scar below his right eye.”
    â€œAnd he was alone?”
    â€œNo, there were a few others riding with him, all packing.” Morris pauses. “They weren’t friends of yer father’s, were they?”
    The pistol’s humming at my hip again.
Goddamn you, Morris. You as good as killed him.
    â€œKate?” Morris reaches ’cross the counter and touches my hand. “Did something happen?”
    I pull away. I need to get outta here. I need to leave before I put a bullet between poor Morris’s eyes.
    â€œYer sure everything’s all right?” he prods.
    I think of what he’ll say if I tell him the truth.
Talk to Bowers. Report the raid to Fort Whipple.
But Bowers, like the honest sheriff he is, left a few days back to track a horse thief who rode through town, and Whipple’s soldiers protect settlers ’gainst Apache raids, not attacks from their own kind. Not that I got the time for neither. The longer I stand here yapping, the farther south those bastards slip, riding to the devil knows where. I gotta go home and load up my horse. I gotta ride after ’em before the trail goes cold.
    â€œKate?” Morris says again. “Did something happen?”
    â€œNah, everything’s dandy.”
    I even buy ammo and supplies just to make him shut pan.

    In the last bit of remaining sunlight, I dig through what’s left of the house. Pockets of ash are still warm, and certain pieces of furniture fared better than others. Half my bed frame’s still standing. Our kitchen table ain’t nothing but coals, but the kettle’s sitting there atop the rubble, like a hen on eggs.
    In what used to be Pa’s bedroom, I find what I’d run into the flames for originally: an old metal lunch box he kept stocked with valuables and tucked beneath his mattress. He’d also had a worn leather journal always stowed beside it, but there ain’t a sign of that left. Bet it made some mighty fine kindling.
    I pluck out the lunch box and bang on it with the fire poker till the warped latch gives. Inside is a drawstring pouch holding a dusting of gold. Pa never liked to talk much ’bout the early days, but I know he spent some time prospecting down in Wickenburg before he and Ma came north and settled near Prescott. The meager funds he earned then helped raise our house ’long the creek, and I reckon nearly everything he had left got spent trying to save Ma from consumption. I were nearly four when she bit.
    I shake the pouch, making the gold dance. Looks like there ain’t more than a few dozen dollars here, but that’s more than I’s ever called my own. I pocket it and find a picture of Pa, Ma, and me—still a bundle of a baby—beneath the pouch.
    I touch Pa’s black-and-white face with my thumb. He’s standing all protective-like, one arm wrapped round Ma’s shoulder and the other touching the grip of his pistol. I’m a perfect blend of the both of ’em: dark hair from Ma, but extra inches in height gained from Pa. Skin that’s caught somewhere between his fair complexion and her golden bronze. She were Mexican, living in Tucson when Pa passed through running cattle years back. The way he told it, there weren’t a more beautiful woman in all the Territory. Truth be told, there still ain’t many women in Arizona, but Ma
was
pretty. I glance back at the photo. Piercing eyes and high cheeks and a sternness ’bout her that makes me proud.
    In a way, it’s a blessing she died young. Prescott ain’t taking kindly to Mexicans lately. They’re run outta town or spat at on the streets. I been seeing less and less of ’em since I were a kid, and the cowardly part of me’s happy half my features are Pa’s. That I talk like him too.
    The only thing left in the box is documents—a deed for our acreage, secured through the Homestead