The Blood of Renegades

Book 10: Loner

by J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Historical Thrillers; Action & Adventure Romance; Thrillers

Synopsis

In Utah the Loner finds religion—behind the barrel of a gun—in this blazing Western from the USA Today–bestselling author of Trail of Blood.

SHOWER THE BRIDE WITH LEAD . . .

The damsel is in distress, or so it seems to Conrad Browning. On his way across the wide, tall Utah territory to California, the Loner meets a beautiful Mormon girl on the run from a forced wedding—and the gun-toting faithful trying to hunt her down. But there are two sides to every story—and the ones you don’t hear are the ones that can get you killed.

The runaway bride has a little history of her own. Soon, the Loner touches off a storm of unholy gunfire, drawing blood from an outlaw and a death sentence from a patriarch. Among murderers and Mormons, Bibles and bullets, the Loner finds himself riding to a wedding—a ceremony he intends to crash with a vengeance . . .

“There is plenty of exciting action . . . The author springs a surprising twist to the tale.” —Western Fiction Review

Release date: January 28, 2011

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Rugged, snow-capped mountains rose in the distance, a majestic sight under a beautiful blue sky.

The same couldn’t be said about the terrain over which Conrad Browning and Arturo Vincenzo traveled. There was nothing majestic about it. The landscape was mostly flat and semiarid, sparsely covered by tough grass, dotted with scrubby mesquites and greasewood, and slashed by the occasional arroyo.

Hardly the oasis Brigham Young had promised his followers, Conrad mused, but the Mormons had made their homes in Utah anyway and in most cases seemed to be thriving, if bustling Salt Lake City was any indication. Conrad and Arturo had passed through the city a few days earlier and since then had been making their way around the huge salt lake that gave the place its name. Following the railroad that skirted the northern end of the lake they had left the vast body of water behind them and angled southwestward toward Nevada.

Conrad rode a big, blaze-faced black gelding while Arturo handled the reins hitched to the four-horse team pulling the buggy. They had been together for several months after leaving Boston and embarking on a cross-country quest for Conrad’s lost children, little Frank and Vivian. The children’s mother, the vengeful Pamela Tarleton, had concealed their very existence from Conrad, who hadn’t known she was pregnant when he broke their engagement and married Rebel Callahan instead.

A lot of time and tragedy had gone by since then. Rebel and Pamela were dead, but Pamela had managed to strike at Conrad from beyond the grave. Her cousin had delivered the letter she had written revealing Conrad had a son and daughter—twins, Pamela boasted—who were hidden where he would never find them.

It was a particularly vicious way of tormenting him, but he wasn’t the sort to suffer without trying to do something about it. His investigation had uncovered the fact that Pamela had taken the twins from Boston and started to San Francisco with them. Since then, Conrad and his friend and servant Arturo had been searching for them, following Pamela’s route across the country. Conrad had no way of knowing whether she had taken the children with her all the way to the coast, so he and Arturo stopped frequently along the way to ask questions and find out if anybody knew anything about a woman traveling with a nanny and two small children.

But there wasn’t anybody to ask questions of, out there in the thinly-populated wilderness. Often the steel rails of the Southern Pacific and the telegraph poles and wires erected by Western Union were the only signs civilization had ever visited the area. No more settlements of any size lay between there and Nevada, at least none Conrad knew of.

He was a tall, well-built man in his twenties with close-cropped sandy hair under his flat-crowned black Stetson. Once he had been so handsome he’d set the hearts of society girls all over Boston—and the hearts of their mothers—to fluttering, but time and trouble had etched character lines in his face. He wore a white shirt and black boots, trousers, and coat. A hand-tooled black gunbelt was strapped around his trim hips. A meticulously cared for Colt revolver with walnut grips rode in the holster attached to the gunbelt.

In addition to the handgun, Conrad carried a Winchester repeater and a heavy-caliber Sharps carbine in sheaths lashed to his saddle. He was an expert with all three weapons but perhaps most deadly with the Colt, which was fitting since he was the son of Frank Morgan—one of the fastest men to ever strap on a six-gun. Morgan was known as The Drifter, and some called him the last true gunfighter.

That might have been true once, but no more. Now there was the man who called himself Kid Morgan, and while Conrad didn’t go out of his way to keep it a secret, not all that many people knew Kid Morgan and Conrad Browning were one and the same. He had invented the identity to help him track down Rebel’s killers, and it still came in handy from time to time.

More than a month earlier, while they were in Denver searching for clues to where Pamela might have taken the children, Conrad and Arturo had gotten roped into some trouble that left Arturo with a wounded arm. Since then, they’d been traveling at a slower pace so his injury would have more time to heal. Conrad had handled the buggy for a while, but Arturo’s arm was stronger and he had resumed his driving chores. That was fine with Conrad. He preferred being in the saddle.

“My word, there’s really not much out here, is there?” Arturo said. “I thought Wyoming was godforsaken, but this is just depressing.”

Conrad smiled. “I don’t know. It has a certain stark beauty about it, don’t you think?”

“For about the first ten minutes. After that it’s just flat and empty and ugly.”

Conrad couldn’t argue with that. It seemed like a pretty accurate assessment to him. Still ahead of them in Nevada were areas like that, but eventually they would get into the prettier country around Reno and Carson City.

Carson City . . . Just thinking about the place threatened to send waves of melancholy sweeping over Conrad’s soul. It was where he and Rebel had lived when she was murdered. Their home had gone up in flames, and for a while everyone believed Conrad had perished in the blaze.

He’d wanted them to think that. Kid Morgan was born then and he’d set out on his mission of vengeance.

Unexpectedly, vengeance had turned out to not be very satisfying. Conrad had drifted for a while after, but violence and death seemed to dog his trail. The revelation about the twins had changed everything.

Arturo broke in on Conrad’s thoughts. “How long will it take for us to get to those mountains?”

Conrad studied the snow-mantled peaks. “Maybe late today, maybe early tomorrow. We’ll have to follow the railroad through the passes. There may be other ways through, but I don’t know them.”

“We could be in San Francisco tomorrow if we took the train.”

“Yes, we could, but what if Pamela hid the twins somewhere along the way?”

“I’m familiar with that logic,” Arturo said. “I wasn’t suggesting that we should take the train, but rather just commenting on the relative speed with which it could deliver us to our destination. Isn’t it amazing?”

“Yeah,” Conrad said. “Amazing.” As he spoke he was distracted by a cloud of dust he spotted north of the railroad tracks. Squinting toward the dust he watched it drift closer.

Arturo noticed where Conrad was looking, and turned his head, studying the desert country in that direction, too. “Someone’s coming.”

“Yeah,” Conrad said. “Fast, too.”

And that usually meant trouble.

Conrad reined in his horse and Arturo brought the buggy to a stop. As they watched, the dust column continued to move toward them. Conrad’s keen eyes made out a single figure at the base of the column. His gaze shifted and he lifted a hand to point. “Even more dust back there.”

“What does it mean?” Arturo asked.

“Means that fella in front is being chased by at least half a dozen riders, and I’ll bet they don’t have anything good in mind for him.”

Arturo’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he looked at Conrad. “What exactly are we going to do about it?”

With a faint smile, Conrad said, “Now that’s a good question.”

He reached for his Winchester and drew it out of the saddle boot.

“I knew it!” Arturo said. “Whatever this trouble is, you’re going to get mixed up right in the middle of it, aren’t you? You can’t let it gallop on past us.”

Conrad didn’t answer with words. He heeled his horse into a run across the arid plains in a course that would intercept the fleeing rider.

Behind him, Arturo yelled something but Conrad couldn’t make it out over the thunder of the black’s hoofbeats. He leaned forward in the saddle and urged the animal to greater speed.

He had been torn for only a second between the two courses of action that lay before him. He and Arturo could stay where they were and allow the pursuit to pass in front of them and continue on to the south, which was probably the smartest thing to do, since he was on an important mission of his own: finding his lost children.

Or he could give in to the part of him that didn’t like six-to-one odds.

That was the urge that won the mental battle. He had gotten in the habit of sticking up for anybody who was outnumbered.

It was possible the fleeing rider was a killer or a train robber or some other sort of outlaw with a posse on his trail. In that case Conrad could stop the fugitive and do a favor for the law. But he had to get an idea of what was going on. He didn’t hear any shots or see any puffs of powdersmoke from the pursuers. Evidently they weren’t out to kill the person they were after.

Suddenly, Conrad realized he needed to stop thinking of that lone rider as a man. He was close enough to see long, fair hair streaming out behind the rider’s head. Some men wore their hair long like that, but Conrad’s instincts told him the single rider was a woman.

A woman being chased by that many men was bound to be in trouble. Hauling back on the reins he brought his mount to a stop. He levered a round into the Winchester’s firing chamber and brought the rifle to his shoulder. Aiming high, he squeezed the trigger and sent a shot blasting over the heads of the pursuers, who were a couple hundred yards away.

The woman was closer, maybe fifty yards from him. She changed course, veering toward him, hoping he would protect her. Conrad levered the rifle and squeezed off another round.

The pursuers didn’t return his fire. As the woman flashed past Conrad without slowing down he caught a glimpse of her pale, frightened face. Glancing over his shoulder after her, he saw Arturo had followed him in the buggy and was stopped a short distance away. He had jumped down from the vehicle and stood with a rifle in his hands, ready to get into the fight if need be.

Conrad turned his attention back to the pursuers, who slowed their horses and then stopped, evidently unwilling to charge right into the threat of two Winchesters. They were far enough away Conrad couldn’t make out any details about them except the broad-brimmed hats and long dusters they wore. The horses milled around as the dust cloud kicked up by their hooves started to blow away.

Seconds passed in nerve-stretching tension. Finally one of the men prodded his horse forward. Conrad stayed where he was, waiting in motionless silence, as the man rode slowly toward him.

“That’s far enough,” Conrad called when the man was about thirty feet away.

“Mister, I don’t know who you are, but you’re mixin’ in somethin’ that’s none of your concern.” The spokesman for the pursuers was a thick-set man with dark beard stubble on his face. One eye was squeezed almost shut, no doubt from the injury that had left a scar angling away from it. “That woman belongs to us.”

Conrad said, “You may not have heard, but it’s almost a new century. Enlightened people are starting to believe women don’t actually belong to anyone except themselves.”

The man grunted. “It don’t matter what century it is. The law’s the law.”

“What law?”

“The law of God!” the man thundered.

With that, things became clearer to Conrad. “You’re Mormons, aren’t you?”

“Call ourselves saints,” the man said. “Or in our case . . . angels.”

Avenging angels, Conrad thought. Gun-packing enforcers for the leaders of the Mormon hierarchy. Conrad had heard stories about them, but these were the first he had encountered. When he’d been in charge of all the Browning business and financial interests—back in that other life of his before everything he held dear was ripped away from him—he had dealt at times with Mormon leaders. You couldn’t do business in Utah without dealing with the Mormons. But they had been businessmen as much as they were church elders, their religious beliefs tempered by the desire to make money. These gunmen were very different sorts.

Despite being outnumbered, Conrad wasn’t afraid of them. “Chasing a scared girl across this wasteland doesn’t strike me as being very religious.”

The man scowled and jabbed a finger at him, as if to strike him dead. “Don’t you presume to know the will of the Lord! The girl is ours and she goes back with us. She has defied the elders and must be punished!”

“You’ll have to take her from us,” Conrad said coolly.

“There are six of us and two of you,” the man pointed out with a sneer.

“Yes, but we’ll kill four of you before you put us down. Maybe five. Maybe even all six.” Conrad smiled. “Not to brag, but I’m pretty good with a gun. Maybe we’ll all wind up lying here, food for the buzzards, and then the girl will ride away. What good will that do your elders?”

The other men had been listening intently to the exchange. One of them spoke up. “Leatherwood, maybe we’d better not do this. We were just supposed to bring her back, not kill anybody.”

The leader’s head jerked around. “This man’s not going to tell me what to do. Our orders were to fetch the girl!”

“We’ll be able to find her later.” The man waved a hand at the landscape around them. “Where are they going to go that we can’t find them whenever we want to? This is our home.”

The one called Leatherwood hesitated. He glared back and forth between his companions and Conrad. “Elder Hissop was clear about what we’re supposed to do. I don’t know about you, Kiley, but I don’t much want to go back without doin’ as we were told.”

“They won’t get away,” Kiley said. “Besides, after these men have been saddled with that headstrong female for a while, they may want us to take her off their hands!”

Leatherwood nodded. “That’s a good point.” He turned back to Conrad. “All right, mister, if you want her, take her. But know that by defyin’ us, you’ve signed your death warrant. Sooner or later we’ll kill you, and the girl will go back where she belongs.”

“Talk like that makes me wonder why I don’t just go ahead and drill you right now,” Conrad said.

The squint-eyed Leatherwood grinned, which made him even uglier. “You’re welcome to go ahead and try, mister.”

Conrad began backing his horse away. Without taking his eyes off the six men, he raised his voice and said, “Arturo, take the girl and get out of here. I’ll cover your back trail.”

The Mormon gunmen stayed where they were. Conrad understood why the one called Kiley hadn’t wanted to force the issue at that time. Outnumbered, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing, and no place where they could get any help, he and Arturo were at a definite disadvantage. The avenging angels could stalk them at their leisure, and Conrad and Arturo would have no way of knowing when or where the inevitable attack would come.

For now, more gunplay appeared to have been headed off, and Conrad had a chance to find out who the girl was and what was going on. He didn’t mind fighting, but generally liked to know what he was fighting for, especially when trouble was delaying him in his efforts to find his missing children.

He heard the buggy and the girl’s horse departing behind him, and continued backing his horse away from the gunmen. When he had put a hundred yards between himself and them, he whirled the horse without warning and kicked it into a run. As he galloped after Arturo and the girl, he looked over his shoulder and saw the Mormons weren’t giving chase. That surprised him a little, but obviously Leatherwood had decided they were going to bide their time.

Conrad was sure of one thing: the trouble was far from over.

Because Kiley was right. There was no place for them to go where the avenging angels couldn’t find them.

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 na. . .