The Devil's Badland

Book 2: Loner

by J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure

Synopsis

J. A. Johnstone-niece and former writing partner of the late Western legend William W. Johnstone-carries on her uncle's legacy with this second book from her Loner series. After his wife is murdered, Conrad "Kid Morgan" Browning hunts down the men responsible- then visits his wife's grave in New Mexico. There, he is shocked to discover his ex-fiancEe waiting for him-along with armed backup.

Release date: April 19, 2010

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Thunder rolled over the mountains, and lightning clawed through the gray-black sky above the peaks. It would be a dark, violent night, the young man thought as he slapped the reins against the buggy horse’s back. That was entirely appropriate, because dark nights of the soul were the only kind he knew.

The storm was still a ways behind him. He hoped he could reach his destination before it caught up with him. If not, he would have to seek shelter, which would delay him on his journey. That would be an annoyance, but not a major setback. The woman he was going to see would wait for him.

She had no choice. She was dead.

The approaching storm made the late afternoon gloom even deeper. The young man spotted a flicker of yellow light up ahead. Even with a new century only a few years away and civilization spread to much of what was once a lawless frontier, that part of southern New Mexico Territory was still sparsely settled. The ranches there were far-flung, isolated. The light had to come from a ranch house, or maybe a sodbuster’s adobe shack, because there, as elsewhere, farmers were moving in on what had been open range until a few years earlier.

A hard gust of wind rattled the buggy’s canvas top. No rain was falling yet, but the young man could smell it coming. He sighed as he realized he couldn’t make it to the mission at Val Verde before the storm overtook him. Better to head for that house where the light shone and see if he could spend the night there while the storm rolled through, then go on to Val Verde in the morning.

The light flickered again. Either the wind was blowing the flame, or someone was moving back and forth in front of it. The young man pulled back on the left rein, turning the horse and buggy toward the light. A few drops of rain pattered on the canvas. Thunder boomed again. Lightning cracked.

But those sounds didn’t come from the storm behind him, the young man realized suddenly as he saw muzzle flame spurt in the gloom. That booming sound wasn’t thunder. It was a shotgun being discharged. Those sharp cracks that followed came from six-guns and rifles.

A pitched battle was going on right in front of him. The smart thing to do would be to veer away, go around whatever the trouble was, and keep heading south as long as the weather would allow.

It had been a while since he’d worried much about doing the smart thing. He leaned forward, slashed the horse’s back with the reins, yelled, “Hyyaahhh!”, and raced as fast he could straight toward the blasting guns.

Rory MacTavish blinked his eyes against the sting of powdersmoke and nestled his cheek on the smooth wood of the Winchester’s stock. He peered over the barrel he had thrust through the rifle slit in the dugout’s front wall and waited for a target.

He didn’t have to wait long. A moment later, one of Whitfield’s men darted across the open ground between the corral and the smokehouse. That took him right in front of Rory’s gunsights. With the speedy reflexes of the young, the boy pulled the trigger.

The Winchester kicked hard against Rory’s shoulder. Even though he knew to expect it because he’d been hunting many times in his fifteen years, he still had to bite back a yelp of pain. He’d always been scrawny, without much padding against such impacts.

“Good shootin’, lad!” his father called from one of the other loopholes. “Ye downed the skalley-hooter!”

Rory looked through the slit and saw the gunman crawling back toward the corral, dragging a wounded leg behind him.

“Now kill ’im!” Hamish MacTavish roared. “Get ’im afore he gets away!”

Rory swallowed hard. His pa was right, of course. You couldn’t pass up an opportunity to kill a Whitfield man.

But Rory had never actually killed any man, let alone one who rode for Devil Dave Whitfield.

“Ach, I shoods hae known!” Hamish said as Rory hesitated. The old muzzle-loader in Hamish’s hands blasted, and even in the fading light, Rory saw the Whitfield man jerk under the impact of the heavy lead ball that blasted away a chunk of his skull. The man sprawled facedown on the ground near the corral as rain began to fall.

Hamish pulled his rifle from the loophole and started reloading. He was good at it, his motions swift and smooth. He’d carried a rifle just like that during the War of Northern Aggression, when he was a little younger than Rory was now, and to hear him tell it, he had used it to kill dozens of damn Yankees at a place called The Wilderness. For all Rory knew, it was true. By and large, his father was a truthful man.

And a harsh man in his judgments, as well. Rory had heard the scorn in Hamish MacTavish’s voice just now.

He should have known that he couldn’t trust his son to be a real man. That was what Hamish really meant.

“’Tis startin’ to rain,” Hamish said as he slid the rifle’s barrel back into the loophole. “I expect they’ll be chargin’ us now. They won’t want to get wet, the bloody spalpeens.”

“Let ’em come,” Rory’s older brother James said as he poked a long-barreled Remington revolver through a loophole. He carried the Americanized version of their father’s name, since he, like Rory and their sister Margaret, had been born here, long after Hamish had immigrated to this country.

It had been James who had opened the ball by loosing both barrels of the old double-barreled Greener at Whitfield’s men. The rancher’s gun-wolves had shown up to accuse the MacTavishes once again of stealing Circle D cattle, and when Hamish and James argued, one of the gunmen reached for his Colt. That had been enough to make James’s finger jerk the scattergun’s triggers. The weapon had lived up to its nickname by scattering the hired killers and giving Hamish and James time to retreat into the dugout.

As he squinted over the barrel of the Remington, James went on, “Easier to kill ’em that way.”

Ah, yes, Rory thought as he worked the Winchester’s lever. James was a son after their father’s own heart.

Margaret came up behind him and asked softly, “Do you need more bullets?”

Rory glanced over his shoulder at her. She was seventeen, two years older than he was and two years younger than James. There had been six children in the family, but the two youngest, a boy and a girl, had died of illness in childhood without ever reaching eight years old.

The oldest, Charlie, had been killed two months earlier in a shootout with one of Whitfield’s gunslingers in Val Verde. The loss still put a bitter taste in Rory’s mouth whenever he thought about it.

So he tried not to think about it, even now when they might all be on the verge of being wiped out by Whitfield’s men. He hung on to the rifle with his right hand and thrust his left into the box in Margaret’s hands. He took out a dozen cartridges and shoved them into his pocket.

“Thanks.”

“Here they come!” Hamish called.

Rory leaned forward, put his cheek against the rifle’s stock again, and waited to kill his first man.

It didn’t have to come to this.

That thought went through his head as he saw men rush out from behind the barn and the corral and charge toward the dugout, orange flame spurting from their guns and splitting the stormy twilight. If his father and Dave Whitfield had been able to sit down and talk things over like reasonable men . . .

But the chance to be reasonable had vanished along with Whitfield’s missing cattle. It had died with Charlie MacTavish. Hatred and the spilling of blood were all that was left.

Rory tried not to cry as he pulled the trigger, but the tears welled from his eyes anyway. The storm was suddenly right on top of the little ranch, with thunder rumbling so loudly it shook the earth, lightning flashing to compete with the muzzle flames, and rain falling from the heavens in drenching, sluicing waves. Rory no longer aimed his rifle at men but at vague gray shapes instead, shapes that brandished weapons of their own as they poured lead at the house.

Then something loomed out of the gathering shadows and cut through the attackers, scattering them again. Rory held his fire as he saw more muzzle flashes, but these shots weren’t aimed at the dugout. Instead they sent Whitfield’s men running for cover. Rory realized that a buggy had just raced into the yard, with a riderless horse tied on behind it. The vehicle wheeled into a sharp turn, moving so fast that for a second Rory thought it would tip over and spill the man at the reins. Instead, he kept his seat as the wheel that left the ground for a second came back down and bit into earth that was turning rapidly into mud. Amazingly, the man had only one hand on the reins.

The revolver in his other hand spat fire and lead.

“Who’s that?” James shouted.

“I dinna ken!” Hamish said. “But he’s on our side, so more power to ’im, I say!”

The stranger’s unexpected attack had broken the back of the charge. Whitfield’s men fled as the stranger’s uncannily accurate shots broke arms and tore through legs. The man in the buggy wasn’t shooting to kill, Rory saw, but he was inflicting plenty of damage anyway. Damage that had Whitfield’s men turning tail and running, taking their dead and wounded with them.

James whooped gleefully and ran to the door. He flung it open and dashed out into the rain to throw some shots after their enemies. “Be careful, James!” Margaret called after him, but he didn’t pay any attention to her. He was too caught up in the heat of battle.

Hamish went out, too, tossing aside his rifle and pulling an old pistol from behind his belt. “Pa!” Margaret said in exasperation. She turned to Rory. “I suppose you’ll be chasing after them like a madman now, too.”

“If they’re goin’ out, I can’t stay in here, Meggie,” he said. He had endured enough scorn from his father and brother for one day. Jacking another round into the Winchester’s chamber, he hurried to the door and out into the pounding rain.

The force of the storm half-blinded him and almost knocked him off his feet. The wind wasn’t blowing that hard; it was the sheer power of the rain itself that almost drove him to his knees. He struggled to stay upright and looked around for any of Whitfield’s men who were still in range.

The only people he saw were his father and James and the man in the buggy, who had swung down from the seat and stood next to the vehicle with a Colt revolver in his hand. The stranger was hatless, but with the rain in his eyes Rory couldn’t tell much more about him except that he was tall and dressed in a dark suit. The downpour had plastered the man’s fair hair to his head.

“They’re gone,” Hamish roared over the rushing sound of the rain, “and we’re much obliged t’ ye for your help, mister. Come on into th’ house, outta this storm!”

“I have to see to my horses!” the man shouted back. He gestured toward the buggy, where a big black was hitched to the vehicle and a rangy buckskin was tied on behind.

“Th’ boy can do that for ye!” Hamish said. “Rory! Take the man’s horses into the barn!”

“Aye!” Rory said. Unlike killing, that was a chore he could handle.

He handed his rifle to James, then grabbed the black’s bridle and led the horse toward the barn. The buckskin followed along behind the buggy. Rory swung the big door open. It was a relief to step inside, out of the rain.

He was soaked to the skin. His feet squished unpleasantly in his boots as he walked.

Using one of the matches in a little box hung from a nail by a string, Rory lit the lantern. Quickly, he went about unhitching the black and leading him and the buckskin into a pair of empty stalls. Once, all six stalls in the barn had been full, but money problems had forced his father to sell off most of their horses. Only a couple of mounts were left.

Rory rubbed the horses down, then dumped grain into the feed troughs and filled water buckets from the barrel. With the animals taken care of, he walked over to the buggy and glanced curiously into the vehicle. He saw an obviously expensive saddle behind the seat, along with a fine new Winchester and a heavy-looking older rifle Rory thought was a Sharps. The stranger was well-to-do, plain enough. Rory couldn’t help but wonder why the man had come along and taken a hand in their trouble. According to Hamish MacTavish, the rich didn’t give a damn about anyone except themselves. They sure wouldn’t care about a family of poor Scots trying to make a go of a hardscrabble ranch.

But this man evidently did. Rory left the barn and headed for the dugout, anxious to learn more about this stranger who had shown up out of the storm to rout Devil Dave’s gun-wolves with a blazing Colt.

Built into the side of a hill, the dugout that served as the home of the MacTavishes was larger and less primitive than most folks might have expected. Hamish, Charlie, and James had used thick beams for the roof, then sealed it and the walls with pitch before mounding the dirt and stone over it again. It didn’t leak even in a downpour like this, which was more than could be said for the barn. A chimney extended up through the hill from the large fireplace where flames now leaped and danced, warming the big main room. The floor was stone, but Margaret had put down rugs to make it nicer and more comfortable. Except for the lack of windows, you’d hardly know that you weren’t in a regular house.

When Rory went in, he saw his father, James, and the stranger standing in front of the fireplace, drying their clothes in its heat. Margaret was on the other side of the room, rattling pots and pans in the kitchen as she prepared a meal for the menfolk.

“Might I offer ye a drink?” Hamish was asking as Rory walked in. He glanced over his shoulder as the open door caused a draft. Rory closed it quickly. Hamish went on, “As ye might expect, I have some o’ the finest Scotch whiskey ye’ll find this side o’ the highlands.”

“That sounds good,” the stranger said with a nod. He looked around at Rory. “Who’s this?”

“Me youngest,” Hamish said with a notable lack of pride in his voice. “His name’s Rory.”

The stranger smiled. “Hello, Rory. Thanks for putting up my horses.” He held out his hand. “My name’s Conrad Browning.”

The boy hesitated, surprised that Conrad had offered to shake hands with him. He took Conrad’s hand briefly, keeping his eyes downcast as he mumbled, “Pleased t’ meet ye, Mr. Browning.”

Short and slender, Rory was a lot smaller than his big, brawny father and brother, but he had the same bushy red hair as Hamish and James, who had introduced themselves to Conrad while the boy was out at the barn tending to the horses. They had introduced Margaret as well, who shared the red hair and also possessed the same shyness as Rory. Conrad felt an instinctive liking for these people and was glad he had stepped in to help them.

He had faced a choice when he rolled up in the buggy just as the rain began falling in earnest. He had no way of knowing which side was in the right in this dispute, so he could cast his lot with the defenders inside the house built into the side of a hill, or with the attackers who were charging that dugout.

Conrad had counted nearly a dozen men attacking the house, where only two or three defenders fired back. When in doubt, take up for the underdog, he had decided. But he had shot to wound, not to kill, just in case he found out later that he had jumped into the fight on the wrong side.

Looking around at the MacTavishes, he couldn’t believe that was the case. They appeared to be honest, hard-working settlers—the salt of the earth, as the old saying had it.

The sort of people that Conrad Browning once would have looked down on with a sense of arrogant superiority.

He liked to believe that he had changed, that he wasn’t that sort of man anymore, but it didn’t hurt to remind himself from time to time just what a son of a bitch he had been.

Hamish MacTavish dug around in an old trunk and came up with a dark brown bottle and a couple of glasses. As he brought them over to the fireplace, his son James asked, “What about me, Pa?”

“Ye’re too young for this,” Hamish said.

“Old enough to fight, ain’t I?” James challenged.

“Aye, but so’s Rory, and ye dinna see me givin’ ’im a drink, do ye?”

“He ain’t much of a fighter,” James said, his lip curling in a sneer. “He didn’t kill any o’ Whitfield’s men, as far as I could see.”

Conrad glanced at Rory to see if the youngster would say anything in his own defense. Rory just kept looking at the floor and didn’t speak up.

Turning back to Hamish, Conrad took the glass the man offered him. Hamish lifted his glass and said, “T’ ye health, sir.”

“And to yours,” Conrad returned.

They tossed back their drinks. The whiskey went down like liquid fire and kindled a blaze in Conrad’s belly. He gave a little gasp for breath, and that brought a smile to Hamish’s face.

“I told ye ’twas good,” he said with pride in his voice.

“I never had any better in San Francisco or Boston,” Conrad admitted. That made Hamish beam.

Conrad went on, “Why were those men attacking you?”

Hamish’s smile disappeared. His broad face darkened with anger. “Because they’re hired killers workin’ for a no-good bastard called Devil Dave Whitfield!” he declared.

“The local cattle baron,” Conrad guessed.

Hamish gave a contemptuous snort. “He thinks he is, anyway. He disnae ken that those days are over, that he can no longer run roughshod o’er the smaller ranchers. This is MacTavish land, and MacTavish land it will stay!”

It was an old story, Conrad thought, one that had been played out many times on the frontier. Despite what Hamish said, it nearly always ended the other way, with the richer, more powerful rancher triumphing over the owners of the smaller spreads.

In fact, by this point syndicates or corporations owned most of the large ranches, and companies always grew larger at the expense of individuals. At one point in his life, Conrad had believed that was the proper way for things to be, and he had enough experience in business to recognize the truth of the matter, whether he agreed with it now or not.

He smiled as he told Hamish, “I hope you’re right.” When he got down to it, though, this wasn’t his fight. He had business of his own in New Mexico Territory. So he didn’t ask any more questions, other than to say, “I wonder if you could put me up for the night? The weather’s still pretty bad out there, and I’m not sure the storm is going to let up until morning.”

Conrad could still hear the rain’s sluicing rush. The MacTavishes must have done a really good job of sealing the roof and walls to keep the water out.

“Aye, we wouldna send ye back out in that deluge,” Hamish said. “Ye’ll be welcome to spend the night. Ye can have mah bunk.”

Conrad started to tell the rancher that wasn’t necessary, that he could just make up a bedroll on the floor, then he remembered that the man Conrad Browning used to be—the man Conrad Browning was still supposed to be—wouldn’t have reacted that way. That Conrad would have expected to be accommodated in the best possible manner.

“Of course I’ll be glad to pay you,” he went on, his smile turning smug. That was something the old Conrad would have said, too.

Hamish frowned. “’Twill no’ be necessary to do that,” he said, his voice suddenly cooler. Conrad knew that his offer of payment had just knocked him down a notch or two in Hamish’s estimation, and that was a shame. Still, the game had to be played.

Not that he expected to win, Conrad mused. In the big scheme of things, he had already lost before he ever started, because no matter what he did, Rebel would still . . .