The Loner: The Blood of Renegades Read online

  As his eyes began to adjust and he lowered his hand to squint at their captors, he saw that he was right. Half a dozen men stood outside the smokehouse including Ollie, who held a leveled revolver. Two men had handguns, while the other three weren’t taking any chances. They each had 12-gauge Greeners aimed at Conrad and Arturo.

  “Come on,” Ollie said again, sounding a little impatient. “Dan and Selena are expectin’ you. You don’t want them to get tired of waitin’.”

  As they started out of the smokehouse Arturo stumbled a little. Conrad gripped his arm to steady him. “Looks like we’re going to dinner,” he murmured.

  “The condemned men ate a hearty last meal,” Arturo muttered back at him.

  “What are you two sayin’?” Ollie demanded.

  Conrad shook his head. “Nothing important, Ollie. What’s your last name, anyway?”

  “Barnstabble,” the big man answered. “Sort of like barn and stable. I reckon one of my ancestors in England or some such place used to keep livestock.”

  Arturo nodded. “That sounds like a plausible theory.”

  “We’re going to Kingman’s house for dinner?” Conrad asked. He glanced at the sky and saw that the sun was low in the west. Another hour of daylight was left, no more.

  “That’s right,” Ollie said as he gestured with the barrel of the gun he held. “Let’s go.”

  As the group started toward Kingman’s cabin, Ollie went on in a confidential tone, “I think it was Selena’s idea. She doesn’t think Dan’s treated you all that good since you joined up with us.”

  One of the other guards spoke up. “Ollie, if Dan was here I reckon he’d tell you to quit runnin’ your mouth so much. And these two fellas haven’t joined up with us. They’re Gentiles, and they’re our prisoners!”

  “Yeah, but only until Dan comes to an understandin’ with ’em.”

  “For God’s sake.” The man pointed at Conrad. “This one busted you in the snoot a few hours ago!”

  Conrad could see the bruises his punch had left on Ollie’s face. He smiled. “For what it’s worth, Ollie, I’m sorry I hit you.” Ollie was either slow-witted or just incredibly good-natured, but it didn’t hurt to have someone on the other side who was slightly friendly.

  “See?” Ollie said. “Mr. Browning just didn’t really understand what was goin’ on.”

  The other men exchanged glances. Conrad knew what they were thinking. Somebody didn’t understand what was going on, but it wasn’t Conrad.

  They marched toward Kingman’s cabin. Conrad saw quite a few people standing around the other cabins watching them with great curiosity. He figured not many outsiders came here, and certainly not many Gentiles.

  Kingman was waiting for them and stepped onto the cabin’s porch as the group came up. He had a smile on his face, but it didn’t reach all the way to his eyes. They were cold and calculating.

  “Come in, come in,” he said. “I hope the past few hours haven’t been too unpleasant. Selena has convinced me I’m being too cautious where you gentlemen are concerned. I thought that to make amends, we’d invite you to break bread with us, then you can leave if you want to. Or you’re welcome to stay a few days if you’d prefer.”

  Conrad nodded. “We appreciate that.” He and Arturo would play along, but he didn’t trust the man at all.

  Kingman said, “Ollie, you and these other fellas can put your guns up and go on about your business. Mr. Browning and Mr. Vincenzo aren’t going to cause any more trouble, are you?”

  “That’s right,” Conrad said.

  He and Arturo went up the steps to the porch. Kingman stepped aside to hold out a hand and usher them in.

  Selena was waiting for them inside. She had changed from the men’s clothing she had worn when she fled Juniper Canyon into a nice-looking gingham dress with a square-cut neckline. Conrad figured she had stuffed the dress and a few supplies into the saddlebags along with the money she had stolen from Elder Hissop.

  “Hello,” she said to Conrad and Arturo with a more genuine smile than the one Kingman had mustered up. “We’re so sorry about all the misunderstandings, aren’t we, Dan?”

  “Sure,” Kingman said. “I’d offer you a drink, but we don’t indulge in spirits here. We have some nice cool buttermilk, though.”

  “That would be fine,” Conrad said.

  “Dinner’s almost ready. Why don’t we sit down?”

  Kingman made it sound like he was entertaining them in a luxurious parlor in a mansion on Beacon Hill, instead of a log cabin in an isolated valley in the rugged Utah-Nevada border country. To be fair, the cabin appeared to be well built and comfortably furnished with a nice table and several sturdy chairs. A rug lay on the puncheon floor. A couple oil lamps lit the room. Conrad wondered how all those things had gotten there.

  Selena poured glasses of buttermilk for them. Conrad, Arturo, and Kingman sat at the table while Selena went back to the stove, where a pot of something that smelled good was simmering.

  Conrad took a sip of the buttermilk. “It looks like you’ve got a nice little community here. Do you plan to stay in this valley permanently?”

  “Why would we leave?” Kingman asked. “There’s fertile ground for farming, and plenty of graze for cattle. We can live comfortably here.”

  “I didn’t see any livestock when we were riding in.”

  Kingman shrugged. “We’ll put together a herd later on. The first thing we had to do was get the cabins built and establish ourselves here.”

  That made sense, Conrad supposed, although wondered where Kingman intended to get those cattle. He suspected rustling might be involved. Stealing Father Agony’s stock would be one more way of getting back at the elder who had banished the young men.

  “There’s one other thing most of the men are lacking,” Conrad said. “Wives.”

  Selena turned at the stove. “There are several other women here.”

  “You can’t count on enough of them getting away from Juniper Canyon like you did, though.”

  With his mouth set in a tight line, Kingman said, “I’m not sure this is any of your business, Browning. We’re trying to be hospitable here.”

  “Sorry,” Conrad said. “Didn’t mean any offense.”

  He didn’t care whether he offended Kingman, but he didn’t want to upset Selena. She would be upset soon enough when she realized the man she thought of as her husband was a rustler and an outlaw.

  Selena dished up bowls of stew with chunks of venison, potatoes, carrots, and wild onions swimming in it and set a plate full of thick slices of bread on the table. Kingman explained they sent out hunting parties for fresh meat. He said grace before they ate, and then everyone dug in. As they were eating, Kingman asked, “Where were the two of you headed when you stopped to help Selena?”

  “They were on their way to California,” Selena answered. “Isn’t that what you said, Conrad?”

  He nodded. “That’s right. We’re bound for San Francisco, but there’s no real hurry.”

  “You have business there?” Kingman asked. He was angling to find out if anyone would miss them if they disappeared, Conrad thought.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, we don’t want to keep you. You’re free to go whenever you like. The only thing I ask is that you don’t say anything to anybody about what you’ve seen here.”

  Conrad nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “You’ll be leaving first thing in the morning, then?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Selena said, “Dan, it sounds like you’re trying to get rid of them. That’s not very hospitable.”

  “I’m just trying not to inconvenience our guests,” he said easily, spreading his hands as if his intentions were perfectly honorable and innocent.

  Conrad didn’t believe that for a second.

  The rest of the evening was somewhat awkward. Conrad and Kingman continued being polite to each other, but the tension between them was still there. When the meal was finally over,
Kingman said, “I’ve set aside one of the cabins for you tonight. We can’t expect you to sleep in that smokehouse.”

  Conrad nodded. “We appreciate that, don’t we, Arturo?”

  “Most definitely,” Arturo said. “You rugged frontiersmen may have mastered the art of sleeping on hard ground, but I never have.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” Kingman said. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’ll have some of the men show you where the cabin is.”

  Obviously, dinner was over.

  Conrad and Arturo got to their feet. Conrad smiled and nodded to Selena. “Thank you for the meal. It was very good.”

  “Quite appetizing,” Arturo added.

  “It’s the least we could do, considering how the two of you saved me from being taken back to Juniper Canyon.”

  Kingman ushered them out. Conrad wasn’t surprised to find the same bunch that had escorted him and Arturo earlier, minus Ollie Barnstabble, waiting outside the cabin. He had a pretty good idea what was about to happen.

  “Take our guests to where they’ll be spending the night,” Kingman said as he closed the door behind him so Selena wouldn’t see or hear what was happening.

  “Sure, Dan,” one of the men replied. He had a Greener tucked under his arm.

  Conrad and Arturo exchanged a glance. Kingman wasn’t going to wait any longer to dispose of them. His henchmen would take the prisoners away from the little settlement, kill them, and dump the bodies in a ravine where they would never be found, or something along those lines. Then they would hide the buggy and Conrad’s horse, and in the morning Kingman would tell Selena they had left early, before daybreak, to resume their trip to San Francisco. There might be a part of her that would doubt the story, but she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

  The men carrying the shotguns shifted the weapons and looped thumbs over hammers. “Come on, you two,” the spokesman said.

  Conrad looked at Kingman and spoke bluntly. “You don’t have to do this. We’re no threat to you. Whatever you’re doing here, it’s none of our business.”

  “I can’t take that chance,” Kingman said. “Not after we’ve worked so hard to make a place for ourselves. Not while we’re surrounded by enemies on all sides. I’m sorry, but this is the way it has to be.” He looked at his men and added in a voice as hard as flint, “See to it.”

  Chapter 19

  Conrad gave a little shake of his head to Arturo. They could raise a ruckus, but all Kingman had to do was yell and dozens of reinforcements would come running. As bad as five-to-two odds were, it could be even worse.

  They went down the steps, and the men closed in around them. With shotguns prodding them in the back, Conrad and Arturo marched along the road until one of their captors said, “All right, head up over that hill.”

  Night had fallen, but there was enough starlight for Conrad to see the tree-covered hill to the left of the road. He angled toward it and trudged up the slope with Arturo at his side.

  On the other side of the hill was a little canyon that cut toward the mountains to the south. Once the group entered the canyon, it was hard to see, so one of the men scraped a lucifer to life and lit a torch he had brought with him. With the hill between them and the settlement, they didn’t have to worry about the flickering light being seen.

  The canyon twisted and turned for about half a mile. Finally, the leader said, “All right, that’s far enough.”

  “When you men followed Kingman over here from Elder Hissop’s community, I’ll bet you didn’t realize you’d wind up being murderers, did you?” Conrad asked.

  “Forget it,” the leader snapped. “That might work on an idiot like Ollie, but you’re not gonna talk us out of doing what has to be done. The valley has to be protected at all costs.” The man paused. “Anyway, you’re just a couple of Gentiles. After the things your kind has done to us over the years, we won’t lose any sleep over killing the two of you.”

  Conrad heard the men backing off behind them, getting some room so they could use those scatterguns. The man holding the torch raised it higher. The harsh glare from the flames washed over Conrad and Arturo and cast long shadows on the ground in front of them. Conrad tensed, readying himself to whirl around and make a desperate leap for the closest man. One thing about shotguns, they were very indiscriminate weapons. If he could get close enough to one of the men before the others pulled their triggers, they would have to hold their fire for fear of hitting their companions.

  Before Conrad could make his move, a voice called, “Hey, what’s goin’ on here?”

  In the split second that followed, Conrad recognized Ollie’s voice. The five men jerked their heads around toward him.

  Conrad launched himself at the nearest man in a diving tackle and crashed into him. Wrapping his arms around the man’s waist he drove him off his feet. The man let out a startled yell as he went down, and the torch flew out of his hand.

  Arturo leaped forward and snatched the torch out of the air, then slung it in the faces of the other men. They flinched away from the burning brand, giving Conrad time to yank the pistol of the man he had tackled from its holster. He tipped up the barrel and triggered three fast shots. Two of the men went down.

  Arturo charged after throwing the torch. He was no brawler, but he was fighting for his life. He grabbed the twin barrels of a shotgun and wrenched the weapon upward. He and the man who held the Greener staggered back and forth as they wrestled over the shotgun.

  Conrad swung the gun in his hand and squeezed off another round. A man howled in pain and dropped his shotgun as he clutched at a bullet-shattered shoulder. That left Arturo’s opponent and the man Conrad had tackled, who suddenly grabbed him. Conrad brought the gun barrel down against the man’s forehead with a crashing thud, and he went limp again.

  Leaping to his feet Conrad rushed toward Arturo and the last man. They were turning around and around as they struggled. Waiting for a second until he had the right opening, Conrad slammed the revolver against the man’s skull with stunning force. Instantly, the man let go of the shotgun and his knees folded up. He dropped senseless to the ground.

  “Mr. Browning!”

  Conrad spun around, hoping the gun in his hand had at least one round left in it. He leveled the gun at Ollie, who came forward into the light cast by the torch still flickering on the ground.

  Ollie had his revolver pointed shakily at Conrad. “Mr. Browning, what are you doing? Those are my friends you shot!”

  “They may be your friends, Ollie, but they were going to murder Arturo and me.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because Kingman ordered them to.”

  Ollie shook his head. “Dan wouldn’t do that. He’s a good man. He wouldn’t have anybody killed.”

  “I think you know better,” Conrad said. “I sure wish you’d put up your gun. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “But . . . but Dan and Selena had you to dinner!”

  Arturo said, “That was a façade for Miss Webster’s benefit. Knowing that she’s fond of us, he wanted to make her believe everything was all right, then he could dispose of us without her ever knowing anything about it.”

  “Arturo’s right, Ollie,” Conrad said. “He would have told Selena in the morning that we left early and headed on to California, when actually these men were going to kill us and hide our bodies.”

  Stubbornly, Ollie shook his head. “This is all crazy.”

  “You saw for yourself what was going on. They were about to cut us to ribbons with those shotguns. Why else would they bring us all the way out here like this?”

  Conrad could see the struggle on Ollie’s face. He had cast his lot with Kingman and the others, but being a cold-blooded killer wasn’t in his nature. Finally, after a long, tense moment, Ollie lowered his revolver.

  “I knew it wasn’t right,” he muttered. “When Dan had us start holdin’ up those trains, I knew it wasn’t gonna be the way he said it’d be. He
said we’d live here in peace and ever’body would leave us alone, but I didn’t know we’d have to steal to do it. Or kill innocent folks.”

  That was the final piece in the puzzle, Conrad thought. The Outcast Saints really were outlaws, just as he had suspected. The Southern Pacific line wasn’t that far. They could hold up a train, then retreat to the valley. Some of the furnishings in the cabins had probably come from those robberies.

  “Dan plans on rustling Elder Hissop’s cattle, too, doesn’t he?” Conrad asked.

  Ollie sighed. “I think so. It won’t work, though. The elder won’t let him get away with it. He’ll send out Leatherwood and the rest of the avengin’ angels to track us down.” He holstered his gun. “I’m startin’ to wish I’d never left Juniper Canyon.”

  “I thought Elder Hissop forced you out. Banished you.”

  “He banished Dan, because Dan and Selena wanted to get married. Dan got some other fellas to go with him. There were plenty who liked certain girls but had to watch while they were married off to the elder’s friends. And there were some of us, like me, who came along because our friends were leavin’. Dan and I been pards ever since we were kids.”

  Conrad heard the pain in Ollie’s voice. It wasn’t easy, discovering that a longtime friend wasn’t really the person he had seemed to be. Whether Dan Kingman had changed, or whether he had always been a ruthless outlaw at his core, didn’t really matter. Ollie was seeing him for what he was.

  Ollie took a deep breath and blew it out. “You fellas get on out of here. I’ll take care of the boys you shot, and I won’t raise the alarm until you’ve had a chance to put some distance behind you.”

  “You’re sending us out on foot?” Conrad asked. “That’s a death sentence. As soon as Kingman finds out what happened, he’ll come after us, and he won’t have any trouble hunting us down.”

  “I’m givin’ you a chance,” Ollie said. “That’s all I can do. I ain’t gonna betray my friends any more than that.”