Bad Men Die by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page B

home,” Luke said.
    â€œThey told me you’d been killed, just before the war ended.”
    â€œI’m still breathing.”
    â€œI can see that.” Burroughs paused. “You know who I am now, right?”
    â€œOf course I do, Derek.”
    Burroughs laughed and pulled Luke into a hug, pounding him on the back. Luke returned the embrace, glad to see his old comrade. The war had been a grim, dark time, and he had never gone out of his way to look up any men he had known then. The only ones he wouldn’t have minded seeing again—the men who had betrayed him and left him for dead—had been brought to justice by another member of the Jensen family, gunned down by Smoke years ago when he believed he was avenging the murders of his pa and his older brother, long before he’d discovered that Luke was still alive.
    It was good to see Derek Burroughs, no doubt about that. As the man stepped back, Luke said, “What brings you to Rattlesnake Wells?”
    â€œI was about to ask you the same thing!” Burroughs exclaimed. He pointed at the batwings with a thumb. “Why don’t we go inside and catch up over a drink?”
    â€œThat’s exactly what I was thinking.”
    Bullock’s Saloon was a nice enough place, very similar to hundreds of other saloons Luke had been in over the years. Sundown Bob Hatfield was right about the free lunch being good. Luke assembled a sandwich from several pieces of ham and a couple thick slices of fresh bread, then put it on a plate with three hard-boiled eggs and carried the food over to a table, along with a mug of beer.
    Burroughs said he had already eaten, but he had a beer, too. He sat with his long legs stretched out and his hat thumbed back. “You’ve got to tell me how you wound up alive, Luke. Everybody I ever talked to from the old outfit believed you were dead.”
    Luke shook his head. “It’s too long a story to go into, but you’ve probably heard how it was in Richmond at the end. Pure insanity. It’s a wonder anybody ever got anything right about what happened in those days.”
    Burroughs nodded solemnly. “I didn’t just hear about it. I was there. I was in a hospital in Richmond during the bombardment. The cot would shake day and night from the shells falling nearby. It got to where I wished one of them would go ahead and land on me, just to get it over with. But it never did. The sisters said it was a miracle the hospital was never hit worse than it was. They said God was watching out for us. I don’t have any better explanation.”
    Luke swallowed the big bite of the sandwich he’d been chewing while Burroughs talked. “I’m glad you made it out alive. A lot of good men didn’t.”
    â€œTruer words were never spoken.” Burroughs lifted his beer mug. “To absent friends.”
    â€œAbsent friends,” Luke said as he lifted his own mug. Both men drank.
    As Luke set his beer down, he went on. “What have you been doing since then?”
    â€œOh, I went home after the war, when I had recovered enough.” Burroughs shook his head. “There was nothing for me there. A bunch of Yankee carpetbaggers had come in and taken my family’s land. All my friends, the boys I ran with growing up, were dead. I was the only one of my bunch who made it back from the war. There was a girl . . . but she’d had enough time while I was away to decide she didn’t really want me after all. She married a Yankee judge instead.” His shoulders rose and fell. “I didn’t see any reason to stay. So I lit out for Texas, you know.”
    Luke knew. It was a story that had been repeated thousands of times over as defeated Confederate soldiers returned home.
    â€œEver since then I’ve been drifting,” Burroughs continued. “Never could seem to settle down any one place. I drove cattle from Texas up to the railheads in Kansas for a