Killing Halfbreed by Zack Mason Read Free Book Online Page A

if’n you know what’s good for you!”
    I stumbled back into the bright sunlight and the door slammed behind me.  Still gasping, I watched the confused and angry stares of the townspeople, alternately looking between me and the man swinging from the gallows.
    The sheriff was right.  Time to leave town, and fast.  I didn’t understand what had happened, but for some reason they were letting me go.  I may have second guessed my new freedom, but I sure as heck wasn’t about to third guess it.
    I rushed to the livery stable, hoping my horse would still be there.  The heads of the townsfolk swiveled to follow as I jogged the distance.
    Tom Logan’s family stood at the edge of the crowd, stoically staring at the gallows, ignoring me, their faces set firm in anger.  All except my young Jinny, Tom’s daughter, who knelt in anguish, clinging to her mother’s skirts and weeping.
     

 
     
     
    I rode all day and night, putting as much distance as possible between myself and Cottonwood.  I was still in shock.  Just before dawn, I took a two hour nap and then continued on, arriving about noon at a little break in the road called Dry Spot.  Dry Spot was nothing more than a cheap cantina in the middle of nowhere.
    Several other horses stood at the rail outside.  This was a place where travelers, roaming cowhands, and your occasional gunslinger would pull up for the night, or for just a drink.
    I felt weary, wearier than I could remember feeling in a long time, as if I’d been traveling for a month instead of a day.  I needed time to think, to decide what to do next.
    I ordered a steak, then crashed on a cot in one of the tiny rooms behind the bar.  I lay there for a while just thinking, contemplating what had happened, but not understanding it.  Did they think that other guy had killed Logan instead of me? How could they think that?  Everybody knew I’d done it.
    Who was that stranger?  Why had they killed him?  It just didn’t make sense.  Why had they let me go?  Would they be coming after me with a posse?  Was this all a big joke?
    Disconnected thoughts raced through my mind like thundering horses, yet in the center of the mad maelstrom was a single, solitary image burned into my memory like a brand on my conscience.  I couldn’t shut out the sight of Jinny, too grief-stricken to support her own weight, her dainty knees soiled by the dark dirt, weeping, fists clenched and buried in the folds of her mother’s cotton dress.
    Her innocence was something I'd always treasured.  I'd never expected to be the one who would shatter it, dragging her kicking and screaming into the hard, cruel reality that is the world.  We all meet that cruel trickster called life face to face at some point, but it saddened me to know I’d been its instrument for her.
    Around six, I awoke to the noise of some excitement in the front of the cantina.  Some cowpoke was talking a mile a minute.
    “...let him go they did.  Wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes.  Once we realized what was going on, Jeb Hawkins started hollering about raising a posse up to go after him, but Mayor Burgess shut him down pretty quick.  Said payment had been made for the murder of Tom Logan, and the matter was settled.  Said nobody’d be going after nobody."
    "Well, ol’ Jeb said he didn’t think Logan’s family felt that payment had been made, considerin’ the man who did it was still running free.  Everybody else seemed to pretty much agree with Jeb and it looked we were going to have that posse, but then all the other councilmen stepped forward and seconded what Burgess said.  Said ‘restitution had been made’ and ‘there’d be no further action taken'."
    "Jeb was fit to spit nails, but didn’t do more than grumble.  The sheriff repeated what the councilmen had said, though you could tell he didn’t care for it, not one bit.
    “The deputy was mad too.  He spat, yelled about how ridiculous the whole