The big gundown by J.A. Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page A

still stood. The Kid rode back down there, dismounted, and started looking around for a shovel. He found one in a small shed that stood near the barn but wasn’t attached to it. The fire hadn’t spread that far.
    He walked up a small, aspen-dotted hill behind the ranch house that looked like it might be a good place to dig some graves. He figured Sean and Frannie and Cyrus would like to be laid to rest overlooking the home where they had lived for too short a time. He hadn’t started digging, though, when he heard a sudden rustling noise in some nearby brush. Instinct made The Kid drop the shovel and whirl toward the sound, palming out his Colt as he did so.
    A weak voice said, “P-Please, señor…h-help me…”
    Wary of a trap, The Kid approached the brush carefully, gun in hand. He crouched, moved some branches aside, and saw a man he recognized as one of the Williams vaqueros lying there covered with blood.
    No one else was around. The Kid holstered his gun and moved quickly to the injured man’s side. One glance was enough to tell him that the vaquero was in the same shape as Sean Williams had been—shot to pieces and not long for this world.
    “Did you see the man who did this to you, amigo?”
    The vaquero’s tongue came out and licked blood-smeared lips. His hands moved aimlessly around his bullet-shredded midsection. “The hombres…Señor Sean…warned us about…a dozen of them…maybe more…they had… artilleria …”
    The Kid wasn’t sure he had heard right, but what he thought the vaquero had said fit in with the theory he had come up with. On one knee next to the man, he leaned closer and said, “You mean a cannon?”
    “Sí, señor…a c-cannon…” A shiver went through the man, and he cried out, “Aii, Dios mio!”
    Those were his final words. His head slumped to the side. His eyes were open and staring without seeing anything.
    The Kid closed this man’s eyes as he had Sean’s, then came to his feet and looked down at the ranch house. A cannonball had caused the hole in the wall. The words of the dying vaquero had confirmed his suspicions. The cart on which the big gun was mounted had left those tracks.
    What sort of men would attack a peaceful ranch with a cannon and brutally wipe out a family that had done nothing wrong?
    Even as that question went through The Kid’s mind, he knew the answer.
    The sort of men who rode with Colonel Gideon Black.
    He had known as soon as he saw them that they were evil, cold-blooded killers. The colonel himself had seemed different, polite and well-spoken. But he had been in charge, and he had to know the kind of men who were riding with him. To The Kid’s way of thinking, that made Colonel Black just as bad or worse. The Kid had no doubt that it was Black who had ordered the attack on the ranch after finding the bodies of the men buried under the bank of the arroyo. Black hadn’t asked any questions. He had just assumed that those on the Williams ranch were responsible for the deaths of his men, and he had acted quickly and ruthlessly to settle the score for them.
    Colonel Black was going to discover that he wasn’t the only one who could avenge some deaths. The Kid intended to make the colonel and his men pay for what had happened there that morning. He didn’t care how many of them there were, and he didn’t give a damn that they had a cannon. The big gun didn’t matter.
    Before this was over, The Kid vowed as he stood on the hill and looked at the thinning smoke from the ruined ranch, there was going to be one hell of a big gundown.

Chapter 8

    Bisbee, Arizona Territory, was nestled in the Mule Mountains, not far from the Mexican border. It was stretching a point to call the low peaks around them mountains, but in that generally flat country, The Kid supposed they qualified. Dusk was settling down, and lights from the buildings were spread across the lower slopes.
    The discovery of copper in the area almost twenty years earlier had led to the