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

founding of the settlement, and it had grown as miners realized that smaller quantities of gold and silver could be found along with the copper. The Kid recalled that as Conrad Browning, he had owned a stake in a copper mine near there. Still did, he supposed, but he had never visited the operation and it had represented nothing to him then except some figures on a balance sheet. Now it was even less than that to him. He had no reason to go there, at least none that he knew of.
    The first time Colonel Black came to the Williams ranch, he had said that he and his men were headed up the San Pedro. That might have been a lie, or it might be that the killers had indeed gone up the river and then returned to the ranch to wipe out the Williams family. Either way, The Kid didn’t know where they were now, and since he wanted to pick up their trail, the best place to start seemed to be Bisbee. He knew from what Sean and Frannie had told him that the four men he’d killed on the ranch had been planning to rendezvous with Colonel Black in Bisbee.
    Somebody there would be able to tell him where to find the colonel.
    Once The Kid knew that, his plan was simple: kill the son of a bitch and everybody with him.
    It was all he could do for Sean and Frannie and Cyrus.
    In the early afternoon he had found the bodies of mother and son in the charred ruins of the ranch house, once the heat had subsided enough for him to go inside. The ashes were still hot under his boots, so he moved quickly as he wrapped the bodies in blankets and carried them out to place them gently next to Sean’s body. He had already dug seven graves up on the hillside. He was drenched with sweat, his muscles ached and there was still work to be done.
    The metal framework of the wagon that had been inside the barn was still relatively intact. Only some of it was twisted from the heat of the flames. The Kid shook out his rope, tied the vehicle to the buckskin, and used the horse to pull it out of the ruins. He found enough scraps of charred lumber and cobbled together a new bed for the wagon. Once he had done that, he placed the bodies on the wagon and used it to carry them up the hill to the gravesites.
    Earlier, he had spotted the basket where Cyrus had kept the pups. A glance into the basket told him that someone had emptied a six-gun into it. The Kid took the basket up the hill, too, and put it into the grave with Cyrus. Then he started filling in the seven holes.
    It was mid-afternoon by the time he finished, and he still had a long ride to Bisbee. But he paused long enough to stand for a moment over the graves. He wasn’t a praying man—he didn’t think El Señor Dios would look too kindly on words from a man who had so much blood on his hands—so he said to the people he had just buried, “I can’t make it right. But I can make the bastards pay.”
    He was settling his hat on his head when he saw movement down at the ranch. A couple of small dark shapes darted around the ruins. The Kid frowned, wondering if they were rats.
    When he heard the faint yipping he knew that he was looking at a couple of Cyrus’s pups. Somehow they had escaped the massacre of their brothers and sisters. Probably off wandering around somewhere when the attack came.
    The Kid thought about it for a long moment, then heaved a sigh. He mounted up, rode down the hill, and called and whistled until the puppies came to him. He made room in his saddlebags, scooped them up, and put them in there. As the buckskin walked along Bisbee’s main street a few hours later, they were still there, their heads sticking out the top of the saddlebag as they looked around. They didn’t weigh more than a few pounds each, little squirming bundles of black and gray and brown, and The Kid didn’t know what the hell he was going to do with them. All he knew was that he couldn’t leave them on the death-haunted ranch to survive on their own. Cyrus wouldn’t have wanted that.
    The Kid angled the buckskin