Widowmaker Jones by Brett Cogburn Read Free Book Online Page A

a lawman, even if a former one. Probably didn’t matter one damned lick to that Mexican stickup man.
    Newt had to bump the Circle Dot horse in the back with the toe of his boot several times to make him get up once the woman’s husband was buried. He followed the old woman to her camp, leading the horse. He and the woman took opposite sides of the little fire.
    â€œWhat are you going to do?” he asked.
    â€œI’ll head to Tucson. That was where I started for, and I don’t like changing my mind before I’ve seen a thing through.”
    â€œI’m kind of that way myself,” he said. “But you might think it over again. I don’t know the trail, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
    â€œBecause I’m a woman?”
    â€œTough for anyone, I hear, and the Apache are off the reservations again. Some say they’re worse than Comanche. Maybe you can sell that wagon and catch a train west. I don’t imagine Apache would attack a train.”
    â€œI tried to tell Amos not to take the southern route, but he never was one to listen. And we would have taken the train in the first place, but he always liked to see some new country from the back of a horse.”
    â€œI can go on with you to Fort Stockton. Shouldn’t be too far from here. I’ve never been there, but I reckon I can find it.”
    â€œI’d be obliged,” she said. “When I first saw you coming I didn’t know what to think. If you don’t mind my saying it, you look like the devil. Walking dead man if I ever saw one.”
    He chuckled. “I don’t mind you saying it at all, but don’t hold it against me if I don’t give up the ghost right here and now. I’ve got a few more miles to cover, yet.”
    She looked around them at the expanse of nothing, as if she thought finding anything in it might be a miraculous feat. “What are you going to do after you help me to Fort Stockton?”
    â€œI’m going to find the one that shot me and your Amos.”
    â€œAnd then what?”
    â€œI’m going to have a serious talk with him and get back what he took from me.”
    â€œYou don’t even have a gun.”
    â€œI’ll get one. Make do if I can’t.”
    She rose and went to her wagon, reappearing after climbing in it and rummaging around. When she came back to the fire she was carrying a revolver with the gun belt rolled around it. She pitched the gun to him and he caught it in his lap.
    It was a Smith & Wesson No. 3 in a high-cut, double-loop holster. Both the gun and the holster were well oiled, and it was plain that her man had been one who appreciated a good firearm and fine leather. The belt was an ordinary one, but had a double row of cartridge loops along its length, with every one of them stuffed full of short, fat S&W .44 Russian brass and round-nosed, heavy lead bullets. No matter the well-kept nature of the rig, the only thing unusual about it was the little blue crosses inlaid into each of the walnut grip panels. The inlaid crosses were made of some kind of agate or other shiny stone as blue as a jaybird’s feathers. Gun oil and time had darkened the walnut until the grips were almost black, and the tiny stone crosses stood out like gems.
    She saw him looking at the pistol grips. “My Amos was usually a plain man, except when it came to that pistol and his hat. I asked him once why he decorated his gun so, and he said that a Franciscan friar gave him the idea. He said that maybe those crosses would absolve him of some of the men he sent to hell with it.”
    â€œYou believe that?”
    â€œMy Amos never shot except when he had to,” she said. “But even so, I don’t think there’s anything that can wipe the slate clean when you kill a man, no matter what your reasons. My Amos killed men in the line of duty, and he never forgot that. It wore on him so that he even dreamed of it