Brutal Vengeance (18 page)
Authors: J. A. Johnstone
It was too late. Reilly blasted them off their horses before he tumbled off his own mount and rolled over and over on the ground.
The Kid whirled the buckskin and triggered another shot that tore into the throat of an outlaw. Blood flooded over the front of the man’s shirt as he clutched futilely at the wound before losing his balance and falling from his horse.
Turning the buckskin again, The Kid saw that Ed Marchman was down ... but not dead. He pushed himself up and fired his pistol at the remaining outlaws. Marchman might be a jackass, but at that moment, he didn’t lack for courage.
Thad and Bill Gustaffson were right in the middle of the fight, too, their rifles cracking as they fired shot after shot. They fought with a fierce intensity. Not loco, like Reilly, but clearly determined to avenge the deaths of their loved ones.
Then, suddenly, it was over. The shooting stopped. All the outlaws were down. The rugged-looking teamsters emerged from their wagons, carrying their rifles. “Are you men Rangers?” one of them called to The Kid.
“No, but we’re what’s left of a posse that’s been on the trail of these outlaws,” The Kid explained. “This was Warren Latch’s bunch.”
“Latch!” the man exclaimed. Like seemingly everyone else in that part of the country, he had heard of the outlaw leader. “You mean we actually beat Warren Latch’s gang?”
“That’s right.” The Kid nodded. He looked over the dead outlaws. “But I don’t see Latch himself among them. He must have lit out when the attack didn’t go like he expected it to.”
Not all the outlaws were dead, The Kid realized as one of the bloody figures on the ground suddenly coughed and rolled onto his side.
Instantly, half a dozen rifles covered the man.
The Kid quickly dismounted and motioned for the men to give him room. With his Colt still in his hand, he knelt next to the wounded outlaw. “Who are you, mister?”
“S-Slim Duval,” the man gasped out. He looked like he’d been shot at least twice in the belly. He didn’t have much time left.
So this was Slim, The Kid thought, the one who had led that scouting party they’d run into a few nights earlier.
“Where’s Latch, Duval?”
“I ... I don’t know. He ... ran out on us. We never ... turned on him ... no matter how loco he got ... and then he double-crossed us!”
“Then you won’t mind telling me where to find him,” The Kid said. “You had a couple of prisoners, a woman and a young man—”
“Latch took them ... with him ... along with ... all the loot. I never ... never thought he’d do something ... like that.”
The Kid grunted. “No honor among thieves, eh? Tell me where to find him. Where does he go in San Antonio?”
Duval’s voice rose into a despairing wail as he replied, “I don’t know!”
“Well, you’d better think hard.” The Kid put the revolver’s barrel under Duval’s chin and pressed it into his throat as blood leaked from a corner of the outlaw’s mouth. “Because if you can’t help me find Latch and those prisoners, I don’t have any reason not to kill you right now.”
Chapter 30
San Antonio was beautiful at night. The lights of the sprawling city stretched for a long way.
Downtown, along the river, and near the ruins of the old mission called the Alamo, music and laughter drifted through the open doorways of the numerous saloons. The warm night air was filled with the scent of flowers, although the stink of decay from the river lay underneath the more pleasant smells.
The house was built in the Spanish style, with a red tile roof and an adobe wall around it. A black wrought-iron gate opened into a garden.
The Kid didn’t try to open the gate. He went over the wall, dropping lightly into a shrub-bordered flower bed on the other side.
His black trousers, shirt, and hat helped him blend into the darkness. The Colt’s handle with its ivory grips was the only bit of light about him, and he had his hand wrapped around it. Somewhere not far away, a guitar played a mournful tune.
A balcony with iron railings overlooked the garden. As The Kid approached stealthily, he heard a door open. Pausing in the shadow of a thick shrub, he knelt and looked up.
A man stepped out onto the balcony and walked to the railing. He rested one hand on the rail, and the other lifted a cigar to his mouth. As he took a deep drag on the cigar, the coal at its end glowed brightly, casting a faint light over his face.
From the darkness below, The Kid saw the lean features, the jutting beard, the deep-set eyes. He knew without being told that he was looking at Warren Latch.
The outlaw leader wore a pair of military-style holsters. The odd-shaped butts of the guns were visible in the light spilling through the open door behind him.
The pistols were some sort of foreign make, The Kid guessed, since he had never seen anything quite like them before. It didn’t matter. Latch could have a damned Gatling gun and it wouldn’t matter.
One shot would have ended it simply. From where The Kid crouched, he could have put a bullet through Latch’s head and the man would never know what ended his life.
But The Kid didn’t know where Lace and Nick were. If he killed Latch and then searched the house, only to find that the prisoners weren’t there, he would be at a dead end.
No, Latch got to live a little while longer ... until he told The Kid what he wanted to know.
Latch stood there smoking his cigar for several minutes, then dropped the butt, ground it out under a booted toe, and kicked it off the balcony into the garden. He turned and went back into the house, closing the door behind him.
The Kid stole forward swiftly and silently.
The pillars supporting the balcony had enough scrollwork to provide a few handholds and footholds. His privileged childhood in Boston hadn’t afforded him opportunities to climb trees that most boys got, but he was able to manage. He struggled up one of the pillars until he could reach over his head and grasp the iron railing.
From there it was easy to pull himself onto the balcony.
A couple large windows glowed a warm yellow with lamplight from the room where Latch had gone. The Kid crouched and tried to peer through a corner of one. A gauzy curtain covered the window.
He was able to see a little through the loosely woven curtain, and could tell Latch was standing in front of someone sitting in an armchair. That close to the window, he realized it was raised a few inches to let in the night breezes.
The first thing he heard sent a thrill shooting through him. It was Lace McCall’s voice. “—get away with this, you son of a bitch.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, my dear,” Latch replied. “No one knows where I am or the name I use while I’m here in San Antonio. This house belongs to Stephen Dandridge, the somewhat decadent but law-abiding son of a wealthy businessman from Louisiana. I’ve put quite a bit of time and effort into cultivating that identity.”
“And nobody ever notices that you look like Warren Latch?”
“A lot of men are tall and slender and have beards. Besides, people see what they expect to see.”
“Well, what are you going to do now?”
“If you’re worried that I’m going to molest you, you needn’t be. My interests along those lines are few and rather ... specialized. But I know several men who will be quite taken with you. I thought I would invite them over and have them, ah, place bids on the pleasure of your company.”
“You’re going to auction me off like a horse?” Lace sounded like she couldn’t believe it.
“Between what I make from you and the ransom I expect to get for the young man locked up downstairs, I should clear a nice bit of money. Since I no longer have to share the other loot I brought back with me, I’ll have a small fortune to sustain my lifestyle for an extended period of time.”
“Which you got by double-crossing your men,” Lace said scornfully.
“I think my friend Slim was getting a bit tired of riding with me, and to tell you the truth, I had grown tired of him. As for the others ... well, they were just common outlaws. I can round up a hundred more like them if I ever decide to form another gang. After all ... I’m Warren Latch. Everyone wants to work with me because I’m always successful. And everyone is afraid of me because I’m insane, you know.”
The laugh that came from Latch made a chill go through The Kid, as he suddenly realized it was all an act. Latch didn’t sound the least bit crazy. It was fake, just like the identity of Stephen Dandridge that he had established. Warren Latch, the mad dog ... Don’t cross Warren Latch, he’s loco ... He’ll kill you as quick as look at you.
All a lie to cover up pure evil.
The Kid had heard enough. Gun in hand, he stepped to the door and kicked it open.
Latch whirled, hands going to the butts of his guns, but he stopped short as he found himself staring down the barrel of The Kid’s Colt.
“Kid!” Lace cried. “He told me you were dead, but I didn’t believe him! I never did.” Her hands were tied tightly in front of her. Another rope around her waist bound her to the chair. An ugly bruise stood out on her jaw.
At that moment, The Kid came very close to pulling the trigger and killing Latch.
But he held off. If Lace was the one who turned Latch over to the law, she would get the reward for him. That’s what she had set out to achieve, and The Kid was going to make that possible if he could.
“You’re from that posse!” Latch gasped in astonishment.
“That’s right,” The Kid said. “You didn’t wipe us all out. Half a dozen more are on their way in, but I raced ahead to settle things with you.”
Latch’s surprise seemed to be wearing off. He actually smiled as he asked, “How the devil did you find me?”
“Slim Duval wasn’t quite dead when we caught up to him.”
Latch shook his head. “Slim didn’t know where I live or the name I use here.”
“No, but he knew how to get a message to you. He knew about the girl who works at Flores’ Cantina, who knew about the liveryman, who knew about the priest, who told me about the man named Dandridge who always makes generous contributions to the mission. It wasn’t that hard to find you, once Duval started me on the right trail.”
Latch’s face hardened with anger. “He’s dead, you say?”
“That’s right.”
“Good.” Latch practically spat. “He used to be a good man, but he’d gotten sloppy, lazy. He had it coming.”
The Kid ignored that and asked, “Lace, are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’ve been knocked around a little, but I’m fine.”
“How about Nick?”
“Tied and gagged in the pantry off the kitchen downstairs. He’s all right, too, as far as I know. That arm wound may need some attention.”
“It’ll get plenty of attention soon. Can you get loose?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been trying to loosen these ropes, but the knots are too tight.”
“When I’ve finished with Latch, I’ll cut you loose.”
A smile curved Latch’s thin lips. “You’re finished now, my friend.”
“I don’t know how you figure that,” The Kid said.
“A wise man knows how to spend his money. I’ve spent some of mine on men whose job it is to keep an eye on that girl at the cantina. If anyone comes around asking her the wrong sort of questions, they follow and find out who it is.” Latch nodded toward the door. “They’re standing behind you now.”
The Kid shook his head. “You don’t really expect me to—”
“Kid, look out!” Lace screamed.
Instinct sent him twisting down and to the side. Guns roared behind him, and he felt a bullet tug at his shirt sleeve. From the corner of his eye he saw two men on the balcony, one white, one Mexican. Flame spurted from the barrels of their guns.
A slug tore into the expensive rug only inches from The Kid’s hand as he braced himself and fired. One of the men doubled over as the bullet punched into his belly.
The other man weaved to the side as The Kid triggered again. The shot missed.
Another weapon roared, the reports coming so fast and so close together they blended into a roll of gun thunder. Bullets chewed up the rug as The Kid rolled desperately away from them. Latch had yanked out one of his funny-looking pistols. Flame licked from its muzzle as he fired again and again.
Even on the move, The Kid got off a shot that smashed into the chest of the man on the balcony and drove him halfway around before he collapsed. That took care of two of the three threats, but Latch was the most dangerous of all.
The boss’s gun ran dry, but he already had the second pistol in his other hand. Before he could bring it to bear, Lace drew up her legs and kicked him in the back of the knees. Latch cried out in surprise as his legs folded up beneath him and he fell. The pistols slipped out of his hands and fell, clattering to the floor.
Lace couldn’t get out of the chair, but she threw herself forward with such desperation it toppled with her. She fell onto her side and reached for one of the guns Latch had dropped, snatching it off the rug just as he grabbed the other gun and rolled back to his feet.
Did he have the empty one, or did she?
The clicking of the gun as he frantically jerked the trigger answered that. In the next instant, the pistol Lace held in both hands roared. One after another, the bullets thudded into Latch’s chest, their impact driving him backward in a grotesque dance. She kept shooting as he stumbled onto the balcony, crashed into the railing, and toppled over it, falling out of sight into the garden.
Up and on his feet, The Kid started toward Lace, but she cried, “I’m fine! Make sure he’s dead!”
That seemed like a foregone conclusion to him, as many times as Lace had shot the man, but she was right. The smart thing was to be certain.
Gun ready in his hand, The Kid went onto the balcony and checked first on the two men he had shot. They were dead, sure enough. And when he looked over the balcony railing, he saw Warren Latch lying on his back on the flagstones of a patio below. A dark pool of blood spread around him.
“Is he dead?” Lace called from inside the room.
The Kid lined his sights and fired a shot that blew the top of Latch’s head off.
“No doubt about it.”
The Menger Hotel, one of the finest hostelries in San Antonio, was practically next door to the Alamo. The Kid and Lace were sitting in its lobby a week later when Asa Culhane came through the front doors and thumped toward them using a cane. Nick Burton was with the Ranger.
The Kid got to his feet to shake hands with Culhane. “You look like you’re getting around pretty well. Better than I expected, as bad a shape as you were in.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a tough old bird. I heal fast.” Culhane inclined his head toward Nick. “Like this youngster here.”
Nick’s wounded arm was in a sling, but his color was good, and he seemed to be feeling fine. He was dressed in a town suit. “Ranger Culhane called me and told me he was coming over here to see you, Mr. Morgan. I thought I’d come along so I could say good-bye to you and Miss McCall.”
Nick and Culhane sat down in a pair of comfortable armchairs facing the sofa where The Kid and Lace sat.
“You’re headed back to your grandfather’s ranch?” The Kid asked.
“That’s right,” Nick replied with a nod. “Thad and Bill are going with me. They decided they didn’t want to try to make a go of their family’s ranch after everything that happened there, so they’re going to let that neighbor of theirs pay them off for it.” The youngster grinned. “I told them there were jobs waiting for them on the M-B Connected, if they wanted them.”
“Won’t that be up to your grandfather?” Lace asked.
“No, ma’am ... I mean, Miss McCall.”
“Lace,” she reminded him.
“Yes’m ... I mean ... well, you know what I mean. But as for what you asked me, no, I reckon if my grandpa plans on me taking over the ranch, it’s high time he starts giving me some responsibility. And me hiring Thad and Bill is a good place to start. If he doesn’t like it ...” Nick shrugged.
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