to find some place where they could stop safely and he could take a look at that wounded arm to see how bad it really was.
The arid flats stretched for a couple of miles, but he saw more hills and some green where they ended. There might be a little shade and some water, and both of those things would be welcome.
He kept moving at a steady pace, staying a short distance ahead of the wagon. As he rode toward the hills, he thought about how his desire to avoid other people’s trouble had gone by the wayside. There had been a time, before he was the man he was now, when he truly didn’t care about what happened to anybody else. That was before he had met his real father, who had started him on the path to growing up, and before a beautiful blonde named Rebel had come into his life and finished the job of turning him into a decent hombre.
Rebel was gone now, although there were times when he still seemed to see her, to hear her voice, even to feel the soft caress of her hand against his cheek. But the lessons she had taught him remained. She had never turned her back on people in trouble.
And she wouldn’t let him do it, either, no matter how much he wanted to just be alone, to drift and not care.
He saw some trees at the base of the nearest hill and knew there must be a spring there. All the waterholes in this part of the territory were spring fed, except for a few tinajas that caught the occasional rain, and they were dry a lot more often than not. As they came closer, he saw grass growing. The horses would welcome some graze. The woman and the old man could camp there tonight, he thought.
The spring bubbled out of a rocky outcropping at the bottom of the hill and formed a pool about fifteen feet wide. The horses headed straight for it once they smelled it. The Kid reached it first and waited for the wagon to get there. When it did, he motioned for the old man to stop short of the water.
“Set the brake!” he called to the old-timer. “I want to check the water before we let the horses drink, and I need help with the girl.”
The old man nodded and hauled back on the brake lever. The horses in the team pulled against it but were unable to reach the water. The old man scrambled down from the wagon and hurried over to The Kid.
“Help me put her on the ground,” he said as he carefully lowered the young woman. The old man was too frail to take her in his arms—he probably didn’t weigh any more than she did—but he was able to steady her long enough for The Kid to throw a leg over the saddle and slide down from the buckskin’s back. He got one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees and lifted her, carrying her over to the grass alongside the pool so he could place her there carefully on the ground.
Then he stepped over to the pool, hunkered on his heels, and cupped a handful of water in his palm. It didn’t smell of alkali, and when he tasted it, it was clear and cool and sweet.
With a nod, he told the old-timer, “All right, let the horses drink.” He straightened, went to the buckskin, and led him over to the pool as well. “Not too much,” he cautioned the old man. “That’s not good for them.”
“I know a thing or two about horses, young man,” the old-timer said. He was short and slender. Startlingly blue eyes were set deep in a lined and weathered face. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat with a low, round crown, a white shirt, and black trousers.
“No offense,” The Kid said. He went back to the young woman and knelt beside her.
The old-timer came over to join him. “Is she all right?”
“That’s what I’m about to find out. Why don’t you find a rag and get it wet? We’ll need to wash the blood away from the wound.”
“All right.” The man went back to the wagon as The Kid took hold of the woman’s sleeve and ripped it away from her shoulder.
He was pleased to see that there weren’t any entry and exit wounds on her arm. Instead, there was just a bloody furrow on the outside of her upper arm. The bullet had nicked her, creating a messy but not serious wound. It had traveled far enough before striking her that it had lost some of its power, which helped. All he really needed to do was clean the wound and bind it up. He had a flask of whiskey in his saddlebags. That would do for swabbing out the bullet crease, even though it would burn like hell.
The Kid turned his head to see how the old man was coming along with the chore he’d given him. Because of that, he didn’t see the young woman move. He sensed it, though, and a second later he felt the hard jab as she dug the muzzle of her pistol into his belly.
“Don’t move,” she said, “or I’ll blow your guts out.”
Chapter 3
“Annabelle, no!” the old man called from the wagon. “That’s the young man who’s helping us!”
“I’ll kill you, Fortunato,” the redhead muttered. Green eyes filled with hatred glared up at The Kid when he looked at her.
He shook his head and said, “I’m not Fortunato.” He hoped that gun didn’t have a hair trigger.
“You’ll never get the Konigsberg Candlestick,” the young woman called Annabelle went on. “Or the secret of the Twelve Pearls, either. I’ll kill you…kill you…”
Those striking green eyes suddenly rolled up in their sockets as she passed out again. Her arm fell to the side, and the gun slipped out of her fingers when the back of her hand hit the ground.
The Kid heaved a sigh of relief.
“You have to forgive her,” the old man said as he bustled back over to them from the wagon, carrying a piece of cloth he had soaked with water from a canteen. “She’s out of her head from being shot. Will she be all right?”
“I think so,” The Kid replied as he took the wet cloth from the old man and began washing away the blood around the wound. “There’s a whiskey flask in my saddlebags. Reckon you can get it?”
The old-timer frowned. “You need a drink at a time like this?”
The Kid pointed to the bullet crease on the young woman’s arm. “It’s to clean the wound,” he said, even though he was a little annoyed by having to explain himself.
“Oh. Oh, yes, of course. I’ll see if I can find it.”
While the old man was digging through the saddlebags, The Kid asked, “What’s her name?”
“Annabelle. Annabelle Dare.”
The Kid grunted. “Pretty name. She your granddaughter?”
“No. My, ah, daughter.”
That struck The Kid as odd. He would have said there was too much differences in their ages for Annabelle to be the old-timer’s daughter. She must have come along late in life for the couple.
“What about her mother?”
“I’m not married.”
“All right.” None of his business, The Kid told himself. Of course, he had tried to stick by that notion earlier, he recalled, and they could all see how that had worked out. “Have you found the whiskey yet?”
“Right here,” the old man said
