her hands on her hips, which meant her right hand was pretty close to the butt of the holstered revolver she wore. He supposed that she didn’t fully trust him, which probably wasn’t a bad attitude. While civilization had spread across much of the land, there were still some wild places left, and this remote area of southern New Mexico Territory certainly fit that description. Outlaws still roamed here, Mexican banditos sometimes raided across the border, and occasionally even bands of bronco Apaches from the mountains south of the Rio Grande ventured this far north in search of plunder. It was smart to operate under the assumption that anybody you met might mean you harm.
He reined in and held up a hand to show her that he didn’t. With a polite nod, he called, “Hello.”
She didn’t return the greeting. Instead, she asked bluntly, “Is that other man dead?”
“He is,” The Kid replied.
She glanced over her shoulder at the man who’d been on the wagon with her. He still knelt next to the first dead man. Then she looked at The Kid again and said with an intensity he hadn’t expected, “Good. I wish you’d gone ahead and killed the third one, too.”
Chapter 2
The Kid couldn’t keep his eyes from rising in surprise. She saw that and said, “You must think I’m a bloodthirsty bitch.”
“No, ma’am,” The Kid said. “I don’t know you well enough to venture an opinion either way.”
“You don’t know how they’ve been dogging our trail, either, making life miserable for us. Now Fortunato is just going to send more men after us, once the one you wounded gets back and tells him what happened.”
“Could be, ma’am.” The Kid reached up and tugged on the brim of his hat. “Good luck to the both of you.”
He started to turn the buckskin away, when she cried, “Wait!”
The Kid paused.
“Don’t you want to know what it’s all about?”
“No offense, ma’am, but I figure that’s your problem, not mine.” The Kid had just spent several months taking care of personal business that had turned bloody and heartbreaking. He wasn’t in the mood to take on anybody else’s trouble.
“You mean you’re going to just ride off and…and leave us here?”
“You don’t have to worry about those men anymore. The one who was wounded won’t bother you again. He looked like he was hit pretty hard. You should have time to get where you’re going.”
“How do you know that? You don’t know where we’re going.”
“No, I don’t,” The Kid admitted. She was a stubborn woman, and he was losing his patience. “And I don’t care, either.”
He pulled the buckskin’s head around a little harder than he intended and immediately felt bad about taking his anger out on the horse. The buckskin was a damned fine animal.
“They’re going to try to kill us again, you know!” the woman shouted at The Kid’s back. “Fortunato doesn’t want us to find it before he does!”
He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to stop and ask who Fortunato was, and what they were looking for, and why Fortunato wanted to find it first. There had been a time when he would have been very curious if he had found such a puzzle facing him. Not now, though.
The woman cried out suddenly, not in anger but in pain, and a second later, The Kid heard the faint boom of a high-powered rifle. He whirled the buckskin around and saw the woman staggering to one side, her right hand clutching her upper left arm. A crimson stain appeared under her fingers, spreading as blood welled from her arm.
The Kid’s head jerked toward the east, where some low hills rose. The sun was quartering down toward the western horizon, and its rays struck a reflection from something in those hills. A pair of field glasses, maybe…or a telescopic rifle sight.
The Kid sent the buckskin racing toward the woman. She was still stunned from being wounded. He didn’t know how bad the injury was, but he knew the next shot from that distant marksman might be fatal. He brought the horse to a sliding stop beside her, leaned down, and wrapped his left arm around her. She cried out again as he lifted her off her feet and set her in front of him.
Then he was galloping toward the wagon, and as he approached he shouted to the woman’s companion, “Get back on the wagon! Get it moving!”
Those hills were close to a mile away. That had been one hell of a shot to come as close as it had to killing the woman. The Kid knew instinctively that that had been its intent. She had said that this fella Fortunato would try again to kill them. The Kid wondered briefly if Fortunato himself was the one who’d pulled the trigger.
The woman’s traveling companion was an older man. He had taken his hat off, and his white hair shone in the sun. The Kid shouted at him again to get on the wagon and get the vehicle rolling, and this time the man gave a little shake of his head and reacted, as if he hadn’t fully understood the first time. He clapped the hat back on his head, ran to the front of the wagon, and clambered up on the seat.
The Kid’s back was to the rifleman. His skin crawled. He knew that if he was targeted and the bullet found its mark, he would never hear the shot. The bullet would travel faster than the sound of its firing. But all he could do was keep going and wait for the dreadful impact of the lead, if such was his fate.
He reached the wagon. The old man was slapping the reins against the backs of the team and shouting at the horses. They broke into a run, which rocked the old-timer back on the seat as the wagon jolted into motion. He regained his balance and started slashing at the horses’ rumps again as The Kid rode past.
The Kid thought about veering in close to the wagon and transfering the woman to the seat, but decided that was too dangerous. If she slipped, she might fall under the wagon wheels. Anyway, she was probably safer right where she was, with his body serving as a shield from any bullets that came their way.
He looked back as the buckskin pulled slightly ahead of the wagon. No matter how high-powered that rifle was, they had to be at the very outer edge of its range. At distances like that, a couple of hundred yards could make a big difference.
The Kid remembered his father, Frank Morgan, telling him about an old friend of his, a buffalo hunter named Billy Dixon, who had made a mile-long shot during an Indian fight down in Texas twenty-some-odd years earlier, shooting a chief’s horse right out from under him at that range. But that had been a spectacular shot, a once-in-a-lifetime shot, and probably more than a little bit of luck had been involved, too.
Despite the fact that he thought they were probably safe now, The Kid kept the buckskin running and waved for the old man to keep the wagon moving, too. He didn’t slow down until they had put another five hundred yards behind them. Even then he just slowed down and didn’t stop, even though he was sure they were out of range of the rifleman in the hills.
When he looked back, he saw the sun glint on something again. He knew it was probably a foolish thing to do, but he lifted a hand in a mocking wave of farewell.
Then he turned back to the woman and asked, “Are you all right?”
She didn’t answer him. Her head lolled loosely on
