Free The Loner: Seven Days to Die by J.A. Johnstone

escaping.
    “That son of a bitch!”
    The Kid’s eyes snapped open at the sound of the familiar voice. He saw her standing in front of him, a look of fierce anger on her face. She wore jeans and a buckskin shirt, and her hat hung behind her head by its chin strap. Her thick blond hair fell to her shoulders and framed her beautiful face. She looked much like she had the first time he had met her, right down to the holstered six-gun strapped around her hips.
    “Rebel,” he whispered.
    “Don’t let that bastard win, Conrad. If I could, I’d plug the varmint right between the eyes. You’ll have to do it for me. Promise me you will, one of these days, Conrad.”
    “I…I promise,” The Kid husked between lips that he had bitten bloody to hold back the screams.
    She moved a step closer to him and held up a hand. “I miss you so much.” She reached toward him, as if she wanted to brush her fingers across his cheek.
    He ached for her touch, strained forward so that for the first time in more than a year, the two of them could make contact. He wished he could kiss her. He knew the sweetness of her lips would take away all his pain.
    Though they strained toward each other, she couldn’t quite seem to touch him. An expression of deep sadness came over her face.
    “I have to go now, Conrad.”
    “No!” he cried hoarsely. “No, don’t go! Don’t leave me again!” The words were in his mind. He didn’t know only incoherent croaking sounds were coming from his mouth.
    “Be strong, Conrad. Don’t let him win. You have to get out of here. You have to get out…”
    She was gone, and the strength he had drawn from the sight of her disappeared with her. Bitterness flooded through him. She hadn’t really been there at all, he realized. She hadn’t returned to him, however briefly, from beyond the wall of tragedy and death. It was all his feverish imagination. It was over, all over, and despair welled up inside him…
    Something cool touched his face.
    Something smooth and soft and comforting.
    The hand of the woman he loved.
    It was a fleeting thing, there and then gone, but it was enough. Even in his terrible state, The Kid knew some things should not be questioned, only accepted, embraced, clung to with the power of hope and love.
    His faith was restored.
    And with it came a terrible thirst for justice and vengeance.
    His head fell forward, and darkness closed around him.
    He barely heard the screams, followed by angry shouts. He had no idea what was going on, and he didn’t care. As the darkness took him, his final thought was that he wasn’t defeated. Not yet.
    Not as long as he still drew breath and still loved Rebel Callahan Browning.
    And that would be forever.

Chapter 13

    He woke up to the touch of something cool on his face, but it was a wet cloth, not ghostly fingers.
    It felt good. The Kid sighed as he embraced that slight bit of comfort and tried to ignore the terrible pains that wracked the rest of his body.
    “You’re awake, eh?” The voice belonged to the old, white-haired doctor. Thurber went on, “Just lie still, Bledsoe. You don’t want to be moving around much, and you sure as hell don’t want to roll over onto your back.”
    The Kid’s tongue felt swollen to twice its normal size as he worked it out of his mouth and swiped it over dry lips. That didn’t help much, since his tongue was parched, too, but after a moment he was able to say, “Wh-where…”
    “You’re in the infirmary,” Thurber supplied when The Kid couldn’t go on. “The warden wanted to throw you back in your cell, but I told him you’d die if he did that.”
    “Th-thanks,” The Kid whispered.
    “Oh, it wasn’t a lie. He beat you to within an inch of your life, and that inch would have slipped away without the proper care. You lost so much blood from your back and from the wound in your side that opened up again, there was a puddle of the stuff around your feet when they brought me to the whipping post. I cleaned