Free Renegades by William W. Johnstone Page B

pounding in his head to go away.
    Eventually he felt a lot steadier, although the anvil chorus inside his skull continued with a shattering crescendo each time his pulse beat. His ankle hurt like blazes, too. Still leaning on Stormy, he took his hand off the saddle horn and gingerly touched the side of his head above his left ear. He winced as his fingertips prodded a big goose egg coated with dried blood from the gash in his scalp.
    Frank remembered the fight with the Black Scorpion. The bandit chief had had him down and was pummeling him. That was the last thing Frank recalled. The Scorpion must have really walloped him with a rock or a gun butt, something like that.
    And then, obviously, the Black Scorpion had escaped, leaving Frank lying senseless on the ground. The bandit must have believed him to be dead; otherwise he would have finished him off.
    Blinking bleary eyes, Frank peered around. It was daylight; early in the morning, he guessed. The sky was still mostly overcast and the air was cold and dry. There were a few breaks in the clouds, however, and it was through one of those gaps that the sun had shined directly into Frank’s eyes when he tried to open them.
    He estimated that at least twelve hours had passed since the Rangers had attacked the Black Scorpion’s camp. What had happened since that time? Had the Rangers wiped out the bandidos, except for the leader who had gotten away? Frank recalled that he had knocked out one man during the fight. Maybe that man was a prisoner . . . or maybe the Rangers had killed him, too.
    And why hadn’t Wedge and the others come to look for him?
    Maybe they had, Frank told himself, and just hadn’t found him yet. They might be riding through the semiarid Mexican landscape right now, searching for him.
    Or they might figure that he had been killed in the fight. They could have turned around and ridden back to the Rio Grande, leaving him here.
    Even though he hurt like hell and had a bad ankle, Frank wasn’t too worried now about his survival. He had Stormy and Dog to keep him company and help him, he had a Winchester and plenty of rounds for it in his saddlebags, he even had some jerky and biscuits he had brought with him from the Rocking T. And as he looked around some more, he discovered that he still had his Colt, too. He spotted it lying on the ground about twenty feet away.
    Holding tightly to the reins, he hobbled over to pick up the revolver. After checking the barrel to make sure it wasn’t fouled, he slid the weapon back into leather. He found his hat, too, not far off, and hung it on the saddle horn for now. As bad as his head hurt, he didn’t want to even think about putting a hat on it.
    Now it was just a matter of getting back to the border. Once he did, he thought he could find his way to the Rocking T. They would welcome him there, and he could spend a few days recuperating from the banging around he had received.
    It bothered him that the Black Scorpion had gotten away. Even if his gang had been wiped out by the Rangers, the bandit might be able to recruit more followers, and his reign of terror along both sides of the border would continue. Frank wondered if he might be able to trail the Scorpion from this spot.
    He knew he was in no shape to be trying to track down the bandit leader, but once the thought was in his head, he couldn’t shake it. He began to look around, searching for tracks.
    It didn’t take him long to find them: the hoofprints of one horse leading toward the mountains. Grimly, Frank considered the tracks for a long moment. His ankle was sprained but not broken, he decided, and he was able to stand on it long enough to get his left foot in the stirrup and swing up onto Stormy’s back. Then he hitched the Appaloosa into a walk, following a course that paralleled the tracks left behind by the fleeing Black Scorpion.
    Frank’s stomach was empty, but he was a little queasy and thought it probably