Free A Dangerous Man by William W. Johnstone

what’s going on.”
    Longley glanced at the black sky. “Hell of a night.”
    â€œIs the only weather in this country wind and sleet?” Sullivan asked.
    â€œI don’t know. My first time here.” Longley shivered. “It will turn to snow soon.” He looked back to the street. “They’re getting a man down from the box.”
    â€œI got a bad feeling about this. I reckon I’ll go take a looksee.” Sullivan made a little bow and extended his arm. “After you, Bill.”
    Longley thought that amusing. “I’d hardly shoot you in the back in front of all those people.”
    â€œI don’t think there’s any way of telling what you’d do, Bill,” Sullivan said.
    Longley adjusted the hang of his guns. “Damn, I just got my boots cleaned.”
    â€œWe all have a cross to bear. Lead the way, I’ll be right behind you.”
    â€œYeah? Well don’t get any ideas, bounty hunter.”
    Sullivan grinned. “Me, Bill? Why, I wouldn’t dream of putting a bullet into the back of your skull.”
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    The body lay facedown on the boardwalk and no one seemed willing to pull the arrow out of its back.
    â€œHere, I recognize that ranny.” Clem Weaver lifted the dead man’s shoulder with the toe of his boot. “Yup, it’s him all right. His name is Dan Culp, runs with a feller by the name of Jack Flood. He was here in town for a spell afore we run him out.”
    Mayor York nodded. “I remember him. Chicken thief as I recall.”
    â€œAnd a damned nuisance,” Weaver said. “He should’ve been hung fer a pest years ago.”
    â€œApaches?” Tom Archer threw the question out to everybody.
    Weaver shook his head and yanked the arrow out of Culp’s back, bringing blood, flesh, and bone with it. After a while he said, “It’s Ute. And it’s a war arrow, judging by the strap iron head. If’n the savages had been hunting, they’d have used flint.”
    â€œWhat the hell are Utes doing this far south?” York said. “They never come this far into Apache country.”
    â€œLong time ago, they took a notion to mount winter raids against the Apaches. The Ute are friends with the Jicarilla and they know the young bucks like to hole up with their womenfolk and young’uns in the cold weather, then raid into Old Mexico come spring. That’s how come the Utes figure December is a good month for hoss stealing.” Weaver nodded at the Culp’s body. “And that’s how come he’s dead. Must’ve bumped into the Utes while they was out conducting business.”
    â€œI say we mount a punitive expedition,” Archer said quickly, his anger showing. “Make those damned savages pay for killing a white man.”
    The storeowner was met with blank stares and a stony silence.
    Weaver said, “Tom, Ute warriors are fellers you don’t want to tangle with. They’re mean as hell and don’t know when to quit.”
    â€œSeems like you’re on your own again, Mr. Archer,” Lisa York said.
    Sullivan who’d been listening to the talk, wondered what she meant by that, then dismissed it from his mind.
    Even at that late hour and in the middle of a sleet storm, she was so dazzlingly pretty that the big bounty hunter’s breath caught in his throat. Amid the gray night, surrounded by gray buildings, torn by a gray storm from a gray sky, Lisa York burned like a candle flame that lit up the gray recesses of his soul.
    He admitted to himself that he’d . . . no, not loved her . . . but certainly admired her from the first moment he’d seen her. But she’d never even glanced at him or acknowledged that he was alive.
    He vowed to change that just as soon as he could.
    â€œWe’ll bury this man in the morning.” Mayor York looked around him. “Jim, can we put him in your icehouse for the