Free Savage Thunder by Johanna Lindsey Page B

be taken up with his search. And with the way his luck was going, the search would probably take him through a number of saloons too before he was done, where the chancesof trouble coming his way were always greatest. In his present mood, he didn’t particularly care.
     
    Billy Ewing ran a nervous hand through his golden-brown hair before pouring another shot of the Forty-rod the Oriental Bar and Gambling Saloon served as whiskey, aptly named since you weren’t expected to get more than forty rods before paralysis set in. He was in deep shit and knew it, but couldn’t think of any way to get out of it without getting his head blown off. He had thought the Oriental would be the last place his new “friend” would show up, since Wyatt Earp was part owner of this particular establishment, and one of the things he had just discovered was the feud going on between the Earp brothers and the Clanton gang. But there weren’t any Earps around just now, and Billy Clanton, the youngest of the Clanton brothers and his new friend, had found him anyway.
    How deceiving appearances could be, but how would anyone who didn’t know better have guessed that young Clanton, who couldn’t be more than sixteen if he was even that, was already a cold-blooded killer? Christ.
    Billy had met Clanton in Benson, and upon discovering they were both heading for Tombstone the next day, they had decided to ride together. Billy had been grateful for the company of someone with knowledge of the area, even more grateful for the job offered him at the Clanton Ranch near Galeyville. He knew ranching thanks to all the summers he had spent up in Wyoming with his sister, and he definitely neededa job, since his money had just about run out. But his ignorance had really come through on this one. He had tried pretending he was something he wasn’t, hadn’t asked the questions he should have, and found himself hired on, not to a ranch, but to a gang of cattle rustlers and stage and pack-train robbers. The ranch near Galeyville was merely their headquarters.
    A couple of miners who worked the Mountain Maid Mine and had seen him ride in with Clanton had smartened him up that very first night in town. Not that he was willing to take their word for it. But anyone he asked after that told him about the same thing. The Clanton gang had been operating in this area for years, and also clashing with the authorities in Tombstone because of it. They were still known by the same name even though Old Man Clanton, who had started the gang, had been killed a few months ago, leaving Curly Bill Brocius in charge.
    Besides Bill Brocius and the three brothers, Ike, Finn, and Billy Clanton, there were other well-known members of the gang who were also well-known troublemakers here in Tombstone. John Ringo was one, known to have participated in the Mason County War down in Texas before joining the gang, and who had not long ago killed Louis Hancock in an Allen Street saloon. Frank and Tom McLaury were also members whose names came up frequently. And Billy Claiborne, another young glory-hunter, who insisted he be called Billy the Kid now that the real Kid was dead. Claiborne had killed three men already for laughing at such grandstanding, and Ike and the McLaury brothers broke him out of the San Pedro jailjust the other night after being arrested for that third killing.
    Young Billy Clanton had been involved in what was now being called the Guadalupe Canyon Massacre, which had led to his father’s death. Ewing had really heard an earful about that particular deed of the Clantons. The gang had attacked a mule train that was freighting silver bullion through the Chiricahua Range in July of this year, slaughtering the nineteen Mexicans leading the train. Old Man Clanton died a few weeks later when friends of the dead muleteers ambushed him and some of his gang as they were leading a stolen Mexican herd back through those same mountains. Young Clanton had missed that deadly encounter,