Free Bullets Don't Die by J. A. Johnstone

like a man who had come home after a long absence. “Are you sure I’m not the marshal anymore?”
    “That’s what everybody says,” The Kid replied. “I don’t think they’re lying.”
    “It just . . . It seems like I belong here.”
    “I know what you mean,” The Kid said.
    If somehow all his memories of the past few years faded from his mind and he could walk back into the mansion in Carson City where Conrad Browning had lived with his wife Rebel, he would have felt like he was supposed to be there, too. As if somehow nothing had changed . . .
    But it had changed. The mansion was gone, consumed by fire, and Rebel was dead. Conrad Browning was just a memory, too, and that was the way it had to be. The Kid’s last attempt to reclaim his former life had ended in failure, and he would never allow himself to be trapped like that again.
    Tate looked at the chair behind the desk. “You reckon he’d mind?”
    “I wouldn’t much care if he did.” The Kid waved a hand at the chair. “Go ahead.”
    Tate sat down, took his hat off, and placed it on the desk. He leaned back in the chair with an expression of utter satisfaction on his face.
    A swift rataplan of hoofbeats sounded in the street outside.
    Something about the hoofbeats made The Kid stiffen as tension gripped him. His hand moved toward his gun as he turned to face the door, which he and Tate had left standing partially open. Shots blasted in the night.
    The Kid twisted and blew out the lamp on the desk, plunging the office into darkness.
    “Stay here!” he told Tate.
    “But I’m the—”
    “No, you’re not! Stay here!”
    The Kid drew his gun as he moved to the door and looked out. There had been only three shots, and as he peered toward Main Street, he saw a figure on horseback had come to a stop at the corner. He couldn’t make out any details about the rider, but he felt confident the man was the one who had fired the shots.
    The man shoved something from the back of his horse. It thudded to the ground. The rider whirled his mount and galloped off.
    The shots had been to get everybody’s attention, The Kid thought. It wasn’t an attack. The man had been announcing that he was delivering something.
    The Kid had a bad feeling about what that something might be.
    He opened the door and stepped out, and as he did he heard Tate moving behind him. He was about to tell the old lawman again to stay there, but changed his mind, figuring it would be all right for Tate to come along. His instincts told him for the moment there was no danger.
    The two of them trotted toward whatever the horseman had dumped in the street. Up and down the blocks, the shots had drawn a few people out of the buildings, but nobody seemed anxious to investigate the commotion. As they got closer to the dark shape, The Kid recognized it as human, just as he’d feared.
    He holstered his gun, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the metal container of matches that had saved his life a few days earlier. He shook one of the matches from the tin and snapped it to life as he knelt beside the man lying in the street.
    Just as The Kid expected, the man was Marshal Riley Cumberland. It appeared he had gone out to the Broken Spoke just as he’d said he was going to.
    He hadn’t gotten a warm welcome, though. His face was swollen, bruised, and smeared with blood from numerous cuts and scrapes. His clothes were tattered and torn, and from the looks of them, as well as the damage to Cumberland’s body, he had been tied behind a horse and dragged over rough ground.
    But at least he was alive. Ragged breaths rasped in his throat. That was a little more than The Kid had expected. He’d thought they would find Cumberland dead when they reached his side.
    “Good Lord,” Tate muttered. “Poor hombre’s been beaten within an inch of his life. I’ll have to find out who did this.”
    “We know who—” The Kid began, then stopped. Explaining things to Tate would be a waste of time and