Free The Loner by J.A. Johnstone Page A

cover all our bets.”
    Gant sneered and brushed his coat back. “And I’m telling you I intend to have that woman before we give her back to her husband.”
    Lasswell sighed. He read the challenge on Gant’s face and in the gambler’s stance, and he knew that he couldn’t let it go unanswered.
    With a flickering move that filled his hand and gave Gant no chance, Lasswell drew and fired.
    He was close enough so that the bullet drove Gant back a couple of steps as it thudded into his chest. Gant tried to draw, but his body was no longer following his commands. He weaved to the side and then spun off his feet, crashing to the ground.
    Lasswell stood there, apparently as casual as he had been a couple of heartbeats earlier, when Gant was still alive. Smoke curled from the barrel of the gun in his hand.
    “Let’s make it simple,” he said. “None of you are gonna bother Mrs. Browning because I say you ain’t. That plain enough for you?”
    Nobody argued, not even Carlson. A few of the men muttered agreement, and the gathering broke up, the men drifting away to see to their horses or roll a smoke or get a card game going. Lasswell told the Winchell brothers to grab some shovels and start digging. They had both Gant and Ray Duncan to bury.
    Moss came over to Lasswell, who had replaced the spent shell and pouched his iron. “I remember you now,” he said quietly. “You were part of that big feud in Texas about twenty-five years ago. Seems like I recall hearin’ something about a shoot-out in a saloon in Comanche. Fella named Lasswell downed four of the other bunch even though he had a couple of slugs in him.”
    “I’m still carryin’ around one of those slugs,” Lasswell said, “and it hurts like the dickens whenever it’s about to rain.”
    “Hell, man, you’re a gunfighter!”
    Lasswell shook his head. “Not to speak of, not when there are men like Frank Morgan still alive. That’s why I wouldn’t go into this job with just me and the boys who’d been ridin’ with me. Just the chance we might have to go up against Morgan is enough to make me mighty careful.”
    “Well, I reckon you won’t have to worry about any of them comin’ at you head-on,” Moss said. “After seein’ that draw, they won’t want to do that. Gant was a pretty slick gun-thrower, and he didn’t even clear leather.” A shadow of a smile crossed Moss’s granite face. “All you’ll have to do is watch out behind you.”
    “I always do,” Lasswell said.

Chapter 7

    After night had fallen—after what had been the longest day of his life, without a doubt—Conrad went out to the carriage house and hitched the big buckskin horse to the buggy. The animal was more than just a buggy horse; Conrad had used him as a saddle mount before and knew the buckskin had plenty of speed and stamina. He stowed his saddle in the back of the buggy, along with the Winchester and the shotgun and the coiled shell belt.
    He hoped he wouldn’t need any of those things. He hoped that he would turn the money over to the kidnappers and that they would give him Rebel in return. But if it didn’t work out that way, he was going after them. He would kill anyone who got in his way, until his wife was safe again.
    It would take about two hours to reach Black Rock Canyon, Conrad estimated. He drove out of Carson City a quarter of an hour before ten o’clock, to give himself plenty of time. The carpetbag with the fifty thousand dollars in it was at his feet.
    On his way out of town, he stopped at the Western Union office to see if there were any more messages from Claudius Turnbuckle concerning Frank Morgan, but of course there weren’t. Conrad had known there wouldn’t be. But he had checked just to make sure.
    The kidnappers had picked a good night for their evil purposes. The moon was only a thin sliver of silver in the sky, so the night was at its darkest, lit mostly by the millions of stars. They wouldn’t do much good in Black Rock