Free The Killing Shot by Johnny D. Boggs Page B

was aware of it, too. He also knew Pardo planned to make this Reilly’s last ride. It had taken them more than three hours to pick their way down the mountains, through the forests and creek beds, riding in silence, but finally they had moved into the clear desert.
    â€œWhere are we going?” Reilly asked.
    â€œNowhere in particular,” Pardo said, but he jutted his jaw southeast toward a spartan wasteland of rock. Reilly looked at him, frowning at the Evans rifle in Pardo’s scabbard. He nudged the sorrel forward.
    Down here, it was murderously hot. They should have stopped, rested, watered their horses, but Pardo went like a mad dog, moving, moving, moving. Reilly wet his lips, trying to figure out where he had gone wrong, what he had said. He had been born in Johnson County. His answer had been a slip, but he had, or thought he had, gotten away with it. Johnson County, Indiana, but Pardo thought he had meant Missouri. The rest of the lies weren’t really lies. Paul McGivern had taken a rebel ball through both lungs at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, but he had been campaigning with 11th Indiana—Slim Chisum had served in the First Missouri, seldom shut up about “seeing the elephant” at what the Rebels called Shiloh—and when Reilly’s mother had learned of Paul’s death, she gave up any effort at living. The next fall, Reilly had buried her on the farm beside Reilly’s father, who had been struck and killed by lightning when Reilly was only twenty-one months old.
    He was barely in his teens when his mother had died. He’d been on his own since.
    What had he said to Pardo?
    No, it didn’t matter. What mattered was staying alive. But how?
    Pardo pulled back on the reins, letting Reilly move in front of him. Reilly looked for an arroyo, some boulders, something he could use for cover. Also, he listened, for the creak of leather, the click of a gunmetal. Instead, he heard Pardo’s voice behind him.
    â€œRein up, Mac. And turn around.”
    Reilly pulled the reins, turned in the saddle, saw Pardo slowly drawing the Evans from the scabbard. He said nothing, just looked. “I need to test out this here rifle.” Pardo grinned.
    â€œOn me,” Reilly said.
    â€œThat’s right. You ain’t surprised?”
    Reilly said nothing.
    â€œYou said it was Apaches,” Pardo jacked a cartridge into the Evans.
    â€œIt was Apaches.”
    â€œThat’s a damned lie. Apaches been no trouble of late.”
    â€œThey jumped the reservation.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œEver been to San Carlos?”
    Pardo shook his head.
    â€œI have.”
    â€œThen you know Apaches, Mac. Problem is, I know them, some. And I can read sign. Whoever waylaid you, they was on shod horses. Injuns don’t ride shod ponies.”
    â€œApaches ride what they can steal.”
    â€œThem dead marshals wasn’t scalped.”
    Reilly tried to match Pardo’s grin. “You know Apaches. You know they don’t take scalps.”
    â€œBut they wouldn’t have left you alive, Mac. Not no Apache. They would have had their fun on you, my friend.”
    Now, Reilly chuckled. “I don’t speak Apache,” he said, “but from what I heard, those Apaches seemed to think they were having some fun. Leaving me in that can to bake.”
    Lying had always come pretty easy to Reilly. It helped him win more than he lost when he sat down to play poker, and it had gotten him a deputy’s job when he had told Marshal Tidball that he had never spent time in jail.
    â€œNice story, Mac.” Pardo raised the rifle to his shoulder. “But Major Ritcher would have told me if Apaches was on the prod.”
    Reilly dived off the horse just before a shot left his ears ringing. He hit the ground, rolled, hearing another shot, and another, hearing the sickening wail of a dying horse, then Pardo’s cursing. More gunfire. Even a man with an Evans