Free Bloody Season by Loren D. Estleman

behind. Dismounting before the door, Morgan Earp fisted his pistol and kicked apart the latch. But there was nothing inside to shoot except a huddled armadillo and he followed the others to the barn. It contained four caked saddle horses with their heads hanging on a floor of ammonia-smelling straw. Masterson let his rifle droop.
    “Well, we did not figure to beat them here.”
    “Any of them look familiar?” Virgil asked Paul.
    He shook his head. “I never saw their mounts.”
    Wyatt laid a hand on a shivering cow pony’s hollow flank. “I know this one. I saw Luther King riding it down Allen Street a week ago.”
    Masterson said, “It does not look to stand out that much.”
    “I’m telling you it’s King’s.”
    Virgil found a tick in his clothes and squashed it. “King is tight with Len Redfield, ain’t he?”
    “That is scarcely evidence.” Behan had just caught up, with Breakenridge behind. The sheriff’s gelding tried to pry loose a patch of trampled alfalfa from the bare earth with its muzzle.
    “I am a deputy U.S. marshal, not a judge.” Virgil mounted.
    “Stage robbery is county jurisdiction.”
    “Murder in the territory is federal. Hold your water, Johnny. You will get your slab of the glory.”
    “Johnny don’t want it,” Morgan said, grinning. “Him and the Redfields are old poker partners.”
    Len Redfield was a big man, yoke-shouldered, and balloon-knuckled from fights in the pasture and in town. He wore braces over a red-and-white-checked shirt gone pink from wearing and washing and gray dungarees glazed with dirt at the knees. He closed the door on his wife inside their whitewashed house in the lower valley and stepped off the porch to meet the riders. Wyatt got down without asking leave and the others watched Redfield’s square face darken.
    “We are looking for Luther King and the other men who tried to rob the Benson stage,” Wyatt said. “The trail leads here.”
    “Like hell it does.”
    “You are calling me a liar?”
    Redfield said, “You’re trespassing.”
    “This here is law business, Len.” Virgil stretched himself on his saddle horn.
    “I don’t know nothing about no holdups and I ain’t seen Luther this month.”
    Wyatt said, “You’re a liar.”
    The rancher’s face congested deeper and his right shoulder dropped. Wyatt turned his head, taking most of the blow along his jawline, scooped his big American out of his trousers, and laid the barrel behind Redfield’s left ear. Redfield went down, shying Virgil’s horse. Landing on his hands and knees, he started to push himself up. Virgil took his boot out of its stirrup and planted it against Redfield’s chest and shoved. The rancher sprawled on his back. Wyatt kicked him in the ribs. The snap was brittle in the clear air. He placed his foot across the fallen man’s throat and rolled back the pistol’s hammer and pointed the muzzle at his face.
    “Where is Luther King or I’ll blow your brains clear to China.”
    “Wyatt.”
    He kept his shooting arm straight and turned his head slightly. Morgan, astride his chestnut, was approaching from the corral. He had a hand wrapped around his Colt’s resting on his thigh and he was herding forward a lumpy-looking man in overalls and a dirty duster, shoving him stumbling ahead with the horse’s shoulder when he hesitated. Finally Morgan turned the horse hard and the man fell on his face with a rattling noise.
    “He dumb the far side of the corral when he saw me coming,” Morgan said. “He almost made it.”
    “Morning, Luther.” Wyatt elevated the Smith & Wesson’s muzzle and seated the hammer gently. Redfield breathed, catching his breath when his cracked rib pinched him.
    Bob Paul spurred his black in a wide loop around the corral, milling the horses around inside, and came back. “There’s two badly used animals in there,” he said.
    Belting his pistol, Wyatt left Redfield to place a heel against Luther King’s shoulder and rolled him over. Virgil