.45-Caliber Desperado Read Online Free PDF

toss.
    They landed on the gallows near Cuno, who froze as he stared, lower jaw slack, at the beautiful skewbald paint stallion that had stopped before him in a twisting broil of sand-colored dust. The paint shook its head and twitched its ears, stomping one rear hoof in the dirt and blowing.
    Cuno blinked, certain that Zimmerman had given his brain such a pounding he was only seeing what he wanted to see. His own horse, his own prized stallion, couldn’t be standing here before him.
    â€œRenegade . . . ?”
    Another horse, a chestnut bay, galloped toward him. This one carried the Mexican girl who’d been in the guard tower. She drew up before the gallows, and dimpled her cheeks in a grin. Wisps of dark-brown hair clung to her tanned, dusty, pretty face.
    â€œYou just gonna stare at that horse, gringo?” said Camilla, jerking her shoulders back and thrusting her breasts out as she canted her head toward the open gates. “Or you gonna ride that cayuse the hell out of here?”

4
    CUNO SHUTTLED HIS befuddled gaze between the horse and the girl once more, vaguely wondering if the Pit had driven him mad.
    But then before he realized it, he’d grabbed the reins and bolted off his heels and into the saddle that felt familiar and comfortable beneath him. His old saddle. His horse . . . the skewbald paint he’d bought after he’d sold his father’s business and lit out on the vengeance trail after Anderson and Spoon.
    He and the horse had dusted many trails together, chasing or being chased. The cavalry had confiscated Renegade at Camp Collins, when Cuno had been taken into custody under the watchful eye of Sheriff Dusty Mason, and that had been the last he’d seen of Michelle Trent, the Lassiter children, and Camilla (had she ever told him her last name?) . . . until now.
    Cuno reined the horse toward the girl, who watched him a little skeptically, no doubt a little repelled by his swollen and purpled nose and eyes. He blinked, frowned. “You came for me?”
    She smiled a little sadly. “I am sorry it took so long.”
    Cuno looked around at the men of her gang milling on horseback, dust rising in the morning sunshine around their pintos, bays, mixed Arabians, and paint mustangs, the guards standing against the barracks walls holding their hands high above their heads. Rifles thundered as several of the guards were shot, sent bouncing off the barrack walls or, in one case, flying into the large stone water trough in the center of the yard. A few of the prisoners were killed, as well.
    It appeared to be payback time all around for Camilla’s men.
    The warden continued to grunt and groan as he stared up at Cuno and Camilla, fury in his eyes.
    â€œYou can run,” he seethed through his dusty mustache, pewter-gray hair flopping down above his left eye. He shuttled his glare from Cuno to Camilla. “But the army will hunt you like the Mexican dogs you are.”
    Camilla carried a Schofield .44 in a black shoulder holster. As more rifles cracked around her, she drew the big hogleg, rocked the hammer back, and brought it to bear on the warden, whose eyes suddenly lost their bravado.
    â€œHold on.” Cuno swung gingerly but quickly out of his saddle, walked over, and used his bare right foot to kick the warden onto his back. He stared down at the man, fists tightly clenched at his sides. “I want the honors.”
    â€œNo,” the warden mewled, grinding the heels of dusty brogans into the dirt and trying to crawl away backward. “Please, I . . . I’m only doin’ my job.”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    Cuno leaned down, threw the right flap of the man’s gray serge jacket back, and slid the big bowie from its sheath. It was the only weapon he carried, and he didn’t mind using it willy-nilly, his armed men backing his cowardly play.
    â€œGo ahead,” Camilla said when she saw that Cuno was hesitating. “Cut the