A Wanted Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

heal, no matter what the preachers said.
    Today Gideon laid a letter at the base of Rose’s headstone.
    “It’s from a college back east,” he told her quietly. “Pa went and signed me up for it.” He paused, frowned. “I don’t even like school that much, but I guess I’m good at it. Pa and Ruby say nothing worthwhile can come of my staying here, once I finish up my lesson-work this spring.”
    A flicker of motion at the edge of Gideon’s vision interrupted his speech before he could get to the part that sorrowed him most—he knew he’d have to go, and that would mean he couldn’t pay Rose any visits for a long time.
    A rider sat watching him from the road. His horse was a gelded pinto, and his boots were good, probably handmade in Mexico. He wore a hat pulled down low over his brow, and a pistol, butt forward, showed where he’d pushed back one side of his long black coat, so it caught behind the holster.
    Gideon took in all those things in the space of an instant, but they weren’t what caught his attention. Something in the stranger’s countenance sent a thrill through Gideon, made him rise slowly to his full height.
    The man resettled his hat, briefly revealing a head of straw-colored hair. Then he nudged the horse into motion with the heels of his boots and rode along the length of the picket fence.
    “Strange place for a grave,” he said, drawing up close to where Gideon stood. His eyes were almost the same shade of blue as Pa’s were, Gideon noted, and his mouth was like his ma’s had been—still, but ready to smile. Not that Gideon rightly recollected his mother; she’d died when he was born, and he’d only seen one likeness of her, a faded old picture tucked between the pages of a Bible.
    Gideon stiffened, gestured toward the cemetery flanking the small church. “Nobody in there’s got a better marker than my sister, Rose,” he told the rider. His heart was beating fast and, cold as it was, sweat tickled the skin between his shoulder blades.
    “I didn’t know you had a sister,” the stranger said quietly.
    Gideon straightened his spine. He wasn’t afraid of the man. Standing on the ground, not sitting a horse, he’d be no taller than Gideon, but he was older, and seasoned, if the easy way he wore his gun was any indication. “I reckon there’s a lot you don’t know about me, mister,” he said, intrigued.
    The rider grinned. “I know a little more than you probably think I do,” he said, shifting in the saddle, standing briefly in the stirrups as if to stretch his legs. “Your name is Gideon…Payton. You’re sixteen years old. Ponder it a bit, and you’ll realize that you’ve seen me before.”
    That little hesitation before he said “Payton”—what did that mean?
    And Gideon did recall a previous encounter, a shadowy glimpse that teased at the edges of his memory but wouldn’t show itself.
    “Who are you?” he asked bluntly.
    “I call myself Rowdy Rhodes,” the man answered.
    “And I’m your brother.”
    Gideon had known he had brothers, but he hadn’t been able to get much more than that out of his pa. They were all older than he was, but he couldn’t have said how many of them there were, or recited their names with any certainty. Now one of them was sitting right in front of him.
    “You call yourself Rowdy Rhodes? If you’re my brother, you ought to be a Payton, not a Rhodes. And what the hell kind of name is Rowdy, anyhow?”
    Rhodes chuckled and leaned forward in the saddle, resting one forearm on the pommel. “One that suits me just fine,” he said. “Are you still in school, Gideon?”
    Gideon glanced at the letter lying in front of Rose’s gravestone, and wished he hadn’t. Rhodes made him uneasy, with his watchful, knowing eyes, and yet Gideon wanted to know all about him. “I’ll be going away to college, come autumn.” He swallowed. “I mean to be an engineer. Maybe work for the railroad.”
    “Now, that’s ironic,” Rhodes said