Billy the Kid Read Online Free PDF

widowed papa, the judge.
    Billy was almost as good with horses and rounding up cattle as he was with guns. He got into a rodeo up in Prescott when he was twelve, in the junior competition, and the newspaper said, "Keep an eye on this kid; he rides like he has glue on his bottom." He'd inherited his mother's good looks but not her Irish red hair and green eyes. He had a large portion of her wry sense of humor, and it had gotten him into trouble on numerous occasions.
    His thoughts wandered back to Willie, and he smiled beneath the hat brim, remembering him warmly.
    Oh hell,
Billy thought. Then he solemnly promised himself he'd look Willie up the next time he was anywhere near the Verdes. No matter if it was twenty years hence.
    A barn came into distant view and Billy suddenly remembered a day when he was about twelve. He'd often wished he'd had a picture of that day. Willie had thrown a bucket of whitewash at the same time Billy had slammed a cow pie into Willie's face.
Fwwwwwhap!
Willie with green mush all over his face, Billy dripping whitewash. They both rolled in the dirt, laughing. Those were fine boyhood days.
    Then he had another funny memory, and forgetting he was still ironed to Perry, he slapped his knee, jerking Perry's forearm. Perry lunged around, slamming both arms to the seat back ahead, pop-eyed with anger. He snarled quietly, "Do that agin an' I'll trow you crost this car."
    For a few seconds, Billy's eyes were icy, but then he fought down his temper. "We'd go together, pardner," he murmured. Some skin had come off his own wrist, he knew. "Behave yourself," he added softly.
    Reaching the edge of a wide green flat, the train had begun to pick up speed. Then the whistle hooted with urgency. There was a fire on the track ahead.
    ***
    THE STACK OF PUNK-DRY cordwood, piled eight feet or more and doused with coal oil, flamed and crackled, sending up sheets of flecked brown smoke. It straddled the tracks. The wood was stashed at fifty-mile intervals for feeding the always-hungry tenders of the SF, P&P trains.
    Joe was having trouble mounting again. His black big-rumped mare was spooking, eyes dancing with fear of the flames.
    "Now?" Joe shouted anxiously, looking at his father. He whipsawed the frightened mare another thirty or forty feet from the fire.
    Art, on the loose dirt bank above the tracks, where he impassively watched the train draw closer, yelled back, "I'll let you know." He had a long tether on an extra pair of good saddle horses for Billy and Perry, and he cursed at the animals to hold still as smoke dirtied the sky over the plateau. A rolled-up burlap bag to hold the loot was strapped to the saddle of one horse. Billy had sold his roan in Wickenburg.
    Art had begun to worry about this job, mainly because of Billy. That Billy, as good as he was with a gun, as cool a boy as he was, had an unpredictable streak in him. A man like that couldn't really be trusted for work like this. At the last moment, he might change his mind. Perry and Joe were right. He'd been a fool to take Billy. He might have to kill him.
Later!
    Usually, Art preferred simplicity. His liking, over two uncaught years in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico, was to look it over, lay out an escape route, make sure fresh horses were thirty miles ahead, then use guns and dynamite to do the rest. Fancy schemes like this one were apt to go wrong. Yet he could only blame himself. He'd just gotten tired of doing things the same old way.
    As the whistle hooted again, worry etched Art's face.
Worst mistake of all,
he now thought,
was talking Billy into that fool deputy sheriff getup.
No, maybe his own idea of having Perry go along as a prisoner was worse. No matter, it was an idiot's plan. Not clean and simple.
    As much as anything, he felt he'd lost control. Billy and Perry were supposed to take care of the gun-toting conductor in Wickenburg, make sure he didn't get on the train. Yet there was no guarantee he wasn't aboard. Billy had also made