The Devil's Badland: The Loner Read Online Free PDF Page B

canvas, but Rory wasn’t going to let that stop him from carrying out the chore his father had given him.
    As Conrad and Hamish lingered over cups of coffee, Hamish asked, “If ye don’t mind me pryin’, Mr. Browning, how did your late wife come to be buried in Val Verde?”
    “Her family lived there for a while,” Conrad explained, “and her brothers thought it would be a good place.”
    “I would have thought it would be up to ye to decide such a thing.”
    “I wasn’t available at the time,” Conrad said with a shrug. “One place is as good as another.” That might sound callous, he thought, but it was true. Where a person was buried did nothing to change the fact that he or she was dead.
    “Well, I hope that visitin’ her grave brings ye some peace,” Hamish said. “Beggin’ your pardon again, but ye have the look of a haunted man about ye.”
    That was an apt description. He had been haunted since that awful night in Black Rock Canyon. He hoped that settling the score with the people responsible for Rebel’s death would lay those ghosts to rest, but he had come to doubt it. He wasn’t sure anything would ever ease the pain.
    But he had learned to function in spite of it. He could even smile from time to time, as he did now. “I appreciate your concern, Mr. MacTavish,” he said, “but I think you have enough problems of your own to deal with, without worrying about mine.”
    Hamish sighed. “’Tis true. Whitfield will be upset that he’s lost another man.”
    “I’m the one responsible for this death,” Conrad said. “Tell Whitfield to look for me in Val Verde if he wants to take it up with me.”
    While Margaret cleaned up after breakfast James hurried back inside, an anxious expression on his face. “Riders comin’, Pa,” he reported.
    “Whitfield’s men,” Hamish guessed heavily.
    “Not just them. I think the big skookum he-wolf himself is with ’em this time.”
    Hamish scraped his chair back and stood up. He took the shotgun down from its pegs on the wall. “Let me do the talkin’,” he ordered. “I’d like to get through this without any more killin’, and you’re a bit of a hothead, James, if I do say so meself.”
    James looked like he might have argued, but Hamish was already on his way out the door. James followed, loosening the Remington in its holster on his hip as he did so.
    Conrad still sat at the table, savoring the last of the strong, black brew in his cup. Margaret came over to him and asked, “Are you going out there, Mr. Browning?”
    Conrad drained the coffee cup and sighed. “I am. But before I go, let me say thank you for breakfast, Miss MacTavish. It was mighty good.”
    Margaret blushed again, as she seemed to at every compliment. “You said it yourself,” she told him in a low voice. “This isn’t your fight.”
    “I don’t reckon Dave Whitfield will be in much of a mood to listen to explanations right now.” Conrad pushed his chair back and stood up. He hadn’t put his coat on yet, but he wore the trousers and vest from his dark gray tweed suit, along with a white shirt and a black string tie. He walked over to the open doorway and leaned a shoulder against the jamb as half a dozen men rode into the yard in front of the dugout.
    The man in the lead, who rode a big, handsome palomino, was a thick-gutted, barrel-chested hombre. A granite-like slab of jaw dominated his face. He jerked his horse to a halt, and the rough way he handled the reins made Conrad dislike him on sight.
    The other five men brought their mounts to a stop behind him. Hamish and James faced them, not backing down. Rory watched from the barn doors. Conrad knew the boy had taken his Winchester with him. The rifle was probably leaning against the wall just inside the doors, out of sight.
    The odds weren’t too bad, Conrad thought, instinctively assessing the situation and trying to figure out what would happen if gunplay broke out. They were four against six, and the four of