The Loner: The Blood of Renegades (20 page)

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Authors: J. A. Johnstone

Tags: #Fiction, #General

BOOK: The Loner: The Blood of Renegades
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Chapter 37
 
Conrad lunged to his feet and started toward the cabins, but Kingman exclaimed, “Browning! Don’t leave me here! I need to get down there, too.”
Conrad hesitated, but only for a second. Grabbing hold of Kingman’s arm he lifted the man to his feet. Their horses were nearby, looking a little spooked but not panicking. Kingman’s ride would hurt like hell with that bad leg, but it was his choice.
Conrad’s brain was racing as he helped him mount up, then swung into the saddle himself. One: He might need Kingman’s gun. Two: He had told the guards to gather the men from the valley at that end of the pass in case any of the avenging angels made it through the avalanche. Three: They weren’t here. Four: Something had happened to stop them from coming.
Something . . . or some
one
.
“They found another way in!” Kingman shouted over the pounding hoofbeats of their horses.
Conrad nodded. He had figured it out already. Fearing a trap, Hissop had split his forces, sending some of the avenging angels to their deaths in the pass while he and Leatherwood circled around with the rest of the men and entered the valley by another route. They had taken Ollie and the other defenders by surprise, although that smattering of gunshots testified that some of the men had been able to put up a fight.
However, the gunfire had stopped, leaving an ominous silence hanging over the valley, a silence broken only by the swift rataplan of hoofbeats from the horses being ridden by Conrad and Kingman.
Dust continued to billow out of the pass behind and above them as they raced toward the cabins. Conrad suddenly hauled back on the reins. In the large open area in front of the burned ruins of Kingman’s cabin, two figures stood. One was tall and slender, wore a skirt, and had long blond hair that flowed far down her back. The other figure was shorter and stockier and even from that distance gave off an air of ugly menace. Elder Agonistes Hissop had his left arm clenched tightly around Selena’s waist, while his right hand held a long-barreled revolver that he prodded into her side.
Kingman had brought his horse to a stop in shock, too. He whispered, “No . . .”
“Come on!” Hissop called to them. “Come closer and see what your sins have wrought! Come and face the judgment and wrath of the Lord!”
“You’re not the Lord!” Kingman shouted back in a choked voice. “You’re just a man! A twisted, evil little man!”
Selena cried out as Hissop pressed the gun barrel harder into her side. “I’ll kill this harlot who dared to defy God’s will! I swear I will, unless you do as I say!”
“Play along with him,” Conrad said quietly as his gaze darted over the settlement. He didn’t see anyone moving around, but he spotted a couple rifle barrels sticking around cabin corners. Hissop’s men must have herded all the prisoners into one place, most likely the barn. Scattered around, the followers covered the little fanatic as he threatened Selena.
“If we ride up there he’ll kill us,” Kingman said.
“If we don’t, he’s liable to kill Selena. He’s crazy enough to do it.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Kingman muttered. He hitched his horse into a slow walk toward Hissop and Selena. Conrad rode alongside him.
“That’s far enough!” Hissop said when they were about twenty feet away. Both men reined in. They were close enough Conrad could see Selena was trembling a little in Hissop’s grasp. Her eyes were wide with terror, but there was something else in them as well. After a second, Conrad recognized it as anger. She was filled with outrage that once again Father Agony was trying to control her life.
“How did you get in here?” Kingman demanded. “This is our home!”
Hissop laughed. “You have no home, boy! You are an outcast. You are the banished! God has turned His face away from you, and you are forced to flee from the garden!”
“Juniper Canyon is about as far from the Garden of Eden as any place I can imagine,” Kingman shot back. “And you’re about as far from God. More like the Devil.”
“Don’t blaspheme any worse than you already have,” Hissop warned. “On the other hand, your soul is already damned to eternal torment in the fiery pit, so what more harm can you do? As for how I and the other servants of the Lord got into this valley of yours . . . you pitiful young fool, do you think you’re the only one who’s ever been here? I explored every foot of this territory before the angels of the Lord led me to Juniper Canyon! I knew this valley was here long before you did, and I know every way in and out of it. It was child’s play to come around from the other direction, enter the valley, and take your men by surprise.”
Kingman frowned. “But I don’t understand. If you knew this valley was here, why did you settle in Juniper Canyon? The water and the soil and the grass are all better over here. This is paradise!”
“Of course it is!” Hissop cried. “Do you think I wanted a ready-made paradise for my people? How would they ever learn to appreciate what God has given them if they didn’t have to struggle for it? I looked at this place and saw nothing but Satan’s temptation! I looked at Juniper Canyon and saw how hard work could transform it into a place where my people could live and make their homes without ever taking anything for granted. I saw a place that would be ours because we fought the Indians and the elements and the earth itself for everything that it gave us!”
Oddly enough, Conrad could see Hissop’s point. He didn’t agree with it, necessarily, but he could understand why the elder had felt that way all those decades ago when he had established his community in Juniper Canyon, rather than in the lush valley on the other side of the salt flats. That wasteland must have represented a stark division to him.
“You’re a madman,” Kingman said. “What are you going to do now?”
“Why, I’m going to carry out the Lord’s will, of course,” Hissop declared. “You and all the rest of your sinful followers must be made examples of. You’ll be taken back to Juniper Canyon and executed. The two Gentiles we’ll kill here. They won’t set foot in our home again. As for the women, Sisters Dora, Rachel, and Caroline will be returned to their families and given in marriage to their intended husbands. This one”—Hissop dug the gun in Selena’s side again, making her gasp—“has been too defiled to ever be a proper wife for a prophet. I tried to overlook her sins, I really did, but I cannot. She will live among us as one shunned, a servant who will never be spoken to or acknowledged, for the rest of her days. It is a fitting punishment,” Hissop added piously.
Kingman looked like he was about to rave some more, but Conrad cut him off by asking, “Where’s Leatherwood?” He hadn’t seen the leader of the avenging angels, and it was hard for him to believe Leatherwood wouldn’t be front and center with Hissop, gloating over the elder’s triumph.
A look of sadness came over Hissop’s toad-like face. “That valiant warrior in the Lord’s service has gone to his reward. Jackson insisted on accompanying his men through the pass, even though we suspected there might be an ambush. We didn’t expect anything as craven as the mass murder you committed here today, though.”
Conrad hadn’t spotted Leatherwood during those few minutes of bloody chaos in the pass. He hadn’t been leading the charge, but his horse could have fallen behind some of the others. If he had been in the middle of the pack, Conrad wouldn’t have seen him.
“Jackson Leatherwood’s death is one more sin for which the Lord will exact vengeance,” Hissop went on. “And the time for that vengeance has come. You men throw your guns aside. We have a long ride back to Juniper Canyon.”
Before Conrad and Kingman could even start to follow that order—which they probably wouldn’t have, anyway—Selena said in a loud, clear voice, “Don’t do it, Dan. Don’t give up.”
“But Selena . . .” Kingman’s voice was twisted from the strain he was under. “He’ll kill you. He’s loco enough to do it.”
Hissop’s chin jutted out defiantly. “I am the living embodiment of God’s will, that is all!”
“Let him kill me,” Selena said. “Better yet, you do it. Or you, Conrad. Draw your guns, kill me, and then kill him. He has to be stopped, even if it costs my life, all of our lives. Kill me, so he dies, too.”
Kingman shook his head. “I . . . I can’t do it.”
A smug smile stretched across Hissop’s face. “Of course you cannot. I am under divine protection. The angels watch over me and protect me—”
Suddenly, Selena let out a scream and twisted violently in Hissop’s grip. He couldn’t hold her. Both her hands wrapped around the gun barrel and wrenched it away from her side. She wrestled the weapon out of his hand and grabbed the butt, slipping her finger through the trigger guard.
Instead of turning the gun on Hissop, she lifted it toward her own head, crying, “Daniel, I love you! Kill him!”
“Selena, no!” Kingman sent his horse plunging forward.
He was too late. The gun roared and flew out of Selena’s hands as the impact of the bullet drove her backward off her feet.
Chapter 38
 
Conrad knew the other gunmen were more dangerous than Hissop, who was disarmed at the moment and not that much of a fighting man to begin with.
But he also knew the avenging angels would hesitate to shoot if the elder was in the line of fire, so he drove his horse forward and left the saddle in a diving tackle, catching the fleeing Hissop around the waist and pushing him to the ground. Conrad crashed down on top of the smaller man and pulled his gun.
“Hold your fire!” he shouted as he pointed the Colt at Hissop and eared back the hammer. His thumb was all that kept it from falling. Even if the avenging angels riddled him with bullets, the gun in his hand would go off and splatter Hissop’s brains all over the ground.
Conrad looked at Kingman and Selena. Kingman had flung himself out of his saddle, fallen to his knees, and gathered up Selena’s limp body in his arms. Her head hung back so Conrad could see the bloody streak along her temple. Tears rolled down Kingman’s face as he moaned, “No, no, no, please, God, no!”
“Kingman!” Conrad said sharply. “Dan! Listen to me! I think she’s just creased. She’s still breathing, Kingman!”
Kingman blinked and shook his head as Conrad’s urgent words finally got through to him. He looked down at the wound on Selena’s head, then lowered his ear to her chest and listened with a tense, hopeful expression on his face. After a moment he let out a whoop and jerked his head up.
“She’s alive! I hear her heart beating!”
“Get her out of here,” Conrad said in a low, compelling tone. “There’s no time to waste. Get her to cover, now.”
The avenging angels were holding their fire for the moment because of the threat to Hissop, but that might not last. He had been stunned when Conrad tackled him, and so far he was just lying there, semiconscious. When his wits came back to him, he might order his men to shoot anyway, even if it meant he wouldn’t survive. He was crazy enough to do such a thing.
Staggering because of his wounded leg, Kingman struggled to his feet with Selena cradled in his arms. He stumbled toward some trees about fifty yards away. The cabins would have provided better cover, but there was no way of knowing which ones the avenging angels were lurking behind.
As soon as Kingman reached the trees with Selena, Conrad raised his voice and called, “Listen to me, you men! Come out in the open now and throw down your guns, or I’ll kill Hissop!”
From behind one of the cabins, a man called, “You shoot him and you’ll be full of lead a second later, mister!”
“I know that,” Conrad replied calmly, “but Hissop will still be dead. It’s your choice.”
Conrad heard muttering from the men but couldn’t predict what they might do. At that moment, Hissop tipped the balance by starting to squirm. The elder jerked his head up and yelled, “Kill him! Kill the Gentile!”
Conrad threw himself to the side, knowing the avenging angels would follow Hissop’s order. Guns roared and bullets whipped past him as he desperately rolled for the nearest cover—the ruins of Kingman’s cabin. A shot blasted closer and a slug burned along the top of his arm as he surged to his feet. Hissop had scrambled on all fours over to the long-barreled revolver Selena had taken from him and then dropped. He clutched it in both hands and fired as he knelt in the dirt. Conrad felt the wind-rip of the bullet pass his ear as he triggered two swift shots in return.
Still on his knees, Hissop bent over backwards as both bullets drove into his chest. He came up again, like a doll that refuses to be tipped over, but blood welled from his mouth and the gun in his hands sagged. The weapon went off a final time as he pitched forward on his face, the bullet flying harmlessly into the ground.
Conrad caught only a glimpse of Hissop’s final seconds of life. As the elder was dying, Conrad was flinging himself behind what was left of the foundation of Kingman’s cabin. The smell of ashes and charred wood was sharp and unpleasant. He had hated that smell ever since his house in Carson City had burned down following Rebel’s murder.
The avenging angels stopped shooting, shocked to see Hissop’s lifeless body. He had believed he was protected from harm by his status as a prophet, and surely some of the avenging angels had believed that, too.
But it wouldn’t keep them from trying to exact vengeance, Conrad thought. Taking advantage of the lull he thumbed fresh cartridges into the empty chambers of his gun’s cylinder. With a full wheel, he waited for the attack he knew wouldn’t be long in coming.
It wasn’t. Men darted out from behind cabins, firing as they came, and charged toward the burned-out cabin. Conrad lifted himself enough to return the fire and saw at least a dozen men coming toward him with guns blazing. He could stop a few of them—in fact, he knocked a couple off their feet with his first two shots—but he couldn’t prevent them from overrunning his position and killing him.
Kingman pitched in, firing from the trees where he had retreated with Selena, but he was a little too far away to be very effective with a handgun. Once Conrad was taken care of, the avenging angels would go after him and probably kill all the prisoners in a frenzy of revenge. Before the morning was over, Paradise Valley would more likely be Slaughter Valley.
Conrad drew a bead and spilled another man with a well-placed shot, then heard shouts and the whipcrack of a rifle. Glancing toward the barn, his heart leaped as Ollie Barnstabble emerged from the building with a rifle in his hands and fired again. The bullet smashed between the shoulder blades of one of the avenging angels and drove him forward on his face, where he landed in a limp, lifeless sprawl. More men raced out of the barn, firing handguns and rifles.
The prisoners had gotten free! They joined the battle, making the odds a lot more even. Through swirling clouds of dust and gunsmoke, Conrad caught a glimpse of Arturo firing a shotgun, cutting down two of the avenging angels. Leaping to his feet Conrad ran toward the fight. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kingman hobbling into battle as well.
Orange tongues of flame flew from gun barrels. Conrad whirled through the chaos, firing until the hammer of his gun clicked on an empty chamber. As one of the duster-clad avenging angels loomed up in front of him, Conrad crashed his revolver down on the man’s head. The big hat absorbed some of the blow, but not enough to keep the man from collapsing, out cold. Conrad picked up the rifle the man dropped and brought it to his shoulder. His first shot with the Winchester drilled a gunman through the head.
He found himself standing with Kingman, Arturo, and Ollie as three men who had managed to get mounted suddenly charged them on horseback. The four of them stood their ground and fired at the same time, the shots ripping out in a concerted volley of lead that scythed through the avenging angels and swept them off their saddles. Three lifeless, shredded bodies thudded to the ground.
And just like that, it was over. An eerie, echoing silence settled over the battleground as tendrils of powdersmoke floated here and there, carried lazily on the breeze.
Conrad looked over at Arturo and Ollie and saw they were both bleeding from minor wounds but appeared to be all right otherwise. A glance the other way told him Kingman was barely staying on his feet. “Ollie, help Dan. Selena’s back in those trees. He can show you. She’s hurt, but I think she’ll be all right. Arturo, you and I had better check on Hissop’s men. We don’t want any surprises.”
Arturo broke open the Greener, took out the empty shells, and slid in two fresh ones. “No, we certainly don’t.” He closed the shotgun with a sharp
clack
.
“You’re turning into a real triggerite.” Conrad told him with a weary smile as they made sure all the avenging angels were either dead, unconscious, or too badly wounded to pose a threat.
“I’ve had an exceptional teacher.”
Only three avenging angels were still alive, and one was gut-shot and wouldn’t live much longer. Conrad had some of the men from Paradise Valley tie up the other two. “Don’t kill them. You’re going to need somebody to send back to Juniper Canyon with an offer of a truce.”
“Do you really think those people will agree to that?” Arturo asked.
“I think they might. Hissop and Leatherwood were the ones holding everything together over there, and they’re both dead. If Kingman offers to leave them alone and everybody lets everybody else live in peace from now on, they might accept it. If they don’t . . .” Conrad shrugged. “Nobody will be coming through the pass anymore. Kingman needs to find all the other ways in and out of the valley and make sure they’re guarded all the time.”
“That sounds like a rather nerve-wracking way to live.”
“People on the frontier have been doing things like that for a long time. It’s part of the price folks pay for freedom.”
They walked to the cabin Kingman and Selena had been using. Ollie was cleaning the wound on Kingman’s leg.
“Selena’s in bed. She’ll probably have a pretty bad headache when she wakes up, and she’ll have to take it easy for a few days, but I think she’ll be all right. The bullet barely clipped her head.”
“She was trying to kill herself, so she’d be out of the way and we could take care of Hissop,” Conrad said. “She thought she was about to die. Kingman, what was the last thing she said?”
Kingman grimaced and looked down at his bloody leg. “That she loved me,” he admitted.
Actually, the very last thing she’d said was a plea for them to kill Hissop, Conrad thought, but that was close enough. “That’s right. I hope you know you don’t have anything to worry about where Selena and I are concerned. You can forget any kind of crazy notion about having some sort of showdown with me.”
“I already have,” Kingman said. “Blast it, you saved my life out there in the pass . . .
again!
I can’t very well have a shoot-out with you now.”
“You’d lose if you did,” Arturo pointed out. “Mr. Browning is quite the triggerite.”
“You like that word, don’t you?” Conrad asked.
“It has a certain ring to it.”
Conrad laughed and turned back to the others. “How did you get loose, Ollie?”
“Well, Elder Hissop left three men watchin’ us when he went out with the others to wait for you and Dan. Turned out that wasn’t enough. When all the shootin’ started, they got distracted, and I was able to jump a couple of ’em and bang their heads together. I guess I banged ’em a little too hard. They’re both dead.”
“A well-deserved fate,” Arturo said. “While Ollie was doing that, the third guard took a shot at him and put that crease in his side, but I and a couple other prisoners were able to overpower him. Somehow in the struggle the man was fatally wounded with his own gun. We took their weapons and came to take part in the altercation.”
Conrad nodded. “It’s a good thing you did. Another thirty seconds and they would have been shooting me full of holes.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Arturo said. “You would have thought of some clever method of turning the situation to your advantage, sir. You always do.”
Conrad appreciated the vote of confidence, but he knew Arturo was wrong. He didn’t have any sort of divine protection any more than Agonistes Hissop did. One of these days a bullet would find him and end his life, just as his slugs had ended Hissop’s. . . .
Unless he gave up the sort of life he had been leading since Rebel’s death. Unless he put away his guns for good and went back to being a businessman. A businessman . . . and a father.
But before he could do that, he had to find his children. Pamela had already left a number of traps for him along the way as he searched for the twins. She had hired men to kill him if he came too close to locating them, and Conrad fully expected he would run into more trouble.
The trail was getting short, though. It wasn’t all that far to San Francisco. Unless Pamela had doubled back, little Frank and Vivian had to be somewhere between Utah and the Pacific coast. Maybe, even quite possibly, in San Francisco itself. The city by the bay was big enough to hide a lot of things, including two young children. Pamela’s twisted brain might have found the idea of hiding them there, right under the noses of Conrad’s attorneys and friends, particularly amusing.
“Sir?” Arturo said. “Conrad? You look as if you were a million miles away.”
Conrad shook his head. “No, not a million miles.”
Just the distance to San Francisco. The last leg of the long, hard, bloody trail.

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