The Devil's Badland: The Loner (3 page)

Conrad didn’t waste any time wondering who the men were or what they intended to do. His keen brain understood instantly what was going on. Devil Dave Whitfield, or at least, some of his men, had returned to the MacTavish ranch with the intention of blowing the dugout to kingdom come.

The Colt in Conrad’s hand leveled and fired in the blink of an eye, as the man with the dynamite drew back his arm to hurl the explosive at the dugout. The man yelled in pain and stiffened in the saddle.

“Throw it!” one of the other men yelled. “Throw it, you damned fool!”

Instead, the dynamite slipped from the wounded man’s hand and fell to the ground at his horse’s feet. Conrad hoped the mud would put out the fuse, but it continued spitting sparks as it burned.

The men stampeded, mud flying under the hooves of their horses as they tried to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the dynamite.

The wounded man had the presence of mind to try to get away, too, but he was too late. With a booming crack and a blinding flash, the dynamite went off. The explosion sent man and horse flying through the air.

“In the barn!” a man shouted. “The son of a bitch is in the hayloft!”

Conrad threw himself down as gun flame bloomed in the stormy night. He guessed there were three or four of the raiders left, and they were all doing their damnedest to kill him by blazing away at the hayloft door. He heard slugs thudding into the door and the wall around it. The lead chewed splinters from the wood.

Conrad poked the Colt through the opening and returned the fire. At the same time, shots roared from inside the dugout. The explosion had roused the MacTavishes from sleep, and they were joining the fight.

That put the raiders in a crossfire. A couple of them sagged in their saddles as if they were hit, even as they turned and fired back toward the dugout. After a moment, they realized they were in a bad spot, wheeled their horses and put the spurs to the animals, galloping out of the muddy yard between the dugout and the barn.

They left behind the man and the horse that had been caught in the blast. Neither dark shape on the ground was moving. Conrad figured both of them were dead.

Working easily by feel, because he’d had plenty of practice these past few months, he thumbed fresh cartridges into the Colt to replace the ones he had fired. Then he climbed down from the hayloft and lit the lantern. Draping the oilcloth over his head and his left arm, he carried the lantern in that hand and the revolver in the other as he walked out of the barn.

The dugout door opened. Hamish and James came out of the dwelling, wearing slickers and hooded ponchos. Hamish had the shotgun, James his Remington. They stopped on the other side of the bodies from Conrad, who held the lantern high enough for its yellow glow to spread over the gruesome sight.

The man and the horse were torn up pretty bad. The man’s face was unmarked, though, and James said, “That’s another of Whitfield’s men. I think his name was Dugan, or something like that.”

“Dumont,” Hamish corrected. “He was there that day in Val Verde, the day your brother…”

Hamish’s voice choked off, but Conrad knew what he was talking about—the day Charlie MacTavish had died in a gunfight with one of Whitfield’s men.

“They were going to blow in the front of the dugout with dynamite,” Conrad said. “I was still awake and heard their horses. Once I realized what they were planning, I did what I could to stop them.”

Hamish nodded at the bodies. “It looks like ye did a good job of it. I think we winged a couple o’ the other bastards, too.”

Conrad agreed. He gestured toward the dead man and said, “You should take his body to the law in Val Verde. The authorities can’t ignore the fact that Whitfield’s men tried to dynamite your home.”

“They can’t, eh?” James asked with a disgusted snort. “No offense, Mr. Browning, but that shows how little you know about the law. Whitfield can claim that he didn’t know anything about it. Just like he’ll claim that he didn’t send his hired killers over here earlier to harass us. And the sheriff will believe him, because the Circle D is one of the biggest spreads around here. The law won’t side with the likes of us against Whitfield.”

Conrad knew the young man was probably right, although things might be different if he threw the weight of his own name behind the MacTavishes. Dave Whitfield might be an important man in these parts, but he didn’t carry as much influence in the entire territory as Conrad Browning did.

The problem was that Conrad had his own mission, and he couldn’t allow anything else to get in the way of it.

“We appreciate what ye’ve done for us, Mr. Browning,” Hamish said. “This makes twice ye’ve saved us from disaster. If there’s anything we can do for you…”

“You’ve done plenty,” Conrad said with a shake of his head. He realized that the rain had stopped spattering down on the oilcloth. He moved it aside and looked up at the sky. Stars peeked through here and there. The clouds were beginning to break up. It looked like the storm was over.

That particular storm, anyway.

James dragged the dead man’s body into the barn. “Looks like you’ll have company for the rest of the night,” he told Conrad with an unfriendly grin. Conrad wasn’t sure what he had done to earn the young man’s dislike, other than having money. Evidently that was enough where James MacTavish was concerned.

They left the horse where it was. Come morning, they could tie ropes to the carcass and drag it off.

Conrad didn’t figure Whitfield’s men would try anything else tonight, after the losses they had already suffered, but after he climbed back into the hayloft, he slept fitfully, waking often to open the loft door and have a look around. Knowing that a dead man lay below him in the barn didn’t make him sleep any better, either.

The atmosphere at breakfast the next morning was subdued. The MacTavishes knew their troubles weren’t over, not by a longshot. With Conrad’s help, they had turned back two attacks on their homestead, but Conrad was leaving, and their enemy Dave Whitfield remained. It was just a matter of time until he struck at them again.

When they were finished eating, Hamish said, “Rory, go out and hitch up Mr. Browning’s horse to that buggy.”

“I can take care of that,” Conrad said.

Rory got to his feet. “No, really, I don’t mind, Mr. Browning. I like working with horses, and those two of yours look like fine animals.”

“They are,” Conrad admitted. The buckskin had carried him hundreds of miles already on his quest for justice, before he’d started this trip to New Mexico Territory in the buggy.

Rory went out to the barn, followed by James. Conrad thought the boy looked a little nervous about the idea of going in there where Whitfield’s dead gunman lay under a piece of 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 them were spread out a little, while Whitfield and his men were bunched up. That was potentially a tactical mistake on Whitfield’s part.

But maybe it wouldn’t come to shooting. Hamish spoke up, saying, “What are ye doin’ here, Whitfield? Ye know that ye ain’t welcome on my spread.”

“I came for my man Dumont,” Whitfield replied, his voice harsh with anger.

“He’s dead.”

Whitfield’s scowl didn’t change. “I figured as much,” he snapped. “I hear you’ve got some sort of hired gun working for you now, MacTavish. Did he kill Dumont, or was it you or one of your boys?”

Without straightening from his casual pose in the doorway, Conrad called, “It was your own man who blew himself up, Whitfield. If anyone’s to blame for his death…it’s the man who sent him over here with dynamite.”

Whitfield turned his horse a little so that he could glare murderously at Conrad. “You’d be the hired gun,” he snapped.

“No,” Conrad said flatly. “I’m just passing through these parts on my way to Val Verde. I stopped and took a hand because I didn’t like the odds against the MacTavishes. That’s all.”

“What’s your name, mister?” Whitfield demanded.

“Conrad Browning.”

Whitfield frowned, as if the name was somehow familiar to him but he couldn’t place it. “Well, you’ve made a bad mistake by stickin’ your nose in where it ain’t welcome, Browning. This bunch you’re defending is nothing but a gang of rustlers and murderers.”

“You’re a damned liar, Whitfield,” Hamish burst out. “My son told ye that to your face, and now I’m tellin’ you.”

One of the men edged his horse forward. “Want me to take care of this trash for you, boss?” he asked.

The man wasn’t very impressive-looking. Even on horseback, he wasn’t very big. The marks of some childhood disease pocked his dark, narrow face. He wore a cowhide vest and a black Stetson pulled down low. A quirley dangled from the corner of his mouth.

Conrad knew, though, that appearances were deceptive. The way this man carried himself in the saddle with his hand never straying far from the butt of his gun, the muscular thickness of his right wrist, the cold, dark eyes…They all added up to the fact that he was a gunslinger. Conrad had grown to know the signs all too well.

“That’s all right, Trace,” Whitfield snapped as he lifted a hand to motion the gunman back. “I can stomp my own snakes.”

“Evidently not,” Conrad said. “You come visiting with a handful of hired guns at your back.”

Whitfield’s already florid face flushed even more with anger. “Because I don’t want to wind up with a bullet in my back, like three of my riders did when a hundred head of my cattle disappeared!”

“We didn’t steal your cattle, and we sure as hell didn’t shoot any o’ your men!” Hamish said.

“What happened to them, then?”

“The border’s not all that far away,” Conrad pointed out. “Bandidos could have crossed over, ambushed your men, stolen those cattle, and run them back across into Mexico without much trouble. That sort of thing happens all the time.”

“It never happened around here until this greasy-sack outfit moved in,” Whitfield argued.

“Because ye run roughshod over ever’body else in this part o’ the country until they’re all scared o’ ye,” Hamish said. “There’s a good reason folks call ye Devil Dave.”

“By God, I won’t stand for that!” Whitfield’s hand started toward his gun.

Before it could get there, Conrad’s Colt was out and leveled, his draw a flicker of movement hard for the eye to follow. At the same time, the man called Trace slapped leather as well. Everyone froze, with Conrad’s gun pointed at Whitfield and Trace’s revolver trained on Conrad.