The Killing Shot. Johnny D. Boggs

rode off this morning.”

      “How many men does he have?”

      “Five. That’s all I seen. But I hear them talk that one of them got killed when they wrecked the train, and his brother took him home to get planted. I don’t know when he’ll come back.”

      “They wrecked a train?”

      “Yeah. Killed my stepfather. Don’t give me that look. He was a louse.”

      Reilly tested the coffee. It was terrible, but it was coffee. “You best get back, look after your mother. They don’t want us talking much.”

      “Back in the desert, you said you were a real lawman,” she said softly.

      “I am.”

      “What you plan on doing?”

      He didn’t really have an answer. “Try to keep you, your mother, and me alive,” he said as she walked away. A thought struck him, and he called out, “Blanche?”

      She turned.

      “Where’s my badge?” he whispered.

      Her fingers began dribbling the pocket of her pants.

      “Bury it,” he said.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      “See, the boys been betting on when my cussedness would get the better of me, and I’d kill you,” Pardo said. “You’re walking around pretty good now. Amazing what a few days of rest, grub, and good coffee’ll do for a fellow.”

      “Good coffee?” the tall man from the prison wagon said, and Pardo cackled, but the mirth ended a second later. Pardo tested the Colt in his holster, just letting this hombre called Mac know that he still might die. Today. In the next minute.

      “Where you from?” You didn’t ask a man where he hailed from, didn’t even ask his name, you just let him tell you if he had a mind to, but nobody had ever accused Bloody Jim Pardo of being polite.

      “Grew up on a farm in Johnson County,” he answered easily as he lifted the blackened coffeepot off the fire and filled his cup.

      Pardo took his hand away from his revolver. “Hell, Mac, we was neighbors.” He found a tin cup on the ground, held it out for the stranger to fill. “I growed up on a Cass County farm myself.”

      The man didn’t seem nervous. Just topped Pardo’s cup with miserably bad coffee—making it was never one of Three-Fingers Lacy’s strongest talents—then sat across the fire on a boulder, sipping casually. Like they were in some café in Tucson, talking about the weather or the parson’s sermon last Sunday.

      “You fight in the war?” Pardo asked.

      He shook his head. “Too young.”

      “How old are you?”

      “Thirty-four.”

      “Look older. Well, maybe not older, but experienced.”

      “I’ve done some traveling.”

      “Me too.” Pardo laughed. “’Course, me, I’m four years older than you. I fought in the war.”

      “Everybody knows that about Jim Pardo. You rode with Quantrill.”

      He set the cup down. “You got a problem with that?”

      The man had a disarming smile. “Not at all. My mother used to sing praises of Captain Quantrill, said he was saving us all from damned Yankee tyrants. Too bad how it all had to end.”

      Pardo frowned. He remained silent for a long time, staring at the small fire, then spit on a coal, and watched it bubble and disappear. “Yeah. ’Course I rode with some boys as young as you would have been then. I reckon your mother wouldn’t allow you to fight those invaders.”

      “My brother fought. Somebody had to work the farm. That was me.”

      Pardo started scratching the palm of his right hand against the Colt’s hammer. “Who’d your brother ride with?”

      “First Missouri.”

      He spit again. “Some real outfit, eh, not irregulars like me and Quantrill. Not bushwhackers. Not murderers.”

      “I don’t know about that. My brother was killed somewhere down in Tennessee. Ask my mother, and me, the war was being fought in Missouri.”

      “And your ma? Where’s she now?”

      “Dead. When Paul, that was my brother, died, it pretty much killed her, too. I buried her the next fall.”

      “What about your pa?”

      “I never knew him. Lightning strike got him when I was a baby.”

      “No family, eh?”

      He shook his head.

      “That’s too bad, Mac. Me? Kansas redlegs, gutless bastards, got my pa killed. All I got now is Ma. Had me a kid brother, but he died of fever when he was just a tot. Would have been about your age now, I reckon.” Pardo’s eyes became slits. “So, Mac, let me guess. You grow up, hating Yankees, go down to Texas, get into trouble at Fort Concho, and light a shuck to Arizona. That’s your story as I remember.”

      “McKavett. Not Concho.” The man smiled. Smart fellow, this Mac. He knew Pardo was trying to trap him.

      “What did you do?”

      “Robbed the paymaster. Killed a guard.”

      Laughing, Pardo reached for the cup, took another sip. “Yankees don’t care much for that. I guaran-damn-tee you that. How much money did you get?”

      “I don’t know. I lost the strongbox crossing the Pecos. Kept riding, but Texicans and the Army have a long memory, and a longer reach.”

      “Yankees get their money back?”

      “I don’t think so. They were asking me about it when they caught up with me in Bisbee.”

      “That’s good. That they didn’t get that money, not that they arrested you. Me, I had me a little plan. Robbed us a train. That’s how come I got the kid and that handsome woman with us. Derailed that son of a bitch, but everything went to hell. Boiler blew in the engine, express car and everything else went up in flames. The boys didn’t care much for it, but I say, at least the Yankees didn’t get their pay.” He clinked his mug against the cup in Mac’s hand in a rebel toast.

      “So they caught you,” Pardo continued. “They started hauling you back to Texas. Who ambushed you in the valley?”

      “Apaches.”

      “That’s too bad.” Pardo emptied the coffee into the fire, watching the ash bubble and boil, and pitched the cup aside.

      “Would have been,” the man said, “if you hadn’t happened along.”

      Pardo rose. “Let’s take a ride, Mac. Don’t give me that look. Man’s strong enough to walk, he’s able to ride, I say. Saddle us up a couple of horses. I’ll ride that roan. Saddle the sorrel mare for yourself.”

      The man kept frowning. Hell, Pardo didn’t blame him for that. Suspicious. Maybe a little scared—he ought to be—but it didn’t show in his face.

      “No offense,” he said softly, looking at the corral, “but that sorrel’s not much of a horse.”

      “Don’t matter. We ain’t going for much of a ride. That’s my saddle yonder. You take the McClellan.”

      “McClellan?” The man frowned. “That’s a Yankee saddle.”

      “Makes you feel better, I took it off a dead Yank. Get to it, Mac. I need to talk to Ma and the boys before we light out.”

      Ruby Pardo drowned an ant with a waterfall