Killer Poker

Chapter 25





It was too late to make a move before they reached the ranch. Conrad swallowed his disappointment and remained still. A few minutes later, the wagon came to a stop and he heard a gate being opened. The wagon rattled into motion again.

Several more minutes passed before the wagon stopped. Saddle leather creaked as men dismounted. McKinney said, “Let me give you a hand,” and Rose replied, “Thank you.” Obviously, he was helping her down from the wagon seat. Conrad felt the vehicle shift on its springs.

“Get him out of there,” McKinney ordered.

The wagon’s tailgate dropped open with a racket. Strong hands reached into the wagon bed and took hold of the blanket-wrapped figure. Conrad felt himself being dragged toward the back of the wagon.

As they lifted him clear of the vehicle, McKinney said, “Dump him out.”

The men let the musty blanket unroll. Conrad tumbled free, but instead of crashing limply to the ground as an unconscious man would have, he caught himself lithely on his hands and feet. Blood pumped hard through his veins and he forgot all about how badly his head hurt as he sprang up and swung a fist at the man closest to him.

It was still night. Oil lamps burned on the porch of the big house in front of which the wagon was parked, so he was able to see the cowboy. The blow landed solidly on the surprised man’s chin and sent him flying backward.

“He’s awake!” McKinney yelled. “Grab the son of a bitch!”

Conrad knew the odds facing him were mighty high. If he could break away from them and get his hands on a gun, he might be able to capture McKinney. Rose wouldn’t make a good enough hostage, but the rancher was a different story. Conrad knew McKinney’s men wouldn’t blaze away at him if McKinney was in the line of fire. He was going to fight until he couldn’t fight anymore, and get his hands on Rance McKinney if he could.

One of the Double Star punchers who had accompanied the wagon leaped at him, swinging a roundhouse blow. Conrad ducked under the whistling fist and hooked his right hand into the man’s belly. The cowboy folded up as the short but powerful blow drove the air from his lungs. Conrad’s left hand shot out and snagged the gun from the holster on the man’s hip.

“Look out!” somebody else shouted. “He’s got Jonah’s gun!”

“Shoot him!” The shrill cry came from Rose.

“No!” McKinney bellowed. “I want him alive!”

Conrad heard a rush of footsteps behind him and bent forward sharply. The man who tried to tackle him sailed over his head. Conrad twisted away from another man. He spotted McKinney standing in front of the porch steps with Rose and lunged in that direction.

A man yelled, “Hyaaah!” and suddenly a horse loomed up on Conrad’s right, crowding in on him. He tried to get out of the animal’s way, but its shoulder slammed into him and knocked him off his feet. He managed to hold on to the gun as he sailed through the air and came crashing down on the ground, but before he could swing it toward McKinney, another man rushed in and kicked his arm. Conrad’s fingers opened involuntarily and the gun flew free.

The cowboy tried to kick him again. Conrad grabbed the man’s foot and heaved, sending him falling over backward with a startled yell. Conrad rolled away and scrambled to his feet, ramming into the solid obstacle of a horse’s flank. Something dropped over his head and tightened around his neck.

“I got him!” the rider shouted. “I got a loop on him!”

“Don’t kill him, damn you!” McKinney roared.

Conrad had no idea why McKinney was so dead set on keeping him alive, but he didn’t have time to ponder the question. He clawed at the lasso around his neck, trying to get his fingers under it. The rope was already tight enough that it cut off his air. The way the horse was dancing around, if it bolted the noose would probably break his neck as surely as if he’d dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows.

Men crowded around him and grabbed his arms. Some of the pressure went off his neck as the rope was cut. A fist crashed into his jaw and rocked his head back. In the chaos that surrounded him, Conrad couldn’t tell exactly what was going on, but he heard McKinney say, “Hold him,” and felt the man’s hot breath against his face.

A fist slammed into his belly. Conrad felt sick, but there was nothing in his belly to come up. McKinney hit him again and again, pounding him like a side of raw meat while the cowboys held him up.

Conrad had endured beatings before. He knew how to put the pain aside and pretend that it didn’t exist. Blow after blow battered him, until McKinney stepped back and said with vicious satisfaction, “I reckon that knocked all the fight out of him. Let him go.”

The men released Conrad. He tried to stay on his feet, but his legs wouldn’t support him. He fell to his knees and stayed there.

McKinney stood in front of him, looking dark and huge in that cowhide vest. The rancher grinned and rubbed his swollen knuckles with his other hand. “You may have won the card game, you son of a bitch,” he gloated, “but you lost everything else. And you’re just gettin’ started learning how much you’ve lost.”

He nodded to someone behind Conrad. A booted foot hit Conrad in the back and drove him forward, facedown in the dirt. He coughed as dust clogged his mouth and nose. He knew he was about to pass out again and fought to hang on to consciousness, but it was a losing battle.

A darkness as black as those aces he had used to defeat McKinney closed in around him and took him away.





When Conrad woke up, he was lying in a soft, comfortable bed between crisp, clean sheets. The shock of those surroundings was so great it was almost like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water in his face. He gasped before he could stop himself.

“Browning’s awake,” a man said somewhere close by. “Go tell the boss.”

A door opened and closed, and it was followed by a sound Conrad knew all too well: the sound of gun hammers being drawn back.

He opened his eyes, wincing a little as light struck them. Sunlight slanted in through a window with the curtains drawn back. As his vision cleared, he saw two men standing at the foot of the bed. Each man had a double-barreled shotgun pointed at him, and the weapons were cocked and ready to fire.

“Better . . . be careful . . . with those scatterguns, boys,” Conrad husked. “If they go off . . . at this range . . . there won’t be . . . much of me left. Your boss . . . won’t like that.”

“Mr. McKinney said we was to go ahead and kill you if you try anything else,” one of the men said with a sneer. “I reckon he’s damn sick and tired of your tricks, mister.”

Conrad felt too weak for any tricks. He closed his eyes again and lay there, trying to regain some of his strength as he took a quick inventory of his aches, pains, and bruises. Yep, he decided after a moment, he hurt pretty much from head to toe.

Footsteps sounded in the hall outside the room. Conrad opened his eyes. A second later the door swung open and Rance McKinney marched in. The rancher looked pleased with himself as he grinned down at his battered prisoner. “Well, I’m glad to see you’re not dead. You’d be gettin’ off too easy if you were.”

Conrad’s voice was stronger as he said, “What the hell are you talking about, McKinney? I never did anything to you except beat you at a game of cards.”

McKinney waved his left hand. His right rested on the walnut butt of the Colt holstered on his hip. “I don’t care about the money. It’s what you did to that poor woman you got to pay for, Browning.”

“Poor woman?” Conrad repeated in confusion. “You mean the woman calling herself Rose Sullivan?”

McKinney snorted in contempt. “Not her. That gal can take care of herself better than any I ever saw. She could probably whip half my crew, and out-shoot ’em, too.” He drew in a deep breath and glared in hatred at Conrad. “I’m talking about Pamela Tarleton.”

“I never—”

Conrad stopped short. He’d been about to say he had never hurt Pamela Tarleton, and that was true in a physical sense. But he had broken their engagement, and although he and Frank weren’t truly responsible for her father’s death, Pamela blamed them for it. She’d been hurt, all right, and that had allowed the vengeful monster she had been all along to escape.

“I don’t know what she told you,” Conrad said to McKinney, “but chances are, it was a lie.”

“That woman never told a lie in her life,” McKinney snapped.

The conviction in the rancher’s voice told Conrad that Pamela had worked her magic on him, had woven a spell like some latter-day Circe and convinced McKinney to believe whatever lies she laid out for him. She had probably taken McKinney to bed. She had been able to make any man believe anything when the falsehoods were accompanied by soft, sleek flesh and softer kisses.

“She explained everything to me,” McKinney went on. “She told me how you went loco and threatened her, and how she had to break off your engagement and run away from you just to save herself. She told me about how you’ve been trying to kill her ever since then and how she had to hide out. She didn’t dare tell you about those kids, because she knew that would make you even worse. She said if you ever found out, you’d try to track her down, and she made me promise that if the trail led you to me, I’d stop you.” He jerked his head in a curt nod. “So that’s just what I’m gonna do.”

Conrad felt a surge of despair well up inside him. The story Pamela had told McKinney bore a passing resemblance to the truth. But she had changed a few things, like the fact that it was he who had ended their engagement, not her, and twisted others until everything was backward. McKinney thought he was protecting Pamela, and that explained the man’s reaction when he found out who Conrad was.

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Conrad said wearily, knowing it probably wouldn’t do any good. “I just want to find my children.”

“So you can mistreat them like you mistreated their mother?” McKinney shook his head. “Not a chance in hell, Browning. I know what I’ve got to do. You’re never gonna leave this ranch alive.” A cruel smile twisted the rancher’s mouth. “But we’re gonna have some fun makin’ sure you wind up dead.”