Outlaw's Reckoning by J. R. Roberts Page A

easy to me. Things like stealing, lying, cheating . . . even killing. All of it became easier the more I did it.
    â€œMy uncle was a farmer and he always taught us kids to work hard and reap the rewards. I thought work was for assholes and that I could take what I wanted. Sometimes when I look back on it, I wish someone would have been able to stop me back in those days.”
    Matt shifted in his saddle as sounds of shouting and thundering hooves echoed in the distance. Clint took a look back there, but didn’t see anything. By this time, Matt had already lost interest.
    â€œThey’re headed away from us,” Matt said. “They won’t even get close.”
    â€œSo you rode on the wrong side of the law,” Clint said. “How long did that last?”
    Laughing to himself, Matt replied, “Long enough for me to pull together more money than my uncle or anyone else in my family would ever see.”
    â€œWhen did you decide to change your ways?”
    â€œAbout a year ago, when I nearly swung from the wrong end of a noose.”
    â€œI bet that’s a hell of a story,” Clint said.
    â€œNot really. I was caught dead to rights by a posse who got the drop on me and strung me up from a tall tree. They was reading me the list of my crimes and then addressed me by name to see if I had any last words to say. The only thing was, the name they used wasn’t mine.”
    Seeing the puzzled look on Clint’s face, Matt nodded and said, “I know just how you feel. I didn’t know what to make of it, either. The man leading the posse took a reward notice from his pocket, held it up to my face and nearly spit his teeth out when he saw the man in the picture wasn’t me.”
    â€œWho was it?”
    â€œThe hell if I know. He looked damn close, but there was a scar or two that didn’t match up. The color of the eyes was different, too. I got some whores to thank for that one, since they told whoever writes up them notices the color of this other fella’s eyes.”
    â€œWomen do have a long memory for that sort of thing,” Clint mused.
    â€œThey sure as hell do, God bless ’em.”
    There were some more shouts from the direction of Birdie’s Pass, which caught Clint’s ear. Matt heard them as well and gave his reins a snap to speed his horse up a bit. Clint tagged along, genuinely impressed by the other man’s perfectly calm demeanor.
    â€œSo the posse just let you go?” Clint asked. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
    â€œNeither have I. But they let me go, gave me an apology and even offered to buy me my fill of whiskey when I got back in town to make up for all the running they made me do. They must’ve been too damned embarrassed to think about why I ran from ’em or didn’t try to beg my way out of it when I was caught. Whoever that other fella is, I hope he can run faster than me.”
    Matt grinned and looked up at the stars. “Anyway, they put me in jail for a bit on account of the chase I gave ’em and so they wouldn’t look like a bunch of fools to the folks paying their salaries and then they let me go. I had a change of heart after serving that time. I had a second chance, almost like them preachers talk about. I don’t know whether it was God or just some awfully good luck, but I decided not to spit in the face of it. The more I thought it over, the worse I felt about all the things I done in my life.”
    â€œSo you decided to make it up?”
    â€œI can’t ever make it up, but I can try to settle a few scores here and there.”
    â€œI’d say Kay Hasselman and her son are settled for a while,” Clint said.
    But Matt slowly shook his head. “They got money, sure, but that boy don’t have a father. That lady don’t have a husband. I got that man killed and there ain’t nothing I can do about it.”
    There really wasn’t much Clint