The Devil's Badland: The Loner by J. A. Johnstone Page B

from behind the cottonwood and fired twice in the direction of the hidden gunman. At the same time, he launched himself in a dive that carried him behind one of the nearby gravestones.
    A bullet chipped granite from the stone and showered dust on him. He regretted that the attempt on his life was inflicting damage on a marker commemorating someone who had passed on, but it couldn’t be helped.
    Conrad heard a man’s voice rasp, “Get around behind him!” So there were at least two of them, he thought grimly. The voice didn’t sound like that of either Dave Whitfield or Jack Trace. What other enemies did he have in Val Verde?
    The man responsible for Rebel’s kidnapping, maybe?
    The woman in the shawl had been bait. That bitter realization filled Conrad’s mind. His enemy had figured out that he was still alive and had used the woman to set a trap for him. Whoever it was had known that Conrad wouldn’t be able to ignore the mysterious woman who left flowers on Rebel’s grave. He would have to know who she was…and so he would walk right into an ambush to find out. The woman had probably been hired for the job and hadn’t even known Rebel.
    The best way to find out the truth was to capture one of the ambushers and make him talk. Conrad lay there behind the gravestone, listening intently. After a moment, he heard a whisper of sound to his left. The man coming at him from that direction had brushed against one of the headstones.
    Conrad rolled as muzzle flame once again gouted redly in the night, but he rolled toward the would-be killer, rather than away from him. He came up on his hands and knees, staying low as he drove forward. Another shot blasted, right above him as he crashed into a pair of legs.
    The bushwhacker yelled in surprise and alarm as Conrad knocked him down. Conrad lashed out with the gun in his hand, trying to hit the man in the head and knock him out. Instead, the man flailed around with his gun, and the barrel struck Conrad across the throat. For a second, his windpipe was paralyzed, and no air could get through. He was left gagging and gasping.
    “Hogan! Hogan, he jumped me!”
    Conrad had no idea who Hogan was. The name meant nothing to him. But before he had time to try to figure it out, a woman screamed somewhere close by.
    “Careful, damn it! She’s gettin’ away!”
    That was the same man who’d given the order to circle around Conrad. Hogan, Conrad thought as he was finally able to drag some air back into his lungs.
    “Stop her! She’s got a gun!”
    The man Conrad had tackled hit him in the belly, then shoved him away. Conrad rolled onto his side. He heard the man scrambling up and running among the tombstones. More shots rang out. A man yelled in pain.
    “Let’s get out of here!” That was Hogan again. “The plan’s ruined!”
    Conrad pushed himself to his feet and fired toward the sound of the shouts. A gun cracked to his right, but the shot didn’t seem to be aimed at him. The woman? Hogan had said that she’d gotten her hands on a gun.
    Conrad stumbled over to a tree, leaned on the trunk. He heard a swift, sudden rataplan of hoofbeats in the darkness. The bushwhackers had had horses hidden behind the cemetery and they were lighting a shuck out of there. Their ambush had been unsuccessful. He had put up more of a fight than they expected, he supposed.
    Trying not to breathe too heavily in case any of the gunmen were still lurking in the shadows, Conrad waited a moment longer to let the pounding of blood in his head subside. His throat ached, but he was able to get air through his windpipe again without any trouble. He straightened and called, “Miss? Miss, are you here?”
    From what he had overheard, the woman had been a prisoner. They had been forcing her to help them, not paying her. If he could find her, Conrad thought, she would probably be willing to help him. He wanted her to tell him everything she knew about the men who had set this trap.
    She didn’t respond,