The Kid smiled and made a casual gesture toward the second reptile carcass that lay on the ground nearby. “Apparently, I do,” he drawled.
The woman came forward, looked at the snake The Kid had shot, and frowned. “That first shot I heard?”
“Yeah.”
She let out a low whistle of admiration. “Pretty good shooting.”
The Kid could have said the same thing about her appearance, as well as her shooting. She was in her early twenties, he estimated, with curly golden hair pulled back behind her head. She wore a low-crowned brown hat with its strap taut under her chin. Her skin had a healthy tan a little lighter in shade than her hair. She wore a brown vest over a white shirt and a brown riding skirt and boots. She didn’t look like the sidesaddle type.
She still held the Winchester, and while the rifle wasn’t pointed at The Kid, she carried it with an easy assurance that said she could swing the barrel toward him again very quickly if she needed to. Keeping her distance, she asked, “Who are you?”
“The name’s Morgan,” he replied, not offering any more information than that.
“Why’d you kick that skull off into the brush? The poor hombre it belonged to never did you any harm.”
“I know,” he said without mentioning that the same thought had occurred to him. “I took it as a warning to keep out of the valley . . . and I don’t like being told where I can and can’t go.”
“A warning is exactly what it was,” she said, “and you were foolish to disregard it. But if you were bound and determined to do that, why didn’t you just ride around it?”
“I wanted whoever put it there to know how I felt.” He paused and studied her. “Was that you?”
She bristled in anger. The Winchester’s muzzle edged toward him as she said, “Do I look like the sort of person who’d do something like that?”
“I don’t know,” The Kid said. “That’s why I asked. You’re the one who just told me I’d be making a big mistake if I rode on into the valley.”
“Well, for your information, I didn’t put those bones there. I’m not the one you have to worry about. It’s—”
She stopped short. Her head came up in a listening attitude. Alarm leaped into her eyes.
The Kid heard it, too. A swift rataplan of hoofbeats that approached too fast for them to do anything. Half a dozen riders swept around a stand of thick brush about fifty yards away and thundered toward them.
Chapter Two
There was nothing The Kid could do except stand his ground. He had five rounds in his Colt, which meant it wasn’t possible to kill all six of the strangers if gunplay broke out.
But the young woman was armed, too, he reminded himself, and if she could account for one or two of them, he might be able to get the rest. Of course, he would probably die, too, and so would she, but he believed it was better to go down fighting and take as many of your enemies with you as you could.
Maybe it wouldn’t come to that, he thought as the riders reined in . . . although from the looks of this bunch, they were no strangers to killing.
The man who sat his horse a little in front of the others was a big hombre, tall and broad-shouldered with brawny arms. The sleeves of his blue shirt were rolled up over forearms matted with dark hair. More hair curled from the open throat of the shirt. A beard jutted from his belligerent jaw. A gray hat was cuffed to the back of his head. He wore a pair of pearl-handled revolvers. Cruel, deep-set eyes studied The Kid from sunken pits under bushy eyebrows.
The apparent leader was the biggest of the bunch, but the man who rode to his right was almost as large. His slablike jaw bristled with rusty stubble, and a handlebar mustache of the same shade twisted over his mouth. As he took off the battered old derby he wore and used it to fan away some of the dust that had swirled up from the horses’ hooves as they came to a stop, The Kid saw that the man was totally bald. The thick muscles of his arms and shoulders stretched the faded red fabric of the upper half of a set of long underwear he wore as a shirt. Double bandoliers of ammuntion crisscrossed over his barrel-like chest. He held a Winchester in his right hand.
To the leader’s left was a smaller man dressed all in gray, from his hat to his boots. His size didn’t make him seem any less dangerous, though. Those rattlers The Kid had killed hadn’t been very big, either, but they were deadly nonetheless. In fact, the dark eyes in the man’s lean, pockmarked face had a reptilian look about them. The Kid noted how the man’s hand never strayed far from the butt of the pistol on his hip.
The other three men were more typical hardcases, the sort of gun-wolves that The Kid had encountered on numerous occasions. He didn’t discount their threat, but the trio that edged forward toward him and the young woman garnered most of his attention. He’d kill the big, bearded man first, if it came to that, he decided, then the little hombre in gray, and then the baldheaded varmint. Once the three of them were dead, then he’d use what was left of his life to try for the others. He was pretty sure he’d have some lead in him by that point, though.
White teeth suddenly shone brilliantly in the leader’s beard as he grinned. “Been stompin’ some snakes, eh?” he asked in a friendly voice.
The Kid wasn’t fooled. The man’s eyes were just as cold and flinty as they had been before.
“That’s right,” The Kid said. “Looks like you’ve got some diamondbacks around here.”
The man threw back his head and guffawed. As the echoes from the booming laughter died away, he said, “Hell, yeah, we do. Why do you think they call this Rattlesnake Valley?”
“I didn’t know they did,” The Kid replied with a shake of his head.
“You’re a stranger to these parts, eh?” The man looked at the young woman. “You should’ve warned your friend what he was gettin’ into, Diana.”
“He’s not my friend,” she said. “I never saw him before until a few minutes ago.”
“Is that so?” The black-bearded giant sounded like he didn’t really believe her. His eyes narrowed. “And here I thought your uncle had gone and hired himself a fast gun.”
The woman shook her head. “He told you he’s a stranger here, Malone. Why don’t you let him just turn around and ride away?”
“Why, who’s stoppin’ him?” The man called Malone grinned at The Kid and went on in an oily tone of mock friendliness, “You just go right ahead and mount up, mister. We wouldn’t want to keep you from goin’ back wherever you came from.”
The Kid had a feeling that if he got on the buckskin and headed back west through the pass, he wouldn’t make it twenty yards before he had a bullet in his back. He said, “What if I want to ride on down the valley?”
Malone rubbed the fingers of his left hand over his beard. “Well, I ain’t so sure that’d be a good idea. We got all the people we need in the valley right now.”
“It’s a public road, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly. There’s supposed to be a marker here so folks will know they’re enterin’ Trident range, and they’d be better off turnin’ around.”
“That’s not true,” Diana said with a sudden flare of anger. “The boundaries of your ranch don’t extend this far, Malone. You’re claiming range that doesn’t belong to you.”
He turned a baleful stare on her. “I don’t like bein’ called a liar, even by a pretty girl like you, Miss Starbird.”
The Kid had noticed the brand on the horses the men rode. It was a line that branched and curved into three points. Now he said, “Neptune’s trident.”
That distracted Malone from the young woman named Diana Starbird. He looked at The Kid again and asked, “You know of it?”
“Neptune was the Roman god of the sea, and he was usually depicted carrying a trident like the one you’re using as a brand. The Greeks called him Poseidon.”