Hard Ride to Wichita by Ralph Compton, Marcus Galloway Page B

He could feel the gun in his hand, the pain in his chest, and the weight on his shoulders. His vision was swiftly clearing.
    The front of Scott’s shirt was wet with blood, most of it centered in his midsection. Every time he tried to draw a breath, tremors rocked his frame. “Next time,” he wheezed. His hands scraped at the floor and his legs stretched out as if they were trying to move on their own to get the rest of him moving. “Next time . . . it’ll be . . . easier.”
    And then the house became silent once again.
    This was a silence unlike the one that had come before when everyone was alive and hoping not to spark anything. The silence surrounding Luke now was thick enough to suffocate him and strong enough to crush him beneath its mass.
    Now that his body was awakened, Luke’s mind started to churn with dozens of random thoughts.
    There could be more gunmen waiting to hear from Scott.
    Someone could have heard the shots.
    The law might be on its way.
    His mother . . .
    That last thought stopped all the others.
    Luke allowed the gun to fall from his hand and staggered over to the spot where Virginia was lying. His steps blended together until he found himself hunched over her body. She was quiet and peaceful. Instead of trying to lift her into his arms, Luke bent down to gently place a kiss on her forehead. In his mind, he could see the warm smile that she usually gave him when he showed her affection and he turned away from the body on the floor before he saw something that would rob him of that gleaming memory.
    There wasn’t much time. As he worked his way through the house, Luke kept that at the front of his mind. It kept him going and gave him something else to think about other than the haze of gun smoke and the stench of death in the air. He went to his bed and collected as many clothes as he could stuff into the old carpetbag that Kyle used when he went away for so long. He rounded up all the food that was fit to toss into the bag and then made his way back to the carnage in the front room.
    Luke kept his eyes above the bodies and didn’t think about the reason the floor was slick beneath his boots. He gathered up all three pistols: the old Colt and both of Scott’s guns. When he tried tucking them under his belt, Luke stopped and looked down at the gunman’s body. He took a breath to steel himself and then hunkered down to unbuckle the gun belt from around Scott’s waist. All of those things, guns and all, were stuffed into the carpetbag, which was now too full to be properly closed.
    Finally Luke found himself staring down at the valise that had been at the heart of this terrible storm. He picked it up, looked inside, and shook it to see if he could get a rough estimate of how much money was in there. His brain was spinning in too many circles for him to count, but he knew it was a lot. Taking both bags with him, he started toward the front door. Instead of walking past his mother and Kyle to step through that door, he turned around and walked through the kitchen to leave through the back.
    As soon as he was outside, Luke felt as if he’d rejoined the world. Voices were hollering back and forth. There was a commotion in the street near the front of the house. Luke knew most of that was probably in response to the sounds of shooting, but his most powerful instinct told him to take what was his and put some distance between himself and that house.
    It wasn’t his house any longer. He didn’t want to step foot inside or set eyes on it ever again, and there wasn’t anything strong enough to make him change his mind. He’d been given a horse that Kyle had bought from Cam Eberhauser, an old farmer who worked a plot of land a few miles to the north of town. That horse waited for him now and was always grateful to be saddled up for a ride. Luke hurried through the motions and loaded that horse with everything he’d