Pretty stupid of you two to be sleeping without a guard,” Jeremiah Bassett growled. A few feet away, Ling shot out of his bedroll and sprang away from them, crouched and wild-eyed like a cat caught unawares. Uncle sneered. “If I were anyone else, you’d all have your throats slit by now.”
A gun c****d behind him. “And you’d have a hole in the back of your head.” Walker stepped from the shadow, rifle raised.
“Uncle.” Hettie was relieved he was alive, of course, but his arrival stirred all kinds of questions in her. He took his boot off her neck, and she sat up, rubbing at the tender flesh. “You got away from the Pinkertons.”
“Yeah.” He holstered his weapon, and Walker lowered his Winchester. The old man squatted by the campfire and rubbed his hands. “Been trackin’ you awhile now. Didn’t g
