Hard Luck Money Read Online Free Page B

to one of the men with him. He led a saddled but riderless horse forward. As Lupo’s captors muscled him forward, he knew he was going up on that horse. Again the thought of making a break for freedom crossed his mind. Once he was in the saddle, there weren’t many men who could keep up with him.
    As if reading Lupo’s mind, the stranger drew his gun. So did the men with him.
    “Here’s the deal, mister,” he said, addressing Lupo directly for the first time. “We’ve got a use for you ... but you ain’t the only huckleberry in the world who fits the bill. You understand me? You try to get away or give us too much trouble, and we’ll just kill you and leave you layin’ where you fall. Simple as that.”
    They had a use for him, the man said. That meant they would keep him alive, at least for a while. Lupo didn’t see anything he could do except cooperate. He lifted his head and made noises through the gag.
    The stranger jerked a hand toward it. “Take that out of his mouth. We don’t want him to choke before we get him back to the boss’s place.”
    Lupo wanted to meet the mysterious boss. Anybody who could set up something like what was happening had to be a pretty smart man, as well as a powerful one.
    Boozer pulled the rag out of Lupo’s mouth. Lupo spat and worked his jaw back and forth for a moment before he looked up at the stranger. “I’ll cooperate with you, mister. Don’t worry about that.”
    “Good. I was hopin’ you’d be smart.”
    Hagen said, “Let him go.”
    Lupo took a deep breath. He put his foot in the stirrup, grasped the horn, and swung up onto the riderless horse’s back.
    “That just leaves one thing,” Hagen said.
    The stranger shook his head. “That’s your lookout, not mine,” he said flatly.
    “You could give me a hand with the chore.”
    “Sorry,” the stranger said, but he didn’t sound sorry at all.
    Hagen grunted. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and brought it out holding a revolver. With no more warning than that, he turned, pointed the gun at Boozer’s head, and pulled the trigger.
    The shot was sharp and vicious in the night. Boozer’s eyes widened in shock as the bullet bored into his brain, leaving a small, red-rimmed hole in his temple. He went down like a dropped sack of grain.
    The other guards were ready for the moment. They pulled guns, too, and emptied several rounds apiece into the other two convicts who had helped with the escape. They never had a chance.
    Lupo sat on his horse, his eyes wide with shock and horror, as he watched the two men jitter around in a grotesque dance for a couple seconds before death dumped them in gory heaps on the ground.
    The big, ugly man who was in charge of the riders grinned at Hagen. “Looks like Lupo’s the only one who got away.”
    “Yeah,” Hagen agreed. “Lucky son of a bitch, ain’t he?”
    With that, the riders closed in around Lupo and forced him to turn with them. They set a fast pace as they rode off through the trees, fast enough that Lupo worried he would run into something and bash his brains out.
    The men seemed to know where they were going, and surrounded as he was, he didn’t run into anything. They came out on one of the roads near the prison and paused momentarily.
    Lupo was still stunned by what had happened, but he understood the reasoning behind it. Hagen would claim Boozer and the other two convicts had been part of the escape, too. He and the guards with him would be hailed as heroes for stopping three of the four fugitives. Hagen would probably even claim Lupo must have been the mastermind behind the prison break.
    Back inside the walls, bells began to clang as the alarm was sounded. Soon bloodhounds would be baying through the East Texas woods, but Lupo was willing to bet Hagen would mislead the dogs somehow and put them on the wrong scent. Hagen’s part in everything would be covered up completely.
    “Let’s go,” the man in charge said. “Hagen won’t be able to keep