Brutal Vengeance by J. A. Johnstone

the head of the big group of riders.
    “They had better catch up by the end of the day,” Latch snapped. “All they had to do was finish off those girls, kill all the livestock they could find, and burn everything to the ground. That shouldn’t have taken them more than an hour or two.”
    If that was all they had done, Duval mused.
    Cooper was a pretty good man, but Rattigan was one of the four Latch had assigned to handle the mopping up. Like the creature that formed part of his name, Rattigan was a particularly loathsome vermin, even for that bunch of cutthroats. He was sly, too, and had a way of wheedling other men into going along with what he wanted.
    The other two outlaws who’d been left behind at the ranch, Fellows and Clark, were easily led. Duval could easily see Rattigan persuading them they ought to have another go at the twins before they killed the girls, and with the three of them united, Cooper would have had to go along with them.
    But maybe he was worrying for nothing, Duval told himself. Maybe the four men would do exactly what they were supposed to do and nothing more, and by nightfall they would have come galloping up to rejoin the rest of the gang. It didn’t make any sense to go borrowing trouble.
    By late afternoon, though, when Latch and Duval began looking for a good place to camp, there had been no sign of Cooper and the others. Duval saw familiar sparks of anger in Latch’s eyes, a bad sign.
    The plains through which they had ridden for the past several days were starting to peter out into a stretch of rugged, wooded hills and canyons. Several more days of riding through the rougher terrain lay between them and San Antonio, which was situated where the landscape became flatter again and started to turn into the coastal plain running all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
    Latch found a hollow he liked the looks of and announced, “We’ll camp here for the night.”
    The rest of the men immediately dismounted and set to work tending to the horses, gathering wood for a fire, and setting up camp.
    Latch stalked to the top of the ridge that formed one side of the hollow and stopped, peering back to the west, the direction from which they had come.
    Seeing that, Duval went up to join him. “Looking for Cooper and the others?”
    “They should have caught up to us by now,” Latch snapped. “They’ve disobeyed my orders.”
    He wasn’t worried about the possibility that something had happened to the four men, Duval realized. The thing that bothered Latch was the chance somebody hadn’t done exactly what he’d told them to do.
    “Maybe they decided they’ve had enough of riding with us and went off on their own,” Duval suggested.
    “Without their share of the loot?” Latch shook his head. “I don’t think so. One thing all my men have in common is greed.”
    He was probably right about that, Duval had to admit.
    “No, it’s more likely they lingered there to enjoy themselves some more with those girls,” Latch went on. “I told them not to waste any more time. But that man Rattigan is scum. Clever scum, but still scum.”
    Latch was thinking along the same lines Duval had, earlier in the day.
    But so much time had passed, he didn’t think that was a satisfactory explanation anymore. “Even if they had, it wouldn’t have taken them all day, boss. They still should have caught up to us by now.”
    Latch jerked his head in a curt nod. “Yes. Something has happened to them.”
    “Maybe that posse from Fire Hill is still after us. Maybe they rode up to that ranch while Cooper and the others were still there and caught them.”
    Latch frowned. “Those men should have turned back by now. We’ve never had a posse chase us for this long.”
    “We never burned down a whole town before, either,” Duval pointed out.
    Latch stroked his beard and smiled in obvious pleasure at the memory of all those buildings going up in flames as the crackling roar was accompanied by shrill screams.