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recall seein’ that name on any reward dodgers lately.”
    “That’s because I’m not wanted,” The Kid said.
    That hadn’t always been the case. For a while there had been a bounty on his head in New Mexico Territory, but that was a mistake and had been all cleared up.
    “You got nothin’ to worry about from us, then. We’re after a gang of desperados led by a man named Warren Latch.”
    “I told you, I never heard of him. What did they do?”
    Culhane’s rugged face took on a bleak cast. “A few nights ago they raided a town northwest of here called Fire Hill. Name’s fittin’, because they burned the place to the ground and killed a bunch of folks in the process. They were after a shipment of cash that was bein’ held in the safe at the stage station.”
    “There are still stagecoach lines around here?”
    “The railroad don’t go everywhere just yet.”
    In his previous life as wealthy businessman Conrad Browning, The Kid had built numerous spur lines, but he knew Culhane was right. Some settlements were too small to make running the steel rails to them profitable.
    “Latch is the sort of outlaw who’s kill-crazy,” the Ranger went on. “He wasn’t just tryin’ to steal that money. He wanted to loot as much else as he could from the town and then destroy it and the folks who lived there. Came pretty close to doin’ it, too. Only one or two buildin’s were still standin’ when I got there. The rest were just ashes.”
    That was the fire he had seen several nights earlier, The Kid thought. It had to be. The glow was large enough to have been an entire settlement going up in flames.
    “Only about a hundred people lived there,” Culhane continued, “and more’n half of ’em were killed in the raid, either by bullets or by the fires Latch’s men started.”
    “How do you know it was Latch’s gang that was responsible?” The Kid asked. The grim story had caught his interest, despite his continuing resolve not to get mixed up in any trouble.
    “Some of the survivors got a good look at him,” Culhane explained. “This ain’t the first job Latch’s bunch has pulled. They’ve held up trains and robbed banks all over West Texas, and we’ve got a good description of him. The senseless killin’ matches what he’s done in the past, too, although I got to say he outdid himself this time. He never tried to wipe out a whole town before.”
    “If this only happened a few nights ago, they got the Rangers on the job pretty fast,” The Kid commented.
    “That’s because I happened to be in Fort Stockton on some other law business when a rider come gallopin’ in the next mornin’ with the news of what had happened. I wired my cap’n in San Antonio and told him about it, and he said for me to rattle my hocks over there as fast as I could and try to pick up Latch’s trail. Some of the men from town who could ride wanted to come with me, and as it turns out, the cattleman whose money got stole from the stage station was puttin’ together a posse, too. So I sort of combined everything and took command.”
    “How many men do you have?”
    “Twenty-four, countin’ me.” Culhane smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. “And before you ask, Latch’s bunch is forty or fifty strong, so I’m mighty glad you didn’t ventilate any of my boys. We’re already outnumbered. The odds don’t need to be any worse than they already are.”
    Culhane was more than outnumbered, The Kid thought. Considering what Latch’s men had done to the town of Fire Hill, they had to be hardened killers. A bunch of store clerks and cowboys wouldn’t be any match for them.
    Culhane might have been thinking the same thing. He regarded The Kid with a shrewd, intent expression. “You got the look of a fightin’ man about you, Morgan. I’m sure sorry for the little misunderstandin’ we had, and I’d be mighty happy if you was to throw in with us—”
    “Forget it.” Hearing about what Latch’s gang had