Read The Loner: Inferno #12 for Free Online

we’ll just see about this!”
    “Leave Lieutenant Nicholson out of it,” Brennan snapped. “This is between you and me, you obstinate old buffalo!”
    Dunlap drew back in outrage. “Old buffalo, is it? We’ll see how you like it when I stampede right over you, mister!”
    With that, he lunged at Brennan, swinging a knobby-knuckled fist at the sergeant’s head.
    A roar went up from both sides in the dispute. Soldiers and immigrants alike surged toward the gap between wagons, fists clenched and ready to do battle.
    Of course, there were plenty of other gaps between the wagons. It wasn’t the only point of entry into the circle, by any means. But symbolically, it had become the gate, and Dunlap the gatekeeper.
    The narrowness of the opening worked against a full-scale brawl. There was only room for Dunlap and Brennan to slug at each other, which they did with enthusiasm. Shouts filled the night every time a fist thudded into flesh. Men on both sides called encouragement to their respective champion.
    More people from the wagon train had come up behind The Kid. They crowded forward, eager to see what was happening, and the press of human flesh forced him to move closer. Harwood wasn’t next to him anymore—he couldn’t see the scout—but suddenly he realized Jessica Ritter was. Her hip was against his, and neither of them had room to pull away.
    Jessica looked over at him, tall enough that she didn’t have to tilt her head back much to do so. “Mr. Dunlap’s too old for this!” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the tumult.
    The Kid knew what she meant. Brennan was middle-aged, an obvious veteran of many years in the cavalry, but Dunlap was even older. He had told The Kid that he was settling down when the wagon train reached Raincrow Valley. He had put in enough dangerous decades on the frontier to deserve that retirement.
    Even so, The Kid didn’t know what Jessica expected him to do. He couldn’t stop the fight. It had gone too far for that. The only thing that would end it was one man getting the best of the other.
    At that moment, Brennan landed a hard, looping punch that made it past Dunlap’s attempt to block it. The sergeant’s fist crashed into Dunlap’s jaw with such force the older man was lifted off his feet and spilled onto his back. Brennan charged into the circle after him, and that left the gap between wagons wide open.
    The troopers began to pour through it, spoiling for a fight the immigrants were glad to give them. In the blink of an eye, punches were being thrown furiously and indiscriminately.
    Now this was a full-fledged brawl.
    Most of the immigrant women fled from the violence, which caused the crowd to thin out in a hurry. The Kid could move again. It wasn’t his fight and he didn’t want any part of it, so he started to back up.
    Jessica Ritter stalked forward, grabbed the shoulder of a trooper who was pounding his fist into the face of a civilian, and hauled him around with a shouted, “Hey!”
    She punched the startled soldier in the nose, flattening it and making blood spurt from his nostrils.
    The startled trooper howled in pain and clapped one hand to his injured nose. He swung the other in a backhand that cracked across Jessica’s face and jerked her head to the side.
    It was an instinctive reaction on the soldier’s part, an unthinking response to the pain he felt. Under normal circumstances it was unlikely he would have hit a woman.
    The Kid reacted instinctively, too. Since Scott Harwood wasn’t around to protect the woman he was engaged to, The Kid lunged forward, shoved the stumbling Jessica behind him, and uncorked a punch that buried his fist to the wrist in the trooper’s belly. The man doubled over and collapsed at The Kid’s feet.
    He turned toward Jessica, not expecting any thanks but not anticipating what he got, either. She punched him hard in the chest.
    “I didn’t ask you to do that!” she yelled. “I can take care of myself!”
    The imprint