The Morgans

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  That was a long time ago. A lot of dusty trails, burned powder, and spilled blood ago. Conrad was trying to put all that behind him, but sometimes he felt like it was a losing battle.

  He settled the hat on his head and turned toward the door. Moffatt stopped him by gripping his upper arm.

  “Hold on. I say you’re not goin’ down there, and the docks are my territory, not yours, Browning.”

  “The streets are public, and I’ll go where I want. Anyway, if you’re telling me the truth, your friends on the docks will back you up, won’t they?”

  A muscle lying along Moffatt’s jaw twitched and jumped, but he let go and didn’t say anything else as he followed Conrad out of the office.

  A simple, unostentatious sign on the outside of the building read THE BROWNING COMPANIES. Similar offices were located in Denver, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, showing the vast reach of the various holdings owned primarily by Conrad Browning. Shipping, railroads, real estate, banking . . . all those enterprises and more funneled wealth into Conrad’s pockets. His mother, Vivian, and her husband—Conrad’s stepfather—Charles Browning had done a superb job of establishing this financial empire, and it had only grown larger under the astute leadership of the men Conrad had put in charge.

  Over the years since he and his real father, Frank Morgan, had assumed ownership of the holdings, Conrad had had very little to do with running things. At first he couldn’t be bothered, because he’d been busy living the life of a rich, arrogant wastrel. Then he had fallen in love with and married a Western girl, and for a while it seemed as if her influence would be enough to make him grow up.

  Then brutal violence had stolen her away from him, and that tragedy had plunged him into a new life . . . a life where he roamed the West as the gunfighter known as Kid Morgan, surviving by his wits and the gun-handling skill he had inherited from Frank Morgan.

  From the first moment Conrad Browning had discovered who his real father was, he had hated Frank Morgan. Over time, as fate made them allies in numerous battles, that feeling had softened into an uneasy truce, and finally that grudging acceptance had turned into affection on Conrad’s part.

  As for Frank, he had always loved the son he had never known he had until the boy was almost grown, although he was practical enough to admit that Conrad was pretty much of a horse’s ass at first. Conrad had realized that about himself and tried to make up for it.

  After several years of salving his grief with the adventurous life he led as Kid Morgan, Conrad’s mourning had faded to a more bearable level. It was time to go back to his previous life, his real life, as a young businessman. He’d been trying hard in that effort.

  Like putting up with Moffatt’s bluster, for example. The man continued trying to persuade Conrad to turn back as they headed toward the docks, but Conrad ignored him.

  Quite a few tall-masted sailing ships were tied up along the waterfront, but this was the age of steam, and vessels made of iron and steel instead of wood, with smokestacks instead of masts, were numerous, too. Noise filled the air, the shouts of men and the rattle of machinery blending to form a racket that was almost musical in its own distinctive way. The sharp tang of coal jabbed Conrad’s nose. He didn’t find any of the sensations particularly appealing, but he supposed men could get used to them, maybe even revel in them.

  A Browning ship was being unloaded. A crane swung a big cargo net full of crates from the deck to the dock. A burly older man with a bristling white mustache was supervising the operation. The sleeves of his work shirt were rolled up over brawny forearms.

  He spotted Conrad and Moffatt approaching and bushy white eyebrows rose at the sight of the two men together. He motioned for the crane operator to stop the machine.

  “Hello, Ward,” Conrad greeted the man.

  “Mr. Browning,” the man replied with a curt nod. Then he glared at Moffatt and went on, “What are you doin’ with this scoundrel?”

  “By God, Ward, you can’t talk about me like that!” Moffatt burst out. “You may be the boss of this crew while they’re working, but they’ve chosen me to represent them when it comes to their wages, and you know it.”

  Ward shook his head and said, “I know nothin’ of the sort. You came around here with your bully boys and tried to scare the lads into doin’ what you want, but it didn’t work, did it? Most of ’em told you to take a flyin’ leap!”

  “That’s a damned lie,” Moffatt said, clenching his fists again as he moved closer to Ward. The stevedore boss squared his shoulders and looked like he was ready to throw a punch, too.

  Conrad said, “Both of you take it easy,” as he moved smoothly between them. “So Moffatt hasn’t formed a union down here after all?”

  “Some of the crews have gone along with him,” Ward said. “The ones he buffaloed into it.”

  “I never forced anybody to turn to me for help,” Moffatt said with a sneer.

  Three men had moved up behind Moffatt, Conrad noted, men who hadn’t been there a moment earlier. They were all big and looked like they might have been dockworkers at one time, but now instead of rough canvas trousers and shirts, they wore suits. But like Moffatt, they seemed out of place in them. Clearly, they were roughnecks, and Conrad assumed they were the muscle that had convinced some of the workers to throw in with Moffatt.

  Conrad looked the men over and then coolly dismissed them, turning to Ward to say, “Spread the word for me, Jonas, that if any man wants to come and see me to talk about a better wage, my door is open. There’s no need to go through Moffatt, who’d probably just take the lion’s share of any increase for himself.”

  “That’s a damned lie, too!” Moffatt yelled. “You’re gonna be sorry about this, Browning.”

  “I’m already sorry I gave you the time of day,” Conrad snapped. “Now, step aside. I have work to do.”

  One of the men who had joined Moffatt spat an obscenity. He shouldered up to confront Conrad and suddenly swung a hamlike fist at the young man’s head.

  Conrad’s reactions might have slowed slightly from months of sitting in an office, but he was still faster than the man attacking him. He leaned away from the punch, which merely clipped the homburg’s brim and sent the hat flying off his head.

  The missed blow threw the man off-balance, so he couldn’t defend himself as Conrad hooked a hard left into his ribs and followed it with a straight right to the face. Cartilage crunched under Conrad’s knuckles as blood spurted hotly from the man’s flattened nose. He reeled back, howling in pain, and sat down hard.

  Their companion’s misfortune didn’t cause the other two to hold back. They rushed Conrad, swinging wild punches. For a moment, he blocked the flailing fists, but then one of them got through and caught him on the jaw. The impact spun him halfway around. That gave one of the men a chance to grab him from behind and pin his arms to his sides.

  “I got him, boss!” the man yelled to Moffatt. “Teach him a lesson!”

  Grinning, Moffatt cocked his fists and moved in. The evil gleam in his eyes testified that he meant to hurt Conrad, perhaps badly.

  Moffatt had forgotten about Jonas Ward, though. The burly stevedore grabbed his shoulder, hauled him around, and slammed a punch to his jaw. Moffatt staggered but didn’t go down. He caught himself and bored in on Ward like a badger, peppering him with short but powerful blows.

  Meanwhile, the third bruiser was standing close enough for Conrad to lift both feet from the ground, draw his knees up, and then straighten his legs in a powerful double kick that landed on the man’s chest. The man flew backward—right off the edge of the dock. He yelled as he tried futilely to find something to grab in midair. A second later, water flew high in the sky as he landed in the bay with a huge splash.

  Despite his wastrel ways in his youth, enough of Conrad’s education had stuck for him to be familiar with Newton’s third law. So he wasn’t surprised when the kick he launched made the man holding him stumble backward. He stuck a foot between the man’s ankles a
nd got their legs tangled up so that the man toppled over. He hit the cobblestones hard enough that it knocked his grip on Conrad loose.

  Conrad rammed an elbow into the man’s midsection, rolled over, and grabbed him by the throat. He pulled the man up, then banged his head against the pavement. The man went limp. He was knocked cold.

  Shouting filled Conrad’s ears as he scrambled to his feet. He saw that a lot of the dockworkers had gathered around to watch the fight. Nothing drew attention like a battle—unless it was a beautiful woman, and none of those were in sight at the moment.

  Instead, Moffatt and Ward were slugging away at each other, and as Conrad watched, Moffatt landed a blow to the other man’s stomach that doubled him over. That put Ward in perfect position for Moffatt to lift an uppercut from ground level. It exploded on Ward’s chin like a bomb and knocked him a couple of inches into the air before he crashed down on his back, senseless.

  Breathing hard, Moffatt glared in triumph at Ward’s motionless form for a second, then swung around. His expression of savage satisfaction disappeared when he saw that Conrad was on his feet and the three bruisers were down and out of the fight. One man was unconscious, one was floundering in the bay trying to find a place to climb out, and the third sat cross-legged on the ground cupping his hand under his broken nose to catch the blood that welled from it. What he intended to do with a handful of gore was anybody’s guess.

  Moffatt said, “How . . . how did you . . . ?”

  He didn’t finish the question, but Conrad answered it anyway, saying, “Maybe I’m not the soft-handed pencil pusher you thought I was, Moffatt.”

  Hate and rage twisted Moffatt’s face. He reached under his coat as he started toward Conrad. Sunlight glinted on the knife he pulled from a hidden sheath.

  Faster than the eye could follow, Conrad drew a gun from a holster under his coat at the small of his back and pointed it at Moffatt, who stopped in his tracks when he found himself staring down the weapon’s barrel. His face was dark with angry blood, but now it began to pale as Conrad thumbed back the little revolver’s hammer.

  “You made a fundamental negotiating mistake, Moffatt,” he said. “It takes a man who’s highly skilled with a knife to go up against a man with a gun.” Conrad smiled. “How about it? Are you that good?”

  Moffatt cursed and opened his hand. The knife clattered to the street.

  “You can’t shoot me,” he said. “I’m unarmed.”

  “I don’t know. I might find some men around here who would swear that you never dropped that knife. If they told the law you attacked me with it, and I was just defending myself . . .”

  That drew some jeers of agreement from the onlookers. Conrad didn’t believe that Moffatt had many friends here, only men he had paid off or intimidated, and neither of those things created much loyalty.

  “What do you want, Browning?”

  “For myself? Nothing. I just want you and your hooligans to leave these honest, hardworking men alone. Try living on the sweat of your own labors, instead of leeching off the work other men do.”

  The gun in Conrad’s hand might have scared Moffatt, but that didn’t stop him from sneering.

  “You’re a fine one to talk! Fancy rich boy who inherited all his money! What have you ever done to earn your own way?”

  The man had a point, even though Conrad didn’t like to admit it. Sure, the Browning holdings had grown larger and even more lucrative while he was running them, but in truth, “running” the business meant putting good people in charge and staying out of their way, for the most part. Conrad couldn’t take personal credit for much of that success.

  Then why was he here, sitting in an office instead of out on the trail somewhere? He couldn’t answer that.

  He pointed the gun in the air and lowered the hammer off cock. As he slipped the weapon back in its holster, he said, “Just remember what I told you, Moffatt. Everyone here today saw that you’re not invincible after all. It won’t take long for word to get around to the rest of the docks. People will stand up to you now.”

  Jonas Ward had regained his senses and climbed back onto his feet. He called, “Damn right, we will!”—and more shouts of agreement and support came from the crowd. The hangdog look on Moffatt’s face said that he knew he was beaten.

  The man Conrad had kicked into the bay had finally gotten out. With water streaming from him, he came up to Moffatt and asked, “What do you want to do, boss?”

  “Get those other two on their feet,” Moffatt snapped. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Within minutes, all four men had slunk out of sight.

  Ward clapped a hand on Conrad’s back and wrung his other hand.

  “That was a mighty fine fight!” he said. “Did you mean that, Mr. Browning, about giving the men higher wages?”

  “I think we can work something out,” Conrad said. “I’ll leave instructions for my manager to talk to you and all the other men who unload my ships and see what can be done.”

  Ward frowned and asked, “You’re not gonna handle it yourself?”

  “I may not be here.”

  “May not be . . . Where are you goin’, Mr. Browning?”

  Conrad shook his head and said, “I don’t really know.”

  Chapter 3

  Tucson

  Frank had to spend one more night on the trail, then arrived in Tucson the day after the shootout with El Serpiente and his men. It had been a number of years since he’d been in the city, so he didn’t know if the livery stable owned by his old friend Pete McRoberts was still in business. He was happy to see that it was.

  “Frank Morgan!” the toothless, bandy-legged liveryman exclaimed as he gazed up at the head-and-a-half-taller visitor. “I figured for sure you was dead by now!”

  “Why, did you read about me dying?” Frank asked.

  “No, just figured the kind of life you led, somebody would’ve plugged you before now!” McRoberts slapped the leg of his overalls, raising some dust, and laughed. “Reckon I should’ve knowed better, as slick on the draw as you always been. You still as fast as ever, Frank?”

  “Fast enough that I’m still here.”

  “Reckon that’s fast enough, all right!” McRoberts cackled. He looked at Goldy and Stormy and let out a whistle of admiration. “Lord have mercy, them’s two fine pieces o’ horseflesh. Bring ’em on in here. You’re lookin’ for a place to stable ’em, I reckon?”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got that pack animal, and my dog, too.”

  “Dog? I figured a wolf done followed you in off the desert. I can tell by lookin’, he ain’t no ways tame, is he?”

  “Tame enough,” Frank said. “He won’t chew your arm off or rip your throat out if you don’t bother him. He’s particularly partial to old Stormy there, so if you let the two of them stay in the same stall, Dog will behave himself.”

  “He’d better,” McRoberts said as he cast a leery eye toward the big cur. “I charge extra for gettin’ chawed on.”

  He quoted a price for feeding and looking after all four animals, and Frank paid for three nights in advance. Money was no problem. Since he had inherited an equal percentage in the Browning business holdings from his former wife, he had been one of the wealthiest men west of the Mississippi, although he never dressed or acted like that. Having money hadn’t changed him. As long as he had enough for supplies and ammunition, that was plenty, just as it always had been.

  “I’m looking for a hotel called the Plaza del Sol, Pete,” he said once the arrangements had been concluded. “I don’t recall it, so it must not have been in business the last time I was through these parts. Reckon you can tell me how to find it?”

  “Shoot, you can’t hardly miss it. Just go on down Congress Street and keep an eye out for a fancy, hacienda-lookin’ sort of place.” The old-timer cocked his mostly bald head to the side. “You supposed to meet somebody there, Frank? Is it work that brung you to Tucson? Gun work?”

  Frank frowned. He knew the reputation that had
followed him around for all the long years. People always believed that because he was a fast gun, that talent was for hire to the highest bidder.

  As a matter of fact, that wasn’t the case. Frank had never earned his living as a gunfighter. He had worked as a bounty hunter from time to time, and he had pinned on a badge as a town-taming lawman. He had fought in range wars and railroad wars, but only because he believed one side was in the right and people needed his help. He had hired on as a guide for wagon trains and ridden as a shotgun guard on stagecoaches. But as far as taking money just to shoot somebody’s enemies . . . that he had never done. And never would.

  But it was indeed a summons for help that had brought him to Tucson. A letter had caught up to him in El Paso, and he had started in this direction to find out what it was about.

  Dear Señor Morgan, the letter had read.

  I write to you in the hope that you can assist me in a dire situation. We are not acquainted, but Don Felipe Almanzar, an old and dear friend of my father, gave me your name and suggested that you might help us. My father, Eduardo Escobar, has a ranch near Tucson that is under a veritable siege by outlaws and rustlers whose lawless activities threaten to ruin it. The authorities have been unable to run them to ground but Don Felipe believes that you are equal to the task. I cannot promise you a great deal of money if you were to assist us, but you would have my eternal gratitude. If you can see your way clear to do this, please write to me in care of the Plaza del Sol Hotel in Tucson and I will meet you there anytime you would like to discuss the situation. I very much hope you can help us. I fear you are the only one who can.

  The letter was signed Antonia Escobar.

  Over the years, Frank had been contacted many times by people with similar problems. Sometimes he took a hand, sometimes he rode away, depending on what his judgment of the situation turned out to be. The fact that this Escobar woman had gotten his name from Don Felipe Almanzar spoke well of her. Frank both liked and respected the Mexican rancher, having gotten to know him several years earlier when a perilous adventure had led him south of the border.