The Loner: Seven Days to Die

by J. A. Johnstone

  The fire in his side was bad. It hurt like someone had jammed a blazing torch into his body. Maybe they had.

  The swaying and bouncing added to his sickness. He tried to move, hoping to find a more comfortable position. His hands were numb, which meant his wrists were tied together. Eventually, he came to understand that his wrists were also bound to his ankles.

  Somebody had draped him facedown over a saddle and lashed him in place so he couldn’t move.

  Haggarty.

  That son of a bitch.

  The Kid couldn’t hold back the groan of misery that welled up in his throat. A couple of seconds after the wretched sound escaped, the horse that was carrying him stopped.

  “So, you’re awake again,” a man’s voice said.

  “Cut me…loose,” The Kid gasped.

  “Yeah, like I’m gonna take a chance on cutting Bloody Ben Bledsoe loose.”

  “Hag…Haggarty?”

  “That’s right.”

  The Kid was too weak to lift his head to look at the man. He stared at the ground as he said, “You’ve got the wrong man, you stupid bastard.”

  Haggarty chuckled. “Talk like that’s not likely to make me want to treat you better, is it? I’ve seen the picture on all the reward posters. You’re Bledsoe, all right.”

  “You’re wrong. My name is…Morgan.”

  During that brief hesitation, he had thought about saying Conrad Browning. But that name probably wouldn’t mean anything to Haggarty. At one point, Conrad had been declared legally dead, after a body was found in the charred ruins of his house in Carson City. Later, Conrad’s lawyers had discreetly informed the authorities that he was, in fact, still alive, but his whereabouts were unknown.

  That was the way The Kid wanted to keep it. He had no interest in going back to his previous life, and he didn’t want to reveal it unless he had to.

  “You can lie all you want to, Bledsoe,” Haggarty went on. “No one is going to believe you. Who’d take the word of a murdering outlaw?”

  With a click of his tongue, Haggarty got the horses moving again. As The Kid swayed over the saddle and a fresh wave of dizziness set the world to spinning crazily around him, he realized he was just going to have to bide his time.

  Surely, sooner or later, Haggarty would deliver him to someone who would realize a terrible mistake had been made.

  The Kid could tell from the light it was early morning. He had been out cold for most of the night. The light grew brighter and the shadows shorter as the sun climbed in the New Mexico sky. The ride seemed to take an eternity.

  Finally, Haggarty reined in again. “There it is,” he said. “Hell Gate. You’re back home, Bledsoe.”

  The Kid forced his head up and gazed out across a valley. On the far side, backed up against a sheer cliff of what appeared to be solid granite, was a compound of squat stone buildings, surrounded by a high, thick, stone wall with guard towers at the front corners. The cliff itself formed the rear wall of the enclosure.

  In the middle of the cliff was a tunnel opening that reminded The Kid of the black, hungry maw of a beast. The resemblance was made even stronger by a pair of heavy, barred gates that looked like teeth.

  One thought blazed through The Kid’s mind as he stared at the compound. Once a man was swallowed up by that hole, he would never come out again. “What…what is that place?” he muttered.

  “Hell Gate Territorial Prison,” Haggarty said. “You know that as well as I do, Bledsoe. It’s where they put the worst of the worst…like you.”

  The Kid didn’t have the energy to argue with his captor. Actually, he felt somewhat relieved as he lowered his head again. Now that they had reached their destination, somebody at Hell Gate Prison was bound to realize he wasn’t Bloody Ben Bledsoe, whoever that was.

  He supposed maybe Haggarty had made an honest mistake in thinking he was an outlaw who had escaped from the prison.

  It didn’t change the fact that once The Kid was back on his feet again, he would have a score to settle with the man. Mistake or not, Haggarty would pay for what he had done. Nobody gunned down Kid Morgan from behind, pistol-whipped him, and got away with it.

  Haggarty hitched the horses into motion again, leading The Kid’s buckskin with The Kid lashed to the saddle. Though the prison had appeared close in the thin, clear mountain air, they had to travel several miles on horseback to get there. It took a long time to wind down the trail into the valley, cross it, and climb the other side.

  At last they came to a pair of massive wooden gates in the stone wall. Guard towers sat on both sides of the entrance. The Kid couldn’t tilt his head back far enough to see the occupants of the towers, but he heard a harsh voice call down, “Is that Bledsoe?”

  “That’s right,” Haggarty replied.

  The Kid didn’t waste time and strength contradicting him. Presenting the facts to a guard wouldn’t do any good. He needed to talk to the warden.

  With a creaking of hinges, one of the gates was soon swung open. Haggarty rode in, leading The Kid’s buckskin. Blue-uniformed guards clustered around them, carrying rifles.

  One of the men thumbed back his black cap and nodded. “It’s Bledsoe, all right,” he declared. “I’d recognize that face anywhere. Pure evil, it is.”

  Haggarty dismounted. The Kid saw his booted feet and denim-clad legs approaching. Haggarty leaned over, and for the first time The Kid saw his face, heavy-jawed and hard-planed, with several days’ worth of dark stubble on his cheeks.

  Haggarty grinned coldly at him. “Don’t try anything, Bledsoe,” he warned. “There are a dozen guards surrounding you, and they’d like nothing better than an excuse to settle the score for the two men you killed when you broke out of here.”

  The Kid didn’t say anything. He waited and felt a tug on his wrists and ankles as Haggarty used a knife to cut the rope that bound them together.

  He might have fallen headfirst to the ground and broken his neck, but Haggarty caught hold of the back of his shirt and hauled him the other way, so that he slid out of the saddle onto his feet.

  As soon as he landed, his balance deserted him. After hanging upside down for so long, earth and sky had traded places for him. As they abruptly switched back into their proper orientation, The Kid fell, sitting down hard in the dust. His stomach spasmed, and he couldn’t hold the sickness back any longer. He crumpled onto his side and painfully emptied his belly.

  As the retching subsided, he became aware that the men surrounding him were laughing. He wanted to curse them bitterly but knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  Haggarty was the one who really had some payback coming. The Kid intended to deliver it just as soon as he possibly could.

  Chapter 4

  Haggarty wore a long duster and a brown hat. He was big, broad across the shoulders, and deep in the chest. He stood a couple inches over six feet, which made him slightly taller than The Kid. He probably outweighed The Kid by fifty pounds.

  Haggarty reached down, lifted him effortlessly, and had no trouble manhandling him toward one of the stone buildings. The Kid’s wrists were still tied, but his feet were free. Haggarty had cut the bonds around his ankles.

  Waving lazily in the breeze, the flags of the United States and New Mexico Territory flew on a flagpole in front of the building that was their destination. The Kid figured it was the prison’s administration building.

  Blue-uniformed men went in and out of a larger structure to the right. That would be the guards’ barracks, The Kid thought.

  He took his mind off how horrible he felt by studying the rest of the layout, now that he was on his feet again and could look around.

  Smoke rising from the chimney of a building to the left made him think it was probably the kitchen and mess hall. Several smaller buildings clustered around it. One of them would be the armory, where the guards’ rifles and ammunition were kept. Another appeared to be a blacksmith shop. The rest were probably for storage of various sorts.

  Two more buildings that
looked like barracks stood near the towering cliff. The windows in them had iron bars, and barbed-wire fence was strung between posts driven into the ground around them. Armed guards paced back and forth nearby.

  Clearly, some of the prison’s inmates were kept in those buildings. If that was true, where did the barred tunnel in the cliff face lead?

  The Kid suspected he knew the answer, and it wasn’t a pretty one.

  Trailed by the guards who had laughed at his misery, The Kid and Haggarty reached the steps that led up to the administration building’s porch.

  “Are you through being sick?” Haggarty asked. “I don’t want you throwing up on the warden’s boots. He’s still got to approve paying me the reward.”

  The Kid swallowed the foul taste in his mouth and rasped, “I’m all right.”

  That wasn’t exactly true. He felt weak as a kitten. His head ached intolerably, his side hurt like blazes, and he was still a little dizzy. But his stomach was settling down the longer he was upright, and he didn’t think he would be sick again.

  With Haggarty’s fingers digging cruelly and painfully into his shoulder, The Kid went up the steps. His boots thudded on the planks as Haggarty gave him a shove that sent him stumbling toward the door. A guard opened it before The Kid could crash into it.

  He tripped as he entered the building and fell to his knees. Haggarty grabbed his arm and lifted him again. They were in an office with several desks. Men in suits who worked at those desks stood and stared at him.

  Another man waited in an open doorway on the other side of the room. He was tall and slender and wore a sober black suit and a string tie. Wavy dark hair receded from a high forehead. The man’s face was like a wedge angling back from a prominent nose. A neatly trimmed mustache adorned his upper lip. His eyes were large and had an odd cast to them. He clasped his hands together behind his back and rocked back and forth on his toes.

  “Haggarty,” he said. “They told me you were bringing in Bledsoe. I didn’t believe it. I didn’t think one man would be able to capture such a monster.”

  The Kid waited for the man to go on. He waited to hear This isn’t Bledsoe! What the hell were you thinking, Haggarty?

  Instead, the man rocked back and forth, smiled, and said, “Bring him in. I’m looking forward to telling him what he has in store for him now that he’s back at Hell Gate.”

  “No!” The Kid cried, unable to hold in the startled exclamation. “Can’t you see I’m not this fellow Bledsoe, whoever he is?”

  Haggarty chuckled. “He’s been saying that ever since I nabbed him last night, Warden Fletcher.”

  “Well, we’ll soon make him understand that he’s not fooling anybody.” Fletcher gave Haggarty a curt nod and stepped back into what was obviously the warden’s private office.

  Haggarty shoved The Kid forward into the room. It was well-appointed, with a big desk, several leather armchairs, a map of New Mexico Territory on one wall and portraits of the president and the territorial governor on the opposite wall. Behind the desk, a window looked out over the compound and the tunnel that had been bored into the cliff.

  Haggarty dragged a ladderback chair from one side of the room and put it directly in front of the desk. A heavy hand on The Kid’s shoulder forced him down into the chair. The Kid sat there while Fletcher went behind the desk and regarded him coolly.

  “I’ll wire Santa Fe that you’ve been recaptured, Bledsoe,” he said. “I’m sure that will be welcome news.”

  The Kid hadn’t noticed telegraph wires coming into the prison, but he hadn’t been in a very good position to look around much.

  He shook his head stubbornly. “You’re making a mistake. My name’s not Bledsoe. I’m not an escaped prisoner. I’ve never been here before.”

  Fletcher had been about to sit down, but he stopped himself and straightened as The Kid spoke. He murmured, “Is that so?” and came around the desk again to stand in front of The Kid.

  With no warning, his fist lashed out. It crashed into The Kid’s jaw with terrific force and knocked him out of the chair. Fletcher might be slender, but he packed a lot of force in his punch. The Kid sprawled on the floor.

  “Pick him up,” Fletcher snapped at Haggarty.

  Once The Kid was back in the chair, still stunned but able to sit up by himself, Fletcher went on, “I see dried blood on his head and on his shirt. What happened to him?”

  “Had to shoot him,” Haggarty replied. “I was careful just to crease him in the side. It knocked him down, made him lose some blood. I figured he wouldn’t feel much like fighting after that, but I gave him a rap on the head with my gun butt, just to be sure.”

  “He’s not badly hurt?”

  Haggarty shook his head. “No, I cleaned the wound and bandaged it. I can’t rule out blood poisoning, but I’m pretty sure he’ll live.”

  “We’ll have the doctor look him over just to be sure. I’d hate to have him die before he can be hanged.”

  “No offense, Warden, but I don’t think a jury’s going to sentence Bledsoe to be hanged.”

  “He killed two of my guards,” Fletcher said with a frown.

  “I know. But he’s also the only one who knows where he stashed all that money he and his gang stole.”

  The words cut through the ringing in The Kid’s head. He remembered how, a couple of years earlier, his father Frank had helped recover some money that had been looted from a bank that was part of the Browning business interests. He’d been locked up in Yuma Prison, over in Arizona, for a while.

  In that case, several people on the outside had known Frank’s true identity. Kid’s case was different. Those idiots actually believed he was some outlaw named Bledsoe.

  “I think the murder of two prison guards takes precedence over a bank robbery,” Fletcher said, irritation evident in his voice.

  “I think so, too, Warden,” Haggarty said, “but the men who own those banks have a lot of influence in Santa Fe. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Well, I hope you’re wrong. I’d like to see justice done.” Fletcher took hold of The Kid’s sandy hair and jerked his head back. “Why don’t you just tell us where that money is, Bledsoe, and save us all a great deal of trouble?”

  The Kid bit back the curse that wanted to spring from his lips. Angering Fletcher wouldn’t do any good. Instead he forced himself to say in a calm voice, “Warden, listen to me. I’m not Bledsoe. I didn’t kill any of your men, and I don’t know anything about any bank loot.”

  Haggarty laughed. “You’re trying that lie on the wrong man, mister. If there’s anybody who knows that you’re really Bloody Ben Bledsoe, it’s Jonas Fletcher.”

  “That’s right,” Fletcher said with a nod. “I’m not likely to forget you, Bledsoe. Not after all the trouble you caused, even before your escape. You didn’t really think that shaving off your beard would make you that difficult to recognize, did you?”

  It was insane, thought The Kid. Haggarty was going by pictures on wanted posters, which were sometimes notoriously inaccurate, and Fletcher seemed to be so full of anger and hate that he wanted to believe the man who’d escaped from his prison and killed two guards had been recaptured.

  Fletcher had some reason for lying about it. The Kid couldn’t begin to figure out what that might be.

  “How about it?” Fletcher prodded. “Things might go a little easier for you if you cooperate.”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” The Kid replied between clenched teeth. “I’m not Bledsoe.”

  Fletcher stared at him for a long moment before saying, “All right, suit yourself. You may change your mind after a spell in Hades.” He looked up at Haggarty. “We’ll take charge of him now. Your job is done.”

  “The laborer is worthy of his hire. Isn’t that what the Good Book says, Warden? I’ve heard that you used to be a preacher.”

  “Don’t quote Scripture to me,” Fletcher snapped. “That was a long time ago. Don’t worry, Haggarty. When I wire Santa Fe, I’ll include
the fact that it was you who brought him back to us. You’ll have to ride to Santa Fe to collect the reward, though.”

  Haggarty’s broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “I don’t care where I have to go, as long as I get paid.” He paused. “You think maybe I could get something to eat before I leave, maybe some grain and water for my horse?”

  Fletcher nodded and called, “Dawkins.”

  One of the men from the outer office stuck his head in the door. “Yes, Warden?”

  “See to it that Mr. Haggarty gets whatever he needs for himself and his mount,” Fletcher ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Haggarty asked, “What about the horse Bledsoe was riding? I brought him in on it.”

  Fletcher waved a hand. “You can have it as far as I’m concerned. Count it as a bonus on the reward.”

  “I’ll do that,” Haggarty said with a nod. “That buckskin looks like a fine piece of horseflesh.”

  The Kid wouldn’t have thought it possible under the circumstances, but his heart sank a little more. He and the buckskin had been through a lot together over the past year. He hated to lose the horse, especially to a brutal son of a bitch like Haggarty.

  But of course, he had more important things to worry about.

  Like the fact that he was about to be tossed into someplace called Hades. He knew Fletcher must have been talking about the dark tunnel into the cliff. A place known as Hades, in a prison called Hell Gate…

  That couldn’t be good.

  Chapter 5

  Haggarty left the office, and two of the rifle-toting guards stepped in to keep an eye on The Kid. Fletcher went behind his desk and sat down. He pulled a piece of paper in front of him and dipped a pen in an inkwell.

  “While we’re waiting for the doctor, I’ll compose the wire that I’ll be sending to Santa Fe,” he said.

  “How about sending a wire for me?” The Kid asked.