The Loner

by J. A. Johnstone

  “So I can count on you to keep my secret?”

  Bearpaw nodded again. “Yes. I won’t reveal what you just told me.”

  “Now,” Morgan said, “you have to tell me how you knew I wasn’t telling the truth out there. If I’m going to keep up this pose, it’ll have to be as good as I can make it.”

  “First of all, tell me this. How do you intend to go about killing Lasswell and the other men who kidnapped your wife?”

  Morgan frowned. “Well, I don’t really know yet. I suppose I’ll have to fight them . . .”

  He stopped as Bearpaw solemnly shook his head.

  “If you go up against anybody who’s halfway decent with a gun, Kid, you’ll just get yourself killed.”

  “I managed to take care of the Winchell brothers, and then Garrity and Jessup.”

  “You killed Hank Winchell by blowing his brains out when he was stunned,” Bearpaw said with brutal honesty, “and it was a fluke that his brother fell so you could make the horse pull that buggy wheel over his neck. That was some fast thinking on your part, mind you, but you were still damned lucky.”

  “What about Garrity and Jessup? I outdrew them.”

  “Again, you were lucky. You came up against a couple of fellows who were slow as mud on the draw and terrible shots to boot. They thought they were dangerous gunmen, but they really weren’t. I’ve seen some real gunfighters in my time, and those two weren’t anywhere in the same league.”

  Morgan stared at the Paiute, dumbfounded. “But I hit them,” he protested. “Shot them right out of the saddle.”

  “Yeah, each of them had one bullet wound to the chest. Not bad. But how many shots did you fire?”

  Morgan recalled that he had emptied the Colt, and as he answered Bearpaw’s question, he realized what the other man was talking about. “Five shots,” he said. “Which means that three of them were clean misses.”

  “Sixty percent, to be mathematically precise. Hitting what you’re shooting at less than half the time will get you killed in a hurry if you’re going up against someone who’s actually good with a gun. Maybe some of those kidnappers aren’t any good. Maybe some of them aren’t any better than Garrity and Jessup. But I’ll bet some of them are. I know Clay Lasswell is a lot better. He’d kill you in the blink of an eye, Kid.”

  The bitter, sour taste of defeat and despair came up under Morgan’s tongue. “Are you saying that I should just give up? That I shouldn’t go after the men who are responsible for my wife’s death?”

  Bearpaw shook his head. “Not at all. I’m saying that you need to get a lot better before you face any of them.”

  “How am I going to do that?”

  Bearpaw chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “Did you ever hear of a man called Preacher?”

  “I don’t think so,” Morgan replied with a puzzled frown.

  “How about Smoke Jensen?”

  “Of course. He’s as famous as Wild Bill Hickok or—”

  “Or Frank Morgan?” Bearpaw finished. “It’s a tossup who was really faster in his prime, Smoke Jensen or your father, and I suppose it’s a question that will never be settled. Preacher was an old mountain man who taught Smoke everything he knew about gun-fighting. Smoke had the natural ability, the vision and reflexes he was born with, and Preacher provided him with the know-how to use them. I knew Preacher, and he told me once that as soon as he saw Smoke handle a gun, he knew that the boy had the potential to be one of the best, if not the best.” Bearpaw folded his arms across his chest. “I saw you draw on Garrity and Jessup tonight, and I tell you, Kid, I saw something similar to what Preacher must have seen with Smoke. You were born with a talent for gun-handling. I don’t think you’ll ever be at quite the same level as Smoke—or your father—but with practice and a good teacher, you could be better than just about anybody else.”

  “How much practice are you talking about?”

  Bearpaw shrugged. “Months? Years? The really good ones never stop practicing.”

  “I don’t have that long,” Morgan declared with a shake of his head. “That gang has already had time to scatter to the four winds. The more time that goes by, the harder it’ll be to track them all down.”

  “Maybe so, but you still can’t afford to rush it.”

  “Anyway, where can I find a teacher like you were talking about?”

  The Paiute glared at him and said, “White man heap hurt Bearpaw’s feelings. Ugh.”

  “Stop that,” Morgan snapped. “Are you talking about teaching me yourself? You’re not a gunfighter.”

  “No, but I told you, I knew Preacher, and that old man liked to talk. He could go on for hours about all the things he taught Smoke Jensen. Didn’t your father ever mention any of the little tricks he’d learned over the years?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did,” Morgan admitted. “I reckon I learned a few things without even being aware of it.”

  “I reckon you did, too. And I can teach you more. Most of it is really just common sense, and the first thing is, you have to hit what you shoot at. Being fast on the draw isn’t worth a plugged nickel if you can’t hit anything. That’s why you work on accuracy first. The speed is already there. You were born with it. You just have to develop it once you’ve mastered the accuracy.”

  “Why would you want to take the time and trouble to help me?” Morgan asked.

  “I pulled you out of that creek, didn’t I? The way some cultures see it, once you’ve saved a man’s life, you’re responsible for him from then on. Anyway, you helped Patrick and his family, and since they’re my friends, I figure I owe you. What do you say? Take a little time anyway to get better before you go after those men.”

  Morgan thought it over for a long moment, then nodded. “I reckon I can wait a little while. But not too long. If I don’t catch up to those men fairly soon, someone else is liable to kill them first.”

  “Would that be so bad?” Bearpaw asked. “If they’re dead, does it matter whether or not they died by your hand?”

  “Yes,” Morgan said. “It does.”

  Chapter 13

  Marshal Zeke Chambliss came to the McNally house the next morning. The lawman’s left shoulder was heavily bandaged, and that arm was in a sling. He had a bandage around his head as well, but he seemed fairly strong.

  “Kid, I just wanted to thank you for what you did last night,” Chambliss said as he shook hands with Morgan in the McNallys’ parlor. “For all you knew when you braced those two hellions, they really had killed me.”

  “I’m glad they didn’t,” Morgan said with a faint smile.

  “Oh, so am I!” Chambliss laughed. “Anyway, another reason I’m here is to make you a proposition. How’d you like to pin on the marshal’s badge while I’m healin’ up?”

  “Wait a minute, Zeke,” Dr. McNally protested. “Mr. Morgan’s not yet fully recuperated from his own wound.”

  Morgan glanced at the doctor. “I thought you said when you changed the bandage this morning that the bullet hole looked like it was almost completely healed.”

  “Almost,” McNally insisted. “I said almost completely healed.”

  “You said that after today, you didn’t think I’d need to wear the bandage anymore.”

  McNally frowned. “You shouldn’t use a man’s own words against him.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Morgan said, smiling again. He turned back to Chambliss. “Sorry, Marshal. I appreciate the offer, but I have to say no. I’m not cut out to be a lawman.”

  Chambliss looked disappointed. “Are you sure, Kid? I’m thinking that with a famous gunfighter wearing the badge, troublemakers will steer clear of Sawtooth.”

  The citizens of Buckskin had thought the same thing when they offered the marshal’s job to Frank Morgan. But it hadn’t really turned out that way, and as a result, Frank’s relatively brief stint as a star packer was over.

  Morgan shook his head and told Chambliss, “I’ve got business of my own elsewhere as soon as I’m fit to ride. And t
hat’s not going to be very long. I reckon your deputies will have to hold down the fort until you’re better.”

  “Well, we’ll muddle through, I guess,” Chambliss said with a sigh. “If you change your mind, though . . .”

  “No chance,” Morgan said.

  “In that case . . .” Chambliss put out his hand again. “I’ll wish you good luck and say so long.”

  Morgan had noticed that Eve wouldn’t meet his gaze this morning. When the marshal was gone, he waited until he got a chance to speak to her alone, then asked, “What’s bothering you, Eve? Did I do something wrong?”

  She shook her head, but again she wouldn’t look at him. “No, of course not,” she said. “You saved us from those two gunmen. There’s no telling what they might have done if not for you, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought, but you seem like you’re angry with me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she insisted. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  Morgan could only stare after her as she bustled off to prepare her father’s examination room for the day’s patients.

  Giving up any attempt to figure her out as a bad job, he stepped out onto the porch instead and looked down the road toward downtown. Sawtooth really wasn’t a very big settlement, but this was his first good look at it. The road entered the town from the south. Dr. McNally’s house was on the edge of the settlement. To the north, the road turned into a broad main street with businesses lining it for several blocks. Most of the residences were on the cross streets. The town was located in a valley between a line of wooded hills to the east and a range of more rugged mountains to the west. The mines were located in those mountains, Morgan knew, while beyond the eastern hills sprawled a vast plain cut up into large ranches. Sawtooth Creek twisted out of the mountains about a mile south of the settlement and provided water for those ranches.

  Farther to the east lay the mostly arid Humboldt Basin, which wasn’t good for much of anything, but this area around Sawtooth was nice country. A man could be happy here, Morgan thought as he leaned on the porch railing, especially if he had a woman like Eve McNally at his side.

  He stiffened in surprise. Where had that come from? He had no feelings for Eve other than gratitude. He wasn’t capable of anything else right now, and suspected that he never would be again. But that didn’t stop him from recognizing that some other young man would be lucky to have Eve fall in love with him.

  He hoped like hell that she hadn’t fallen for him.

  He went back inside and got his hat. As he settled it on his head, he paused to look into the mirror on the wall of his room. He hadn’t really paid that much attention to the way he looked since he’d been here. He’d lost weight; his face was thinner than it had been before. Not surprisingly, his eyes had a solemn, almost haunted look to them. Eve had shaved him several times, but he thought that maybe he ought to let his beard grow. That would be one more thing to separate him from the clean-shaven Conrad Browning.

  “Where are you going?” Dr. McNally asked as Morgan walked through the front room.

  “I just want to get out and move around a little. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Doc, but I’ve been cooped up here for long enough that I’m getting restless.”

  McNally chuckled. “I’m not so old that I don’t remember that feeling, son. Go right ahead. Just don’t overexert yourself. Remember, you don’t have all your strength back yet.”

  Morgan left the house and walked down the road into the main part of the settlement. As he did, people on the street saw him and gave him friendly nods. Some of them spoke to him, shaking his hand and welcoming him to Sawtooth. Word had gotten around about what had happened with Garrity and Jessup.

  But for that very reason, other citizens seemed leery of him, looking at him from the corners of their eyes and even crossing the street so they wouldn’t have to greet him. They believed he was a famous gunfighter, Morgan realized, so they were afraid of him.

  He had never really thought about it before, but now he realized that was the sort of thing his father had been forced to put up with for years and years, being admired and feared at the same time.

  The blood on a man’s hands was mighty hard to wash off.

  Morgan didn’t spend much time in town. He had nothing in common with these people. When he walked back to the McNally house, he found Phillip Bearpaw sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” the Paiute asked.

  “All right, I suppose,” Morgan answered with a shrug.

  “No lingering effects from that shoot-out last night, either physical or . . . ?”

  “If you’re asking if I lost any sleep over killing those two, the answer is no. I gave them a chance to ride away. It was their decision to go for their guns. But I don’t take any real pleasure in killing them, any more than I would have if they’d been a couple of rabid skunks. It was just something that needed doing.”

  Bearpaw nodded. “That’s a good attitude to take, I guess. It’s the sort of thing that Preacher or Smoke Jensen would say. Don’t look for trouble, but don’t back down from it when it finds you. Don’t brood about it either.”

  “Waste of time, as far as I’m concerned,” Morgan said.

  Bearpaw pushed himself to his feet. “Feel like taking a ride?”

  “Actually, I do. And I’ll bet my horse is even more anxious to stretch his legs. Where are we going?”

  “I thought we’d go out to my cabin,” Bearpaw said. “It’s far enough away from town that the sound of gunshots shouldn’t bother anybody. I picked up a box of cartridges at Ned’s store. There’s no time like the present to get started on that practice.”

  They walked around to the back of the house. Bearpaw’s horse, a shaggy Appaloosa, was tied up at the shed where Morgan’s buckskin and Dr. McNally’s buggy horse were housed. Morgan started to get his saddle out of the shed and put it on the buckskin, but Bearpaw stopped him.

  “Let me do that,” the Paiute suggested. “If Patrick were to see you doing something like lifting a saddle, he wouldn’t be happy. And Eve would be positively livid that you were risking opening up that wound again.”

  Morgan hesitated, then agreed. He didn’t like having somebody taking care of a chore he could handle himself—just another example of how much he had changed since he was a young man—but he knew Bearpaw was right.

  Eve must have heard them talking, because she appeared at the back door, looked at them for a second as Bearpaw saddled Morgan’s horse, then came outside and strode toward them.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Mr. Morgan?” she asked.

  “Out to Phillip’s cabin,” Morgan said with a nod toward Bearpaw. “He asked me to visit.” He didn’t see any need to explain that he was going out there to practice his gun-handling.

  “Did you ask my father if it was all right for you to ride?”

  “Well . . . no, I didn’t. But it’s not far—”

  “Only about a mile,” Bearpaw put in. “And we’ll take it slow and easy, won’t we, Kid?”

  Morgan saw something flicker in Eve’s eyes when Bearpaw called him “Kid.” She said, “If you tear that wound open, you’ll lose all the progress you’ve made since you’ve been here.”

  Morgan nodded in acknowledgment of the warning. “I know that. That’s why I intend to be mighty careful.”

  Eve blew her breath out in an exasperated fashion and said, “All right. Go ahead. Just don’t say I didn’t tell you it was a mistake.”

  Carefully, Morgan put his left foot up in the stirrup and swung up onto the buckskin’s back. It felt good to settle into the saddle. He smiled down at Eve and said, “So far, so good. That didn’t hurt at all.”

  She said, “Hmmph,” and turned to walk back to the house.

  Bearpaw mounted up as well, and the two men rode slowly away from the house, following the trail to the south. When they were well out of ea
rshot of the house, Morgan said, “You know, you never did tell me why Eve’s so upset with me. I tried to convince myself it was just my imagination, but that’s obviously not the case.”

  “It’s not really my place to talk about Eve’s feelings,” Bearpaw said. “You should ask her yourself.”

  “I did. She insists that everything’s fine.”

  Bearpaw shrugged. “It’s her decision what she does . . . or doesn’t . . . want to tell you.”

  “Yeah, I reckon you’re right,” Morgan admitted.

  That didn’t mean he had to like it, though.

  They reached Bearpaw’s home, which was a sturdy-looking log cabin, a short time later. Morgan frowned at it, causing Bearpaw to chuckle and say, “What were you expecting, a wickiup or a tepee?”

  “I thought the only Indians who lived in houses were the Cherokee and tribes like that back East.”

  “I happen to like an actual roof over my head, and a good solid wall between me and the cold wind in the winter. Plus I need better light to read by than a campfire. These eyes of mine aren’t as young as they used to be.”

  “You’re not like any other Indians I’ve run into.”

  “I never met a gunfighter with a Boston accent either,” Bearpaw responded. “Although the accent does seem to be fading a little. You may never sound like a real Westerner, though.”

  “I’d better learn how to act like one.”

  “Amen to that.” Bearpaw turned his horse. “Come on, let’s go over by the creek.”

  They rode along the stream in which Morgan had almost drowned until they came to a large, open field bordered by a rocky bluff twenty feet high. Bearpaw reined in and told Morgan to dismount. They tied their horses to a couple of saplings. Then Bearpaw pointed to a large pine tree about twenty feet away, at the base of the bluff.

  “Draw and fire at that tree,” he said. “Hit it as many times as you can.”

  Morgan faced the pine and reached for the Colt, pulling the gun and bringing it up as fast as he could. He emptied all five rounds at the tree. The shots sounded like thunder as they rolled together, one after the other.