The Loner

by J. A. Johnstone

  He didn’t have time to do anything else before Hyde grabbed him from behind, lifted him into the air, and threw him against the bluff. Pain shot through Morgan as he crashed into the unyielding surface. Hyde came at him again.

  Shots began to roar. Hyde’s eyes widened as bullets punched into his back. He stumbled forward, reaching behind him and trying to paw at the wounds like a maddened beast. The shots continued until the hammer fell on an empty cylinder. Hyde lost his footing and fell to his knees, then pitched forward on his face, revealing Tasmin standing behind him, both hands wrapped around the butt of Morgan’s Colt as smoke curled from the muzzle.

  “Kid, watch out!” Bearpaw yelled.

  Morgan whirled around and saw that Fowler had broken away from the Paiute, who had been wrestling with him while Morgan had his hands full with Dean and Hyde. Fowler snapped a shot at him. The bullet whined off the rock as Morgan dove and rolled, grabbing the Winchester as he did so. He came up on one knee and fired the rifle from the hip. Flame lanced from the barrel. Fowler jerked backward as the bullet drove into his chest. Morgan worked the Winchester’s lever and cranked off two more shots. The impact of the slugs sent Fowler stumbling away from the fire. The wind whipped snow around him, hiding him from sight.

  Morgan sprang to his feet and grabbed Tasmin’s arm. “Are you all right?” he asked. When she nodded, he shoved her toward the horses. “Get behind them and stay there!”

  He stepped over to Bearpaw and bent down to help the Paiute to his feet. “How about you? Are you hurt?”

  Bearpaw shook his head. “No, this old skull of mine is too hard for it to be dented easily. Better keep an eye on that one,” he added, nodding toward Dean.

  “What about the one I shot?”

  “You put three rifle slugs in his chest, Kid. I don’t think we need to worry too much about him.”

  Morgan hoped Bearpaw was right about that. He wasn’t going to venture out into the storm to look for Fowler, though.

  Dean was still only half conscious. Morgan made sure he was disarmed, then tied his hands behind his back.

  Hyde was dead. Even as big as he was, five .45 slugs in his back had been enough to put him down for good. As Morgan checked him to be sure, Tasmin asked from behind the horses, “Did I kill him?”

  “You sure did.”

  A couple of seconds of silence passed. Then she said, “Good. He had it coming to him. You don’t know all the things he did back there at Rosa’s.”

  Bearpaw built the fire up. As its flickering light filled the area under the bluff, Morgan knelt in front of Dean and lightly cuffed the man back to consciousness. Dean groaned and then lifted his head, staring at Morgan with pure hatred. His lips were bloody and swollen from Morgan’s punches.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?” Dean said thickly. “Browning.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My name is Kid Morgan.”

  Dean shook his head. “I don’t care what you call yourself. You’re him.”

  Morgan had reloaded and holstered his Colt after taking it back from Tasmin. He slipped it out now and placed the barrel under Dean’s jaw. He eared back the hammer and said in a quiet, dangerous tone, “If you believe that, then you know you’d better tell me what I want to know.”

  Dean looked like he wanted to tell Morgan to go to hell. Defiance burned in his eyes. But that defiance faded under the steady, level gaze of the Kid, and finally he swallowed hard and said, “What is it you want?”

  “Rattigan and White Rock are supposed to be prospecting somewhere up here at a place called Blue Creek. Is that true?”

  Dean managed to nod. “As far as I know, it is. I remember them talking about it.”

  “Do you know where Blue Creek is?”

  “From the way Rattigan talked, it’s about fifteen miles west of Trinidad.”

  “All right. Where are Clay Lasswell, Ezra Harker, and Vernon Moss?”

  Dean’s mouth twisted bitterly. “You crippled Moss. He’ll never walk on those legs again. Lasswell and Harker got a wagon and put him in it. They were gonna take him back where he came from, somewhere down in Texas. Some little town called Diablito.”

  “Little Devil,” Bearpaw translated.

  Morgan nodded. He understood that much Spanish. He asked Dean, “You know where to find that town?”

  The outlaw shook his head. “Not really. I just know that it’s somewhere on the Rio Grande, right across the river from Mexico.”

  The Texas-Mexico border was pretty long, Morgan recalled, but he would travel every mile of it if he had to in order to find Lasswell, Harker, and Moss. He didn’t care if Moss was crippled. The man hadn’t yet paid the price for the crime he’d helped commit. Not by a long shot.

  As Morgan took the gun barrel away from Dean’s neck, the man looked around and said, “Where’s Fowler? Where’d he go?”

  “He stumbled out into the storm after I shot him,” said Morgan.

  “Damn it! You’re gonna leave a wounded man out there in that blizzard?”

  “I’m not going to go out there looking for him if that’s what you mean.”

  “You can’t just leave him to die!”

  “He’s probably dead already,” Bearpaw put in. “The Kid hit him three times in the chest with that Winchester.”

  Dean closed his eyes and began to curse in a low, bitter voice. Morgan ignored him, stood up, and went over to Tasmin. “You’d better crawl back in your bedroll and try to get some more sleep,” he suggested.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’ll turn in after a while.”

  “What are you gonna do with me?” Dean demanded in a shaky voice. “Are you gonna kill me, too?”

  Bearpaw hunkered beside him and grinned evilly at him. “I’d say you’ve got it comin’ for what you did, mister.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Dead protested. “Lasswell and Moss were the ones behind it. The rest of us were just hired hands.”

  Lasswell and Moss had been hired hands, too, Morgan thought. For the first time in a while, he pondered the question of who had hired Lasswell and given him his orders.

  But the snowy night held no answers.

  Chapter 21

  The storm blew itself out during the night. The sky was still overcast the next morning, but the wind had died down and no more snow fell. During the blizzard, the wind had scoured the flatter terrain so that only an inch or two of snow remained on it. The white stuff had piled up in deep drifts, though, against rocks and other barriers.

  It had drifted against Jim Fowler’s body during the night and eventually spilled over it, so that now the corpse appeared to be a long, white, low mound about fifty feet from the camp. Fowler had made it that far before collapsing.

  Morgan went out and brought in the body, dragging it by its heels. Abel Dean glared at him in hatred as he left Fowler’s body sprawled under the bluff next to Hyde’s corpse.

  “Damn it, at least you could bury them!”

  “Or you can, if you want to try to dig a grave in this cold ground with your fingers,” Morgan said. “We didn’t bring along a shovel.”

  Dean frowned. “Well, it just don’t seem right to leave them for the wolves.”

  Bearpaw said, “Wolves have to eat, too. And it may be a long, hungry winter.”

  Dean shuddered, but didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he asked, “What are you gonna do with me?”

  “I guess we’ll have to take you with us,” Morgan replied. “You’ll have to walk, though, unless we happen to find the horses the three of you were riding. I’m hoping they pulled loose from wherever you tied them up last night and found someplace to get in out of the storm. Hate to think about good horseflesh freezing to death for no good reason.”

  “But you left Jim out there to freeze,” Dean snapped. “He was a human being, not an animal.”

  “That’s debatable,” Bearpaw said.

  They got ready to ride. Morgan tied a length of rope from Dean’s b
ound wrists to his saddle horn. “We’ll turn you over to the law in Trinidad,” he said.

  “To tell you the truth, I planned to kill you, but I reckon I’m not as cold-blooded as I thought I was.”

  “You mean you don’t have the guts.”

  Morgan turned and looked at Dean, who paled at what he saw in the younger man’s eyes. Dean didn’t say anything else.

  As long as they avoided the drifts, the going wasn’t too hard. The horses had no trouble with a couple of inches of snow. There was no sign of the other horses, so Dean had to stumble along behind Morgan’s horse. It would be a long walk to Trinidad for him, but it wouldn’t kill him.

  Bearpaw found the trail that ran between Raton, New Mexico, and Trinidad, and the four of them headed north again. They would reach the settlement before the day was over, Bearpaw said.

  “When we get there, it’ll be time for us to say so long,” Morgan told Tasmin. “You can’t go with us after that.”

  “I’ve held up my own end so far, haven’t I?” she shot back at him. “I’m the one who killed Hyde when he was about to beat you to a pulp.”

  “And I appreciate that. But we weren’t planning on those three jumping us like that. We know that once we leave Trinidad we’ll be riding into trouble.”

  She looked over at him. “I heard enough, last night and back in Gallup, too, to know that you’re hunting down a group of men. What did they do to you, Kid?”

  Morgan shook his head. “It wouldn’t change anything for you to know.”

  “Dean called you Browning. Is that your real name?”

  “I’m just Kid Morgan. That’s all.”

  Tasmin blew out her breath in frustration. It fogged in the chilly air in front of her face. “You’re the stubbornest man I ever did see.”

  “You’ll be staying in Trinidad,” Morgan said again. That ended the discussion.

  They stopped at midday to gnaw on some leftover biscuits and to let the horses rest. Morgan didn’t untie Dean. The man sat on a log and glared at his captors as he ate.

  When they were almost ready to go, Morgan walked over to the buckskin. Suddenly, Tasmin cried out behind him, a cry that was choked off abruptly. When he spun around, he saw that Dean had lunged up from the deadfall, gotten some slack in the rope that connected him to Morgan’s saddle, and whipped that slack around Tasmin’s neck from behind. She must have strayed too close to him. Morgan had warned her to keep her distance from the prisoner, but obviously she hadn’t been careful enough about following that order.

  “Drop your guns!” Dean shouted at Morgan and Bearpaw. “Drop ’em now or I’ll choke her to death, I swear I will!”

  “Take it easy,” Morgan urged. He didn’t want the commotion to spook his horse. If the buckskin got nervous and bolted, even for a short distance, it would tighten that rope and squeeze the life out of Tasmin in a matter of seconds.

  “Drop your guns and back away from them!” Dean screamed.

  Bearpaw looked at Morgan, who nodded grimly. “I guess we’d better do what he says.”

  He eased his Colt from its holster and bent to place it on the snowy ground. A few yards away, Bearpaw did the same with the Sharps. The Paiute didn’t carry a handgun.

  “The knife, too, redskin!” Dean ordered.

  Bearpaw took his knife from its sheath and tossed it on the ground next to the Sharps. He and Morgan backed away from the weapons.

  Dean forced Tasmin forward. Morgan knew that if Dean ever got his hands on a gun, the three of them were dead.

  The outlaw grinned and said to Tasmin, “You’re not gonna bite me this time, you little bitch. I’ll be lucky if I don’t come down with hydrophobia, bein’ bit by a slut like you.”

  They reached Bearpaw’s rifle and knife. Dean paused and bent down, trying to pick up the knife and keep the pressure on the rope around Tasmin’s neck at the same time. Morgan guessed he wanted to cut the rope so he’d be free from the horse.

  That was fine with Morgan. Dean might not realize it, but once he cut the rope, Tasmin would be in less danger. Maybe then one of them could make a move.

  Morgan and Bearpaw stood there tensely while Dean sawed on the rope. As soon as it parted, Dean dropped the knife and shoved Tasmin toward the revolver. As she stumbled forward, she seemed to accidentally thrust a leg behind her, so that it went between his legs. Suddenly, their feet were tangled, and Dean let out an angry curse. He threw Tasmin aside and lunged for the gun.

  Morgan knew he couldn’t beat the outlaw to the Colt. But the knife was closer, so he made a dive for it. His fingers wrapped around the handle just as Dean snatched up the gun. Dean wheeled around as Morgan scrambled to his feet. They were still too far apart. Morgan couldn’t reach him with the knife.

  Bearpaw leaped between them as flame gouted from the muzzle of the gun. The bullet struck the Paiute in the body and spun him around. He had occupied Dean’s attention for only a second, but that second was long enough for Morgan to leap forward and slam the blade into Dean’s chest. With his other hand, he knocked the gun aside as Dean fired again.

  Dean took a step back and fumbled at the handle of the knife protruding from his chest. Morgan hit him hard with a right to the jaw. Dean went down, and the gun flew out of his hand. He spasmed as he tried to pull the blade out of his body, but then he went limp, his hands falling away from the knife. Blood welled from his mouth as he kicked a final time.

  Seeing that Dean was dead, Morgan whirled around and ran to Bearpaw’s side. The Paiute had fallen on the snowy ground, which was now speckled with crimson droplets in places. Morgan went to a knee and lifted Bearpaw’s head.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Bad enough to . . . hurt like blazes.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Morgan said. “We’ll get you to a doctor. It can’t be much farther to Trinidad.” He fumbled with the buffalo robe and the shirt underneath it, finally pulling them aside so that he could see the wound. The bullet had ripped into Bearpaw’s side and then torn out his back. Blood was everywhere. Morgan wasn’t sure how serious the wound was. He told himself that Bearpaw would be all right. He had to be.

  Tasmin knelt on Bearpaw’s other side. She had removed the rope from her neck and seemed to be fine, except for a welt where the rope had scratched her skin. “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Morgan answered honestly because Bearpaw had passed out. “Help me get something tied around these wounds.”

  They labored frantically for the next few minutes, tearing strips from a blanket and winding them tightly around Bearpaw’s midsection after Morgan pressed more wads of cloth into the wounds to try to stop the bleeding. Then they lifted him into his saddle. Thankfully, Bearpaw roused enough to grab hold of the saddle horn with both hands and help keep himself mounted.

  Then Morgan and Tasmin swung up into their saddles as well and set off for Trinidad with Bearpaw riding between them. None of them looked back at Abel Dean, who lay motionless in the snow behind them.

  The doctor, a tall, balding, rawboned man, came out of his surgery rubbing his bloody hands on a rag. He gave an anxious Morgan and Tasmin a nod and said, “It looks like you got him here in time. I got the bleeding stopped, cleaned out the wounds, and stitched them up. He’s got a good chance to pull through, but he’ll be laid up for quite a while. A month maybe.”

  Morgan thought back to what Dr. Patrick McNally had said about him, which was pretty much the same thing. He had beaten that prediction because he had the need for revenge driving him. Bearpaw didn’t have to do that. The Paiute had helped Morgan this far.

  From here on out, the Kid would go it alone.

  He turned to Tasmin and said, “You’ll stay here in Trinidad and make sure that he gets better.”

  “But, Kid—” she began with a frown.

  Morgan shook his head. “I owe my life to Phillip.”

  “Then why don’t you stay here and take care of him?”

  “Because there are still things I have to
do, things that won’t wait.” He looked in her eyes and went on. “Tasmin, I need you to do this. For him . . . and for me. I need to know that both of you are safe.”

  “While you’re off risking your life on some sort of... of vengeance quest?” she whispered.

  “Don’t mind me,” the doctor said behind them. “I think I’ll go have a cup of coffee. The two of you can hash out whatever you need to. Just remember there’ll be a bill for my services.”

  “You’ll get your money,” Morgan said. “I’ll see to that.”

  The doctor nodded and went out, leaving Morgan and Tasmin looking squarely at each other. After a moment, Tasmin sighed and said, “I’m not going to be able to budge you, am I?”

  Morgan shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “You know, most of the time men do whatever I want. It’s not fair that you’re not like them. Who was she?”

  Tightly, Morgan asked, “What do you mean?”

  “The woman who left you in such pain.”

  “She didn’t leave me,” he said. “She was taken from me.”

  “By the men you’re hunting down?”

  Morgan shrugged.

  Tasmin reached out, rested a hand on the chest of the buckskin jacket Morgan wore. “I’ll take care of Bearpaw,” she promised. “I’ll see to it that the doctor does everything that needs to be done. What are you going to do?”

  Morgan glanced at the window. Night had fallen outside. It had taken them most of the rest of the day to reach Trinidad, which at the moment was a picturesque little settlement with snow on the roofs of its buildings and the mountains looming up in the west.

  “It’s too late to leave now. In the morning, I reckon I’ll head for Blue Creek.”

  “Where there are two more men you need to kill.” Morgan shrugged again. There was no need to put it into words.

  The doctor came back into the room, carrying a cup of coffee. He said, “I had to give Mr. Bearpaw some laudanum, so he’ll probably sleep the rest of the night. I’ll keep an eye on him. You don’t have to worry. You can both go have something to eat and then get some rest. The Trinidad Hotel ought to have a room for you.”