Showdown

by William W. Johnstone

  “Hell, no!” the lady blurted out.

  “Then come on.”

  “I’m Mrs. Dunbar,” she said, finding and struggling into her winter coat.

  “I know who you are now. I didn’t recognize you at first with most of your clothes off.” Colette flushed and opened her mouth to speak. Frank shushed her. “Be quiet, Colette.”

  She ignored that. “Are those . . . my attackers, dead?”

  “One of them isn’t.” Frank pointed to the tied-up man in the horse stall they were passing. “That one. The one I busted on the head might have a broken skull. I don’t know for sure and don’t really give a damn.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I’m sure.” Frank pushed open the back door and motioned Colette out. “Head to the right and stay as low as possible. And be quiet, if you want to live.”

  Colette did as she was told and at the edge of the corral, Frank motioned her on into the timber. “Wait for me. I’ve got to get you a horse.”

  “I refuse to leave here without my friends,” she said stubbornly.

  “Don’t be a fool, Colette. I can’t take on thirty or forty men single-handed.”

  “There are only thirty-four of them, Marshal,” she whispered. “I counted them.”

  “Only thirty-four of them?”

  “You’re a famed shootist, Marshal. Go dispose of them.”

  Before Frank could respond to that, a man let out a yell from the front of the barn. “Hey! Claude and Jeff are down and the woman’s gone!”

  “Down?” another man hollered on the run toward the barn. “How in the hell could one woman do that?”

  “I don’t know. But she damn shore did it. Look for yourself.”

  “Run toward the timber, Colette,” Frank said. “Wait for me at the top of that first rise. You see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Move!”

  Colette turned away, paused, and looked back at Frank. “We’re in real trouble, aren’t we, Marshal?”

  “Yeah, lady. We are.”

  “I’m sorry. About everything.”

  “We’ll talk later. Move, lady.”

  Colette made the timber unseen, and Frank waited by the old corral, listening to the outlaws talk.

  “She might have gone into the timber,” another man hollered.

  “City folks? No way. You’ve heard them talk. They’re all lost as sheep. Even the men. They’ve been lost ever since we grabbed ’em. Search the town and the edges of the timber.”

  “Maxwell might have made South Raven,” a third man said. “We better get the hell out of here.”

  “I don’t think so. He was bad hurt when he got away. I think he died ’fore he got there. If there ain’t nobody here in a few hours, we’re home free. ’Sides, we got enough firepower to hold off the Army. Find that damn woman. Move!”

  Frank edged back into the timber and watched as men hurriedly blocked the road leading out of town, while others began a building-to-building search of the town.

  He tensed as one man returned to the corral and walked around it, counting the horses. Frank relaxed as the man finished his count and walked away, satisfied that no horses had been taken.

  “I got into this,” Frank muttered. “Now how the hell am I going to get out of it?” Shaking his head at the predicaments he could get into, Frank eased his way up the rise to where Colette was waiting.

  “I’m freezing to death!” the woman said.

  “Doubtful,” Frank told her. “But tonight’s going to be a different story. We’ve got to find a place to hole up and build a fire or we will be in trouble.”

  “Maxwell got away,” Colette said. “Help is on the way.”

  “Maxwell is dead. I buried him early this morning.”

  “Oh, my God! Wilma will be devastated.”

  “Have all the women been assaulted?”

  “No. Not yet. Only two of us so far. But the outlaws are getting impatient about that. It won’t be long before a mass rape will occur.”

  “Your getting away might have delayed that,” Frank said. “Colette . . . if I could get you a horse, do you think you could make it back to South Raven?”

  “I ... don’t know, Marshal,” she replied honestly. “I don’t even know where I am. You see, we were all blindfolded. But I suppose I could try.”

  Frank shook his head. “No. Forget it.” He looked up at the now-sullen skies. The day was very cloudy and cold. The nights would be below freezing. Frank figured there were maybe five hours of good daylight left.

  Six hours at the most.

  He made up his mind. It was going to be a bloody afternoon.

  Eighteen

  Frank quickly led the way back to Stormy. “Can you saddle a horse?” he asked.

  “No,” Colette said. “We always had people to do that for us. And certainly not one of those large Western saddles. I couldn’t even lift the thing.”

  Looking at the woman, very pale and slender, Frank didn’t doubt her for a moment. She had probably never picked up anything heavier than a teapot in years. And she was probably very near the end of her emotional rope. “All right. You’ll be cold, but you’ll be alive.”

  “What do you mean?” she demanded.

  “I’m going to rig you up a lean-to using my groundsheet. I’ll leave you my blankets to bundle up in. Then I’m going back to the town and start this ball rolling.”

  “You’re going to leave me alone?”

  “No. Stormy will be here with you. You can talk to him.”

  “Don’t be insulting, Marshal!”

  “Then don’t ask stupid questions, lady.”

  “As you wish, Marshal.”

  While Frank was rigging up a lean-to, he asked, “Can you shoot a pistol?”

  “Certainly not!”

  Muttering about women in general, and spoiled, uppity city women in particular, Frank finished the lean-to and pointed to it. “You get in there and stay put, Colette. There is my canteen and you’ll find food in my saddlebags. I probably won’t be back until tomorrow. If I’m not back by noon tomorrow, you somehow get on that horse and give him his head. He’ll get you back to town. It might take him a day or two, but he’ll get you back. Understood?”

  “Yes. You’re really going to do battle with all those thugs?”

  “I don’t have much of a choice, Colette. Now do I?”

  “I suppose you don’t.”

  Frank went to a nearby creek and filled his hat with water, taking it back for Stormy to drink. He patted the animal’s neck and stroked his nose for a moment, then turned to Colette. “If I don’t come back, Colette, take good care of Stormy, will you? He’s a good horse.”

  “You are a very strange and complex man, Marshal. Not at all as you are portrayed in dime novels and in many newspaper articles. I think you are a study in contradiction.”

  “Whatever that means,” Frank said, checking one of the pistols he’d taken from the men in the barn.

  “We all owe you an apology.”

  “You owe me nothing, lady. Now watch carefully.” He showed her the workings of the .45: how to load it, cock it, aim it, and pull the trigger. He then loaded it full and gave her a handful of cartridges. “If you are approached by any of the outlaws, aim for the thickest part of the body, between the waist and the neck. Understood?”

  “Yes. And I believe I could actually shoot those hoodlums.”

  “I hope so. I’ll be going now, Colette.”

  “I wish you success, Marshal.”

  Frank nodded and stepped out of the brush corral, walking away. He did not look back.

  * * *

  Frank stayed in the timber and took his time, circling the town, coming up at the far end, a block away from the livery. Some of the hostages were, he believed, being held in the center of the short block of buildings, others in the town’s only church building. Probably the men and women were separated.

  Wonderful, Frank thought. I’ve figured that out. Now if I could just come
up with a successful plan of attack.

  “She ain’t in town!” a man hollered from across the street. “We’ve searched everywhere.”

  “She didn’t take no horse neither,” another yelled.

  Frank watched from his hiding place as Sonny, the big-city bodyguard who had worked for the rich folks, stepped out of a building to stand on the boardwalk, about a dozen yards from where Frank was crouched in the brush.

  That bastard, Frank thought. I bet he’s behind all this treachery.

  That theory was confirmed when Sonny yelled, “Then she’s on foot in the timber and lost. Forget her. She’ll die out there.”

  “When you reckon we’ll get our money, Sonny?” Frank recognized a bounty hunter from town.

  Sonny waved the man over to him. “By now the kids have opened the ransom letter and have set the wheels in motion. My man in Boise will get word to the telegraph agent in South Raven as soon as the lines are up. For now, we just have to wait.”

  So you’ve a man in town waiting for the word, Frank thought. But who is he? And how about the man in Boise? Damn! This plan was carefully thought out by somebody, and Frank didn’t believe Sonny was the mastermind behind it all.

  Then . . . who could it be?

  “Hell, Sonny,” Brooks Olsen said, walking out of the building next to Sonny. “That might be weeks from now.”

  “Could be,” Sonny said. “But that’s the way it was all set up. And it’s damn sure too late to change it now.”

  “What’s gonna keep them from sending the Army in here after us?” another outlaw asked, stepping out of the building where Frank was sure some of the hostages were being held.

  “The kids won’t tell anyone,” Sonny replied. “We warned them in the letter that if they did, they’d never see their parents alive.”

  So I was right, Frank mused. Sonny isn’t alone in this kidnapping.

  “Purty slick, Sonny,” the outlaw said. “So all we got to do is sit tight, right?”

  “For a while. In another three or four days, we’ll move again. We ...” His words were cut off by the sound of a single shot. Sonny froze for a couple of seconds, then whirled around and shouted, “What the hell was that?”

  “I got me a nigger, Sonny,” a man shouted from the other end of the short block of town. “He was snoopin’ around and tried to run when I spotted him. He won’t run no more.”

  “Well, that’s two we got,” Brooks said with a smile.

  “Double the guards on the road,” Sonny said. “I don’t want any of these darky families living around here to slip through and warn anyone. Do it, Red.”

  “Done,” the outlaw acknowledged, and turned away, disappearing into a building.

  “Where will we move to, Sonny?” Brooks asked.

  “There’s an old Army fort that’s been deserted for years. We’ll move there.”

  But he didn’t say where it’s located, Frank thought. Smart of him. That way none of the outlaws would dare try to kill him and take over. Sonny is slicker than I figured.

  Frank sensed someone moving up behind him, and his hands tightened on his rifle as he prepared to whirl around and fire.

  “Mister,” the girl’s voice called in a whisper. “I ain’t part of them outlaws. I promise you I ain’t.”

  Frank turned around to face the voice. It was a young Negro girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, peering at him from the brush in back of the line of stores. He left his hiding place and moved to her.

  “My name’s Bessie,” she whispered. “I live with my grandmother about a mile and a quarter from here. I seen it all.”

  “Let’s move further back into the brush,” Frank said.

  “Them’s a bad bunch,” Bessie said as they slipped deeper into the thick brush. “I seen ’em kill Cassius. Shot him down right after they got here.”

  Frank pointed toward where he had found the first Negro body. “Over there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He a relative of yours?”

  “No, sir. Jes’ a friend. Been knowin’ him since I was borned. I been talkin’ to that white lady you hid out in the woods. You want me to take her to my cabin?”

  “Exactly where is your cabin?”

  “Come on. I’ll show you the path. It’s hard to find if you don’t know what you’re lookin’ for.”

  About a half mile from the town, Bessie pointed out a narrow gap through the woods. “Right through there will take you to the cabin. Cassius was gonna help me and my grandmother move from here. Now he’s dead and we ain’t got nobody else to help us.”

  “You help me, Bessie, and I’ll help you and your grandmother move. That’s a promise.”

  The girl looked at him through eyes that were not quite trusting. “Lots of white people say that. Don’t none of them mean it.”

  “I do.”

  “We’ll see, I reckon.”

  “I thought there were other families living around here.”

  “There was until last spring. The last families moved away then. Can’t grow no crops here; too hilly and rocky. My grandmother says it was a mistake to come here in the first place. But she did ’cause my mother and father did. My folks died last year of the fever.”

  “Does your grandmother know about these outlaws?”

  “Sure. I told her after I spied on ’em and seen how they been treatin’ them folks they got prisoner. They an evil bunch.”

  “Yes, they are. Come on, let’s go back to my horse and get Colette.”

  “You comin’ with us to the cabin?”

  “Yes. For a short time. Then I’m going back to town to help the others get away.”

  “They too many of ’em for just one man.”

  “That depends on the man.”

  “I reckon.”

  An hour later they were sitting in the small warm cabin, drinking coffee and talking with Bessie’s grandmother, Marvella. Stormy was stabled in the corral out back of the cabin.

  “I know who you are, Frank Morgan,” the older woman said. “I been hearin’ ’bout you for years.”

  “Who am I, Marvella?”

  “You a pistol man. Did you fight in the war, Frank Morgan?”

  “I did. For the Gray.”

  She nodded her head. “Well, I won’t hold that agin you. There was good and bad men on both sides.” She peered intently at him. “Did you hold slaves, Frank Morgan?”

  “No. I never believed in it.”

  “Bessie, see about that corn bread, child. You got to have a full belly, Frank Morgan, if you’re gonna fight all them men over yonder.”

  “I could sure do with a bite, Miss Marvella. Smells mighty fine.”

  “Sure it does. I made it.” She smiled. “Tell me, Frank Morgan. You didn’t see nor smell no smoke from the fire whilst you were comin’ here, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. Whoever built this cabin knew what they were doing. All this tall timber around the cabin breaks up the smoke. Very smart.”

  “My son did it. Died of the fever last year. He and his wife. They’re buried on that little rise, lookin’ down on the cabin he built. It’s sad, though. A mother shouldn’t have to bury her child.”

  Frank nodded in agreement. “How are you folks getting your supplies since the town became deserted?”

  “We ain’t,” Marvella replied. “We’re near’bouts out of everything. That’s why Cassius was gonna help us move out of here. Don’t know what we’ll do now.”

  “I’ll make sure you get moved,” Colette surprised Frank by saying. “And you get moved into a nice house.”

  “Right nice of you, ma’am,” Marvella said. “But why would you do that for us?”

  “Because you helped me . . .” She looked at Frank and smiled. “Us.”

  “Bessie,” the old woman said, “you cut up that corn bread and give half of it to Frank Morgan. He’s got to have something to take with him back to Freetown.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Frank did not protest; he k
new it would do no good.

  “You must be a man who’s real sure of himself, Frank Morgan,” Marvella said. “One man agin all those white trash back in town.”

  “They’re wrong and I’m right, Marvella. You can’t stop a man who knows he’s right and just keeps on coming at you.”

  “I reckon that’s right.” She turned her head for a few seconds. “Bessie, you wrap up that corn bread in some clean cloth now, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  With the wrapped-up corn bread tucked inside his jacket, Frank picked up his rifle and headed for the door. Marvella had given him two heavy quilts to use if he had to spend the night in the lean-to. His hand on the door latch, Frank said, “You know how to use that shotgun I saw over in the corner, Marvella?”

  “I surely do, Frank Morgan. And I got me a bag of shells for it too.”

  “Good,” Frank said with a smile. “Just don’t shoot me with it.”

  “You give out a holler when you get back, Mr. Morgan,” Bessie said.

  “I’ll do that for sure. All right then, I’ll see you ladies later on.”

  Frank opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, pausing for a moment. He would head first to the lean-to to cache the food and quilts, and then head for Freetown for a showdown.

  Nineteen

  It was the middle of the afternoon before Frank once more reached the outskirts of Freetown. Only a couple hours of good daylight left. The two buildings where he had determined the hostages were being held were heavily guarded, front and back. He would not attempt to breech that security . . . not yet. First he would take out any outlaw he could find wandering alone around the edges of town—if any were that stupid.

  Frank smiled as his eyes touched several small buildings behind the line of stores on his side of the old town. Single- and double-hole outhouses.

  “Why not?” he whispered. “That’s a dandy place to start.”

  Staying in the timber, he shifted positions until he was about a dozen or so yards behind an outhouse in the center of the short block. He knelt down and waited. Sooner or later somebody would have to make a visit to the outhouse. Frank almost laughed aloud at the possible ramifications of his plan. He struggled to contain his laughter and waited.