Ghost Valley

by William W. Johnstone

  “Sounds like your past caught up to you if you’re about to tangle with Ned Pine and his gang.”

  “They took my son. Pine, and an owlhoot named Victor Vanbergen, set out to settle old scores against me.”

  “Old scores?” Tin Pan asked.

  “First thing they done was kill my wife, the only woman I ever loved. Then they found my boy in Durango and grabbed him for a ransom.”

  “Damn,” Tin Pan whispered. “That’s near about enough to send any man on the prowl.”

  “I can’t just sit by and let ’em get away with it. I’m gonna finish the business they started.”

  “I’ve heard about this Vanbergen. Word is, he’s got a dozen hard cases in his gang. They rob banks and trains. I didn’t know they was this far north.”

  “They’re here. I’ve trailed ’em a long way.”

  “One man won’t stand much of a chance against Ned Pine and his boys. They’re bad hombres. Same is bein’ said about Victor Vanbergen. Have you gone plumb loco to set out after so many gunslicks?”

  “Maybe,” Frank sighed, sipping coffee. “My mama always told me there was something that wasn’t right inside my head from the day I was born. She said I had my daddy’s mean streak bred into me.”

  Tin Pan shrugged. “A mean streak don’t sound like enough to handle so many.”

  “Maybe it ain’t, but I damn sure intend to try. I won’t let them hold my son for ransom without a fight.”

  Tin Pan stiffened, looking at his mule, then to the south and east. “Smother that fire, Morgan. We’ve got company out there someplace.”

  “How can you tell?” Morgan asked, cupping handfuls of snow onto the flames until the clearing was dark.

  “Martha,” Tin Pan replied.

  “Martha?”

  “Martha’s my mare mule. She ain’t got them big ears on top of her head for decoration. She heard something just now and it ain’t no varmint. If I was you I’d fetch my rifle.”

  Frank jumped up and ran over to his pile of gear to jerk his Winchester free. He glanced over his shoulder at the old mountain man. “I sure hope Martha knows what she’s doing,” he said, hunkering down next to a pine trunk.

  “She does,” Tin Pan replied softly. “That ol’ mule has saved my scalp from a Ute knife plenty of times.”

  Tin Pan pulled his ancient Sharps .52 rifle from a deerskin boot decorated with Indian beadwork. The hunting rifle’s barrel was half a yard longer than Frank’s Winchester, giving it long range and deadly accuracy.

  “But the Utes are all south of here,” Frank insisted, still watching the trees around them.

  “They signed the treaty,” Tin Pan agreed. “I don’t figure these are Utes. Maybe you’re about to get introduced to some of Ned Pine’s boys.”

  Frank wondered if Ned Pine had sent some of his shootists back to look for Charlie Bowers. If that was the case, it would give him a chance to change the long odds against him. It would make things easier.

  He crept into the trees, jacking a load into the firing chamber of his Winchester saddle gun.

  * * *

  “Right yonder,” Sam whispered. “In them pines, only it looks like the fire just went out.”

  “Maybe he heard us,” Buster suggested.

  “Could be Charlie,” Tony said. “He’d be real careful if he heard a noise.”

  “It’d be a helluva thing if us an’ Charlie started shootin’ at each other in the dark,” Sam said.

  “How the hell are we gonna find out if it’s him without gettin’ our heads shot off?” Buster asked.

  “I ain’t got that figured yet,” Sam replied. “Let’s move in a little closer.”

  “I say we oughta spread out,” Tony said.

  “Good idea,” Sam agreed. “Tony, you move off to the left a few dozen yards. Buster, you go to the right. Stay behind these trees until we know who it is.”

  “Right,” Buster whispered, moving north with his rifle next to his shoulder.

  Tony slipped into a thicker stand of pines to the south of the grove where they’d spotted the flames.

  Sam inched forward, blinking away snowflakes that got in his eyes. Since they were coming upwind, whoever was camped ahead of them wouldn’t hear a sound they made. If it was Charlie Bowers who made the campfire, Sam knew he would recognize his bay stallion tied in the trees before any shots were fired.

  * * *

  Frank spotted a dim shape moving slowly, quietly among the trees. He didn’t need a look at the man to know he was up to no good.

  Frank thumbed back the hammer on his rifle, waiting for the man to show himself again.

  The heavy roar of a big-bore rifle cracked near the mule and horses.

  A shriek of pain filled the night silence. Tin Pan Rushing had hit someone with his Sharps . . . Frank knew the sound of the old buffalo gun. He was more than a little bit surprised that the mountain man would throw in with him in a fight with Ned Pine’s gang.

  Two muzzle flashes winked in the darkness from trees near the clearing. The crack of both guns and the fingers of red flame gave Frank a target.

  He squeezed off a round at a fading flash of light.

  “Son of a bitch!” a deep voice cried.

  Frank was ejecting a spent shell, levering another into the Winchester as fast as he could before ducking behind the tree as the voice fell silent.

  “Is that you, Charlie?” someone shouted from the trees east of camp.

  Now Frank was certain that some of Ned Pine’s men had been sent back to look for Charlie Bowers.

  “Yeah, it’s me!” Frank bellowed. “Is that you, Ned?”

  “It’s Tony. How come there’s two of you shootin’ at us? You shot Sam an’ Buster just now.”

  “My cousin Clarence came up from Durango. We met on the trail. We didn’t know who it was out there. Come on down to the fire. We’ve got coffee.”

  “That still don’t sound like you, Charlie. Did you kill Frank Morgan?”

  “Put a hole right through his chest. Sorry about shooting Sam and Buster. Come on down and we’ll get the fire going again.”

  “Bullshit!” Tony said. “It must be you, Morgan.”

  “Morgan’s dead, like I told you. I didn’t plan on riding up to the cabin in this storm. Me and Clarence shot a wild turkey hen. Walk on down here and have some.”

  “You don’t sound like Charlie.”

  “It’s cold. What the hell are you so scared of, Tony?”

  “Scared of bein’ tricked, and I never heard you make mention of no cousin by the name of Clarence.”

  Tin Pan shouted from the far side of the clearing. “I’m Charlie’s cousin. I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’ve gotta be crazy to stand out in the cold and snow. We’ve got coffee and roasted turkey. Come on in.”

  A silence followed.

  “Let me check on Sam and Buster first. I can hear Buster groanin’ over yonder. Ned ain’t gonna like it when he finds out you shot down two of us.”

  “It’s dark,” Frank said, readying his rifle. “How the hell was I supposed to know who it was?”

  “You don’t sound like Charlie Bowers to me,” Tony said, his voice a bit lower. “I’ve been ridin’ with Charlie for nearly three years. I’d know his voice if I was hearin’ it.”

  “I’ll walk up there and prove it to you,” Frank said. “I can’t tell exactly where you are. Show yourself and I’ll come up.”

  A dark silhouette moved in the wall of snow and pine trunks.

  Frank brought his Winchester’s sights up, steadying the gun against his shoulder. “I see you now, Tony. Just wait right there for me and we’ll see to Sam and Buster.”

  He squeezed the trigger. His .44-caliber saddle gun slammed into his shoulder.

  The man partly hidden by trees flipped over on his back without making a sound.

  “Nice shot, Morgan,” Tin Pan said from his hiding place. “Couldn’t have done no better myself.”

  Frank stepped around the pine.
“It was mighty nice of him to walk out and introduce himself. Some men are so damn stupid, it makes you wonder how they stayed alive long enough to grow out of diapers.”

  “One of ’em ain’t dead yet,” Tin Pan warned.

  “I’m always real careful,” Frank replied as he headed into the forest.

  * * *

  Karen came over and sat beside him. “Are you feeling any better?” she asked. “Seemed like you drifted off for a spell.”

  “I was just remembering another gent who helped me get my son back the first time I went after him.” He gazed at a window for a moment. “I wonder what’s keeping your pa.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Coy Cline was riding his horse up a snow-laden slope when he heard the crack of a rifle. Something struck his breastbone with tremendous force.

  “Shit!” he shouted as his sorrel gelding bounded out from under him.

  “What the hell was that?” Bud Warren cried.

  “A bullet, you damn idiot!” Buster Pate replied, reining his bay into the trees.

  Another gunshot rang out from a ridge above the rim of the valley.

  “Son of a . . .” Bud bellowed, gripping his belly as a piece of hot metal passed through him, exiting next to his spine. He threw his pistol into the snow to hold onto the saddle horn with both hands.

  “I’m shot!” Coy shrieked, toppling out of the saddle into a snowdrift.

  Buster jumped off his horse. A sharpshooter from above was taking potshots at them in the dark.

  “Help me, Buster!” Bud called from a dark place between two lines of trees.

  Buster didn’t answer him. Only a fool would give his position away in the dark.

  Coy began to moan somewhere in the inky blackness. “You gotta help me,” he sobbed.

  “Screw ’em,” Buster muttered. The shots had come from more than two hundred yards away. It would take a hell of a marksman to make that kind of shot at night, and a very large-bore rifle to boot.

  “Morgan,” he whispered, gripping the stock of his rifle with gloved hands.

  He’d been sure they were following Frank Morgan’s trail of blood out of the valley, but now he wasn’t so sure. Who the hell was shooting at them?

  “You gotta help me,” Coy cried again. “I’m shot through the gut. I’m bleedin’ real bad.”

  From another spot in the pine woods, Bud began coughing until his throat was clear. “Jesus.”

  Bud slid off his horse next to a pine trunk. He landed with a thud and groaned softly as his gelding galloped away to escape the bang of guns.

  “I’m dyin’ over here,” Bud croaked. “You boys gotta help me.”

  Buster was only thinking of surviving the sharpshooter himself. He lay still for a moment.

  “Where are you at, Buster?” Coy wondered, the pain in his voice garbling his words.

  Buster wasn’t about to answer him and make a target of himself.

  The boom of a rifle came from above.

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Coy screamed, flipping over on his back.

  It was proof that Buster had been wise to remain silent until he knew where the rifleman was.

  “Please help me,” Bud called. “I can’t move my damn legs no more.”

  Buster wanted to make sure his legs would move as he made his way back down the slope. He said nothing, closing his ears to Bud’s cries.

  He could hear Coy strangling on blood. Under better circumstances he would have offered his old partner some assistance, but not now. He knew with certainty that his life was at stake now.

  “Where’re you at, Buster?” Bud shouted. “You gotta come help me.”

  Buster hunkered down to wait. Bud Warren was nothing but a hired killer in the first place, and someone at the top of the valley was giving him his just due, a payback he had coming after years as a gunman.

  “If only we hadn’t followed the smell of that damn smoke,” Buster said softly.

  “I’m dyin’,” Coy choked. “Send my share of the money to my ma back in Texas.”

  Buster grinned, although there was little real humor behind it. No one in Ned Pine’s bunch would send a share of the money anywhere ... if they got their hands on the money at all. It was beginning to look like the ransom money for Conrad Browning was going to be hard to collect.

  “Morgan may be as tough as they say he used to be,” Buster muttered. “He’s damn sure a hard sumbitch to kill, if you ask me.”

  Buster went looking for his horse. Ned and Victor had to be told what had happened while they were following Frank Morgan’s blood trail.

  * * *

  Ned glared at Buster. “What the hell do you mean, he got all of you?” Ned demanded.

  “He got Coy an’ Bud. Shot ’em right off the backs of their horses. I made it down the slope, but I was dodgin’ lead the whole time.”

  “In the dark?”

  “Dark as pitch, Boss.”

  “I thought you told me Morgan was wounded . . . that you found blood.”

  “We did. He’s got somebody with him. Don’t know who the hell was doin’ the shootin’, but he can damn sure hit what he aims at.”

  Victor Vanbergen was standing at a window. “That bastard,” he snapped.

  Cletus Huling strode over to the fire to get more beans from the pot. “I’ll handle Morgan,” he said, “if you raise my share to fifteen thousand.”

  “You’re too goddamn greedy,” Victor said. “You agreed to ten thousand.”

  Cletus grunted. “It don’t appear any of us is gonna collect a damn dime unless we find Morgan, an’ even then we ain’t sure he’s got the money.”

  “He wants this boy,” Ned said, turning to Conrad for a moment.

  Cletus gave Ned a steely stare. “After all I’ve been through gettin’ this kid up here, I’d better get the money you promised me in that telegram, Ned. If I don’t, I’m gonna kill you an’ Victor an’ every other gunslick you’ve got left, if you have any left after Morgan gets through with you. He’s killin’ off your boys faster’n you can keep track of the number, an’ that ain’t no joke.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that, Cletus,” Ned said, his eyebrows furrowing.

  “Like hell I can’t,” Cletus replied. “I’ve killed better men than any of you. I’ll kill every sumbitch in this valley unless I get my money.”

  “There’s seven of us,” Victor said from his spot by the window. “You’ll never get us all.”

  “Time’ll tell,” Cletus remarked, his right hand near his pistol. “If I get the money you promised me, there won’t be no trouble.”

  Victor’s eyes strayed to Ned’s. They both knew how dangerous Cletus could be, one reason they’d contacted him to capture the Browning boy.

  “Take it easy, Cletus,” Ned said. “No call to get so riled up.”

  “Just so long as I get my damn money,” Cletus told him as he took a spoonful of beans and shoveled them into his mouth. “That’s the only reason I’m here,” he added, chewing without taking his eyes from either Ned or Victor, his back to the wall beside the hearth.

  Ned looked at Buster. “Are you sure Coy an’ Bud are dead?” he asked.

  “Same as dead,” Buster answered. “Coy couldn’t hardly talk an’ Bud was cryin’ like a sugar-tit baby. I damn sure wasn’t gonna look for ’em with Morgan shootin’ down on us the way he did just now.”

  “What makes you so sure it was Morgan?” Victor asked, an eye still on Cletus as he walked over to the fire to warm his back and his hands.

  “I ain’t,” Buster replied. “Only whoever it was could damn sure shoot in the dark.”

  “Morgan brought somebody with him this time,” Ned told the others.

  “Sounds like it,” Cletus agreed. “A wounded feller ain’t gonna have the best aim. You said you found blood in the snow, an’ two sets of footprints.”

  “We did,” Buster agreed.

  “Reckon one of them Injuns I saw when we rode in is helpin’ him?”

  “Them Injun
s don’t help nobody. We hardly ever see ’em around here,” Ned said. “They ain’t never come down an’ talked to us.”

  “How come they hang around here?” Cletus asked.

  “Nobody knows. We asked folks down in Glenwood Springs. They tell stories about ’em.”

  “What kind of stories?”

  Ned looked down at his boots a moment. “About how they’re called the Old Ones, the Ones Who Came Before. Some of the old-timers around here claim they’re the Anasazi, the Injuns who built all them old mud houses up on the bluffs.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Cletus asked him.

  Ned seemed reluctant to answer right at first. “They’ve all been dead for hundreds of years, Cletus, or so the locals tell it.”

  “So that’s where them ghost stories come from?”

  “Most likely.”

  Buster spoke. “The sumbitch shootin’ at me an’ Coy and Bud wasn’t no ghost. Leastways, the bullets, was real enough to knock ’em off their horses.”

  “It was Morgan,” Cletus said, sounding sure of it.

  “That’s the way I’ve got it figured,” Buster answered in a faraway voice.

  Cletus walked over to the door and opened it a crack. For a time he stared out at the snowy night.

  “What are you doin’, Cletus?” Ned asked.

  Cletus didn’t answer until he closed the door. “I may not wait for him to come to us.”

  “What?” Victor seemed surprised.

  “I may go after him myself.”

  “That’d be plumb crazy,” Buster said. “He’s just waitin’ up there on that rim for one of us to try it.”

  “Wait until it gets light,” Ned suggested. “That way, you can see his tracks.”

  “I ain’t much on waitin’,” Cletus replied, “not when I’m owed ten thousand dollars.”

  “But you won’t know where to look,” Ned said.

  Cletus shook his head. “When you’re huntin’ a man, it’s easy to know where to look.”

  Victor shrugged. “Suit yourself on it, Cletus, only be sure to bring us our part of the money if you find him.”

  “Are you sayin’ I’d double-cross you, Vic?”