Ghost Valley

by William W. Johnstone

“No. Didn’t mean that at all.”

  Ned went to the door and peered out. “It’s stopped snowin’, looks like. A man would be easier to find now.”

  Buster shuffled off to a corner of the fireplace. “You’d best have eyes in the back of your head,” he said. “Morgan, or whoever it was, can see like a cat at night.”

  “I was born with eyes in the back of my head,” Cletus said quietly, shouldering into his mackinaw. “That’s how come I’m still alive.”

  “You want us to send some of the boys with you, Cletus?” Victor asked.

  “Hell, no. They’d only be in the way.”

  “Find out where Morgan’s hidin’,” Ned suggested. “Then come get the rest of us an’ we’ll kill him an’ sack up all that damn money.”

  Cletus picked up his rifle. “I’ll let you know if I find him.”

  “And the money,” Victor said, glancing at the Browning boy tied to a chair.

  Cletus moved to the door and prepared to go outside. “One thing don’t figure,” he said thoughtfully.

  “What’s that?” Ned asked.

  “If Morgan brought all that money up here to get his son back, then how come he ain’t just sent word to you that he’s ready to pay?”

  Ned and Victor gave each other questioning looks. Ned spoke first. “We ain’t set eyes on him yet.”

  Cletus wasn’t convinced. “It don’t sound to me like he intends to pay that ransom at all.”

  “Then why the hell is he here?” Victor asked.

  “To kill every last one of you,” Cletus replied, opening the door carefully. “By the way he’s been actin’ since I got here, it don’t appear he’s in no money-payin’ mood.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Buck came back to the cabin an hour before dawn. He came through the door soundlessly while Frank was drinking another cup of whiskey and bark tea. Karen sat near him in a hide-bottom chair.

  “I got two of ’em,” Buck said, leaning his buffalo gun in a corner. “They was followin’ the smell of our smoke from this here fireplace.”

  “Two?” Frank asked, clearing his head to hear what the old man had to say.

  “One of ’em got away. It was hard to see in that forest down yonder, but I don’t figure it’ll be long before more of ’em start looking’ for us up here.”

  Frank tossed the wool blanket off his shoulders, flexing his bad arm. “Hand me my shirt, Karen,” he said. “I think I can pull on my boots.”

  “You ain’t strong enough, Morgan,” Buck said.

  “I reckon I’m about to find out.”

  “Don’t do it, Frank,” Karen pleaded.

  “I’ve got no choice. Pine and Vanbergen know I’m here and they’re sending men after me now.”

  Steadying himself, he put his cup of tea and whiskey on the dirt floor and pushed himself upright. “Hand me my shirt,” he said again.

  “I can handle ’em, if they don’t come all at once,” Buck said.

  “It’s not your responsibility . . . it’s mine,” Frank said, taking the flannel shirt Karen offered him. “It’s me they want, and the ransom money they think I’m carrying.”

  “You didn’t bring any ransom money, did you?” Karen asked him.

  He shook his head. “Nope. Just a load of lead for what they’ve done. I intend to pay them in heavy metal, but not the kind they’re expecting.”

  Buck sighed. “I’ll go out an’ saddle your horse. It’ll be light soon.”

  “I’d be obliged,” Frank told him, buttoning the front of his shirt, ignoring the pain, then stepping into one stovepipe boot, and then the other.

  “This is crazy,” Karen said, watching Frank struggle to get dressed.

  “Maybe,” Frank replied. “Now if you’ll hand me my coat and that Winchester in the corner. There’s a box of shells in my saddlebags.”

  “And what if I won’t?” Karen asked, folding her arms across her chest.

  Frank pretended he didn’t hear her. “I may have to have you help me strap on my gunbelt.”

  Dog whimpered softly, sensing his master’s pain, coming over to him to lick the back of his hand.

  “You can go, Dog,” he said gruffly. “Two sets of eyes are better than one.”

  Dog trotted over to the door as soon as Buck went out to saddle the bay.

  “Please don’t do this, Frank,” Karen said. “To tell the truth, I’ve gotten mighty fond of you.”

  “This is business, Karen. Dirty business, and not of my own making. My only son is down in that valley now. What kind of father would I be if I didn’t go after him?”

  “But you’re hurt bad.”

  “I’ve been hurt this badly before. It takes a helluva lot more than one bullet to kill me ... if it don’t go in at the right place.”

  “You’re hardheaded, Frank Morgan.”

  He eased into his mackinaw. “So I’ve been told. My ma used to tell me the same thing nearly every day. Now help me strap on that gunbelt.”

  “I’ll never understand men,” Karen said, moving over to the bed to get his Colt.

  Frank grinned in spite of the throbbing ache in his left shoulder. “I never met a woman who did,” he told her gently while she reached around him to buckle on his cartridge belt just below the top of his denims.

  “Thanks,” he said softly, and for reasons he couldn’t explain at the time, he bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  She returned his kiss and stepped back, and now there was a trace of a smile on her face. “That was nice, Frank. You come back so we can do that again.”

  “I have every intention of coming back.”

  “Just make sure you do.”

  He walked over to the doorway, his back hunched against the pain pulsing through his chest. He was certain that if he could get on his horse, he could make it.

  * * *

  Bud Warren lay in the snow, fighting back waves of nausea. The hole in his lower abdomen felt like it was on fire and when his fingers touched the area, they came back wet—he knew it was blood.

  “Are you there, Coy?” he asked in a weakened voice thick with phlegm.

  Coy didn’t answer him the first time.

  “Coy! Coy!”

  And then a shadow moved in the darkness, standing over him now.

  “Is . . . that you, Coy?”

  “Why do you come here?” an unfamiliar voice asked, a voice with a curious accent.

  “That ain’t you, Coy. Who the hell are you?”

  “I am a keeper of this valley.”

  “A keeper? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you Frank Morgan?”

  “I do not know this Frank Morgan.”

  “Then what’s your damn name?”

  “I am called Isa.”

  “What kind of name is that? I can’t see you real good. It’s too damn dark.”

  “In your language, it is the word for coyote.”

  “In my language? What the hell are you talkin’ about, stranger? You’re Morgan. If I could find my gun, I’d kill you right here an’ now.”

  “I am not Morgan. You will not kill me. You have no weapon and you are dying.”

  “I ain’t dyin’. I’ve got a hole in my belly, that’s all it is.”

  “You will die.”

  “You ain’t no damn doctor, an’ you’ve got a real stupid name.”

  “I will be the one who kills you.”

  Bud raised his head off the snow, blinking furiously to clear his eyes. He saw a man dressed in buckskins with a bow and arrow.

  “You’re a damn Injun!” he cried.

  “I am Anasazi.”

  Bud saw an arrow being fitted to the bow.

  What the hell is an Anasazi? he thought, slipping toward unconsciousness again, remembering what he’d been told about Frank Morgan.

  But who the hell was this Indian?

  TWENTY-SIX

  As Bud was surrounded by a swirling gray fog, what he’d been told came back to him.

  * * *

&n
bsp; Darkness came to the snow-clad mountains. Rich Boggs was hobbling toward the cabin at Lost Pine Canyon on seriously frostbitten feet. Cabot Bulware was behind him, using a pine limb for a crutch, they told Bud afterward, describing every step of their painful journey.

  “It ain’t much farther,” Rich groaned. “I can see the mouth of the canyon from here.”

  “Sacré,” Cabot said, limping with most of his weight on the crutch. “I be gon’ kill that batard Morgan if I can get my hands on a horse and a gun.”

  “I just wanna get my feet warm,” Rich said. “The way I feel now, I ain’t interested in killin nobody. I think a couple of my toes fell off.”

  “Who was the old man with Monsieur Morgan?” Cabot asked. “I hear Ned say Morgan always work alone.”

  “Don’t know,” Rich replied, his teeth chattering from the numbing cold. “Just some old son of a bitch in a coonskin cap with a rifle.”

  “He be dangerous too,” Cabot warned. “I see the look in his eyes.”

  “You’re too goddamn superstitious, Cabot. He’ll die just like any other man if you shoot him in the right place. I can guarantee it.”

  “My feet are frozen. I go back to Baton Rouge when I can find a horse. I don’t like this place.”

  “I ain’t all that fond of it either, Cabot,” Rich said as they moved slowly to the canyon entrance. “It was a big mistake to side with Ned on this thing. I never did see how we was gonna make any money.”

  “I do not care about money now,” Cabot replied. “All I want is a stove where I can warm my feet.”

  “Won’t be but another half mile to the cabin,” Rich told him in a shivering voice. “All we’ve gotta do is get there before our feet freeze off.”

  “Boots, and horses, are what we need,” Rich announced. “If they didn’t leave our horses in the corral, we’re a couple of dead men in this weather.”

  “I feel dead now,” Cabot replied. “I don’t got feeling at all in either one of my feet.”

  * * *

  As night blanketed the canyon Rich added more wood to the stove. He and Cabot had dragged the dead bodies outside, but a broken window let in so much cold air that Rich was still shivering. He’d taken the boots off Don Jones’s body and forced his own feet into them. Cabot was wearing boots and an extra pair of socks that had once belonged to Mack.

  They’d found two pistols and a small amount of ammunition among the dead men. Ned and the others had taken all the food; thus Rich was boiling fistfuls of snow in an old coffeepot full of yesterday’s grounds.

  Five horses were still in the corral even though the gate was open, nibbling from the stack of hay, and there were enough saddles to go around.

  “I am going back south in the morning,” Cabot said with his palms open near the stove.

  “Me too,” Rich said. “I’m finished with Ned and this bunch of bullshit over gettin’ even with Frank Morgan. There’s no payday in it for us.”

  “I’ve been dreaming about a bowl of hot crawfish gumbo all afternoon,” Cabot said wistfully. “This is not where I belong.”

  “Me either. I’m headed down to Mexico where it’s warm all the time.”

  Cabot turned to the broken window where Don had been shot in the face. “What was that noise?” he asked.

  “I didn’t hear no noise,” Rich replied.

  “One of the horses in the corral . . . it snorted, or made some kind of sound.”

  “My ears are so damn cold I couldn’t hear a thing nohow,” Rich declared. “Maybe it was just your imagination. All I hear is snow fallin’ on this roof.”

  Then Cabot heard it again.

  “Help . . . me!” a faint voice cried.

  “That sounded like Jerry’s voice,” Cabot said, jumping up with a pistol in his fist.

  “I heard it that time,” Rich said, getting up with Mack’s gun to open the door a crack.

  Rich saw a sight he would remember for the rest of his life. Jerry Page came crawling toward them on his hands and knees in the snow, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

  Rich and Cabot rushed outside to help him.

  “Morgan,” Jerry gasped. “Morgan came up on the rim and stuck a knife in me. He killed . . . Roger. Cut his throat with the same bowie knife.”

  “We’ll take you in by the fire,” Cabot said as he took one of Jerry’s shoulders.

  “I’m froze stiff,” Jerry complained, trembling from weakness and cold. “I’m bleedin’ real bad. You gotta get me to a doctor real quick.”

  “We can’t go nowhere in this snowstorm,” Rich said as they helped the wounded man into the cabin. “It’ll have to wait for morning.”

  “I’m dyin’,” Jerry croaked. “You gotta help me. Where’s Ned?”

  Ned and the others pulled out. We ran into Morgan too. He took our boots and guns and horses. We damn near froze to death gettin’ back here.“

  They placed Jerry on a blanket beside the stove and covered him with a moth-eaten patchwork guilt.

  “Morgan,” Jerry stuttered. “He ain’t human. He’s like a mountain lion. Me an’ Roger never heard a thing until he was on top of us.”

  “We figured there was trouble when neither one of you came back,” Rich said bitterly. “Morgan killed Mack and Jeff and Don and Scott. Only Lyle, Slade, Billy, Rich, Cabot, and Ned made it out of here alive.”

  “What happened . . . to Morgan’s kid?”

  “Ned had a gun to his head,” Rich recalled.

  “That’s the . . . only way it’s gonna stop,” Jerry moaned as he put a hand over the deep knife wound between his ribs. “Ned’s gotta let that boy go.”

  “Ned’s gone crazy for revenge. He won’t stop until he kills Morgan.”

  “Morgan . . . will . . . kill him first,” Jerry assured them. “I need a drink of whiskey. Anything.”

  “We’re boilin’ old coffee grounds,” Rich said. “There ain’t no whiskey. Ned and the others took it all with them when we pulled out of here.”

  “Water,” Jerry whispered, his ice-clad eyelids batting as if he was losing consciousness. “Gimme some water. Morgan’s gonna kill us all unless Ned . . . lets that boy go.”

  “You know Ned,” Cabot said, pouring a cup of weak coffee for Jerry, steaming rising from the rusted tin cup. “He won’t listen to reason.”

  “I’m gonna die . . . way up here in Colorado,” Jerry said as his eyes closed. “I sure as hell wish I was home where I could see my mama one more time....”

  Jerry’s chest stopped moving.

  “Don’t waste that coffee,” Rich said. “Jerry’s on his way back home now.”

  Cabot stared into the cup. “This is not coffee, mon ami. It is only warm water with a little color in it.”

  * * *

  Ned paced back and forth as a fire burned under a rocky ledge in the bend of a dry streambed.

  “Where the hell is Rich and Cabot?” he asked, glancing once at Conrad, bound hand and foot beneath the outcrop where the fire flickered. It was dark, and still snowing, but the snowfall had let up some.

  “They ain’t comin’,” Lyle said.

  “What the hell do you mean, they ain’t coming?” Ned barked with his jaw set hard.

  “Morgan got to ’em,” Slade said from his lookout point on top of the ledge. “They’d have been here by now if they were able.”

  “Slade’s right,” Bud said, his Winchester resting on his shoulder. “Some way or another, Frank Morgan slipped up behind ’em and got ’em both.”

  “Bullshit!” Ned cried. “Morgan is an old man, too old to be a the gunman. He doesn’t have it in him to slip up behind Rich and Cabot.”

  “I figure he got Jerry and Roger,” Slade went on without raising his voice. “We know he shot Mack and Don and Jeff and Scott back at the cabin. Poor ol’ Curtis never had a chance either. Then you’ve got to wonder what happened to Sam and Buster and Tony back on the trail when they went to check on Charlie.”

  Lyle grunted. “Morgan must be slick,” he said, cas
ting a wary glance around their camp. “I wish we’d never gotten into this mess. That kid over yonder ain’t worth no big bunch of dollars to nobody.”

  “He ain’t worth a plug nickel to me,” Billy said as he added wood to the fire. “I say we kill the little bastard an’ get clear of this cold country.”

  Ned turned on his men. “We’re not leaving until Frank Morgan is dead!” he yelled.

  Lyle gave Ned a look. “Who’s gonna kill him, Ned? We ain’t had much luck tryin’ it so far.”

  “We’ll join up with Victor at Gypsum Gap and hunt him down like a dog,” Ned replied.

  Slade shrugged. “Bein’ outnumbered don’t seem to bother Morgan all that much.”

  “Are you taking Morgan’s side?” Ned asked.

  “I’m not takin’ any side but my own. My main purpose now is to stay alive.”

  “Me too,” Billy added.

  “Same goes for me,” Lyle muttered. “This Morgan feller is a handful.”

  “Are you boys yellow?” Ned demanded.

  “Nope,” Lyle was the first to say. “Just smart. If a man is a manhunter by profession, he’s usually mighty damn good at it if he lives very long.”

  “I never met a man who didn’t make a mistake,” Ned said, coming back to the fire to warm his hands.

  “So far,” Slade said quietly, “Morgan hasn’t made very many mistakes.”

  “One of you saddle a horse and ride back down the trail to see if you can find Rich and Cabot,” Ned ordered, his patience worn thin.

  “I’m not going,” Slade said. “That’s exactly what a man like Morgan will want us to do.”

  “What the hell do you mean?” Ned inquired, knocking snowflakes from the brim of his hat.

  “He wants us to split up, so he can take us down a few at a time.”

  “Slade’s right,” Lyle said.

  “We oughta stay together,” Billy chimed in. “At least until we join up with Vic an’ his boys.”

  “Morgan!” Ned spat, pacing again. “That son of a bitch is a dead man when I get him in my sights.”

  “That’ll be the trouble,” Lyle offered. “A man like Morgan don’t let you get him in your gunsights all that often, an’ when he does, there’s usually a reason.”

  “He’ll come after us tonight,” Billy said, glancing around at forest shadows. “He’s liable to kill us in our bedrolls if we ain’t careful.”