The Last Gunfighter: Ghost Valley

by William W. Johnstone

  One man seated before the fire whirled and came out with a pistol. Frank squeezed the Winchester's trigger immediately.

  The clap of a .44 rifle exploding ended the high country silence. A yelp of pain followed as the cowboy went spinning away from the fire onto snowy ground with blood pumping from his chest.

  The second cowboy tried to scramble for a stand of nearby trees. Frank's second bullet cut him down instantly, curling him into a ball as he clutched his belly, yelling at the top of his lungs with the agony of a gut-shot wound.

  "Nice shootin', Morgan," Buck remarked. "That was damn near a hundred an' fifty yards. You ain't half bad with that saddle gun."

  Frank stepped out from behind the tree. "That's two of them I won't have to worry about. I'll turn their horses loose and we can get back on that trail. It won't be long till Vanbergen and Pine figure out that some of their little lost lambs won't be coming back home."

  He moved cautiously down to the fire. The first man he shot was dead, staring blankly at gray skies. The second lookout was still squirming around in a patch of crimson snow, his face knotted in pain.

  Frank walked over to him, resting his rifle barrel against the man's left temple. "Where are the others?" he asked in a voice as cold as the wind swirling around them.

  "To ... hell with ... you, Morgan. Find out for ... yourself if you've got ... the nerve."

  "I have never been short on nerve, cowboy," he said. "I'd imagine you could use a drink of whiskey right now."

  "Yeah. I'm ... hurtin' like hell."

  "Too bad," Frank replied. "I can assure you it'll only get worse."

  "You ... bastard. How'd you slip up on us?"

  "It was too damn easy. For a hired gun, you ain't very damn smart about fires."

  "It was ... cold."

  "You're gonna get a lot colder. When most of your blood leaks out, you'll get a bad case of the shivers."

  "I ain't scared of dyin', you cold-assed son of a bitch. You won't get past Ned an' Vic."

  "I have before."

  "Not ... this time. They've got a surprise for you."

  "A surprise?"

  "Damn right. You'll see." Then the man lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Frank glanced over his shoulder at Buck Waite. Buck had a deep frown on his face.

  "Looks like they're ready for you, Morgan," Buck said quietly. "You can't jest run down to that valley an' start off killin' that gang."

  He gave the mountain peaks above them a sweeping glance before he spoke again. "Tell you what I'll do. Seein' as these is special circumstances, I'll try to help you out. I told you I ain't shot nobody since the end of the war. But I'm gonna do what I can."

  "I'm grateful, but I don't need your help," Morgan said.

  "You ain't seen what's waitin' for you down in Ghost Valley yet," Buck replied. "Leave these sumbitches where they lay. A fool can see they ain't goin' nowhere. We'll fetch their horses an' turn 'em loose. This gut-shot bastard won't last but an hour or two."

  Eleven

  Conrad was walking home at twilight with his mind drifting after another day at the store. His small, two-room log cabin lay at the outskirts of Trinidad. The day's receipts at the store had been good, better than usual. His mother would have been proud of him. He was continuing to expand the fortune she'd left him when she was murdered. Conrad took no small amount of pride in seeing his wealth grow.

  He gave little thought to his father, not even knowing his whereabouts now. Nor did he care, one way or another. Frank Morgan was no father to him. He was a killer, a gunfighter, a man who did not exist in Conrad's life as he lived it now, and it was better to put his father's memory aside. Even though his father had saved his life from a gang of cutthroats a few weeks back, it was something Conrad wanted to forget. He hoped he never had to set eyes on Frank Morgan again.

  But there were times when Conrad wondered what his dad was really like. All Conrad had to go on were stories about a man who killed other men for a living, stories told to him by his late grandfather, before his mother was taken from him by an assassin's bullet. But there was no denying Frank Morgan's reputation as a shootist for hire. Those tales continued to circulate up and down the Western frontier, and when Conrad heard them, he turned away and went about other business. Hearing how many men his father had killed was not the sort of thing he cared to do. It was a part of the past, not his past, part of the early days when his father made a living with a gun.

  "Good evening, Conrad," Millie Cartwright said as she passed him on the boardwalk.

  He stopped and bowed politely, removing his hat. "Good evening to you, Miss Cartwright," he said, smiling. "It's so good to see you again."

  "I see you are carrying ledger books under your arm," she said, smiling coyly, her face, framed by dark ringlets of deep brown hair, turning pink.

  "A day's work is never done," he replied. "I have to balance the books. I've been too busy at the store to have the time to get it done."

  "Then your mercantile business must be good," Millie said to him.

  "Indeed it is. I may have to hire another clerk if things remain at their present pace. More and more people are coming west these days."

  Then Millie's face darkened. "I was so glad to hear that you made it safely away from those outlaws. Your father must be a terrible man, if you'll pardon me for saying so. The outlaws took you prisoner, I was told, hoping that your father would pay a handsome price for your safe return. He killed them."

  "I hardly ever talk about my father, Miss Cartwright," he said. "He is a part of my distant past, a man I'd rather forget if I can."

  "Some say he is a professional murderer."

  "I can't deny it. I've only met him a few times ... this last time, when he rescued me from those outlaws. But in truth, the men who took me only did so because they wanted to force my father to pay ransom for me. If I wasn't the son of Frank Morgan, I would be able to live my life in peace. He has made a lot of enemies."

  "I'm so sorry, Conrad," Millie said. "It must be quite a burden for you. Anyone who knows you well can't believe that you are the son of a hired killer. You are a gentle soul, and you care about people."

  "I thank you for your kind remarks," he said.

  "You deserve every kindness. You run an honest store and you treat people fairly."

  He grinned. "Perhaps we might have dinner one night, if you have no objections."

  Millie looked askance at him. "I fear my parents would not agree to it, Conrad. My father still remembers stories about the deeds attributed to your father. I'm so sorry. I know he's wrong about you, that you might be anything like Frank Morgan. But I have to honor my parents' wishes."

  "I understand," he said softly, glancing down at his boots. "It seems I'll never outgrow my father's bad reputation, even though I don't really know him. He left my mother before I was born."

  Millie reached for him and touched his arm. "Maybe we can find a way to spend some time together," she whispered. "If you rented a buggy, we might take a picnic lunch into the mountains and no one would know."

  He was momentarily cheered by the thought. Then his face fell again. "How sad it is to bear the burdens of my father's sins. It seems I'll carry them with me for the rest of my life. But I would love to rent a carriage and take you to some quiet place for a picnic lunch. Would the end of the week be okay with you?"

  "I'll drop by the store and let you know," Millie replied, "but now I must hurry home. There's a pretty place by Catclaw Springs where we could go and no one would see us. It's a beautiful spot."

  "I know the place," Conrad said with excitement in his voice. "There are big oak and pine trees above a spring pool below the waterfall. I'll buy a bottle of wine and some good cheese."

  Millie's face turned a faint shade of red. "I can bake a loaf of bread and slice some sugar-cured ham from the smokehouse. I'll even bake a peach cobbler for dessert."

  "Saturday," Conrad said. "Late in the afternoon, after I close the store. You can meet m
e behind the livery and no one will know."

  "I'm looking forward to it, although I have to make sure my parents think I'm going somewhere else. See you on Saturday, Conrad."

  He bowed again as she walked off toward her clapboard house on the north side of Trinidad.

  "Things aren't so bad after all," he said to himself as he made a turn down a side street toward home.

  Skies turned inky above southwestern Colorado as he made his way toward his house. Winking stars filled the heavens. He thought about what it would be like to have a picnic with Millie, and for the first time in months he felt happy, content, at peace with himself and the world around him.

  He came to his cottage and fumbled in his pocket for the key, keeping the bank bag containing the day's receipts under his arm. Conrad had taken in more than four hundred dollars from settlers heading west, and a smaller amount from local residents who traded with him on a regular basis.

  When he put his key in the lock, he heard a deep voice behind him.

  "Be real still, boy. If you don't pay real close attention to me, I'm gonna kill you. You're worth as much to me dead as you are alive."

  Conrad glanced over his shoulder. A burly cowboy with a thick gray beard stood behind him holding a sawed-off shotgun with the biggest barrels he'd ever seen.

  " This is a ten-gauge," the stranger explained. "If I pull both these triggers they'll be scrapin' you off your own front door."

  "Who are you?" Conrad asked. "What do you want with me?"

  "Name's Cletus. That's all you need to know."

  "I'll give you my money ... all the money from the store I took in today."

  "Peanuts," Cletus said. "I ain't here for chicken feed."

  "What do you want?"

  "Just you, little boy. You're worth ten thousand dollars to me in Glenwood Springs. Now turn around an' walk around the back of your house. I got a horse waitin' for you."

  "What is this all about?" Conrad asked.

  "Your old no-good daddy, Frank Morgan. He's a rotten son of a bitch. Me an' some other boys are gonna trade you for all the money ol' Frank can raise. An' if he don't come up with the money, I'm gonna put a hole plumb through your back." Conrad turned around to get a better look at the man covering him with the shotgun. "I don't even know my father. He's a gunfighter. We haven't spoken to each other but once over the past twenty years."

  "Shut your damn mouth an' walk around behind this cabin, boy. I'd just as soon kill you right here. Be easier takin' you to high country."

  "And what if I refuse to go?"

  "Then you're a dead man."

  Conrad dropped the moneybag he was carrying ... it landed with a thud on his front porch. "Take my money," he told the gunman. "But leave me here. My father wouldn't give a plug nickel to save my skin."

  "That ain't what I hear, boy. I'll take your sack of money, only I'm damn sure takin' you along with it. March around to the back of this house an' climb on that sorrel horse. I'm gonna tie your hands. If you cry out, or make even one sound, I'll blow you to pieces."

  Conrad's knees were trembling as he walked off the porch to circle his cabin. Once again, it seemed, his father's legacy had shown up to ruin his peaceful existence.

  He mounted a sorrel mare with the gunman's weapon aimed at his face.

  "Turn north," Cletus growled. "If we pass anybody, don't say a goddamn word. You do, an' I'll cut you in half so's your daddy has two pieces of you to bury."

  As dusk became dark, Cletus Huling and Conrad started north at a slow jog trot. Cletus rode behind Conrad with his shotgun leveled.

  Conrad closed his eyes for a moment. Again, he was a prisoner of men who wanted revenge against his father. Of all the men on earth Conrad despised, it was his father. Being a killer, he had sentenced Conrad to life at the hands of wanted men who would only use him to get at Frank.

  Dusk became full dark. Conrad shuddered as they headed for the distant peaks marking the southern end of the Rockies.

  Twelve

  Conrad recalled those last moments in the snowbound cabin in the mountains, when Frank and an old man riding a mule had Ned Pine's gang surrounded. Pine, the toughest of the lot, had shown genuine fear of Conrad's father that day when the gang was boxed in.

  * * * *

  "I know it's you, Morgan!" Pine bellowed. "If you fire one more shot, I'll blow the kid's goddamn skull all over Lost Pine Canyon and leave him for the wolves!"

  Pine edged out the front door of the cabin with his pistol under Conrad's chin.

  "My men are gonna saddle our horses!" Pine went on with a fistful of Conrad's hair in his left hand. "One more gunshot and I blow your son's head off!"

  Only silence filled the canyon after the echo of Ned's voice died.

  "You hear me, Morgan?"

  More silence, only the whisper of snow falling on ponderosa pine limbs.

  "Answer me, you son of a bitch!"

  The quiet around Ned was absolute. He squirmed a little, but he held his Colt under Conrad's jawbone with the hammer cocked.

  "I'll kill this sniveling little bastard!" Ned called to what seemed like an empty forest.

  And still, there was no reply from Morgan.

  "Whoever you've got shootin' from up on the rim, you'd best tell that son of a bitch I mean business. If he fires one shot I'll kill your boy."

  Conrad Browning had tears streaming down his pale face and his legs were trembling. A dark purple bruise decorated one of his cheeks.

  Ned looked over his shoulder at the cabin door. He spoke to Slade and Lyle. "You and Rich and Cabot get out there and saddle the best horses," he snapped. "Tell Billy Miller to keep his gun sights on the back."

  "He ain't gonna shoot us?" Slade asked.

  "Hell, no, he ain't," Pine replied.

  "What makes you so all-fired sure?"

  "Because I've got a gun at his boy's throat. He came all this way to save him. Morgan knows that even if he shoots me, I'll kill this kid as I'm going down. Now get those goddamn horses saddled."

  "I see somebody up top!" cried Billy Miller, a boy from Nebraska who had killed a storekeeper to get a few plugs of tobacco.

  " Kill the son of a bitch!" Ned shouted.

  "He's gone now, but I seen him."

  "Damn," Ned hissed, his jaw set. He spoke to Slade and Lyle again. "Get out there and put saddles on the best animals we've got. Hurry!"

  "I ain't so sure about this, Ned," Lyle said, peering out the doorway.

  "Get out there and saddle the goddamn horses or I'll kill you myself!" Ned cried. "Morgan ain't gonna do a damn thing so long as I've got this gun cocked under his little boy's skull bone."

  Rich Boggs, a half-breed holdup man from Kansas, came out the front door carrying a rifle. "C'mon, boys," he said in a quiet voice.

  Lyle and Slade edged out the door with Winchesters in their hands.

  "I don't like this, Lyle," Slade said.

  "Neither do I, but we can't stay here until this snow melts."

  Cabot Bulware, a former bank robber from Baton Rouge, was the last to leave the cabin. He spoke Cajun English. "Don't see no mens no place, mon ami," he whispered. "Dis man Morgan be a hard batard to shoot."

  "Shut up and get the damn horses saddled," Ned said, his hands trembling in the cold.

  "Please don't shoot me, Mr. Pine," Conrad whimpered. "I didn't do anything to you."

  "Shut up, boy, or I'll empty your brains onto this here snow," Ned spat. "I ain't all that sure you've got any goddamn brains."

  "My father doesn't care what you do to me," Conrad said. "He never came to see me, not even when you killed my mother."

  "That was an accident, sort of. Now shut up and let me think."

  Cabot, Lyle, Slade, and Billy made their way slowly to the corrals. Rich came over to Ned with his rifle cocked, ready to fire.

  "You reckon Morgan will let us ride out of here?" Rich asked.

  "Damn right he will."

  "You sound mighty sure of it."

  "I'v
e got his snot-nosed kid with a gun under his jawbone. Even Morgan won't take the chance of shootin' at us. He knows I'll kill his boy."

  "I ain't seen him no place, Ned. I've been looking real close."

  "Help the others saddle our mounts. Frank Morgan is out there somewhere."

  "Are you sure it's him? Billy saw a feller up on the rim of the canyon. Maybe it's the law."

  "It ain't the law. It's Morgan."

  "But you sent Charlie back to gun him down, an' then Sam and Buster and Tony rode our back trail. One man couldn't outgun Sam or Buster, and nobody's ever gotten to Charlie. Charlie's real careful."

  "Shut the hell up and help saddle our horses, Rich. You're wasting valuable time running your mouth over things we can't do nothing about. If Morgan got to Charlie and Sam and the rest of them, we'll have to ride out of here and head for Gypsum Gap to meet up with Vic."

  "One man can't be that tough," Rich said, although he made for the corrals as he said it.

  Ned was furious. He'd known Morgan was good, but that had been years ago.

  Ned stood in front of the cabin with his Colt pistol under Conrad's chin, waiting for the horses. At the moment he needed a swallow of whiskey.

  * * * *

  Louis Pettigrew had begun to have serious doubts. He'd been listening to Victor Vanbergen and Ford Peters talk about Frank Morgan for more than an hour ... Louis had a page full of notes on Morgan.

  But too many seasoned lawmen had told him that Morgan was as good as any man alive with a gun. Something about the stories he was hearing didn't add up.

  "Morgan left his wife with a band of outlaws?" Louis asked with disbelief. "And they killed her?"

  "Sure did," Vic said.

  "That ain't the worst of it," Ford added. "She had this baby boy of Frank's. He left the kid with her too. That oughta tell you what kind of yellow bastard he is ... he was. The little boy's name was Conrad Browning."

  "Did Mr. Morgan ever come back to visit his son?" Louis asked.

  "Not that anybody knows of. He was raised by somebody else. Morgan was rotten through an' through. Any man who'd abandon his own son ain't worth the gunpowder it'd take to kill him, if you ask me."