Bullets Don't Die

by J. A. Johnstone

  “Sorry, Marshal. I should have introduced myself. My name’s Morgan.” The Kid paused. He had a reputation as a gunfighter, and a lot of badge-toters had begun to look at him suspiciously, as they had been doing with his father for decades. Still, he wanted to be honest with this man who had helped him. “Some people call me Kid Morgan.”

  If the name meant anything to Marshal Jared Tate, he gave no sign of it. He just nodded. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Morgan. Now that we’ve been properly introduced, you mind telling me why those hombres were trying to kill you?”

  “They wanted to steal my horses. They’d already ridden one of their mounts to death, and the others weren’t far from it.”

  “They must’ve been in a mighty big hurry. Any idea why?”

  The Kid shook his head. “No, but if I had to guess, I’d say they were on the run from the law.”

  “I agree with you. When I heard all that shooting, I figured I ought to take a look. Careful-like, you understand, because I didn’t know what I’d be getting into. So I slipped along the creek for a ways. When I saw the odds were two against one, and those two telling my lawman’s instincts that they were no good, I knew I needed to give you a hand. The way that fella with the rifle tried to bushwhack you just confirmed it.”

  “That was a good shot you made,” The Kid said.

  Tate shrugged, but The Kid could tell he was pleased to hear that.

  “My eyes may be getting old, but they’re still pretty sharp. Whereabouts are you headed, Mr. Morgan?”

  The sudden question took The Kid a little by surprise, but he answered honestly. “No place in particular. I thought I might see if I could find a riding job on one of the ranches in this end of the state.”

  “Why don’t you come along to Copperhead Springs with me?” Tate suggested. “I know just about everybody who has a spread around there. I’m sure it won’t be hard to find one who needs a good hand.”

  That was another lucky break for The Kid. From what he could remember from that map, he estimated it was another couple days’ ride to the settlement, and he wouldn’t mind having some company. Tate obviously felt the same way.

  “All right. I appreciate that, Marshal. I was planning to make camp along this creek tonight, if you’d care to share my coffee and bacon and beans.”

  “That sounds like a good idea to me.” Tate paused. “We might want to move a little farther upstream before we settle down for the night, though. I never cared much for sharing a campground with dead folks.”

  Chapter 3

  The Kid might have been tempted to leave the dead hardcases where they had fallen—there were enough coyotes and other scavengers around to take care of them—but Marshal Tate seemed to assume they were going to bury the men. The Kid didn’t want to argue with the man who had saved his life, so he broke out his shovel and did the digging.

  He put the four men in a single grave, and by the time he finished filling in the hole in the ground, night was falling.

  “Don’t worry, I can still find us a good campsite, even in the dark,” Tate said as they started west along the creek. “I’ve been all over this part of the country for years, know it like the back of my own hand.”

  The Kid was leading one of the extra horses, along with his pack animal. The marshal led the other two horses. As they rode at an easy pace along the stream, The Kid asked, “Have you been a lawman in other towns besides Copperhead Springs?”

  “Oh, Lord, yes, a dozen or more. I was one of Hickok’s deputies in Abilene, you know.”

  “Wild Bill himself ?”

  “That’s right. I never really thought he was all that wild, except when circumstances forced him to be. Most of the time he seemed like a fine gentleman. It nearly broke my heart when I heard he’d been shot from behind by that coward up in Deadwood. If Bill had been facing the door, Jack McCall never would have got that close to him with a gun.”

  After a couple decades of estrangement, The Kid and his father had grown closer over the past few years. He had heard quite a few stories from Frank Morgan about the old days of the Wild West. He was interested to hear what else Jared Tate had to say. “Where else did you serve as a peace officer?”

  “I was a Ford County deputy when Jim Masterson was the sheriff. Served alongside him and his brother Bat.”

  “Really? I know Bat Masterson.”

  “Is that so?” Tate laughed. “Well, it just goes to show you it’s true what they say about how the West is really a small place despite all those wide open spaces. Bat’s a fine man.”

  “He is,” The Kid agreed, thinking of how Masterson had given him a hand during his cross-country quest. He wasn’t going to let himself think too much about how that had turned out, but he wasn’t going to forget the people who had helped him out along the way.

  “Dodge City’s where I met the Earps, too,” Tate went on. “I wound up heading out to Arizona Territory some years back and spent some time in Tombstone while they were there. Fine bunch of boys, mind you, but . . . headstrong, I guess you could say. You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of them.”

  “I’ve heard Wyatt Earp has gone up to Alaska to cash in on that gold rush.”

  “What gold rush?” Tate asked with a frown.

  “They’ve found gold along some river up there called the Yukon. It caused a rush just like the one to California back in ’49. You haven’t heard about it?”

  “Life’s pretty slow in Copperhead Springs,” Tate said with a smile. “And I’ve never been all that good about keeping up with the news. To me a newspaper’s got its uses . . . but most of ’em involve the outhouse!”

  The Kid laughed at that. As they rode on, Tate continued reminiscing about various places he had worn a star, most of them small towns in Kansas and Nebraska. “I like this part of the country, you know,” he mused. “From time to time I might go someplace like Tombstone, just to see something new, but I always come back to these parts. It seems to me this is the heart of the country, and not just because it’s in the middle. It’s the beating heart, where the things that make this America are most honest and true.”

  The Kid supposed most people thought that was the case about where they lived, if they thought about such things at all, but he didn’t say it to Marshal Tate. He just smiled and nodded.

  A short time later they came to a spot along the creek perfect for camping, with an open space in the trees, level ground, plenty of grass for the horses, and an easy slope down to the stream. They picketed and unsaddled the horses, then The Kid gathered some wood to build a fire. There were enough broken cottonwood branches around to make it unnecessary to collect the dried buffalo chips usually needed to build a fire on the the prairie.

  “Let me boil the coffee,” Tate suggested when flames were leaping merrily from the heap of branches The Kid had arranged. “You shouldn’t have to use all your supplies.”

  “All right,” The Kid agreed. “I’ll fry up some bacon and heat the beans I’ve got leftover from last night.”

  Tate got a small coffeepot from the pack lashed behind his saddle. He carried it down to the stream to fill it with water.

  The Kid noticed a couple minutes later that Tate hadn’t come back. He lifted his gaze from the thick strips of bacon beginning to sizzle in his frying pan and looked toward the creek. The glow from the fire reached that far, and The Kid could see Tate standing beside the stream, the coffeepot still in his hand hanging at his side.

  “Marshal?” The Kid called. “Something wrong?”

  Tate gave a little shake of his head, not like he was answering The Kid’s question but more in the manner of a man waking up. He looked back over his shoulder. “What?”

  “Is anything wrong?” The Kid repeated. “You were going to get water for the coffee.”

  “The coffee . . .” Tate lifted the pot and looked at it, then laughed. “Good Lord. The night’s so plumb beautiful I reckon I just got caught up in it and forgot what I was doing. Thanks for the reminder, Mr. M
organ.”

  “You can call me Kid, Marshal. Most folks do.”

  Tate knelt to fill the pot. “Seems a mite disrespectful, calling a grown man Kid. Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Not really. I’ve always figured Mr. Morgan is my father, not me.”

  He didn’t add that his father was Frank Morgan, also known as The Drifter, the last of the famous Old West gunfighters. There were still plenty of men around who were fast on the draw and lived by the gun, but Frank was the only survivor of the old breed who still lived as he always had. Some of the other famous shootists were still around, but they had all hung up their guns.

  “Your father is still living, is he?” Tate asked as he came back to the fire with the coffeepot.

  “Oh, yeah. At least as far as I know. We don’t see each other all that often.”

  “There’s not trouble between you, is there?” Tate asked with a small frown.

  “No, not at all. At one time there was, but in the last few years . . . well, we’ve become good friends. We’re just both too fiddle-footed to get together very often.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. You should enjoy all the time you do get to spend with him. It’ll seem all too soon that he’s gone.”

  The Kid shook his head. Frank Morgan was such a larger than life figure, it was impossible to imagine him not being around. Logically, of course, The Kid knew that was inevitable.

  But he couldn’t believe it in his heart.

  He continued fixing the meal, and realized something several minutes later as he glanced at the coffeepot sitting at the edge of the fire. “Marshal, you didn’t put the coffee in the pot, did you?”

  “What? Why, sure, I—” Tate leaned forward and sniffed. “That doesn’t smell like coffee. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I did. I’m feeling a little absentminded tonight, Kid. Probably has something to do with shooting that man. To tell you the truth, it’s been a while since I had to kill a man, and it’s never been something that sets easy on me.”

  “I understand.” The Kid had seen so much violence he’d become a little hardened to it, but knew most people, even peace officers, weren’t like that.

  Tate got a sack of Arbuckle’s from his gear and poured grounds into the pot. Soon the smell of the strong black brew filled the air, mingling well with the aroma of the bacon.

  The food was good, and The Kid ate his fill, washing it down with the marshal’s excellent coffee. When they were finished, since there was a creek handy he washed out the coffeepot, the skillet, and the pot he had used to heat the beans, which they had polished off. He put everything away, then sat down on the bedroll he had spread next to the fire.

  Tate sat on the opposite side of the fire, packing tobacco in a pipe. When he had it ready, he fired it up, took a few puffs, and heaved a sigh of satisfaction. “I tell you, Kid, living in town is all right, but I like getting out here away from everybody sometimes. That’s probably why I said I’d take Cantrell to Fort Hays and deliver him to the army. I knew it would give me a chance for a nice leisurely ride back to Copperhead Springs with a few nights on the trail.”

  “And then I came along and intruded on your privacy by nearly getting myself killed,” The Kid said with a grin as he stretched out on the blankets and propped himself up on an elbow.

  Tate waved the pipe in the air. “Oh, no, I’m not worried about that. A cheerful traveling companion is always welcome, as long as he’s not the sort who jabbers all the time. I can already tell you’re not that sort. You know how to be quiet and leave a man with his thoughts.” Tate pointed the pipe’s stem at him. “That’s because you’re a man with a lot of thoughts of your own.”

  That was certainly true, and The Kid was about to say as much when he heard something move in the darkness. It was just a faint sound, the scrape of leather against dirt, maybe, but his instincts picked it out from all the other sounds belonging around a trail camp.

  Somebody was out there, and without having to think about it, The Kid moved his hand toward his gun.

  “Hold it!” a man’s voice commanded. “You better freeze, mister. You’re covered, and if you pull that gun, I’ll ventilate you.”

  Chapter 4

  The Kid stopped before his fingers closed around the butt of the Colt. It wasn’t easy to do so; his first impulse was to pull the gun and roll fast to the side, to throw off the aim of whoever was threatening him.

  But Marshal Tate was sitting on the other side of the fire rather flat-footed, smoking his pipe, clearly not prepared for trouble. If bullets started flying, the old lawman might not survive.

  The Kid was willing to give the situation a few seconds to see how it was going to play out. “Take it easy, mister,” he called. “There’s no need for gunplay here.”

  The unseen man responded with a snort. “I’ll be the judge of that. Who are you?”

  “I could ask the same of you,” The Kid said.

  “Yeah, but I’m the one holding a rifle aimed dead straight at your brisket. Now answer the question.”

  “My name’s Morgan. And my friend is a lawman, in case you missed the star on his vest. His name’s Tate.”

  Pointing out that Tate was a lawman was a calculated risk. If the unseen man threatening them was an outlaw, he might be prompted to start shooting.

  On the other hand, if he was a law-abiding man he probably wouldn’t feel very comfortable about pointing a rifle at a peace officer. That was what The Kid was hoping for, anyway.

  That hope was rewarded as the man said, “Yeah, yeah, I see the badge now. All right to come in to the camp?”

  “Just don’t come in shooting,” The Kid warned.

  Crackles sounded in the brush along the creek bank as a man stepped into the light holding a Spencer repeating rifle of the type carried by the U.S. cavalry. His faded blue trousers with remnants of yellow stripes down the legs appeared to be army issue, as was the gray hat with the turned-up brim he wore. His shirt was buckskin, though, and his high-topped boots were fashioned mocassin-style, rather than military. He was about the same age as Marshal Tate, with a weathered face and considerable gray in his brown hair and mustache.

  He wore a badge, too, pinned to his buckskin shirt. He pointed the rifle at the ground. “Sorry about the misunderstanding. I thought you might be a couple of the hombres I’ve been trailing. I can see now that you’re not. Maybe you’ve seen ’em, though.”

  The Kid was sitting up, alert. “Four men. A short, stocky bearded fella, a tall skinny one in an old derby hat, a redhead, and a man with a scar down his left cheek that looked like he got it in a knife fight.”

  The newcomer’s eyes narrowed as he listened to those descriptions. He shifted the Spencer slightly, as if he were tempted to raise it and point it at him again. “You’ve seen them, all right, and up close, too. They happen to be friends of yours?”

  “Not hardly,” Tate said, speaking up for the first time. “We killed them a while ago.”

  “They’re buried a few miles downstream.” The Kid nodded in that direction.

  The stranger looked surprised, although he tried to conceal that reaction. “I reckon you’d better tell me about it.”

  “I don’t see why we should,” Tate said crisply. “That’s a town marshal’s badge you’re wearing, just like mine, and since I don’t see any town around here, you’re out of your jurisdiction.”

  “So are you,” the man snapped, “but that didn’t stop you from killing those hombres.”

  “They didn’t give us much choice about it.”

  The Kid didn’t particularly want to sit around and listen to the two old-timers squabble with each other. “Listen, why don’t you two introduce yourselves, and then you can both share what you know about the situation.”

  The stranger shrugged. “That’s all right with me, I suppose.”

  “Me, too.” Tate stood up and extended his hand. “Marshal Jared Tate.”

  “Marshal Bob Porter,” the other man said as he gripped Tate’s hand.
“I’m from a town called Chalk Butte, about thirty miles east of here.”

  The Kid had heard of Chalk Butte, but hadn’t passed through there while he drifted west.

  “I know Chalk Butte well, although it’s been quite a while since I was there,” Tate said. “I’m from Copperhead Springs.”

  “Copperhead Springs?” Porter repeated with a frown. “But I thought . . . Nah, never mind. I want to hear about your run-in with those varmints. I have to say, I’m a mite surprised you’re still alive. They are . . . or rather, they were, if you’re telling me the truth . . . a vicious bunch.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a second,” The Kid said. “They tried to steal my horses because they had ridden one of theirs to death and the others were almost that far gone. I objected to having my horses stolen. Marshal Tate happened to come along and give me a hand with my objections.”

  “So you shot it out with those men, and they’re dead and you’re not?” Porter sounded like he had a hard time believing that.

  “We brought along the three horses that were still alive,” The Kid said, nodding toward where the animals were picketed. “If you know the mounts you’ve been chasing, maybe you’d recognize them.”

  “I might.” Porter walked over to look at the horses. The Kid and Tate went with him.

  After studying the horses in the firelight for a moment, Porter turned to them and nodded. “Sure looks like the animals they rode out of Chalk Butte on,” he admitted. “I reckon you’re probably telling the truth.”

  “We can show you the grave and you can dig them up if you want,” The Kid said.

  A grim smile curved Porter’s mouth. “No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Did you, uh, happen to look in the saddlebags you took off those horses?”

  “Haven’t gotten around to it yet,” Tate said. “They’re piled over there on the ground. If there’s stolen bank money or something like that, you’ll find it there.”

  “What makes you think they had loot with them?”

  “You chased them this far, and pretty hard and fast, too, judging by how worn out those horses were. You must have a pretty good reason for that.”