“I think it was Callie Stratton who came up with that idea.”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Frank agreed. He took a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket. “I rode into town this afternoon and wired my lawyers in Denver, got the name of the best lawyer in Fort Worth. He’ll be on his way down here tomorrow.”
“Kane doesn’t have the kind of money it takes to pay for that.”
“No, but I do,” Frank said. “You give the fella that paper when he gets here. It’ll explain everything and give him his orders.”
“You’d better hope Duggan doesn’t get wind of this. He’ll fire you faster than you can say Jack Robinson.”
Frank grinned. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: let him.”
They said their farewells and went their separate ways, Frank heading back to the Slash D. He was challenged by a couple of guards when he got there. One of them was Pitch Carey, who asked, “What are you doin’ wandering around at this time of night, Frank?”
“Just taking a ride along the fences,” Frank said.
“Patrolling, eh? You think something’s gonna happen?”
“You can count on one thing, Pitch,” Frank said. “Something’s always going to happen. We just don’t know what it is yet.”
* * *
The rest of that night and the next day passed quietly. Frank didn’t have an inkling that something was wrong until that evening when he noticed that Ed MacDonald and most of the other ranch hands were not in the bunkhouse. There was nothing that unusual about their absence—Duggan had men patrolling his fence lines every night now—but too many of the crew were gone for that to account for it. They had been there at supper and then slipped off afterward for some reason.
Still, Frank didn’t think too much about it until he walked over to the main house and found that Duggan himself was gone.
Wing was in the kitchen, cleaning up from supper and getting ready for breakfast the next morning. “Evening,” Frank said to him. “Where’s everybody gone, Wing?”
The cook shook his head. “Not know what you mean, Mr. Morgan.”
“Duggan, MacDonald, and just about all the other hands aren’t anywhere around. Is something wrong?”
Frank knew that this was the night Al Rawlings and his friends planned to cut all the fences in the county, but there was no way for Duggan to be aware of that . . . at least not as far as Frank knew.
“Nothing wrong, Mr. Morgan,” Wing said. “Everything all-ee fine.”
Frank frowned. “Don’t try that coolie talk on me, damn it. I know you speak English just as good as anybody around here and better than most.”
Wing sighed in resignation and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Morgan. I’ve been sworn to secrecy. I’m afraid Mr. Duggan no longer trusts you.”
“Why the hell not?” Frank exclaimed. “I haven’t done anything to give him cause not to trust me.”
Wing glanced around nervously. “I shouldn’t tell you this.... Mr. Duggan will never forgive me if he knows I betrayed his secret. . . .”
“He won’t hear it from me,” Frank promised.
Wing hesitated a second longer but then said, “Mr. Duggan knows you’ve been meeting with that young man called Tye. He’s afraid that you’re double-crossing him.”
Frank said, “Damn it!” and smacked his right fist into his left palm. He had no idea how Duggan had found out about his clandestine meetings with Beaumont, but that didn’t matter now. “What’s Duggan up to tonight?”
“I shouldn’t tell you—”
“Listen to me, Wing,” Frank said. “I know how it must look, but I give you my word I haven’t betrayed Duggan. I want to stop the trouble around here from getting worse, that’s all. If you know where Duggan and the rest of the crew have gone and what they plan to do, I need you to tell me, so that I can keep folks from getting hurt.”
It cost Wing quite an effort, but after a moment he nodded and said, “Mr. Duggan found out somehow that the smaller ranchers plan to try cutting his fences again tonight. He said . . . he said that when they do, they’re going to be in for a really big surprise.”
This time Frank couldn’t help but grate out a curse. “Which way did they head?”
“I heard him say something to Ed about Stepps Creek, so I guess they’re going out there again, where Chris Kane tried to cut the wire before.”
Frank clapped a hand on the cook’s shoulder. “Thanks, Wing. You did the right thing by telling me, but I won’t let Duggan know where I found out.” He turned toward the door.
“What are you going to do, Mr. Morgan?” Wing called after him.
“Put a stop to it, I hope, before a lot of people get killed.”
He hurried out to the stable and swiftly saddled Stormy. No one was around to stop him as he rode out, but he saw Wing standing tensely on the porch, silhouetted by the light coming through the open door behind him, watching worriedly as Frank galloped off into the night.
Frank had ridden over every foot of the Slash D, and his natural frontiersman’s instincts insured that he could find his way, even on a night like this one. Not only was there a new moon, but clouds had moved in during the late afternoon, obscuring even that feeble glow. It hadn’t started to rain yet, but the air was heavy, as if it might later.
With Frank’s expert touch on the reins, Stormy didn’t miss a step on the trail. Dog raced along behind, eager to see where his master was going. Frank didn’t slow down until he figured he had almost reached the creek. As he pulled Stormy back to a walk, he peered intently into the darkness. He was able to make out a line of thicker shadows that marked the trees along the stream. He swung down from the saddle and was about to approach on foot so that Duggan and the others wouldn’t hear him coming, when something happened that made any sort of stealth utterly unnecessary.
A huge explosion roared out, tearing apart the veil of darkness with a ball of flame and shaking the very earth itself under Frank Morgan’s feet.
30
Frank was shocked by the blast. Stormy let out a shrill whinny and reared up on his hind legs, pawing the air. Dog hunkered, whining. None of them had expected anything like the explosion that had just rocked the night.
While the roar was still echoing over the rolling, wooded hills, guns began to bang. As Frank hauled down on the reins and brought the Appaloosa under control, he saw spurts of muzzle flame here and there, briefly lighting the darkness like giant, deadly fireflies. Somewhere not far off a man screamed in agony.
Frank bounded into the saddle and heeled Stormy into a run that carried them toward the scene of battle. As he rode he jerked his Colt from its holster, but then he cursed as he realized he wouldn’t know who to shoot at. He figured the clash was between Duggan’s men and some of the members of Rawlings’s bunch who had come to cut the fence, but it was too dark out here for him to tell who was who.
That wasn’t stopping the other men. They blazed away at each other. Frank heard more than one man cry out in pain. He pulled the Appaloosa to a stop again and yelled, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” He didn’t know if any of the combatants would pay attention to the order, but it was worth a try.
Unfortunately, all it accomplished was to make several of the gunmen open fire on him. More gun flashes stabbed out, and bullets hummed a deadly tune past his ears. Frank jerked Stormy around so that the horse faced back the other way. Then he slid out of the saddle and yanked his hat off. He slapped the Stetson against Stormy’s rump and sent the Appaloosa lunging away, hopefully out of the line of fire.
Then Frank called, “Dog! To me!” and darted into some nearby trees.
He knelt there with Dog beside him, fallen leaves crackling underneath him as he watched the battle and tried to make some sense of it. From time to time a bullet whistled through the branches above them or thudded into one of the tree trunks, but for the most part none of the lead came near them.
Gradually, Frank began to make some sense out of what was going on.
There were two groups of gunmen, one on each side of the fence, just as he would have expected. Slash D on one side, smaller ranchers on the other. What he still didn’t know was what had caused the big explosion. Whatever it was had set some of the grass and brush on fire, and the flames began to spread and flicker higher, casting a nightmarish glare over the scene. As the blaze grew, Frank saw men darting here and there, firing on the run. The light was too uncertain for him to recognize any of them.
Footsteps crashed into the trees behind him. He swung around, knowing that anybody on this side of the fence was likely a Slash D man. “Hold it!” Frank barked as a dark shape loomed up in front of him.
“Morgan?” It was Stiles Warren’s voice. “You damn traitor!”
Instinct made Frank dive to the side as the Colt in Warren’s hand roared. Frank could have gunned the tall, lanky puncher, but he didn’t want any more killing tonight. Instead he kicked out and swept Warren’s legs out from under him.
Warren yelped in surprise as he fell and then grunted as he hit the ground. Frank aimed at that sound and swung his gun. The barrel thudded into something, and Warren stretched out on the ground with a long sigh. Frank checked him in the darkness, finding the lump on his skull. Warren was out cold.
Frank sprang to his feet as a sudden burst of barking and growling sounded nearby. Another Slash D man must have entered the trees, and Dog had jumped him. The man screamed and shouted, “Call him off! Call him off!”
“Dog!” Frank said. “Dog, hold!”
That command would make the big cur stop attacking, but if the man he had pulled down made any move to get up, Dog would stop him. Frank hurried toward the low growling and said, “Whoever you are, mister, you’d better stay put, or else he’s liable to tear your throat out before I can stop him.”
“Morgan!” the man gasped. Frank recognized Ed MacDonald’s voice. “Morgan, have you gone crazy? Call off your dog!”
“First tell me what’s going on here.” The shots continued, but they came less frequently now. The fight was dying down.
“We . . . we set a trap for those damn fence-cutters!”
“What kind of trap?”
“We rigged some dynamite with a friction trigger . . . attached it to the wire . . . hid it next to the fence . . . For God’s sake, Morgan, get this dog away from me!”
Frank was in no mood to call off Dog. He had gone cold inside as MacDonald explained the blast. He said, “You mean you rigged the dynamite so it would go off if the wire was cut?”
“Yeah . . . It was the boss’s idea, I swear! We didn’t know the hombre would be standing almost right on top of it when it went off!”
Beaumont. Frank had advised the young Ranger to let Rawlings go through with his plan, even though it was dangerous. It was even possible that Beaumont had been the one to step up to the fence with a pair of wire-cutters in his hand. He might have slipped the cutters over the wire and pressed the handles together....
One thing was certain. Whether the blast had killed Beaumont or not, it had surely killed someone. It had been too big, too powerful, not to.
“Back off, Dog,” Frank said, and MacDonald let out a sigh of relief. He was probably rethinking that a second later as Frank hunkered beside him and pressed the barrel of his Colt under the foreman’s chin, digging it in painfully.
“You said the dynamite trap was Duggan’s idea?” Frank asked coldly.
“Y-yeah!”
“How did he know the fence was going to be cut tonight?”
“Somebody told him. . . . One of the farmers, I think. He said Rawlings got all his bunch together and planned to cut fences all over the county tonight.... That’s all I know, I swear, Morgan!”
So one of the men who had been at that meeting in Rawlings’s barn had sold them out, Frank thought. In a way, he wasn’t really surprised. In every group there was usually at least one man who was weak, who was more interested in protecting himself and feathering his own nest rather than looking out for his friends.
“So you snuck out here and set your trap, and when the blast went out you opened fire on the men who weren’t caught in the explosion. Is that it?”
“Yeah,” MacDonald said, and though he was still scared, his voice sounded a bit stronger. He had enough backbone so that even the threat of Frank’s gun prodding his jaw wasn’t going to cow him forever. As if to prove that, he went on. “Either pull that trigger or let me up, Morgan.”
“Not just yet,” Frank grated. “How come I wasn’t told about any of this?”
“Because the boss knows now you’re a damned traitor! Stiles has been keepin’ an eye on that young fella Tye. He saw the two of you getting together last night. You sold us out, Morgan!”
Frank grimaced. He had made sure that no one followed him to the rendezvous with Beaumont, but obviously the young Ranger hadn’t been that careful. Frank didn’t absolve himself completely from the blame, either; he should have noticed that someone was tailing Beaumont.
“I didn’t sell anybody out,” he said. “I was just trying to keep people from getting killed.”
“Go to hell, Morgan!” MacDonald snarled.
A new voice said from behind Frank, “You move a muscle, Morgan, and I’ll send you there. I’ve got a Winchester trained on you.”
Frank recognized Earl Duggan’s raspy tones. He heard leaves crunching under the cattle baron’s boots as Duggan approached. He realized now that the night was quiet again. The shooting was over.
The only sound was a faint moan from somewhere on the other side of the fence.
“He’s got a gun at my throat, Boss,” MacDonald warned.
“Drop it, Morgan,” Duggan ordered.
Frank considered for a second. Duggan couldn’t be able to see him that well. The fire was dying out, the flames being extinguished by the light rain that had begun to fall while Frank was questioning MacDonald. It was entirely possible that Frank could spin around and put a bullet in Duggan before the cattleman could fire. Even if Duggan got off a shot, it would be pure chance if it hit Frank.
But even though a part of Frank wanted to do that, he had told MacDonald that he wanted to stop the killing, and he had meant it. He pulled the barrel of the Peacemaker away from MacDonald’s throat and slid the gun back into leather. Then he stood up and turned to face Duggan. Rain pattered quietly against the crown of Frank’s hat.
“All right, Duggan,” he said.
“What about it, Ed?” Duggan’s voice lashed out.
Frank heard MacDonald scrambling to his feet. “I’m all right, Boss,” the foreman said. “Morgan holstered his gun.”
Duggan grunted. “Better drop it, Morgan.”
“I don’t think so,” Frank said flatly. “I’ve only got so much backup in me, Duggan. You’d do well to remember that.”
Duggan didn’t press the issue. Instead he asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I hoped to get here in time to stop you from doing something damned foolish.” Frank paused and then added heavily, “I didn’t make it.”
“We’ll see how foolish it is once word gets around about one of those damn greasy-sack cowboys gettin’ blown to bits when he tried to cut my fence. After tonight none of those bastards will dare come anywhere near a decent man’s fence.”
“You think fences are worth killing men over?” Frank’s voice shook a little from the depth of his anger.
“You’re damned right I do!” Duggan shot back at him. “What’s worth defending more than a man’s home range?”
Frank couldn’t answer that. In a way, he knew that Duggan was right: A man did have an unquestionable right to defend himself, his family, and his property. But those fence-cutters weren’t thieves and murderers. They weren’t the sort of worthless outlaw trash that Frank had gunned down countless times over the years when he was forced into it. He had never lost a minute’s sleep over dealing out death to scum like them.
But the little ranchers and the farmers who found themselves in op
position to Duggan and the other cattle barons were, by and large, decent hard-working men who just wanted something better for themselves and their families. None of them deserved to have a bundle of dynamite blast them to kingdom come.
“Hey, Boss!” The shout came from the other side of the fence. “Some of them are still alive over here! What should we do?”
When Duggan hesitated in answering, Frank said, “Why don’t you tell your men to kill the rest of them in cold blood? Murdering some helpless men isn’t beneath you, is it, Duggan?”
“Shut the hell up,” Duggan growled. “Ed, keep an eye on Morgan while I take a look over there.”
“Sure, Boss,” MacDonald said. He still had his gun, and now he eared back the hammer so that the metallic ratcheting was loud in the night.
“I’m going with you,” Frank declared. He started to follow Duggan toward the fence.
“Boss . . . ?” MacDonald asked.
“Let him come,” Duggan snapped over his shoulder. “Just watch him close, and ventilate him if he tries anything.”
They made their way to the fence and carefully climbed between the strands of wire, avoiding as much as possible the wicked barbs. Several men were standing around in the rain between the fence and the trees along the creek. About twenty yards along the fence was a gaping hole where the explosion had gone off. Frank looked at it and said, “You blew up your own fence, Duggan. Sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
“Not hardly,” Duggan rasped. “The purpose was to teach those bastards to leave me and mine alone. You reckon they’ll do it from now on?”
Frank didn’t answer that. He wasn’t sure what the reaction would be to tonight’s violence . . . but he was willing to bet it wouldn’t work out as neatly as Duggan was obviously convinced it would.
Duggan snapped a match into life with his thumbnail and shielded it from the rain with his other hand. He had tucked the Winchester under his arm. The glow from the match fell on the face of a young man who lay in the grass near the fence. He writhed in agony from a bullet-shattered shoulder, but he suffered pretty much in silence. Frank didn’t recognize him.
Violent Sunday Page 23
