Savage Country

by William W. Johnstone

  Chapter 23

  Frank was soaked to the skin by the time they reached the cavelike area underneath the overhanging cliff. So were the other members of the group. Frank had a slicker in his gear, but he hadn’t asked if he could put it on, figuring that Royal would say no. None of the hardcases seemed to have slickers with them, and they were in a mighty foul mood the wetter they got.

  The men who were already in camp must have built up the fire when the wind grew colder, because it was burning brighter now and giving off welcome heat. Several of them picked up rifles when they noticed that the newcomers had a couple of prisoners with them. One of them called out, “Royal, we heard shots up on the ridge. Who the hell’s that you got with you?”

  “This one’s Frank Morgan,” Royal replied as he pointed the barrel of his revolver at Frank. “I don’t know who the other bastard is.”

  “Morgan! The Drifter hisownself, you mean?”

  “That’s right.” Royal said to Frank and Scheer, “You two get down off your horses. Brady, you and Thad see to Dennehy.”

  Royal didn’t dismount until after Frank and Walt Scheer had swung down from their saddles. Slovack complained until a couple of the other men helped him from his horse. Several more gathered around the injured Dennehy as Brady and Thad placed him on a blanket spread on the sandy ground that formed the floor of the cave.

  In the light from the fire, Frank glanced up at the rock wall looming above his head and saw images painted there, crude representations of men and animals and geographical features like mountains and rivers. The images had faded with time and been dulled by the smoke from countless fires, but they were still visible, mute testimony to the fact that men had been using the place for shelter for a long time, maybe as long as hundreds of years. Frank had seen such ancient pictures before and knew that Indians had daubed them on the rock, using paints and dyes made from berries and other plants. Standing in the presence of such antiquities was always impressive, and it was so even now, although at the moment Frank had plenty of other things on his mind.

  Still holding a gun, Royal came over and glared at Frank and Scheer. He was a burly man with slightly stooped shoulders and a rugged face dominated by a big nose that had been broken at least once. In his rasping voice, he asked Scheer, “Just who in hell are you, mister? You workin’ with Morgan?”

  The engineer licked his lips. “My name is Walt Scheer. I work for the Southwestern and Pacific Railroad. I’m a surveyor and construction engineer.” He glanced over at Frank. “I never saw this man before today. I don’t know who he is or what he’s doing up here.”

  Royal grunted. “Is that so? Looked to me like the two of you were pards when you came runnin’ out of those trees.”

  “He forced me to go with him,” Scheer said with a note of desperation in his voice. “Think about it. I never shot at you or put up any kind of a fight.”

  “No, you didn’t put up a fight, that’s for damned sure,” Royal said scornfully. “You were too busy fallin’ down that hill.”

  “Leave him alone,” Frank said. “He’s telling you the truth. He doesn’t know anything about what’s going on. I ran into him earlier today and made him come with me because I thought he might be part of your bunch. Now I know he’s not.”

  “I don’t give a damn about that,” Royal said. “He knows where our camp is, so he’s a threat to us.”

  Scheer took half a step forward. “No, I’m not,” he said anxiously. “I swear I’m not. Let me go and I won’t tell anybody where you are or what you’re doing.”

  “What are we doing?” Royal asked.

  If Frank had had a chance, he would have told Scheer to plead ignorance. As it was, he gave the engineer a warning look, but Scheer either didn’t see it or ignored it. Eager to cooperate, Scheer said, “You’re trying to wreck the spur line that the New Mexico, Rio Grande, and Oriental Railroad is building and keep it from getting to Ophir. Right?”

  “Yeah,” Royal said heavily. “That’s right. And since you know about that . . .”

  The gun in his hand came up.

  “Wait a minute,” Scheer babbled, backing up now. “I’m not going to say anything. I don’t care what you’re doing. I don’t want the spur line to go through either. Once it fails, the company I work for will come in and take over.” His voice rose as Royal eared back the revolver’s hammer. “We’re on the same side!”

  Frank suddenly lunged toward Scheer, slamming into him and knocking him down just as Royal’s gun crashed, driving him out of the way of the bullet that Royal had aimed at his head. Howling in fear, Scheer cowered on the ground as Frank knelt beside him and looked up at Royal. Fingers of lightning clawed at the sky and lit up the gunman’s face with an electric glare.

  “Get out of the way, Morgan,” Royal grated. “We don’t need this snivelin’ son of a bitch no more.”

  “You might as well kill us both then,” Frank said, “because I’ll never cooperate with you.”

  “No, I told you I’m keepin’ you alive. Might be able to use you against young Browning.” An ugly grin pulled at Royal’s wide mouth. “After all, what boy wouldn’t want to keep his ol’ pappy safe?”

  A breath hissed between Frank’s tightly clenched teeth. Royal knew that Conrad was his son! How the hell was that possible? Conrad certainly hadn’t told anyone. It had been obvious that he wanted to keep their relationship as much of a secret as possible. But Royal and these other hired killers who were trying to wreck the spur line knew.

  Confusion reigned in Frank’s head for a few seconds until he pushed it all aside. He said, “You don’t have to worry about Scheer. He’s no threat. You can see that for yourself.”

  Scheer was still crying and had his arms over his head, even though he had to know that wouldn’t protect him from a bullet. The gesture was just instinct, pure self-preservation, even though it was futile.

  Royal glowered down at them for a long moment before finally lowering his gun. As he slid the weapon back in its holster, he said, “All right. He lives . . . for now. But if either of you tries anything, he’ll die mighty quicklike.”

  Frank nodded. To Scheer, he said in a low, urgent voice, “Take it easy. Pull yourself together, man. You’re all right now.”

  Royal motioned some of his men forward. “Put ’em over there against the cliff and tie ’em up,” he ordered. “As long as they stay quiet, you don’t have to gag them. In fact, if they start to raise a ruckus, just bend a gun barrel over their heads. Don’t kill Morgan, though.”

  “What are you going to do?” Frank asked as several of the hardcases grabbed him and Scheer and shoved them toward the base of the cliff.

  “I got to think,” Royal said. “Luck’s dropped you in my lap, Morgan, and now I got to figure out what to do with you.”

  By the time a few more minutes had passed, Frank and Scheer were sitting with their backs pressed against the rock, their arms pulled behind their backs and tied there uncomfortably. Their legs were still loose, though, so Frank was grateful for that small favor.

  Right now, he would take any break he could get, no matter how slight.

  The day passed slowly, and it seemed even longer than it was due to their captivity, their uncomfortable position, and the pouring rain that continued to fall for hours. The time gave Frank a chance to study their captors, though. The men all wore range clothes and were heavily armed. Their coarse-featured, beard-stubbled faces were typical of drifting hardcases, the sort of gunmen for hire who would do anything as long as the money was good enough. A couple of them, including Thad, were younger than the others and probably hadn’t been riding the owlhoot trail for as long, but that didn’t mean they were any less dangerous. Their leader, Royal, seemed to be more intelligent than the others, but it was an animal cunning, mixed with ruthlessness. Any man who rose to the leadership of a gang of killers such as this was likely the most dangerous of them all.

  The rain finally stopped in the late afternoon. The clouds broke as the su
n was going down, which allowed a red glare to fall over the landscape for a few minutes before the shadows of dusk began to gather. It looked to Frank almost like the door into Hell had been opened briefly, and he had to wonder just what sort of gibbering demons had crawled out and loosed themselves on the earth during that time.

  He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  Royal and several more of the men had been talking among themselves for a while, occasionally casting veiled glances toward Frank and Scheer. Frank didn’t like the looks of the discussion, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Beside him, Scheer talked a lot, complaining about everything under the sun, especially the fact that their captors hadn’t fed them anything during the long day. Frank’s stomach was empty too, but he didn’t see how it was going to do any good to bitch about it.

  As it began to grow dark, Royal and a couple of the men stood up and walked toward them. Scheer fell silent, perhaps sensing that something bad was about to happen. Royal and the others stopped in front of the prisoners, and the boss of the gang hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and said, “I’m glad you talked me outta killin’ this fella, Morgan. Turns out we’ve got a use for him after all.”

  “Anything,” Scheer said quickly. “I’ll help you any way I can.”

  “Better not be so quick to volunteer,” Frank advised him quietly.

  Royal laughed. “Hell, it don’t matter whether he volunteers or not. We’re gonna do the same thing either way.” He motioned toward Scheer. “Take him, boys.”

  “Wait! What are you—don’t—” Scheer let out a yell as the two men picked him up by the shoulders and feet and started to carry him toward the fire.

  Royal stayed where he was and said to Frank, “You know how the Apaches have been givin’ trouble around here, Morgan? How a band o’ renegade bucks has been raisin’ hell?”

  “I’ve heard about it,” Frank said, not mentioning anything about the encounter he and Conrad had had with the Indians on their way to Lordsburg.

  “Well, what do you think a bunch o’ savages like that would do if they was to catch a lone white man out by himself?” Without waiting for Frank to answer, Royal went on. “I’ll tell you what they’d do—they’d grab him and have themselves some fun with him, that’s what.”

  Over by the fire, Scheer writhed in the grip of the hardcases and cried, “Put me down! Let me go! Please!”

  They paid no attention to his begging.

  Frank felt a cold ball of horror form in his guts as Royal went on. “You know how Apaches have fun, don’t you, Morgan? Ain’t nothin’ those red heathens like better than torturing a white man. Seems to me that if a bunch of Apaches got hold of ol’ Walt over there, they might just take his hide off him, one strip at a time.”

  Scheer heard the words and screamed. The sound was cut off abruptly as the men carrying him dropped him by the fire. The impact of his landing on the hard-packed ground knocked the breath out of him.

  “And just to make it more interestin’,” Royal went on, “maybe the knives they’d use to take his hide off would be heated up in the fire beforehand, so they could cook him a little at the same time they were skinnin’ him.”

  A bitter taste rose in Frank’s throat. At the same time, his brain was working rapidly, so he swallowed the bile and said, “Are you telling me that the Indian raids on the railroad weren’t really the work of the Apaches at all?”

  “Now, wouldn’t that be a neat trick?” Royal asked with an ugly grin. “Fact of the matter is, there are some Apaches up here in these mountains, and they don’t like us palefaces. But as to whether or not they’ve really done everything they’ve been blamed for . . . well, that’s a good question. But when the folks down at that railroad camp find Scheer’s body in the mornin’, all skinned and scorched, don’t you reckon the Apaches will get the blame again?”

  That was exactly what would happen, Frank knew. By the time Royal and his henchmen got through torturing Scheer, it would probably be impossible to identify him. But the railroaders would be able to tell he had been a white man, and when they saw what had been done to him, they would be certain the Apaches had done it. The gruesome discovery would damage morale in the camp that much more.

  “I can’t believe you’d do such a thing,” Frank said coldly.

  “Believe it,” Royal said. “We’re gettin’ paid a heap to make it harder for those boys to finish that railroad. And I don’t give a damn who gets hurt along the way.”

  Scheer had gotten his breath back. He began to scream again. Royal jerked his head around and snapped, “Shut that son of a bitch up!”

  A gun rose and fell, the barrel thudding against Scheer’s skull as the engineer arched his back up off the ground. He slumped down limply as the blow fell, out cold now.

  That was probably the most merciful thing that could happen to him, Frank thought bleakly. He was tied up and outnumbered twenty to one, and there was nothing he could do to stop the hired killers from carrying out their grisly scheme.

  Royal swung back toward the fire and ordered, “Get on with it.”

  Frank wanted to close his eyes or look away, but he forced himself not to. He had promised Scheer that he would try to keep him safe, and he had failed in that promise. The man was going to die in a drawn-out, agonizing fashion. Frank hoped the pain wouldn’t make Scheer regain consciousness, but he was afraid that wouldn’t be the case.

  One of the men hunkered by the fire, holding the tip of a razor-sharp bowie knife in the flames until it glowed red-hot. While he was doing that, several of the men ripped Scheer’s shirt open and then pulled it off him. They left his trousers on. It would take a while to get to that part of his body with their torture.

  The man with the knife turned toward the helpless victim. “Hold him down, boys,” he said with a grin. “Even out cold, he’s liable to jump around a mite once he feels this hot blade peelin’ his skin off.”

  Several men grasped Scheer by the shoulders and legs, clamping tight grips on him. The knife-wielder leaned over him. Scheer’s body jerked wildly, even though he was still unconscious, when the blade came in contact with his skin.

  “Look at him jump!” one of the men said with a laugh as the man with the knife made a long, shallow cut across Scheer’s chest.

  Frank’s jaw clenched so tight he thought his teeth might start to shatter. Despite his reputation as a gunfighter, he had never been a bloodthirsty man, never believed in senseless violence.

  At this moment, however, he gladly would have put a bullet through the brain of every man gathered around the helpless engineer. And he never would have lost a second’s sleep over the killings.

  The man with the bowie knife lifted the blade. Crimson droplets clung to it. They sizzled as he thrust the knife back into the flames. “We’ll just heat this up a little more,” he said. “Then a cut down each side and we’ll start to peel the hide back, just like one o’ them damned Apaches was doin’ it.”

  He was too impatient in his cruelty to wait for long, though. After only a few moments, he took the blade out of the fire and turned back toward Scheer.

  Then he toppled forward, dropping the knife, and landed in a limp sprawl across Scheer’s bleeding body. It took everyone under the overhang of the cliff, including Frank, a second or two to realize that the thing sticking straight up from the fallen man’s back was the shaft of an arrow.

  Chapter 24

  Conrad looked around warily as he entered the hotel dining room. He had a multitude of worries this morning. Pamela and her father were staying at the Holloway House, so they might have come down for breakfast. Likewise, Rebel could be in the dining room.

  And then there was the matter of Rebel’s cousin Ed and her brothers Tom and Bob. From the descriptions Jonas Wade had given him the night before, Conrad knew the Callahan boys were in Ophir, and they were still looking for Frank Morgan, still bent on avenging the deaths of Simon and Jud Callahan back in El Paso. If the Callahans saw Conrad, undoubtedly they
would recognize him from the fight at Mimbres Tank. Whether or not they would try to kill him outright, Conrad didn’t know. He didn’t want to risk it, though.

  Thankfully, he didn’t see any familiar faces in the dining room except for the waiter. The hour was early. Pamela and her father were probably still asleep. Rebel was an early riser, but she wasn’t here and Conrad wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth. As for her brothers and cousin, they were probably sleeping off a drunk in some squalid saloon or whorehouse. Also, they had no way of knowing that he was staying at the Holloway House, other than the fact that it was the best hotel in town and obviously he would prefer quality lodgings.

  Conrad felt a few eyes following him as he went to an empty table and sat down. He was expecting that interest. By now, the story of how he had wrecked the bathhouse and exposed Rebel would have gone around among the hotel staff, which meant that some of the guests probably had heard it too. A rumor was a pernicious thing, fast on its feet and exceedingly difficult to kill. With all the dignity he could muster, he sat down at the table, and as the waiter approached, Conrad said, “Good morning, George. I’ll start off with coffee.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Browning,” the man said without hesitation. No matter how many embarrassing things happened to him, Conrad Browning had a great deal of money, and no one in Ophir was likely to forget that. Wealth was the great ameliorator.

  Conrad gazed straight ahead while he waited for his coffee. The waiter returned with cup and saucer a few minutes later and placed them in front of Conrad, who said, “Thank you, George. I’ll have hotcakes, a slice of ham, and fried eggs.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The man’s eagerness to please made Conrad feel better. All might not be right with the world, but at least there were signs that eventually normalcy would return.

  That comforting thought was going through his head when the voice said behind him, “Well, if it ain’t the peeper.”