Tarleton folded the paper and slapped it against his thigh. His eyes cut first one way, then the other.
Frank smiled. “Thinking about making a run for it? I wouldn’t advise it.”
“I . . . I know who you are,” Tarleton said. His carefully controlled façade was slipping. “You’re a gunfighter. I’d have no chance against you. I won’t fight you.”
Frank held up his right hand. There was a burn on the palm. “I can still draw, but I’d rather not until this heals up. That’s why I brought along some help, just in case you started a ruckus.”
Conrad stepped through the door Frank had left open behind him. He said to Tarleton, “Come along, Clark. The marshal is waiting for you. You’ll be spending some time in his jail, until the sheriff can get up here from Lordsburg to take custody of you.”
“Conrad.” Tarleton set the paper aside and stood up. “How can you do this? You can’t believe this madness. You and I were friends.”
Conrad shook his head. “Not really. You tried several times to have me killed.”
“My God! How can you believe that? You were going to marry my daughter!”
“You never would have allowed that to happen. You’ve had me marked for death for a long time.”
The color had drained out of Tarleton’s face, leaving it ashen and haggard. His hands clenched into fists. “I won’t go to jail,” he growled as Conrad came forward.
“You don’t have any choice in the matter,” Conrad said.
“The hell I don’t!”
And with that, Tarleton lunged forward, swinging a fist at Conrad’s head.
Conrad leaned to the side, letting the blow go harmlessly past his ear. He stepped in closer and hooked a right to Tarleton’s midsection. The punch knocked the breath out of Tarleton, but he managed to grab Conrad and barreled into him, knocking him over backward. Both men crashed to the floor of the lobby.
Frank stepped back, giving them plenty of room.
Tarleton landed on top of Conrad. Clubbing his fists together, he slammed them into the younger man’s jaw. Conrad was stunned, but he had the presence of mind to heave his back up off the floor, throwing Tarleton off balance. Tarleton fell to the side, still gasping for air.
Conrad rolled over and came to his feet, beating Tarleton by a couple of seconds. He could have stepped in and struck as Tarleton was struggling to his feet, but he held back, letting his opponent get upright again before he waded in. Conrad landed a couple of hard punches, but Tarleton was tough enough to absorb a considerable amount of punishment. He shrugged off the blows and threw a hard left and right of his own. The combination landed on Conrad’s chest and chin and rocked him back a step. Catching his balance, Conrad set himself and drove a straight right into Tarleton’s mouth as the older man bored in. Blood spurted as the punch pulped Tarleton’s lips and staggered him.
Conrad didn’t let up now. He came in hard and fast, sledging punches that pushed Tarleton back across the lobby. Tarleton ran into the registration desk and knocked it over on the clerk, who had taken refuge behind it. As the brutal combat surged back in the other direction, Frank stepped forward and lifted the desk, rescuing the hapless clerk.
By now, quite a crowd had begun to gather. Rebel and her brothers stood just inside the door of the hotel, along with Allison McShane, Jonas Wade, and Marshal Steve Everett. Wade was holding Allison’s hand, and she didn’t seem to mind. More of the townspeople pushed in to watch Conrad and Tarleton slugging away at each other.
Suddenly, a scream came from the staircase leading down to the lobby from the second floor. Conrad’s head jerked around. He saw Pamela Tarleton standing there, hands pressed to her face in horror, a look of disbelief in her eyes.
The distraction gave Tarleton a chance. He smashed a right and a left into Conrad’s face, knocking the younger man off his feet. Tarleton had to know by now that he had no hope of escape, but since no one was interfering, he pressed his attack, obviously intent on making Conrad pay for helping to ruin all his plans. Tarleton drew his leg back to deliver a devastating kick to his fallen opponent.
Conrad twisted out of the way, though, and reached up to grab Tarleton’s leg. He heaved on the leg and brought Tarleton crashing down. Scrambling onto his knees, Conrad threw himself forward and got his hands around Tarleton’s neck. He bounced Tarleton’s head off the floor and then started throttling the life out of him. . . .
Frank stepped forward, got hold of his son, and pulled Conrad up and off the now-senseless Tarleton. “That’s enough,” Frank said. “You don’t want to kill him.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Conrad said as he lifted a trembling hand and wiped the back of it across his bloodstained mouth. “Right now I’d like very much to kill him. But I won’t. We’ll let the law handle him.”
“Wise decision, youngster,” Marshal Everett said as he came forward with a pair of handcuffs. He bent over and snapped them around Tarleton’s wrists. Then he motioned to some of the townsmen and said, “Take him down to the hoosegow. I’ll be along in a minute to lock him up.”
Conrad turned toward the stairs, where Pamela still stood staring at him. “I’m sorry it had to be this way,” he said to her. “I truly am. Hurting you was something I never wanted to do.”
She wiped tears from her cheeks as her father was picked up and hustled out of the hotel. She spit, “Go to hell, Conrad Browning.”
Rebel started forward, a fighting gleam in her eyes.
Frank moved to intercept her. “It’s all over,” he said quietly. “I reckon Conrad could use a gentle hand right about now. He won the fight, but he took quite a bit of punishment along the way.”
Rebel glared at Pamela for a second longer, then turned to Conrad and smiled. “Your pa’s wrong about one thing,” she said as she took his hand. “I think I’m the winner here.”
Rebel and Conrad both were, Frank thought with a grin. That’s what was so good about it.
Chapter 35
“You sure you want to boss this job yourself?” Frank asked.
“I can handle it,” Conrad said confidently. “At least until my new construction superintendent can get here.”
Frank held out his hand. “Well, good luck.”
Conrad gripped Frank’s hand firmly. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.” He started to turn toward the street, where El Diablo waited and where Rebel was already mounted on her chestnut. Then he paused and said, “Frank . . . Dad . . . did I do all right?”
“You did fine, son,” Frank said. “You did just fine.”
Conrad nodded, mounted up, and turned his horse toward the south. Rebel was right beside him as the two of them rode away.
Damned dusty road, Frank thought as he wiped away the little bit of moisture that had sprung up in his eyes.
A week had passed since the pair of showdowns, first with Sam Brant and then with Clark Tarleton. It had been a busy time too. Tarleton had been taken to Lordsburg, where he was now in jail awaiting trial on a multitude of charges. Frank had ridden out to visit with the Apaches, reclaiming Walt Scheer from them and explaining to Mano Rojo that justice had been done. Royal and quite a few other members of the gang were dead, and the rest were behind bars. So was Tarleton, who had been the driving force behind the whole thing, including the attack on Mano Rojo’s people. Mano Rojo had agreed that he and the other warriors would follow Geronimo’s example and turn themselves in to the Army, with a promise that they would fight no more. Frank was glad to hear that. He wasn’t going to excuse the past behavior of the Apaches, but there weren’t that many of them left. In the end, if they kept fighting, they would be hunted down and exterminated. A proud people deserved better than that, and Mano Rojo and his men had suffered enough tragedy already.
During the week, he had also sat down with Allison McShane for that interview she wanted, but in the course of their talk Frank had asked a couple of subtle questions of his own, finding out enough to know that Allison wasn’t opposed to Jonas Wade courti
ng her. Frank didn’t know how things would work out between them—that was up to them—but he was glad that Jonas would at least have a chance with her.
Pamela Tarleton was on her way back to Philadelphia, might even be there by now. Conrad had seen to that, paying all the expenses of her trip home. Pamela had accepted his help. Not particularly graciously, but she was accustomed to being taken care of, and her father couldn’t do that anymore. Rebel was of the opinion that Conrad ought to just leave Pamela to fend for herself, but of course he wasn’t going to do that. He was too much the gentleman to abandon a lady in distress, even one who now hated him.
Other than that minor disagreement, Conrad and Rebel had come to a pretty good understanding. Frank figured there would be wedding bells for those two sooner or later. He hoped Conrad would invite him to the ceremony. That seemed likely, since he and his son were closer now than they had ever been. Of course, that didn’t take much, but still, it was a good start.
Conrad was on his way out to take over the construction of the spur line and supervise it personally, at least for a while. Tom and Bob Callahan were already down there, working as hunters to provide fresh meat for the railroad workers.
Frank leaned on the railing along the boardwalk in front of the hotel and watched the dwindling figures of Conrad and Rebel as they rode out of Ophir. Lifting his right hand, Frank looked at the palm. The burn he had gotten when he snuffed out that fuse was almost healed now. Another few days and he would be able to draw a gun as well as ever.
But he hoped he would never have to. The past few weeks had been packed full of excitement and danger, but he was getting too old for these rowdy-dows. Seeing Conrad and Rebel together made him think again about grandchildren. The time was coming for him to settle down....
A man riding past the hotel caught Frank’s attention. The man was roughly dressed and had a lean, wolflike quality about him. He wore a gun strapped low on his thigh. He was looking at Frank with mean, narrowed eyes, eyes that glittered with recognition. The man paused his horse for a second, but then rode on, turning in at a saloon down the street.
Later today or tomorrow at the latest, Frank thought with a sigh. The challenge would come then. That stranger fancied himself good with a gun, and the thoughts that had gone through his head as he recognized Frank were plain to read on his face. He figured he was going to be the man who finally outdrew and gunned down The Drifter.
What was that old saying? The more things changed, the more they stayed the same? Frank drew in a deep breath. The mountain air was crisp and clean.
But he thought he smelled a faint hint of gun smoke in it . . . before he realized that the scent clung to him.
* * *
In Lordsburg’s jail that night, Clark Tarleton lay on a hard, uncomfortable bunk and wondered just how everything had gone wrong, as he had wondered every night for the past week. Luck had always been with him, but now it seemed to have deserted him.
He would get it back. He would win in the end, he told himself. He always had. He had plenty of money to hire the best lawyers in the country. No prosecutor in some backwater territory would put him behind bars permanently. Besides, he had friends, powerful friends, who would come to his aid. They couldn’t afford to do otherwise, because he knew as much incriminating information about them as they knew about him. It was only a matter of time before he was free.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor that ran through the center of the cell block. Other than that, the place was quiet. There were only a few other prisoners, and they were all asleep.
The footsteps came to a stop outside the door of Tarleton’s cell. One of the guards checking on him? Tarleton swung his legs off the bunk and stood up, seeing the dark bulk of the man through the bars. The only light in the cell block was all the way down at the other end of the corridor, so the visitor’s face was in shadow.
After a moment of silence, Tarleton demanded impatiently, “Well? What is it?”
“Tarleton?” the man asked in a whisper.
“Yes. Damn it, man, speak up.”
“I’ve got a message for you from a friend. A friend back in Boston.”
Tarleton stepped closer to the bars. “It’s damned well about time.”
The stranger’s hand came up from his side, and for a second Tarleton couldn’t comprehend that the man held a knife. Then, as understanding dawned on him, he opened his mouth and tried to shout in alarm. Before any sound could come out, however, the man’s hand shot between the bars, grabbed Tarleton’s shirt, and yanked him forward. The razor-sharp blade sank easily into Tarleton’s throat, cutting off any outcry. The stranger yanked the knife to the side, opening a huge wound. He stepped back quickly as blood spurted. Tarleton fell to his knees, clawing at the bars as he went down. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out except a little gurgle that couldn’t have been heard more than a few feet away. Tarleton’s grip on the bars slipped and he fell over backward. A dark pool formed and widened around his head as he twitched a few times and then lay still.
The stranger squatted and reached through the bars one more time, wiped the blade clean on one leg of Tarleton’s trousers, and then walked quietly out of the cell block without looking back.
* * *
The next day, in an office in Boston, a door opened and a clerk came in. He laid a telegram on the desk belonging to the man whose office this was. The man picked up the telegram, read the words printed on it, and nodded. “Thank you, Harding,” he said. The clerk left.
The man at the desk leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of him. It would have been better, of course, if everything had worked out and Tarleton had handled his part of the plan successfully. But he hadn’t, and at least Tarleton was dead now, so that he could never reveal the name of his partner in the scheme. All the tracks were covered, so to speak. No one would ever be able to connect the man at the desk with Clark Tarleton or the Southwestern and Pacific Railroad.
A shame about the spur line, but he hadn’t been all that interested in that part of the plan in the first place. As far as he was concerned, the idea was to cause enough trouble for Conrad Browning so that Conrad would turn to his father for help. That was exactly what had happened. Frank Morgan had come galloping to the rescue, as the man at the desk had known he would, and time and again, Morgan had been a hairbreadth away from death.
But somehow he had always dodged it. Morgan was the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Either that, or the very best at what he did . . .
The man at the desk sighed. He was tired of living in fear. For five years now, ever since the death of Vivian Browning, he had expected to look up and see Frank Morgan in front of him, ready to claim his vengeance. Well, no more. No more! This gambit might have failed, but it was only the first move in the game. The man’s right hand clenched into a fist and slammed down on the desk.
Inside the quiet, elegant office with its dark walls and shelves of law books, Charles Dutton trembled with anger—and not a little fear—and said hoarsely, “Frank Morgan, it’s time for you to die.”
AFTERWORD
Notes from the Old West
In the small town where I grew up, there were two movie theaters. The Pavilion was one of those old-timey movie show palaces, built in the heyday of Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin—the silent era of the 1920s. By the 1950s, when I was a kid, the Pavilion was a little worn around the edges, but it was still the premier theater in town. They played all those big Technicolor biblical Cecil B. DeMille epics and corny MGM musicals. In Cinemascope, of course.
On the other side of town was the Gem, a somewhat shabby and run-down grind house with sticky floors and torn seats. Admission was a quarter. The Gem booked low-budget “B” pictures (remember the Bowery Boys?), war movies, horror flicks, and Westerns. I liked the Westerns best. I could usually be found every Saturday at the Gem, along with my best friend, Newton Trout, watching Westerns from 10 A.M. until my father came looking for me around suppertime
. (Sometimes Newton’s dad was dispatched to come fetch us.) One time, my dad came to get me right in the middle of Abilene Trail, which featured the now-forgotten Whip Wilson. My father became so engrossed in the action he sat down and watched the rest of it with us. We didn’t get home until after dark, and my mother’s meat loaf was a pan of gray ashes by the time we did. Though my father and I were both in the doghouse the next day, this remains one of my fondest childhood memories. There was Wild Bill Elliot, and Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, and Tim Holt, and, a little later, Rod Cameron and Audie Murphy. Of these newcomers, I never missed an Audie Murphy Western, because Audie was sort of an antihero. Sure, he stood for law and order and was an honest man, but sometimes he had to go around the law to uphold it. If he didn’t play fair, it was only because he felt hamstrung by the laws of the land. Whatever it took to get the bad guys, Audie did it. There were no finer points of law, no splitting of legal hairs. It was instant justice, devoid of long-winded lawyers, bored or biased jurors, or black-robed, often corrupt judges.
Steal a man’s horse and you were the guest of honor at a necktie party.
Molest a good woman and you got a bullet in the heart or a rope around the gullet. Or at the very least, got the crap beat out of you. Rob a bank and face a hail of bullets or the hangman’s noose.
Saved a lot of time and money, did frontier justice.
That’s all gone now, I’m sad to say. Now you hear, “Oh, but he had a bad childhood” or “His mother didn’t give him enough love” or “The homecoming queen wouldn’t give him a second look and he has an inferiority complex.” Or “cultural rage,” as the politically correct bright boys refer to it. How many times have you heard some self-important defense attorney moan, “The poor kids were only venting their hostilities toward an uncaring society?”
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