“I have whiskey,” he said. He reached for the bottle under the bar and took down a glass from the shelf behind him.
“I don’t need the glass,” the stranger said. “Just give me the bottle.”
He reached for it, and as he did, the cuff of his white shirt stuck out a little from the sleeve of the frock coat. Rivas noticed a few drops of red staining the shirt cuff. They stood out against the white fabric.
The stranger took the bottle, pulled the cork, and tilted it to his mouth. The whiskey gurgled a little as he swallowed a healthy slug of it. When he set the bottle down on the bar, he wiped the back of his other hand across his mouth, and Rivas saw the little red stains on that shirt cuff, too.
“If you want what is left in the bottle, Señor,” Rivas said, “it will cost you two dollars.”
The stranger reached inside his coat, but instead of getting some money from his pocket, he brought out a small, well-thumbed little book bound in black leather. At first Rivas thought it was a Bible, or at least a New Testament, but then the stranger rested it on the bar and opened it, and Rivas saw that some of the pages were blank and others were filled with rows of neat, precise writing.
Again the stranger reached inside his coat. This time he took out a pencil. “What’s your name, hombre?” he asked.
Rivas was confused, but he said, “Antonio Rivas.”
The stranger wrote in his book. “Where were you born?”
“Across the border in a village much like this one.”
“Did it have a name?”
“San Elizario.”
The stranger nodded and wrote that. “How old are you? Do you know your birthday?”
That was one thing Antonio Rivas did know. He told the stranger the day he was born, and the stranger wrote it down.
Rivas could read a little, and even though the writing was upside down from where he stood, he studied it and began to make out that the words were a list of some sort, name after name, some gringo, some Mexican, with varying degrees of information such as date and place of birth out to the side. The names had other, more recent dates beside them as well.
The name right above his was Rudolph Talmadge. Señor Talmadge ran the general store up the street. Talmadge’s birth date was printed next to his name, and today’s date as well, which was puzzling. It occurred to Rivas that this gringo with his list might be a little bit crazy.
“Are you going to pay me for the whiskey, Señor?” When dealing with potential lunatics, it was always better to get paid as soon as possible.
“In a minute. Are you married, Señor Rivas?”
“Sí, of course. My wife Carmen is asleep in the back.”
The stranger smiled. “Young and pretty, is she?”
More unease stirred inside Rivas as he said, “Sí, muy bonita.”
“Good. It’s been a while since I’ve had a woman. I’ll enjoy her.”
Rivas’s eyes were no longer sleepy. They opened wide in shock and anger. “I think you should leave now, Señor,” he said tautly. “Take the bottle. I do not even care if you pay me.”
“Oh, I can’t do that, not yet.” The stranger closed his book, tucked it and the pencil away. “Not until after I’ve finished my business.”
“You are finished here, Señor. Please go.”
“Well, I suppose I could,” the stranger mused. “I’ve already talked to Mr. Talmadge down at the store, and he told me what I needed to know. He said that the man I’m looking for came through here about a week ago, riding west toward Arizona Territory. That’s enough. But somehow, even when I was through with Mr. Talmadge, I didn’t feel like I was done here. Something was keeping me from riding on, and now I know what it was.”
Definitely a lunatic, Rivas thought. He started to move his hand toward the old cap-and-ball pistol that he kept on a shelf right underneath the bar.
“Now I know that I wasn’t meant to leave here until I’d had me some fun with your pretty little wife, Señor Rivas.”
That statement was so shocking that it made Rivas hesitate as he reached for the gun, and that was his undoing. The stranger’s hand came up and the early morning light flashed on something in it, and suddenly Rivas couldn’t swallow and he felt faint, and when he looked down at the bar in front of him he saw the hot flood of crimson that poured from his throat. The stranger reached across the bar with his other hand, tangled his fingers in Rivas’s thick black hair, and jerked his head up. Then the gringo slashed again with the knife, cutting so deep this time that the blade grated on the top of Rivas’s spine and his head almost came loose from his body. When the stranger let go, Rivas fell forward loosely, landing on the bar with its pool of blood and then sliding off to land in the floor behind it.
The stranger came around the bar, wiped the blade on the dead man’s shirt, and frowned when he saw that he had gotten even more blood on his cuffs. He had always been so fastidious in the past. Now that he was closing in on his quarry, he was getting eager, and that made him a little sloppy. He would have to get that under control before he caught up with Frank Morgan.
Everything needed to be nice and neat when he killed Morgan. Just because people died didn’t mean that there had to be a mess.
Chapter Ten
Frank took a couple of flapjacks and some ham fat back to the livery stable for Dog. By the time he got there, Jasper Culverhouse was on hand, scooping grain from the bin into the troughs in the stalls that had horses in them.
“Mornin’, Marshal,” Culverhouse greeted him. “How are you today?”
“Not bad, considering. And you might as well call me Frank. I told some of the other fellas in town to.” Frank tossed one of the flapjacks to Dog, who caught it deftly and wolfed it down.
“Been up to the café, have you?”
“That’s right. Miss Warren’s breakfasts are as good as her suppers.”
“You’re right about that. Reason I wasn’t here earlier is that Pastor McCrory and I took the bodies of Jack Moses and the Hanley brothers up to the graveyard and planted ’em. Since you said you didn’t want ’em put on display, Homer and I didn’t see any reason to drag our feet about the buryin’.”
“Anybody show up for the funeral?” Frank asked curiously.
Culverhouse snorted. “For gunmen like that? There are no mourners at those funerals.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he looked like he regretted them. He went on quickly, “But I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all right, Jasper,” Frank said, stopping him. “When a fella rides the trails I do, it is a lonely life, no getting around it. A man doesn’t make many friends. He never stays in one place long enough to do that.” He smiled. “When my time comes, I expect that service will be pretty sparsely attended, too. Could be just me and El Señor Dios.”
“Man could do worse,” Culverhouse said with a scowl.
“Amen,” Frank agreed. “Now, I reckon I’ll get Stormy saddled up. I’m going to take a ride out to the Lazy F.”
“Let me do that for you,” Culverhouse said as he put down the scoop he had been using for the grain. “That’s a fine horse you’ve got. We get along pretty well, but I’m glad you told him that I was all right. I wouldn’t try to ride him or even mess with him too much when you weren’t around, that’s for sure.”
“You’d regret it if you did,” Frank said with a grin. Stormy was a one-man horse when it came to riding, although he would allow other people besides Frank to saddle him, groom him, and feed him—as long as he was in the right mood.
When the horse was ready to ride, Frank swung up into the saddle and said, “I’ll see you later, Jasper.” Culverhouse lifted a hand in farewell as Frank rode out of the barn.
Stormy’s hooves rattled on the plank bridge over the Verde River, and Frank left San Remo behind as he headed east toward the Lazy F. It was a nice day, with a few clouds floating in the blue sky over the dark green hills and the even darker line of the Mogollon Rim.
As he reached the range claimed by Howard Flynn, he
began to see cattle bearing the rancher’s brand. He didn’t know if Flynn actually owned all this land or just grazed his stock on it. In most places, the days of the huge, open-range spreads, where men owned a lot less land than what they actually used, were over and ranchers had to establish clear title to any range they wanted to use for grazing. Frank wasn’t sure what the situation was here in Arizona Territory, though. Things hadn’t had as much time to settle down here as they had in other parts of the country. In fact, it had been less than a decade since the days when no one was sure if the Army would ever be able to defeat the Apaches and make Arizona safe for settlement. The territory was still a raw land, bright with promise but also fraught with danger.
Frank estimated that he was only a couple of miles from the Lazy F ranch house when he saw a rider coming toward him. He had expected to run into some of Flynn’s punchers before now. But as this rider trotted along the trail toward him, he realized in surprise that the approaching figure wasn’t one of Flynn’s cowboys at all. Instead it was the cattleman’s niece, Laura.
Frank reined Stormy to a halt, and as Laura rode up to him, he lifted a hand to the brim of his hat and nodded politely. “Miss Flynn,” he greeted her. “Good morning.”
She wore pants and rode astride like a man, but there was no mistaking the fact that she was a woman. Her hat hung on her back from its chin strap, and that allowed her long, thick blond hair to tumble loosely around her shoulders. The man’s shirt she wore didn’t do much to conceal the thrust of her breasts, either.
If she was nervous about being in the presence of the man who had killed two of her uncle’s men less than twenty-four hours earlier, she didn’t show it. “Mr. Morgan,” she said coolly. “What are you doing out here?” Then, before he could answer, her gaze stopped on the badge pinned to Frank’s shirt and she said, “Oh, my goodness. You’re a lawman?”
“Freshly minted,” he said with a smile. “The mayor of San Remo offered me the job of marshal, and I took it.”
“Willard Donohue is a disreputable old windbag. I’m not sure he was ever legally elected mayor. From what I gather, he just started calling himself that, and everyone went along with it to humor him.”
“Maybe so,” Frank said with a shrug, “but the other folks in the settlement seemed agreeable to the idea of me being the marshal. So I reckon it’s official enough.” His smile widened into a grin. “Mary Elizabeth Warren is even feeding me for free, as her part of my wages for the job.”
The mention of Mary Elizabeth brought a smile to Laura’s face, too, the first one Frank had seen on her. It made her even prettier. “Mary Elizabeth is a wonderful woman,” she said. “I hope that Caleb will be able to talk her into marrying him one of these days.”
“So that she can come out here and cook for your uncle?”
Laura laughed. It was a good sound. “No, so that she and Caleb will be happy, of course. But being able to eat Mary Elizabeth’s cooking more often than just when we go into town would be nice, too, and I don’t mind admitting it. I’m not one of those dainty, delicate Eastern ladies who pretends she doesn’t like to eat. I might have been like that once, but the West is growing on me, I suppose.”
Frank nodded. “It has a way of doing that to folks.”
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing out here, Mr. Morgan. Or should I call you Marshal Morgan?”
“Why not make it Frank?” he suggested. “As for what I’m doing here, I’m on my way to see your uncle and have a talk with him.”
“A talk about what?”
Frank didn’t see that it would do any harm to explain his errand to her. In fact, if he could make her understand what his goal was, she might be willing to help him convince Flynn to be reasonable.
“Since I’ve been hired to keep the peace in San Remo, it seems to me that the best way of doing that is to persuade your uncle and Ed Sandeen to give up the idea of a range war between them. Nobody really wins in one of those things. I know; I’ve been involved with them before. They just lead to a lot of bloodshed that doesn’t solve anything.”
A shadow had passed over her face at his mention of Sandeen, driving away the smile that had been there a moment earlier. She said, “I really don’t see that what happens between Edward and my uncle is any of your business, Marshal. You don’t have any jurisdiction except in San Remo.”
Frank nodded. “That’s true. But what happens out here on the range has an effect on the settlement.” He added grimly, “Violence has a way of spreading.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s true. But the man you need to talk to is Edward Sandeen, not my uncle. He’s the one who’s stirring up trouble.”
“Because you turned him away when he came courting?” Frank ventured.
Anger flared in her eyes. “Who told you that?” she demanded.
“More than one person,” Frank said with a shrug. “Isn’t it true?”
From the way she was glaring at him, he thought for a moment that she wasn’t going to answer him. But then she said, “I won’t deny that Edward expressed . . . a romantic interest in me. I even considered his suit for a short time. I’m an educated woman, Marshal. I thought at first that Edward was . . . was a man of breeding and culture. He has the ability to make it seem like he is.”
“You can put a suit on a polecat, but he’s still a polecat,” Frank said.
“I’m not sure I would have phrased it quite so bluntly. . . but it didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t want to become romantically involved with Edward Sandeen.” She shook her head. “Out here most people consider me an old maid, you know. But I’d rather be thought of that way than to become involved with the wrong man.”
“Sounds pretty wise to me,” Frank told her. He changed tack a little by saying, “I’m a mite surprised to find you out here riding by yourself this way.”
“I’m armed,” she said, patting the stock of the Winchester that stuck up from a saddle boot strapped to her mount.
“Can you use that rifle?”
“Of course! Well, at least to a certain extent. I’ve been practicing. Mr. Buckston is teaching me how to shoot.”
“From what I saw of him yesterday, Buckston seems like a pretty good fella.”
“He’s a fine man,” Laura said without hesitation. “A bit unlettered, of course, but a true gentleman at heart. A diamond in the rough, you might say.”
Frank didn’t really want to dig any deeper into Laura’s feelings for Buckston, but he reminded himself of why he had ridden out here in the first place.
“Sounds like you’re fond of him.”
Laura’s chin came up defiantly. “And why shouldn’t I be?”
“No reason that I know of,” Frank said. “I was just thinking that if war breaks out between your uncle and Sandeen, Buckston will be right in the middle of it. As foreman of the Lazy F, he’ll be a prime target for any gunman who wants to curry favor with Sandeen.”
Laura’s pretty blue eyes blinked. “You think so?” she asked worriedly.
“I know so. Like I said, I’ve seen it before. Each side starts killing off the other, and it goes on and on until sometimes there’s hardly anybody left to fight. That’s usually how it ends, with a lot of death on both sides.”
Laura looked even more worried now. Her teeth caught at her bottom lip as she considered what Frank had said. “Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to have a talk with Uncle Howard,” she said after a long moment. “I . . . I don’t really feel that I have a right to tell him what to do, though. He’s been very kind to me. He took me in and gave me a place to live when he didn’t really have to.”
“In that case, I’m sure you don’t want anything happening to him, either.”
“Certainly not!” She gave an abrupt nod. “I’ll do what I can to help you, Marshal. And I’ll start by riding with you to the ranch house. It’s probably not all that safe for you to be approaching the Lazy F by yourself today. Some of the men still hold a grudge against you because
of what happened to Mr. Crenshaw and Mr. Houlihan.”
“That gunfight wasn’t my idea,” Frank told Laura as she turned her horse so that she could ride alongside Stormy. “Those two hotheaded young punchers started shooting and didn’t give me any choice but to defend myself.”
“I know that,” she said. They began riding at an easy pace along the trail, side by side. “Mr. Buckston explained the whole thing to me. But that doesn’t change the hard feelings that some of the men have toward you.”
“No,” Frank said, “I reckon it doesn’t.”
They rode on toward the ranch for several minutes without saying anything else. As they passed a knoll that was thickly covered with pines, Frank glanced toward it and saw the late morning sunlight reflect off something in the trees.
That brief flash of light was all it took to make his instincts take over. He kicked his feet free of the stirrups and left Stormy’s back in a dive that sent him toward Laura. She cried out in surprise as he crashed into her, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her out of the saddle. His diving tackle sent both of them crashing to the ground.
But even as they were falling, Frank heard the crack of a rifle and the high-pitched whine of a bullet passing through the space they had occupied only a heartbeat earlier.
Chapter Eleven
The rifleman hidden in the trees on the knoll fired again as Laura’s horse skittishly danced aside, forcing Stormy to move, too. The bullet kicked up dust in the trail scant feet from where Frank and Laura lay. Frank surged to his feet, hauling the shocked woman with him. Laura didn’t seem to be hurt, but she was stunned and not very cooperative.
Frank hoped that lack of cooperation wouldn’t get them both killed. He shoved her toward a stand of pines on the other side of the road and shouted, “Run! Head for the trees!”
Even as the words were leaving his mouth, he pivoted toward the knoll and drew his Colt. The Peacemaker seemed to leap into his hand of its own volition. The range was a little far for a handgun, but he wasn’t trying to actually hit the bushwhacker as much as he was attempting to spook the man. He triggered three shots toward the pines that concealed the rifleman, then turned to run after Laura.
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