INFERNO
A LAST GUNFIGHTER STORY
by William W. Johnstone
with J. A. Johnstone
(Note: This story takes place before the events in the Last Gunfighter novel The Drifter.)
Frank Morgan smelled the smoke before he saw it. That was a mite unusual, but at the time, he was riding upward through a ravine at the edge of the Cap Rock, the time-eroded escarpment that divided the High Plains from the rest of Texas, and that restricted his view of the landscape.
He reached the top of the ravine and came out on the prairie and saw the smoke, sure enough. Big billowing clouds of the thick gray stuff rolling across the Texas plains, driven by a hard wind that threatened to pluck the hat from his head. He reached up to hold it on as a frown settled onto his weathered face.
The fire was coming toward him, leaping across the prairie at a dizzying speed, but it was still about a mile away, he figured. Although he could see the southwestern end of it, the wall of flames and smoke stretched off to the northeast farther than he could see.
Morgan had a good horse under him, a hammer-headed dun that he had been riding for a while. It took him only a second to realize that he could gallop hard to the west and get safely out of the way of the blaze.
The settlement that was smack-dab in the fire’s path didn’t have that option.
Even with the threat that faced him, Morgan paused for a moment at the sheer horror of it. The flames were eight or ten feet tall and devouring ground at a terrifying rate. He could see some of the townspeople scurrying around like ants, panic-stricken by the fire’s inexorable approach. Some of them clustered around the public well, hauling up buckets of water to fling onto the buildings in the futile hope that they might turn back destruction. Others leaped onto horses and fogged it out of there, escape their only thought. Still others tried to load a few belongings onto wagons, buggies, and buckboards, bartering time to flee against their possessions.
Poor stupid idiots, thought Morgan. Everything they had, including maybe even their lives, was about to be snatched away from them through no fault of their own, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.
He didn’t have to worry about anything except saving his own life. He turned his horse and heeled it into a run, leaning forward over the dun’s neck as he urged it on to greater and greater speed.
The wind shifted a little in Morgan’s favor, taking away any chance that the fire might blow on past the settlement without destroying it. Not that there had ever been much of a chance to start with.
He looked over his right shoulder and saw that he was getting clear of the danger. He kept the dun running hard for another few minutes, just to be sure that another sudden wind shift wouldn’t send the flames in his direction again. It wasn’t long before he was well clear and could rein in. He turned his mount so he could watch as the blaze reached the town and the gray smoke turned black and billowed even more as the buildings went up, one after the other.
* * *
Morgan could have just ridden on. There was a reason he was known throughout the West as the Drifter. Ever since a young man, when he had gotten a reputation as a fast gun, he had been on the move most of the time, always riding, never staying in any one place for very long. At first, maybe he had been searching for happiness, but as man after man fell to his blazing speed and unerring accuracy with a Colt, every opportunity to settle down ultimately had been lost.
Now in middle age, Morgan drifted, one of the last of his breed, seeking only to be left alone. Wanting only to not have to kill yet another snot-nose punk out to make a name for himself.
So it was an unaccustomed impulse that sent him riding toward the ruined settlement after the fire had roared on through and finally burned itself out when it reached the edge of the Cap Rock.
He came to a stagecoach road that cut a path through the charred landscape and followed it into town . . . or rather into what was left of the town, which wasn’t much. The walls of the adobe buildings were still standing, but their interiors were burned out. The frame buildings were gone, right down to the ground, except for their foundations and the occasional partially consumed timber. The insides of buildings were just heaps of ashes. The conflagration must have been incredibly hot. It reminded him of towns that had been bombarded by artillery and then set afire during the war. He saw burned bodies lying here and there, which accounted for the sickly sweet stench in the air.
The people who had gotten out in time were trickling back in, some on foot, others on horseback or in wagons. They wandered around, dazed, staring in disbelief at what was left.
The wind had finally fallen still, too late to save the settlement, and an eerie quiet lay over the scene, broken only by a faint crackling from the places where some of the ruins still burned.
The hush was shattered by a harsh, incoherent scream, followed by a woman’s agonized voice. “Gone, all gone!” she cried. “The boys, too! They’re dead! Dead! Damn you! Damn you to hell!”
Morgan turned his horse and saw a middle-aged woman pounding frenzied punches into the chest of a man who stood there looking stunned as he absorbed the punishment. Stocky, with thinning white hair and a neatly trimmed beard, his expression was that of a man who’d been shot in the gut. He looked like he was dead and just didn’t know it yet.
Morgan had seen that expression all too many times. He hadn’t liked it then, and he didn’t like it now.
“Your fault, your fault, your fault!” the woman screamed at the man as she continued hitting him.
He made no attempt to stop her. Finally, grief overwhelmed her and she fell to her knees, then toppled over onto her side and lay there in the ashy dust, covering her face with her hands as she sobbed.
The man finally seemed to become aware of Morgan sitting on the dun a few yards away. He looked up at the Drifter and asked in a dull voice, “Who’re you, mister?”
“Just a fella who’s passing through.” Despite the hard shell he usually cultivated around him, Morgan wasn’t an unfeeling man. “I’m sorry for your loss. Sorry for all the losses here. I saw the fire coming, but there was nothing I could do to help.”
The man shrugged. “Wasn’t nothin’ anybody could do once the fire was lit.”
“You mean once the fire started, don’t you?” Morgan asked with a frown.
“Nope.” The man shook his head. “That fire was started a-purpose.” He looked around at the destruction surrounding them. “My wife’s right. This is all my fault. I founded this town. I was the mayor. This was my home, and I burned it down.”
* * *
The man’s name was Al Bowman. He sat in the shade of a still-standing adobe wall and nipped at the bottle Frank Morgan had taken from his saddlebags and given to him.
Bowman made a face at the raw bite of the whiskey. “I’m not really much of a drinkin’ man. And while I appreciate it, mister, I got to say it don’t help much.”
“Nothing will but time,” Morgan said as he hunkered on his heels in the shade.
Bowman shook his head. “Not even that’ll do it. Some things can’t be forgive or forgot. My wife lost our home and three of our boys. Tell me how time’s gonna help that.”
“You lost your sons in the fire?”
“Three of the four. I grabbed the youngest and went lookin’ for the other three, but I couldn’t find ’em nowhere. They were off somewhere in town. You know how boys are, always underfoot except when you’re lookin’ for ’em.”
Morgan nodded.
“God, it tore my heart out to leave without ’em,” Bowman went on in a choked voice. “But them flames were practically on top of us already, and there was nothin’ else I could do.” He took another swig of the whiskey. “I tell you, though, mister, I’m already startin’ to wish I’d stayed and died with ’em.”
Morgan shook his head. “One more death wouldn’t have done anybody any good.”
“You don’t know, mister,” Bowman whispered. “You just don’t
know.”
Morgan had no answer for that. Nobody knew what was in another person’s heart. “What you said earlier about it being your fault . . . even if somebody set the fire, it wasn’t you, was it?”
“No, but I caused it. It wouldn’ta happened if I hadn’t done what I did. I told the Locklin brothers to get out of town. I got a posse together and we cornered ’em with shotguns in the saloon and told ’em to get out of Flat Rock. We had the drop on ’em, so they didn’t have much choice. But Steve Locklin said nobody talked like that to the Locklin brothers and got away with it. He said we’d be sorry.” Bowman heaved a sigh. “I reckon we are.”
Locklin . . . Morgan recognized the name. Steve Locklin and his brothers Asa and Rance all thought they were slick on the draw, and they had the kills to prove it. Their arrogance and greed had led them to become outlaws, and they had murdered and plundered their way across the Lone Star State. The Texas Rangers had been on their trail for a while, but the Rangers were spread thin and the Locklin brothers had fast horses as well as fast guns. They had escaped from every trap the lawmen had tried to set for them.
“Jed Ainsley came foggin’ in just as the smoke started to rise,” Bowman went on. “He was ridin’ into town for supplies from his spread northwest of here. He spotted Steve Locklin with a torch, settin’ fire to the grass. The wind was so high Jed knew the fire would come straight for us, so he took off hell-for-leather to warn us. The Locklins saw him and opened up on him, and Jed caught a bullet. He kept on anyway. Of course, it didn’t make a bit of difference. Poor son of a gun died for nothin’.” Bowman gestured vaguely to a blackened corpse that hardly looked human anymore. “There he lays, over yonder.”
Morgan’s jaw tightened. He wasn’t a man given to brooding and pondering, but this was a rare occasion when he felt himself torn inside. Nothing was more feared by frontier folks than a prairie fire, and one look around Flat Rock was enough to see why.
Anybody who started such a blaze, especially through resentment or carelessness, was lower than dirt in his eyes. The fury he felt as he looked around, seeing what had happened, warred with his long-ingrained desire to just be left alone and continue drifting.
“They wasn’t our blood, you know,” Bowman mused, breaking into Morgan’s thoughts.
“What?”
“The boys. They was adopted, I guess you’d say. We took ’em in to raise when they was orphaned, because nobody else would. Our own kids are grown and gone. But that didn’t matter to my wife. She loved ’em like they were our own.”
“You saved one,” Morgan pointed out.
“Yeah, but—” Bowman couldn’t go on. He made a choking sound and just shook his head.
Morgan rubbed his jaw. Clearly, no words he could say were going to offer any comfort to the man, and the whiskey wasn’t helping, either.
So he did the only other thing he could. “You know where I can find these Locklins?”
Bowman’s drooping head came up as he frowned in surprise. “You ain’t . . . you ain’t thinkin’ about goin’ after them, are you, mister?”
“Anybody left alive in this town who’s up to the job?”
A bitter laugh came from Bowman. “There was nobody here who was up to that job even when everybody was still alive.”
“You don’t want them to get away with this, do you?”
“God, no! But I didn’t think there was anything anybody could do.”
Frank straightened to his feet. “Maybe I can.”
Bowman blinked as he looked up at Morgan, a dark shape with the afternoon sun behind him. “Who are you, mister?”
“Name’s Frank Morgan,” the Drifter said.
Bowman’s breath hissed between his teeth. He scrambled up. “Morgan! You mean you’re Frank Morgan, the gunfighter?”
“Some call me that.”
“What are you doin’ in this part of the country?”
“Passing through, like I told you,” Morgan said. “Now, can you tell me where to find the Locklins or not?”
Bowman rubbed his mouth as a look of desperate hope came into his eyes. “I’ve heard rumors that they’re hangin’ around a road ranch and stage station about ten miles north of here, on the trail to Lubbock. Place called Vinegar Hill. Don’t ask me why; there ain’t many hills in these parts.”
Morgan nodded. “Much obliged.” He turned toward the dun, which stood nearby waiting patiently with its reins dangling.
Bowman took a quick step after him. “Wait a minute. Are you really goin’ after ’em?”
Morgan looked around at the burned town. “I figure if I don’t, it’s liable to stick in my craw.”
“Then I got just one request of you, Mr. Morgan . . . take me with you.”
Morgan’s mouth tightened as he gestured toward the woman who had finally gotten up and was wandering aimlessly in circles. “Don’t you think you ought to be trying to comfort your wife?”
“She don’t want no comfort from me. She just wants things to be back like they were, and that’s somethin’ no man can do. Nor God, either, I reckon. Like the Good Book says, the movin’ finger has writ, and the page is turned. All that’s left now is settlin’ the score.”
“It’s your choice,” Morgan said. “I don’t tell any man how to live his life.”
“I don’t care about livin’,” Bowman said. “Just dyin’. I want to be there to see it when those damn Locklins cross the divide.”
Morgan swung into the saddle. “Up to you to keep up, then,” he said as he turned the dun and prodded it into motion, heading north out of Flat Rock.
* * *
He figured Bowman would give up the damn fool idea, but he had underestimated the man’s determination. When he looked back a few minutes later, he saw that Bowman had gotten hold of a horse somewhere and was riding after him, bouncing awkwardly in the saddle. Morgan shook his head and slowed the dun so that Bowman could catch up to him.
Morgan noticed the revolver stuck behind Bowman’s belt and gestured toward it. “Where’d you get that?”
“Made the town marshal give it to me. He didn’t care anymore. Said he was ridin’ out and never comin’ back. I thought I might need a gun. I thought I might help you.”
Morgan bit back a curse. The last thing he needed going up against three gun-wolves like Steve, Asa, and Rance Locklin was some grief-stricken townie “helping” him. For a moment, he seriously considered reaching over and walloping Bowman. The best thing might be to knock the man out until the showdown with the Locklins was over.
But there was a look of such pathetic eagerness in Bowman’s eyes that Morgan couldn’t do it. He didn’t think Bowman was going to find what he was really looking for at Vinegar Hill, but short of violence, the man wouldn’t be stopped.
“When we get there, stay out of the way,” Morgan said. “This is my kind of work, not yours.”
“I’ll only take a hand if I need to,” Bowman promised.
They rode the rest of the way in silence, because really, what was left to say?
Coming in sight of the low, rambling adobe building with the sod roof, Bowman said, “That’s it. That’s Vinegar Hill.” He leaned forward in the saddle. “And those horses tied up in front belong to the Locklin brothers! I recognize them.”
“Last chance to go home, Bowman,” Morgan told him.
Bowman shook his head. “Got no home to go to. Not after today.”
Inside the road ranch, the men either heard the horses or saw them coming, because they ambled out the door and spread out, a sign that they knew what they were doing.
The skinny one with the buckskin jacket and long, tangled hair under a flat-crowned brown hat moved over to the water trough and propped his left foot on it. The short one who was about as wide as he was tall crossed his arms over his massive chest and leaned back against the wall beside the door. The third man, about as tall as the skinny one but heavier, with a dark mustache drooping over his mouth, went the other way and stopped by the corral fence. He h
ad a Winchester cradled in his arms.
Steve, Asa, and Rance, in order from right to left, Morgan thought. He had never crossed trails with them before, but he had seen their pictures on enough reward dodgers tacked to trees. Kill-crazy scum, the lot of them, especially Steve. The other two might callously gun down somebody in a robbery, but only Steve was loco enough to set a fire that he knew would destroy an entire town.
“Howdy, mister,” Steve called. Grinning, he gestured toward Bowman. “You know you got a turd followin’ you?”
Asa made a rumbling sound, and after a second Morgan realized that it was laughter.
“I never knew a turd to ride a horse before,” Asa said.
The most practical and pragmatic of the brothers, Rance, said, “Who are you, mister, and what do you want?”
Never taking his eyes off them, Morgan dismounted without answering. He wanted to be on solid ground as he faced them. “You’d be the Locklin brothers, I reckon.”
“That’s right,” Steve acknowledged. “You got the advantage on us, friend.”
Morgan shook his head slowly. “I’m no friend to snakes like you.”
Steve’s arrogant grin disappeared as he lowered his left foot to the ground and dropped his casual pose. He wore two guns, fancy ivory-handled pistols. Asa was a two-gun man, as well, wearing them butt-forward in cross-draw rigs that hung from bandoliers crossed over his broad chest. Rance had a Colt, too, but he was best with a rifle, Morgan recalled. He made it a habit to know as much as he could about men he might have to face in a showdown someday. It came in handy.
“You some kind o’ lawman?” Steve demanded. “Texas Ranger, maybe?”
“Lawman?” Morgan repeated. “Not hardly. Just an hombre who doesn’t like what you did today.”
“You mean burnin’ out Turdface and his friends?” A bark of laughter came from the man. “Hell, they had it comin’. They shoulda known better than to run the Locklin brothers out of town. That’s just like spittin’ into the wind.” Steve laughed again. “And that was some wind earlier today, wasn’t it? I never saw flames move so fast in all my borned days.”
Ten Guns from Texas Page 27
