No Man's Land

by William W. Johnstone

  Frank groaned. Dixie was dead. He’d not been able to save her.

  Abby put a cool towel on his head. “You should get a lot more rest. We can talk some more in the morning.”

  “What’s your name, boy?” Sam asked before Frank drifted off.

  “Morgan,” he groaned. “Frank Morgan.” He waited for the couple to gasp or show some other sign of astonishment that they had a famous gunfighter in their home.

  “Good to meet you, Mr. Morgan,” Sam said. If he recognized the name, he didn’t act like it.

  * * *

  Frank awoke with a tall blond man standing over him holding a hat in his hands. He assumed it was the next morning because he was hungry again.

  “I bet money that you wouldn’t make it, Morgan.”

  “Glad you lost your bet,” Frank groaned.

  The man smiled, showing a row of perfect teeth. “Me too. I’m John Stout, the sheriff of El Paso County. You feel like talking a little, mister?”

  Stout had a baby face, but Frank slowly came to realize he was even younger than he looked.

  “I could talk. What do you want to know?”

  Stout pulled up a rocking chair. “You remember much about the attack?”

  “Not much. All happened pretty fast.” Frank turned his head on the pillow so he could look Stout in the eye. “Was... was my wife abused, Sheriff?”

  The man shook his head. “No. Bergin and his drinkin’ buddies happened on you right after the ambush. But there is something you should know. By the time they got to her, the ring finger on her left hand was gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “They cut it off. Made a trophy of it, I suppose.”

  “Was it Swan?”

  “Looks like it. Before we hung the old boy Sam wounded, he told us as much. All right, Morgan.” The sheriff scooted the rocker up closer to the bed. “You had a horse and a dog on that train. I got them both boarded at the livery at the Springs. That Appaloosa is a mighty handsome animal. I could get you a good price for him if you want.”

  “No, I’ll keep him, thank you.” Frank set his jaw.

  “Listen to me, Morgan. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you got shot up pretty bad. You aren’t going to be doin’ much ridin’ again. Hell, I don’t know if you’re even gonna walk without a cane.”

  Frank closed his eyes. “I surprised you once, remember? Now, I’d be obliged if you’d send my horse and my dog back here. I’ll pay you for your trouble.”

  Stout flashed his wide grin again. “That’s just what I wanted to hear, my friend. You’re a fighter.” He nodded. “And by the time this is all over, you’ll need to be.”

  Chapter 27

  “You got anything in there about vengeance and such?” Frank sat propped on his pillow against the wall. He had graduated to feeding himself.

  “Well, we got the whole Book of Judges,” Abby said. “There’s a heap of the Lord’s hand of fury in there. I’ll read to you about God’s left-handed servant Ehud stabbin’ the wicked king in the guts. Sam likes it when I read that part.”

  “That’ll do,” Frank said, finishing off his stew.

  It was nothing short of a miracle he was alive at all. He’d been shot in the shoulder, back, and both legs. One of the bullets had gone through the bicep of his right arm.

  It had been almost a month since the ambush, and Frank had yet to walk without Abby or Sam’s help. They showed him every courtesy and treated him like a son.

  Sam disappeared to work in his mine every morning. In the evening, he sometimes went to share a drink with friends in nearby Manitou Springs. When Abby wasn’t cooking mutton stew, she sat at Frank’s side and read to him from the Bible, picking where to start each day by closing her eyes and letting the pages fall open to “whatever place the Good Lord directs.”

  Day by day, Frank could feel himself getting stronger. The need for a reckoning against Swan kept him going, pushed him through his pain.

  One Sunday, Sam walked in and interrupted Abby’s Scriptures. She must have been expecting him, because instead of her normal rebuke, his intrusion only drew a soft smile.

  “I made this for you,” Sam said as he came through the door. He held out a wooden crutch, carved out of peeled cedar and cushioned with a piece of wool. “Me and Abby been talkin’ and we figured it was time you got up and around.” The old man twisted his hat in his hands and beamed as he offered Frank the present. “You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need to. We just thought you might want to go on a walk or two without us taggin’ along all the time.”

  Frank took the crutch and scooted to the edge of the bed. “I don’t know what to say, Sam. You two have been nicer than a hard man like me deserves.” He pushed up on the wood while the Bergins watched his progress.

  It took him a few wobbly minutes, but he finally got to his feet. He felt light-headed as soon as he stood up, but that passed and he took a tentative step.

  The crutch fit perfectly, and Sam beamed like a father who’d just given his son a new horse.

  Frank hobbled around the room. Sweat popped out on his forehead from the exertion. After one round, he collapsed back on the bed and leaned his new gift against the wall next to him.

  “Thank you, Sam. Thank you both, for everything.” His body was unaccustomed to any exercise, and he found himself short of breath. This healing was hard business for one who’d always been so self-sufficient. “I’ll try a longer gallop tomorrow,” he panted.

  * * *

  Frank ate mutton stew, listened to Abby read her Scripture, and walked a little further every day.

  Three weeks after Sheriff Stout’s first visit, the lawman made good on his promise and delivered Stormy and Dog out to the Bergin place. When he saw Frank come out to meet him, hobbling on the cedar crutch, the sheriff cocked back his hat and folded his hands across his saddle horn.

  “Well, I’ll be.” He whistled under his breath. “I leave for a day or two, and come back to find you running around like a jackrabbit.”

  “Told you I’d surprise you.” Frank grinned. He knelt down slowly to rub a delighted Dog behind his ears. “I figure I’ll be off the crutch in another week—movin’ slow, but on my own.”

  Stout dismounted and ground-tied his gelding. He held onto Stormy’s lead rope. “We’ll go put your horse in Sam’s corral if you feel like a short stroll. I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

  “Sure thing.” Frank had walked the short, sandy path to the pole corral a dozen times that day. One more would do him some good. He found he only needed the crutch about half the time, and he used it more to rest than to walk.

  “Morgan,” Stout said after he turned Stormy out and pitched him a flake of hay. “You’re getting better. That’s plain to see. What are your plans after you mend?”

  “I suspect you know, Sheriff, or you wouldn’t have bothered to ask just yet.”

  “Frank, listen to me. I been hearin’ stories about you since I was a sprout. You’re the fastest gun I ever even heard of, but you’re hurt and weak.” The baby-faced sheriff leaned back against the fence. “You know as well as I do that the law will catch up with Swan sooner or later. There’s no use for you to get killed in the meantime.”

  “There’s no law in No Man’s Land,” Frank whispered. The thoughts of Ephraim Swan brought a new sense of strength to his legs. “It’s a code I live by, Stout. The same code that would make you hunt a man to the ends of the earth if he killed one of your deputies.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “But that’s the law. It’s different.”

  “No, it ain’t.” Frank scratched Dog on the head. “I appreciate you bringing out my animals.”

  “That’s a fearsome dog. He almost bit my hand off till I mentioned your name.” Stout seemed to realize it was time to change the subject. “I suppose I’d best be goin’.”

  “Sheriff.” Frank turned to head back toward the house. “I wonder if you could do me one more favor.”

  “Y
ou bet,” Stout said.

  Frank leaned on his crutch and took a sheet of paper and pencil out of his shirt pocket. He licked the tip of the pencil, scribbled out a note, then handed it to the sheriff.

  The other man read it and gave a nodding smile. “Not a problem. I’ll take care of this as soon as I get into town.” He swung onto his horse. “You’re a good man, Morgan—no matter what those boys from the East write about you.”

  “Not too good,” Frank whispered under his breath.

  * * *

  Frank’s strength came back slower than he wished, but it did return. He began to extend his walks further out into the hills and canyons surrounding Sam and Abby’s place. When he wasn’t walking, he spent a good deal of his time at Dixie’s grave, talking to her.

  He told her of his plan to go after Swan. He knew she’d be against it, but it didn’t matter. He thought she should be in on the planning.

  Once he was able to dispense with the crutch, Frank began to build a stone fence around the grave. He started by gathering up all the loose sandstone blocks he could find within easy walking distance. The weather was warm, and it felt good to work and sweat with his shirt off.

  When all the stones of appropriate size were gathered, Frank borrowed a hammer and chisel from Sam and quarried more from the large sandstone cliffs near the grave. The white scars on his arm and side were drawn and tight, but it felt good to stretch them. It felt good to build something for Dixie.

  Frank spent three weeks working on the wall. Sometimes he worked for hours on a single stone to get it to fit just right and lock in with all the others. He’d always been good with his hands, but he wanted this to be perfect. He had never been the type of man to cry, but after all the weeks of building and healing, when he finally laid the last stone on top of the three-foot-high wall and erected the slab marker he’d carved himself, he sat down on the ground beside his wife’s grave, put his face in his hands, and wept.

  Chapter 28

  Walking without a crutch was all well and good, but shooting was another thing altogether. Frank strapped on his Colt again for the first time six weeks after the ambush. Sam was kind enough to provide a half-dozen wiskey bottles, and Frank set them up against a sandy hill a quarter mile away from the house.

  His arm had tightened from the scar tissue, and he felt awkward at first just drawing the heavy gun from the holster. Frank’s hand didn’t react like he needed it to. An action that had once been pure instinct now had to be relearned—step by slow, plodding step.

  Frank knew how to shoot. His history was enough to prove that. But knowing how to shoot and making your body do it were two different things.

  The first six shots kicked up sand around the bottles. Frank emptied the pistol and tried again. This time he hit two of the bottles, but he had to be painfully slow and he knew if bottles could shoot back, he would have been in trouble.

  After twelve depressing rounds, Frank decided to work on form and speed to keep from wasting bullets.

  Draw, thumb, squeeze, click . . . re-holster and repeat the process. Frank practiced hundreds of times, until his arm and shoulder ached and his thumb was raw from cocking the hammer. By the times coyotes began to howl at a crescent moon, he was weak as a newborn babe and had to limp back to the house.

  Sam and Abby never asked him how things were going, but there was a constant supply of rich stew and plentiful readings from the Word.

  After a week of practice, Frank finally began to feel like his old self. Fall had come to the Colorado foothills, and the crisp air put him in the mind for a hunt. He broke all six bottles on his first try, and slid the Colt easily back into his holster. There was definitely a new chill in the air. After almost three months, he was finally ready. Ephraim Swan might not know it yet, but his time had come.

  * * *

  “You done what?” Sam scratched the top of his gray head as if Frank was speaking another language, and Abby broke into tears.

  “Sheriff Stout took care of all the paperwork at the bank in town. There’s ten thousand dollars there in an account under your name. A fellow I know put that amount as a bounty on my head. I figure you folks saved my life, so you earned at least that much.”

  Sam opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  Frank put up his hand. “You’ve treated me like I was kin. I can never repay you for that. Sam, you’re getting too old to be scratchin’ around in that dark old mine. Come out and see the world while you and Abby are still spry enough to enjoy it.”

  “I feel like you are my kin,” Abby said through her tears. “You don’t owe us nothing, Frank. A good turn is its own reward.”

  Frank knew the good-byes would be hard, and he’d had Stormy and a packhorse saddled and ready before the Bergins knew he was about to leave.

  “Please take this money with my thanks. As long as you’re able, I’d appreciate it if you’d look after Dixie’s grave.”

  The couple stood arm-in-arm and waved as Frank climbed aboard Stormy and turned to leave. When he looked back, he saw that even old Sam had started to cry.

  “I’ll come back and look in on you when I can,” he said over his shoulder. There was frost on the ground and Dog whined to get on the trail. All the emotion in the air was getting to the poor animal.

  “You do that, son,” Abby said. “God go with you.”

  Frank rode away slowly. Before he was out of earshot, he heard Abby say to Sam, “You know what I want to buy first? A new Bible . . . ”

  * * *

  Frank provisioned in Manitou Springs. He bought .45’s for his Colt and several boxes of .44-40’s for his rifle. He still had a sackful of buckshot.

  Sheriff Stout walked up just as Frank finished throwing his diamond hitch and tucking the edges of tarp around his top load on the packhorse.

  “I guess you healed up enough to go on and get yourself killed. On the revenge trail now, eh, Morgan?”

  He gave the lawman an icy stare and tied off the dead end of the hitch rope. “Call it what you like. Swan’s not about to answer to the law anytime soon. He may as well answer to me.”

  “From what I hear, he’s got upwards of fifty men working for him. That’s an army where I come from.”

  “You know how to eat an elephant, Sheriff?” Frank caught the stirrup in his hand and brought it to his boot toe. His muscles were still a little tight in his legs and back, and it took some effort to get in the saddle.

  “No, Frank, I don’t reckon I do. How do you eat an elephant?”

  On his horse, Frank leaned down and stuck out his hand to shake with the sheriff. “One bite at a time, John. One bite at a time.”

  * * *

  He headed east, intending to work his way south as he went. He made up all kinds of reasons why he should take this more out-of-the-way route; he needed a little more time to heal, more time in the saddle to harden him for what was ahead—but the truth was, he wanted to steer clear of anything and anyplace that brought to mind his time with Dixie.

  It didn’t work.

  Two days out, Frank realized he was just south of Sand Creek, the site of the infamous Chivington Massacre, where scores of Black Kettle’s Cheyenne women and children were surprised and butchered while huddled under an American flag. The attack had been fierce and one-sided.

  The Dog Soldiers were no shrinking violets. There had been atrocities committed on both sides—but Sand Creek . . . Morgan shook his head when he thought about the killings and mutilations he’d heard about. He was glad he’d never had to explain something like that to Dixie.

  The morning sun burned away the frost in no time, and the day began to heat up. Thirty miles out of Manitou Springs, he stopped at a small spring to take off his coat and get a drink. When he bent to refill his canteen, Frank managed to surprise a large rattlesnake who’d curled up on a stone to sun itself.

  Instinctively, Frank whipped the Colt from his holster and snapped a quick shot at the snake. He was far enough away that he was in no dan
ger from the reptile’s venom, but he was close enough that his blood ran cold.

  Not from fear of the viper—but because he’d missed.

  Chapter 29

  If he’d access to a mirror—which he didn’t—even Frank wouldn’t have been able to recognize himself. Abby Bergin’s mutton stew was rich enough, but the nagging pain from his wounds and the anger he felt over Dixie’s murder churned constantly in his stomach and had worked to keep his appetite small. Though he was a powerful man, he’d never been on the heavy side, and now his face was drawn and hollow. The muscles in his arms were strong from building the stone wall around Dixie’s grave, but they were long and sinewy. He reckoned if anything happened and the coyotes got his body, they’d be awfully disappointed. He’d likely be as stringy as a spent gaming rooster.

  His salt-and-pepper hair had decidedly more salt than it had only sixth months before. Where he’d always kept it short, it now hung long and wild, like a windblown mop when he took off his hat. He’d let his beard grow as shaggy as a buffalo bull. The darkness of it accented the deep circles under his eyes and the hollows in his gaunt cheeks.

  He went four days on the trail without anyone recognizing him, and reveled in his anonymity.

  The cool fall weather and short daylight had prompted Stormy and Dog to break out their winter coats, and they looked almost as unkempt as he. The closer he got to No Man’s Land and Ephraim Swan, the more he realized he would need to make arrangements for another horse if he wanted to slip in unnoticed. It wasn’t exactly a big secret that Frank Morgan rode a stout Appaloosa gelding and was always accompanied by a devoted cur dog.

  Twenty miles south of Black Mesa, the unofficial landmark that designated the beginning of No Man’s Land, was a run-down log trading post run by an old, snaggle-toothed outlaw named Bob Fitzsimmons. Everyone called him Three-Toed Bob.

  There were several stories floating across the plains as to how and why Bob had lost the all but three of his toes. Some said it had to do with frostbite in a big blizzard back it the fifties. Others said he got himself captured by a band of Comanche down by the Red River and they’d done the hacking before he managed to escape. From his experience with Comanche, Frank figured they would have cut off a lot of things more important than a man’s toes.