The Loner: The Big Gundown

by J. A. Johnstone

  The Kid finished off the brandy in his snifter. “I didn’t know that. I’d heard that Black was looking for some good men, though. As a matter of fact, that’s why I’m here.”

  Augustine’s rather bushy eyebrows rose. “Then I may have spoken out of turn, if you’re planning on joining up with the colonel.”

  “I haven’t made any plans,” The Kid said. “Just heard the rumors and drifted into town to get the lay of the land. I’m open to the best opportunity…whatever it is.”

  “Then you’ll want to talk to Edward Sheffield. He’ll pay top dollar for a man who can put a stop to his trouble.”

  The Kid set the empty snifter on the bar. “You know, Mayor Carmichael told me that Black’s been spending a lot of time in your place, Augustine. I got the impression that you and the colonel were friends. Now it seems more like you’d rather give Sheffield a hand.”

  Augustine smiled. “Just like you, Mr. Morgan, I’m open to the best opportunity. If Colonel Black and his men want to spend their money in my saloon, I’m perfectly willing to take it. At the same time, I wouldn’t mind getting on the good side of a man like Edward Sheffield. As I told you, he’s probably the most important man in this part of the territory.”

  “In other words, you’re playing both sides against the middle.” The Kid’s words were blunt, and he didn’t soften his voice or smile as he delivered them. He wanted to get a rise out of Augustine, if there was one to be gotten. That was one thing he had learned from his career in business: if you got under a man’s skin, he was liable to let more of the truth slip than he intended to.

  But Charles Augustine just chuckled in response to The Kid’s accusation. “Say it however you like. I’ve never apologized for wanting to make money, and I’m not going to start now.”

  “Fair enough,” The Kid responded with a nod. “Where do I find this man Sheffield?”

  Augustine took a heavy gold turnip watch from his vest pocket and flipped it open to check the time. “You just got into Bisbee a little while ago, didn’t you, Mr. Morgan?”

  “That’s right. About an hour ago, I reckon.” It seemed longer ago than that, The Kid thought. But it also seemed beyond belief that only this morning, the Williams family and their vaqueros had still been alive and happy. This day full of violence and death had lasted a hundred years.

  “Why don’t you get yourself something to eat and maybe find a hotel room, then come back here in about an hour? The Bisbee House would suit all those needs, since it’s the best hotel in town and also has a fine dining room. And a stable for your horse, for that matter.”

  “How do you know I can afford a place like that?” The Kid asked with a faint smile.

  “I don’t, of course. But I assumed that a man who’s familiar with fine brandy would also be accustomed to staying in the best places.”

  As a matter of fact, The Kid had plenty of money at the moment. During a recent stopover in Santa Fe, he’d had his attorney in San Francisco, Claudius Turnbuckle, wire him enough cash to cover his expenses for a while, and he hadn’t spent much of it during the ride to Arizona Territory. And there was plenty more where that came from. The Kid’s share of the Browning holdings generated enough revenue that he would never run out of money, even if he never earned another dime from his own efforts.

  “All right, I’ll check it out. My horse could use a good rubdown and something to eat.” The Kid paused. “I suppose you want to send word to Sheffield and find out if it’s all right for me to meet with him. Folks must tread lightly around him since he’s the big man in these parts.”

  “That’s right. But for what it’s worth, Mr. Morgan, I’ll put in a good word for you. I thought the way you handled Watkins was quite impressive, to say nothing of that shootout with Rawley and Paxton. As gunmen, they weren’t quite at the same level as the men who ride with Colonel Black, but they were no slouches, either.”

  “All right, then. I’ll be back in an hour or so.” The Kid turned toward the door of the office.

  “I’d better come with you. There may still be some resentment on the part of the miners over what happened to Watkins.”

  The Kid didn’t argue with him. They walked out together. The Kid was aware of the angry glares sent in his direction by many of the saloon’s customers. He saw Watkins still sitting at one of the tables. A man in a bowler hat was working on his tongue, either sewing it up or bandaging it or something. The black medical bag sitting open on the table told The Kid that the man in the bowler was a doctor.

  Augustine paused on the boardwalk just outside the saloon’s batwing doors. “The Bisbee House is in the next block. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks,” The Kid said. “For the brandy…and for that good word you’re going to put in with Sheffield.”

  “I don’t know that I’m doing you that much of a favor,” Augustine said. “If you take the job, you’ll be going up against heavy odds. I don’t know how many men the colonel has now, but it could be more than two dozen.”

  Plus a cannon, thought The Kid. Those were heavy odds, all right.

  Luckily, he didn’t give a damn about things like that.

  Chapter 12

  The Bisbee House was a fine hotel, as Charles Augustine had said. A three-story building of adobe and brick, the upper two stories had wrought iron balconies along the front that overhung a broad porch where guests could sit in wicker chairs and sip drinks in the shade during the heat of the day. Gas lamps hissed softly as they filled the lobby with warm yellow light that gleamed on the brilliantly polished hardwood floors. Potted palms stood in the corners. Men in expensive suits sat on overstuffed divans and armchairs, reading newspapers. The place had the hushed atmosphere that came with money and power.

  For that reason, the clerk at the desk looked a little askance at The Kid’s buckskin shirt, denim trousers, high-topped boots, and broad-brimmed hat. The fact that he had a pair of saddlebags slung over his shoulder and was carrying a Winchester didn’t help matters, either.

  The clerk put his hands on the desk and leaned forward, saying, “Sir, I’m not sure—”

  “I am,” The Kid broke in. “I’ll have a room, and I need someone to take my horse around to the stable and see that he’s tended to. He’s the big buckskin tied up right out front.” He glanced through an arched doorway and saw people eating off fine china at tables covered with snowy linen tablecloths. “Good, the dining room is still open.”

  “Sir, I’m afraid I must insist—”

  “On giving me the best accommodations in the house? I appreciate that.” The Kid reached in his pocket and brought out several twenty-dollar gold pieces, which he stacked neatly on the desk in front of the surprised clerk. “There’s a hundred dollars. Let me know when it runs out.”

  The clerk put his eyes back in his head, swallowed hard, and said, “Yes, sir.”

  The Kid smiled at him. “Go ahead. Pick one of them up and bite it. I know you’re dying to.”

  The clerk shook his head. “No, sir. I’m sure your money is good.” He banged the palm of his hand on a bell that sent a loud ding across the lobby. “You say your horse is a buckskin?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll have it taken care of, sir.” The clerk turned the register around. “If you’d care to sign in…”

  The Kid hesitated before reaching for the pen that rested in a holder with a black marble base. He didn’t want to use the name Conrad Browning. He had put all that behind him. Most of the time it seemed to him like Conrad Browning was a completely different person. Besides, just as he had recognized Edward Sheffield’s name, it was highly like that Sheffield had heard of Conrad. He didn’t want word getting to Sheffield that Browning was in town.

  Somehow it didn’t seem right, though, to sign in as Kid Morgan. He had dubbed that dime-novelesque name on himself when he wanted the world to believe that Conrad Browning was dead, and the handle had stuck. The Kid had grown comfortable with it, and it was something of a tribute to his
father, as well. But there was no getting around the fact that it was a little, well, melodramatic.

  He settled for scrawling K. Morgan in the register, and in the space for his home address, he wrote San Francisco. That’s where the offices of Turnbuckle & Stafford were, and that was as close to a home as The Kid had these days.

  “Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” the clerk said, reading the register upside down with a practiced eye. “If you need any help with your bags—”

  “I don’t,” The Kid said. “This is all I have. Just see to the horse.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  It was amazing how much difference a stack of double eagles made in the way a man was treated, The Kid mused.

  The clerk handed him the key to Room 28. “It’s right on the front, with a fine view of the street.”

  From what The Kid had seen, the main street of Bisbee wasn’t all that scenic. But he took the key, nodded, and said, “Much obliged.”

  A porter responded to the bell, and the clerk told him to get The Kid’s horse and take it around back to the stable.

  “See that he’s well taken care of,” The Kid added.

  “Yes, sir,” the porter replied with a nod. He grinned when The Kid pressed a fifty-cent piece into his hand.

  The Kid was aware that some of the guests in the lobby were watching him curiously. To the eyes of those well-to-do businessmen, he wasn’t the sort of man who normally patronized the Bisbee House. He felt them watching him as he went up the stairs carrying his rifle and saddlebags.

  He climbed two flights and found Room 28 on the front of the hotel where the clerk had said it would be. The corridor had a thick carpet runner down the center of it, prints of landscape paintings on the walls, and ornate gas lamp fixtures.

  The room itself was more of the same, except there was a large woven rug instead of the carpet runner. The paper on the walls had gold flecks in it. A pitcher and basin sat on a wash stand. The bed was heavy, the mattress thick. A wave of weariness came over him as he looked at it, and he wanted to just crawl into the bed and stay there for the next fourteen or fifteen hours.

  Instead, he placed the Winchester and the saddlebags on the bed, tossed his hat beside him, and peeled off the buckskin shirt. He wanted to wash off the grime of the day.

  When he had washed up as best he could, he pulled a white shirt, black whipcord trousers and a black vest and jacket out of the saddlebags. After shaking the wrinkles out of them, he donned them and then wrapped a black string tie around his neck.

  He looked considerably different than when he had ridden into town. This garb was simple, far from the dandified get-ups he had worn as Conrad Browning, but it was more respectable than the trail clothes he usually wore. He wouldn’t look as out of place in the hotel dining room or when he met with Edward Sheffield.

  Not that The Kid gave a damn what people thought of him. The events of the past year had taught him how meaningless such things were. But he had already killed two men and had a knock-down, drag-out fight with another since his arrival in Bisbee, and he figured he had attracted enough attention to himself for the time being.

  He wasn’t going unarmed, though. That would be too much, he thought as he strapped the gunbelt around his hips.

  When he went back downstairs, the clerk glanced at him and then looked away, evidently not recognizing him. Then the man looked again, clearly surprised as he realized who the tall man in the dark suit was.

  “Mr. Morgan,” he said. “The dining room’s right through there.”

  Morgan nodded. “Thanks.”

  He went into the dining room and sat at one of the tables with its snowy linen cloth. A pretty, brown-haired waitress came over and smiled at him, not bothering to keep the admiration and interest out of her eyes as she asked him what she could get him.

  Morgan’s tone was businesslike as he ordered steak with all the trimmings and coffee. He was hungry. He hadn’t had much to eat that day, and the brandy on an empty stomach he’d had at Augustine’s was making his brain a little fuzzy. The food and coffee would take care of that.

  The meal was a good one, and by the time Morgan finished with it, he felt human again. The hard, grim day had taken a toll on him, but he felt like he could keep going for a while now.

  The waitress hovered around his table. “Are you sure there’s nothing else you’d like, sir?” she asked.

  “Not a thing,” Morgan said. He knew that if he’d been of a mind to, he could have flirted with the waitress and there was no telling how far it would have gotten him. But that was about the last thing he wanted right now, and besides, he had an appointment with Charles Augustine. The saloon owner was going to take him to meet Edward Sheffield, and Morgan hoped that Sheffield would help him find Colonel Gideon Black and even the score for the Williams family.

  He signed for the meal, then stood up and put on his hat. As he walked onto Bisbee’s main street, he saw that the town was even livelier now that it was a little later in the evening. The saloons appeared to be doing a booming business, and the stores that were still open, including Carmichael’s Mercantile, had customers going in and out of them, too. Morgan thought briefly about the puppies he had brought from the ranch and hoped that Carmichael’s grandson took good care of them.

  Then he put that out of his head and strolled toward Augustine’s.

  As he entered the saloon Morgan noted the big miner with whom he had clashed earlier was gone, or at least not at the same table where he had been. Surely some of the other customers who had glared murderously at him as he left were still there, but they didn’t pay any attention to him. It was another reason he had changed clothes. He wasn’t trying to duck trouble, but it didn’t make sense to go out of his way to find it, either.

  He made his way along the crowded bar to the door at the end of it. As he reached for the knob, one of the bartenders came down to that end of the bar and said, “Hold it, mister. You can’t just—”

  Morgan looked at him coldly. “Mr. Augustine is expecting me.”

  The man swallowed. “Well, uh, then you just go right ahead, sir. Sorry I bothered you.”

  “No bother,” Morgan said. He opened the door and stepped into the corridor.

  When he reached the door at the other end, he knocked on it. “Who’s there?” Augustine called from within.

  “Morgan.”

  “Ah. Come in.”

  When Morgan opened the door, he saw Augustine taking his right hand out from under his coat. He had a hunch that the saloonkeeper’s fingers had been wrapped around the butt of a pistol in a shoulder rig. No man was as successful in a mining boomtown as Augustine appeared to be without making a considerable number of enemies along the way.

  Augustine smiled as he got to his feet. He didn’t comment on Morgan’s changed appearance. He just said, “Are you ready to meet Edward Sheffield?”

  “That’s why I’m here.” Morgan looked around the room. “I don’t see him.”

  “Oh, he’s not here. We’ll have to go see him. That’s the way it works.”

  Morgan wasn’t surprised. Rich men were accustomed to people coming to them, rather than the other way around.

  Augustine took a soft felt hat from a hat tree. “We’ll go out the back. You didn’t have any trouble when you came in, did you?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “How do you like the Bisbee House?”

  “It’s fine. Looks comfortable, and the food in the dining room was good.”

  Augustine chuckled. “I’m glad you liked it.” He led the way into the corridor, where he opened another door that let them into an alley. Morgan stayed close to him, not expecting any sort of a double cross but knowing at the same time that it would be more difficult to ambush him if there wasn’t much distance between him and Augustine.

  He realized after a few minutes that they were walking toward the train station. Recalling what Augustine had said about Edward Sheffield building a spur line into the Dragoon Mountains to serve the co
mpany town near his mine, Morgan wondered if he would have to go all the way to Titusville to meet with Sheffield. Surely Augustine would have told him if that were the case, so that he could have brought his gear along with him.

  That wasn’t how it turned out, however. When they reached the depot, Augustine gestured toward a couple of railroad cars parked on a siding. “There it is,” he said. “Edward Sheffield’s home away from home.”

  Chapter 13

  Morgan wasn’t particularly surprised. He knew that a lot of tycoons had their own private railroad cars. When he was still Conrad Browning, he might have enjoyed such a thing himself.

  The two of them went up a set of iron steps to the platform at the rear of the closest car, which was a thing of beauty, all polished brass and dark wood. Augustine knocked on the vestibule door, which was opened a moment later by a stout woman in a maid’s uniform. “Herr Augustine,” she said in a German accent, “please come in. Herr Sheffield is waiting for you.”

  “He hasn’t been waiting long, I hope,” Augustine said with a smile.

  “Ach, no. He and Frau Sheffield just finished their dinner a few minutes ago.”

  Morgan thought back, trying to remember what, if anything, he had ever heard about Sheffield’s wife. He didn’t recall much, only that she was in bad health. He wondered if she had come to Arizona Territory with her husband because of the warm, dry climate. Sheffield’s home was in Chicago, Morgan remembered. The winters there would be hard on someone who was sick.

  The maid took their hats and led them through the vestibule into an elegantly appointed sitting room. Morgan had seen plenty of hotel rooms that weren’t as elegantly and comfortably furnished as this railroad car. A slender man rose from a divan to greet them. He held a drink in one hand, a long, thick cigar in the other. His gray hair was parted in the center and thinning on top. He had a mustache and rather bushy muttonchop whiskers.