The Loner: Book One

by J. A. Johnstone

  Conrad nodded. “I reckon I’m his friend now, too, since he saved my life. I’ll have to thank him. And you and your father, too.”

  “No thanks are necessary. Pa’s business is helping people after all.”

  That might well be true, Conrad thought, but as much money as he had, he could well afford to repay his debt to Dr. Patrick McNally—

  That thought came to a sudden halt as he remembered that it was Conrad Browning who had all that money, and he was no longer Conrad Browning. His name now was Morgan, and Morgan was a penniless drifter.

  Well, maybe not penniless, he corrected himself. He had brought a few hundred dollars with him from the house in Carson City, although it was possible that money was now in the pockets of one Phillip Bearpaw—if the Paiute hadn’t already spent it on liquor.

  “You said Mr. Bearpaw brought my horse in, too?”

  Eve nodded. “That’s right. It’s out back in our barn, along with Pa’s buggy horse. I’ve been taking care of it. It seems like a fine horse.”

  “He is,” Morgan agreed. “Seems like…you take care of a lot of things around here.”

  “I do my best. Pa has his hands full with…well, with his patients and all.”

  Morgan sensed that she meant something more than that. Something to do with her mother, more than likely, he guessed.

  “I washed your shirt and got the blood out of it as best I could,” she went on. “Luckily, you can’t really see the stain on a black shirt like that. And I was able to mend the bullet hole.”

  “I’m obliged.”

  “It wasn’t much trouble. Your gun and gunbelt are in one of the drawers, and your rifle is leaning in the corner. You won’t need any weapons as long as you’re here, of course. And if you’re worried about the money that was inside your shirt, don’t be. It’s all safe.”

  Morgan didn’t want to admit that he’d been wondering about that very thing a few moments earlier. He just nodded and said, “Thank you.”

  “You know,” Eve said as she looked down at him, “even though you’re still running a fever, I think you’re better tonight. You’re more alert, and you’re making more sense. If that fever would just break, I think you’ll have turned the corner.”

  “Maybe it will.”

  “I’m sure it will. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Unfortunately, time was something he didn’t have a lot of, Morgan thought.

  There were still a dozen men out there he had to kill, and chances were, they’d be getting farther away with each day that passed.

  Chapter 10

  Sometime during the night, the man who had been Conrad Browning dozed off again. When Morgan woke up, he was drenched with sweat. It must have run off him in rivers, because the bedclothes underneath him were soaked. They were cold and clammy and uncomfortable. He was going to call out, but then he heard a shuffling sound, as if someone were coming across the room toward him. He pried his eyes open, expecting to see Eve McNally, but in the dim light coming from the lamp, a totally different vision in a long, white nightgown presented itself to him.

  The woman who leaned over him was much older than Eve, although her face was relatively unlined. White hair flew out wildly around her head. She looked down at Morgan out of wide, staring eyes but didn’t say anything. Startled by her, he instinctively tried to jerk away, but he was so weak and the bandages around his midsection were so tight that he could barely move. He succeeded in causing fresh jolts of pain to shoot through his wounded side, however.

  “Eve!” he called. “Eve!”

  He must have frightened the old woman. Her eyes widened even more for a second, and then her face twisted as she started to cry. She blubbered like a child. Big tears rolled down her cheeks.

  With a rush of footsteps, Eve hurried into the room. “Mama!” she said as she took the old woman’s arm. “Mama, you shouldn’t be up wandering around. You could hurt yourself!”

  Mrs. McNally tried to pull away. Eve hung on to her arm, gently but firmly. The old woman lifted her other arm and pointed at Morgan in the bed.

  “Joseph!” she said. “Joseph’s come back!”

  Eve slipped an arm around her shoulders and turned her away from the bed. “Mama, you know that’s not Joe,” she said. “I wish it was, but it’s not. Joe’s not here right now.”

  “But…but he’s coming back sometime, isn’t he?” Mrs. McNally asked between sobs.

  “Of course he is. We just have to wait for him.”

  “I…I sit and wait for him all day.”

  “That’s right. You sit and wait and play your Gramophone.”

  The old woman sniffled and said, “Joseph loved those old songs.”

  “We’ll play all of them for him when he comes back,” Eve promised.

  Dr. McNally appeared in the doorway, wearing a nightshirt and a worried expression. “Dear Lord,” he muttered. “I thought she was sound asleep.”

  Eve steered her mother across the room. “Mama, you go with Pa, all right? You need to get some rest.”

  “Will Joseph be back in the morning?” Mrs. McNally asked.

  “I don’t know,” Eve said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  The doctor took hold of his wife’s other arm and led her from the room, glancing back at Eve as he did so and shaking his head sorrowfully. Eve sighed and eased the door closed behind them.

  Then she turned to the bed and said, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Morgan. We try to keep a close eye on her. Sometimes at night, she gets up and roams around the house, looking for my brother.”

  “Joseph,” Morgan guessed.

  Eve nodded. “That’s right. He…died a couple of years ago. That’s what made my mother…like she is.”

  “I’m sorry,” Morgan said, and meant it. These people had helped him, quite possibly saved his life. That meant that because of them, he was still alive to kill Clay Lasswell and the other men he intended to hunt down.

  Eve sank down wearily on the straight-back chair near the bed. She wore a high-necked blue nightgown, and even though the part of Morgan that might have appreciated the fact she was an attractive young woman was numb with grief and loss, he still took note of it.

  “For a while Pa hoped that she would come out of it,” Eve said. “He thought that once the shock of losing Joe wore off, she would be herself again. But I guess it never has.” She looked at Morgan with a sad smile, then suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, my Lord! Look at you. Your face is covered with sweat! Your fever’s broken, hasn’t it?”

  “I reckon so,” Morgan said in a husky voice.

  “And here I was, babbling on.” She stood up and leaned over the bed, cupping his face between her hands. “Yes, you’re a lot cooler than you were. Thank God for that. You’re going to be able to fight off the infection after all.” She felt the bed around him. “These sheets are soaked. I’ll need to change them. You’ll need a fresh nightshirt, too.”

  Morgan felt a sudden and unexpected surge of embarrassment. “Don’t you think you, uh, ought to get your father to do that?”

  “Pa’s going to have his hands full getting Mama settled down again. I can take care of this.” She straightened and put her hands on her hips. “I’ve been working as my father’s nurse for quite a while, Mr. Morgan. I don’t think I’ll be seeing anything I haven’t seen before.”

  In general, maybe, Morgan thought, but not specifically. But he didn’t argue. He was too tired and weak for that. He lay back, closed his eyes, and let Eve do what she needed to do. When she was finished, he had to admit that it felt a lot better lying on dry sheets and wearing a clean, dry nightshirt.

  “With any luck, you’ll be ready for some real food again tomorrow,” she said. “We won’t rush it, though. It’ll take quite a while for you to regain your strength after what you’ve been through.”

  “How long?” Morgan asked.

  She frowned at him. “How long what? Until you’re up and around?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I imagine
it’ll be a couple of weeks before you’re able to get out of bed at least.”

  Morgan shook his head. “A week,” he said.

  “Don’t be silly. You won’t be strong enough by then.”

  “Yes, I will be.”

  “My, aren’t you the stubborn one? Is there somewhere you have to be?”

  “Yes,” Morgan said. “And something I have to do, the sooner the better.”

  “Yes, well, if you rush it, you’ll be taking a chance on having a relapse. You had a really close call, Mr. Morgan. You don’t want to die now just because you insisted on doing something foolish.”

  Morgan heaved a sigh. “No,” he whispered. “I don’t want to die now.”

  But after Lasswell and the others were dead, it wouldn’t really matter, now would it?

  Morgan slept late the next morning. When he woke up, a man he had never seen before was sitting in the rocking chair, puffing on a pipe and watching him.

  Even though the stranger was sitting down, Morgan could tell that he was big. The man wore a black hat with a rounded crown. A couple of eagle feathers were stuck in the band. He wore a blue shirt over fringed buckskin leggings, as well as high-topped moccasins. As if Morgan needed anything else to guess the identity of his visitor, the coppery shade of the man’s skin was a dead giveaway.

  “You’re Bearpaw,” Morgan said. “The man who saved my life.”

  The man took the pipe out of his mouth and said, “Phillip Bearpaw. You can call me Phillip.”

  Morgan nodded. “I’m pleased to meet you. And I’m mighty obliged to you for helping me. I’d likely have died out there if not for you.”

  Bearpaw grunted. “No likely about it. You would have drowned. I heard the splash and came to see what had happened. You were facedown in Sawtooth Creek.”

  “You were that close? I didn’t see anybody around.”

  “People only see me when I want to be seen,” Bearpaw said. He chuckled. “In this case, I was just around the next bend in the creek, fishing and reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Ever read it?”

  Morgan shook his head. “I’m afraid not. My father’s an avid reader, though. He may have.”

  Bearpaw clamped his teeth on the pipe stem and gave a solemn nod. “You should try it sometime. It’ll give you a new understanding of the condition of man’s immortal soul.”

  Morgan frowned a little and said, “I haven’t run into many Paiutes, but you’re not like any of them.”

  “Bearpaw heap sorry. Ugh.”

  Morgan laughed out loud, then felt a sudden twinge of guilt. It had been less than a week since Rebel’s murder. He shouldn’t have ever laughed again, let alone this soon.

  “Anyway, I’m grateful to you for saving my life, Phillip. I’d be glad to—”

  Bearpaw frowned, and Morgan stopped short as he realized that the Paiute might take any offer of a reward as an insult. Instead, Morgan said, “If there’s anything I can ever do for you, it would be my pleasure.”

  Bearpaw nodded. “I’ll remember that.” He took the pipe out of his mouth again. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “I reckon I’ll live.” Frank would have said something like that in a similar situation, and Morgan thought that if he was going to succeed in making everything think that Conrad Browning was dead, he would have to stop talking like him.

  “Eve said your fever broke last night. That’s good.”

  “Where is Eve?”

  “Getting some rest.”

  “I’m glad,” Morgan said. “She deserves it. I have a feeling she’s been spending most of her time watching over me for the past few days.”

  Bearpaw nodded. “That girl’s good at being a nurse, all right. She’d make a good doctor, too, one of these days, if that’s what she wanted to do. She’s too busy taking care of her folks, though, and helping out with Patrick’s patients. You hungry?”

  The sudden shift took Morgan a little by surprise. “Actually, I am. Starving, now that I think about it.”

  “Another good sign.” Bearpaw stood. “I’ll go get you something to eat.”

  He left the room, and came back a few minutes later with a plate and a cup of coffee. The plate had a couple of biscuits smeared with molasses on it. Bearpaw set the cup and plate on the table beside the bed and helped Morgan sit up, propping the pillow behind him. Moving like that caused pain to shoot through Morgan’s side, and the room spun around him a little from his head being upright again. Both of those reactions settled down quickly, however, and he grasped the cup eagerly when Bearpaw handed it to him.

  “Careful,” the Paiute cautioned. “The coffee’s hot.”

  Morgan took a sip. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d tasted anything as good as the strong, black brew. Then he took a bite of biscuit, savoring the sweetness of the molasses, and that was even better.

  “Don’t wolf it down,” Bearpaw cautioned. “Your stomach may not be used to solid food yet.”

  Morgan took it slow and easy, but he ate every bite and drained the cup of every last drop of coffee. His stomach protested a little, but overall he felt strength flowing back into his body from the food.

  Drowsiness began overwhelming him even before he finished eating. As he polished off the last of the meal, he yawned prodigiously. Bearpaw took the plate and cup and set them aside, then said, “You’d better get some more sleep.”

  “I really ought to…”

  Morgan’s voice trailed off as he realized there really wasn’t anything he could do right now. His only mission in life was to bring justice to the men responsible for Rebel’s death. He didn’t care about business anymore; Conrad Browning’s lawyers were more than capable of keeping the various enterprises humming along smoothly. He was realistic enough to know that he was in no shape to face any of his enemies right now. Recovering from his injury was really the only job he had at the moment.

  “All right,” he said as he allowed Bearpaw to help him stretch out again. “I guess a nap wouldn’t hurt anything.”

  “Someone will be here when you wake up,” the Paiute promised.

  That was the beginning of a long week for the man who now called himself Morgan. He slept and ate and gradually grew stronger. When he was awake, Eve McNally was usually there to bring him food and drink and make sure he was comfortable, although from time to time Bearpaw or Dr. McNally spelled her in those duties. Sometimes, Bearpaw sat in the rocker and read from his battered copy of Paradise Lost, his deep, resonant voice a perfect match for the English poet’s high-flown words. At other times, Morgan just lay there and listened to the Gramophone music coming from elsewhere in the house. As was often the case in frontier settlements, the doctor practiced medicine in the same house where he and his family lived. The bedroom where Morgan was recuperating was on the side of the house, close enough to the front so that occasionally he heard horses passing by on the road.

  One afternoon when he was dozing, the sound of shots rang out somewhere not far away, coming in clearly through the open window. By now, Morgan was strong enough to sit up on his own, even though he hadn’t tried to get out of bed and walk yet. When the gunshots startled him out of his half sleep, he bolted up in the bed and cried, “Rebel!”

  No one else was in the room, but Eve hurried in a few seconds later. “Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Morgan,” she said as she came to the bedside. “There’s no war. The rebels aren’t attacking.”

  He fell back with a groan. She didn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain it to her without revealing who he really was. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to yell.”

  “You must have been dreaming, and then when you heard those shots…” She made a face.

  “Who was doing the shooting?”

  Eve shook her head. “Just a couple of men riding by on the road. Troublemakers. They’ve been around town for the past few days. Trash like that drifts in from time to time and hangs around town for a while annoying everybody, but then they get bored and ride on. It’s nothin
g to concern yourself with, Mr. Morgan.”

  Morgan wasn’t concerned, now that he knew what was going on. For a moment, though, the sound of the shots had carried him back to that awful night full of blood and death that had stolen everything from him, even his own identity.

  But losing his identity was his own idea, he reminded himself. He had given it up in hopes that would make it easier for him to deliver justice to Rebel’s murderers. He didn’t really mourn the loss of Conrad Browning, not for a second.

  The next day, he said to Eve, “It’s time for me to get up.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she replied with a frown. “You’ve only been here a week. I don’t think you’re strong enough yet.”

  “I’m getting up,” Morgan said.

  She held out a hand to stop him. “Let me at least go ask Pa what he thinks.”

  Morgan considered that, then nodded and leaned back against the pillow propped up behind him. “All right…but I’m getting up.”

  “You are the stubbornest man. Wait right there.” She paused in the doorway to point a finger at him. “I mean it.”

  A couple of minutes later, Dr. McNally came in with Eve following him. “My daughter tells me you’re ready to get up,” the doctor said.

  Morgan nodded. “It’s time.”

  “You know, most people with a gunshot wound like that would be laid up for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month.”

  Most people couldn’t have been shot like that and gone on to do everything he had afterward, Morgan thought. Thinking of his father, he said, “I come from good stock.”

  Eve crossed her arms and said, “I told him it was a bad idea.”

  McNally rubbed at his chin. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s young, and he was obviously in good health before he got shot. Plus he’s been eating like a horse for days now.”

  That was true. Morgan’s appetite had come back stronger than ever.

  “I think it’ll be all right to give it a try,” McNally went on.

  Morgan threw back the sheet and started to swing his legs out of the bed.

  “Now, don’t rush things,” McNally said. He moved to Morgan’s side and took hold of his right arm. “Eve, get his other arm. Take it slow and easy. Try standing up first, and see how that makes you feel.”