The Loner: Book One

by J. A. Johnstone

  Morgan hesitated, not because he was unsure of the answer, but rather because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Finally, he said, “It’s not that I don’t want you, Tasmin. I don’t want any woman right now. I have other things I have to deal with first before I can even think about anything like that.”

  She squeezed his shoulder. “You have so much sadness in you, Kid. I’m sorry for whatever caused it. If there’s anything I can do to help…”

  “Just stay out of the way if there’s trouble.”

  That came out more abruptly than he’d intended. He felt her flinch as if she’d been struck. But she said, “Fine. I won’t be a bother.”

  Then she turned over and pressed her back against his, rather than spooning with him. That was probably better, he thought.

  Craggy peaks, lushly timbered valleys, arid wastelands all passed under their horses’ hooves as they continued eastward, angling somewhat to the north toward Colorado as they did so. The cold weather passed by, the wind turned out of the south again, and the temperatures warmed. This was a volatile time of year, though, Bearpaw pointed out. There might be another blue norther at any time, and he hadn’t backed off on his prediction of snow.

  They avoided large towns, traveling north of Albuquerque and south of Taos and Santa Fe, then turned in a more northerly direction to follow the mountains. The Sangre de Cristos were in the northeastern corner of the territory, running north and south from New Mexico into southern Colorado. Raton Pass was on the border between the two. Bearpaw explained all this to Morgan and Tasmin, and since he seemed to know where he was going, they were content to let him take the lead.

  “Is there anywhere west of the Mississippi you haven’t been?” Morgan asked as they approached the towering pass.

  “I’m sure there is,” Bearpaw replied with a grin, “but I can’t think of any place right now.”

  “How did you wind up in Sawtooth?”

  The Paiute could shrug now because the minor bullet wound in his shoulder was almost healed up. He did so and said, “Everybody’s got to be somewhere. I’d lived a pretty eventful life, and Sawtooth seemed like a nice quiet place to settle down and live out the rest of my years in peace. It was, too…until Kid Morgan showed up.”

  Tasmin looked over at Morgan. “I know you’re supposed to be a famous gunfighter,” she said, “but I don’t think I’d ever heard of you.”

  “You just don’t travel in the right circles,” Bearpaw told her. “The Kid’s famous, all right.”

  She looked like she wasn’t sure whether she believed him or not. Morgan didn’t say anything. He still felt a little uncomfortable about the whole business of pretending to be somebody else, somebody who didn’t really exist.

  Although Kid Morgan was becoming more and more real with every gunfight, he realized.

  The view from the top of the pass was one of the most spectacular they had seen so far, with majestic mountains rising on either side of them, and behind them plains stretching away for scores of miles to the south and east. Up ahead, in Colorado, the mountains continued, although they were higher and more rugged to the west, falling off into rolling hills to the east.

  The climb to the pass was steep, so Bearpaw reined in to rest his mount when they reached the top, and the Kid and Tasmin followed suit. They swung down from their saddles and stood there for long minutes, looking out over the impressive landscape.

  “This is a lot prettier than the pueblo where I grew up,” Tasmin commented.

  “You said you’re Hopi?” Morgan asked.

  “Only a fourth. My other grandparents were white.” Her mouth quirked in a bitter smile. “Missionaries, in fact, who came out here from the East to save the heathen savages. They must not have done a very good job of it, considering the way I turned out.”

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Morgan told her.

  “You don’t know just how heathen I am.” She gave a defiant toss of her head. “And you never will, Mr. Kid Morgan. All that is behind me now.”

  That was fine with him, he thought.

  Bearpaw’s attention was focused on their backtrail, and when Tasmin went off into the brush to take care of some personal business, he motioned Morgan over to him and said quietly, “I think somebody’s following us, Kid.”

  Morgan’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the landscape below the pass. He didn’t see anything moving except a couple of hawks soaring on the wind currents, but he trusted Bearpaw.

  “How many?”

  “Three, I think. They’re a long way back, and I can’t even see them right now. But I’ve caught several glimpses of them today, and I’m pretty sure they’re back there.”

  “How do you know they’re actually following us?”

  “I don’t, of course,” Bearpaw admitted. “They could be pilgrims who just happen to be going the same direction we are. A lot of people use this pass. But I slowed down, and they slowed down. I pushed a little harder, and they pushed a little harder.”

  Instinctively, Morgan’s hand dropped to the butt of his gun. “Who’d have a reason to follow us?”

  “That madam back in Gallup could have hired some gun-wolves to come after us and settle the score for her brother,” Bearpaw suggested.

  Morgan nodded. That was a possibility, all right. But it didn’t seem likely to him. “We’ll keep our eyes open. If they’re following us, when do you think they’ll make their move?”

  “No telling. They’re close enough they can catch up to us tonight, if they want to.”

  Tasmin was coming back. Morgan glanced at her and said, “I wish we’d found a place to leave her.”

  “I’m not sure she would have stayed. That girl’s got ideas in her head about you, whether she’ll admit it or not…and whether you like it or not.”

  That was one of the last things Morgan wanted to hear, but he was afraid Bearpaw might be right. “If there’s trouble, I’m counting on you to keep her safe,” he told the Paiute.

  “What are you going to be doing?”

  “Killing whoever’s giving us that trouble,” Morgan said.

  Chapter 20

  Later that afternoon, Bearpaw pointed to a dark blue line on the northern horizon and said, “That’s a storm coming. Remember that snow I told you about?” He nodded toward the distant clouds. “It’s up there. We’ll need to find a good place to camp where we can get out of the weather.”

  “Maybe we should make for the nearest town,” Morgan suggested.

  Bearpaw squinted at the sky. “That’d be Trinidad. But I’m not sure we’ve got time to make it that far before nightfall.” He hitched the Appaloosa into a faster pace. “We’ll give it a try.”

  The horses were tired after a long day on the trail, though, so Morgan and his friends could only push them so hard. The dark blue line on the horizon seemed to rush southward toward them, and it wasn’t long before it turned into looming, bluish-gray clouds. The wind picked up, and the chill was back.

  “If you see a good place to camp,” Morgan called to Bearpaw, “we’ll go ahead and stop.”

  The Paiute nodded. It was hard to tell because his face was usually impassive anyway, but Morgan thought he looked more concerned than usual. Between the weather and those three riders following them, this might turn out to be a long, dangerous night.

  A short time later, Bearpaw pointed to a ridge to the left of the trail and said, “I think we’d better go over there and see if we can find somewhere to hunker down. A nice overhang would give us a place to get out of the weather.”

  Morgan nodded. “Lead the way. We’ll be right behind you.”

  It took about half an hour for them to locate a suitable place. A granite bluff jutted into the air and sloped inward to a cavelike area at its base. It would provide shelter from the north wind and block at least some of the snow, if Bearpaw was right about that being on the way as well.

  Morgan and Bearpaw tended to the horses while Tasmin gathered wood and built a fire. Ever since the
y had left Gallup, she had been good about helping out around camp and had done her share of the work without any complaints. She soon had a nice little fire blazing away merrily, the smoke rising to spread out against the overhanging rock and then disperse.

  By now, the sky was completely overcast. Dark gray clouds scudded swiftly overhead. The temperature dropped steadily. As Morgan and Bearpaw hunkered next to the fire, Morgan said, “It looks like you were right, Phillip.”

  Bearpaw grunted. “I just hope we’re not in for a full-fledged blizzard. We may be stuck here for several days if the snow gets too deep.”

  “Do you expect that to happen?”

  “Not really,” Bearpaw replied with a shake of his head. “It’s too early in the season for that. But when you’re talking about the weather, Kid, you can’t really take anything for granted. It does what it wants to do, and there’s not a blessed things we humans can do about it except try to adapt.”

  They had some dried venison plus the makings for biscuits. Bearpaw prepared supper, and the three of them sat by the fire and ate the meager meal. While they were eating, Morgan saw snowflakes begin to fall, whipped along by the wind.

  “There’s your snow,” he told Bearpaw with a grin. “I guess you knew what you were talking about after all.”

  “I told you. Never argue with a redskin about the weather.”

  The light had begun to fade. Morgan went to the front of the cavelike area underneath the overhanging bluff and looked out across the hills he could see from there. He was especially watchful for any signs of motion, but didn’t see any. Maybe the riders who had been behind them earlier had sought shelter from the storm, too. If they had any sense, that’s what they had done, whether they were following Morgan and his companions or not.

  Morgan turned and went back to the fire. Behind him, the snowfall grew thicker.

  If the circumstances had been different, they would have put out the fire so that anyone tracking them wouldn’t be able to see it. As it was, though, without the fire it would get mighty cold before morning. They would let it burn down to embers, but wouldn’t extinguish it completely.

  During the time they had been traveling together, Morgan had gotten a little more comfortable having Tasmin around. She didn’t make any pretense of separating her bedroll from his anymore. She was huddled against him for warmth as the flames died down. During a brief, private conversation earlier in the evening, Morgan and Bearpaw had agreed to take turns standing watch tonight, just in case anything happened. Bearpaw took the first turn.

  Morgan dozed off, feeling a chill seeping into his bones from the rocky ground despite the blankets underneath him. Outside their little sanctuary, the wind howled and the snow blew almost horizontal to the ground.

  “Wake up, Kid.”

  The voice penetrated Morgan’s sleep-fogged brain. It took a second before he realized that it didn’t belong to Bearpaw. Nor was it Tasmin’s voice. The tones were male, harsh and angry.

  Morgan lunged up from his blankets and reached for the gun on his hip.

  Something crashed into his face and sent him sprawling onto his back before he could grab the Colt. A second later, there was another jarring impact, this time on his left side. Somebody was kicking him, he realized.

  The faint glow from the embers, reflected back from the overhanging bluff, showed him a dark shape looming above him. He rolled away as the man tried to kick him again. That took him past the Winchester he had placed beside his blankets when he turned in. He snatched up the rifle and started swinging the barrel around to bear on his attacker.

  “Hold it, Kid, or I’ll blow the whore’s brains out!”

  Morgan froze, and not from the frigid chill in the air. Somebody snapped a match into life, and its harsh glare revealed a shocking scene. Bearpaw lay huddled near the horses while the man with the match stood over him, holding a gun on him. Another man had jerked Tasmin to her feet and had an arm looped around her throat while his other hand pressed the barrel of a revolver to her head. The third man, the one who had been trying to stomp the Kid to death, was Hyde, the giant black bouncer from Rosa’s place in Gallup. He pushed some fresh wood into the fire, and after a moment it caught and grew brighter.

  Hyde wasn’t the only one of the trio Morgan recognized. The other two hombres had been members of the gang that had kidnapped Rebel. He hadn’t seen them since that night in Black Rock Canyon, but their images were still fresh in his mind, preserved perfectly by the hatred he felt.

  “Put the rifle down, Kid,” warned the man holding Tasmin. “I ain’t gonna tell you again.”

  Morgan grimaced and tossed the Winchester aside. On the other side of the fire, Bearpaw moaned and stirred. The bastards must have snuck up on him under the cover of the storm and knocked him out, Morgan thought.

  “Reach over with your left hand and take the Colt out,” the man holding Tasmin ordered.

  “Once he’s unarmed, I’m gonna bust him into little pieces,” Hyde rumbled.

  “Not until we have a talk with him,” the other man said. “Do what I told you, Kid. Shuck that iron.”

  Carefully, Morgan reached over with his left hand and slipped the Colt out of its holster. He wondered for a second just how good a shot he was with that hand. Not good enough, he decided. He bent over and placed the revolver on the ground next to the Winchester.

  “Now back away from them.”

  Morgan did so reluctantly. Tasmin was watching him with a fearful expression on her face. He knew from some of the things she had said during the trip that she was terrified of Hyde. Rosa had run the house with an iron fist, and Hyde was her enforcer. The beatings he doled out on Rosa’s command had seriously injured some of the soiled doves.

  “I guess Rosa sent you after us to settle the score for her brother,” Morgan said. He didn’t say anything about recognizing the other two men from Black Rock Canyon. He didn’t want them to know about that just yet.

  “We got scores of our own to settle,” the man said. “Clem Baggott and Spence Hooper were friends of ours. We came to see them and found out they’d been shot dead by some fancy gunslinger. Clem’s sister was glad to send this big darkie with us to help track you down.”

  Even after splitting up, most of the gang seemed to have converged on Gallup, Morgan thought. He supposed that wasn’t so surprising. Baggott’s sister ran a whorehouse after all. These hardcases probably had thought they could lie low there as well as anywhere else.

  “What’s your game, mister?” the man went on. “Why’d you come gunning for Clem and Spence?”

  “We weren’t gunning for them,” Morgan said. “I explained it all back in Gallup. I just stopped off at Rosa’s for a little slap-and-tickle, and that fella Baggott came into the parlor and started shooting at me.”

  The man shook his head. “Clem was a pretty levelheaded sort. He wouldn’t have blazed away like that and put his sister in danger without a good reason. He recognized you.”

  Morgan shook his head. “He mistook me for somebody else, if anything. I never saw him before.”

  The man sneered and pressed the gun barrel against Tasmin’s head hard enough to make her cry out softly in pain and fear. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “It’s the truth,” Morgan insisted. He was looking desperately for some way to turn the tables on these men, but so far he hadn’t found any.

  The other man, the one guarding Bearpaw, frowned as he stared at Morgan. “Abel, there’s somethin’ familiar about this hombre,” he said suddenly. “I’d swear I’ve seen him before.”

  Abel…That had to be Abel Dean. Morgan plucked the name out of his memory. Dean squinted at him and said, “Yeah, Jim, I think maybe you’re right. He looks familiar to us, and Clem recognized him…Who the hell can he be?”

  “All I know is he’s Kid Morgan,” Hyde said, “and I’m gonna kill him.”

  Jim Fowler—that was the other man’s name, Morgan recalled—took a step forward. “Maybe I’m goin’ loco,”
he said, “but I’d swear this fella looks like the one from Carson City. The one whose wife we took out to that canyon—”

  “Son of a bitch!” Dean exclaimed. “It is him!” He jerked the gun away from Tasmin’s head. “Kill him!”

  Before either of the kidnappers could fire, Bearpaw suddenly lunged hard against Fowler’s legs. The Paiute had regained more of his senses than he had let on. Fowler stumbled to the side as he pulled the trigger. The blast was deafeningly loud as it echoed back from the overhanging bluff.

  At the same time, Tasmin turned her head and sank her teeth into Dean’s throat under the shelf of his jutting jaw. His yell was one more of surprise than pain, but she kept him from firing at Morgan while he tried to knock her loose.

  Morgan dived for the Colt on the ground. Hyde moved with surprising speed for such a big man and rammed into him, knocking him away from the gun. Blood streamed down the side of Hyde’s face from his ear, and Morgan realized that the wild shot fired by Fowler must have clipped him. Hyde swung a sweeping backhand at him. Morgan ducked under it.

  He wasn’t going to make the mistake of trying to tackle Hyde again. That hadn’t worked too well the first time. Instead, he lunged behind the horses, using the animals to shield him from Hyde’s charge and from Dean’s and Fowler’s guns. The shot had spooked the horses, so they were dancing back and forth.

  Morgan tore the buckskin’s picket rope loose and leaped onto the horse’s back. He banged his boots against the horse’s flanks and sent him leaping forward. The buckskin’s shoulder collided with Hyde. The big man had more than met his match. He went sailing off his feet from the impact.

  Morgan leaped off the buckskin and tackled Dean, knocking him away from Tasmin. Both of them went down hard. Morgan crashed a fist into the outlaw’s face and used his other hand to grab the wrist of Dean’s gun hand. He slammed that hand against the rocky ground a couple of times, and the second time, the gun came loose. Morgan hit him again.

  He didn’t have time to do anything else before Hyde grabbed him from behind, lifted him into the air, and threw him against the bluff. Pain shot through Morgan as he crashed into the unyielding surface. Hyde came at him again.