The Loner: Book One

by J. A. Johnstone

  “Is there a Western Union office in town?” Morgan asked.

  The doctor nodded. “Two blocks down the street on the left.”

  “Much obliged for everything.”

  They left the doctor’s house, stepping out into another frigid night. Morgan spotted a café, so he and Tasmin stopped and had an actual meal, which tasted good after long days of making do on the trail. Then they went to the Trinidad Hotel, where Morgan rented two rooms and used most of the rest of his money to pay for a couple of weeks in advance on Tasmin’s room.

  “I’ll see you later,” he told her. “Go on up and get some rest.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to send a wire.”

  He found the Western Union office and sent another telegram to Claudius Turnbuckle, asking that the lawyer arrange to pay for the doctor and any other expenses Tasmin and Bearpaw might have. He wanted both of them to have money in the bank in Trinidad to take care of any emergencies, too.

  With that taken care of, he returned to the hotel and stopped at the desk to get the key to Room Seven. Tasmin was across the hall in Room Eight.

  The clerk gave Morgan a puzzled frown. “The young lady already took the key to your room, sir. She said she would take care of both of them.”

  Morgan hadn’t told her to do that, but he supposed that no harm was done. He nodded his thanks and went upstairs. Pausing in front of Tasmin’s door, he knocked softly on it, intending to ask her for the key to his room.

  There was no answer.

  Morgan knocked again and called, “Tasmin?” Maybe she was already so sound asleep that she couldn’t hear him, he thought. He turned and stepped across the hall to try the door to his room, hoping that she had unlocked it before turning in.

  The knob twisted easily in his hand. He swung the door open, and saw that the lamp on the table next to the bed was already burning with its flame turned low.

  The bed was occupied, too. Tasmin sat there with her back against a pillow propped between her and the headboard. She wore a simple white nightgown, and her dark hair was loose and flowing around her shoulders.

  “Oh, no,” Morgan said as he began to shake his head.

  “Why not?” she asked. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. I am just a whore after all.”

  Tears shone in her eyes as she spoke.

  Morgan stepped into the room and eased the door closed behind him. “I never thought you ought to…I mean, you don’t have to feel any obligation to…I never expected—”

  “Shut up,” she whispered. “We both need this.”

  Morgan shook his head. Maybe someday, but not now. Not yet.

  “I can’t.”

  Her hands clenched into fists. “I’ll bet you can. You just won’t.”

  “That’s not true. I just can’t be with any woman right now.”

  “Until you’ve finished killing the men who took the last woman from you?”

  Morgan dragged a deep, ragged breath into his body. “If you must know,” he said, “that’s right. And maybe not even then. Maybe not ever.”

  She leaned forward in the bed. “Then for God’s sake, at least tell me about it. Tell me the truth for a change, Kid. If you don’t, then I’ll think it’s just because I’m a cheap whore.”

  “That’s not true,” Morgan insisted. “I swear, Tasmin, ever since I’ve gotten to know you, I never think of you that way. That’s all in the past.”

  Her lips curved in a thin smile. “So, you can put what I used to be behind you without any trouble, but you can’t put your own past behind you, too?”

  Morgan just stared at her, unsure what to say. He didn’t think anything would make a difference.

  “Did you ever stop to think that if you talked about it, it might be easier to let go?”

  “I don’t want to let go. Not yet.” He struggled with the thoughts that filled his head. “I…I need to hang on to the pain for now. It keeps me going. When I’m done with…what I have to do…maybe then things will be different. Maybe I can start looking ahead again, instead of looking back.”

  Tasmin looked at him for a long moment, then sighed and shook her head. “You might as well go across the hall and get some sleep,” she said.

  Relieved, he turned and reached for the doorknob.

  “You’ll need to be well rested to do all that killing,” she said to his back.

  Chapter 22

  The log cabin sat against the snowy, timbered slope of a hill. The little stream known as Blue Creek twisted along at the base of the hill. Morgan supposed that was where the two men who occupied the cabin did their panning for gold. He saw an old-fashioned sluice box at the edge of the creek. The odds of them finding much dust like that, in this day and age when modern mining methods had replaced those old ways, was mighty slim, Morgan thought as he hunkered behind a boulder on the opposite slope and watched the place. A die-hard prospector always had hope, though, even when he didn’t have much of anything else.

  Smoke curled from the cabin’s stone chimney. Both men were in there, Morgan knew. He had seen them moving around a short time earlier, right after he got here. They had tended to the horses in the little corral and shed out back, then gone into the cabin. It was late in the afternoon. They might not emerge again until the next morning.

  Morgan didn’t intend to wait that long.

  It had taken him most of the day to get here from Trinidad. The clouds had finally broken up during the day, so the sun was shining brightly now as it dipped toward the peaks behind the cabin. With the weather clearing like that and the wind dying down, the night would be really cold. Morgan’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the stack of firewood beside the cabin.

  Could be that one of the men would decide to bring in some more wood before nightfall, just so they’d have plenty. He began working his way toward the cabin, circling so that he could come in from that direction. If neither of them came out to fetch wood, he’d have to think of some other way to lure them out.

  He crossed the creek upstream, leaping from rock to rock in order to do so, then headed for the cabin. It didn’t have any windows on this side, but Morgan used the trees for cover anyway. When he reached the cabin, he pressed his back to its rear wall, just around the corner from the stack of firewood.

  He could hear Rattigan and White Rock moving around inside and talking, and the knowledge that he was this close to two more of the men responsible for Rebel’s death gnawed at his guts. He wanted to go around to the front of the cabin, kick the door open, and go in shooting. If it came down to it, that was exactly what he would do. But he hoped there would be a better way.

  The sun had touched the mountains to the west and shadows had begun to gather when Morgan heard the cabin door open. He slipped the Colt from its holster and waited.

  Booted feet crunched in the snow as one of the men came around the cabin to the stack of firewood. Morgan heard him muttering to himself. He waited until the man had gathered up several pieces of wood and turned back toward the front of the cabin before he sprang out of concealment and brought the Colt crashing down on the man’s head.

  The man dropped the firewood and toppled forward. From inside the cabin, a voice yelled, “White Rock? What was that racket? You all right out there?”

  White Rock wasn’t going to answer. He was out cold. Morgan moved quickly past the unconscious half-breed. He reached the front corner of the cabin just as Rattigan came out the door, gun in hand.

  Morgan hesitated for a second as he saw how old Rattigan was. The man’s face was lined and leathery, and the beard stubble dotting his angular jaw was pure white. For that second, Morgan was reminded of his grandfather, and his finger froze on the trigger.

  Then Rattigan’s face twisted in an evil grimace, and flame erupted from the barrel of the gun in his hand. Morgan felt a tremendous impact on his left hip that slewed him around. Rattigan fired again. This slug burned past Morgan’s ear, and he didn’t waste any more time thinking about Rattiga
n’s age. Old or not, the outlaw was as vicious and evil as any of the others Morgan had faced. Maybe more so, because he’d had more time to practice. Morgan snapped his gun up and triggered it as his left leg folded up beneath him.

  Because he was falling, his aim was a little off. His bullet caught Rattigan in the left shoulder and knocked the old man back a step. Rattigan kept his feet and hung onto his gun, though. He threw a third shot at Morgan. The bullet plowed into the snow-covered ground only inches away. The Colt bucked in Morgan’s hand for a second time. This bullet punched into Rattigan’s chest and knocked him down. When he tried to raise his gun, Morgan shot him again. Rattigan went over onto his back, the revolver slipping from his fingers as he slumped.

  Boots crunched in the snow. Morgan rolled over and saw that White Rock had regained consciousness and was coming at him, a piece of firewood held high over his head. The breed’s face was contorted with hate as he yelled, “You son of a bitch!”

  Morgan knew that White Rock intended to crush his skull with that firewood. He tipped up the barrel of the Colt and fired. The bullet struck White Rock in the throat and ripped through at an upward angle into his brain. Blood fountained as he stumbled forward another step. The firewood slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground as White Rock pitched forward, landing on the crimson spray that had come from his ruined throat and stained the snow.

  Unable to stand because his left leg was still numb, Morgan scooted backward so that he could cover both men. He was pretty sure that Rattigan and White Rock were both dead, but injured as he was, he didn’t want to take any chances.

  Neither man moved. Morgan could tell they weren’t breathing anymore. He reached for the loops on his gunbelt, intending to take some cartridges from them and reload.

  The belt was surprisingly loose around his hips, he discovered. He moved his hand to the place where he’d been hit, and found that the thick leather was torn almost completely apart. He didn’t feel any blood, though, and after a second, he realized that Rattigan’s bullet had hit the gunbelt and glanced off, ruining the belt but failing to penetrate Morgan’s body. His leg had gone numb from the impact; that was all.

  Relief washed through him. He had worried that he might bleed to death out here, far from town. Now he knew that the numbness in his leg ought to wear off after a while. He’d be bruised and sore, but if the bullet hadn’t broken any bones, he would be able to get back to Trinidad.

  Morgan reloaded the Colt, then untied the holster thong from his leg and took off the ruined gunbelt. He tossed it aside and crawled over to the cabin, dragging his injured leg behind him. When he made it to the wall, he reached up with his free hand and found a good grip between a couple of the logs. He was able to pull himself up and lean against the cabin.

  As he did that, feeling began to come back into his leg. He waited until he trusted his muscles to obey him, then limped toward the door, which stood open. Rattigan hadn’t closed it behind him before he started shooting. By the time Morgan made it to the door, he was confident that the bullet hadn’t broken his hip. Everything seemed to be working, albeit painfully.

  He stepped inside and shoved the door closed to trap the heat from the fireplace. As he warmed up, the stiffness in his leg eased even more, although the place where the bullet had struck the gunbelt was still very tender to the touch. A coffeepot was on the stove. Morgan found a cup on a crude shelf and filled it with the strong black brew, then sat down in a rough-hewn chair at an equally rough table to sip from the cup and rest his leg.

  After a while, he felt strong enough to limp outside and drag the bodies of Rattigan and White Rock around to the back of the cabin. He left them there and crossed the creek to head back up the hill to the place where he’d left his horse. The buckskin was still there. He tossed his head, obviously glad to see Morgan.

  “Sorry,” the Kid muttered. “Let’s get you down to that shed.”

  By the time he’d finished tending to the horse, night had fallen. Morgan went inside, taking some firewood with him, and built up the blaze in the fireplace. The two outlaws had enough supplies on hand so that he was able to scrape together some supper without much trouble. Not wanting to use either of the bunks in the cabin where Rattigan and White Rock had slept, he had brought in his bedroll. He spread it out in front of the fireplace and crawled into the blankets to sleep, using his saddle as a pillow.

  But between his painful hip and the knowledge that two dead men lay on the cold ground just on the other side of those logs, Morgan was a long time dozing off.

  He wouldn’t have been surprised if wolves had dragged off the corpses during the night, but Rattigan and White Rock were still there the next morning. Morgan’s hip and leg were pretty sore, but he was able to get around fairly well. He hauled both bodies into the cabin, one at a time, and dumped them on the bunks. He planned to leave them there, a mystery for whoever stumbled on this cabin next.

  Although he didn’t like stealing from the dead, he needed a new gunbelt, and Rattigan wore one with a brown, buscadero-cut holster attached to it. Morgan took it off the body and tried it on. It fit fairly well around his lean hips. He slipped the Colt into the holster, worked it up and down a few times, and nodded in satisfaction. The belt and holster would do.

  He left the corral gate open as he rode away. The outlaws’ horses would have to fend for themselves. If he showed up in Trinidad with a couple of extra horses, the law might start asking too many questions.

  It was late afternoon by the time he reached the settlement. He went straight to the doctor’s house and tied the buckskin outside. When he limped into the front room, he found it empty, but voices came from the room where he had left Bearpaw the day before.

  The Paiute was propped up in bed when Morgan came in. He grinned and said, “Kid!”

  Tasmin sat in a straight chair beside the bed. She looked at Morgan and smiled in relief, but didn’t say anything.

  “Are you all right?” Bearpaw went on. His grin disappeared and was replaced by a frown as Morgan limped across the room to get another chair and pull it up beside the bed.

  “I’m fine,” Morgan said. “A little gimpy, that’s all.”

  “That’s a new gunbelt you’re wearing. A different one anyway.”

  “My old one got ruined.”

  “By a bullet?” Bearpaw didn’t wait for Morgan to answer. He continued. “What about Rattigan and White Rock?”

  “We don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  Bearpaw heaved a sigh of relief and nodded. “Good. That just leaves the three down in Texas. As soon as I’m able to travel, we’ll head down that way—”

  “I’m going now,” Morgan broke in. “Well, first thing tomorrow anyway.”

  “By yourself? You don’t need to do that, Kid.”

  Tasmin said, “You’re wasting your breath, Phillip. He’s as stubborn as a mule. He can barely walk, and he’s talking about starting to Texas tomorrow.”

  Morgan smiled faintly and pointed out, “I’m not going to walk there.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t need to take on those three by yourself,” Bearpaw insisted. “I ought to come with you.”

  “The doctor said you’d be laid up for a month.”

  “Patrick said the same thing about you. You were up and around in a couple of weeks.”

  Morgan shook his head. “I can’t wait even that long. Lasswell and Harker were going to take Moss home. There’s no telling if they stayed there in Diablito. I may have to track them somewhere else.”

  Bearpaw studied him intently for a moment, then asked, “You think you’re ready to go it alone?”

  “I went it alone yesterday,” Morgan said, “and I’m still alive.”

  Bearpaw’s head went up and down in a slow nod. “I suppose you’re right about that. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. But Lasswell’s probably the most dangerous of the whole bunch. We don’t really know about Harker and Moss.”

  “Moss is crippled.”
/>   “Doesn’t mean he’s not still dangerous. A broken-backed rattler can still sink its fangs in you, Kid.”

  Morgan didn’t want to continue this argument. He leaned forward in his chair, squeezed Bearpaw’s shoulder, and said, “I’ll see to it that all your expenses are taken care of while you recuperate, yours and Tasmin’s both. And I’ll tell you who to wire in San Francisco if you ever need anything after that. When you’re ready to travel, the two of you can head back to Sawtooth.” He smiled at Tasmin. “It’s a good place to live. You’ll be able to make a new life for yourself there.”

  “Where no one will know I used to be a whore?” she asked.

  Morgan inclined his head. “Everybody can use a fresh start now and then, I reckon.”

  “What about you, Kid? When does your fresh start come along?”

  “Not yet,” he replied, thinking about Clay Lasswell, Ezra Harker, and Vernon Moss. “Not yet.”

  He stood up. Bearpaw held up a hand and said, “Wait a minute, Kid. I can see that I’d be wasting my time trying to talk you out of this.”

  Morgan smiled again, signifying agreement.

  “I want you to take my Sharps with you,” Bearpaw went on. “One of these days, you’ll need to make a long shot, and you won’t find a sweeter rifle for it than that one.”

  “The Sharps is yours,” Morgan protested.

  “That’s right. So it’s mine to give away if I want to. Take it, Kid. Otherwise, I might just have to follow you to Texas.”

  “I’ll buy a wagon,” Tasmin said. “We can load you in it and probably travel now.”

  “The hell with that,” the Kid said sharply. “You try something crazy like that and it’s liable to kill you, Phillip.”

  “Then take the Sharps. Make a loco old redskin feel better.”

  Morgan sighed. He could see that he wasn’t going to win this argument. “All right,” he said. “If it’ll help, I’ll take the Sharps. Between that and the Winchester and my Colt, I reckon I’ll be armed for bear.”