The Loner: Book One

by J. A. Johnstone

  “My knife, too,” the Paiute said. “I want you to have it.”

  Morgan nodded. “All right.” He had already decided that he would stop at one of Trinidad’s general stores and make arrangements to have a new Sharps and the best knife they had in stock delivered to the doctor’s house for Bearpaw when he was well away from the settlement.

  “You’d better come to see me in the morning before you ride out,” Bearpaw warned.

  “I can do that…as long as you promise not to give me any more trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Bearpaw repeated with mock indignation. “More often than not, I’m the one who’s saved you from trouble.”

  “No argument there,” Morgan said. “I owe you my life several times over.”

  He left the room, saying that he needed to take his horse down to the livery stable. Tasmin followed him out onto the porch. It had warmed up quite a bit during the day, and some of the snow had melted. The rest of it would be gone in another day or two, Morgan thought.

  “Are you really all right?” Tasmin asked as they paused on the porch.

  “I’m fine,” Morgan assured her. “My hip is bruised, but that’s all.”

  “And it’ll probably be healed up by the time you reach the Rio Grande.”

  “I’m counting on that,” Morgan said.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Did you ever stop to think that all this you’re doing won’t bring her back, Kid?”

  He looked off into the distance and answered honestly.

  “Every day of my life.”

  Chapter 23

  Texas was a far cry from Colorado, in more ways than one. Over the course of several weeks, Morgan had traveled more than a thousand miles from those snow-dappled mountains to this hot, dry, dusty plain along the Rio Grande. Though autumn storms continued to bring snow and cold winds to more northern climes, weather like that seldom penetrated to this chaparral-covered border country southeast of Laredo.

  If everything he had learned since leaving Colorado was correct, the border village of Diablito was now only a mile or two ahead of him. His journey was almost at an end. That was the good news.

  The bad news was that two men were following him.

  Morgan had no idea who they were, but they had been back there for a couple of days, never coming too close, always staying far enough back to keep him in sight without crowding him. Bearpaw had taught him to watch his backtrail, and that lesson was paying off now.

  Morgan thought about trying to set up an ambush for the men following him, but he had decided that as long as they didn’t make a move against him, he would press on toward his destination. They had to have a reason for dogging his trail, and maybe he would find out what it was once he reached Diablito.

  In the meantime, and without taking his attention off what was in front of him and behind him, a portion of his thoughts drifted back to Trinidad. He would never forget the look on Bearpaw’s face as he gripped the Paiute’s hand and bade him farewell. Frank Morgan was his father, and the Kid had come to accept that. But Bearpaw was like the uncle he’d never had.

  Nor would he forget the sadness in Tasmin’s dark eyes as she stood there on the front porch of the doctor’s house, a shawl around her shoulders, her dark hair blowing in the wind. When they were standing there together on the porch, before he mounted up and rode away, she had made a move like she was about to kiss him, then stopped abruptly as if realizing that it wouldn’t do any good. It would just deepen the pain for both of them.

  “Life has damned bad timing, doesn’t it?” she had whispered.

  Morgan thought about how things might have been different, first with Eve McNally, then with Tasmin, and knew that was true. Life had damned bad timing, and there wasn’t a thing anybody could do about it.

  Nothing except ride on and look to the future, not the past.

  That is, as soon as the past was laid to rest.

  Vernon Moss wheeled himself toward the open door, groaning in pain as he did so. He didn’t figure he would ever get used to this damned chair. He was starting to think the agony from his crushed legs would never fade either. But it wasn’t quite as bad when he could sit outside in the shade of the vine-covered porch. There might be a little breeze, and maybe the young Mexican girl he paid to take care of the place would rub his useless legs through the blanket that was spread over them. Sometimes that made them feel better.

  Moss was still several feet from the door when the tall figure of a man appeared in it, dark and featureless against the bright sunlight outside. Moss took his hands off the chair’s wheels and said, “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m looking for Vernon Moss,” the stranger said.

  “You found him…or what’s left of him,” Moss said bitterly.

  “Where are Clay and Ezra?”

  The stranger sounded like he knew them. It was hard for Moss to think because of the pain in his legs, so he said, “They’ve gone down to the cantina. They’ll be back in a little while. You used to ride with them or something?”

  The man chuckled, but there wasn’t any humor in the sound. Instead, it struck Moss as something that might have come from an open grave. He didn’t know why that bizarre thought passed through his mind, but it made him shiver.

  “Started in a cantina, and now it’s going to end in one,” the stranger muttered to himself.

  Moss slipped a hand under the blanket. “Damn it, mister, I want to know who you are.”

  “You don’t remember me? From Black Rock Canyon?”

  The stranger moved a step into the room, so that Moss could see him a little better. Moss recognized his face, just like he recognized the reference to Black Rock Canyon. He would never forget that night, or the face of the man who had run him down with that buggy and crippled him for life.

  “Damn you!” Moss screamed as he jerked the pistol from under the blanket.

  The gun in his hand roared, but not before flame licked from the muzzle of the stranger’s Colt, which had appeared with blinding speed. Moss felt a giant fist punch him in the chest. The impact made the chair lurch back. The gun trickled from his fingers and fell onto the blanket. Many’s the time he had thought about taking that gun and putting the barrel in his mouth or pressing it to his temple and then pulling the trigger to put himself out of his helpless misery—but in the end, he hadn’t been able to do it. He’d been too gutless.

  Now, even though blood had begun to fill his mouth, he managed to croak, “Thank you,” to the stranger before he died. Those words, and the sudden pound of hoofbeats, were the last things Vernon Moss heard on this earth.

  Morgan whirled around as he heard the horses coming up fast behind him. Just as he had expected, the shots had drawn the men who’d been following him into the open. So he wasn’t surprised to see the two riders galloping toward him.

  He was shocked, though, that he recognized them—and they were two of the last people he would have expected to see here in this sleepy border village.

  One was tall and lanky, with a thatch of dark hair under his Stetson. The other was shorter and stockier, with a round face and sandy hair. Despite those obvious differences, they bore a distinct resemblance to each other—and to Morgan’s late wife.

  They were Rebel’s brothers, Tom and Bob Callahan.

  As surprised as Morgan was to see them, they appeared to be even more shocked to recognize him as they reined their horses to sliding halts. Bob Callahan, the shorter of the brothers, yelped, “Conrad!” Even in the gunfighter garb, they knew their brother-in-law.

  Morgan figured the fight wasn’t over. Diablito was small enough so that Lasswell and Harker would have heard those shots and might come to investigate. He replaced the spent cartridge in the Colt and slid a round into the normally empty sixth chamber. Then, as he snapped the cylinder closed, he said, “What are you boys doing here?”

  “We’ve been following you,” Tom said as he swung down from the saddle. Beside him, Bob did likewise. Tom went on. “
We picked up your trail up in the Four Corners. We were lookin’ for the bunch that kidnapped and killed Rebel. Figured if anybody was gonna settle the score for her, it’d have to be us…since as far as we knew, you’d killed yourself in Carson City.”

  Morgan nodded. “That’s what everybody was supposed to think.”

  “Then…then, damn it, you’re the mysterious gunfighter who’s been killin’ off those bastards one by one?” Bob asked in amazement.

  “We knew somebody else was after ’em,” Tom added, “but we figured it didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Rebel.”

  “It had everything to do with it,” Morgan said. “And it’s not over—”

  Before he could finish that sentence, a shot blasted from down the street. The bullet whined past his ear and thudded into the adobe wall of Moss’s house. Morgan wheeled around and spotted Lasswell and Harker splitting up, taking cover behind buildings on opposite sides of the street as they continued throwing lead at Morgan and the Callahan brothers.

  “Hunt some cover!” Morgan snapped as he triggered a shot back at Lasswell and Harker and ducked behind a corner of the adobe shack.

  Tom and Bob slapped their horses on the rump and sent the animals running out of the line of fire as they scurried for cover of their own. Slugs kicked up dust around their feet, but they made it to safety, Bob behind the house across the street, Tom behind a shed.

  Lasswell and Harker must have moseyed out of the cantina to see what the shooting was about, noticed the three men standing in front of Moss’s shack, and figured that trouble had caught up to them at last. Now it was going to be a cat-and-mouse game, the two outlaws against Morgan and his unexpected allies. Morgan had his enemies outnumbered for a change.

  He wasn’t sure he liked that. He had placed Bearpaw in danger, and the Paiute had paid the price. Tasmin had come close to dying, too. Morgan didn’t want anything to happen to Tom and Bob. They had already suffered enough, losing their sister like that.

  But he also knew that the Callahan brothers were tough, seasoned hombres who had been in more than one fight. He caught Bob’s eye across the street and gestured to him, signaling that he was going to work around behind the buildings and try to get the drop on Lasswell. Bob nodded and motioned that he and Tom would do the same with Harker.

  As Morgan moved in a crouching run behind the buildings, he hoped that the people who lived here in Diablito would keep their heads down while this little war was going on. He didn’t want any other innocents getting hurt.

  The guns had fallen silent for the moment while everyone jockeyed for position. Morgan moved carefully, using every bit of cover he could find and darting across the open areas as fast as he could. Sweat trickled down his back. His heart pounded, either from nerves or from the anticipation that his long quest would soon be over—or both. He jerked a little as shots from across the street suddenly shattered the tense silence.

  “Tom!” Bob Callahan yelled in alarm.

  Morgan’s jaw clenched. Tom must be hit, he thought. He dashed up a narrow alley between two buildings, and reached the street in time to see Ezra Harker drawing a bead on Bob as Bob tried to drag his wounded brother to safety.

  “Harker!” Morgan shouted.

  The outlaw whirled toward him. Flame stabbed from Harker’s gun. At the same time, the Colt in Morgan’s fist roared and bucked. Harker staggered, but didn’t go down. He fired again, sending shards of adobe flying as the bullet struck the corner of the house next to Morgan.

  The next second, Harker was riddled with lead as Morgan fired three more times and both Callahan brothers blazed away at him, too, even the wounded Tom, who lay propped up on one elbow as he fired with his other hand. Harker went backward in a macabre dance with blood exploding from him as the bullets ripped through him.

  In the eerie silence that fell as the thunderous echoes rolled away, Morgan heard a gun being cocked behind him.

  “That’s six,” Clay Lasswell said. “You’ve gotta be empty.”

  Lasswell didn’t realize he had replaced the bullet he had used to kill Moss, Morgan thought as he stiffened. The gunman didn’t know that there was still one round in the Colt.

  “Turn around,” Lasswell went on. “I want to see who I’m about to kill.”

  Morgan let his arm sag to his side an air of defeat. He turned slowly and faced Lasswell. The ginger-bearded gunman said, “So you’re the bastard who’s been trackin’ down those fellas who rode with me. Yeah, I know about it. I heard through the grapevine about how you killed Baggott and Hooper and Buck and Julio and the rest of ’em. What I want to know is why.”

  “Take a good look at me,” Morgan rasped. “Then you’ll know.”

  Lasswell’s eyes narrowed, then widened in shock. “Browning! But you’re supposed to be—”

  He didn’t finish. He pulled the trigger instead.

  But even as Lasswell’s finger closed on the trigger, Morgan’s gun came up again with speed the likes of which he had never achieved before. So fast that it all seemed to happen in the same shaved heartbeat, both Colts roared, Morgan felt the hot breath of a slug as it passed his ear, and Lasswell was rocked back by Morgan’s bullet driving into his body.

  Now Morgan’s gun really was empty, and he couldn’t defend himself if Lasswell got off another shot. But Lasswell didn’t fire again. He staggered to the side, then dropped his gun and fell to his knees.

  Morgan suddenly cried, “Wait! Don’t die yet!” and leaped toward him.

  Lasswell crumpled onto his left side.

  Morgan dropped to his knees as well and grabbed Lasswell’s shoulders. “Damn you, don’t die!” he said as he shook the outlaw. “Who hired you to kill my wife? Tell me!”

  Blood dribbled from the corner of Lasswell’s mouth as he looked up at Morgan with an expression that was half smile, half grimace. “You’ll…never know,” he gasped out.

  Then his head drooped to the ground and all the life went out of his body.

  Morgan looked up at the hot Texas sky and howled, “Nooooo!”

  It wasn’t over.

  Maybe it never would be.

  Four days later, wearing the fringed buckskin jacket against the dank, chilly wind coming off the Pacific, Kid Morgan walked into the San Francisco building that housed the offices of Turnbuckle and Stafford. A law clerk greeted him, saying, “Mr. Turnbuckle is expecting you, Mister, ah, Kid. He said to show you right into his office when you got here.”

  “Thanks,” Morgan said with a nod. He followed the man to a heavy door of polished, engraved wood. The clerk swung it open, and Morgan stepped inside.

  He stopped short at the sight of the two men standing by the window. Claudius Turnbuckle was a stout, balding man with bushy eyebrows and muttonchop whiskers. Morgan expected to see him. It was the other man who came as a surprise.

  “Hello, Conrad,” Frank Morgan said.

  The Drifter was a medium-sized, deceptively powerful man with graying dark hair. He wore range clothes and a holstered six-gun. He stepped forward, put his arms around his son, and gave him a hug that the Kid returned awkwardly.

  “Claudius has just been telling me what you’ve gone through these past few months,” Frank went on. “I wish I’d found out sooner. I’d have given you a hand.”

  “That’s…all right,” the Kid said. “I handled it.”

  At least, he’d handled it as much as he could, he thought.

  “I was up north in timber country. Claudius didn’t know where to find me.” Frank put a hand on the Kid’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’m so sorry about Rebel. She was as fine a gal as anybody will ever see.”

  The Kid nodded. The pain of his loss was still there inside him, as sharp as ever, but he had learned by now to keep it tamped down, to not acknowledge it unless he had to. That was the only way he could keep going.

  After the shoot-out in Diablito, he and the Callahan brothers had ridden to San Antonio, where a real doctor took over caring for the wounded Tom Callahan. Morg
an had patched him up as best he could, and the sawbones said that Tom ought to be all right. Then Morgan had sent a wire to Turnbuckle, letting him know what had happened, and gotten a speedy message in return asking him to come to San Francisco as soon as possible. He’d been able to catch a westbound Southern Pacific train in San Antonio, and now here he was in San Francisco, reunited with his father.

  “I have a particularly good bottle of brandy I’ve been saving,” Turnbuckle said. “I’ll break it out, and then we can all sit down and you can tell us what you’ve been doing, Conrad.”

  “We already know some of what he’s been doing,” Frank said with a slight smile. “Raising hell from here to Texas. I have to say, Conrad, I knew you’d changed a mite, but…” He looked the Kid over. “Maybe not this much.”

  As glad as he was to see his father, Morgan wasn’t in any mood to sit around and reminisce. He still had things to do. But he supposed he owed Frank and Turnbuckle an explanation, so he took off his hat and sat down as the lawyer suggested, accepted a snifter of brandy, and launched into a recitation of everything that had happened in the past few months. It was a dark and bloody tale, and that was reflected in the faces of Frank and Turnbuckle.

  “Is Tom going to be all right?” Frank asked when the Kid was finished.

  “I think so.”

  “What about that fella Bearpaw?”

  Morgan nodded. “I’ve already sent a wire to Tasmin and gotten one back from her saying that they’re fine. They’re still in Trinidad, but they’ll be starting back to Nevada soon. She wants me to visit them in Sawtooth…” Morgan shrugged. “But I doubt if I ever will. I still have things to do.”

  “Returning to take over the management of the Browning financial interests, you mean?” Turnbuckle asked.

  “No,” the Kid replied, not bothering to keep the harshness out of his voice. “Those days are over. Too much has happened for things to ever go back to the way they were before.”