The Loner: Dead Man’s Gold

by J. A. Johnstone

  “Should I move that gun out of your reach,” he asked her, “or do you know who I am now?”

  “I don’t…know who you are.”

  “But you know I’m not Fortunato.”

  “Of course…you’re not…Fortunato. What do you…mean by that?”

  The old man leaned in and said, “A few minutes ago, you mistook our young benefactor here for that Italian brigand.”

  “Really?” Annabelle murmured.

  “Yeah, you threatened to blow my guts out,” The Kid said with a smile. “You sounded like you meant it, too.”

  “Oh, my God.” She closed her eyes. “I…I’m sorry. I must have been out of my head.”

  The Kid nodded. “Getting shot will do that to some people. You lost some blood, too. Though not enough to worry about.”

  She opened her eyes and looked around. “Where…are we?”

  “Some hills near those flats where Fortunato’s men were chasing you,” The Kid told her. “I reckon you’re safe here for the moment. They can’t cross those flats without us seeing them.”

  “Fortunato won’t come after us this soon, anyway,” Annabelle said. Her voice was a little stronger now. “You killed two of his men and wounded another. As far as I know, he doesn’t have anyone else with him except a servant.” A bitter edge came into her tone. “But it won’t take him long to recruit some more gunmen to send after us.”

  The Kid sensed that she was still waiting for him to ask for an explanation. Maybe he was just contrary, but he didn’t do it. Instead, he told the old man, “I’ll need some clean cloth to bind up this wound.”

  He nodded. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  While the old man was doing that, Annabelle said to The Kid, “You haven’t told me who you are.”

  “Just a fella with a bad habit of sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Well…I’m glad you stuck it in today.”

  “Is that your way of saying thank you?”

  “I suppose we do owe you our thanks. If you hadn’t come along and helped us, we might be dead now.” A shudder ran through her. “Or worse, Fortunato’s prisoners.”

  The Kid sighed. She wasn’t going to stop until she got what she wanted. He asked, “Who is this Fortunato hombre?”

  “Count Eduardo Fortunato. He’s an Italian nobleman.”

  “The old fellow called him a brigand, so I figured he was an owlhoot of some sort.”

  “Oh, he’s a criminal, all right,” Annabelle said. “Being of noble birth doesn’t necessarily make a person honest. He’s looted art treasures from all over the Continent.” She added condescendingly, “I’m referring to Europe.”

  “Oh,” The Kid said.

  He didn’t mention that as a younger man, he had spent several months touring Europe one summer, visiting every museum and historical site and soaking up the culture. That was the accepted thing for wealthy young Americans of a certain class to do. His late mother, Vivian Browning, had had her feet planted firmly on the ground and was as unpretentious as could be, but she had also believed that it wouldn’t hurt anything for her son to be exposed to some of the finer things in life.

  “Fortunato will resort to any means to get what he wants, including murder,” Annabelle went on. “It’s rumored that he was involved in a robbery at the Louvre several years ago. The men who actually carried out the theft all wound up dead, and the paintings they took were never recovered. I’m certain they’re hanging on the walls of Fortunato’s villa.”

  “Sounds like a pretty bad hombre,” The Kid said, not mentioning that he had been to the Louvre himself. She probably wouldn’t believe him, anyway. “What’s he doing over here in the States?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Konigsberg Candlestick?” Before The Kid could answer, Annabelle waved a hand dismissively. “No, of course you haven’t. It’s a very valuable artifact that was stolen from a castle in Spain more than two hundred years ago. The castle was being used by the Spanish Inquisition as a place to hold prisoners and conduct trials. The candlestick was in a chapel inside the castle and was the property of the Catholic Church. It was stolen by an escaping prisoner and never seen again, although there were rumors that the prisoner fled to the New World, taking the candlestick with him.”

  The old man came up with several strips of clean cloth. The Kid nodded toward him and said to Annabelle, “So you and your pa are on the trail of this fancy candlestick, is that it?”

  Annabelle frowned. “My what?”

  “Your father. The old-timer here.”

  Her frown deepened as she shook her head. “He’s not my father.”

  The old man sighed and said, “I’m afraid I may have misled you slightly, my son.”

  “He’s Father Jardine,” Annabelle said. “He’s been sent by the Vatican to recover the Konigsberg Candlestick…and another artifact the prisoner may have taken with him.”

  The Kid sat back on his heels in surprise. “If he’s a priest, then who are you?”

  “Dr. Annabelle Dare.”

  The Kid raised his eyebrows. “Doctor?”

  “Ph.D in History from Yale University, thank you.” She moved her injured arm slightly and winced. “I believe you said you were going to bind up this wound?”

  “Yeah. See if you can sit up.”

  With Father Jardine’s help, Annabelle did so. Her face paled in pain, making the scattering of freckles across her nose more noticeable. The Kid knelt beside her and wrapped the makeshift bandages around her arm, pulling them tight enough to make her wince again.

  “Do they have to be that tight?” she asked.

  “The bleeding’s stopped. You don’t want it to start up again.”

  “No, I suppose not.” She moved her arm a little, as if checking to see how bad it was going to hurt. Then she said, “You still haven’t told me your name.”

  “It’s Morgan.”

  “Is that your first name or your last name?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Some people call me The Kid, or Kid Morgan, so I guess you could say it’s my last name.”

  Actually, he had given himself that name, taking the inspiration for it from a dime novel. He had assumed that identity to conceal who he actually was, and in time, the pose had become the reality. He had no intention of going back to being the man he’d been before.

  “Kid Morgan?” Annabelle repeated, and the mocking tone in her voice put The Kid’s teeth on edge for a second. “That sounds like the name of some sort of desperado or gunfighter.”

  The Kid shrugged and didn’t say anything.

  “Wait a minute,” Annabelle said as wariness sprang up in her eyes. “Are you an outlaw, Mr. Morgan?”

  He knew what she was worried about. She had been so anxious to blather on about wicked Italian counts and valuable old candlesticks that she might have revealed too much to the wrong man. After all, they had never seen him until an hour or so earlier and had no idea what he was capable of. He might kill them both and go after the Konigsberg Candlestick himself, or he might try to sell them out to Fortunato…

  “I’m not an outlaw,” he said. Whether or not she wanted to believe him was up to her.

  Evidently she did, because she looked relieved. Then she said, “Then you must be a gunfighter.”

  The Kid didn’t deny it. That was the reputation Kid Morgan had, and he supposed there was some truth to it.

  Annabelle leaned forward suddenly and clasped his arm with her right hand. “If you’re a gunfighter, Mr. Morgan…Kid…then I want to hire you.”

  “Hire me? To do what?”

  “To kill Eduardo Fortunato,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  The Kid felt a cold surge of anger inside him. This was the sort of thing that his father had been putting up with for years, he thought. Just because Frank Morgan had a reputation for being fast on the draw, most people believed that he could be hired to gun down anyone. That he was just a killing machine, a handy tool for whoever had the right price
.

  “You’ve got me mixed up with somebody else,” The Kid said tightly, making an effort to keep his anger under control. “I’m not an assassin.”

  “But…I thought—”

  “You thought wrong.”

  Annabelle shook her head. “Then I apologize. I meant no offense, Mr. Morgan. The way you helped us made me think you were the kind of man who seeks adventure, and then when you admitted that you’re a gunfighter as well…” She shrugged her right shoulder, being careful not to move the left one and make her wounded arm hurt worse. “It was a natural enough mistake.”

  If she wanted to believe that to make herself feel better, The Kid didn’t care. He stood up. “This’ll be a good spot for you to camp. I’ll help the padre tend to the horses, and then I’ll be moving on.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re not going to stay here tonight, too?”

  “No, I reckon I’ll get on about my business…which doesn’t include killing Italian noblemen.”

  Annabelle’s mouth tightened into an angry line. “I suppose I deserved that,” she snapped. “You can at least help me to my feet and give me back my gun before you go.”

  “I said I’d help with the horses, too,” The Kid responded as he reached down, grasped her upraised hand, and pulled her to her feet. Then he picked up her gun and extended it to her butt-first. It was a double-action Smith & Wesson .38, he noted with approval, small enough for a woman to handle without too much trouble, especially if she practiced with it, but a heavy enough caliber to have some stopping power, too.

  She took the weapon and slid it back into its brown leather holster. Then she stood and watched in silence as The Kid helped Father Jardine unhitch the team from the wagon. They hobbled the horses to keep them from wandering off, but the animals could still drink freely from the pool and graze on the grass that grew on its banks.

  “You must forgive Annabelle, my son,” the priest said quietly when he and The Kid paused on the other side of the wagon. “She means well, she truly does, but she has little patience and our mission is very important to her.”

  “What’s in it for her?” The Kid asked. “If you recover this fancy candlestick for the Church, what does she get out of it?”

  “It was her research that led me here. Tell me, Mr. Morgan, have you ever heard of the Jornada del Muerto?”

  The Kid nodded. “It’s a stretch of badlands north of here a ways, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, but its name means Journey of the Dead Man.”

  “So?”

  “Have you any idea how it got that name?”

  “Not really,” The Kid replied with a shrug. “I suppose it’s because the place is so hot and dry, it’ll kill you if you try to cross it.”

  “Many years ago…two centuries ago, in fact…one such man did try to cross it. Unwisely, as it turned out, because he died before he reached the other side. His name was Albrecht Konigsberg.”

  The Kid smiled. “The man with the candlestick?”

  “Exactly. He escaped from the Inquisition in Spain and came here to this land. I suspect that he stole the candlestick thinking that he could use it to pay his way to the New World. It was made of gold, after all, and decorated with fine gems. Somehow, though, he managed to hang on to it. Annabelle set out to trace his movements. She spent three years in Mexico doing so, pouring over endless piles of old government and Church documents. She was able to find a record of his arrival in Vera Cruz, and from there she traced him to Mexico City, where he was able to take on a new identity and serve as an advisor to the viceroy in charge of what was then New Spain. Konigsberg was a scientist, you see, an astronomer and astrologer who knew a great deal about the stars. But eventually his past caught up with him. Agents of the Inquisition found him, and he had to flee, taking the candlestick with him once again.”

  “So he ran north,” The Kid guessed, “into what’s now New Mexico Territory.”

  Father Jardine nodded solemnly. “Yes. He hid himself again by assuming a new identity as a trader known as El Aleman. However, his enemies ferreted him out after a time and he was forced to flee yet again. This time, his luck finally deserted him. With an Indian servant, he started across what is now known as the Jornada del Muerto but never reached the other side. There is a story about how an Indian near death stumbled into a mission and told stories of his master, a German who possessed a great treasure and hid it somewhere in the wasteland. But this was during the time soon after the Pueblo rebellion, when there was still much trouble with the Indians, and the priests and the soldiers at the mission had no time to see if the man’s story was true. Eventually it was forgotten. But the story was still there, in the faded records of the mission that now reside in Mexico City.”

  The Kid ran a thumbnail along his jaw. “So when Miss Dare figured all this out, she got in touch with the Church authorities and told them she thought she knew where the candlestick ended up?”

  “That is right. And the Vatican…sent me. The loss of what has come to be called the Konigsberg Candlestick has never been forgotten…or forgiven.”

  The Kid thought they might have picked somebody more suited to come all the way to New Mexico Territory and search for the missing artifact, but he supposed Father Jardine might be tougher than he looked.

  “I reckon this Count Fortunato must have some spies who heard about the whole thing?”

  “Fortunato has spies everywhere, even, although I hate to say it, in the Holy City.”

  “And he wants it for himself.”

  Father Jardine spread his hands. “For some men, their greed is so overpowering that it blots out everything else, including whatever decency they might have.”

  The Kid nodded slowly. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, then.”

  “Indeed we do. I hope you have a better understanding now, my son, of why Annabelle sought your help in this matter.”

  “I reckon so, but it doesn’t really change anything—”

  Annabelle came around the wagon, her eyes alight with suspicion. “What are the two of you whispering about around here?” she demanded.

  “I was merely thanking Mr. Morgan for his kind assistance so far,” Father Jardine said blandly. He smiled at The Kid, clearly leaving it up to him what he would do next.

  The Kid didn’t have to think very long about that. “Good luck to both of you,” he said. He walked around the wagon to where the buckskin stood with his reins dangling, contentedly cropping at the grass.

  “You’re really leaving?” Annabelle said as she and the priest followed him.

  “Yep.” The Kid glanced at the sky as he picked up the reins. There was only about an hour of daylight left. “If you haven’t been standing guard at night, it’d probably be a good idea if you started. There’s more out here to worry about than just Fortunato.”

  “You mean mountain lions, things like that?”

  The Kid swung up into the saddle. “Yeah, and some two-legged predators, too. There are still owlhoots and banditos in these parts.”

  “I thought the West was civilized now.”

  “You thought wrong,” The Kid told her.

  With that he turned and rode away, heading higher into the hills, leaving Annabelle to glare after him.

  The whole thing was like something out of a storybook, he thought that night as he stretched out on a flat slab of rock, lying on his belly with the Winchester beside him.

  The Spanish Inquisition, for God’s sake!—so to speak. A golden candlestick studded with gems, a desperate escape, a dying man with a fabulous story…The Kid was a little surprised that the candlestick wasn’t supposed to have a curse on it. That was about the only thing missing from that loco yarn.

  Although, he mused, if the story was true, Albrecht Konigsberg had wound up dying in a terrible wasteland and being immortalized by having it named after him—the Dead Man. Maybe that was curse enough.

  Even though several hours had passed since sundown, the rock slab still retained some of
the day’s heat. It was warm underneath The Kid, but not all that comfortable. It was perfectly positioned, though, for him to keep an eye on the campsite a couple of hundred yards below him at the bottom of the hill. Annabelle and Father Jardine had built a pretty big fire, and he could see them moving around it. They might as well have erected a giant arrow pointing to them. Anybody out on the flats, or even in the hills on the far side, could see that fire and know exactly where they were.

  Earlier, The Kid had ridden well out of sight, then stopped long enough to build a small, almost smokeless fire to boil some coffee and cook his supper. He had eaten and put the fire out before darkness settled down over the landscape. Then he had mounted up and moved back down to this place so that he could keep an eye on the two pilgrims.

  Somebody needed to look out for them, that was for damned sure. Like he had told them, Fortunato wasn’t their only problem. He didn’t think they stood a chance in hell of going up into the Jornada del Muerto by themselves and coming out alive. The Kid had never been through there himself, but he recalled hearing his father talk about it. Hard country, Frank Morgan had said. And if that’s what the man called The Drifter thought, then, brother, that country was hard!

  Chances were, Annabelle Dare and Father Jardine would die of thirst or be killed by outlaws even if Fortunato and his men didn’t catch up to them. Unless somebody went along with them who knew what he was doing.

  “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” The Kid said under his breath. He was talking himself into it. He had ridden away from their camp knowing that he was going to watch out for them tonight, but now he was persuading himself to make it a full-time job.

  If he did, he’d just be beating Rebel to the punch. If he tried to abandon them, he knew good and well he’d have her ghost whispering in his ear.

  He saw a shadow move, out on the flats. His hand went to the rifle next to him, drew it closer. A savage grin tugged at his mouth.

  Come on, he thought. Let’s see who you are before I kill you.