The Loner: Trail Of Blood

by J. A. Johnstone

  “Scared of this sissy varmint? Hell, I’ll bet he’s about to piss his pants right now!”

  Conrad looked into the man’s good eye and said coldly, “Not even close. You may be if you don’t back off.” He didn’t have much patience to start with, and it had just run out.

  The man who had spoken to Rankin hooted derisively. “Dude’s got a mouth on him!”

  “Yeah,” Rankin growled, “and I intend on shuttin’ it.”

  A Kansas City police officer was probably within hearing distance of a shout for help, but Conrad didn’t call out.

  Kid Morgan stomped his own snakes.

  The clothes were different, but suddenly it was The Kid who glared defiantly at the man confronting him.

  For a second, the hardcase’s good eye widened slightly, as if he recognized the change that had come over his intended victim. But it wasn’t enough to make him change his mind about what was going to happen next. He grated a curse and swung a fist at The Kid’s head.

  Jerking his head aside The Kid hooked a punch into the hardcase’s midsection, burying a fist deep in his belly, and knocking the man’s grip loose from his coat. As the man doubled over, The Kid grabbed his shoulders and shoved him into the other troublemakers, who had started toward him with clenched fists and angry faces.

  A couple got their legs tangled up and fell on the sidewalk, but the other two closed in on The Kid. Pedestrians nearby scattered, not wanting to get in the middle of a brawl, leaving a clear space on the sidewalk around The Kid and the men attacking him.

  He ducked under a roundhouse punch, reached up and took hold of the man’s arm, and pivoted sharply at the waist in a wrestling move that sent the off-balance hardcase flying into the street with a startled yell. He came crashing down on the pavement on his back, leaving The Kid open to the other man’s attack.

  A fist grazed The Kid’s ear painfully, and another thudded into his chest. He sent a jab of his own into his opponent’s face that rocked the man’s head back. A looping blow from The Kid landed cleanly on the man’s jaw and sent him spinning to the sidewalk.

  Rankin and the other two had climbed back to their feet, and they closed in around The Kid. A fist drove into the small of his back and sent pain shooting through him. A booted foot was thrust between his ankles to trip him. He knew if he went down to the sidewalk, they could kick and stomp him to death if they wanted to.

  It appeared that was exactly what they did want. The man with the crazy eye said, “Kill the son of a bitch! You don’t get the money unless he winds up dead!”

  Chapter 19

  That changed everything.

  The Kid knew instantly—it wasn’t a random encounter with some toughs eager to push somebody around. It was an ambush by hired killers who had been waiting for him to return to the hotel.

  It also told The Kid several other things, but he didn’t have time to ponder them. He devoted all his attention to not winding up dead.

  His hands shot out and grabbed the shirtfronts of two men to keep himself from falling. Braced that way, he lifted a leg and slammed a savage kick into the groin of the third man. The man screamed and doubled over, clutching at himself. That cut down the odds by one.

  The Kid lowered his head and hunkered his shoulders so he could more easily shrug off the blows that rained down on him. He bulled forward, forcing the two men he had hold of to stumble back toward the building behind them. He ran them into the wall hard enough to make the back of their heads bounce off the bricks. The impact was enough to stun them and put them out of the fight for a few moments.

  When The Kid whipped around toward the two men in the street who were back on their feet, he saw them clawing at the guns on their hips. The pretense of making it look like a casual encounter and a simple fight turned deadly was over. It was outright attempted murder now.

  The two Colt Lightnings were in the shoulder holsters under his arms. He couldn’t draw them from there as quickly as he could if they had been in the cross-draw rig belted around his waist. Because of that, both of the would-be killers cleared leather first. Shots blasted from them as The Kid shucked his irons. A slug whined past his ear and splattered against the brick wall behind him. The Lightnings flashed .38 caliber death in return.

  One of the men dropped his revolver and clutched at his bullet-torn throat as crimson welled from it. The other man staggered as The Kid’s bullet drove into his chest, but he stayed on his feet and kept shooting. The Kid went to a knee and triggered both guns again, aiming at the remaining hardcase’s belly. The man bent forward as the slugs punched into his gut. His gun exploded one more time as his hand clenched on it spasmodically, but the bullet smacked into the sidewalk between him and The Kid.

  People down the street were yelling in alarm over the shots. The Kid heard someone moan behind him, sending him surging to his feet. He whirled around with the Lightnings leveled and saw that one of the men he had run into the wall was down on the sidewalk, writhing in pain. The Kid guessed instantly that one of the bullets aimed at him had missed, and struck that man instead.

  The wounded man suddenly stiffened, and his breath came out of him in a long sigh that turned into an ugly rattle. The hardcases had succeeded in killing someone, but the dead man was one of their own.

  With whistles shrilling and guns drawn, a couple of Kansas City police officers charged toward the scene. The Kid knew they would be there in mere moments, so he moved quickly, stepping over to the only one of the hardcases who was relatively unhurt. The man stood against the wall of the building, eyes wide with fear.

  They widened more when The Kid put the barrel of a Lightning under his chin and asked in a low, hard voice, “Who hired you?”

  “R-Rankin!” the man answered without hesitation.

  The one with the loco wandering eye, The Kid recalled. He glanced around. Rankin was the man he’d shot in the throat. He wouldn’t be answering any questions even if he weren’t dead … which he damn sure was.

  “Why?” The Kid demanded. “Why did he want me dead?”

  The man swallowed as best he could with the barrel of The Kid’s gun digging painfully into his neck. “I-I dunno.” He tried to shake his head. “I swear I don’t, mister. He just rounded up a few boys he knew and said he had a-a job for us. Said there was a man who … who needed to wind up dead.”

  “You don’t know who I am, or why Rankin wanted to kill me?”

  “I got no idea, I swear.”

  Before The Kid could say anything else, a loud, harsh voice ordered, “Get away from that man and drop those guns! Do it or we’ll shoot!”

  The Kid didn’t have to look around to know the police had arrived. He knew they would make good on their threat. He stepped back, bent over, and carefully placed the Lightnings on the sidewalk. He didn’t want to take a chance on damaging the guns by dropping them.

  He knew he wouldn’t be able to ask any more questions of the two survivors from the gang that had tried to kill him, but that didn’t really matter.

  He knew somebody else he could ask, just as soon as he got the chance.

  The soft yellow glow of lamplight through a window guided The Kid through the dark night. He rode the big black gelding he had bought that afternoon. The horse’s hoofbeats were enough to alert the dogs. They came charging out from under the farmhouse’s porch. The black shied a little, spooking as the curs clustered around and barked furiously. The Kid brought the horse under control with a firm hand on the reins and waited.

  Not for long. He saw the light in the window go out abruptly, then a second later the door swung back just enough to allow the barrel of a rifle to be thrust out. “Who … who’s there?” a quavery old voice asked.

  “I think you know the answer to that, Mr. Potter,” The Kid called.

  He was ready for the reaction he got. Muzzle flame lanced through the darkness as the rifle cracked. The Kid didn’t know where the bullet went, but it didn’t come anywhere close to him. He had figured that accurate shooti
ng in the darkness would be more than the old, terrified retired stationmaster could manage.

  Drawing his gun—not one of the .38 caliber Lightnings but rather the Colt .45 he wore in a holster on his hip—The Kid sent the black surging forward, scattering the dogs. When he was close enough he left the saddle in a leap that carried him to the porch as the horse veered away.

  By the time The Kid’s boots hit the boards of the porch, Potter had managed to work the rifle’s lever. The Kid crouched low and drove a shoulder against the door. It banged inward, crashing into Potter and knocking the old man backward. He fired again, but the shot went wild.

  Normally The Kid wouldn’t be too rough with an old-timer like Potter, but the retired station-master had tried to have him killed. The Kid dropped to a knee beside Potter and grabbed the Winchester with his free hand, wrenching it out of the old man’s grip. Then he said, “You’d better be careful with that shotgun, Sara Beth. You shoot me and you’ll blow the hell out of your husband with it, too.”

  He saw the pale blur of her dress on the other side of the shabby living room. He couldn’t see the greener but thought there was a good chance she was pointing it at him.

  His hunch was confirmed by the way she asked, “Why shouldn’t I? The old buzzard ain’t much use to me. Most of the time he can’t even—”

  A groan came from Potter, cutting across her words.

  “Anyway,” Sara Beth went on, “if he’s dead, this place would belong to me.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you want,” The Kid said mockingly. “A hardscrabble farm that the bank’s going to take away from you sooner or later anyway.”

  “You shut up!” she snapped. “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “I know more than you think I do. I know he took Pamela Tarleton’s money so he could buy this farm and ask you to marry him. I know you’re the granddaughter of an old friend of his and he’s been lusting after you ever since you started sprouting. I found out a lot about both of you this evening after the men he sent to kill me didn’t do their job.”

  From the floor, Potter rasped, “I didn’t … didn’t send them to kill you. I didn’t know what Rankin was gonna do. I just went to see him and … and told him you were the man Miss Tarleton said might come after her. That’s what she paid me to do, three years ago. I reckon she … she must’ve paid him, too.”

  “Spill it all,” The Kid ordered. “Did she tell you to be so cooperative with me if I showed up and started asking questions? Did she pay you to lie to me about where she went?”

  “No! No, it was the truth, the God’s honest truth!”

  The Kid took hold of the nightshirt Potter was wearing and hauled the old man into a sitting position. “Keep talking.”

  “Sara Beth, put that shotgun away and strike a light,” Potter said.

  With obvious reluctance, she did so, scratching a lucifer to life a moment later. She lit the lamp that one of them had blown out a few minutes earlier. As its glow filled the room, The Kid saw that she was dressed for bed, too, in a long nightgown that repeated washings has faded from blue to almost white.

  Potter rubbed a lump on his forehead where the door had hit him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Browning. I never meant for you to get hurt.”

  “What did you think Rankin and his hired guns were going to do?”

  The old-timer grimaced. “I … Well, I just tried not to think too much about that. I surely did.” He looked at The Kid and his bushy eyebrows rose in surprise, as if he had just noticed what the visitor was wearing.

  The tweed suit of Conrad Morgan had been replaced by high-topped black boots, black whipcord trousers, a soft buckskin shirt that was open at the throat, and a flat-crowned black Stetson with a concho-studded band. It was the gunfighter Kid Morgan who hunkered next to Potter, a heavy .45 revolver held with deceptively lethal casualness in his hand. “Tell me the whole thing.”

  Potter rasped his tongue over dry lips. “Everything I told you was true. Miss Tarleton and the other lady and the babies showed up in Kansas City. I helped ’em out because they missed their connection. It was Miss Tarleton who told me where they were going, just like I told you. And she said … she said you might come looking for them someday.”

  “What did she want you to do if I showed up?” The Kid asked.

  “Just what I did. Tell you the truth. But … there was something else.”

  “Go find Rankin and tell him I was in town and on Pamela’s trail?”

  Potter swallowed and nodded. “Yeah. She paid me, paid me well, to do both those things. So I did. And she said, once I had done it, if I sent a wire to a man in Boston and told him what I’d done, he’d see to it that I got some more money for my trouble.” A whining note entered the old-timer’s voice. “I really need that money, Mr. Browning. This farm ain’t been near as successful as I thought it would be, and it’s hard work.”

  Sara Beth snorted. “He wouldn’t know how hard it is. He makes me do most of the work.”

  “Well, you’re young and strong,” Potter muttered without looking at his wife.

  The Kid didn’t care about the problems between them. “What’s the name of the man you were supposed to get in touch with in Boston?”

  “D-Davenport. Willard Davenport.” Potter hesitated. “I already sent the wire to him.”

  “To collect your blood money,” The Kid snapped.

  Potter winced as if he thought The Kid was going to hit him … or shoot him. “I didn’t know,” he insisted. “I didn’t know what was gonna happen.”

  Maybe in the strictest sense, the old man was telling the truth. He had to have guessed, though, that whatever Pamela had planned for Conrad Browning wouldn’t be anything good.

  Despite that, Potter had given him a lot to think about, and The Kid was grateful for that. The pieces of Pamela’s plan were falling into place.

  “I-I’d like to make it up to you,” Potter went on. He nodded toward the blond girl on the other side of the room. “Why don’t you and Sara Beth go into the bedroom for a while? She … she won’t mind, and I’m sure you could do her a hell of a lot more good than I ever could.”

  The sour taste of disgust rose in The Kid’s mouth, and it grew stronger when he glanced at the girl and saw the look of interest, even avarice, that sprang up in Sara Beth’s eyes.

  “Forget it,” he said. “That’s not going to happen.”

  Sara Beth made a little sound of disappointment.

  “What are you gonna do to me?” Potter asked in obvious fear.

  The Kid straightened to his feet and slipped the Colt back into leather. “If you’ve told me the truth, nothing. But if I find out you’ve lied to me, I’ll be back to see you one of these days. Until then, you can live with your own greed and misery. I’ve heard Davenport’s name. He’s a lawyer in Boston. He’ll probably send you the money Pamela promised you.” The Kid shook his head. “I don’t think it’s going to make any real difference.”

  Potter swallowed again. “That’s because you got plenty of money, Mr. Browning, and always have. You don’t know what it’s like. You just don’t.”

  The Kid thought about everything he had lost, everything he had struggled, and was still struggling, to get back. “Nobody does, Potter. Nobody does.”

  Chapter 20

  During the ride back to Kansas City, The Kid thought hard about everything he had learned.

  After the shootout on the street near the Cattleman’s Hotel, the police had taken him into custody and questioned him about the attempt on his life. Enough witnesses to the incident had spoken up that there was no question about his actions being self-defense.

  The Kid hadn’t told the police the ruckus was deliberate on the part of Rankin and the other men. He let them think it was an ugly fight that had spiraled out of control into deadly violence. The fact that all five men had bad reputations had helped convince the authorities. Rankin was well-known as a troublemaker, and he was suspected of being involved in bank robberies and train holdu
ps in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.

  Just the sort of man Pamela Tarleton would hire to carry out a killing, The Kid mused. He had no doubt she had promised Rankin more money once Conrad Browning was dead. Rankin had probably had instructions to get in touch with Willard Davenport, too.

  Maybe Pamela had told Eddie Murtagh the same thing, as well as Dr. Vernon Futrelle. The lure of an extra payoff would have been necessary to insure the men did exactly what Pamela wanted them to do.

  The Kid couldn’t help but wonder how many other men between there and San Francisco had received similar instructions from Pamela Tarleton.

  He was convinced Potter had told him the truth that afternoon. Pamela really had been headed for San Francisco when she came through Kansas City with her maid and the two children. She had wanted Conrad to know that. She was deliberately leaving a trail he could follow, luring him farther and farther west.

  At the same time, she had set up traps along the way, like the one with Rankin. The point of the whole thing was to torment Conrad. If he fell victim to one of the ambushes, then Pamela would have her revenge that way. But if he survived, as he had so far, he would continue to be tormented by the knowledge that she had stolen his children away from him. The whole thing was a two-edged sword, and it was one of the most diabolical schemes he had ever encountered.

  What made it even more impressive, in its own macabre way, was that it was actually a contingency plan on Pamela’s part. The main thrust of her vengeance had been Rebel’s kidnapping and murder, along with the attempts to kill The Kid after that.

  There were no limits to her evil, he thought. She had come up with ways to torture him from beyond the grave.

  When he got back to the hotel, he would send wires to Charles Harcourt and Jack Mallory, asking them to investigate Willard Davenport and his dealings. It would be a long shot, but maybe they could find out something about other traps that might be waiting for him somewhere up ahead on Pamela’s trail.