Burning

by William W. Johnstone

  “What the hell’s goin’ on here?” the owner of the Diamond spread demanded, reining up in the middle of the street.

  Frank looked at the men who rode in with the rancher. He knew one of them: Matt Kingston. Matt met Frank’s eyes and nodded his head in recognition.

  “Are you starting trouble again, Paul?” Rogers asked, turning his attention to the farmer.

  “No, he isn’t,” Frank said, verbally stepping in. “Your hired gun braced me.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Rogers asked.

  “That’s Frank Morgan,” Matt said softly.

  Rogers slowly twisted in the saddle, settling his gaze fully on Frank. “Well, well,” he said. “The sodbusters went out and hired themselves a real wolf, hey?”

  “Nobody hired me,” Frank said. “I was passing through this area and needed supplies and a hot meal. Nothing more than that.”

  “You say,” Roger said doubtingly.

  “That’s right,” Frank said, coming right back at the man. “I damn sure do say.” Frank was getting a bit hot under the collar at having his word disputed. “And if you have something else to say about that, get your big fat ass out of that saddle and say it to my face. Don’t sit up there like some two-bit potentate, hiding behind your hired guns.”

  Rogers blinked a couple of times at that. He was not accustomed to people speaking to him in such a manner.

  “What the hell’s a poo-tentate?” a farmer standing behind Frank whispered.

  “Damned if I know,” another farmer said. “Sounds like something awful to me.”

  “You’re got a damn smart mouth on you, Morgan,” Rogers said.

  “Let me take care of him, Mr. Rogers,” one of hired guns said.

  Matt Kingston laughed aloud at that. “Shut up, Sonny. The West is full of tinhorns like you that Frank Morgan has chewed up and spat out.” He looked at Frank. “How you doin,’ Drifter?”

  “Fair to middlin’, Matt. Haven’t seen you in quite a while.”

  “I’m bleedin’ and hurtin’,” Rick hollered. “Ain’t nobody gonna see ’bout me?”

  “Nobody gives a damn about you, Rick,” Matt said. “Pour some whiskey on what’s left of your hand and shut up.”

  “That ain’t no way to talk to a friend,” Rick said sullenly.

  “Who said we were friends?” Matt replied. He looked at Mark Rogers. “If Frank Morgan says his gun ain’t for hire, boss, it ain’t for hire.”

  The rancher nodded his head curtly. “All right.” He looked at Frank. “See that you don’t tarry in this area, Morgan.”

  “Rogers,” Frank said, “I’ll stay around here as long as I damn well choose to stay. And if you don’t like it, you can go sit on a cactus.”

  Again Rogers blinked at Frank’s words. A flush began creeping slowly over the man’s neck and face. His hired guns tensed in their saddles, their hands dropping near their guns.

  “When your boys draw, Rogers,” Frank said, “I’ll kill you first.”

  “Hold it, boys,” Rogers said quickly. “Just take it easy.” He cut his eyes to Frank. “I’ll say this, Morgan, and you’d better pay heed to my words. Don’t ever cross Diamond range.”

  Frank stared at the man and said nothing.

  “Get your horse, Rick,” Rogers told the man. “We’ll fix you up back at the ranch.”

  Frank watched Rogers and his crew ride out of town. Then he stood on the boardwalk and calmly rolled a cigarette.

  “I never seen a man shuck a pistol out of leather that fast in all my life,” John Platt said from the end of the boardwalk.

  The farmers and their families all stood in silent awe, looking at Frank. Claude broke the silence. “And I never heard anyone speak to Mark Rogers like that.”

  “You made an enemy for sure, Mr. Morgan,” Dan Jones said. “And he won’t forget neither.”

  Frank looked back at the man. “Man needs to be taken down a peg or two. Is the owner of the other big spread as bad as Rogers?”

  “Worse,” Hugh Watson said.

  “I thought Rick Handy was slick with a short gun,” John Platt said. “But he just barely cleared leather ’fore you shot him, Frank. And you let him hook and draw first.” He shook his head. “I swear, I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that.”

  “What happens now?” Paul Adams questioned.

  Frank tossed the butt of his cigarette into a mud puddle. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to get me a cup of coffee.”

  Frank ambled toward the saloon, which was now almost deserted. He entered the batwings and stopped by the bar to tell the barman he wanted a cup of coffee.

  The bartender sneered, until the other man behind the bar sidled over to whisper to him that this was the man who blew Rick Handy’s finger plumb off. After that short conversation, the barman smiled sickly and said, “I’ll be glad to bring it on over to your table, Mr. Morgan, and will there be anything else I can get you?”

  Frank shook his head and moved over to a corner table, where he could sit with his back to a wall and face the front entrance. When he sat down, he noticed a tattered booklet lying on an empty chair against the wall next to his seat. He leaned over and picked it up, smiling when he recognized the same paperback book that he’d started a few days ago but never finished.

  After the barman set his coffee on the table along with a bowl of sugar and a small pitcher of fresh cream, Frank opened the book and thumbed through the pages until he came to the place where he’d stopped reading.

  Dangerous Dan Murdock was on his knees, hollering at Frank Morgan and Sweet Sue that he would get them for what they’d done to him.

  Frank leaned back his head and laughed out loud. The other night, when he’d first read how the fictional Frank Morgan had shot the gun out of the desperado’s hand, he’d thought how stupid that was. Everyone who’d ever been in a gunfight knew that in real life you never tried to shoot a man’s gun hand; the target was just too small. You always aimed at the biggest, thickest part of your target, the chest. That way, if you happened to be a little high or low or off to one side, with any luck you’d still down the man before he could do the same to you.

  Frank shook his head and smirked. Funny how real life had imitated the fictional one in the book. Here he was, just out of a gunfight in which he’d actually been stupid enough to do exactly what Ned Buntline, or Edward Judson, had his hero doing in the penny dreadful—shooting a gun out of the hand of a man who was doing his level best to kill him. Course, I had a damn good reason for not killing Handy, Frank thought wryly. If I’d blown a hole in him the size of a fist, ten other of his cronies would’ve drawn and shot me down ’fore I could blink. As it was, my only chance of comin’ out of that little fracas alive was to do exactly what I did, shoot Handy but leave him standing.

  He sipped his coffee and read the next few pages of Dangerous Dan’s story....

  After Frank Morgan and Sweet Sue left, Dangerous Dan Murdock got to his feet and went to the doctor’s office down the street. After a brief examination, the doctor declared that miraculously no bones were broken and other than probably having some swelling and bruising over the next few days, Dangerous Dan was none the worse for what had happened to him.

  Dangerous Dan returned to the saloon, intending to drown his sorrows in more whiskey, but he noticed that the other patrons were looking at him and smiling, and he was sure they would be laughing behind his back from now on because of what that bastard Morgan had done to him.

  He gulped his drink, and slammed the shot glass down on the bar so hard it shattered, before grabbing his hat and stalking out of the saloon, to the sound of muted snickers and laughing behind him.

  He flexed his right hand as he walked, noting how stiff and sore it was. He realized it would be days or weeks before it was well enough for him to even think about going up against Frank Morgan again, at least with a short gun.

  As he walked past the nicest restaurant in town, he glanced in the window and saw Frank
Morgan and Sweet Sue sitting at a table, all cozy-like, having a meal and laughing together. Dangerous Dan was sure they were laughing at him, and it made him furious.

  “I’ll get that son of a gun,” he muttered to himself, and stalked off toward the gunsmith’s shop on the next corner.

  He stormed through the door, went directly to a shelf on a far wall, and took down a ten-gauge express gun—a double-barreled shotgun with the barrels cut down short so the shot would spread more rapidly. It was a devastating weapon at close range, and didn’t take a great deal of skill to hit just about anything within thirty yards.

  Dangerous Dan placed the shotgun on the counter and told the proprietor to give him a box of double-aught buckshot. “’Cause I got me a varmint I gotta kill.”

  “That buckshot’s an awfully heavy load for shooting varmints, mister,” the proprietor said as he pulled a box off the shelf behind the counter.

  “This is a right big varmint,” Dangerous Dan answered with a chuckle at his joke.

  Uh-oh, Frank Morgan thought as he thumbed the page and took another sip of his coffee, getting drawn into the story in spite of his derision of the author moments before. I wonder how Judson’s gonna get his hero outta this mess. An express gun loaded with 00-buckshot is one of the meanest weapons in the world, Frank thought, remembering with some roiling of his gut the few times he’d been up against men armed with such weapons.

  As soon as he was outside the store, Dangerous Dan broke open the box of shells, put one in each of the twin barrels of the sawed-off shotgun, and filled his pockets with the remaining shells. With a flick of his wrist, he snapped the barrels shut and walked toward the restaurant with the gun cradled in his arms, smiling to himself at the mental image of Frank Morgan shredded and torn apart by the buckshot.

  Frank Morgan and Sweet Sue sat in the restaurant, Frank drinking coffee while the young woman drank tea. “Mr. Morgan, I want to thank you once again for saving me from that ruffian,” Sue said, dropping her eyes demurely as Frank stared at her.

  “Think nothing of it, Miss Sue,” Frank said, thinking he’d never seen eyes so blue or skin so fair. “Any gentleman worth his salt would’ve done the same thing.”

  The real Frank Morgan rolled his eyes and made a face as he read this dialogue, thinking no self-respecting man of the West would ever talk in such a manner, especially to a woman he’d just met.

  Frank shook his head impatiently when the barman ambled over with a pot of coffee in his hand and asked if Frank wanted a refill. He was anxious to get back to the story to see how the fictional Frank Morgan was going to keep from getting his butt blown off by Dangerous Dan and his shotgun.

  Sweet Sue looked up at Frank from under long, thick eyelashes and smiled, revealing teeth as white as new snow. “But you were the gentleman who saved me, Mr. Morgan, and I will never forget you for your act of bravery as long as I live.”

  Frank nodded, and happened to glance out of the window of the restaurant just in time to see Dangerous Dan Murdock leveling a double-barreled shotgun at them from just outside the building.

  Without having time to utter a warning, Frank shoved Sweet Sue as hard as he could, and then he dived under the table just as the window exploded into a million glittering fragments and the table disintegrated as the roar of the express gun made his ears ring.

  Frank hit the floor rolling and tumbled head over heels until he came up on his knees, his right hand full of iron. He pulled the trigger on his smoke-wagon just as Dangerous Dan finished reloading his shotgun and snapped the barrels shut.

  Frank’s first bullet hit Dangerous Dan in the middle of his chest and made him stagger back, but didn’t knock the big man off his feet. Dan’s eyes opened wide under the shock of the slug in his chest, but he was still strong enough to raise the barrel and take aim at Frank, who was kneeling a mere ten feet away.

  Frank knew if Dan fired again, he couldn’t miss at this range. He eared back the hammer on his Colt .44 and fired again, aiming higher this time.

  A small black hole appeared in the middle of Dangerous Dan’s forehead and his skull exploded in a fine red mist as he toppled over backward to land spread-eagled on his back in the middle of the street.

  Frank turned quickly to see how Sweet Sue was, and was relieved to see that she was getting to her feet, apparently unharmed by the load of buckshot that had torn their table apart.

  “Miss Sue, are you all right?” Frank asked, rushing to help her to her feet.

  “Yes . . . I think so, Mr. Morgan,” she replied, brushing her dress off with her hands.

  “But, sir, did you have to be so rough? ” she asked, glaring at him as if he’d done something wrong.

  “But, Miss Sue,” Frank protested, “Dangerous Dan was going to shoot us through the window.”

  She glanced outside and saw the bloody body of Dangerous Dan lying on his back.

  With a haughty flip of her hair, she said, “That still does not excuse rudeness, sir. Good day to you.” She didn’t look back as she walked stiffly out of the door and down the street.

  Frank tipped his hat back and shook his head. “Well, I’ll be hanged,” he said, realizing that he would never understand women if he lived to be a hundred years old.

  The real Frank Morgan closed the book with a grin. Well, at least Judson had gotten one thing right, he thought as he drank down the last of his cold coffee. People don’t hardly ever appreciate it when you stick your nose in where it don’t belong, no matter how much of a favor you do them.

  * * *

  It was springtime, time for roundups and branding. Cowboys drifted into the area, looking for work. But there would be no roundup or branding this spring, and the only hands being hired were gunhands. The drifting cowboys drifted on, looking for a friendlier climate.

  No lawman came to investigate the killing of the Norton family; Frank wasn’t sure it had even been reported. Considering the way the farmers felt about the sheriff, he doubted it had been.

  The Diamond hands and the GP hands stayed out of the settlement, and Frank stayed close, not at all certain just why he was doing so. He had taken an intense dislike for Mark Rogers, to be sure. But there was more to it than that. Frank just hadn’t pegged it down yet in his mind. Injustice? Sure, but there was injustice everywhere, from settlers to the treatment of the Indians.

  No, there was more to it than that.

  Frank sighed heavily as he sat on a bench outside the general store and smoked. He knew he ought to saddle up and ride on. Knew if he stayed, he was going to get involved in a bad fight.

  But he kept delaying his departure.

  Frank put his hand out and petted Dog’s big head. The cur licked Frank’s hand, and then lay down beside him and went to sleep.

  Frank watched as a lone rider rode slowly into the settlement. Frank’s eyes narrowed as he recognized the man: Steve Harlon. The ranchers were really getting serious now.

  Harlon was quick, mean, and deadly. If he had any feeling for human life at all, Frank had never met anyone who had witnessed it. No one knew for sure where Harlon was from. Some said he was from Missouri, others said Kansas. Steve was about Frank’s age and height, but not quite as muscular. Frank continued to sit on the bench as Harlon approached, the gunslick reining up when he spotted and recognized Frank. He sat in his saddle for a moment, staring at Frank; then a smile creased his lips.

  “Morgan,” Steve finally said. “Strange meeting you here.”

  “I get around some, Steve.”

  “Indeed you do. I hope we’re workin’ for the same side.”

  “I’m not working for either side, Steve. Just passin’ through.”

  “Ah, now, Morgan.” The gunslick again smiled. “I know you better than that. You always take the side of the underdog.”

  At the sound of his name, Dog looked up, his cold brown eyes studying Steve.

  “Your dog, Morgan?”

  “You might say that.”

  “Mean-lookin’ bastard.”
>
  “We get along.”

  “I ’spect you do.” Steve swung down from the saddle and looped the reins around a hitching rail. He stepped up onto the boardwalk, sat down beside Frank, and pulled out the makings, rolling himself a smoke. “No hotel in this dump?” he asked.

  “Rooms for let over at the saloon.”

  “They nice?”

  Frank remembered that Steve was very picky about his quarters. “They’re clean.”

  “No fleas or cooties?”

  “I haven’t scratched once since I got here.”

  “I insisted on a hotel. I hate bunkhouses.”

  “I recall that.” Frank remembered that Harlon used to take some ribbing about being so fastidious. The ribbing stopped quite abruptly after Steve killed one of his tormentors. No one had ribbed him about that particular quirk of his since that incident.

  “Who hired you, Steve?” Frank asked.

  “I’ve had offers from both the GP and the Diamond. I haven’t made up my mind as yet.”

  “It’s shaping up to be a real ugly one.”

  “Aren’t they all, Frank?”

  “I reckon so.”

  “I suppose you booked the best room in the hotel?” Steve questioned.

  “I think they’re all the same.”

  Steve got up and swung into the saddle. “See you later, Frank. Perhaps we could have a drink together before dinner.”

  “Maybe so.”

  Steve nodded his head and rode over to the saloon/hotel. Frank recalled someone once telling him that Steve Harlon had gone to a university someplace; had had plans on becoming a teacher. Frank knew that when he wanted to, Harlon could use very good English.

  “You must know that fellow,” Joe Wallace said from the open door of his store.

  “We’ve crossed trails a time or two.”

  “But no trouble between you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Still haven’t made up your mind, hey, Mr. Morgan?”

  “I won’t until I’m pushed.”

  “Maybe they won’t push you. Ever think of that? Maybe they’ll play the waiting game with you.”

  “Hoping I’ll get bored and move on? Maybe so.”