Imposter

by William W. Johnstone

  “Good idea.”

  Frank laid his hand on Dog’s head. Dog understood and was quiet, sensing the tenseness in Frank’s touch.

  “I been seein’ Sadie givin’ you the eye lately, Leo. I reckon she’s got plans for you this evenin’.”

  “She can go to hell too, Tanner. I’d sooner bed down with a damn hog than with that woman.”

  Leo laughed. “Well, that leaves Bloody Mama.”

  “That’s even worser. That woman makes me wanna puke. I think it’s time we pulled another raid and got us some good-lookin’ young stuff.”

  “Bloody Mama says we gonna do that next week sometime. Town about forty miles south of here.”

  “No foolin’?”

  “No foolin’. We gonna hit a church whilst Sunday services is a-goin’ on. The men won’t be armed and the women will be aplenty.”

  “That there’s a damn fine idee.”

  The men were silent for a couple of minutes. Frank could see them through the sparse brush along the creek bank. Stage a raid on a church, he thought. What a sorry, no-good, worthless pack of trash.

  Frank took off his spurs and silently made his way toward the men. When he was about forty feet away, he stepped out into the clear. “Howdy, boys,” he called.

  Both men grabbed for iron, Tanner hollering, “Morgan!”

  Frank drilled Tanner in the belly first, then shifted the muzzle of his Peacemaker toward Leo and put a .45 round into his belly. The entire matter took about two seconds. Leo and Tanner never got off a shot. The outlaws were stretched out on the ground, alive and moaning in pain. Frank walked over to them and kicked away their guns.

  “You boys are a couple of sorry pieces of trash,” Frank bluntly informed them.

  “You ain’t got no call to talk to us like that, Morgan,” Tanner said. “Not after what you just done.”

  “I want a drink of water,” Leo moaned.

  “With a stomach wound?” Frank asked. “You know that’s not good for you. That might make you worse and you’d end up dying.”

  “Your bullet tore up my innards, Morgan,” Tanner said. “I’m hard hit and ain’t gonna make it. They’s some whiskey in my saddlebags. Would you fetch the bottle for me?”

  “Why should I?” Frank asked coldly.

  “Because it’s the Christian thing to do.”

  Frank laughed at him. “You were looking forward to raiding a church on Sunday morning, killing some men, kidnapping women to rape them, and then possibly selling them into prostitution . . . and you dare to speak the word Christian to me?”

  “You go to hell, Morgan!” Tanner told him.

  Frank laughed at him.

  “Damn you, Morgan!” Leo groaned. “You’re just as bad as you claim we are.”

  “Maybe,” Frank agreed. “But I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “Deal?” Tanner moaned the words. “What kind of deal?”

  “You tell me everything about your hideout, the people there, and I’ll get you all the whiskey and water you want, string a groundsheet over you for shade, and then ride out and let you die in peace.”

  “And if we don’t?” Leo asked.

  “I’ll leave you here and let the ants and snakes have you.”

  “You’d do it too, wouldn’t you, Morgan?”

  “Try me.”

  “I’ll tell you, Morgan,” Leo said. “And it’ll be the truth too.”

  “I’m listening.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Frank was hidden in a jumble of boulders, studying the layout of the old army fort. The crumbling buildings were about seventy-five yards away. He could see no activity. Sadie and Bloody Mama and the others were staying inside, out of the heat of the early summer day. And Frank sure couldn’t blame them for that.

  After watering Stormy and Dog and the packhorse, Frank had left them a few hundred yards back. He had taken his rifle and a bandolier of cartridges and walked to his present position. Leo had died before Frank had left the creek, and Tanner had slipped into unconsciousness. Leo had told Frank that besides Bloody Mama and Sadie, there were six men hiding out in the crumbling buildings of the old fort. And only one had been a part of Val’s gang . . . other than Bloody Mama and Sadie. A man called Wilder.

  “Wilder?” Frank had mused aloud. “I know a Lou Wilder. A no-good from New Mexico. Has a knife scar on his cheek.”

  “That’s him,” Leo said. “He’s a bad one. How’s Tanner?”

  “Still alive.”

  “I guess it won’t be long for me.”

  “Probably not.”

  A few minutes later, Leo closed his eyes and did not open them again. At least not on this earth.

  “Did Leo croak?” Tanner asked.

  “Yes. Just then.”

  “I hope one of them boys at the fort gut-shoots you, Morgan. I hope you die hard, you sorry son of a bitch.”

  “So nice of you to care,” Frank replied.

  Tanner moaned a couple of times and then slipped into unconsciousness.

  The corral where the outlaws’ horses were being held was about fifty yards behind the only building where a very faint whisper of smoke was coming out of the stone chimney. Probably used to keep the coffee hot, Frank thought. If they try to run for their horses, I’ll nail at least some of them.

  As that thought was fading from Frank’s mind, a man stepped out of the large building and looked toward the north.

  Probably looking for Leo and Tanner, Frank thought.

  The man turned and said something to a person standing inside. A few seconds later, Bloody Mama stepped out, dressed in men’s bib overalls. Frank recognized her by her big butt. As Frank had once heard a man say, “Bloody Mama do drag some ass behind her.”

  Frank lifted his rifle and started to sight her in, then shifted the muzzle. He just couldn’t do it. Even though Bloody Mama was just as bad as, or worse than, any of the men who rode with her, shooting a woman just simply went against the grain for Frank.

  Of course, if she ever started shooting at him, that was quite a different matter.

  Frank shot the man standing next to the woman.

  The man was knocked to the ground by the .44-40 slug, and Bloody Mama leaped for the open door, hollering at the top of her voice.

  “It’s a raid!” she squalled, her voice carrying clearly to Frank. “Lawmen have found us.”

  “Lawmen, your butt!” a man yelled. “I’ll bet you that’s Frank Morgan.”

  “Kill that bastard!” Bloody Mama yelled. “Kill him, I say!”

  “You kill him, Mama!” another voice shouted from the other side of the building.

  “Don’t you argue with me, Willis!” she shouted. “Go get him. Avenge your partner, Jerry. He’s layin’ out yonder in the sun, dead and startin’ to stink.”

  What a nice woman, Frank thought. So ladylike.

  “You hear me, you turd?” Mama shrieked. “Go get him.”

  What Willis then said to Bloody Mama was something that could not be repeated in a San Francisco brothel.

  Willis’s comments didn’t phase Bloody Mama. “Blow it out your ass, Willis,” Mama retorted in a shout.

  “And that goes double for me, Willis!” Sadie yelled. “You sorry piece of buffalo crap.”

  “Open fire on that shooter!” a man yelled.

  Frank hunkered down in the boulders as the lead began howling all around him, hoping that no bullet would hit the rocks behind him, flatten out, and ricochet into him.

  “Santos!” Sadie yelled. “You and Neal go left and right and get behind that shooter. Move it!”

  “You go left or right, Sadie,” Santos shouted. “Get your ass shot off.”

  Sadie cussed the outlaw, coloring the hot air with profanity, ending with, “Mama, we sure hooked up with some yeller-bellies this run.”

  “Damn straight we did,” Bloody Mama yelled. “I reckon you and me are gonna have to handle this ourselves.”

  “I ain’t never seen a man that was worth a cra
p for anything other than a good hump,” Sadie hollered. “And most of them ain’t even good for that.”

  Bloody Mama laughed at that, her shrill braying echoing out of the building.

  Crazy, Frank thought. Both of those women are crazy.

  “This gunfire will bring Tanner and Leo back here,” a man said.

  “Tanner and Leo are dead, you stupid bastard!” Bloody Mama yelled. “Morgan—and you can bet your stinkin’ drawers that’s Morgan out there—killed them both.”

  Frank fed a couple more cartridges into his rifle and waited.

  “We’ll wait him out,” Sadie said. “Come dark, we’ll get him.”

  Suits me, Frank thought. He settled into a more comfortable position in the boulders and waited.

  THIRTY-TWO

  If Sadie and Bloody Mama had counted on the night hiding them, they were sadly mistaken. The moon was full and bright and the heavens were sparkling with stars. Frank sat amid the jumble of rocks and boulders and smiled as he waited for the outlaws to make a move.

  Then Frank rethought that and said to hell with it: He’d take the fight to them. They wouldn’t be expecting that . . . he hoped.

  Frank left the rocks and began crawling on his belly, slowly and carefully, toward the large building, hoping he would not run into a rattlesnake along the way.

  When he reached the building, he paused beneath a broken window and listened.

  “I ain’t goin’ out there,” a man said. “Morgan’s jist a-waitin’ for one of us to make that stupid move.”

  “Me neither,” another man replied. “We got food and water in here. I say we wait him out.”

  “Cowards!” Sadie said. “Craven cowards, all of you.”

  “Why don’t you haul your ass out there then?” a third man suggested. “So far, all you’ve done is run that mouth of yours.”

  “By God, Vinnie, you can’t talk to me like that!”

  “I just did, Sadie.”

  Frank leaned his rifle against the building, pulled his Peacemaker and his spare Colt from leather, and cocked them. Then he rose to his feet and sprayed the inside with lead, cocking and firing as fast as he could. When he was empty, he grabbed his rifle and took off running, leaving the sounds of yelling and moaning behind him. He had sure hit somebody. By the sounds inside the building, more than one outlaw had soaked up lead.

  Frank knelt by the side of a building and quickly reloaded. He watched as Bloody Mama came staggering out into the moon-bright night, a pistol in each hand.

  “I’ll kill you, Morgan,” she shouted, and began firing wildly in all directions. “Goddamn you, Drifter. You’ve shot me, you . . .” Bloody Mama filled the night with the most vulgar of profanities.

  She fell to her knees, remained that way for a moment, then toppled over on her face and was still.

  “Penelope?” Sadie called.

  Penelope? Frank thought. Her real name was Penelope?

  “Are you all right, baby?” Sadie asked.

  Bloody Mama lay motionless and silent on the ground. Sadie began cussing Frank, alternately cursing and screaming out her rage. She ran out of the building, a rifle in her hands. Frank could have easily shot her, but he held his fire.

  “Damn you, Morgan!” Sadie screamed. “I’ll see you in hell.” She stuck the muzzle of the rifle in her mouth and pulled the trigger. She fell to the rocky ground, dead next to her friend in crime.

  “That’s it, Morgan,” a man called from the building. “Me and Santos is all that’s left in here. Neal and Jerry is hard hit, Willis is dead.”

  “Step out where I can see you,” Frank called.

  Two men stepped out of the building to stand in the moonlight, their hands raised. They carried no weapons that Frank could see.

  “I’m Vinnie,” one of the men said. “This here is Santos.”

  “You ride with Val Dooley?”

  “I never met the man. Sadie and Mama rode with him. They told us all about the kidnappin’ of them women and you comin’ after them. I don’t want no more trouble with you, Morgan. And that’s the truth.”

  “Saddle your horses and ride out of here,” Frank called. “Don’t ever let me run into either of you again. If I do, I’ll kill you. Understood?”

  “Plain as day, Morgan,” Santos said.

  “Do you get to keep our guns?” Vinnie asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I’d better shut my mouth and get gone.”

  “Wise decision. Get out of here.”

  Santos and Vinnie quickly saddled up, under Frank’s watchful eye, and rode out, with a full canteen of water, the clothes on their back, and nothing else. Frank suspected they would ride for a few miles, then make a cold camp and come back to the old fort in the morning, to hunt around for clothes, guns, and food. Frank would leave them whatever food and clothing remained, but they would not find any guns.

  When Frank was reasonably certain they were gone, at least for the night, he checked on those outlaws remaining in the building. They were dead. Frank’s wild spraying of lead had done the job. Frank dragged the bodies out and into a shed on the edge of the old fort’s perimeter. He did the same with the bodies of Bloody Mama and Sadie. He gathered up all the guns and tossed them into the building, then went about picking up old boards until he had enough to keep a blaze burning for a long time. He put them both inside and outside the shed, then saturated everything with kerosene he found in the outlaws’ quarters.

  While the kerosene soaked into the old boards, Frank made a pot of coffee and then settled down for a cup of hot coffee and a smoke. The coffee perked him up, for he was tired.

  After another cup of coffee and the last of the pan bread he had brought with him, Frank set the building blazing; a funeral pyre for the already damned.

  He knew where he was going next, for he had found a map with a note among the women’s personal belongings. The note was from a man called Curly. Frank knew him from years back, and Curly Lewis was a bad one, cruel and mean. Bloody Mama and Sadie were going to hook up with Curly and his bunch in a few weeks.

  “Well, now, Curly,” Frank had said after reading the note and studying the map. “I’ve got a little surprise for you. Bloody Mama and Sadie will be unable to make it. But I’ll come in their place. Count on it.”

  * * *

  Frank did not shave for a week, and his naturally heavy beard proved to be a very effective disguise. He was able to ride into a town, provision up, have a meal in a café, and take a hot bath without being recognized. Then he was once more on his way. He did not tell the county sheriffs or the town marshals about the deaths of Bloody Mama and Sadie. Frank was sure that Santos and Vinnie would spread the word.

  In a café Frank overheard talk about the breakup of the Val Dooley gang and the shootout with Johnny Vargas.

  “That Frank Morgan must be a ring-tailed-tooter,” one local remarked. “I guess all them things that’s written and said about him are true.”

  “I reckon so,” another said. “I’d like to see that fellow just one time.”

  “What would you say to him?”

  “I don’t know. Howdy, I guess.”

  Frank smiled and continued enjoying his meal.

  “I hear he’s a big man,” the first local said. “Six feet five or six. Two hundred and seventy-five pounds.”

  Frank again smiled. It would take a damn big horse to tote that big a man around.

  “And he’s killed men with just one blow with his big fist.”

  Frank laid down his knife and fork. The rumors were getting entirely out of hand.

  “No, he’s not none of them things,” another local spoke up. “I seen pictures of him. He’s about six feet tall and built up pretty good in the shoulders and arms. But he ain’t no giant.” The man glanced over at Frank and blinked a couple of times. “As a matter of fact, he sorta looks like that feller right there.”

  All eyes in the café turned to Frank.

  A man seated to Frank’s
right said, “Don’t Morgan carry a Peacemaker?”

  “Yeah, he does,” the local who was eyeing Frank said.

  “So does this fellow. And it’s tied down too.”

  “My God in Heaven,” another man said in hushed tones. “That’s the Drifter, Frank Morgan.”

  Here we go, Frank thought.

  “Are you really Frank Morgan?” the waitress asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, I am,” Frank replied. “Could I have some more coffee, please?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Morgan. You sure can. How about some apple pie to go with it?”

  “That would be real nice,” Frank said with a smile. He watched as a local beat it out of the café, grabbed the first person he came to, and began talking and pointing.

  Within minutes, the boardwalk in front of the café was lined with people. A large man with a star on his vest pushed his way through and entered the café. “Frank Morgan?” he called.

  “Right here, Sheriff.”

  “Coffee, Wilma,” the sheriff called to the waitress as he walked to Frank’s table and sat down. “Telegraph wires been hummin’ with messages for you for near’bouts a week, Morgan.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. From a Dr. Evans and a Marshal Tom Wright. You know them?”

  “I sure do. What’s up?”

  “You want to read them or you want me to just tell you?”

  “Tell me. You can give me the wires later.”

  “You rescued some women that had been kidnapped, right.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “One of ’em was in shock, couldn’t speak?”

  “Yes.”

  “She committed suicide. Hanged herself.”

  “Damn.”

  “Sheriff Davis over in Deweyville has a sister ’bout half crazy?”

  “Yes, that pretty well describes Alberta.”

  “Yeah, that’s her name. She’s been placed in an asylum.”

  “That’s no surprise.”

  “Couple more things. You familiar with somebody named Little Ed Simpson?”

  “Yes. What about him?”

  “His mother killed him. Shot him stone dead when the boy pulled a gun on his father. The father caught the boy trying to steal some horses.” The sheriff shook his head. “That must have been a very strange family.”