Frank took the guns from the holsters of the men he had knocked down. He handed them to Shipworth, who took them, but looked like Frank had just dumped a load of rattlesnakes in his lap. Then several of the farmers picked up the unarmed gunmen, who were starting to come around a little, and lifted them into their saddles. The men were able to stay mounted, but they were still too groggy to be any threat.
“You’ll be sorry!” Carter called over his shoulder as the dispirited group rode away.
“Maybe,” Horace shouted back, “but not unless you come up with something more than lines from a bad melodrama!”
As soon as Carter and the others were out of earshot, though, Horace turned to Frank with a worried frown on his face and went on. “He means it, doesn’t he?”
“Sure he does,” Frank agreed. “And you saw the way that so-called sheriff acted. He’s not going to stand in Carter’s way, no matter what happens.”
Horace rubbed a hand over his weather-beaten face and said, “He’ll send Parmalee back here with a whole army of gunmen if that’s what it takes. This has gone beyond an argument over freight rates now. Carter’s taking it personal, and he’ll do whatever he has to in order to smash us.”
Frank nodded slowly. “That’s the way it looks to me too. That’s why we have to act fast to counter his moves. I’m riding to town to send some telegrams. I know some lawyers too, and I have a little influence with the railroad. I’m going to wire the U.S. marshal too, and try to get some law in here that’ll actually do what it’s supposed to.”
“You think we can hold out until the marshal arrives?”
“You’ll have to,” Frank said. “Once we get Bonner in the hands of some real law, the railroad won’t have any choice but to rein in Carter and Parmalee.”
Mildred came down from the porch and took her husband’s hand as she stood beside him. She said, “You sound like you’re making this your battle as much as it is ours, Mr. Morgan.”
“I did that last night when I traded lead with Parmalee’s bunch, ma’am,” Frank told her. “Once you take cards in a game like this, you’ve got to play out the hand, all the way to the big casino.”
Chapter 9
Frank rode into Salina later that morning. The town had grown a lot since the first time he had been there, more than twenty-five years earlier when he’d been a young cowboy, one of the drovers who’d brought a herd of longhorns up from Texas. The railhead had long since moved on, leaving Salina to become a settled-down town, a supply center for the farms that surrounded it. That had been the fate of a lot of formerly wild and woolly cow towns in Kansas.
He saw the sheriff’s office, but didn’t bother stopping there. He had already seen enough of Sheriff Haley to know that would have been a waste of time. Instead, he rode directly to the railroad station, which was also where the local telegraph office was located. He dismounted, flipped the dun’s reins around a hitch rail in front of the depot, and went inside.
Frank spent the next half hour filling out telegraph forms and handing them to the operator on the other side of the window. The fellow burned up the wires sending the messages. Frank could send Morse himself, although he wasn’t very good at it. He understood enough to know that the operator was sending the messages just as he had written them. He had wondered if the man would be a little leery of crossing Thaddeus Carter. Obviously, the operator took his duty seriously—although he did raise his eyebrows a little at some of the wires he sent for Frank.
When that was taken care of, Frank stepped out of the depot and looked up and down the town’s main street. His keen eyes searched for familiar faces. The fact that Chadbourne had been working for Carter and Parmalee meant there might be other men mixed up in this with whom Frank was acquainted.
If some of them wanted to up and leave when they found out he was involved too, then so much the better. Fewer of them he had to shoot that way.
Since he hadn’t had a chance to finish breakfast, he was a little hungry. Spotting a café down the street, he headed for it.
Instinct made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he walked along. Somebody was watching him. He glanced around, but didn’t see anyone who seemed to be paying much attention to him. Frank knew better than to disregard what his gut told him, though. He didn’t relax until he stepped into the café and closed the door behind him.
That was when his back finally stopped feeling like it had a target painted on it.
“Son of a bitch,” Parmalee said as he let the little gap in the curtains fall closed over the window of the second-floor hotel room. “It’s him, all right.”
Even though he hadn’t really been talking to her, the naked woman lying on the bed behind him asked, “Who?”
“Frank Morgan.”
“The famous gunfighter?”
Parmalee’s teeth gritted together in irritation. Morgan was famous, all right, but Parmalee wasn’t convinced that Morgan was one damn bit better with a gun than him. Morgan had just been lucky, that was all.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d heard he was around, but I was hoping that was wrong.”
The news about Morgan’s involvement had come from Carter. It was Chadbourne who had recognized Morgan in the first place.
Now Chadbourne was gone. He had lit a shuck out of these parts without even coming back to Salina to claim the wages Carter owed him. Parmalee couldn’t help but wonder how many more of the boys would take off for the tall and uncut if they knew there was a chance they’d be facing Frank Morgan’s guns.
“Are you comin’ back to bed?” the woman asked. “Or are you gonna just stand there at the window the rest of the day?”
Parmalee felt rage welling up inside him. He wanted to turn around, drag the woman from the bed, and toss her out in the hall on her bare ass. It would serve her right.
But it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t mean that things were like they used to be in the old days, no, sir. In the old days, he never would have stooped to something like bullying a bunch of sodbusters, and he wouldn’t have worked for a slimy little bastard like Carter either. That was what was really bothering him, not anything some stupid whore said.
He turned and went to the chair where he had left his clothes. He took one of his cheroots from the pocket of his shirt and lit it with a match he struck on his thumbnail. “Get out,” he growled at the woman.
She frowned. “What?”
“You heard me,” he said around the cheroot. “Get your clothes on and get out of here. You’ve been paid already.”
“You’ve got some more time comin’—”
“Don’t want it.”
“Well!” She was offended. She flounced out of bed, which probably would have been more effective if she hadn’t been naked. Some women needed to confine their flouncing to times when they had clothes on.
Parmalee turned back to the window and stood there smoking until the woman was gone. Then he got dressed and left the hotel.
Morgan had been coming out of the train station when Parmalee first spotted him. There was one good reason Morgan might have been in there. Parmalee went to the Western Union counter and asked the clerk on the other side of the window, “Did a fella send some messages a few minutes ago?”
“Lots of people send messages, mister,” the clerk replied. “That’s why those telegraph wires are strung alongside the railroad tracks.”
Parmalee picked up one of the pads of yellow message forms lying on the counter, scribbled on it with a stub of pencil that was sitting there, and then tore it off. He leaned in through the window and said, “Here, send this.”
The clerk got up from his key and stepped over to take the flimsy. Parmalee dropped it on the floor. When the clerk bent over to pick it up, Parmalee grabbed him by the collar and jerked him closer. He twisted the clerk’s shirt and tie so that they tightened around his neck and cut off the squawk he tried to make. From the depot lobby, Parmalee looked like he was just leaning through the window talking to the clerk.
“
Listen to me, you little pissant,” Parmalee grated quietly, his voice like a couple of rocks rubbing together. “You use that mouth to sass me again, I’ll pull the tongue right out of it, you understand?”
The clerk was getting red in the face, but he managed to nod.
Parmalee went on. “The fella who sent those messages a few minutes ago, he was medium-sized but looked a little bigger, wearing jeans and a buckskin shirt, with a tan Stetson. Isn’t that right?”
Again, the red-faced clerk jerked his head in a nod. He was starting to flail a little, but was no match for Parmalee’s strength.
“Settle down or I’ll twist your head right off your neck. Let me see the wires he sent.”
Parmalee let off on the pressure a little so the clerk could talk. “I . . . can’t!” the man croaked hoarsely. “Against . . . regulations!”
“You want to get choked to death over some rules in a book? I wouldn’t.”
The clerk reached behind him, felt around on the desk where his telegraph key was located, and grabbed up a handful of message forms. He pressed them into Parmalee’s other hand. Parmalee let go of him, and the clerk slumped back in his chair, breathing hard. He wheezed a little as he drew in air.
Parmalee glanced at the messages Morgan had sent, and as he scanned the words, his anger grew. He tossed the flimsies back into the operator’s cubicle. “I wasn’t here,” he said, “and I never saw those telegrams.”
“Believe me,” the clerk said, “I’ve already forgotten I ever saw you, mister!”
Parmalee gave the man a curt nod and turned to stalk out of the depot.
A few minutes later, he was knocking on the door of Carter’s office. When the railroad executive opened it, he scowled at Parmalee.
“I told you the two of us don’t need to be seen together,” Carter snapped. “You’re not supposed to come here during the day.”
Parmalee walked in, forcing Carter to step back. As Carter shut the door, Parmalee said, “Just who the hell are you trying to fool? Everybody knows you’re the one who wants those farmers run off their land. Hell, you took the sheriff out there this morning to look for Bonner.”
“There’s no evidence that Bonner works for you, hence no evidence connecting me to you—”
Parmalee silenced him with a sharp slashing motion. “You paper-pushers are all alike. You worry about the little things so much, you don’t even see trouble stampeding right at you.”
“What are you talking about?” Carter demanded with a glare.
“Frank Morgan.”
“The gunman hired by those farmers?”
“Duncan and his bunch didn’t hire Morgan,” Parmalee said. “If he’s siding with them, it’s because he thinks they’re in the right and he wants to. He doesn’t just sell his gun to whoever’s got the money.”
“Unlike some,” Carter said with a sneer on his face.
Parmalee let that comment go—for now. “Morgan’s in town. He sent some wires over at the Western Union office. Some of them went to lawyers in Denver and San Francisco, asking them to look into what you’ve been doing here and bring pressure on your bosses to rein you in. One went to the Justice Department in Washington, and another to the U.S. marshal’s office in Wichita.”
Carter paled. “I thought this man was just a drifting gunslinger. How can he have such connections?”
“I’ve heard rumors that Morgan’s really a rich man, even though he doesn’t act like it. And it looks like he’s got friends in high places. If his lawyers find out that you’ve been jacking up the freight rates even more than you were supposed to and skimming off the top, you’ll be in a heap of trouble, Carter, with both your bosses and the law.”
Carter flushed angrily. “How did you—”
Parmalee interrupted him with a harsh laugh. “How did I know what you’ve really been up to around here? Hell, I’m not stupid. You’ve been acting way too desperate for all this to just be about business. There had to be some loot involved somewhere to make it worth your while to hire me and my boys. So I guessed . . . and it looks like I guessed right.”
“Don’t go prying into things that don’t concern you,” Carter warned icily. “You get your money, that’s all you should be worried about. That, and dealing with this problem.”
“You can’t afford to let Morgan run around stirring things up, that’s for sure. And you still need to make certain Bonner can’t talk too. He must be out there at that so-called Elysium, or else Morgan would have let you look around.” Parmalee thought for a moment and then nodded decisively. “All right, there’s no way around it. Morgan’s got to die, and we’ve got to either get Bonner away from those sodbusters or kill him. And we’ve got to take care of it now, before things have a chance to get worse.”
“But if Morgan has already contacted the U.S. marshal—”
“If Morgan and Bonner are both dead when the marshal gets here, then there won’t be much he can do about it, will there?”
“How are you going to manage that?” Carter asked anxiously. “Can you kill this man Morgan in a gunfight?”
“Probably. But as much as I’d like to prove that, we can’t run the risk. We’ll have to bushwhack Morgan. And as for Bonner, if he’s out there at Elysium, he’ll be dead before morning.”
“How can you be so sure of that?”
“Because I intend to burn the whole damn place to the ground,” Parmalee said.
Chapter 10
After eating lunch, Frank checked back at the telegraph office to see if there were any replies to the wires he’d sent earlier. A different operator was on duty now, a younger man than the one who’d been there before.
“What happened to the other fella?” Frank asked. “He gone to eat lunch?”
The operator shook his head. “No, he took sick and had to go home.”
“Hope it’s nothing serious.”
“When I got here, he was pale and pretty shaky. Didn’t look too good to me.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Frank asked if there were any telegrams for him, and the clerk handed him a couple of flimsies. They were just replies from the offices of his lawyers, acknowledging his wires and saying that they would get right on his instructions. There was nothing from Washington or Wichita.
“You know where Elysium is?” Frank asked the operator.
“That community of farmers northwest of here?”
“That’s right.”
“Yeah, I know where it is.”
“That’s where I’ll be if any more replies come in for me,” Frank told the man. “I’ll pay to have somebody bring them out to me.”
The operator frowned. “No offense, mister, but you don’t look much like a sodbuster.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Frank said, and left it at that.
He picked up the dun and rode out of Salina, heading back toward Elysium. It would take the marshal a couple of days to get there from Wichita, he figured, and that was if the lawman started out right away. That meant Horace and the other farmers had to keep Bonner safe for that long. Frank didn’t expect Carter and Parmalee to allow that to happen without them trying to free Bonner—or kill him, if it came to that.
So he was naturally wary of trouble as he rode toward Elysium. Caution was a habit with him anyway. He didn’t react immediately when he saw a woman come running out of a clump of cottonwoods next to the trail ahead of him. He waited to see what was going to happen.
She spotted him and dashed straight toward him, screaming, “Help me! Oh, my God, help me, mister!”
Frank reined in and dismounted quickly, drawing his gun as soon as his boots were on the ground. The woman’s blond hair was tangled, and her dress was torn in several places. A bruise stood out startlingly against the pale skin of her cheek. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. She had been roughly handled, that was for sure. She grabbed Frank, throwing her arms around him and clutching at him, trembling violently as she did so.
“What happened, ma’am?” he
asked. “Who did this to you?”
“In . . . in there,” she said, half-turning and pointing toward the trees. “Two men . . . they grabbed me, made me drive my wagon under the trees . . . then they . . . they assaulted me!” She moaned. “Don’t let them get me again!”
Frank’s first thought had been that this was a trap. Parmalee and his men wanted to lure him into the cottonwoods so they could bushwhack him. But the woman’s injuries were obviously real, and she seemed to be genuinely terrified.
“Your wagon’s still in there?” he asked her.
She jerked her head in a nod. “Y-yes. I guess. They . . . they may have taken it.”
“How’d you get away from them?”
“I . . . I passed out . . . fainted, I reckon . . . and when I woke up, they were pawing through the supplies in the back of the wagon, not paying any attention to me.” She swallowed hard. “I crawled into the brush and then got up and ran. I . . . I wasn’t sure where I was going or if I was even going in the right direction, but then I came out on the road and saw you. . . .”
Her story had the ring of truth to it. Frank nodded curtly and said, “Stay here. If anybody but me comes out of those trees, get on my horse and get the hell out of here, as fast as you can.”
“What . . . what are you going to do?”
“See about settling the score with those two hombres,” he said grimly.
He started toward the trees, but the woman caught hold of his sleeve, stopping him. “Don’t,” she said. “They’ll kill you. Maybe you’d better just take me back to town.”
Frank shook his head. “If I do that, they’ll be long gone by the time anybody can get back out here. Don’t worry about me, ma’am. I can take care of myself.”
With that, he stalked toward the cottonwoods, gun in hand.
He had just reached the edge of the trees when he heard the metallic ratcheting of a Winchester’s lever behind him.
Frank spun around in time to see that the woman had pulled his rifle from the saddle boot and leveled it at him. Flame licked from the muzzle as she fired. At the same time, more shots blasted from the trees.
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