Avenger

by William W. Johnstone

  Her breath came out of her in a long sigh, and Frank knew she was gone, even as she was trying to warn him. But she wasn’t telling him anything that he wasn’t already aware of. He knew perfectly well how evil Charles Dutton was.

  What had happened on this train tonight was proof aplenty of that.

  Chapter 25

  Not surprisingly, the conductor was even more upset this time. There were three corpses instead of one, plus a fella with a broken arm.

  “I’m just damned glad that my part of this run ends in Philadelphia,” he said as he glared at Frank. “Somebody else can deal with all the death and gunplay the rest of the way to Boston.”

  Frank thumbed his hat to the back of his head. He had found it lying along the tracks where it had fallen when he took his tumble from the train. The old J.B. was getting pretty battered.

  “I hope there won’t be any more trouble,” Frank said.

  The conductor snorted. “You can hope all you want, Morgan, but from what I know about you, trouble seems to follow you around.”

  That sentiment wasn’t anything Frank hadn’t heard before, and as much as he hated to admit it, he knew the conductor was right. Even under the best of circumstances, all too often Frank ran into hombres who wanted to kill him, just because of who he was. Throw in the agents working for Dutton and the bounty that the crooked lawyer had placed on his head, and the frequent attempts on his life were no surprise.

  “I’m sorry,” he told the conductor, “but I’ve got to get to Boston as fast as I can. If there was another way to get there, I’d take it.”

  “You’ll have to talk to the law when we pull into Philadelphia, you know.”

  Frank nodded. “I’ll be glad to. Mrs. Jeffries died by accident, and the two men I shot in self-defense.”

  “That’s not the story that gent with the broken arm is telling.”

  Frank’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “What?”

  “He’s back in the caboose now, getting his arm tended to by a doctor who happened to be on the train, and the story he’s telling to anybody who’ll listen is that he and his friends were on that platform with Mrs. Jeffries when you came barging out of the car, picked a fight with them for no reason, and started shooting.”

  “That’s a damned lie!”

  The conductor shrugged. “I happen to believe you are right . . . but what the law will believe, I couldn’t say.”

  “I’m going back there to have a talk with that son of a—”

  The conductor put a hand on Frank’s arm to stop him. “Sorry, Morgan, you’re not going anywhere. The caboose is off-limits to you, and by God, I will enforce that. The engineer, the fireman, the brakemen, and all the porters will back me up too. So unless you want to try to shoot your way through all of us . . .”

  Frank shook his head and scowled. “I’ll wait and let the law handle things. But that bastard is lying.”

  The conductor just smiled. “Once we get to Philadelphia, it won’t be my problem anymore.”

  Angrily, Frank went back to his compartment and waited. He knew when the train reached Philadelphia and stopped, but he stayed where he was. If the lawdogs wanted him, they could come to him.

  That was exactly what happened. About half an hour after the train stopped, one of the porters came to Frank’s compartment, leading a man in a suit and bowler hat. The stranger was short and stocky and had a face like a bulldog with a mustache, and Frank wasn’t the least bit surprised when he introduced himself as a member of the Philadelphia Police Department.

  “Detective Sergeant Harvey Bastrop,” the man said. “And you’d be Mr. Frank Morgan?”

  “That’s right.”

  Detective Bastrop didn’t offer to shake hands, and neither did Frank. The detective said, “I understand you were involved in a shooting on this train earlier tonight, as well as one yesterday.”

  “None of those fracases were my idea,” Frank said.

  “But you’re still alive and four other people are dead. You’re either a very lucky man . . . or a very dangerous man, Mr. Morgan.”

  “I think you know who I am,” Frank said tightly. “There’s no point in beating around the bush.”

  “No, there’s not,” Bastrop agreed. “You’re a gunfighter. A hired killer.”

  Frank shook his head. “I don’t hire out my gun. If I draw it, it’s to protect my life or the life of somebody else, or else to fight for a cause I believe in.”

  “You think that’s the way to fight for a cause? With a gun?”

  Frank felt an instinctive dislike for this man. “Too many times, that’s the only way that does any good.”

  “Well, that’s not the way we do things here in civilization,” Bastrop said with a sneer. “This ain’t the Wild West, cowboy.”

  “No . . . and a lot of ways, that’s a damned shame.”

  Bastrop flushed angrily and said, “I’ve heard one side of the story. Tell me yours.”

  “First of all,” Frank said, “I know a little bit about the law. Those shootings didn’t happen in Philadelphia. I’m not sure you have any jurisdiction in this matter, Detective Sergeant.”

  “You’re in Philadelphia now, mister,” Bastrop snapped. “So you just let me worry about things like jurisdiction. I can have you locked up until everything gets sorted out, if that’s what you want.”

  Frank didn’t want anything else delaying him on his way to the showdown with Dutton in Boston, so he said, “I plan to cooperate. The fella I shot yesterday was a blasted young fool who thought he was faster than me and was determined to prove it. He died for his trouble.”

  “There are witnesses who say that he drew first,” Bastrop admitted grudgingly.

  Frank nodded. “That’s right, he did.”

  “Well, why didn’t you just shoot him in the arm or the leg? Couldn’t you have wounded him without killing him?”

  Frank suppressed a sigh of irritation. “Were you in the war, Sergeant?”

  “The Civil War, you mean?” Bastrop asked with a frown.

  “The War of Northern Aggression, some call it,” Frank said softly, aware that he was needling the man but unable to resist the temptation.

  “I wasn’t old enough to fight in the war. But I remember it.”

  “Ever had somebody shoot at you since you’ve been a policeman?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Bastrop asked. The blustery tone in his voice told Frank that the answer was no.

  “When somebody’s drawing a gun with the obvious intention of killing you, you don’t have time to think about things like wounding them,” Frank said. “That kid wasn’t very fast, but when I say that, I mean in comparison with me.”

  Bastrop sneered again. “A little full of yourself, ain’t you?”

  “I’m just stating the facts. He was slow compared to me . . . but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t get his gun out and fire it in a hurry. A second, or a second and a half maybe.” Frank shook his head. “That’s not enough time to get fancy. I drew and shot in self-defense. That’s all there is to it.”

  Bastrop must have seen that he wasn’t going to be able to shake Frank’s story on that incident. “What about earlier tonight?” he demanded. “The gent with the broken arm, a Mr. Childress, says that you attacked him and his friends without provocation.”

  “No provocation other than the fact that they were trying to murder me.”

  “Can you prove that? Did anyone else see what happened?”

  “No, there weren’t any witnesses back there on that platform,” Frank admitted. “But this fella Childress can’t prove what he says either, can he? I’d say it’s his word against mine.”

  “Why would they want to murder you?”

  Frank still didn’t want the police involved in his mission, but he didn’t see any way around answering Bastrop’s question. He said, “They were working for a man in Boston named Charles Dutton.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A man who wants me dead
.”

  “Why would he want that?”

  “Because he was responsible for the death of a woman I loved,” Frank said, “and he knows that I’m coming to kill him.”

  It was a damn fool thing to say, and Frank knew it. Bastrop puffed up like a horned toad and said that Frank was going to have to come to police headquarters with him to answer some more questions. When Frank objected that the train would pull out without him, Bastrop said, “You’ll just have to catch a later one . . . that is, if you see the outside of a jail cell any time soon.”

  Bastrop grabbed his arm to haul him off the train. Frank pulled away, and for a second the air between the two men was thick with potential violence. In the end, though, Frank knew that he couldn’t gun down a policeman for doing his job, no matter how wrong-headed the man was.

  “I want your gun,” Bastrop said, holding out his hand.

  “I’m not used to giving up my iron,” Frank replied.

  “You’ll do it or there’ll be another charge against you.”

  Reluctantly, Frank drew the Peacemaker from its holster and handed it over to Bastrop. The detective held it in his right hand as he jerked his bowler-hatted head and said, “Come on.”

  They walked to the end of the car and stepped down onto the platform of the train station in the middle of Philadelphia. Even though it was the middle of the night, the place was bustling with activity. That was another thing about these Easterners, Frank thought—they didn’t know when it was time to go to bed.

  Bastrop grasped Frank’s right arm with his left hand and ordered, “Let’s go.”

  They had walked only a few feet when three men stepped out of the crowd, and Frank knew suddenly that something was wrong. The men were hard-faced and wore long overcoats that were too heavy for the warm, muggy night. He said, “Detective, watch out—”

  That was as far as he got before the trio of assassins brought sawed-off shotguns out from under their coats and opened fire.

  As the scatterguns boomed, Frank gave Bastrop a hard shove that sent the detective sprawling to the platform. At the same time, Frank went the other way in a desperate dive. Most of the buckshot ripped through the air between the two men, since the charges hadn’t had time to spread much. A few of the pellets stung Frank’s back and legs, though, and judging by the way Bastrop howled in pain, he had been nicked too.

  “Get him!” one of the killers shouted as they rushed forward. People on the platform who had been boarding or disembarking from trains screamed and yelled and scurried to get out of the line of fire. “Get Morgan!”

  If Bastrop hadn’t taken his gun away, Frank could have shot it out with the men and taken his chances. But he was unarmed and he figured that each of the men had fired only one barrel. That meant there were three more loads of buckshot in those guns, just waiting to rip him to shreds.

  He rolled aside as one of the men fired the second barrel. The charge slammed into the platform where Frank had been a heartbeat earlier. As Frank came to a stop on his belly, he heard Bastrop yell, “Morgan!” and looked up to see his Peacemaker spinning across the platform toward him. Bastrop had slid the gun to him.

  Frank put out his hand and felt the butt of the Colt slap into his palm. From there, pure instinct took over. He rolled onto his side and brought the revolver up. The man who had fired both barrels of his shotgun was trying to reload it, so he wouldn’t be a threat for another second or two. That gave Frank enough time to concentrate on the other two men. The twin barrels of their weapons were swinging toward him and were about to come in line.

  He couldn’t risk hitting them in the body. They might still have time to pull the triggers before they died. Head shots were his only chance.

  The Colt in his hand roared twice.

  The heads of both men jerked back as Frank’s bullets slammed into them. One he got in the center of the forehead, the other through the left eye. But in both cases the slugs bored through their brains and blasted out the backs of their skulls. The men hit the platform like the lifeless sacks of meat they had become in less than the blink of an eye.

  Frank swung the Colt toward the third man, who had just snapped his shotgun closed after thumbing fresh shells into both barrels. Those barrels were still pointed down, though, and in the man’s eyes Frank could see the horrible realization that if he tried to lift the weapon he was going to die, suddenly and violently.

  “Don’t . . . don’t shoot!” the man called in a choked voice. He bent at the knees and placed the shotgun on the platform. As he straightened, he lifted his hands over his head. “Don’t kill me, Morgan!” he babbled. “Please don’t shoot me!”

  Frank kept the Peacemaker trained on the man as he pushed himself to his feet. He could tell that the buckshot wounds he had suffered were minor, little more than scratches, although they stung and he could feel the warm trickle of blood from some of them.

  Bastrop stopped cursing bitterly long enough to yell, “Somebody give me a hand here!” Several bystanders came over and helped him to his feet. There was still a lot of confusion on the platform, and Bastrop told one of the men who had helped him, “Go find some cops! Tell ’em Detective Sergeant Bastrop needs some help.”

  Then he stumbled over to Frank, who smiled faintly and asked, “You want my gun back, Sergeant?”

  “No, that’s all right, you keep this son of a bitch covered.” Bastrop shook his head. “Damn it, Morgan, I didn’t like you one damned bit, and then you had to go and save my life.”

  “Like I said, sometimes you just don’t have a chance to think about what you’re doing.”

  Bastrop looked as though he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to cuss or laugh. He settled for turning to the prisoner and saying roughly, “Why did you and your partners try to kill us?”

  “We weren’t after you,” the man replied quickly, as if that was going to help matters for him. “We just wanted to—” He stopped short.

  “Just wanted to kill Morgan, that’s what you were gonna say, ain’t it?” Bastrop demanded. “You bastards must work for Charles Dutton.”

  The look of recognition and surprise that the shotgunner couldn’t conceal told Frank that the charge Bastrop had just made was correct. More importantly, Bastrop saw the man’s reaction too, and was smart enough to know what it meant.

  He grunted and said, “Looks like you were telling me the truth about what happened earlier, Morgan. I still don’t like you trigger-happy cowboys. . . .”

  “But you’ve got to admit, there are times when we come in handy.”

  “Yeah. There are definitely times when it’s good to have one of you around.”

  Then he went back to cursing and complaining, which seemed to be his natural state.

  Chapter 26

  With proof that Frank’s story about how Dutton’s agents wanted him dead was true, Bastrop was no longer so inclined to cause trouble for him. The fact that Frank had probably saved his life certainly didn’t hurt anything either. Bastrop had seen with his own eyes how the men had opened fire on the crowded platform without any hesitation. If not for Frank’s quick action in shoving him aside, the burly detective sergeant probably would have been cut down by the shotgun blasts too.

  Almost miraculously, none of the bystanders on the platform had been hit by the flying buckshot.

  Given the circumstances, Bastrop forgot about the idea of taking Frank in for more questioning. “I can’t exactly wish you good luck and Godspeed,” Bastrop said, “not after you told me about what you plan to do when you get to Boston . . . but I don’t have any reason to hold you here either, Morgan. I’ve got all the information I’ll need to fill out my reports.”

  “I appreciate that,” Frank said. “And I’m obliged to you for persuading the railroad to hold that train for me.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Bastrop coughed, and Frank knew the detective was a little embarrassed that Frank had saved his life. Gruffly, he went on. “Better get on board and get out of here while you can. Once my supe
riors hear about this, they may not be quite so understanding.”

  Frank held out his hand. “So long, Sergeant.”

  Bastrop shook with him, and then Frank climbed up into the car where his compartment was located. The new conductor stood there with arms crossed, eyes narrowed, and a glare already on his face.

  “I don’t like being behind schedule before we ever leave Philadelphia,” he said by way of introduction. Obviously, he knew who Frank was.

  “Not crazy about it myself,” Frank said. “Next time somebody tries to kill me, I’ll tell them not to take so long about it.”

  That didn’t make the conductor any happier, but Frank was used to having folks in positions of authority angry with him. It happened a lot, especially with marshals and sheriffs and the like.

  The train was already pulling out of the station when he went into his compartment, which had been made up for sleeping. With a sigh, he dropped his Stetson on the bunk and sat down to take his boots off.

  He stretched out on the narrow bunk without undressing and stared up at the compartment’s ceiling. As he tried to figure out how many people had already died trying to stop him from getting to Dutton, he realized that he had lost count. Was he going to have to wade through a sea of blood just to reach his destination?

  With that grim thought in his head, he dozed off, rocked to sleep by the constant swaying of the train on the rails.

  Frank hadn’t seen anything of Philadelphia except the bloodstained platform at the train station. In a way he regretted that, because he knew from his reading that the City of Brotherly Love had played an important part in the history of the country. The Declaration of Independence had been signed there, after all. He wouldn’t have minded doing some sightseeing if he’d had the chance. But history wasn’t as important as his mission.

  Likewise, if things had been different, he would have enjoyed seeing something of New York City, even though he knew it was the biggest city in the entire country and being stuck in the middle of that many people would probably make him more nervous than riding through Indian country on a slow horse.