Authors: William W. Johnstone
Ghost Valley (14 page)
TWENTY-SIX
As Bud was surrounded by a swirling gray fog, what he'd been told came back to him.
* * *
Darkness came to the snow-clad mountains. Rich Boggs was hobbling toward the cabin at Lost Pine Canyon on seriously frostbitten feet. Cabot Bulware was behind him, using a pine limb for a crutch, they told Bud afterward, describing every step of their painful journey.
“It ain't much farther,” Rich groaned. “I can see the mouth of the canyon from here.”
“Sacré,
” Cabot said, limping with most of his weight on the crutch. “I be gon' kill that
batard
Morgan if I can get my hands on a horse and a gun.”
” Cabot said, limping with most of his weight on the crutch. “I be gon' kill that
batard
Morgan if I can get my hands on a horse and a gun.”
“I just wanna get my feet warm,” Rich said. “The way I feel now, I ain't interested in killin nobody. I think a couple of my toes fell off.”
“Who was the old man with Monsieur Morgan?” Cabot asked. “I hear Ned say Morgan always work alone.”
“Don't know,” Rich replied, his teeth chattering from the numbing cold. “Just some old son of a bitch in a coonskin cap with a rifle.”
“He be dangerous too,” Cabot warned. “I see the look in his eyes.”
“You're too goddamn superstitious, Cabot. He'll die just like any other man if you shoot him in the right place. I can guarantee it.”
“My feet are frozen. I go back to Baton Rouge when I can find a horse. I don't like this place.”
“I ain't all that fond of it either, Cabot,” Rich said as they moved slowly to the canyon entrance. “It was a big mistake to side with Ned on this thing. I never did see how we was gonna make any money.”
“I do not care about money now,” Cabot replied. “All I want is a stove where I can warm my feet.”
“Won't be but another half mile to the cabin,” Rich told him in a shivering voice. “All we've gotta do is get there before our feet freeze off.”
“Boots, and horses, are what we need,” Rich announced. “If they didn't leave our horses in the corral, we're a couple of dead men in this weather.”
“I feel dead now,” Cabot replied. “I don't got feeling at all in either one of my feet.”
* * *
As night blanketed the canyon Rich added more wood to the stove. He and Cabot had dragged the dead bodies outside, but a broken window let in so much cold air that Rich was still shivering. He'd taken the boots off Don Jones's body and forced his own feet into them. Cabot was wearing boots and an extra pair of socks that had once belonged to Mack.
They'd found two pistols and a small amount of ammunition among the dead men. Ned and the others had taken all the food; thus Rich was boiling fistfuls of snow in an old coffeepot full of yesterday's grounds.
Five horses were still in the corral even though the gate was open, nibbling from the stack of hay, and there were enough saddles to go around.
“I am going back south in the morning,” Cabot said with his palms open near the stove.
“Me too,” Rich said. “I'm finished with Ned and this bunch of bullshit over gettin' even with Frank Morgan. There's no payday in it for us.”
“I've been dreaming about a bowl of hot crawfish gumbo all afternoon,” Cabot said wistfully. “This is not where I belong.”
“Me either. I'm headed down to Mexico where it's warm all the time.”
Cabot turned to the broken window where Don had been shot in the face. “What was that noise?” he asked.
“I didn't hear no noise,” Rich replied.
“One of the horses in the corral . . . it snorted, or made some kind of sound.”
“My ears are so damn cold I couldn't hear a thing nohow,” Rich declared. “Maybe it was just your imagination. All I hear is snow fallin' on this roof.”
Then Cabot heard it again.
“Help . . . me!” a faint voice cried.
“That sounded like Jerry's voice,” Cabot said, jumping up with a pistol in his fist.
“I heard it that time,” Rich said, getting up with Mack's gun to open the door a crack.
Rich saw a sight he would remember for the rest of his life. Jerry Page came crawling toward them on his hands and knees in the snow, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
Rich and Cabot rushed outside to help him.
“Morgan,” Jerry gasped. “Morgan came up on the rim and stuck a knife in me. He killed . . . Roger. Cut his throat with the same bowie knife.”
“We'll take you in by the fire,” Cabot said as he took one of Jerry's shoulders.
“I'm froze stiff,” Jerry complained, trembling from weakness and cold. “I'm bleedin' real bad. You gotta get me to a doctor real quick.”
“We can't go nowhere in this snowstorm,” Rich said as they helped the wounded man into the cabin. “It'll have to wait for morning.”
“I'm dyin',” Jerry croaked. “You gotta help me. Where's Ned?”
Ned and the others pulled out. We ran into Morgan too. He took our boots and guns and horses. We damn near froze to death gettin' back here.“
They placed Jerry on a blanket beside the stove and covered him with a moth-eaten patchwork guilt.
“Morgan,” Jerry stuttered. “He ain't human. He's like a mountain lion. Me an' Roger never heard a thing until he was on top of us.”
“We figured there was trouble when neither one of you came back,” Rich said bitterly. “Morgan killed Mack and Jeff and Don and Scott. Only Lyle, Slade, Billy, Rich, Cabot, and Ned made it out of here alive.”
“What happened . . . to Morgan's kid?”
“Ned had a gun to his head,” Rich recalled.
“That's the . . . only way it's gonna stop,” Jerry moaned as he put a hand over the deep knife wound between his ribs. “Ned's gotta let that boy go.”
“Ned's gone crazy for revenge. He won't stop until he kills Morgan.”
“Morgan . . . will . . . kill him first,” Jerry assured them. “I need a drink of whiskey. Anything.”
“We're boilin' old coffee grounds,” Rich said. “There ain't no whiskey. Ned and the others took it all with them when we pulled out of here.”
“Water,” Jerry whispered, his ice-clad eyelids batting as if he was losing consciousness. “Gimme some water. Morgan's gonna kill us all unless Ned . . . lets that boy go.”
“You know Ned,” Cabot said, pouring a cup of weak coffee for Jerry, steaming rising from the rusted tin cup. “He won't listen to reason.”
“I'm gonna die . . . way up here in Colorado,” Jerry said as his eyes closed. “I sure as hell wish I was home where I could see my mama one more time....”
Jerry's chest stopped moving.
“Don't waste that coffee,” Rich said. “Jerry's on his way back home now.”
Cabot stared into the cup. “This is not coffee,
mon ami.
It is only warm water with a little color in it.”
mon ami.
It is only warm water with a little color in it.”
* * *
Ned paced back and forth as a fire burned under a rocky ledge in the bend of a dry streambed.
“Where the hell is Rich and Cabot?” he asked, glancing once at Conrad, bound hand and foot beneath the outcrop where the fire flickered. It was dark, and still snowing, but the snowfall had let up some.
“They ain't comin',” Lyle said.
“What the hell do you mean, they ain't coming?” Ned barked with his jaw set hard.
“Morgan got to 'em,” Slade said from his lookout point on top of the ledge. “They'd have been here by now if they were able.”
“Slade's right,” Bud said, his Winchester resting on his shoulder. “Some way or another, Frank Morgan slipped up behind 'em and got 'em both.”
“Bullshit!” Ned cried. “Morgan is an old man, too old to be a the gunman. He doesn't have it in him to slip up behind Rich and Cabot.”
“I figure he got Jerry and Roger,” Slade went on without raising his voice. “We know he shot Mack and Don and Jeff and Scott back at the cabin. Poor ol' Curtis never had a chance either. Then you've got to wonder what happened to Sam and Buster and Tony back on the trail when they went to check on Charlie.”
Lyle grunted. “Morgan must be slick,” he said, casting a wary glance around their camp. “I wish we'd never gotten into this mess. That kid over yonder ain't worth no big bunch of dollars to nobody.”
“He ain't worth a plug nickel to me,” Billy said as he added wood to the fire. “I say we kill the little bastard an' get clear of this cold country.”
Ned turned on his men. “We're not leaving until Frank Morgan is dead!” he yelled.
Lyle gave Ned a look. “Who's gonna kill him, Ned? We ain't had much luck tryin' it so far.”
“We'll join up with Victor at Gypsum Gap and hunt him down like a dog,” Ned replied.
Slade shrugged. “Bein' outnumbered don't seem to bother Morgan all that much.”
“Are you taking Morgan's side?” Ned asked.
“I'm not takin' any side but my own. My main purpose now is to stay alive.”
“Me too,” Billy added.
“Same goes for me,” Lyle muttered. “This Morgan feller is a handful.”
“Are you boys yellow?” Ned demanded.
“Nope,” Lyle was the first to say. “Just smart. If a man is a manhunter by profession, he's usually mighty damn good at it if he lives very long.”
“I never met a man who didn't make a mistake,” Ned said, coming back to the fire to warm his hands.
“So far,” Slade said quietly, “Morgan hasn't made very many mistakes.”
“One of you saddle a horse and ride back down the trail to see if you can find Rich and Cabot,” Ned ordered, his patience worn thin.
“I'm not going,” Slade said. “That's exactly what a man like Morgan will want us to do.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Ned inquired, knocking snowflakes from the brim of his hat.
“He wants us to split up, so he can take us down a few at a time.”
“Slade's right,” Lyle said.
“We oughta stay together,” Billy chimed in. “At least until we join up with Vic an' his boys.”
“Morgan!” Ned spat, pacing again. “That son of a bitch is a dead man when I get him in my sights.”
“That'll be the trouble,” Lyle offered. “A man like Morgan don't let you get him in your gunsights all that often, an' when he does, there's usually a reason.”
“He'll come after us tonight,” Billy said, glancing around at forest shadows. “He's liable to kill us in our bedrolls if we ain't careful.”
“I'm not goin' to sleep tonight,” Slade said.
“Why's that?” Ned asked.
Slade grinned. “I want to make damn sure I see the sun come up tomorrow mornin'.”
Ned was fuming now. Even his two best gunmen, Lyle and Slade, showed signs of fear.
“You ride back a ways, Billy,” Ned said. “Just a mile or two.”
“I won't do it, Ned.” Billy was certain it was a death sentence.
“Are you disobeying a direct order from me?” Ned demanded as he opened his coat.
“Yessir I am,” Billy replied. “If Morgan's back there, he'll kill me from ambush someplace.”
Ned snaked his Colt from a holster. He aimed for Billy's stomach. “Get on one of those horses and ride southwest to see if you can find Rich and Cabot. If you don't, I'll damn sure kill you myself.”
Billy's eyes rounded. “You'd shoot me down for not goin' back?”
“I damn sure will. Get mounted.”
Billy backed away from the fire with his palms spread wide. “You let this Morgan feller get stuck in your craw, Ned. I never seen you like this.”
“Get on that goddamn horse. See if you can find their tracks.”
Billy turned his back on Ned and trudged off to the picket ropes.
“You may have just gotten that boy killed,” Slade said tonelessly.
* * *
Bud felt something pierce his chest, pinning him to the ground. The last thing he saw before his eyes batted shut was the Indian, holding a bow with a quivering bowstring.
Was the Indian Morgan's sidekick? he wondered.
But the Indian, who called himself Anasazi, wasn't carrying a rifle.
Bud felt his body rising off the ground, spinning in lazy circles.
“What the hell is goin' on?” he mumbled, then fell silent.
* * *
A slender figure dressed in deerskin leggings and a deerskin shirt bent over Bud, jerking his arrow from Bud's rib cage with one savage pull.
“Sleep, white-eyes,” he said, turning away quickly with the bloody arrow in his fist.
He mounted a piebald pony and disappeared into the pine forest as dawn brightened the eastern horizon.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Show me where you found the three men,” Frank said, clinging to his saddle horn, shivering inside his coat from the fever from his wound and the below-freezing temperatures at this high elevation.
“It's a mile or so,” Buck said. “Can you stay on your horse that long?”
“Yeah,” Frank whispered, thinking about Conrad and this second attempt by Ned Pine and Victor Vanbergen to hold him for ransom. “I can sit this saddle for a spell.” Clouds of swirling steam came out of his mouth when he spoke even though his lips were pressed tightly together, a mark of the anger welling inside him.
Dog trotted out in front of them as they crested a ridge above Ghost Valley. Early rays of sunlight cast eerie shadows on the snowy forest floor, while a curious silence surrounded both horsemen.
“Some of 'em will be comin', lookin' for the two I shot,” Buck said.
“Let them come,” Frank snarled, fighting back the pain racing through his shoulder and chest. He wanted to end things between himself and the gunslicks, but he had to remember that Conrad's safety was the most important thing and he couldn't let personal grudges get in the way.
Buck shrugged. “I'll get as many of 'em as I can, Morgan, only it's gonna be a helluva fight if they all come at us at once.”
“I've never been in a fight that wasn't hell,” Frank told him. “Never had an easy one in my life. But you don't have to take a hand in this. I can handle it myself.”
“In the shape you're in? You'd have a hard time swat-tin' a fly.”
“I've never had an easy road through life.”
“Don't reckon I have either,” Buck recalled, guiding his pinto around a snowdrift. “Gettysburg was the worst. Never saw so many dead men in my life. I coulda been one of them. Took a ball in my leg. Ain't been able to walk quite right ever since, but I was always thankful I didn't wind up dead like so many of 'em did.”
“No such thing as an easy war,” Frank said, keeping his eyes on the trees below as they rode over the lip of the valley to begin a steep descent.
“Hold up, Morgan,” Buck said quietly, jerking his pinto to a halt.
“What is it?” Frank asked, unable to see any movement in the trees.
“Way down yonder, maybe half a mile or so. I just saw a man on a horse.”
Frank reined his bay to a stop, trying to find the movement Buck had seen. “I don't see a damn thing,” he said a moment later.
“He's gone now. Coulda been one of them Injuns, I suppose, or it might be one of Pine's boys.”
“Will the Indians bother us?” Frank asked.
Buck shook his head. “They stay to themselves. A year can go by when me an' Karen don't see hide nor hair of 'em. Once in a while they'll show themselves, but it's only when they take a mind to.”
“Are they the Old Ones, the Anasazi?”
“Can't say for sure. Main thing is, they don't bother nobody.”
“I hope they stay that way until this business between me and Pine and Vanbergen and his damned hired guns is over. I don't need any Indian enemies now.”
“Most likely they will stay out of it. All these years I been up here, we ain't had no trouble out of 'em. Hardly ever see 'em, matter of fact.”
“Let's keep moving,” Frank said, heeling his horse forward. “I don't see anything down there.”
Buck merely nodded and urged his horse alongside Frank's to continue their slow trek toward the snow-laden floor of Ghost Valley.
Suddenly, Frank saw the outline of a man on a horseâhe was wearing a bowler hat. Frank swung his horse into the trees and said, “I see one of them.”
“I seen him too,” Buck said softly. “Looks like an Easterner wearin' that derby.”
“He's real careful,” Frank observed. “He's no Easterner by the way he uses cover to hide himself.”
“I'll flank him,” Buck suggested, easing his pinto away to the east. “Remember, there could damn sure be a bunch more of 'em somewheres.”
“I don't need a reminder,” Frank said, pulling his Winchester from its saddle boot.
He jacked a shell into the firing chamber and sent his bay down the slope at a slow walk. The pain in his shoulder seemed less.
* * *
Cletus knelt over the bodies of Bud and Coy, examining the blood and footprints in the snow. What puzzled him most was the pair of moccasin prints near one of the bodies.
He glanced around him. Maybe Frank Morgan wore moccasins when he was out in the wild.
“Don't make no damn difference to me what's on his feet,” Cletus muttered.
A moment earlier he'd thought he'd saw a pair of riders on one of the high ridges, but now they were gone. In the light of early morning, it was hard to tell. He supposed it could have been a couple of those Indians he saw when he found this hideout of Pine's and Vanbergen's.
“A man's eyes can play tricks,” he said, moving back to his horse to climb in the saddle. “But if it is Morgan, I'll kill the son of a bitch an' take that money. He'd damn sure better have that money with him.”
Cletus mounted, collecting his reins, listening to the silence around him, watching everything.
“It's damn sure quiet,” he said to himself. “Downright unusual for it to be so quiet.”
He urged his horse up the snowy slope, resting the butt of his ten-gauge shotgun on his right knee. If anyone showed up in front of him, he'd cut them to shreds with his Greener shotgun and take off for Texas with the money.
Two hundred yards higher up the incline, a voice from the forest stopped him cold.
“Hold it right there, pardner. Drop that damn goose gun or you're a dead man!”
Cletus thumbed back both hammers, aimed, and fired in the direction of the voice. One barrel bellowed, spitting out its deadly load of flame and buckshot. His horse shied and almost lunged out from under him, until he finally got the animal under control.
“That was a mistake, pardner,” the same voice said.
Half a second later, a rifle barked from the pines east of himâhe saw the yellow muzzle flash just as something popped in his right hip, sending tiny tufts of lint from the hem of his coat flying into the air.
“Shit!” Cletus cried, flung from his saddle by the force of impact from a ball of lead.
He landed on his side in the snow, wincing, and his fall caused the second barrel of his shotgun to go off harmlessly toward the treetops.
His horse galloped away trailing its reins, and Cletus understood the danger he was in almost at once. He was wounded, lying in a small clearing, with a gunman taking good aim at him from a spot Cletus couldn't see clearly.
“Bushwhackin' bastard,” he croaked, beginning a slow crawl toward a ponderosa trunk with blood running down his pants leg to his right boot.
The rifle thundered again, its slug missing him by mere inches, plowing up a furrow in the snow behind his head before he could make the tree.
Cletus made the ponderosa and looked down at his leg. He was bleeding badly.
Taking stock of his situation, he quickly realized how desperate his circumstances were. He was wounded in the hip, without a horse, trapped in a cluster of pines.
“How the hell could I have missed seein' the bastard,” he asked himself. Years of manhunting had given him good instincts for this sort of thing.
He knew he had to stop the bleeding from his wound. He took a faded blue bandanna from around his neck and gingerly tied it around the top of his thigh.
“I've gotta move . . . he knows where I am.”
Painfully, yet carefully, Cletus began to crawl between the tree trunks, hoping he could find his horse. As he inched across the snow, he reloaded his shotgun.
* * *
Buck heard the twin shotgun blasts and the rifle shot, and he jumped off his horse in a clump of small blue spruce trees not far from the spot.
“Morgan found him,” he whispered, leaving his pinto ground-hitched.
He crept forward with his buffalo gun cocked and ready, unable to see who Morgan was shooting at.
Then he saw a loose horse trotting back toward the valley floor, a saddle on its back.
“Morgan got him,” Buck told himself.
Looking uphill, he sought the place where the man in the derby hat had gone down. Whoever he was, he'd been knocked off his horse, but that was a long way from a sure sign that the man was dead.
And there was another thing to consider . . . making sure he didn't mistake Morgan for the enemy.
Buck continued up the slope at a slow pace, pausing behind every tree to look and listen. He knew this country well, and he knew how easily a man could be fooled by what he thought he saw in front of him.
* * *
Frank was blinded by tears by the time he made it out of the saddle. He tied off his bay, cradling his rifle in the crook of his good arm. The man he was after had gone down little more than a hundred yards away.
He sleeved tears of pain from his eyes.
“Time to be real careful,” he told himself, beginning a slow walk downhill, a bit of carelessness he allowed himself due to his injuryâand the need for haste to get to Conrad before Pine and Vanbergen killed him.
A pistol shot roared from his left and he made a dive for his belly, tasting snow, feeling the shock of his fall all the way up to his sore shoulder.
Bitter bile rose in his throat. “You missed me, you son of a bitch!” he cried, knowing how foolish it was to give his present position away.
His answer was another gunshot, coming from more than a hundred yards away.
“You're a damn fool, whoever you are!” Frank bellowed, making sure he had some cover behind the trunk of a thick pine tree.
“You're the damn fool, Morgan!” a distant voice shouted back at him.
Frank didn't recognize the voice. “Who the hell are you, asshole?”
“What difference do names make? Where's all that goddamn money you're supposed to be bringin' to get that snivelin' kid of yours back?”
“I've got it right here. Come and get it!”
“I'm gonna kill you, you old bastard.”
“Make your play. I'll be waiting for you. . . .”
Another soft sound reached Frank's ears, a movement in the snow.
“Keep coming,” he said. “Keep thinking about all this money I've got in my money belt.”
Now there was silence.
* * *
Cletus belly-crawled toward the place where he'd seen Morgan go down. In his mind's eye, he could see a leather money belt filled with gold coins. He told himself that Morgan wasn't as good as they said he was . . . if his own aim had been just a little bit better a moment ago, Morgan would be dead and all the ransom money would be his.
He continued to inch forward on his elbows, his Greener shotgun clenched in one fist, his Colt in the other. He could almost feel the gold in his hands.
Then he heard a whispering sound. A short arrow with a feathered shaft entered his side, penetrating his liver with a suddenness he'd never known before.
“What the hell . . . ?”
He rolled over just in time to see an Indian moving away from him among the pines.
Blood pumped from Cletus's wound. He dropped both of his guns to reach for the arrow shaft, and found it buried in his flesh almost all the way to the hilt.
Shooting pains, like hot branding irons, raced down his body and across his chest. He tried to breathe, and couldn't.
A moment later, Cletus Huling, bounty hunter from Texas, was dead, never knowing who it was that killed him.
* * *
Victor went to a window of the shack. “Those were gunshots I heard,” he said, turning to Ken and Harry Oldham, brothers from the Texas Panhandle. “You boys ride up there. Maybe Huling got Morgan, but I'm gonna make damn sure Huling don't double-cross us. If you find him, bring him down here with that money.”
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