The Loner

by J. A. Johnstone

Six weeks earlier

  Nevada was beautiful this time of year. But then, any setting would be beautiful as long as Rebel Callahan Browning was in it, Conrad Browning thought.

  “Here’s to you, my dear,” he said as he raised a fine crystal champagne flute. “You make a lovely view even lovelier.”

  “Why, Conrad, what a sweet thing to say.” His wife smiled at him. The sunlight filtered down through the branches of the pine tree under which Conrad had spread the blanket he’d taken from the buggy. The golden glow struck highlights from her blond hair where it fell in thick waves around her shoulders. Her face was flushed with happiness. Or maybe it was just the champagne, Conrad thought.

  She clinked her glass against his, and they both drank. He didn’t need alcohol to become intoxicated these days. His wife’s beauty and the clear, high country air were more than enough to cause that.

  The remains of a picnic lunch were spread out on the blanket in front of them. Conrad had packed the lunch in a wicker basket, placed it in the buggy along with the blanket, and then surprised Rebel with his suggestion that they take a drive up here into the hills overlooking Carson City, Nevada.

  “What about work?” she had asked with a puzzled frown.

  “I’m the boss, aren’t I? I think I can take half a day, or even a whole day, off if I want to.”

  “Yes, of course,” Rebel had said. “But it’s just so . . . unlike you.”

  “I’m not myself since we moved out here.”

  It was true. Conrad had felt himself changing ever since they’d left Boston behind and come to Carson City. He wished they had made the move earlier. He slept better, breathed easier, and was coming to realize that even though he had been raised in the East, this was now home to him.

  It was all Frank Morgan’s fault. Or perhaps it was better to say that Frank deserved the credit, although for a long time Conrad had been unwilling to give his father the least bit of credit for anything. All he had done was blame him for his mother’s death.

  Conrad Browning was practically a grown man before he found out that his father was Frank Morgan, the notorious Western gunfighter known as The Drifter. Frank hadn’t known he had a son either, because Conrad was the product of a brief marriage when he was a young man, a marriage that his beloved Vivian’s father had ended abruptly. Vivian had gone on to marry again and to found a business empire that stretched across the continent. She and her second husband had raised Conrad, who had taken his stepfather’s last name.

  Several years earlier, during a trip West, outlaws had murdered Vivian. Those same outlaws had kidnapped and tortured Conrad. He had Frank Morgan to thank for saving his life. Conrad had been in no mood to thank the man, however. He had found out by then that Frank was his real father, and he didn’t care for that news at all. He had been a bit of a prig in those days, he often thought now.

  More than a bit actually.

  Frank hadn’t given up on him, though, and over the course of several adventures they had been drawn into, Conrad had come to respect his father, even to feel genuine affection for him. They worked well together.

  It was during one of those adventures, in fact, that Conrad had met and fallen in love with Rebel. After their marriage, they had gone back to Boston, but circumstances kept pulling them westward. They had spent some time in Buckskin, a mining community in the mountains southeast of Carson City, where Frank had served as the marshal for a while. Seeing how Rebel thrived in the frontier atmosphere had convinced Conrad to move out here permanently. With telegraph wires and railroad lines stretching all across the country now, there was no reason why he couldn’t manage the Browning business holdings just as effectively from Carson City as he did from Boston.

  “Well, whoever you are these days, I like him,” Rebel said. She finished her champagne, placed the glass in the basket, and lay down on the blanket, stretching her arms above her head so that her breasts rose enticingly.

  Conrad couldn’t resist the temptation. He set his glass down and moved alongside her, propping himself up on an elbow so that he could lean over her and press his lips to hers. The kiss was sweet and gentle at first, but it grew rapidly in intensity. Passionate urgency surged through Conrad’s body. Rebel wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him tighter against her. Their bodies molded together, her breasts flattening under the pressure of his muscular chest.

  She was breathless with desire when he pulled back and broke the kiss. He slid his left hand between them to caress her right breast through her dress. “Conrad,” she said in a husky voice, “it’s broad daylight, and we’re right out in the open . . .”

  “And there’s no one but us around for miles,” he said. He didn’t know that for a fact, but he felt fairly certain it was true. He wanted it to be true. He kissed Rebel again.

  Her hands clutched at him. He reached for the hem of her skirt and drew it up, exposing sleek, bare, beautiful legs. His fingers stroked the softness of her thighs.

  Somewhere not far off, hoofbeats thudded on the ground.

  Rebel gasped and started pushing Conrad away. He went willingly, but not happily. He didn’t particularly want anybody riding up on them like this either. He rolled off Rebel and sat up. Beside him, she hastily tried to tug her skirt down. She didn’t manage to cover herself completely before half a dozen men rode out of the trees and into sight. They had to have gotten at least a flash of her bare legs before she finally got her skirt over them.

  As the men reined in, Conrad’s eyes darted from them to the picnic basket. A short-barreled Colt .45 revolver was in the basket, within reach if he needed to grab it. When he and Rebel set out on this excursion, he certainly hadn’t anticipated running into any trouble, but one of the things he had learned from being around his father was that it was best to be prepared.

  The gun had only five rounds in its cylinder, though; the hammer rested on the empty sixth chamber. Something else he had learned from Frank. Five bullets, six men . . . that could present a challenge.

  Stop jumping to conclusions, Conrad told himself. These men probably meant them no harm. He was sure they hadn’t even known that he and Rebel were here.

  He got to his feet, brushed off his trousers, and nodded to the strangers. “Gentlemen,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is,” one of the riders replied. He gestured with his left hand toward the blanket and the wicker basket. “We didn’t mean to interrupt your picnic.”

  “That’s quite all right. We were finished anyway.” Conrad held a hand down to Rebel. “Weren’t we, my dear?”

  “That’s right,” she said as she grasped his hand and let him help her to her feet.

  The man who had spoken before grinned and said, “Don’t let us run you off, folks.” He was a narrow-shouldered man with a ginger beard and a cuffed-back hat. The well-worn walnut grips of a revolver jutted up from the holster on his hip. The men with him were similar sorts, all dressed in range clothes. Some were bearded, some clean-shaven, but they all had hard-bitten faces. Conrad had seen plenty just like them, men who were no better and no more honest than they had to be. Just like the outlaws who had sliced off the top of his left ear to torture him while he was their prisoner. He wore his sandy hair long to cover up that disfigurement.

  Conrad tried to ignore the cold ball of fear that had formed in his belly. He wasn’t afraid for himself so much as he was for Rebel. Outnumbered as the two of them were, if the men decided to attack them, they could probably overpower him and do whatever they wanted to her.

  Some of them would die in the process, though. He made that vow to himself, even as he tried to keep what he was feeling from showing on his face.

  “That’s all right,” he said as he reached down to pick up the basket. “We were leaving anyway. Got to get back to town.”

  “Live in Carson City, do you?”

  “That’s right.” Conrad felt a little better now that he had the basket in his left hand where his right could swoop into
it and snatch out the Colt. There was a Winchester in the buggy. He wondered if Rebel could reach it while he gave her some covering fire. If she got her hands on the rifle, they could give a better account of themselves. Rebel was a better shot with a Winchester than he was, and she had the fighting spirit of a girl who had grown up on the frontier.

  If those varmints started any trouble, they’d get a warmer reception than they likely expected, Conrad thought.

  But then the spokesman surprised him by reaching up, tugging on his hat brim, and nodding pleasantly. “Guess we’ll be ridin’ on then,” he said. “You folks have a pleasant day.” He turned his horse, hitched it into motion, and jerked his head at the other men to indicate that they should follow him.

  Conrad slipped his right hand into the basket and closed it around the butt of the Colt, just in case this was some sort of trick. That didn’t appear to be the case, though. The men rode on around the shoulder of the hill, soon going out of sight.

  Rebel reached down, grabbed the corners of the blanket, and gathered the whole thing into a bundle with the leftover food inside. Conrad took the revolver out of the basket. Rebel crammed the blanket in to replace the gun.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  “Indeed,” Conrad said. He tucked the Colt behind his belt. “Those men could still be lurking around.”

  Rebel shuddered. “Did you see the way they were looking at me? Especially that big, ugly one?”

  “Not really,” Conrad admitted. “I was watching their shoulders most of the time.” That was where a tiny hitch could be seen just before most men went for their guns. Frank had taught him that. With some men, the tell was in their eyes, but experienced gunfighters could control that. Not the shoulder hitch, though.

  “Well, it wasn’t good,” Rebel said. “I thought for sure they were going to—” She stopped and shook her head. “Let’s just say I was trying to figure out how fast I could get to that Winchester in the buggy.”

  A grim laugh came from Conrad as he set the basket in the back of the buggy. “I must admit, the same thought was going through my mind, my dear.”

  Moments later, he had the vehicle rolling back down the hill toward Carson City, behind the big buckskin horse hitched to it. There was still no sign of the six riders. Conrad sighed with relief as he glanced over at his wife. That encounter had turned out much better than he had feared it might.

  Although he was still disappointed that he and Rebel had been interrupted just at that particular moment . . .

  “Damn it, Lasswell, we should’ve waited another few minutes before we rode up. Then we could’ve seen ’em goin’ at it. That gal’d be worth watchin’, I’ll bet.”

  Clay Lasswell leaned to the side in his saddle and spat. “And then what would you fellas have done?” he demanded. “You’re tellin’ me you could’ve seen Mrs. Browning buck nekkid and not wanted to jump on her?”

  The giant, moonfaced Carlson nudged the older man riding beside him and laughed. “Buck nekkid,” he said. “I don’t want to see that! You get it, Buck?”

  “Shut up,” Buck said without any real rancor. Carlson was an idiot most of the time. Buck had learned to make allowances for him. Julio Esquivel was the same way. He just shook his head at Carlson’s comments.

  Ezra Harker, the man who’d been complaining to Lasswell, said, “What would it have hurt if we’d gone ahead and shot the dude and taken the girl?”

  Lasswell raked the fingers of his left hand through his ginger-colored beard. “Well, for one thing,” he said, “that ain’t what we’re bein’ paid to do. For another, did you see the way the boy kept eyein’ that picnic basket? I’d bet a hat he had a gun in there.”

  “What if he did? You worried about bein’ shot by some pasty-faced gent from back East?”

  Lasswell squinted at Harker and said, “Do you just not pay attention to anything, Ezra? That boy didn’t look too pasty-faced to me. And have you forgot that his pa’s Frank Morgan?”

  “Just because his pa’s a gunfighter don’t mean that he is. Anyway, Morgan’s an old man now.”

  “Not that old,” Lasswell said, thinking of some of the stories he’d heard about Frank Morgan in recent years. The Drifter might not be as young as he once was, but his gun hand hadn’t slowed down any. He was still tough as whang leather and dangerous as a wounded wildcat. Sure, the boy was different, but if he’d inherited even part of his pa’s skill with a gun and pure cussedness . . .

  “We’ll do things the way we were told,” Lasswell went on. “That’s the best way of bein’ sure we get paid like we were promised.”

  The sixth man in the group, the dark, saturnine Ray Duncan, said, “We’d better get paid. If we don’t, I’ll be lookin’ to even the score with some hot lead.”

  The riders kept moving gradually higher in the mountains. Off to the west, surrounded by pines, lay the blue depths of Lake Tahoe. It wasn’t far from here to the California line. This was silver country, but large ranches abounded in the area, too. Several railroad lines passed through Carson City and Reno to the north. If a man wanted to rob a mine payroll or an ore shipment, hold up a train or rustle some cattle, this corner of Nevada was the place for him to be. Opportunities for lawlessness were everywhere.

  Right now, those opportunities included kidnapping a rich man’s wife.

  “Anyway,” Lasswell went on to Harker, “if we killed the boy, who’d pay the ransom for his wife?”

  “Frank Morgan?” Harker suggested.

  Lasswell spat again. “Morgan? You ever know a gunman to have a lot of money? Hell, it runs through our fingers like water, you know that. That’s why we can’t go too long between jobs. Not to mention the fact that if we was to kill Morgan’s boy, I don’t reckon he’d be too disposed to handin’ over any ransom money to us. Likely, he’d come after us and try to kill us all instead.”

  “Well, then, what about the girl’s family?”

  Lasswell shook his head. “From what I understand, she don’t come from money. Browning’s got all of it. And he’ll pay handsomely to get her back once she’s in our hands.”

  “A woman like that’d be worth damn near anything,” Duncan said.

  “Sí,” Julio agreed. “She is very lovely.”

  Carlson said, “I don’t care what else we do, long as I get a turn or two with her ’fore we send her back to the dude. Lord, I’m lookin’ forward to that.”

  Lasswell frowned. He was going to have his hands full keeping this bunch of mangy coyotes under control, and he knew it. If he had to, he could afford to shoot one or two of them, he supposed. That would still leave him with enough men to do the job, assuming that the others were waiting like they were supposed to be.

  A few minutes later, the six riders came to a large clearing. Lasswell had been smelling wood smoke for a while, so he wasn’t surprised to see that the men waiting for them had built a campfire. They even had a pot of coffee brewing.

  “Lasswell?” one of the men called as he strode forward to meet the riders. He was tall and barrel-chested, with a face that looked like it had been hacked out of an old log with a dull ax.

  Lasswell reined in and nodded. “That’s right.”

  The man stuck a hand up to him. “I’m Vernon Moss. You sent me a wire, told me to gather up as many good men as I could and meet you here.”

  Lasswell shook hands with Moss, then swung down from the saddle. The men with him dismounted as well. Lasswell looked around the clearing, saw that there were nine men in addition to Moss.

  “That’s Jeff and Hank Winchell,” Moss said, pointing to two tall, skinny hardcases who looked as much alike as two peas in a pod. “Don’t bother trying to tell them apart. That’s Clem Baggott next to them, then Abel Dean, Jim Fowler, Titus Gant, and Spence Hooper. The old-timer’s Rattigan, and the breed is called White Rock.”

  “You vouch for all of ’em, Moss?” Lasswell asked.

  “I do.”

  Lasswell studied the men intently for a mome
nt, then chuckled. “You’re about as evil-lookin’ a bunch of hombres as I ever seen. Good job, Moss.”

  “What is it we’re after?” Moss wanted to know. “With sixteen men, we can hold up a train or knock over a bank easy.”

  “Our job will be even easier than that. We got to kidnap one woman.”

  Moss frowned at Lasswell, who heard several surprised mutters from the other men. “One woman?” he repeated. “Why do you need this many men to snatch one woman?”

  “Because snatchin’ her ain’t the problem. Hangin’ on to her until we get the ransom is.”

  “Must be one mighty special woman,” Moss said. “Who is she anyway?”

  “It ain’t who she is. It’s who her husband’s father is. You ever hear of Frank Morgan?”

  The worried look that suddenly appeared on Moss’s face answered that question. “The woman we’re after is Frank Morgan’s daughter-in-law? The payoff had better be damned good! I won’t take a chance on going up against Morgan if it’s not.”

  “How does fifty thousand dollars sound?”

  “Split between sixteen men?” Moss did some quick ciphering in his head. “That’s a little over three grand apiece.”

  “It’ll be even more if some of us don’t live to claim a share,” Lasswell pointed out.

  “You reckon that’s liable to happen?”

  “If Frank Morgan gets involved,” Lasswell said, “I think you can damned well count on it.”

  Chapter 3

  Conrad didn’t exactly forget about the encounter with the six men on the hillside, but he had plenty of other things on his mind, so he didn’t dwell on it. Keeping up with all the far-flung Browning business holdings required a great deal of time and attention. When he and Rebel had first moved to Carson City, he had rented an office in one of the bank buildings downtown and hired a private secretary, as well as several bookkeepers and stenographers. All of them stayed busy as information flowed into the Carson City office over the telegraph wires from Boston, New York, Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco.