“Yes, sir, we was paid for that, and we done been paid for the rest of the month, ’cause didn’t nobody know how long it would be before you come back.”
As Duff and Elmer sat on their horses talking to Woodward, two other riders came up from the west.
“Here comes Case ’n Brax now,” Woodward said.
The riders pulled up. “We got all the cows back with the others,” one of them said. Then, recognizing Duff, he nodded.
“Mr. MacCallister, I’m Brax Walker. It’s good to see you home, sir.”
“Mr. MacCallister, I’m Case Martin,” the other rider said.
“Who built the barn?” Duff asked.
“Well, sir, Mr. Guthrie, he brung out all the material, the lumber and such,” Woodward said. “And the three of us built it.”
“And you want to work for me?”
“Yes, sir!” all three said together.
“All right, you are hired. This is Elmer Gleason. He is the foreman, and you will answer to him. Have you any problem with that?”
“No, sir, we ain’t got no problem with that at all.”
“You stay here, Elmer. I’m going into town to see what this is all about,” Duff said.
“Okay.”
Duff started to turn his horse, but before he did, he looked back at Woodward and the others.
“And just for your information, gentlemen, what I was wearing that night is called kilts. And ’tis in the colors of the Black Watch, as noble a military unit as ever served in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. I’ll nae brook any more teasing.”
“No, sir, you ain’t never goin’ to hear nothin’ about that from us again, I can promise you that,” Woodward said.
“No, sir, nor from us, either,” Walker added, and Martin nodded his own head in agreement.
Elmer laughed out loud as Duff rode off.
Chugwater
When Duff called upon Fred Matthews to see why there were Black Angus cows on his ranch, Matthews said that this subject could best be discussed over coffee and pie at Vi’s Pies.
Matthews nodded to one of his clerks, who left the store without further instruction.
“I have to make a few entries in my book,” Matthews said. “Give me a moment, and I’ll be right with you.”
“What’s going on, Fred?” Duff asked.
“It’ll only be a moment longer,” Matthews replied, without answering Duff’s question.
Five minutes later the two men walked down to Vi’s Pies. When they stepped inside, Duff saw R.W. Guthrie, Biff Johnson, and Meghan Parker sitting at a table. There were two empty chairs at the table. Seeing Matthews’s clerk hurrying off, he knew that he had been sent to set up this impromptu meeting.
“Take a seat, gentlemen,” Vi Winslow said. “Duff, I baked a fresh cherry pie this morning. I know that is your favorite.”
“Aye, thank you,” Duff said, still confused by everything.
His friends at the table were smiling at him as he sat down.
“Now,” Duff said. “Is this going to be a secret forever? Or is someone going to tell me what is going on?”
“Fred, you be our spokesman,” Biff suggested.
Matthews told Duff how they had gotten word that he had experienced a bit of difficulty, and how they had also heard from the Kansas City Cattle Exchange that they would be forced to sell off the herd if he did not show up in two weeks.
“It was all Meghan’s idea,” Matthews said. “She knew how badly you wanted those black cows, though I still haven’t figured out why,” he added with a chuckle. “So, she came to me, R.W. and Biff, then she put in her own money, and all of us together raised enough to buy the herd in order to prevent them from selling the cows out from under you. She took the money to Kansas City, bought the herd, and put them on the train back here. I hired three cowboys to meet the train, and drive the cows down to your ranch. I assume that you have seen the cows and met your cowboys.”
“Aye. And I’m not sure which was the bigger surprise, seeing the cows, or those three hooligans,” Duff said.
“They promised they would be on their best behavior,” Matthews said.
“Duff,” Meghan said, and there was a worried expression on her face. “I hope we weren’t out of line in this. If we were, and if you are angry with anyone, please be angry with me and not with them. I am the one who talked them into going along with the idea.”
“Upset?” Duff said. “How can I be upset? ’Tis wondering I am how a Scotsman like me, barely a year in this country, could have made as wonderful friends as the four of ye.”
“Duff, you are an honest and good-hearted man,” Biff said. “How hard is it to be friends with such a man?”
“The bit o’ trouble I encountered was in being robbed,” Duff said. “But I’ve recovered the money, and I’ll be repaying all of you, with interest, and my thanks.”
“No interest needed, your thanks are enough,” Matthews said.
“That goes for me too,” Biff said.
“And me,” Guthrie added.
“Not for me,” Meghan said.
“Meghan, you want interest on your loan?” Matthews asked, surprised by her response.
“No interest,” Meghan said. “And no loan. I own one fourth of the herd, and I’m not selling.”
“What?” Duff asked.
Meghan smiled and put her hand on his. “We’re going to be partners, Duff MacCallister. One way or another,” she said.
Duff registered no expression to Meghan’s announcement. He took a bite of his cherry pie and chewed it thoughtfully as everyone stared at him, waiting for his response.
Then, to the relief of everyone, he placed his hand on Meghan’s, and smiled.
“Aye,” he said. “Partners.”
In William W. Johnstone’s bestselling
The Last Gunfighter, Frank Morgan is the last
of a breed—until he confronts a young gun who
shares his name, skill, and maybe even his blood ...
LIKE FATHER. LIKE SON. LIKE HELL.
Morgan has one son he knows of—and Kid
Morgan, the Loner, has become famous in his
own right. But in Montana, Morgan comes
face-to-face with a young man with a deadly swagger
and a stunning claim: that he’s Frank’s son, too.
And his one and only goal is to kill his old man.
For Frank Morgan, the first thing to do is find out if
Brady Morgan is truly his own flesh and blood.
That means tracking down a woman he once loved,
and then untangling her lies, lust and a scheme to
steal prime Montana ranch land. Suddenly, Frank is
in the middle of a bloodbath of a range war—and
he’s standing on the opposite side from young
Brady Morgan. In a clash of guns and greed,
two Morgans will face each other one last time:
to decide who will live and who will die ...
Turn the page for an exciting preview of
THE LAST GUNFIGHTER: MONTANA
GUNDOWN
by William W. Johnstone
with J. A. Johnstone
On sale now wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.
Chapter One
It was nice to be home.
Of course, a man like him didn’t have a home in the strictest sense of the word, like most folks did, Frank Morgan reflected as he and his friend, the old-timer named Salty Stevens, rode through a valley with majestic mountains looming over it.
There was a good reason Frank was known as The Drifter. Every time he had tried to put down roots in the past thirty years or so, something had happened to prevent it.
Often something tragic.
But despite that, he had grown to regard the entire American West as his home. Recently, he had spent time in Alaska and Canada, and while he had to admit that those places were spectacularly beautiful, it was nice to be back in the sort of frontier country where he felt most comfo
rtable.
Cattle country, like the places where he had grown up in Texas, even though this particular valley was located in Montana. Frank saw stock grazing here and there on the lush grass. This was his kind of territory, and his kind of people lived here.
“Pretty, ain’t it?” Salty asked, as if reading Frank’s mind.
Frank nodded and said, “Yep.”
“Well, don’t get all carried away and start waxin’ poetical about it.”
Frank grinned. The expression softened the rugged lines of his face ... a little.
He was a broad-shouldered, powerfully built man who had been wandering the West for more than thirty years since coming home to Texas as a youngster after the Civil War. It was not long after that when he discovered, through no fault of his own, how fast and deadly accurate with a gun he was.
Other people became aware of that natural talent of his. Some tried to use him to their advantage. Others just wanted to test their own skills against his in contests where the stakes were life and death.
And with each man that fell to his gun, Frank Morgan’s reputation grew. He left his home in search of peace, but gun trouble followed him, and as years passed and men died, his reputation became more than that.
It became a legend.
He was tagged with the nickname The Drifter because of his habit of never staying in one place for very long, but some folks had started calling him The Last Gunfighter. In these days when the dawn of a new century was closing in fast, most people considered the Old West to be finished.
Hell, it had been more than twenty years since Jack McCall had put a bullet in the back of Wild Bill Hickok’s head in the Number 10 Saloon in Deadwood. Wes Hardin was dead, too, also shot in the back of the head by a coward; Ben Thompson had gone under; Smoke Jensen was living the peaceful life of a rancher in Colorado; and nobody quite seemed to know what had happened to Matt Bodine.
So it was understandable that people considered Frank Morgan to be the last of a dying breed, that of the shootist and pistolero. In truth, he wasn’t. There were still quite a number of men in the West who were quick on the draw and deadly with their guns. They just didn’t get the notoriety such men once did. The newspaper and magazine writers liked to write about how modern and civilized everything was.
Only the dime novelists still cared about the frontier. They never got all the details right, but there was some truth in the feelings they conveyed. Even Frank, who had been cast as the hero of a number of those lurid, yellow-backed, totally fictional tales, had come to realize that.
Clad in worn range clothes, including a faded blue bib-front shirt and a high-crowned gray Stetson, Frank rode easy in the saddle of a leggy golden sorrel stallion he had dubbed Goldy. He was leading the rangy gray known as Stormy, and a big, wolflike cur called Dog trotted alongside the horses. Frank, Stormy, and Dog had been trail partners for a long time, and although Goldy was younger, he had fit in with them, too.
Salty, in a fringed buckskin vest over his flannel shirt and with a battered old hat pushed down on his thatch of white hair that matched his bristling beard, rode a pinto pony and led a sturdy pack horse. The packs were full of supplies given to them by Bob Coburn, an old friend of Frank’s and the owner of the Circle C Ranch, where they had spent the past few weeks.
Dog, Stormy, and Goldy had been watched over by a livery owner in Seattle for months while Frank was off adventuring in the Great White North; but on receiving a telegram from Frank, the man had put the animals in a livestock car on a train that had delivered them to a siding near the Circle C. Frank and Salty had ridden down from Canada to pick them up at the ranch, and the reunion between Frank and his old friends had been a happy one.
For a while, Frank had been content to stay there and visit with Bob. He’d gotten a kick out of demonstrating gun and rope tricks for the rancher’s ten-year-old son. Salty had spent hours telling wild, hair-raising stories to the youngster, who seemed to have a knack of his own for yarn spinning. It was a pleasant time.
But eventually, Frank had gotten up one morning and known it was time to move on. That was why he and Salty were now ambling along this valley in a generally eastward direction. Where it would take them Frank had no idea.
He didn’t figure it really mattered all that much.
“Are we still goin’ to Mexico?” Salty asked. “We been talkin’ about it for a good long time.”
“We said we were going to spend the winter there,” Frank pointed out. “It’s not winter anymore. It’s the middle of summer, and a beautiful one, at that.”
“Yeah, but Mexico’s a long ways off. Take us a pretty good spell to get there, especially since you don’t believe in gettin’ in no hurry. I figure we should start thinkin’ about headin’ in that direction.”
Frank nodded slowly and said, “We can do that. Start thinking about it, I mean.”
“You’re a dadgummed deliberate cuss, you know that.”
“A man gets that way when the years start piling up on him.”
Salty snorted and said, “There’s been a heap more of ’em pile up on me than on you.”
They could have bantered like this for hours, rocking along peacefully in the saddle in the midst of this spectacularly beautiful scenery.
Unfortunately, trouble reared its ugly head in the form of an outbreak of gunshots somewhere not far away.
Both men reined their mounts to a halt. Salty looked over at Frank and said, “Oh, Lord. You’re thinkin’ about gettin’ in the big middle of that ruckus, whatever it is, ain’t you?”
“I’m curious,” Frank allowed.
The shots continued to bang and roar. They were closer now. Frank’s keen eyes suddenly spotted movement in a line of pine trees about two hundred yards away.
A second later, four men on horseback burst out of the trees. They lashed at their mounts with the reins, urging every bit of speed they could out of the animals.
“They’re headed for them rocks!” Salty exclaimed.
Frank saw the clump of boulders off to the left and knew the old-timer was right. The rocks offered the nearest cover for those fugitives.
They might not make it, because an even larger group of riders emerged from the pines about a hundred yards behind them. There were more than a dozen of these men, and they were all throwing lead after the four fugitives.
Most of them were using handguns, and Frank knew the distance was too great for such weapons. A few of the pursuers had Winchesters. The sharper cracks of the repeaters mixed with the booms of the revolvers. A lucky shot might bring down one of the men fleeing toward the boulders.
“What’re you doin’?” Salty yelped as Frank reached for his own Winchester.
“Figured I’d even the odds a little.”
“We don’t know who those hombres are,” Salty argued. “Might be owl-hoots, and that could be a posse after ’em.”
“That’s why I intend to aim high,” Frank said as he levered a round into the Winchester’s chamber and lifted the rifle to his shoulder.
He knew Salty was right. It wasn’t very smart to get in the middle of a fight when you didn’t know who the sides were or what stakes were involved.
But when Frank saw four men being chased by fifteen or twenty, the sense of fairness that was a deeply ingrained part of him kicked up a fuss. He just didn’t like to see that.
“Aw, shoot!” Salty muttered. “Well, it’s been more’n a month since anybody tried to kill us, so I reckon we’re overdue.”
He reached for his own Winchester and pulled it out of its sheath.
Frank aimed over the heads of the pursuers, who appeared not to have noticed him and Salty, and pressed the trigger. The Winchester cracked and spat flame.
Now that the ball was open, Frank didn’t hesitate. He cranked off five shots as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever. Beside him, Salty’s rifle barked several times as he joined in.
The pursuers must have heard the shots, or at least heard the bullets wh
istling over their heads, because they slowed suddenly and started milling around in confusion. That delay was enough to give the four fugitives a chance to reach the safety of the rocks. As they disappeared behind the boulders, the men who had been chasing them swung around to face the new threat.
They charged toward Frank and Salty.
“Uh-oh,” Salty said as he lowered his rifle. “I don’t think they’re firin’ warnin’ shots, Frank!”
Salty was right about that. He and Frank were the prey now.
Chapter Two
“Come on, Dog!” Frank called as he jammed the Winchester back in its sheath and hauled Goldy around. From the corner of his eye, he had spotted a small knoll about fifty yards to their right. That was the closest cover he and Salty could find.
Leading Stormy and the pack horse, the two men pounded toward the little hill. It was barely big enough for all of them to crowd behind it. As they reached the knoll, Frank sensed as much as heard the passage of a bullet close beside his left ear.
The varmints were getting inside the range.
He swung behind the hill and instantly dropped out of the saddle, pulling the rifle from its sheath as he did so. His feet had barely hit the ground when he charged ten feet or so up the slope and threw himself down on his belly. He yanked his hat off so the crown wouldn’t stick up over the top of the knoll and get ventilated by a bullet.
It was a good hat, and he didn’t see any point in letting it be damaged.
Also, the grass growing on the knoll would make it harder for the gunmen to see where he and Salty were. The old-timer bellied down beside Frank and thrust the barrel of his Winchester over the top of the hill.
“We still aimin’ high?” Salty asked in a scornful tone that made it clear he didn’t think that was a very good idea.
“Reckon we’d better,” Frank said. “Those fellas could still be lawmen.”
“Mighty trigger-happy badge-toters, if they are,” Salty muttered. He squinted over the barrel of his Winchester and squeezed off a shot.
MacCallister: The Eagles Legacy: The Killing Page 24