“Where?” The question came quick and sharp.
“Brownwood, not that it’s any of your business.”
The lawman nodded. “I figured as much. Going over to Brown County to hire out your gun, aren’t you? I know all about you, Morgan.”
“Evidently you don’t. I’ve done a lot of things, Sheriff, but selling my services as a gunman isn’t one of them.”
“Oh, no? Then how come you seem to wind up in every shooting scrape that comes along, wherever you go?”
Frank’s lips curved slightly in a thin smile. “Sometimes I just can’t help taking cards in the game, especially if there’s some cheating going on.”
“But you don’t plan on starting any trouble here in Comanche?”
Frank sighed in frustration. He said, “No, Sheriff, I don’t. But I can if you’ve got your heart set on it.”
The lawman’s face tightened. “There’s no call for that. Just ride on, Morgan. I don’t want to see your face in these parts again.”
Frank didn’t say anything, just turned Stormy and hitched him into a walk again. He didn’t like the sheriff’s attitude, but it would be more trouble than it was worth to keep arguing with the man.
“Go see Duggan, gunslinger!” the sheriff called after him. “He’ll pay you your blood money!”
Frank didn’t turn around, didn’t give the sheriff the satisfaction of seeing him respond to the taunt. But he filed the name away in his brain. Somebody called Duggan was hiring gunmen.
That might be a good place to start looking for Tyler Beaumont.
* * *
West of Comanche was a long line of rugged, rocky bluffs running north and south. The trail meandered through a shallow pass. Frank left the farmland around Comanche behind and entered country that was more suitable for ranching. There was only one settlement between Comanche and Brownwood, a little place called Blanket. Frank skirted it and pushed on, eager to reach Brownwood before nightfall.
The sun was sinking behind a big hill just west of the settlement when Frank rode into Brownwood. He stopped at the first saloon he came to, dismounted, tied the Appaloosa’s reins to a hitch rail, and told Dog to stay. He stepped up onto the boardwalk. Since the afternoon had been fairly warm, the saloon’s doors were open, with only the batwings barring entrance. Frank pushed them aside and stepped into the room.
It was the sort of place he had seen hundreds of times in hundreds of other towns and settlements, a big, high-ceilinged room lit by oil lamps that gave off a smoky haze. That haze mixed with tobacco smoke from a dozen quirlies to turn the air a permanent grayish-blue. Sawdust littered the floor to soak up any spilled beer or whiskey, but it couldn’t soak up the raw tang of alcohol. Underlying that were the smells of manure and sweat that followed men who worked with cattle. To the right was a long, polished hardwood bar with mirrors and paintings of nude, extremely voluptuous women on the walls behind it. Tables where men sat and drank or played cards were scattered over the floor to the left. At the back of the room, also to the left, was a staircase that led up to the second floor, where rooms opened onto a balcony that overlooked the main room. To the right of the stairs was a small stage with a piano tucked into a corner of it. The sign outside had proclaimed this to be MCKELVEY’S PALACE. It was nice enough, as frontier saloons went, but it didn’t really look all that palatial to Frank Morgan.
Since it was early, the place wasn’t very busy. Half-a-dozen men stood at the bar drinking while four more played a lazy game of poker at one of the tables. Only one bartender was on duty, a tall man with a rust-colored beard, and he wasn’t having any trouble keeping up with the demand. He sauntered along the bar, refilling shot glasses and drawing mugs of beer whenever one of the cowboys standing at the hardwood asked for a drink.
There were two women in the saloon as well, one of them standing at the end of the bar, the other watching the poker game, her right hand resting on the shoulder of one of the players. Both wore spangled dresses with the necklines low in the front and the skirts high enough to reveal stockings rolled just below the knees. The one at the table was older, probably in her thirties, with a doughy face and short, tightly curled brown hair that was starting to go gray. The woman at the bar was no more than twenty, slender and blond and still relatively pretty, although the ravages of her life were starting to show in her face, especially at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She gave Frank a smile and started toward him as soon as he came into the room.
“Hello, handsome,” she greeted him. “Just ride in?”
He saw her reaching to take his arm and turned slightly so that she grasped the left one instead of the right. Her eyes narrowed a little, and he knew she had noticed the move. She had enough experience to recognize a Coltman when she saw one, and he had just confirmed her judgment.
“That’s right,” he answered.
“You must be thirsty, then. You come right on over here with me and have a drink. First one’s on the house, you know. That’s Mr. McKelvey’s policy.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Frank said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Brownwood.”
“Oh, you’re not a complete stranger in these parts, then?”
He shook his head and allowed her to steer him over to the bar. Bartenders and saloon girls always knew a lot about what was going on in a town, probably because people tended to talk around them and sort of forgot they were there. In a way it was an insult that they went so easily unnoticed, but Frank knew that was the way a lot of them wanted it. More than one apron and calico cat had supplemented their income with a little discreet blackmail.
“My name’s Annie,” the blonde said. “Annie Milam. What’s yours?”
“Frank.” He didn’t offer a last name.
“Rusty, bring Frank here a drink,” Annie said to the bartender, who obviously got his nickname from his beard.
“Sure. What’ll you have, Frank?” the barman asked.
“Beer will be fine.”
“Comin’ right up.” Rusty drew the beer, filling a mug and sliding it across the bar. “There you go. No charge. I guess Annie explained the house policy.”
Frank nodded. “She did.” He picked up the mug and took a sip. The beer was cool and not too bitter. He nodded his approval.
Rusty picked up a rag and began polishing a glass. “Just passing through Brownwood?”
Beside Frank, Annie still had hold of his left arm, and she looked up at him expectantly, waiting for his answer to Rusty’s question. They were pumping him for information, Frank knew, and they weren’t even being very subtle about it. Well, turnabout was supposed to be fair play, he thought. He had come in here intending to find someone and get as much information out of them as he could.
“Actually, I’m looking for a job,” he said.
“Cowboying?” Rusty sounded a little doubtful, probably because Frank was a little old to be doing such work . . . even though he was still perfectly capable of it.
“I can make a hand if I have to,” Frank said, “but I was really thinking about something a little more lucrative and less boring than following a bunch of cows around.”
Rusty scratched at his beard. “What did you have in mind?”
Frank took the plunge and said, “I was told that a man named Duggan might be hiring.”
That made both Annie and Rusty stare at him, and he said it loudly enough so that the men along the bar and at the table heard him, too. One of the men at the bar set his half-empty beer mug down with a thump and turned toward Frank, his eyes narrowing. “What did you say?” he demanded.
“That I heard a man named Duggan might be hiring,” Frank replied.
“Yeah—hirin’ killers!”
“Shut up that kind of talk,” one of the men at the table said.
The first man swung sharply toward him. “Don’t tell me what to do!”
Suddenly there was a lot more tension in the saloon than there had been when Frank first walked in. Well, he had intended to stir
the pot a little, he thought, and from the looks of things he had succeeded.
“Boys, boys,” Rusty said, holding out his hands palms down and motioning softly toward the bar. “We don’t want any trouble in here. You know Mr. McKelvey doesn’t allow any fighting.”
The man who had spoken to Frank gave a disgusted snort. “You mean McKelvey wants to straddle the fence and not make anybody mad.” He picked up his beer and downed the rest of it. Again he thumped the mug on the hardwood. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and said, “But you know what happens when somebody tries to straddle a barbed-wire fence?”
Rusty just shook his head.
“He’s liable to get his balls cut off,” the cowboy said. He looked back at Frank and went on.“Duggan is a coward and a snake, and so is anybody who wants to work for him.”
“I never heard of the man until today,” Frank pointed out.
“That don’t matter. Get this straight, mister—if Duggan starts bringin’ in hired guns, the Pecan Bayou will be runnin’ red with blood before long!”
“That’s mighty fine talk,” Frank said.
“It’s more than talk. It’s a promise! And if you don’t believe it—” The man stepped away from the bar, and his hand swung dangerously close to the butt of his gun.
Frank bit back a sigh. Even when folks didn’t know who he was, they kept challenging him to gunfights. Did he have a damn sign on his back or something?
“Annie, you’d better move,” he said quietly to the saloon girl.
Her face had gone pale under its war paint. “I was just thinking the same thing,” she said. She let go of his arm and stepped back. Behind the bar, Rusty was edging away. The other men in front of the bar picked up their drinks and scattered, but as they moved across the room, Frank noticed that they steered well clear of the table where the poker game had been going on. That told him something, too. There were two factions in this saloon, and while they didn’t like each other, they weren’t quite ready to start shooting.
Except for the man facing him, who stood there with his hand clawed over the butt of an old Remington. It was a single-action revolver, Frank noted, and would have to be cocked before it could be fired. That would slow things down even more and assured that the man had no chance against the Drifter in a gunfight. He probably wouldn’t have stood much of a chance even without that disadvantage.
“You don’t want to do this,” Frank said.
“The hell I don’t. It’s time somebody sent a message to Duggan and Wilcox and all the others like them. They can’t run roughshod over the whole county anymore. It’s a new day.”
Actually, it was the end of an old one, as dusk was gathering outside. Frank had just enough time for that thought, and then the man grabbed for his gun.
12
Frank didn’t wait, as he sometimes did, for the other man to get his gun out of its holster. He went ahead and drew right away, giving himself as much time as possible to place his shot where he wanted it.
The Peacemaker roared and the slug ripped through the man’s upper right arm, to the outside of the bone. He rocked back and yelled in pain. His iron had just cleared leather. It slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers and thumped to the floor. He hadn’t had a chance to ear back the hammer, so there was little danger of it going off from the impact.
The man clutched his wounded arm with his other hand and slumped against the bar. Tears sprang unbidden to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. “You . . . you son of a bitch!” he gasped as he glared at Frank.
“Looks to me like you ought to be thanking him instead of cussing him, Rawlings,” one of the men at the table said. “His gun was out fast enough he had time to put four pills in your belly if he wanted to, instead of just creasing your arm.”
A tendril of smoke curled from the barrel of Frank’s gun. He glanced around, saw that nobody else in the room seemed inclined to continue the fight, and then reloaded the spent chamber before he slipped the Colt back in its holster.
“See if you can move your arm, mister,” he said to the man he had wounded. “I was trying not to break the humerus.”
“I don’t see . . . nothin’ funny about this,” the man grated. But when he moved his arm gingerly, it seemed to work. Frank nodded in satisfaction.
“Go find a sawbones and get that cleaned and patched up,” he told the man. “It ought to heal just fine, and you shouldn’t have any trouble using it in the future.” He added, “Just don’t use it to draw on me again. I’ll kill you next time.”
Muttering curses and still holding his bullet-creased arm, Rawlings stumbled out of the saloon. His friends followed him, casting baleful glares at Frank as they went past him.
When they were gone, the man who had spoken up from the table said to Frank, “Bring your drink over here and join us, stranger.”
Frank hesitated only a second before he picked up his drink and walked across the room to the table. He gave a polite nod to the four men seated there. He didn’t know much about which side was which in the conflict dividing Brown County, but talking to these men might give him the opportunity to learn more.
The spokesman held out a hand as Frank pulled back a chair and sat down. “Ed MacDonald,” he introduced himself. He was tall and lean, with a ready grin and wiry black hair under a cuffed-back Stetson.
Frank shook hands with him and then MacDonald continued the introductions, nodding to each man around the table in turn. Like MacDonald, they wore range clothes and looked tough and capable, but there was nothing of the gunslinger about them. They were just top hands.
“Pitch Carey, Dave Osmond, and Stiles Warren. We all ride for Earl Duggan.”
“Reckon you can tell me, then, if he’s hiring.”
“I reckon the boss is always in the market for a good man. More so lately, when a fella can handle a gun like you just did.”
“Who was that I had to shoot?” Frank asked.
“Al Rawlings. Got a small spread southeast of town. Those fellas with him were the same sort. They run little greasy-sack outfits that don’t amount to much.” MacDonald shrugged. “They probably don’t have more than a few dozen cows apiece.”
The cowboy’s voice was tinged with contempt. Frank didn’t necessarily approve of the attitude, but he could understand it. A man like MacDonald who was used to working for a big outfit would naturally look down on men who ran smaller ranches, even though those men actually owned property and a cowboy might not own anything except a saddle and the clothes on his back.
Frank took a sip of his beer and said, “Sounds to me like there’s some trouble in these parts.”
“You could say that,” one of the other cowboys put in. “Rawlings and the men like him are getting too damned big for their britches.”
The older saloon girl still stood there by the table. She said, “Oh, they’re not so bad, Pitch. They just don’t want to be squeezed out. You can’t blame them for that.”
Pitch Carey snorted. “I can damn sure blame ’em for cuttin’ fences, though, and for takin’ potshots at us when we try to fix what they’ve torn up!”
“You don’t know they’re the ones doing the shooting,” the woman argued.
MacDonald said, “Who else could it be, Midge?”
“Well, I don’t know, but I believe in giving folks the benefit of the doubt.”
“Around here that’ll get you killed,” Carey said.
Annie had been at the bar talking to Rusty. Now she came over to Frank and said to him, “Rusty says to tell you thanks for not shooting up the place. If you’d shot Al Rawlings in the body, though, the bullet might not have gone all the way through. Now there’s a hole in the back wall Rusty has to patch.”
“Rawlings was on the prod,” Frank said with a shrug, “but I didn’t think he deserved killing. Sorry about the bullet hole.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Annie said. “I think Rusty was halfway joking, anyway. It could have been a lot worse.” She glanced at the batwi
nged entrance. “Speaking of which . . .”
Frank glanced in that direction. A couple of men in town suits pushed through the batwings and came into the saloon. They carried shotguns and looked around quickly, their gazes coming to rest on the table where Frank sat with the cowboys from Earl Duggan’s ranch. The two newcomers started toward them.
Frank would have had no trouble recognizing them as lawmen, even without the badges they wore. He had been expecting at least one star-packer to show up to investigate the shot that had been fired.
“I got a report of a gun going off in here, MacDonald,” one of the men said as he came up to the table. He was medium height and thick-set, with a close-cropped brown beard. “What happened? Which of you Slash D boys fired that shot?”
“Wasn’t any of us, Marshal,” MacDonald replied. He nodded toward Frank. “It was this fella here.” He smiled. “Come to think of it, I don’t believe I ever got your name, mister.”
“It’s Morgan,” the Drifter said. “Frank Morgan.”
That drew stares from everyone in the room. Obviously, all of them had heard of him. Silence stretched out for a moment and then was broken by the tall, lanky Stiles Warren exclaiming, “Lord have mercy! I’ve read books about this fella, but I figured he was dead by now!”
“Looks plenty alive to me,” the second lawman said. He was short and bandy-legged, with bristly sand-colored hair under his hat. His eyes were pale blue and watery. Frank didn’t like what he saw in them.
The bearded lawman looked at Frank and said, “I don’t care for gunslingers in my town, Morgan. What were you doing, showing off?”
Before Frank could answer, Ed MacDonald said, “You could call it that, Marshal. Al Rawlings got his back up and drew on Morgan here. Morgan could’ve killed him without any trouble, but he just creased his arm instead. It was mighty good shooting, if you ask me, and Morgan did Rawlings a favor.”
The marshal grunted. “Is that so? That the way it happened, Morgan?”
Frank nodded. “You didn’t see Rawlings outside?”
“No. A citizen reported the shot.”
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