Savage Country

by William W. Johnstone

  Conrad took off his hat and rubbed his temples wearily. “This is insane,” he said. “Didn’t you tell them that they were wrong about what happened?”

  “Yeah, and I did my best to convince them to stop letting Ed lead them around by the nose.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I did any good, though.”

  “Perhaps if I had a word with them . . .”

  “Have you gone completely loco? You need to stay away from them if you can.”

  Conrad nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. I’ll do my best. I won’t go hunting trouble.” He dropped his hand to the butt of the Colt Lightning on his hip. “But if it comes to me, I suppose I’ll have no choice but to deal with it.”

  Rebel laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Hell, Conrad, you’re no gunfighter. You may be Frank Morgan’s son, but you didn’t inherit his skill with a Colt.”

  Conrad stiffened as he stared at her. “What . . . what makes you think—”

  “That you’re Frank’s son? Anybody who’s around the two of you for very long could see that. You don’t look that much alike except at certain times, but then suddenly the resemblance is there and you can’t miss it. And there are other little things that you both do . . . the way you hold your head when you’re interested in something, the way your eyes squint a little when you laugh, things like that.”

  Conrad shook his head. “That makes no sense. Why, until I was nearly grown I never even knew that—” He stopped short as he realized what he was about to admit.

  “You never knew that Frank was your father?” Rebel finished for him. “It doesn’t matter all that much whether you were raised around him or not. The things that tie a father and son together are in the blood. Bonds like that can’t be broken, no matter what.”

  Conrad’s pulse hammered in his head. Memories came flooding back, most of them bad. “You don’t understand,” he heard himself saying to Rebel. “He . . . he’s completely different from me. He’s a gunman, little better than an outlaw.”

  “I’ve been around Frank Morgan enough to know that’s not true. He’s no owlhoot. Never has been.”

  “He caused my mother a great deal of pain,” Conrad grated. “He left her to raise me alone.”

  “You said you didn’t know about him. Maybe he didn’t know about you.”

  “No. He didn’t know about me,” Conrad admitted. “But he never tried to find out either. And then, when he came back into my mother’s life after all those years, it was her involvement with him that led to her death.”

  Even as he spoke the words, Conrad knew they were not completely true. The person really responsible for Vivian Browning’s death had been a lawyer named Charles Dutton, a man who had pretended to be Vivien’s friend while really betraying her and trying to steal her company. Outlaws hired by Dutton, the gang led by Ned Pine and Victor Vanbergen, had been the ones to gun Vivian down. Frank’s presence might have spooked Dutton into acting more hastily than he would have otherwise, but when you got right down to it, Frank wasn’t to blame. And if not for Frank, Conrad would have been murdered too, and Vivian’s death would have gone unavenged.

  Conrad had told himself that he was thinking more clearly now, but it wasn’t true. He still had blinders on when it came to Frank Morgan. The resentment he felt toward his father had clung stubbornly. He’d been unable to put it aside, even though Frank had never been anything but friendly toward him. Frank had come here to New Mexico Territory and put his life on the line for no other reason than to help his son.

  My God, Conrad thought. He might even love me. . . .

  Suddenly he couldn’t breathe, almost like he had been punched in the gut. His vision blurred. He couldn’t see Rebel clearly. Blinking, he swung away from her. She caught at his sleeve and said, “Conrad? Conrad, what’s wrong?”

  He shook free of her and walked toward the hotel entrance, trying not to stumble. He pawed at his eyes with the back of his hand and his chest rose and fell rapidly as he tried to catch his breath. Unfamiliar emotions ran riot inside him. He had never been one to admit easily that he was wrong.

  But when it came to Frank Morgan, he had been wrong for years. Conrad could see that now. With Rebel trailing him with a worried look on her face, he pushed open one of the hotel’s double doors and stepped out onto the boardwalk. He needed air. Some instinct made him turn to his right....

  Utter shock went through him, freezing him as he saw the very man who had just been in his thoughts walking toward him. Frank Morgan was here in Ophir, on the same boardwalk as Conrad, and as Frank saw his son, he smiled and raised a hand.

  Behind him, Ed Callahan came out of the mouth of an alley and stepped up onto the boardwalk. “Morgan!” Ed yelled. “It’s time!”

  His hand was poised over the butt of the gun on his hip, ready to hook and draw.

  Chapter 31

  Frank reacted to the challenge without missing a beat, stopping and turning smoothly, not hurrying but not wasting any time either. As he faced Ed Callahan, Rebel’s brothers Tom and Bob stepped out of the alley where Ed had been waiting and backed up their cousin, spreading out to either side of him.

  As it always did at moments such as this, time seemed to slow down slightly for Frank Morgan. The world around him receded. All the unimportant details of his surroundings faded away. His attention was centered on the man who wanted to kill him. Every little thing, every blink of the eyes, every tensing of the muscles, became vitally important. Frank took note of them all, knowing that watchfulness was as important as speed when it came to surviving a gunfight.

  “You don’t have to do this, Callahan,” Frank said.

  “The hell I don’t! You killed my brothers!”

  “Only because they forced me to. I wasn’t going to just stand there and let them kill me.”

  “Those weren’t fair fights,” Ed said. “Simon and Jud weren’t gunslingers. They didn’t have a chance against you.” He flexed his fingers slightly. “I do. I’m a heap faster than they were.”

  Suddenly Rebel’s voice rang out along the boardwalk. Frank hadn’t known she was there. She must have come out of the hotel behind Conrad. She said, “Tom, Bob, please! Don’t do this. Just step away.”

  Tom Callahan said, “Damn it, Rebel, Ed’s our cousin! He’s family. Family’s got to stand with family.”

  “Go back inside, Rebel,” Bob added. “This don’t concern you no more.”

  “The hell it doesn’t!” Rebel pushed past Frank and ran toward her brothers. That put her between Frank and Ed.

  Ed’s hand dipped toward his gun, moving with blinding speed.

  Frank bit back a curse. He reached for his Colt as he realized what Ed was trying to do. The son of a bitch was using Rebel as a distraction and a shield. Frank’s only chance was to fire past her before Ed could get off a shot and risk hitting her.

  Conrad slammed into Frank’s shoulder, though, as he leaped forward and shouted, “Rebel, no!” The impact knocked Frank a step to the right. Conrad lunged after her in a diving tackle. His arms wrapped around her waist and brought her down.

  At the same instant, Ed got off the first shot. Flame licked from the barrel of his Colt. Frank heard the slug sizzle past his ear.

  The Peacemaker in his hand bucked twice as he triggered a pair of shots. Both bullets thudded into Ed Callahan’s chest and drove him backward. Instinctively, his cousin Bob grabbed him and kept him from falling. But then, as blood welled out over Bob’s fingers from the wounds in Ed’s chest, a horrified expression appeared on Bob’s face and he let Ed’s limp form slide on down to the boardwalk.

  Conrad and Rebel had landed on the edge of the boardwalk. They rolled off, falling the couple of feet to the street. Frank stayed where he was and held the Colt steady. A dozen feet away, Tom and Bob stood frozen. Tom’s hand was on the butt of his gun, but he hadn’t drawn the weapon. Bob stared down at the blood on his hands as Ed lay huddled at his feet.

  “It’s up to you, boys,” Frank said softly to th
e Callahan brothers. “You’ve got it to do, if you still want to.”

  “No!” Rebel cried from the street. She twisted out of Conrad’s grip and pushed herself up on her knees. Grasping the edge of the boardwalk with both hands, she leaned forward and pleaded, “Let it go! Didn’t you see what just happened here? Ed was willing to shoot me if he had to! He didn’t care about me or either of you. He was just using you to help him get Morgan!”

  Slowly, the fingers of Tom’s gun hand straightened out. He lifted the hand away from the gun. “Rebel’s right,” he said in a choked voice. “Ed didn’t give a damn about us.”

  “If family didn’t mean nothin’ to him,” Bob said, sounding equally shaken, “then it don’t have to mean anything to us either.”

  “I’m your family!” Rebel said. “Let that mean something for a change.”

  Tom nodded. “She’s right.” He looked squarely at Frank and said, “It’s over, Morgan. Ed didn’t give you a choice any more than Simon and Jud did. But it’s over now, and it’ll stay that way.”

  Frank nodded and lowered his Colt. He opened the cylinder, thumbed out the empty shells, and replaced them with fresh cartridges from the loops on his gunbelt. Then he slid the iron back into leather.

  “No hard feelin’s, Morgan?” Bob asked.

  “No,” Frank said. “Just regrets that Ed pushed it so far.”

  The shoot-out had drawn a lot of attention. People converged on the spot as Conrad helped Rebel to her feet. She went to her brothers and hugged them each in turn, not caring when some of the blood on Bob’s hands got on her shirt.

  The town marshal came hurrying up with a shotgun clutched in his hands. Frank explained what had happened, and since there were plenty of witnesses to back up his story, including Conrad Browning, the lawman nodded in acceptance.

  “Don’t know if there’ll be an inquest or not,” he said. “That’ll be up to the county sheriff and the coroner. Will you be around for a while just in case there’s a hearing, Mr. Morgan?”

  “I may not be in town, but I’m not planning on leaving the area any time soon,” Frank replied.

  “That’s good enough for me.” The grizzled old star-packer shook his head as he looked down at Ed Callahan’s sprawled body. “Too bad it had to come to this. I seen too much o’ dyin’ in the years I been wearin’ a badge.”

  “We’ve all seen too much of dying,” Frank said.

  He waited until the crowd broke up and Ed Callahan’s body had been carted off in the undertaker’s wagon. Rebel was still talking to her brothers, so Frank took advantage of the opportunity to grasp Conrad’s arm and draw him aside.

  “You could have gotten killed, jumping into the middle of things like that,” Frank said quietly.

  “I’m sorry. I know I could have gotten you killed. But when I saw that Rebel was in danger, I . . . I just didn’t stop to think. I had to save her.”

  “Does she know how you feel about her?”

  “Well, I’ve wanted to tell her . . . but it’s complicated. There was all that business with Pamela—”

  “Who?”

  Conrad sighed. “That’s right, you don’t even know about her—or her father.”

  “Nope,” Frank said with a shake of his head. “I reckon I’m lost.”

  “It’s a long story.” Conrad glanced at Rebel. “It looks like Rebel’s going to be busy with her brothers for a while, so why don’t we go over to the Big Nugget and have a drink? I can tell you all about it there, and I’m sure Jonas Wade would like to say hello to you.”

  “Jonas Wade?” Frank repeated with a puzzled frown. “The gambler I ran into back in El Paso?”

  “That’s right. He owns the Big Nugget Saloon now.”

  Frank grunted. “Sounds like everybody’s been mighty busy while I was poking around the mountains and getting captured by saboteurs and Apaches.”

  “What?” Conrad asked, his eyes widening.

  “Come on,” Frank said with a grin. “Let’s get that drink, and we can tell each other all about it.”

  * * *

  By the time an hour had passed, both Frank and Conrad had been brought up to date on each other’s activities while they were apart. They sat at a table in a corner of the Big Nugget with Jonas Wade, nursing mugs of beer as they filled each other in. As Conrad had predicted, Wade was glad to see Frank.

  “A man gets tired of moving around,” Wade said after he explained about winning the saloon in a poker game. “Ophir’s a mighty nice place. I aim to settle here.”

  Frank nodded. “I can understand that. They may call me The Drifter, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about settling down too.”

  Wade leaned forward in his chair. “Why don’t you?” he asked. “Marshal Everett’s getting on in years and will probably retire soon. I know the town council would be thrilled to give you the job.”

  Frank shook his head. “I’ve worn a badge before. It’s not something I’d care to do again.”

  “So do something else,” Wade urged. “Buy a ranch, maybe raise some horses.”

  “Someday,” Frank said, even though he knew perfectly well that day would probably never come. “Someday I might just do that.” He took another sip of his beer. “Right now, though, I’m more interested in this fella Tarleton. Are you sure those gunslicks you overheard were talking about him?”

  Wade nodded. “I’m certain. I was surprised to hear hombres like that talking about a man like Tarleton, so I paid particular attention. It sure sounded to me like they were working for him.”

  “That makes no sense,” Conrad put in. “I know what you’re thinking, Frank. But Clark Tarleton owns a mine near here. The railroad coming to Ophir will benefit him too. He wouldn’t be interested in stopping my spur line from getting through.”

  “Unless he’s a member of the syndicate that owns the Southwestern and Pacific,” Frank said. “You said yourself he has a lot of different business interests, and he’s from Philadelphia. That fella Scheer told me the syndicate has offices in Philadelphia and Boston.”

  “I have offices in Boston,” Conrad pointed out. “That doesn’t make me one of the syndicate.”

  “No, but I don’t think we can rule out Tarleton’s involvement. After all, he’s right here in Ophir where Royal and those other gunmen could report to him on the sly.”

  Conrad shook his head. “It’s just difficult for me to believe, that’s all. But I suppose you’re right. We have to consider the possibility. What’s our next move?”

  “Scheer’s life is in my hands,” Frank said grimly. “I’m convinced the attack on Mano Rojo’s people was carried out by Royal and his bunch. If they’re working for Tarleton, we’ve got to spook them into coming out in the open somehow, so that the connection will be exposed.”

  “How do we do that?” Conrad asked, keeping his voice low so that the conversation wouldn’t be overheard.

  An idea had occurred to Frank as he thought back on the things that Scheer had told him. “If you can figure out some way to talk to Tarleton again, tell him that the spur line’s route is going to be changed. Tell him it’s going to angle to the west after it crosses the gorge and go through the natural cut in the ridge.”

  “How’s that going to do us any good?” Conrad asked with a frown.

  “I got a pretty good look at that ridge while I was with Scheer,” Frank explained. “The cut in it is a deep one, and the wall on the east side bulges out quite a bit.”

  Conrad nodded. “Yes, that’s why Nathan decided not to route the tracks through there. Too much danger of rock slides, or of that whole side of the cut collapsing one of these days. We wouldn’t want it to fall on one of our trains.”

  “Of course not. But if you told that to Tarleton, and then something was to happen . . . like an explosion that blew down the wall of that cut, say . . . then we’d know it had to be Tarleton who gave Royal the orders.”

  Conrad’s hand clenched into a fist. “By God, you’re right! I hate to think that
he’s capable of such a thing, but we have to find out.”

  “And if nothing happens, we’ve cleared Tarleton as a suspect,” Frank pointed out.

  Conrad nodded decisively. “All right. I’ll do it. I’m not sure how I’ll manage to have the conversation with him, since we’re on the outs at the moment, but I’ll think of something.”

  “Don’t waste any time,” Frank urged. “I just have a week to uncover the ringleader before those Apaches kill Scheer.”

  “You’re hoping that once we have the goods on Tarleton—if he’s guilty—he’ll confess to being behind the attack on the Apaches too?”

  “If he’s guilty, he’ll tell us the truth about all of it,” Frank said grimly. “One way or the other.”

  The discussion might have continued, but at that moment Jonas Wade said, “Good Lord! What’s a lady like her doing in here?”

  Frank and Conrad looked toward the entrance of the Big Nugget, as Wade was doing, and Frank saw why the saloon keeper was surprised. A very attractive redheaded woman about thirty years old had just pushed through the batwings and now paused there, looking around. She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved dress that was positively prim next to the spangled getups sported by the saloon girls. As the old saying went, she was as out of place as teats on a boar hog.

  But when her gaze lit on Frank, Conrad, and Jonas Wade, she smiled and started straight across the room toward them.

  Chapter 32

  Conrad stood up and went to meet the woman, saying, “Mrs. McShane, it’s good to see you again. Were you looking for me?”

  “For your friend Mr. Morgan actually,” the redhead replied. She didn’t slow down as Conrad fell in step beside her. She marched up to the table and said to Frank, “Are you Frank Morgan, sir?”

  He came to his feet and took his hat off. “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  “Allison McShane,” she said, introducing herself, sticking her hand out like a man. “I’m the editor and publisher of the Ophir Ledger.”