“What happened here?”
“I rode up and found the cabin on fire and those men lying out here. They’d been shot as they ran outside.”
The trigger-happy hombre scowled at Frank and said loudly, “He’s lyin’, Buckston. I’ll bet a hat he’s the one who killed them boys.”
“I’m telling it like it happened,” Frank said, his voice hard as flint. “And I don’t much cotton to being called a liar. I’d be willing to bet that Rufe Blake wouldn’t have liked it, either.”
The one called Buckston, who seemed to be in charge, frowned and asked, “What do you mean by that, mister?”
With his left hand, Frank flicked a gesture toward Rufe’s body. “I mean that young puncher was still alive when I rode up. He’s the one who told me what happened here. And before he died, he said that men who ride for somebody called Ed Sandeen were responsible for it.”
“Sandeen,” one of the other punchers said. He made it sound like the worst curse that could ever come out of his mouth.
“I reckon you men ride for the Lazy F,” Frank went on. “That’d be Howard Flynn’s spread?”
Buckston’s eyes narrowed even more. “You seem to know a hell of a lot about what’s goin’ on in this part of the country for somebody who just rode in.”
“All I know is what Rufe Blake told me, and what I can see with my own eyes,” Frank said with a shrug. “It’s pretty obvious that there’s some sort of range war going on between Flynn and Sandeen. And judging by what happened here, Sandeen’s men fight dirty.”
Buckston leaned over and spit deliberately in the dust. “That’s because Sandeen’s a polecat, and he hires men just like him . . . gunslingers, hired killers, men who been ridin’ the hoot-owl trail. I’m convinced Sandeen used to ride that trail his own self, before he come here to the Mogollon country and tried to act all respectable-like. But once a polecat, always a polecat.”
The man who had shot at Frank earlier was still having a hard time controlling his temper. “Damn it, Buck, why are you sittin’ here jawin’ with this fella? Can’t you see he’s gotta be one of Sandeen’s men? Look at that thonged-down Colt! He’s a gun-thrower, sure as hell.”
“If I was working for Sandeen, why would I still be here?” Frank asked. “Why didn’t I ride off with the rest of his men?”
The hothead sneered at him. “You prob’ly stayed behind to see what poor ol’ Rufe and Bragan had in their pockets. Damn scavenger.”
Anger welled up inside Frank. He felt like yanking the hothead down from his saddle and teaching him a lesson, but he knew that the first sign of violence would probably lead to gunplay. These men were keyed up, ready to shoot somebody, and even Buckston, who seemed to be the most levelheaded of the bunch, looking like he was ready to slap leather at the slightest provocation.
So Frank kept a tight rein on his own temper and said, “You’re free to search them. I haven’t taken anything from them.”
Buckston rubbed his jaw with his left hand and frowned in thought. He was a lanky man with a drooping black mustache, obviously plenty tough, but he didn’t look like a gunfighter, more like a top hand who could also handle a six-shooter if he needed to.
While Buckston pondered the situation, the fourth man, who hadn’t spoken yet, stared intently at Frank. After a few moments, he said abruptly, “By the Lord Harry, I know who this hombre is! Thought I recognized him. I’ve seen his picture on dime novels. Boys, that’s Frank Morgan!”
That announcement made the other men stiffen in their saddles. “Is that true?” Buckston demanded. “You’re the gunslinger they call The Drifter?”
“My name is Frank Morgan,” Frank admitted. “What folks call me is their business, not mine.”
“Damn it, Buckston, now you gotta know I’m right about him!” the hothead said. “Think about it. What would a hired killer like Morgan be doin’ around here, if he didn’t come to work for Sandeen? You know Sandeen’s put out the word that he’s lookin’ for men, and payin’ fightin’ wages!”
Buckston nodded slowly. “That’s true.” He looked at Frank. “What you got to say for yourself, Morgan? You come here lookin’ to hire out to Sandeen . . . or is he already payin’ you?”
“I never heard of the man until about fifteen minutes ago,” Frank said, “and I’m getting a mite tired of being accused of things. I’ve told you what happened here, and that’s all I’ve got to say.” He slid the Winchester back in the saddle sheath and snagged his hat from the horn. As he put it on, he said, “Since these fellas were your pards, you can have the chore of burying them, or you can take them back to the Lazy F, or whatever you want to do with them. But I’m out of it, understand?”
“You can’t just ride away,” the hothead said. “I still think you were part o’ the bunch that done this.”
“What’s your name?” Frank asked.
The question surprised the man. “If it’s any business o’ yours, which it ain’t, my name is Dennis Houlihan. Why’d you wanta know?”
Frank just smiled thinly and didn’t answer.
Houlihan took offense. “Looky there, Buck!” he said excitedly to Buckston as he pointed at Frank. “He’s threatenin’ me! He just as much as said that he figures on shootin’ me!”
“Calm down, you fool,” Buckston said. “A man like Morgan ain’t gonna shoot nobody unless there’s some profit in it for him.”
That hurt, Frank thought. Despite the stories that were told about him, he didn’t hire out his gun to just anybody and never had. In every fight he had ever been part of, he had either been forced to use violence to save his own life, or he had been sticking up for somebody who couldn’t protect themselves. He was no knight in shining armor, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer like Deacon Jim Miller, either.
At the moment he had other worries more important than hurt feelings, though. He didn’t like the way that fourth man, the one who had recognized him, was looking at him. The hombre was fairly young, about the same age as Rufe Blake had been, and he had visions of glory dancing before his eyes. Frank knew the look. It said that the man who gunned down the notorious Drifter would then be even more famous.
It was a look that had gotten way too many glory-hungry young men killed.
As if to confirm Frank’s worry, the young man said to Houlihan, “We can take him, Denny. Look at him. He’s an old man, ’bout ready for the rockin’ chair.”
“You a damn fool, Crenshaw,” the other older puncher said. He was a middle-aged black man with considerable gray in the hair under his floppy-brimmed hat and the beard stubble on his jaw. “Don’t you know that an old lobo wolf is just about the most dangerous kind?”
“Shut up, Glover,” Crenshaw snapped. “If you’re scared, you can ride back home.”
Glover started to turn his horse toward Crenshaw’s, but Buckston put out a hand to stop him. This group of four cowboys had split down the middle, with the two older men, Buckston and Glover, on one side, and the pair of young firebrands, Houlihan and Crenshaw, on the other. They had even edged their mounts physically apart.
“Crenshaw, Houlihan, you listen to me,” Buckston said. “You keep your hands away from your guns. If you want to fight Morgan, you go back to the ranch and draw your time first, so you won’t die as Lazy F riders. I don’t want to feel compelled to throw my life away just because you went and got yourself killed.”
“But Buck, this is crazy!” Crenshaw protested. “Morgan’s a hired gun, we all know that. He’s gotta be workin’ for Sandeen!”
Frank just shook his head wearily. He put his foot in the stirrup, grasped the saddle horn and reins, and got ready to swing up onto Stormy’s back.
“He’s gonna get away, Denny!” Crenshaw said in an urgent voice.
“I’m takin’ him!” Houlihan yelled suddenly. He jammed his spurs into his horse’s flanks and sent the animal surging forward. At the same time he clawed an old Remington revolver out of a cross-draw holster on his left hip.
Frank was in
an awkward position, half in and half out of the saddle. He dropped the reins and stood in the left stirrup, straightening so that he could draw. In what was a rarity for one of his gunfights, his opponent got off the first shot. Houlihan’s Remington roared, but less than a heartbeat later the Colt in Frank’s hand bucked as flame geysered from its muzzle.
He was trying to shoot Houlihan in the shoulder. It didn’t seem that a misunderstanding was enough of a reason for a man to die. But fate conspired against that, as the slug from Houlihan’s gun spanked across Stormy’s rump. The big Appaloosa was trained to stand still when guns started to go off, but the pain of the bullet burn made him jump forward a little—just enough so that Frank’s bullet hit Houlihan at the base of the throat. Blood spurted in the air as the man was driven backward off his horse by the slug’s impact.
As always at moments such as this, time seemed to slow down slightly for Frank. He saw that Crenshaw had hung back after goading Houlihan to start the ball. That gave Crenshaw a chance to get his gun out and aimed. He fired, but his aim was off a little. The bullet buzzed past Frank’s head.
Frank’s return shot slammed into Crenshaw’s chest. He shot to kill this time, with cold anger inside him. Crenshaw had played on Houlihan’s reckless impulsiveness, not caring if Houlihan got killed as long as that improved Crenshaw’s chances of downing the famous Frank Morgan. That sort of callousness didn’t sit well with Frank.
Besides, when somebody was trying to kill you, it was hard not to return the favor.
As Crenshaw toppled out of his saddle, too, Frank kicked free of the stirrup and dropped to the ground. Dog was about to go after either Buckston or Glover, but Frank called out, “Dog! No!” He didn’t want this fracas to go any farther.
“Hold it, Morgan!” Buckston shouted. He and Glover had backed up their horses and shucked their saddle guns. The Winchesters were trained on Frank, and although he knew he could knock both men off their mounts, at least one of them was likely to get him, too.
Frank lifted his hands, the Colt still in the right one.
“Drop that gun!” Buckston commanded.
“Not hardly.”
“I’m foreman of the Lazy F,” Buckston grated. “You don’t think I’m gonna let you ride away after you killed two o’ my men, do you?”
“They brought it on themselves,” Frank said. “You’re not blind, Buckston. You saw it. For what it’s worth, though, I didn’t aim to kill Houlihan. My horse jumped just as I fired.”
“What about Crenshaw?”
“He called the tune,” Frank said coldly. “He had to dance to it.”
Grudgingly, Glover said, “Crenshaw did sort of nudge Houlihan into drawin’.”
“Yeah.” The barrel of Buckston’s Winchester dropped a little. “What’re we gonna do about this?”
“Take Morgan to the boss,” Glover suggested. “Let Mr. Flynn decide.”
“Yeah,” Buckston said with a nod. “I reckon that would be best.” The rifle barrel came up again. “If you’re not gonna drop that gun, Morgan, at least holster it. Otherwise, there’ll be more powder burned here and now.”
Frank lowered his arms and slid the Colt back into leather.
“Mount up,” Buckston continued. “We’re goin’ to the Lazy F.”
“And what do you think will happen when we get there?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Flynn’s a fair man. We’ll tell him what happened, and let him decide what to do with you.”
Frank didn’t hesitate. He knew he would be riding into a bad situation, where he would likely be surrounded by tough cowboys who would be glad to ventilate him if their boss gave the order.
But he also knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, and he wanted to tell Howard Flynn as much, right to his face. When passing out the qualities that made up a man, the Good Lord hadn’t put any back-up in Frank Morgan.
He stepped up into the saddle, nodded coolly to Buckston, and said, “Let’s ride.”
Chapter Three
Glover hung back to tie the bodies of Houlihan and Crenshaw on their horses. He also got the horses from the corral and loaded up the corpses of Rufe Blake and Bragan, too. By now all the walls of the burning line shack had collapsed, but it would still be a good while before the body of Wardell could be recovered. Somebody would have to come back with a wagon to do that. For now, Glover led one riderless horse and four carrying grim, grisly burdens as he rode after Frank and Buckston.
“For what it’s worth,” the foreman of the Lazy F said, “I sort of believe you, Morgan. I’ve heard a lot of things about you, but never that you went in for bushwhackin’ or petty thievery.”
“It happened the way I told it,” Frank said.
“If that’s true, then Houlihan and Crenshaw were in the wrong when they drew down on you. Not to mention damned foolish.”
“Yes, but will your boss agree with that?”
Buckston shrugged. “Around here, men ride for the brand, right or wrong. We’ll see, I reckon.”
Buckston rode with his Winchester across the saddle in front of him, but despite that it would have been child’s play for Frank to shoot him and Glover. He could have killed both of them before they knew what was happening. But he didn’t want to live down to the opinion they had of him, and he wanted to be able to live with himself. That meant he kept riding.
“Tell me about the trouble in these parts,” he said, deciding to indulge his curiosity.
“Between Mr. Flynn and Ed Sandeen, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
Buckston wiped the back of a hand across his mouth. “Mr. Flynn come to Arizona Territory thirty years ago, durin’ the War Between the States. He was one o’ the first settlers under the Mogollon Rim. Had to fight Apaches for years, and when he wasn’t fightin’ Apaches, he was fightin’ rustlers and badmen. His wife died of a fever, and he lost their two boys, too, one of ’em to an Apache arrow, the other to a stampede.”
Life on the frontier was hard and dangerous, even in these days when some folks thought the West was starting to get civilized. Frank had heard plenty of stories like Howard Flynn’s before.
“Flynn got any family left?”
“A niece,” Buckston said. “An old maid from back East who come to live with him when her own folks passed on. Don’t think she quite knew what she was gettin’ into, though.”
“What about Sandeen?”
Buckston grimaced. “He showed up ’bout five years ago and bought the Saber spread. It wasn’t right next to the Lazy F. There was one little ranch between ’em. But the fella who owned it sold out to Sandeen a year later, and that made Sandeen and Mr. Flynn neighbors. Sandeen bought up some other little holdin’s, until his spread was the biggest in these parts except for the Lazy F.”
“So then he set his sights on Flynn’s ranch,” Frank guessed. It was an old story, repeated many times and in many places throughout the West. Man’s greed knew no geographical limitations.
“Well . . . not exactly,” Buckston said. “He set his sights on Miss Laura, more’n he did the ranch.”
A frown creased Frank’s forehead. “You’re talking about Flynn’s niece?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I thought you said she was an old maid.”
“She is. Must be twenty-five years old, if she’s a day. I ain’t asked, o’ course, since that wouldn’t be the proper thing to do. You see, Miss Laura was a schoolteacher when she lived back East, and she knows a heap about art and opera and books ’n’ such. I might’ve mentioned that Sandeen wants folks to think he’s some sort o’ respectable gentleman, and I reckon he figured it’d be a good thing if he got himself some culture. Miss Laura’s the closest thing to it around these parts. And I don’t mind admittin’, she ain’t hard on the eyes, neither, in spite o’ being a mite past prime marryin’ age.”
Frank found his interest growing, almost in spite of himself. “So Sandeen set out to court Laura Flynn?”
“Yep. And at first, she was a
mite tooken with him. He’s the sort that ladies seem to find handsome, and when he works at it he can charm the stripe off a polecat’s back. It was all an act, though, and after a while Miss Laura figured that out. She must’ve told Sandeen to go climb a stump. Whatever she said, he didn’t take it too well. That’s when he decided to move in on the Lazy F. Maybe he figures that if he takes over her uncle’s ranch, Miss Laura won’t have no choice but to knuckle under and marry up with him.”
“How’s he trying to go about it?”
“Well, we started out losin’ some cows here and there to rustlers. We had dammed up one o’ the creeks to make a little lake, and somebody blowed that dam to pieces with dynamite. The flood from that drowned some stock in the pastures downstream from the dam. More than once, somebody’s shot at our hands while they were out ridin’ the range.” Buckston’s voice became grimmer as he went on. “A couple o’ the boys were killed, and several more were wounded. We’ve had other line shacks burned, too, but never when any of our hands were around. Until today.”
“What’s Sandeen got to say for himself?”
“He denies that he’s got anything to do with it, o’ course. Says we’re the ones who’re tryin’ to start a range war. But it’s all a pack o’ lies. He’s behind it, all right.”
Frank frowned in thought again. More than once in his adventurous life, he had run into situations that weren’t exactly what they appeared to be on first glance, where some cunning schemer was playing two sides against each other so that he could step in eventually and make a big cleanup. Although Buckston seemed completely convinced that Ed Sandeen was behind the trouble in the Mogollon Rim country, Frank wondered if the same thing could be happening here.
He might not be around here long enough to find out. He would talk to Howard Flynn, explain to the man that he’d had nothing to do with the burning of the line shack and the killing of the three cowboys and that he had been forced into the shootout with Houlihan and Crenshaw . . . and then he would be on his way. Maybe he would ride down to Phoenix. He could wire one of his banks for money from there, get himself a decent hotel room, and maybe spend a while playing poker and taking life easy . . . until he got fiddlefooted again and had to move on.
The Devil's Legion Page 2