Considering how ornery both Stormy and Goldy could be whenever anyone but Frank came around them, anybody who tried anything funny with them would probably regret it.
Sure enough, both the gray stallion and the golden-hued one were fine, as was the packhorse. Frank had already seen Dog in action, so he knew the big cur was fine. When he was satisfied that no one had tried to hurt his animals, he turned back to the hostler and flipped a coin to the man.
“I don’t think any of the bullets flying around hit the barn, but that ought to cover the damage if you find any.”
“Thanks, mister. I’m much obliged. You’re gonna stay here, ain’t you, until the law shows up? Somebody must’ve reported those shots.”
Dealing with the Los Angeles police for the second time today didn’t appeal much to Frank, but he nodded in answer to the old-timer’s question. Despite the low opinion of him most lawmen had, he tried to cooperate with the authorities whenever he could.
Just as the elderly hostler predicted, several blue-uniformed officers trotted up a few minutes later, already with guns in their hands. Frank had told the old-timer to turn up the wick in the lantern, so there was plenty of light in the barn. He didn’t want the officers to get trigger-happy and start shooting at shadows.
“What the hell happened here?” one of the men demanded. “We got reports that a war had broken out.”
“Another Bear Flag Rebellion?” Frank asked dryly. When that just brought scowls from the officers, he went on explain that he had been crossing the street between the hotel and the livery barn when someone started shooting at him from the alley.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, the shots missed.”
“And I reckon you shot back at whoever it was.”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time,” Frank drawled.
The officer who was handling the questions nodded. “Sounds like a robbery attempt to me. The gunman probably planned on killing you, then looting whatever he could from your corpse before help got here.” The officer looked critically at Frank’s clothes. “Although it doesn’t seem to me like he chose his victim very well. No offense, mister, but you don’t strike me as a rich man.”
“Just a drifter,” Frank said, trying not to smile.
Chapter 6
When the police were gone, the hostler said, “They got it wrong all the way around, didn’t they, mister?”
“What do you mean?” Frank asked.
“That policeman figured you for a saddle tramp, but you ain’t. Those two stallions you brought in are fine horses, and your gear ain’t fancy, but it’s good quality. And you’re stayin’ at the Nadeau, which that fella didn’t even think to ask you. So I’d say you got considerably more’n two nickels to rub together.”
Frank smiled. “You’re an observant man, amigo.”
“That ain’t all he got wrong,” the old-timer went on. “If’n that bushwhacker was just out to rob you, he wouldn’t’ve kept firin’ once his first shots missed and you started throwin’ lead back at him. He’d’ve took off for the tall and uncut. No, sir, he didn’t want your money. He wanted you dead.”
“He lit a shuck after a minute,” Frank pointed out.
“Only after you got into the barn and he figured out you was tryin’ to cut off his escape route. Smart fella, cuttin’ his losses that way.”
Without confirming or denying the hostler’s guesses, Frank shrugged. “Whatever you say, old-timer.”
The man squinted at him. “I say I seen you before, a good while ago. In Tascosa maybe. Ever been there?”
“I have.”
“You didn’t tell me your name, but a fella who looked a mite like you cleaned out a saloon in Tascosa, oh, fifteen, maybe sixteen years ago. Sound familiar.”
It did, but Frank just smiled. “That’s too long ago for me to remember.”
“Whatever you say . . . Mr. Morgan.”
Frank slipped him another coin. “How about let’s just keep that part quiet?”
The hostler closed his bony hand around the coin. “I seem to’ve forgot all about Tascosa. The mind plays funny tricks on a fella when he gets to be my age.”
“I’m obliged,” Frank said. He left the stable and went back across the street to the hotel.
John J. Stafford was waiting in the lobby for him. The lawyer hurried over when he saw Frank and said, “I heard some shooting a little while ago, and there’s a rumor going around the hotel that someone was killed at the livery stable behind the hotel.”
“Nobody was killed,” Frank said.
“But it did have something to do with you?”
“Just a robbery attempt that didn’t work out for the hombre who tried it.” If that was what the police wanted to believe, Frank was willing to go along with it.
But just to be on the safe side, he continued. “Did you give anybody in the hotel my name when you reserved that room for me?”
Stafford shook his head. “No, I just had them hold it and charge it to my account.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” Frank suggested. “The fewer people who know who I am, the better.”
Stafford sent suspicious glances around the lobby. “I understand,” he whispered in a conspiratorial tone.
Frank didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh and shake his head.
He settled for having Stafford claim the room key for him, then headed upstairs to get some shuteye. He looked at the elevator as he passed it—the first one in Los Angeles, according to what he’d heard about the Nadeau Hotel—and decided that he wasn’t comfortable getting into a little barred cage that moved up and down between floors. He took the stairs instead.
Definitely old enough to get set in his ways, he told himself with a smile.
Frank was up early the next morning, practically before anyone else was stirring in the hotel. He was the first customer for breakfast in the dining room, and cleared out before any other hotel guests showed up.
He had explained his plans to Stafford the night before, so he didn’t see any need to wait and talk to the lawyer again. Instead, he went out through the Nadeau’s rear entrance again and crossed the street to the livery stable.
Nobody shot at him this time. That was a definite improvement.
A different hostler was on duty at the livery stable this morning, not quite as old but almost as gnarled as the man who’d been there the night before. He was sleepy-eyed and indifferent, not seeming to care who Frank was.
Frank saddled Stormy himself, as he usually did. He trusted the care he took in such jobs more than he did anybody else.
Most of the time on the journey down here from Nevada, he had ridden Goldy, so the big gray stallion was fresher. Stormy was ready to hit the trail, too, as he proved by frisking like a colt as Frank rode him out of the stable with Dog trailing behind them.
Frank grinned at the horse’s spirit, and let Stormy have his head for a few minutes. Like his master, Stormy was getting older, but that didn’t mean he was washed up.
In the gray light of dawn, the oil derricks sticking up all over the city looked like a bizarre forest of some sort. They rose fifty or sixty feet in the air, four-sided, broad-based structures that tapered to a more slender shape at the top.
The derrick sides with all their cross-braces reminded Frank of the way railroad trestles were built. He also rode past large, round wooden tanks where the oil pumped from the ground was stored.
At this hour, the streets were quiet as far as pedestrians and horse and wagon traffic were concerned, but the air was full of noise from the donkey engines that powered the drills. Walking beams rose and fell with a clatter and a thump, and drillers called out to each other as they worked. Smoky lanterns provided light for the men to see what they were doing. They worked around the clock in their quest for the black gold that flowed up out of the earth.
The flaring lights, the raucous shouts, and the stench of sulphur in the air made Frank feel a little like he was riding through the outskirts o
f Hell. He was glad when the road he was following angled up the slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains and he was able to rise above the clamor and the stink.
The sun was up by the time he made his way over the mountains and started down into the broad San Fernando Valley. Some of the valley had been converted into farmland, but this was still prime ranching country, as it had been for most of the past two centuries.
Now that Frank knew what to look for, though, he saw that there were even more oil derricks here than he had realized when he rode through the area the day before. They weren’t as thick as they were in Los Angeles itself, but he could see dozens of them from where he was.
As he neared the base of the mountains, he saw a wagon coming toward him, too, being pulled by a team of mules. Ten men were in the wagon, he noted, two in the driver’s seat and eight riding in the back. The overalls they wore were heavily stained, and their hands and faces were smudged with black, too. Frank moved Stormy to the side of the road to let the vehicle pass.
But instead of driving on, the man handling the reins hauled back on them and brought the mules to a stop. He glared at Frank—at least, Frank thought he did; it was hard to read expressions with all that grease smeared on their faces—and said, “Look, fellas, it’s one of those damned cowboys.”
Frank had done plenty of cowboying in his younger days, before he’d gotten a reputation as a fast gun, but he hadn’t worked as a ranch hand for a long time. He supposed that to these drillers, though, anybody on horseback wearing a Stetson was a cowboy.
He gave them a nod and said pleasantly, “Mornin’, boys. Heading into town?”
“Don’t tell him anything,” snapped the man seated beside the driver. “You know you can’t trust any of those cow-stinking bastards.”
Frank felt a surge of anger. He thought about telling them that he hadn’t come over here to the valley looking for trouble . . . but of course, that was exactly what he had done.
He hadn’t figured on running into it quite this soon, though.
“I reckon you’re not from these parts, mister,” he said. “And by these parts, I mean west of the Mississippi. So I’m not going to take offense at those careless words of yours.”
“I don’t give a damn if you take offense or not,” the driller said. Even though he was sitting down, Frank could tell that he was a big man, tall and broad through the shoulders, with blocky fists almost as big as hams. “Who do you ride for, that Mexican bitch?”
Frank supposed he was talking about the widowed Dolores Montero. It angered him even more to hear a man speak so disrespectfully about any woman. The fact that Señora Montero had lost her husband fairly recently made it even worse.
Still, it was obvious that the driller was trying to pick a fight with him, and Frank was determined not to let that happen. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself until he had a chance to find out more about what was going on here in the valley.
“I think I’d better just mosey on where I’m headed,” he said as he lifted Smoky’s reins.
“Hold it!”
The driller’s harsh cry made the other men stand up in the back of the open wagon. Dog let out a growl as the feeling of tension and hostility in the air thickened even more.
The driver looked like he was starting to regret stopping the wagon and directing the unfriendly comment toward Frank. He said to the man beside him on the seat, “Better take it easy, Hatch. You know what Mr. Magnusson said about not starting any trouble.”
“I’m not starting any trouble,” the man called Hatch rasped as he made a curt motion toward Frank. “It’s those damned cowboys who’ve caused all the problems.”
Still hoping to head off a ruckus, Frank said, “For what it’s worth, friend, I don’t ride for any of the spreads in the valley. I’m just passing through.”
That was stretching the truth a little, of course. Frank had a reason for being here, and as part of that reason, he planned to ask the foreman on the Montero ranch for a riding job. But these drillers didn’t have to know that.
Frank’s words didn’t do any good anyway. Hatch put one grease-coated hand on the wagon seat and vaulted down from it, landing lightly on the ground for such a big man. Frank saw that he wore laced-up work boots, and from the looks of the big bruiser, he had probably done some stomping with them in the past.
He advanced on Frank now, saying, “Get down off that horse, you son of a bitch. I’m gonna teach you a lesson. The days of you cowboys ridin’ roughshod over everybody else are over!”
Dog growled, his hackles rising. One of the men in the back of the wagon called, “Better tell that dog of yours to behave himself, mister, or we won’t be responsible for what happens.”
Frank glanced at the man and saw that he had produced a pistol from somewhere inside the greasy coveralls. That angered Frank even more. He didn’t like anybody pulling an iron on him—or on Dog.
The Good Lord hadn’t burdened him with much back up in his nature either. He might try to skirt around a confrontation when it suited his purposes, but damned if he was going to run from one.
“Sit, Dog,” he told the big cur in a flat, hard voice. “Stay.”
Dog didn’t like it—his continued growling made that obvious—but he obeyed the commands.
Frank swung down from the saddle and let Stormy’s reins dangle to the ground, knowing that the big stallion wouldn’t go anywhere. As Hatch stood there with a smug grin on his dirty face, Frank reached down and untied the thong that held his holster to his thigh. Then he unbuckled his gunbelt, coiled it, and hung it on the saddle horn. He took off his Stetson and set it on top of the gunbelt.
“Mister, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” the driver of the wagon asked with a worried frown.
“I reckon I do,” Frank said as he began to roll up the sleeves of his faded blue shirt. “I’m about to quiet down a loudmouthed bully.”
That comment made Hatch’s grin disappear. “I’m gonna enjoy this,” he said.
“Hatch, you better not kill him,” the driver warned. “You know how upset Mr. Magnusson will be if you do.”
“I won’t kill him,” Hatch said as he lifted his big fists. “But I’ll make the shit-stompin’ son of a bitch wish he was dead.”
And with that he lunged at Frank, swinging his hamlike right hand in a sweeping blow that would knock The Drifter’s head clean off.
Chapter 7
At least, it might have if Frank had stayed where he was and the punch connected.
But instead, Frank weaved to the side so that the fist shot harmlessly past his head. Missing like that threw Hatch off balance. The driller stumbled forward a step.
That brought him within range of the hard left that Frank hooked to his stomach. Hatch grunted when the blow landed, but other than that, he didn’t seem bothered by it. He tried to wrap his arms around Frank.
Knowing that he couldn’t afford to get caught in a bear hug from the bigger, heavier man, Frank twisted away, jabbing a right into the middle of Hatch’s face as he did so. Hatch’s head was rocked back. Frank drove another left into the driller’s belly, again with no noticeable results.
All right, so the man had a cast-iron stomach. But he had to have some other weakness, Frank told himself. Every man did.
With his friends yelling encouragement to him, Hatch waded in, swinging wide, looping punches that Frank avoided without much trouble. Frank continued to pepper Hatch’s face with short, sharp punches. Blood began to leak from Hatch’s nose, mixing with the oil smudges on his face and making a mess.
Hatch shouted, “Stand still, damn you!” He changed his tactics, employing more strategy than Frank expected from such a bruiser. He feinted with a left and then shot out a straight right that caught Frank in the chest.
The blow landed solidly and made Frank stagger back a couple of steps. Roaring, Hatch tried to capitalize on that momentary advantage. Again, his arms reached out to draw Frank into a bone-crushing hug.
Still a little breathless from the punch, Frank had the presence of mind to duck under the arms. He grabbed Hatch’s right arm, pivoted, and threw his hip into the man in a wrestling move that an Indian had taught him years earlier. Hatch’s own weight and momentum worked against him, and he let out a startled yell as he found himself flying through the air.
That yell was cut off a second later when Hatch slammed into the ground on his back. The driller hit the hard-packed dirt of the road with such force that he actually bounced, Frank saw as he stepped back.
His hope was that after a fall like that, Hatch wouldn’t get back up for a while. But luck wasn’t with him. Hatch rolled over, pushed himself to his hands and knees, rumbled something incoherent as he shook the cobwebs out of his head, and then lurched back onto his feet.
Frank had had time while Hatch was climbing upright to kick the man in the brisket, but he’d never been one to fight dirty like that. Besides, if he had, the rest of the drillers probably would have ganged up on him in outrage. As it was, so far they’d been willing to let Hatch carry the flag for them.
At least, Hatch was starting to show some effects from the thrashing Frank was handing to him. His nose continued to bleed, and his eyes were beginning to swell. They were probably turning black, too, but Frank couldn’t tell about that with all the oil on Hatch’s face.
With his chest heaving, the driller said, “I was just gonna . . . teach you a lesson, cowboy . . . but now I’m gonna . . . squeeze the life outta you!”
“Hatch, no!” the driver yelled.
“Shut up, Rattigan!” Hatch bellowed. “This ain’t your fight!”
He came at Frank again, slugging wildly once more. Frank parried and dodged most of the blows, but one of them clipped him on the side of the head and made the world spin crazily for a second. His vision blurred.
It cleared just in time for him to see Hatch’s huge fist coming straight at his face. Frank didn’t have time to dodge to either side, so he dropped instead, falling to one knee.
Slaughter Page 4