“The name’s Frank Morgan. I’m looking for Stump Creek, and a cabin north of here in a box canyon.”
The mountain man scowled. “What in tarnation would you want with the old robbers’ roost? Are you on the dodge from the law someplace?”
“Nope . . . leastways not around here. A gang of cutthroats led by a jasper named Ned Pine has taken my eighteen-year-old son as hostage. I aim to get my boy back.”
“Ol’ Ned Pine,” the trapper said, his mule loaded with game traps and cured beaver skins. “I’d be real careful if I was you. Pine is a killer. So are the boys who run with him. They ain’t no good, not a one of ’em.”
“Like I said, my son is their prisoner. I’m gonna kill every last one of them if I have to. I need directions to that creek, and the cabin.”
The mountain man cocked his head. “Ain’t one man tough enough to get that job done, Morgan. I know all about Pine and his hoodlums. They’ll kill a man for sneezin’ if he gets too close to ’em. Maybe you oughta rethink what you’re plannin’ to do before it gets you killed. There could be as many as a dozen of ’em.”
Frank nodded. “I’ll think on it long and hard, mister, but I’d be obliged if you’d point me in the direction of Stump Creek and that hideout.”
“Keep movin’ northwest. You’ll hit the creek in about ten miles. Turn due north and follow the creek into the canyon where Stump Creek has its headwaters.”
“I’m grateful. Names don’t mean all that much out here, but you can give me your handle if you’re so inclined.”
“Tin Pan is what I go by. Spent years pannin’ these streams lookin’ for color. Never found so much as a single nugget, but there’s plenty of beaver pelts to be had.”
“Appreciate the information, Tin Pan. I won’t make it to the creek until it’s nearly dark. If you’re of a mind to share a little coffee and fatback with a stranger, you can look for my fire.”
“Might just do that, Morgan. It gets a mite lonely out on these slopes. Besides, I’m plumb out of coffee. Been out for near a month now. But I’ve got a wild turkey hen we can spit on them flames tonight. Turkey an’ fatback sounds mighty good, if it comes with coffee.”
“You’ll be welcome at my fire, Tin Pan. I’m headed west and north until I hit the creek. I’ll have a pot of coffee on by the time you get there leading that mule.”
“I can cover more ground than most folks figure. A mule has got more gumption than a horse when the weather gets bad. I’ll be there . . . pretty close behind you, unless I get a shot at a good fat deer. It’ll take me half an hour to gut him and skin him proper.”
Tin Pan had a Sharps booted to the packsaddle on his mule. There was something confident about the way the old man carried himself.
“Venison goes good with coffee,” Frank said. He gazed into the snowstorm. “The only thing I’ve got to be careful about is having Ned Pine or a member of his gang spot my campfire. I may have to find a spot sheltered by trees to throw up my canvas lean-to. I don’t want them to know I’m coming.”
Tin Pan shook his head. “Not in this snow. The cabin you talked about is miles up the creek anyhow. Only a damn fool would be out in a storm like this. I reckon that makes both of us damn fools, don’t it?”
Frank chuckled. “Hard to argue against it. I’ll find that creek and get a fire and coffee going. It’s gonna be pitch dark in an hour or two. I need to find the right spot to hide my horses and gear from prying eyes.”
“You won’t have no problems tonight, Morgan,” Tin Pan said. “But if it stops snowin’ before sunrise, you’ll have more than a passel of troubles when the sun comes up. A man on a horse sticks out like a sore thumb in this country after it snows, if the sun is shinin’. That’s when you’ll have to be mighty damn careful.”
“See you in a couple of hours,” Frank said, urging his horse forward. “Just thinking about a cup of hot coffee and a frying pan full of fatback has got my belly grumbling.”
“I’ll be there,” the mountain man assured him. “Sure hope you got a lump of sugar to go with that coffee.”
“A bag full of brown sugar,” Frank said over his shoulder as he rode down the ridge.
“Damn if I ain’t got the luck today,” Tin Pan cried as Frank rode out of sight into a stand of pines at the bottom of a steep slope.
Frank rode directly into the snowfall, his hands and face numbed by the cold. The outlaws’ trail would be gone in an hour or less, with so much snow falling. He’d have to rely on the information Bowers and the mountain man gave him.
* * *
His horses were tied in a pine grove. Frank huddled over a small fire, begging it to life by blowing on what little dry tinder he could find.
Stump Creek lay before him, a name he supposed the stream had earned due to the work by a beaver colony. All up and down the creek’s banks, stumps from gnawed-down trees dotted the open spots.
The clear creek still flowed, with only a thin layer of ice on it. It was easy to break through to get enough water to fill his coffeepot.
He poured a handful of scorched coffee beans into the pot and set it beside the building flames. Surrounding the fire pit with a few flat stones, he had cooking surfaces on which he could place his skillet full of fatback.
If Tin Pan found his camp, it would be easy enough to rig a spit out of green pine limbs and skewer hunks of turkey onto sticks above the fire. Just thinking about a good meal made him hurry.
In a matter of minutes the sweet aroma of boiling coffee filled the clearing in the pines. Frank warmed his hands over the flames, letting his thoughts drift back to Conrad, and Ned Pine’s gunslicks.
“I swear I’m gonna kill ’em,” he said to himself. “They better not have done any harm to my boy or I’ll make ’em die slow.”
His saddle horse raised its head, looking east with its ears pricked forward.
“That’ll be the old mountain man,” Frank said, standing up to walk to the edge of the pine grove. An experienced mountain man Tin Pan’s age would be able to follow the scent of his fire from miles away.
Frank looked up at the darkening sky. Swirls of snowflakes fell on the pine limbs around him.
“I’ll need to rig my lean-to,” he mumbled. “No telling how much it’ll snow tonight.
“Hello, the fire!” a distant voice shouted.
“Come on in!” Frank replied. “Coffee’s damn near done boiling!”
“I smelt it half an hour ago, Morgan!”
He saw the shape of Tin Pan leading his mule down to the creek through a veil of snow. It would be good to have a bit of company tonight. He was sure the old man had a sackful of stories about these mountains. Maybe even some information about the hideout where Ned Pine was holding Conrad.
Frank buttoned his coat and turned up the collar; then he picked up more dead pine limbs to add to the fire. But even as the prospects of good company and a warm camp lay foremost in his mind he couldn’t shake the memory of Conrad and the outlaw bastards who held him prisoner.
* * *
“Damn, that’s mighty good,” Tin Pan said, palming a tin cup of coffee for its warmth, with two lumps of brown sugar to sweeten it.
“I’ve got plenty,” Frank told him. “I provisioned myself at Durango.”
Tin Pan’s wrinkled face looked older in light from the flames. “I been thinkin’,” he said. Then he fell silent for a time.
“About what?” Frank asked.
“Ned Pine. Your boy. That hideout up in the canyon where you said they was hidin’.”
“What about it?”
“It’s mighty hard to get into that canyon without bein’ seen, unless you know the old Ute trail.”
“The Utes cleared out of this country years ago, after the army got after them,” Frank recalled.
“That still don’t keep a man from knowin’ the back way into that canyon,” Tin Pan said.
“There’s a back way?”
Tin Pan nodded. “An old game trail. When these mountains wer
e full of buffalo, the herds used it to come down to water in winter.”
“Can you tell me how to find it?”
Tin Pan shook his head. “I’d have to show it to you. It’s steep. A man who don’t know it’s there will ride right past it without seein’ a thing.”
Frank sipped scalding coffee, seated on his saddle blanket near the fire. “I don’t suppose you’d have time to show me where it was.”
“I might. You seem like a decent feller, and you’ve sure got your hands full, trying to take on Ned Pine and his bunch of raiders.”
“I could pay you a little something for your time,” Frank said.
Tin Pan hoisted his cup of coffee. “This here cup of mud will be enough.”
“Then you’ll show me that trail?”
“Come sunrise, I’ll take you up to the top of that canyon. I’ve got some traps I need to set anyhow.”
“I’d be real grateful. My boy is only eighteen. He won’t stand a chance against Pine and his ruffians.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Morgan. I ain’t gonna help you fight that crowd. But I’ll show you the back way down to the floor of the canyon. They won’t be expectin’ you to slip up on ’em from behind.”
“I’ve got an extra pound of coffee beans. It’s yours if you’ll show me the trail.”
“You just made yourself a trade, Mr. Morgan. A pound of coffee beans will last me a month.”
“It’s done, Tin Pan,” Frank said, feeling better about things now. “I’m gonna pitch my lean-to while the fatback is cooking.”
Tin Pan grinned. “I’ll cut some green sticks for the hen I shot this morning. A man can’t hardly ask for more’n turkey and fatback, along with sweet coffee.”
Nineteen
Sam signaled a halt. “Yonder’s a fire. Maybe it’s Charlie on his way back to the cabin after he ambushed that bastard Frank Morgan.”
“Who the hell else would be out here?” Tony asked as he peered into the snow.
Buster jerked his pistol free, his back to the heavy snowfall. “We gotta be sure, boys,” he said to Sam and Tony. “I’ve heard stories about Morgan. He ain’t no tinhorn, even if he is gettin’ on in years. Let’s ride up real careful, just to be on the safe side.”
“You worry too much,” Tony said. “Charlie Bowers is as good as they come when a man needs killin’. That’s how come Ned sent him back to do the job. Charlie don’t miss. He’s as good as they get for a bush-whackin’ job.”
“All the same,” Sam said, drawing his own Colt .44, “we’ll ride up careful. No sense in takin’ any chances. It could even be some deer hunter or a traveler. But it pays to be cautious with Morgan followin’ your tracks.”
“Remember what Ned told us,” Tony warned. “Frank Morgan is a killer, a professional shootist from way back. He may still have a lot of caution in him.”
“Ned’s too worried about Morgan,” Sam declared. “Besides, he’s just one man and there’s three of us. You ain’t giving Charlie enough credit. My money says he planted Morgan in a shallow grave by now.”
“We’ve got the wind at our backs,” Tony said. “Let’s ride around and come at him upwind, whoever the hell he is.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Sam agreed. “If it’s Charlie camped down by that creek, we’ll recognize him. If it ain’t, if it’s Morgan, we start shootin’ until that sumbitch is dead.”
“Morgan’s already dead,” Sam said. “The only thing worryin’ Ned is why Bowers didn’t come back to the cabin by dark. Charlie knows his way around these mountains. Maybe all that happened was his stud went lame.”
“I don’t like the looks of this, Sam,” Tony said, squirming in his saddle. “There’s something about this that don’t feel quite right.”
“You’re a natural-born worrier, Tony,” Sam said. “If it is Frank Morgan down there by that fire, the three of us will kill him.”
The gunslicks rode south into the snowy night with guns drawn.
Larger flakes of snow had begun to fall, and the howl of the squall winds echoed through the treetops around them.
* * *
“Clarence Rushing is my full name,” Tin Pan said, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “I’ve been up in these mountains so long that the other gold-panners hung the Tin Pan handle on me. Suits me just fine.”
Frank grinned. “I like Tin Pan. It’s a helluva lot easier on the ears.”
“A name don’t mean all that much anyhow. I went by Clarence Rushing for thirty years, back in Indiana. I went to college for a spell. Tried to make my living as a printer. But I kept feeling this call to see the high lonesome, these mountains, and a man just ain’t happy if he ain’t where he feels he belongs. I came out here looking for gold with a sluice box and a tin miner’s pan. A few miners took to calling me Tin Pan on account of how much time I spent panning these streams. Hellfire, I didn’t mind the new handle. I reckon it suited me. A name’s just a name anyhow.”
“You’re right about that,” Frank agreed, “unless too many folks get a hankering to see it carved on a grave marker. Then a name can mean trouble.”
“Why would anybody want your name on a headstone, Frank Morgan?”
Frank looked up at the snowflakes swirling into the tiny pine grove where they were camped. “A few years back I made my living with a gun. I never killed a man who didn’t need killing, but a man in that profession gets a reputation ... sometimes it’s one he don’t deserve.”
“You was a gunfighter?”
“For a time. I gave it up years ago. Tried to live peaceful, running a few cows, minding my own business on a little place down south. Some gents just won’t leave a man alone when he wants it that way.”
“Sounds like your past caught up to you if you’re about to tangle with Ned Pine and his gang.”
“They took my son. Pine, and an owlhoot named Victor Vanbergen, set out to settle old scores against me.”
“Old scores?” Tin Pan asked.
“First thing they done was kill my wife, the only woman I ever loved. Then they found my boy in Durango and grabbed him for a ransom.”
“Damn,” Tin Pan whispered. “That’s near about enough to send any man on the prowl.”
“I can’t just sit by and let ’em get away with it. I’m gonna finish the business they started.”
“I’ve heard about this Vanbergen. Word is, he’s got a dozen hard cases in his gang. They rob banks and trains. I didn’t know they was this far north.”
“They’re here. I’ve trailed ’em a long way.”
“One man won’t stand much of a chance against Ned Pine and his boys. They’re bad hombres. Same is bein’ said about Victor Vanbergen. Have you gone plumb loco to set out after so many gunslicks?”
“Maybe,” Frank sighed, sipping coffee. “My mama always told me there was something that wasn’t right inside my head from the day I was born. She said I had my daddy’s mean streak bred into me.”
Tin Pan shrugged. “A mean streak don’t sound like enough to handle so many.”
“Maybe it ain’t, but I damn sure intend to try. I won’t let them hold my son for ransom without a fight.”
Tin Pan stiffened, looking at his mule, then to the south and east. “Smother that fire, Morgan. We’ve got company out there someplace.”
“How can you tell?” Morgan asked, cupping handfuls of snow onto the flames until the clearing was dark.
“Martha,” Tin Pan replied.
“Martha?”
“Martha’s my mare mule. She ain’t got them big ears on top of her head for decoration. She heard something just now and it ain’t no varmint. If I was you I’d fetch my rifle.”
Frank jumped up and ran over to his pile of gear to jerk his Winchester free. He glanced over his shoulder at the old mountain man. “I sure hope Martha knows what she’s doing,” he said, hunkered down next to a pine trunk.
“She does,” Tin Pan replied softly. “That ol’ mule has saved my scalp from a Ute knife plenty of times.”
>
Tin Pan pulled his ancient Sharps .52 rifle from a deerskin boot decorated with Indian beadwork. The hunting rifle’s barrel was half a yard longer than Frank’s Winchester, giving it long range and deadly accuracy.
“But the Utes are all south of here,” Frank insisted, still watching the trees around them.
“They signed the treaty,” Tin Pan agreed. “I don’t figure these are Utes. Maybe you’re about to get introduced to some of Ned Pine’s boys.”
Frank wondered if Ned Pine had sent some of his shootists back to look for Charles Bowers. If that was the case, it would give him a chance to change the long odds against him. It would make things easier.
He crept into the trees, jacking a load into the firing chamber of his Winchester saddle gun.
* * *
“Right yonder,” Sam whispered. “In them pines—only it looks like the fire just went out.”
“Maybe he heard us,” Buster suggested.
“Could be Charlie,” Tony said. “He’d be real careful if he heard a noise.”
“It’d be a helluva thing if us an’ Charlie started shootin’ at each other in the dark,” Sam said.
“How the hell are we gonna find out if it’s him without gettin’ our heads shot off?” Buster asked.
“I ain’t got that figured yet,” Sam replied. “Let’s move in a little closer.”
“I say we oughta spread out,” Tony said.
“Good idea,” Sam agreed. “Tony, you move off to the left a few dozen yards. Buster, you go to the right. Stay behind these trees until we know who it is.”
“Right,” Buster whispered, moving north with his rifle next to his shoulder.
Tony slipped into a thicker stand of pines to the south of the grove where they’d spotted the flames.
Sam inched forward, blinking away snowflakes that got in his eyes. He and his partners were coming upwind, and whoever was camped ahead of them wouldn’t hear a sound they made. If it was Charles Bowers who made the campfire, Sam knew he would recognize his bay stallion tied in the trees before any shots were fired.
* * *
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