“I am afraid of Ned,” Cabot replied. “I do not want to die out here in this snow.”
Rich stood up suddenly in his stirrups and pulled his sorrel to a halt. “Who the hell is that with the rifle pointed straight at us?” he asked Cabot.
“There are two of them,” Cabot replied. “There is another one on foot standing behind that tree, and he also has a rifle aimed at us.”
“Damn!” Rich exclaimed, ready to open his coat and reach for his pistol.
“Climb down, boys,” a deep voice demanded. “Keep your hands up where I can see them.”
“Morgan,” Cabot whispered, although he followed the instructions he’d been given.
“Step away from your horses!”
They did as they were told. Rich could feel the small hairs rising on the back of his neck.
“Take your pistols out and toss ’em down!” another voice said from behind a tree trunk.
Rich threw his Colt .44 into the snow.
Cabot opened his mackinaw carefully and dropped his Smith and Wesson .45 near his feet.
“Get their horses and guns, Tin Pan,” the man holding the rifle said. “I’ll keep ’em covered.”
An old man in a coonskin cap came toward them carrying a large-bore rifle. He picked up their pistols and took their horses’ reins, leading them off the trail.
“All right, boys,” the rifleman in front of them said. “I’ve got one more thing for you to do.”
“What the hell is that, mister?” Rich snapped, giving Cabot a quick glance.
“Sit down right where you are and pull off your boots.”
“What?”
“Pull off your damn boots.”
“But our feet’ll freeze. We’ll get the frostbite.”
“Would you rather be dead?”
“No,” Cabot said softly, sitting down in the snow to pull off his boots.
“We’ll die out here without no boots!” Rich complained. “We can’t make it in our stocking feet.”
“I can shoot you now,” the rifleman said. “That way, your feet won’t be cold.”
Rich slumped to his rump and pulled off his stovepipe boots without further complaint.
“Now start walking,” the rifleman said. “I don’t give a damn which direction you go.”
“We will die!” Cabot cried.
The lanky gunman came toward them and picked up their boots without taking his rifle sights off them. “Life ain’t no easy proposition, gentlemen,” he said. “Start walking, or I’ll kill you right where you sit.”
Twenty-six
Darkness came to the snow-clad mountains. Rich Boggs was hobbling toward the cabin at Lost Pine Canyon on seriously frostbitten feet. Cabot Bulware was behind him, using a pine limb for a crutch.
“It ain’t much farther,” Rich groaned. “I can see the mouth of the canyon from here.”
“Sacré, ” Cabot said, limping with most of his weight on the crutch. “I be gon’ kill that batard Morgan if I can get my hands on a horse and a gun.”
“I just wanna get my feet warm,” Rich said. “The way I feel now, I ain’t interested in killin’ nobody. I think a couple of my toes fell off.”
“Who was the old man with Monsieur Morgan?” Cabot asked. “I hear Ned say Morgan always work alone.”
“Don’t know,” Rich replied, his teeth chattering from the numbing cold. “Just some old son of a bitch in a coonskin cap with a rifle.”
“He be dangerous too,” Cabot warned. “I see the look in his eyes.”
“You’re too goddamn superstitious, Cabot. He’ll die just like any other man if you shoot him in the right place. I can guarantee it.”
“My feet are frozen. I go back to Baton Rouge when I can find a horse. I don’t like this place.”
“I ain’t all that fond of it either, Cabot,” Rich said as they moved slowly to the canyon entrance. “It was a big mistake to side with Ned on this thing. I never did see how we was gonna make any money.”
“I do not care about money now,” Cabot replied. “All I want is a stove where I can warm my feet.”
“Won’t be but another half mile to the cabin,” Rich told him in a shivering voice. “All we’ve gotta do is get there before our feet freeze off.
“Boots and horses are what we need,” Rich continued. “If they didn’t leave our horses in the corral, we’re a couple of dead men in this weather.”
“I feel dead now,” Cabot replied. “I don’t got feeling at all in either one of my feet.”
* * *
As night blanketed the canyon Rich added more wood to the stove. He and Cabot had dragged the dead bodies outside, but a broken window let in so much cold air that Rich was still shivering. He’d taken the boots off Don Jones’s body and forced his feet into them. Cabot was wearing boots and an extra pair of socks that once belonged to Mack.
They’d found two pistols and a small amount of ammunition among the dead men. Ned and the others had taken all the food. Thus Rich was boiling fistfuls of snow in an old coffeepot full of yesterday’s grounds.
Five horses were still in the corral, even though the gate was open. They were nibbling from the stack of hay. Thus, there were enough saddles to go around.
“I am going back south in the morning,” Cabot said with his palms open near the stove.
“Me too,” Rich said. “I’m finished with Ned and this bunch of bullshit over gettin’ even with Frank Morgan. There’s no payday in it for us.”
“I’ve been dreaming about a bowl of hot crawfish gumbo and hush puppies all afternoon,” Cabot said wistfully. “This is not where I belong.”
“Me either. I’m headed down to Mexico, where it’s warm all the time.”
Cabot turned to the broken window where Don had been shot in the face. “What was that noise?” he asked.
“I didn’t hear no noise,” Rich replied.
“One of the horses in the corral . . . it snorted, or made some kind of sound.”
“My ears are so damn cold I couldn’t hear a thing nohow,” Rich declared. “Maybe it was just your imagination. All I hear is snow fallin’ on this roof.”
Then Cabot heard it again.
“Help . . . me!” a faint voice cried.
“That sounded like Jerry’s voice,” Cabot said, jumping up with a pistol in his fist.
“I heard it that time,” Rich said, getting up with Mack’s gun to open the door a crack.
Rich saw a sight he would remember for the rest of his life. Jerry Page came crawling toward them on his hands and knees in the snow, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
Rich and Cabot rushed outside to help him.
“Morgan,” Jerry gasped. “Morgan came up on the rim and stuck a knife in me. He killed . . . Roger. Cut his throat with the same Bowie knife.”
“We’ll take you in by the fire,” Cabot said as he took one of Jerry’s shoulders.
“I’m froze stiff,” Jerry complained, trembling from weakness and cold. “I’m bleedin’ real bad. You gotta get me to a doctor real quick.”
“We can’t go nowhere in this snowstorm,” Rich said as they helped the wounded man into the cabin. “It’ll have to wait for morning.”
“I’m dyin’,” Jerry croaked. “You gotta help me. Where’s Ned?”
“Ned and the others pulled out. We ran into Morgan too. He took our boots and guns and horses. We damn near froze to death gettin’ back here.”
They placed Jerry on a blanket beside the stove and covered him with a moth-eaten patchwork quilt.
“Morgan,” Jerry stuttered. “He ain’t human. He’s like a mountain lion. Me an’ Roger never heard a thing until he was on top of us.”
“We figured there was trouble when neither one of you came back,” Rich said bitterly. “Morgan killed most of the others. Only Lyle, Slade, Billy, and Ned made it out of here alive.”
“What happened . . . to Morgan’s kid?”
“Ned had a gun to his head,” Rich recalled.
“That’s the . . . only way it’s gonna stop,” Jerry moaned as he put a hand over the deep knife wound between his ribs. “Ned’s gotta let that boy go.”
“Ned’s gone crazy for revenge. He won’t stop until he kills Morgan.”
“Morgan . . . will ... kill him first,” Jerry assured them. “I need a drink of whiskey. Anything.”
“We’re boilin’ old coffee grounds,” Rich said. “There ain’t no whiskey. Ned and the others took it all with them when we pulled out of here.”
“Water,” Jerry whispered, his ice-clad eyelids fluttering as if he was losing consciousness. “Gimme some water. Morgan’s gonna kill us all unless Ned . . . lets that boy go.”
“You know Ned,” Cabot said, pouring a cup of weak coffee for Jerry, steaming rising from a rusted tin cup. “He won’t listen to reason.”
“I’m gonna die . . . way up here in Colorado,” Jerry said as his eyes closed. “I sure as hell wish I was home where I could see my mama one more time . . .”
Jerry’s chest stopped moving.
“Don’t waste that coffee,” Rich said. “Jerry’s on his way back home now.”
Cabot stared into the cup. “This is not coffee, mon ami. It is only warm water with a little color in it.”
* * *
Ned paced back and forth as a fire burned under a rocky ledge in the bend of a dry streambed.
“Where the hell is Rich and Cabot?” he asked, glancing once at Conrad, bound hand and foot beneath the outcrop where the fire flickered. It was dark, and still snowing, though the snowfall had let up some.
“They ain’t comin’,” Lyle said.
“What the hell do you mean, they ain’t coming?” Ned barked with his jaw set hard.
“Morgan got to ’em,” Slade said from his lookout point on top of the ledge. “They’d have been here by now, if they were able.”
“Slade’s right,” Billy said, with his Winchester resting on his shoulder. “Some way or other, Frank Morgan slipped up behind ’em and got ’em both.”
“Bullshit!” Ned cried. “Morgan is an old man, a has-been in the gunman’s trade. He doesn’t have it in him to slip up behind Rich and Cabot.”
“I figure he got Jerry and Roger,” Slade went on without raising his voice. “We know he shot all those others back at the cabin. Then you’ve got to wonder what happened to Sam and Buster and Tony back on the trail when they went to check on Charlie.”
Lyle grunted. “Morgan must be slick,” he said, casting a wary glance around their camp. “I wish we’d never gotten into this mess. That kid over yonder ain’t worth no million dollars to nobody.”
“He ain’t worth a plug nickel to me,” Billy Miller said as he added wood to the fire. “I say we kill the little bastard an’ get clear of this cold country.”
Ned turned on his men. “We’re not leaving until Frank Morgan is dead!” he yelled.
Lyle gave Ned a look. “Who’s gonna kill him, Ned? We ain’t had much luck tryin’ it so far.”
“We’ll join up with Victor at Gypsum Gap and hunt him down like a dog,” Ned replied.
Slade shrugged. “Bein’ outnumbered don’t seem to bother Morgan all that much.”
“Are you taking Morgan’s side?” Ned asked.
“I’m not takin’ any side but my own. My main purpose now is to stay alive.”
“Me too,” Billy added.
“Same goes for me,” Lyle muttered. “This Morgan feller is a handful.”
“Are you boys yellow?” Ned demanded.
“Nope,” Lyle was the first to say. “Just smart. If a man is a man-hunter by profession, he’s usually mighty damn good at it if he lives very long.”
“I never met a man who didn’t make a mistake,” Ned said, coming back to the fire to warm his hands.
“So far,” Slade said quietly, “Morgan hasn’t made very many.”
“One of you saddle a horse and ride back down the trail to see if you can find Rich and Cabot,” Ned ordered, his patience worn thin.
“I’m not going,” Slade said. “That’s exactly what a man like Morgan will want us to do.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Ned inquired, knocking snowflakes from the brim of his hat.
“He wants us to split up, so he can take us down a few at a time.”
“Slade’s right,” Lyle said.
“We oughta stay together,” Billy chimed in. “At least until we join up with Vic an’ his boys.”
“Morgan!” Ned spat, pacing again. “That son of a bitch is a dead man when I get him in my sights.”
“That’ll be the problem,” Lyle offered. “A man like Morgan don’t let you get him in your gun sights all that often, an’ when he does, there’s usually a reason.”
“He’ll come after us tonight,” Billy said, glancing around at forest shadows. “He’s liable to kill us in our bedrolls if we ain’t careful.”
“I’m not goin’ to sleep tonight,” Slade said.
“Why’s that?” Ned asked.
Slade grinned. “I want to make damn sure I see the sun come up tomorrow mornin’.”
Ned was fuming now. Even his two best gunmen, Lyle and Slade, showed signs of fear.
“You ride back a ways, Billy,” Ned said. “Just a mile or two.”
“I won’t do it, Ned.”
“Are you disobeying a direct order from me?” Ned demanded as he opened his coat.
“Yessir, I am,” Billy replied. “If Morgan’s back there, he’ll kill me from ambush.”
Ned snaked his Colt from a holster. He aimed for Billy’s stomach. “Get on one of those horses and ride southwest to see if you can find Rich and Cabot. If you don’t, I’ll damn sure kill you myself.”
Billy Miller’s eyes rounded. “You’d shoot me down for not goin’ back?”
“I damn sure will. Get mounted.”
Billy backed away from the fire with his palms spread wide. “You let this Morgan feller get stuck in your craw, Ned. I never seen you like this.”
“Get on that goddamn horse. See if you can find their tracks.”
Billy turned his back on Ned and trudged off to the picket ropes.
“You may have just gotten that boy killed,” Slade said tonelessly.
Twenty-seven
Billy hunched his shoulders into the wind, buttoning his coat underneath his chin. He wore thin leather gloves that did little to keep out the cold.
“Ned’s tryin’ to get me killed,” he mumbled, gripping the Winchester resting across the pommel of his saddle as the brown gelding plodded into sheets of tiny snowflakes. Billy knew Lyle and Slade were too smart to ride their back trail in the dark with Frank Morgan behind them.
So much snow had fallen since they made camp under the rock ledge that Billy couldn’t find their own tracks, much less those of Rich and Cabot . . . or Frank Morgan’s.
“He’ll shoot me right out of the saddle,” Billy told himself in a whisper, searching both sides of a narrow mining road leading west, flanked by tall pines. They had ridden this road in daylight and now it was pitch dark, a condition made worse by the snow.
I’m a dead man, Billy thought, shuddering when a blast of cold wind came toward him.
But he was just as dead if Ned Pine shot him for refusing to look for Rich and Cabot.
His gelding pricked up its ears, watching something ahead of him on the trail.
“It’s Morgan,” Billy said, pulling back on the reins to study the situation. “Don’t nothing hurt no worse than being shot when it’s cold,” he mumbled.
A bounty hunter had put a bullet through his leg one winter as Billy was leaving Amarillo with twenty head of stolen cows, and nothing, not even his dad’s woodshed whippings when he was a kid, had hurt any worse.
I won’t do this, Billy thought.
He reined his horse off the road into the ponderosa pines and waited.
* * *
“Just one of ’em,” Tin Pan whispered. “His horse caught our scent ’cause we is upwind.”
>
Frank jacked a shell into the firing chamber of his Winchester. “I’ll go after him on foot,” he said. “Keep an eye out, in case the rest of them are close by.”
“You’re wastin’ good wind,” Tin Pan told him. “I always keep an eye on things. Martha will tell me if they get round behind us.”
Frank crept off into the darkness, making a wide sweep to get behind the rider they’d seen.
“He’s a worrier,” Tin Pan said to himself. “What he needs is a really good mountain mule.”
* * *
Billy swung down from the saddle and tied his horse off to a pine limb.
“I’ll just sit here and wait for half an hour,” he said to no one in particular. “Ned won’t know the difference if I tell him I couldn’t find any tracks.”
He hunkered down behind a ponderosa trunk to be out of the wind, cradling his Winchester next to his chest while he searched the black forest around him, his teeth chattering.
“I’m gonna quit this outfit,” he promised himself, thinking about home. And being warm.
“I can kill you now,” a soft voice said behind him.
Billy jerked his head around.
“Who’s there?” he asked, bringing the muzzle of his rifle up quickly.
“Lay that Winchester down or I’ll put a tunnel through your head,” the voice said.
“It’s you, Morgan!”
“That’s right.”
“How did you get behind me?”
“Quietly.”
“Ain’t nobody can be that quiet,” Billy said.
“I’ll only tell you one more time to drop that rifle.”
Billy let the Winchester slide from his hands into the snow at his feet.
“That’s better. Where’s Ned? And my son?”
“East. Maybe two miles. Please don’t kill me, Mr. Morgan. I didn’t want no part of this right from the start. It was Ned’s idea. He’s taking your boy up to Gypsum Gap to meet up with Vic Vanbergen.”
“I can’t leave you alive. You’ll go back and join forces with Ned Pine again.”
“No, sir, I won’t. I swear it.”
“Only one way to be sure.”
“Are you gonna kill me?”
Reprisal Page 17