Ten Guns from Texas
Page 28
“So you don’t deny what you did?” Morgan asked.
“Deny it? Hell, I’m proud of it! It ain’t ever’ day that a fella can destroy a whole damn town!”
Slowly, Morgan nodded. “You know, Locklin, I haven’t enjoyed killing most of the men I’ve killed, but I think I’m going to enjoy killing you.”
Steve’s face twisted with anger and hatred. “That’s mighty big talk for somebody who won’t even tell us who he is. I think you’re nobody! I think you’re just one more stupid owlhoot who’s got it comin’ to him!”
Suddenly, Rance spoke up in a worried tone. “Steve, I think I know who this hombre is! I’ve seen pictures of him! He’s Frank Morgan!”
“Morgan!” Steve’s eyes widened with surprise. His hands stabbed toward his holsters. “Gun ’im down!”
It was like it always was. Time seemed to slow down for Frank Morgan. With the speed that was as natural to him as breathing, he drew and fired. His first bullet tore out Asa’s throat. He had heard that despite his bulky build, Asa was the fastest Locklin brother. Morgan pivoted, crouching as he shifted his aim, and pumped a slug into Rance’s chest, driving him over backwards. The rifle in his hands cracked, but the barrel was already tilted skyward. Morgan shifted smoothly, anticipating Steve’s shots, and sure enough, a pair of slugs whistled through the air where his head had been an instant earlier. His Colt came to bear on Steve . . . but before he could pull the trigger, more shots roared close by.
Bullets pounded into Steve Locklin’s body, making him do a jittery little dance as he backed up to the adobe wall behind him. Al Bowman walked forward, the gun in his hand blasting two more times as he turned Locklin’s face into a ghastly crimson smear.
“You had it comin’!” Bowman cried in a tortured voice. “You!”
Morgan hadn’t even seen the man dismount. All his attention had been focused on his opponents, not the unlikeliest of allies.
As Steve Locklin’s corpse slid down the wall to come to rest propped in a sitting position on the ground, Bowman stopped shooting and lowered the gun. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Considering that’s his brains and blood all over the wall, I’d say so,” Morgan replied. “I told you to stay out of it.”
“I didn’t think you were gonna get him in time. I thought he was going to kill you.”
Bowman could tell himself that all he wanted to, Morgan thought. The man might even believe it. It didn’t really matter.
Morgan punched the empty loads out of his Colt and slid fresh cartridges into the chamber. “Well, it’s done with,” he said without looking at Bowman. “You can go back to your wife and boy now. Make something out of what’s left of your life, Bowman. That’s all I can tell you.”
“You’re not coming back to town?”
Morgan shook his head. “No reason to. Like I’ve told you, I’m just passing through.” He pouched the iron and took up the dun’s reins.
“I tell you, there’s nothing for me to go back to.” Bowman looked at Steve Locklin’s body and shuddered. “It doesn’t change a thing. Not a damn thing. He started the fire, but I’m still to blame for what it did.”
Morgan turned the horse. He couldn’t talk to the man in the state that Bowman was in. He’d have to find his own way out.
“Thanks, Mr. Morgan!” Bowman called when the Drifter was about fifty yards away. “Thanks for your help! And Mr. Morgan . . . there’s one bullet left in this gun!”
Morgan’s head jerked up as the shot rang out over the plains. He twisted in the saddle and looked around in time to see Al Bowman’s body slump to the ground.
* * *
He had a reason to go back to the settlement after all. He lifted Bowman’s body, draped it over the saddle of the horse the man had ridden to Vinegar Hill, and took him home.
When he lowered the body to the charred ground at the feet of Bowman’s wife, the woman looked at it for a long moment and then spat on it. “It was his fault. All his fault. Big man who had a job to do. Had to run those outlaws out of town. He had it comin’.”
Morgan was getting damn sick and tired of hearing that.
As he rode out of Flat Rock, leaving the devastation behind him, he thought that within days, sprigs of green grass would begin to poke up out of the ground where there was nothing but ashes. Just nature’s way of showing that it truly didn’t give a damn what happened to people. The world would turn, the rain would fall, and the grass would grow, no matter how much suffering the folks who lived there had to endure....
And the only ones immune to that pain were those who had nothing left to lose.
Like the man called the Drifter.
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Copyright © 2016 J. A. Johnstone
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Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3563-2
First electronic edition: April 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3564-9
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3564-1