The Loner: Book One

by J. A. Johnstone

  “That’s right,” Morgan said. “I reckon it’s time.”

  Eve didn’t try to talk him out of it. She just said, “I hope you’ll take care of yourself.”

  “I’ll try,” he said. If she wanted to act like her outburst the night before hadn’t happened, that was all right with him. He wasn’t comfortable talking about anybody’s feelings. He never had been, even before the tragedy that had befallen him.

  “I’ll pour you a cup of coffee.”

  She handed him the coffee, still not meeting his eyes, and he sat down at the table to sip on the steaming brew while she went on getting ready for breakfast. After a few moments of silence, she surprised him by asking, “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  That was true. He would have to pick up the trail of Lasswell and the other kidnappers, but he wasn’t quite sure how to go about that. Frank would have known, he thought, and that reminded him that he’d never had a chance to send a telegram to Claudius Turnbuckle in San Francisco explaining the situation. It was possible that Frank had heard by now about what happened in Carson City. He might believe that his son was dead. The Kid hated that idea, but there was nothing he could do about it right now. Sawtooth didn’t have a telegraph office, and he didn’t know how long it would be before he came across one.

  Dr. McNally came bustling into the kitchen and stopped short, seemingly a little surprised to see Morgan there. But he smiled and nodded and said, “Good morning,” then went over to kiss Eve on the cheek. “Your mother is still sleeping soundly,” he told her.

  “That’s good,” she said. She turned and brought a plate of biscuits and bacon over to the table and set it in front of Morgan. Now he understood. She was trying to get him out of here, and she thought that the sooner she fed him, the sooner he would be gone.

  The back door opened while Morgan and the doctor were eating. Phillip Bearpaw came in, his Sharps rifle tucked under his arm. “Good morning, all,” he said with a grin. He looked at Morgan. “You’re up early, my friend.”

  “I’m riding on today,” Morgan said.

  A puzzled frown replaced Bearpaw’s grin. “So soon? I thought you’d be around for a while yet.”

  “No, it’s time for me to move on.” Morgan glanced toward the stove. Eve stood there with her back toward him, but he could tell that she had stiffened as the conversation went on. He hoped Bearpaw wouldn’t press him for details about why he was leaving now.

  With the easy familiarity of a frequent visitor to the house, the Paiute poured himself a cup of coffee and then sat down at the table with Morgan and McNally. He looked like he was thinking something over, and after a moment, he said, “How would you like to have some company, Kid?”

  Morgan’s eyebrows rose. “You want to go with me?”

  “I thought I might.” Bearpaw looked over at McNally. “I’ll miss you and your family, Patrick, but it’s not like I’d be gone forever.”

  “What you do is your own business, Phillip. We’d miss you, of course, but you do whatever you think is best.”

  Bearpaw looked at Morgan again. “How about it, Kid?”

  Morgan figured he had a pretty good idea what Bearpaw was thinking. Bearpaw thought Morgan wasn’t ready to face down Lasswell and the others yet, and the Paiute was probably right about that. He wanted to keep on working with Morgan while they hunted down the kidnappers.

  That wasn’t a bad idea, Morgan realized. Bearpaw knew a lot more about surviving on the frontier than he did, although Morgan thought he was learning fairly rapidly. Bearpaw might be a big help in getting on the trail of his quarry, too, Morgan told himself. He wasn’t even sure where to start, but he was willing to bet that Bearpaw would have some ideas.

  One thing was certain, though. When it came time to face his enemies, Morgan intended to do that alone. He wasn’t going to put Bearpaw in danger, although he had a hunch the Paiute would have been willing to back him up, no matter what the play.

  They could hash that out later. For now, Morgan nodded and said, “I think I’d like that.”

  Eve turned and stalked out of the kitchen.

  “Uh-oh,” Bearpaw said when she was gone. “Why is she so upset this morning?”

  “A man named Duke Garrity was waiting for me under the trees out back when I rode in yesterday evening,” Morgan explained.

  “Garrity,” Bearpaw repeated. “Related to that fellow from a couple of weeks ago?”

  “His brother.”

  “I take it there was gunplay?”

  “They’re supposed to bury Garrity this morning.”

  Bearpaw let out a tiny whistle. “How fast was he?”

  “Pretty fast. Marshal Chambliss said that this Garrity had killed several men.”

  McNally said, “I guess all that practice down at Phillip’s cabin paid off, Kid.”

  Morgan and Bearpaw both glanced at him in surprise.

  “Did you think I didn’t know what was going on?” McNally asked. “I have two eyes, and I’m pretty good at figuring things out. I know you’ve been working with the Kid here, Phillip. How’s he doing?”

  “Pretty good,” Bearpaw admitted. “Good enough so that he’s still alive this morning.”

  “But you don’t think he’s ready to go after the men he’s looking for, especially not alone.”

  Bearpaw shrugged.

  McNally looked at Morgan and asked, “Are they the ones who shot you, Kid?”

  “They did a lot worse than that,” Morgan said. “But it’s not anything I want to go into right now.”

  “I suppose I can respect that.” McNally picked up his coffee cup. “I think I can talk Eve into fixing up some supplies for the two of you.”

  “We’d appreciate that, Patrick,” Bearpaw said. “Living off the fat of the land isn’t as easy as it used to be when my ancestors roamed this land and game was abundant.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’ll go get my gear together, and I’ll be back here ready to ride in an hour, Kid. Will that be all right?”

  “Sure,” Morgan replied. “I’ll be ready, too.”

  It wouldn’t take him that long to get his things together, he thought. He didn’t have all that much. The clothes on his back…and his guns.

  Couldn’t forget the guns.

  Chapter 15

  When it came time to ride away, Eve surprised Morgan by coming out of the house and putting her arms around him. “Take care of yourself, Mr. Morgan,” she whispered as she hugged him. “I’d hate for anything bad to happen to you.”

  “Thanks, Eve. And thank you for everything you did to help me when I was hurt.”

  She stepped back and looked down at the ground. “I would have done as much for any of Pa’s patients.”

  Somehow, Morgan didn’t believe that. Even though a large part of him didn’t want to admit it, he knew there had been a connection between the two of them that went beyond that of nurse and patient. If things had been different…if they had met at another place, in another time…

  He shoved those thoughts out of his brain. They had no place in his head, not now, not ever.

  Eve turned to Bearpaw and hugged him as well. “You be careful, too,” she told him.

  “Oh, I intend to,” he said.

  “And come back soon.”

  Dr. McNally and his wife came out of the house then, the doctor keeping a hand protectively on her arm. He offered his other hand to Morgan and said, “We’ll be keeping you in our thoughts and prayers, son.”

  “Thanks,” Morgan said. “I reckon I can use them.”

  Mrs. McNally turned to her husband and said, “Patrick, why is Joseph leaving again? He just got here.”

  McNally opened his mouth to try to explain, but before he could say anything, an impulse seized Morgan. He gave in to it, taking his hat off and stepping forward to put his arms around Mrs. McNally. He gave her a firm but gentle hug.

  “Don’t worry about me, Ma,” he told her. “I’ll be back soon.”


  She patted him on the back and then reached up to stroke his sandy hair, which had gotten fairly long. “Oh, Joseph,” she said. “I’ll miss you so much. I’ll be waiting for you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Ma,” Morgan said. “Listen, I really don’t want you worrying about me, and you don’t need to sit around all day waiting for me to get back either. You just go on living. Take care of Pa and Eve and yourself, and I’ll see you when I see you. All right?”

  She looked up him and nodded as he used his thumb to wipe a tear away from her cheek. “All right,” she whispered. “If you say so, Joseph, that’s what I’ll do.”

  He nodded, stepped back, and put his hat on his head again. “So long, everybody,” he said as he took hold of the buckskin’s reins.

  “Good-bye, son,” McNally said. Tears glistened in his eyes, and in Eve’s as well. “Take care. You, too, Phillip.”

  Morgan and Bearpaw swung up into their saddles. As they started to turn their horses, Eve stepped forward and put a hand on Morgan’s leg. She looked up at him and mouthed the words Thank you.

  Morgan nodded, then heeled the buckskin into a trot as Eve stepped back. Bearpaw rode alongside him on the Appaloosa.

  “That was a mighty nice thing you did back there for those folks,” the Paiute said quietly.

  “No more than they deserve,” Morgan said. “It was the least I could do.”

  The two men fell silent as they rode south, putting the settlement of Sawtooth behind them.

  “How do you plan to go about finding the men you’re looking for, Kid?” Bearpaw asked later.

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know,” Morgan answered. “I was hoping maybe you’d have some ideas.”

  Bearpaw chuckled. “It’s a good thing I decided to come along, then. You said you know all their names?”

  “That’s right. At least, I know the names they were going by a few weeks ago. Some of them may be aliases.”

  “This may come as a shock to you, since you know me only as the educated, cultured individual that I am now, but there was a time when I…how shall I put this?…rode some rather dark and lonely trails.”

  Morgan looked over at him. “You were an outlaw?”

  “Not to the extent that Lasswell and those others are,” Bearpaw said quickly, “but from time to time some cattle or horses that didn’t exactly belong to me may have wound up in my possession. As a result of that time in my life, I know some of the places frequented by men who have heard the owl hoot. We can start by asking questions in those places. We’ll have to be careful how we go about it, though. We don’t want it getting back to the men we’re looking for that someone is on their trail.”

  That made sense to Morgan. He said, “I’ll follow your lead.”

  “In that case, I think we should circle around Carson City—”

  “That sounds good to me,” Morgan declared. He had no desire to go back there now.

  “And head for a trading post I know down where Nevada, Arizona, and Utah all come together,” Bearpaw went on. “Chances are, the members of that gang scattered after what happened, rather than staying together. From what you told me, they didn’t all ride together on a regular basis, but came together more for that one job.”

  It caused a twinge deep in the Kid’s chest to hear Bearpaw talking so matter-of-factly about Rebel’s kidnapping and murder, but he told himself that was how it had to be, not only for the Paiute, but for him, too. He couldn’t allow his emotions to rule him. He remembered a quote—from Shakespeare, he thought—about revenge being a dish best served cold. Giving in to hot-blooded rage could lead a man into making mistakes, and those mistakes could doom his entire effort.

  “Some of them may have headed for Mexico,” Bearpaw continued, “and they may have stopped at this place I’m thinking of. If we can track down two or three of them, then maybe they can tell us where to find some of the others.”

  “So you’re saying we’ll find them two or three at a time.”

  Bearpaw nodded. “That’s our best bet. The whole bunch isn’t going to fall right into your lap, Kid.”

  “The problem will be convincing the ones we find to tell us where to look for the others.”

  “Oh, there are ways to persuade people to talk,” Bearpaw said with a slight smile. “I am one of those dirty, torturin’ redskins after all.”

  “At least you didn’t say ‘heap’ and ‘ugh’ this time,” the Kid said.

  As Bearpaw suggested, they circled wide around Carson City and then headed southeast, keeping the various mountain ranges that ran along the Nevada-California border on their right hand. The Great Basin, broken up by a few smaller ranges, stretched out seemingly endlessly to their left. A couple of days into the journey, Morgan gazed off to the west and knew that the mining town of Buckskin lay in that direction. Conrad and Rebel had visited there while Frank Morgan was the marshal, and the Crown Royal Mine, owned by the Browning Mining Syndicate, still operated near Buckskin, although its output of silver ore had begun to dwindle, the Kid recalled.

  All that was part of another life, he told himself. Someone else’s life. He turned his face forward again and concentrated on the trail in front of them.

  Bearpaw called a halt early enough every day so that they could make camp and then Morgan could practice with his gun for an hour or so. The muscles in his arm had strengthened so that drawing and firing the Colt time and time again no longer wore them out. Whenever he washed up in the icy streams that flowed down out of the mountains, he checked the scar on his side where the bullet had torn out a large chuck of flesh. The red, puckered scar was ugly, but the wound had healed cleanly and Morgan wasn’t worried about it anymore. From time to time it ached a little, but nothing he couldn’t handle. Dr. McNally had done a fine job of patching him up.

  Dr. McNally—and Eve…

  It took the two men a week to reach their destination, a week of riding through starkly beautiful, sparsely populated country. Arid desert flats alternated with rugged, rocky mountain ranges and the occasional grassy valley. Isolated ranches were located in those valleys. Bearpaw pointed out some of the squat, adobe ranch houses and said, “Twenty years ago, those folks had to worry all the time about my people, or the Apaches, attacking them and wiping them out. Now the Paiutes have made peace, and so have most of the Apaches. The few bands of renegades left have moved across the border into Mexico and never raid this far north anymore.”

  “Is that why you don’t mind us having a campfire at night?” Morgan asked.

  Bearpaw grinned. “That’s right. It wasn’t all that long ago that being so careless might have cost you your life. Now, the main thing the ranchers have to worry about is their herds dying of thirst. Same thing is true for pilgrims like us. You need to know where the water holes are when you travel through this part of the country. Lucky for you that I’m with you. I know where every spring and tinaja is.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “Not much,” Bearpaw said with a chuckle. “And if I don’t know it, I’ll probably lie about it and say that I do.”

  “Now you tell me how unreliable you are,” the Kid drawled.

  Late in the afternoon, they came to a place where two trails crossed. Several buildings were scattered around, the largest of them built partially of logs and partially of adobe. A long porch ran along the front of it. A latticework roof attached to the vigas that stuck out from the top of the wall provided shade. About a dozen horses were tied up at the hitch rails in front of the place. The other buildings were adobe shacks.

  “A German named Immelmann owns the trading post,” Bearpaw told Morgan as they approached. “The Mormons used to have a settlement here, thirty or forty years ago. They abandoned it, though, and all the buildings fell into ruin except that one. It was in pretty bad shape but still standing when Immelmann came along and fixed it up. A few wagon trains used to pass through, but those days are pretty well over. Now, most of his business comes from men like
the ones we’re looking for.”

  “Outlaws,” the Kid said.

  “Men who don’t want to be found, for one reason or another,” Bearpaw amended. “After Immelmann got the trading post going, a few other folks moved in. They’ve started calling the place Las Vegas. Some of them think there’ll be a regular town here one of these days, but I doubt it. If Immelmann ever dies or leaves, the settlement will dry up and blow away without the trading post to keep it going.”

  Morgan didn’t doubt that. He didn’t care about the future of Las Vegas, though, only the present. And then only if he and Bearpaw could find a clue here to the men they were looking for.

  They added their horses to the ones tied up at the hitch rails and stepped onto the porch. The shade, even though it was dappled by the sun coming through the latticework, was a welcome relief from the heat. Morgan thought it was considerably cooler on the porch.

  The front and back doors stood open to let any stray breezes blow through the building. As Morgan and Bearpaw headed for the front door, three men started through it from inside, on their way out. The men stopped short as they saw the two newcomers.

  “Oh, no, Injun,” one of them said with a frown. “You ain’t goin’ in there where white men are drink-in’ and playin’ cards.”

  The Paiute looked down at the porch and shuffled his high-topped moccasins. “Bearpaw heap sorry,” he said. “Injun mighty thirsty. Not cause trouble.”

  Morgan forced himself not to stare in disgust.

  One of the other men laughed, a loud, braying hee-haw like a donkey. “The last thing a filthy ol’ redskin like you needs is firewater,” he said. “You get a snootful, and you’ll be liable to go on the warpath. Where’ll us poor white folks be then? You’ll probably scalp us all!”

  “Let us by,” the Kid said tightly. “We’re not looking for trouble.”

  “You travelin’ with this redskin, mister? Hell, ain’t you got no pride? Ain’t you got nothin’ better to do than hang around with a savage?”