The Loner: Dead Man’s Gold

by J. A. Johnstone

  “Yes, but it would be the first time you were that tired while we were depending on you to help keep us safe,” she pointed out.

  The Kid couldn’t argue with that logic. He said, “No more fires, all right?”

  “It’ll be awfully cold by morning.”

  He nodded toward the recently-dug mass grave. “Not as cold as those fellas over there are.”

  Annabelle glared at him for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “You’re right, of course. It was foolish to announce our presence like that, wasn’t it?”

  “Yep.”

  “No more fires. Except during the day when they can’t be seen as easily?”

  He nodded. “And I’ll show you how to build one that won’t give off much smoke, so you won’t likely be noticed that way, either.”

  “All right. That sounds like a good idea.”

  “I’ll stand the first watch and wake you up after four hours.”

  “What about me?” Father Jardine asked.

  “You let Dr. Dare and me worry about it tonight, padre,” The Kid said. “You can have a turn tomorrow night.”

  He figured he would try to find some other excuse by then to keep the priest from standing watch. He wasn’t sure Father Jardine would be able to pull the trigger, even if an Apache bent on scalping him was standing right in front of him. There was just too much goodness in the man. At least, that was the way some people would look at it.

  The Kid didn’t believe in that “turn the other cheek” business anymore. His days of being that meek were long since over.

  The way he saw it, the meek never inherited anything except trouble.

  Chapter 7

  Annabelle climbed into the wagon to sleep, while Father Jardine spread a bedroll underneath the vehicle. As The Kid stood nearby watching the preparations, he frowned.

  “You have a hair rope, padre?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “A rope made of horsehair, just like it sounds,” The Kid explained.

  “We only have the ropes we used with the horses.” Father Jardine shook his head. “I don’t know what they’re made of.”

  The Kid had placed his saddle on the ground. He had a lariat made of braided rawhide, the sort that the Mexicans called la reata, but he also had a coil of hair rope that he carried. He fetched it and played it out from its coil as he walked around the wagon, until he had a circle of rope completely enclosing the vehicle.

  By starlight, The Kid saw Father Jardine smile. “Is this supposed to be some sort of talisman to ward off evil spirits, my son?”

  “You could call it that,” The Kid said dryly. “A rattlesnake won’t crawl over a hair rope because the fibers tickle his belly too much. If you ever woke up with a nice fat diamondback rattler curled in your blankets with you because he was looking to get warm, you’d think he was an evil spirit, all right.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  The Kid waved a hand. “Forget it, Father. Just get some sleep.”

  Father Jardine crawled into his blankets. The Kid walked over to a rock next to the spring-fed pool and sat down with the rifle across his lap. He sat still and quiet and sent his senses out to search for any sign of danger in the night. Everything seemed peaceful. Within a few minutes, he heard soft snores coming from the priest.

  There was silence from inside the wagon. The Kid thought about Annabelle Dare sleeping in there, if indeed she was actually asleep. He caught himself wondering how much of her clothing she removed before she turned in, then forced that thought out of his head. He hadn’t been a widower all that long and had no right thinking such things. Anyway, Annabelle Dare was opinionated almost to the point of obnoxiousness. She was clearly accustomed to always getting her own way, and she really wasn’t all that pretty. She was just…striking-looking, that was all.

  Maybe there would come a time when he was ready to move on with his life, when he could look at a pretty woman and have those sort of thoughts without feeling that it was wrong. But not yet. Not yet.

  Right now, all he really wanted where Annabelle was concerned was to keep her alive until she and Father Jardine could finish this loco quest they were on. If they succeeded, she could go back to Harvard or Yale or wherever she came from, and he wouldn’t ever have to think about her again.

  Time passed as the stars wheeled through their courses overhead. The Kid felt a little drowsy from time to time, but he was able to shake it off without any trouble. When he judged that four hours had passed, he went to the back of the wagon, stepped over the horsehair rope, and said quietly, “Dr. Dare.”

  He heard the sound of a gun being cocked, then Annabelle mumbled, “Who…?”

  The Kid stepped quickly to the side, just in case her finger got a mite too heavy on the trigger. He said, “Damn it, Doctor, there’s a time and a place when you need to wake up with a gun in your hand. This isn’t one of them.”

  “Oh. Mr. Morgan.” He heard her moving around. A moment later she stuck her head out the back of the wagon. “I’m sorry. I was sound asleep, and I didn’t know at first who you were.”

  The Kid nodded. “Your turn to stand guard, just like you wanted.”

  “Yes, of course.” She climbed out of the wagon. “If you could give me a moment first…”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  He waited while she went off into the brush that grew along the base of the rocky outcropping. When she came back, he handed the Winchester to her.

  “Everything’s quiet,” he told her. “The padre’s still asleep.” The Kid could hear the snores coming from under the wagon.

  “That’s good. I’m glad we didn’t disturb him.”

  The Kid motioned for her to follow him and led her over to the rock where he’d been sitting earlier. “This is a good place. You’ve got a good view of the flats, and it’s just uncomfortable enough so that you won’t be too tempted to doze off again.”

  “All right. Thank you for the advice.”

  “Here’s another piece. That Smith and Wesson of yours is a double-action. You don’t have to cock it before you shoot. But you know that, or you seemed to when you were gunning down that Apache.”

  Her breath hissed between her teeth. “Are you trying to remind me that I killed a man tonight?”

  “First time?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, I hope it’s the last, too. But in case it isn’t, it won’t hurt you to get as good with that gun as you can. Maybe we’ll work on it some on the way.”

  “You’re going to teach me how to be a gunfighter like you?” Her voice held a tone of mockery.

  “Not like me, lady. You don’t want to be like me.”

  He started to turn away.

  “Wait,” she said. “I heard you talking to Father Jardine earlier. The business about the rope and the rattlesnakes. You were nice to him, when he was a little condescending to you. I appreciate that. He really is a good man.”

  “He’s a priest. That’s what you’d expect, I reckon.”

  “You know a lot about surviving out here on the frontier, don’t you?”

  “I’ve had to learn,” The Kid said. He didn’t say anything about the tragic circumstances that had forced him to pick up a lot of his survival skills in a hurry.

  “But I’ve noticed…there are times when there’s something about the way you speak, the way you carry yourself…Are you an educated man, Mr. Morgan?”

  The last thing he wanted to do was to tell her all about the life he had led back east, when he was still a pampered, pompous ass. Yeah, he was educated, all right, but he had also been ignorant of the things that mattered most in life. It had taken Frank Morgan and Rebel Callahan to educate him about those.

  “No, Doctor,” he said. “I don’t know a damn thing except how to kill my enemies before they kill me.”

  With that, he turned and walked back to the wagon. He took his bedroll and spread it out on the ground inside the big circle of rope, placed his saddle where he
could use it for a pillow, and stretched out to sleep. The ground wasn’t too comfortable, and The Kid had trouble forcing thoughts of the conversation he’d just had with Annabelle Dare out of his head.

  He was asleep in minutes, anyway.

  The sky was gray with the approach of dawn when The Kid woke up. He opened his eyes first, without moving otherwise. His head was turned so that he could see Annabelle sitting on the rock. He watched her for a moment without giving away the fact that he was awake.

  Her head was up, and it turned frequently from side to side as she looked around, evidently alert for any sign of danger. That was good to see. If he was going to travel with them, he had know whether or not he could depend on her. From the looks of it, she could stand a turn on watch. They’d have to wait and see about everything else.

  Oh, and she could get her gun out fairly quickly and defend herself in a fight, he reminded himself. But that had been an instinctive reaction, and the Apache had been only a few feet away when she shot him. He would find out how fast and accurate she really was once they’d had a chance to practice a little. He wouldn’t truly know how she would react in a fight until the time came again—which he was sure it would, if they were heading into the Jornada del Muerto.

  The Kid sat up, which drew Annabelle’s attention to him as she saw the movement in the dim light. He pushed his blankets aside and climbed to his feet, walked over to her.

  “Everything quiet?” he asked.

  “Yes. I haven’t seen or heard anything except some sort of night bird a little while ago.”

  The Kid frowned. What Annabelle had heard might have been a night bird…or it might have been something else.

  “Give me the rifle,” he said, his voice flat and hard. “Then go get under the wagon with Father Jardine.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Do you think—”

  “I don’t know. Just give me the damned rifle.”

  “You’re a rude man, Mr. Morgan,” she said, but she handed over the Winchester and stood up.

  “Under the wagon,” The Kid said again. “Where’d you hear that bird?”

  She gestured vaguely toward the hills. “Up there somewhere.”

  “If you hear any shooting, stay where you are and keep the padre under there with you. Don’t come out until I tell you to.”

  He set off up the hill, moving swiftly in a crouching run and veering from side to side. The light at this time of day wasn’t good for shooting, just like twilight, but if anybody was up there waiting to bushwhack them, chances were the bastard’s eyes would be adjusted to the dimness by now.

  The Kid used every rock, every bush, every scrubby little tree he could find for cover. He climbed all the way to the slab of rock where he had watched over the camp the night before, without running into any trouble along the way. He paused there to listen.

  Somewhere far away in the distance, he heard the drummimg of hoofbeats.

  The tension that filled The Kid eased a little, but only a little. His gut told him that someone had been spying on them, and more than one someone, at that, otherwise there wouldn’t have been any need for signals passing between them.

  The two members of the Apache war party who had survived the fight? Maybe. Indians often signaled with animal noises like that. It might have been some of Fortunato’s men, too, although The Kid considered that less likely. And it could even have been someone else, some enemies Annabelle and Father Jardine hadn’t encountered so far. The Kid wondered just how many people actually knew about this golden candlestick they were after. Something like that might be valuable enough to tempt any number of thieves and owlhoots.

  But right now, The Kid didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary, so he suspected that whoever was watching them was gone. He didn’t know what the purpose had been in spying on them. He was sure he would find out sooner or later.

  “What was it?” Annabelle asked when he returned to the camp.

  “Nothing,” The Kid said. No point in worrying her when he didn’t really know anything. “I reckon it was just a bird, like you said.” He handed the rifle back to her and went on, “Keep your eyes open. I’ll get started on a fire so we can cook some breakfast.” He looked toward the north. “We’ll put some miles behind us today.”

  Chapter 8

  “What is it, Arturo?” Count Eduardo Fortunato asked as he sat up on his cot and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

  “The savages are back, Your Excellency.”

  Fortunato looked up at his dour-faced servant, who stood there in a nightshirt holding a lantern. “They found the woman and the priest?”

  “I assumed you would want them to make their report to you, sir,” Arturo replied in his usual irritatingly smug tone. “So I have no idea what they found.”

  Fortunato grunted and swung his legs off the cot. Arturo was an insolent bastard. Fortunato’s ancestors would have had a servant like that flogged. In this day and age, of course, one could not do that, which was a shame, in Fortunato’s opinion. Although he was quite fond of all the modern comforts and conveniences, in some ways it must have been better in the old days.

  “Don’t just stand there,” he snapped. “Help me dress.”

  Arturo set the lantern aside on a folding table. Its yellow glow filled the large tent. The count had brought along as much as he could pack in a wagon—well, as much as Arturo could pack, anyway, since Count Fortunato himself did no physical labor except the occasional killing—so the tent was well furnished with a roomy, comfortable cot, a dining table, a writing table, and a folding chair with attached cushions. There was also a large trunk that contained the count’s clothes, as well as several smaller cases that held his guns, a saber, and a pair of dueling swords.

  A few minutes later, Fortunato pushed aside the canvas flap over the tent’s entrance and stepped out. Arturo followed him, carrying the lantern again. The count was a stocky, middle-aged man, with thick, sleek hair that was still black as midnight and a ruggedly handsome face with deep-set dark eyes that could burn with passion or glitter with icy hatred, depending on the circumstances.

  Two men stood in front of the tent, half-breed Yaquis in boots, leggings, and long tunics belted around their waists with colorful red sashes. Blue headbands held back their long, raven-black hair. They were half brothers as well as half-breeds, Fortunato knew. They shared the same father, a Mexican bandito who’d had a habit of raping and enslaving Yaqui women he captured. The brothers had been raised among their father’s band of cutthroats. Their mothers had been discarded somewhere along the way; neither of them really remembered much about that.

  Fortunato knew these things because the man who had helped him find and hire the brothers had insisted on telling him all about their dreary history. Fortunato didn’t care, but it was easier to listen to the man, rather than risk offending him. That individual was a high-ranking officer in the Rurales with connections to numerous bandit gangs in the northern part of Mexico. In theory, of course, the Rurales were supposed to hunt down and capture or kill such criminals, but it was so much easier—and so much more profitable—to cooperate with them whenever possible.

  For a man with the sort of money that Fortunato was willing to spend, the Rurales would do almost anything, including telling him where he could find a pair of trackers like the Yaquis who stood before him.

  “Did you find the woman and the priest?” he asked them in Spanish. Fortunato spoke five languages fluently, as well as a smattering of several more.

  One of the Indians pointed across the flats to the west. “They are camped where you believed them to be, where the fire was,” he replied in guttural tones that were unpleasant to Fortunato’s ears.

  “What about those shots we heard earlier?” The distant reports had been very faint, which told Fortunato they came either from far out on the flats or even from the hills on the other side.

  The Yaqui who had spoken shook his head. “We know nothing of them. The camp was quiet when we got
there. We climbed into the hills above it and watched for a time. The fire was out then, and the people slept, except for a guard.”

  “A guard?” Fortunato repeated sharply. “Who was it?”

  “The woman.”

  “What about the priest?”

  “We did not see him. The other man slept near the wagon.”

  The other man…Now they were getting to what Fortunato really wanted to know. He was intrigued by the stranger who had interfered that afternoon and prevented his men from capturing Dr. Dare and the priest. Fortunato wanted to know who he was.

  “Describe the man you saw. ”

  “It was dark. We could not see much. He seemed to be young. He had a big hat and wore a buckskin shirt.”

  Fortunato nodded and turned. He went over to the wagon and kicked the leg of the man who was sleeping underneath it.

  “Braddock! Come out of there.”

  The gunman crawled slowly and painfully out from under the wagon. “Yeah?” he said in a surly voice, then amended, “I mean, yes, sir? What can I do for you, Count?”

  Braddock’s midsection was heavily bandaged. Arturo had tended to his wound and pronounced that he would live…probably.

  “The man who shot you and killed Davenport and Crimmons…you said he was young and wore a buckskin shirt?”

  “Yeah, from what I could see.” A whining note came into Braddock’s voice as he went on, “You gotta remember, Count, it all happened pretty fast, and he wasn’t that close to us.”

  “Close enough to shoot you when you and Davenport missed him,” Fortunato said.

  “Sorry,” Braddock muttered.

  Fortunato waved a hand. “Never mind. It appears that this man has now joined forces with Dr. Dare and the old man. Your orders remain the same. As soon as it’s light enough to see, you will start back to El Paso and find more gunmen to send out here to me.”

  “I’m hurt, boss,” Braddock protested. “I got a bullet in my gut.”

  “Nonsense. Arturo said the wound was merely a deep graze. The bullet did not remain lodged in it.”