Burning

by William W. Johnstone

  The farmer’s face hardened for a few seconds, then softened somewhat. “You might be correct. I will admit I have allowed emotion to take control of common sense.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” Frank said. “Go on back home and stay with your son. He’ll need you by his side.”

  Paul was silent for a moment. Finally he turned eyes filled with hatred on Frank. “You hear what happened to Bob and Nellie Frazier?”

  Frank nodded slowly, his face sympathetic.

  “Mrs. Frazier needs medical care,” Paul continued. “She is in a deep state of shock, I believe the doctors call it. She tried to ride for help, but she was too badly injured and collapsed in the effort. Several of the farmers’ wives are with her. No one, including myself, knows what to do for her. Do you?”

  Frank shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t. Rest is the best thing, I would guess.”

  Paul nodded his head and picked up the reins. “Thank you, Morgan. I s’pect you’re right about the futility of us trying to attack Rogers and Perkins all by ourselves. We’ll wait awhile and see what happens.” He spurred his mount, and he and his sons were gone in a cloud of dust.

  Frank cut his eyes to Cummings. The man had not moved. “Get on your horse and ride out of here, George. Don’t tarry. If I see you again, you’ll be buried in this valley. There won’t be no warning nor any second chances. If I ever set eyes on you again I’ll shoot you dead. Understand?”

  “I’m gone, Morgan.”

  “Move!”

  George moved. Very swiftly. The last time anyone saw him he was riding south, leaning over his saddle horn and whipping his horse as hard as he could while he looked back over his shoulder as if the devil were after him.

  Sixteen

  Richard and Lydia Carmondy stood on the boardwalk and watched as the body of Nick Barrow was dragged away. Lydia’s hanky was fluttering like a flag in the wind as she fanned her flushed face. Frank walked over and stepped up on the boardwalk just as Charlie Jordan stepped out of the café.

  “Is the coffee hot?” Frank asked him.

  “Hot and the best you can get in the territory,” the café owner said proudly.

  “Well, I’ll sure have me a cup then,” Frank said, smiling at the man. “Maybe two or three.”

  Richard and Lydia followed Frank into the café. After Frank was seated, he noticed them standing before his table. The reverend’s face was set and stern-looking, and his lips were puckered as if he’d been sucking on a lemon. Frank sighed and motioned for them to sit down at his table. He figured he was in for some moralizing from a man who knew next to nothing about human nature.

  “Who was that man you so handily dispatched?” Richard asked, his tone suggesting he thought Frank had done the town a disservice.

  “A man who fancied himself slick with a pistol.”

  “Obviously he wasn’t nearly slick enough,” the preacher said drily.

  “In this game, not nearly is just as bad as not at all,” Frank replied just as drily. He looked up as Charlie placed cups of coffee on the table. “How about some pie?”

  “My God, man!” Richard blurted out. “You just killed a man. How can you think about food?”

  “I was hungry before the shooting and I’m still hungry,” Frank told him. “As satisfying as killing pond scum that need it is, it don’t do nothing for an empty stomach.”

  “Incredible,” the preacher muttered, shaking his head and looking heavenward as if the Good Lord would appreciate his distaste at talking with such a man as Frank Morgan.

  “You looked so brave standing out there all alone,” Lydia said, a slight blush coloring her cheeks as she batted her long, thick eyelashes. “I was afraid for you.”

  “Well, ah, thank you,” Frank replied. “Actually, to be honest, that was the second time I faced a gun today.”

  “Oh?” Out came the little hanky once again.

  Frank wondered if she bought them by the dozen as he explained about Ray Hinkle as briefly as he could.

  “You think this Hinkle person is the one who shot Paul Adams’s son Jimmy?” she asked as the hanky waved back and forth.

  “Yes, I do. But he won’t be shooting anybody else. He’s taking himself a dirt nap right now.”

  Richard looked pained as he rolled his eyes. “What a quaint little expression.”

  “How do you like your new house?” Frank asked, abruptly changing the subject.

  “It’s very nice,” Lydia replied. “I know we’re going to love this area . . . as soon as present matters are settled.”

  “It’ll be settled before the end of summer,” Frank told her.

  “How can you be so sure?” Richard asked.

  “Tempers can’t continue to run as high as they have been without boiling over,” Frank assured him. “When they finally reach the boiling point, the end will be in sight.”

  “They haven’t reached that point yet?” Richard asked.

  “Not quite.”

  John Platt walked into the café, and Frank waved the liveryman over to the table. John called for Charlie to bring him coffee, and sat down next to Lydia. She moved over slightly away from him and raised the hanky to her nose as the familiar odor of horse manure followed John to the table.

  “One of the workmen just told me that we’re gettin’ a doctor,” John said, a note of pride in his voice.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful!” Lydia said from behind the hanky.

  “They’re startin’ on his office in the mornin’,” John informed the group. “The doctor is due to arrive in a few days. He’s a young feller, just out of medical school somewheres back East.”

  “Boston, I’m sure,” Richard said.

  “Oh, no doubt,” his sister agreed.

  John sugared his coffee and said, “What we need next is a paper, and someone to run it.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t that be marvelous?” Lydia said. “Richard could do a regular column on the Bible.”

  “Yeah, that would shore be interestin’ readin’,” John said with a quick wink at Frank that the Carmondys couldn’t see.

  “Are you a Christian, Mr. Platt?” Richard asked, as if he suspected he might be sharing coffee with a heathen.

  “I reckon. I was baptized as a young feller back home. But I been backslidin’ for a good many years.”

  “I shall expect to see you at services this Sunday,” Richard said, sticking out his chest and lowering the timbre of his voice as if it were a command from God himself. “Fellowship is a wonderful thing.”

  “Right,” John said with about as much enthusiasm as a man facing the thirteen steps to the gallows. “That’s what my old woman keeps tellin’ me ... ’bout ten times a day.”

  “Mrs. Platt is a good Christian woman,” Richard said. “My sister and I are so looking forward to having dinner at your home this evening.”

  John choked on a mouthful of coffee, coughed a couple of times, then nodded his head. “Supper? Tonight?”

  “Yes. Have you forgotten?” Lydia asked.

  “Musta slipped my mind,” John muttered.

  Conversation stopped as the door opened and Bobby Doolin stepped into the café. The gunfighter walked to a corner table and took a seat. “Coffee and a piece of pie,” he called to Charlie.

  “Coming right up.”

  Doolin looked over at Frank and smiled. “You lucked out again, Morgan. That fellow you gunned down was no gunhand.”

  Frank laid both big, callused hands on the table. “Doolin, I’m getting really tired of your mouth,” he said in a low, hard voice, his eyes burning holes in Doolin’s face.

  Bobby laughed. “You know what you can do about that, Morgan.”

  “Oh, my,” Lydia said. The hanky commenced to waving to and fro once more.

  “You want me to do it now, Doolin?” Frank put the question to him and half rose from his chair.

  Doolin’s smile faded and his face turned as hard and cold as a granite tombstone. “You want it now, Morgan?”

&n
bsp; “That’s up to you,” Morgan said, getting fully to his feet.

  Doolin’s insolent grin returned. “I’ll finish my coffee and pie first,” he said as lightly as if he were declining an offer to go fishing with a friend.

  “If this lady wasn’t sitting here, I’d tell you where you could put that coffee and pie, Doolin.”

  Lydia’s hanky began working at high speed, and her face flushed scarlet while her chest heaved with heavy breaths.

  Doolin frowned. “Don’t be vulgar around women, Morgan. That’s not like you at all.” Like many Western men, Doolin held a good woman in high regard, and would never consider being crass in front of one.

  Frank glanced at Lydia. “If I offended you, Miss Lydia, I’m truly sorry, and I assure you it won’t happen again,” he said, taking his seat once more with a look at Doolin that would have frightened a lesser man to death.

  “Thank you, Frank,” she responded. The hanky slowed considerably.

  “I don’t want to cause no trouble in front of a lady,” Doolin said, sugaring his coffee, his lips curling in a smirk.

  “That’s fine with me,” Frank said.

  “But you and me, Morgan, we’ll settle this thing between us real soon. Count on that.”

  “Whenever you want it.” Frank finished his coffee and pie in silence. After a few minutes, he pushed back his chair and picked up his hat. “Nice seeing you folks,” he said to Richard and Lydia.

  “We’ll see you in church this Sunday?” Richard asked, a scornful note to his words as if he already knew the answer to the question.

  “Doubtful,” Frank replied, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. “But my thoughts will be with you.”

  “See you, Frank,” John said over the rim of his cup.

  Outside on the boardwalk, Frank stood alone for a moment. The sounds of hammering and sawing filled the air. A new town was soon to be. But Frank had no doubt that its birth would be heralded in more blood. He just hoped it wouldn’t be his own.

  * * *

  “Far as I’m concerned,” Mark Regers said, “we can burn the whole damn town down to the ground.”

  “That’d be like my mama used to say, Mark,” Grant replied. “Cuttin’ off your nose to spite your face.”

  “Whatever,” the rancher said sourly. Then he started humming. His eyes took on an odd sort of glaze.

  “Mark?” Grant questioned, leaning closer to the man. “Mark, can you hear me?”

  “I doubt it,” Mark Junior said from the doorway to the study.

  Grant turned to look at the young man. “Are you sober, Mark?” he asked.

  “Sober as a judge. How’s Victor?”

  Grant cussed at the mention of his oldest son.

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “What’s wrong with your dad, Mark?”

  “Well, with Daddy, it used to be he’d feel these spells comin’ on and he’d hide in his bedroom, pretendin’ he had a bad headache. But we all knew it was another spell.”

  “I recall those headaches. I never knew it was a spell like this.”

  “This is a bad one. I never seen one last this long. I’m wonderin’ if he’s gonna come out of it.”

  “Of course he will!”

  “I don’t think so, Grant. They’ve never lasted this long before.”

  “What’s wrong with the old fart now?” Peaches Rogers asked from the doorway.

  Grant grimaced at the young woman’s words. He looked at her. A very pretty young lady with a mouth like a garbage barrel, and if the gossip around town was correct, the morals of an alley cat in heat. “Show some respect for your father,” he told her.

  “Go to hell,” Peaches replied, walking over to her father. The senior Rogers was sitting in a chair, his mouth open. A bit of drool leaked from one corner of his mouth, and his eyes had the long stare of death in them. “You’re disgusting,” she said to him. “You ought to be put in an asylum.”

  “Shut up, Peaches,” Mark Junior told his sister. “Make yourself useful. Gather up Daddy’s guns and store them away. Out of his reach.”

  “Well, that’s a good idea,” she agreed. “You’re not entirely stupid, brother, no matter what everyone says about you.” She glanced at Grant. “Lucy tells me that homesteader’s kid is gonna make it.”

  “When did you see my daughter?”

  “She left a few minutes before you got here.”

  “I told her to stay home!”

  “She don’t pay no more attention to you than I do to that drooling bag of crap there,” Peaches replied, jerking a thumb toward her father. She turned to her brother. “Looks like you’re in charge now, brother. What are you gonna do about the squatters?”

  “Burn them out.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  “You sure that’s the way you want to go?” Grant asked the younger man.

  “That’s what Daddy was talkin’ ’bout doin’ ’fore he went off his bean.”

  “Then we’d better talk.”

  “Suits me. Peaches, you take care of Daddy.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll look after the old fart, make sure he don’t mess himself or nothing.”

  The two men walked out of the study into the front yard. Grant said, “Your sister needs her mouth washed out with soap.”

  “She definitely needs her butt kicked,” Mark agreed. “Now then, I been thinkin’ ’bout the squatters. Here’s my plan....”

  As he began talking, Grant nodded his head.

  Seventeen

  Frank counted the number of workmen busy working on three new buildings being put up in the town. Twelve of them. They lived in tents pitched behind the new additions. The men were all fairly large in build, and all looked as if they’d been around the block a time or two. In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever seen a tougher-looking group of men who weren’t wearing any guns, and they looked like they could handle themselves if push came to shove.

  Frank walked over to the workmen and located the foreman, taking him to one side and talking with him. After a few moments, Frank and the foreman shook hands and the foreman went back to work. Frank walked over to Wallace’s General Store and had a chat with Joe. After a moment, Joe smiled and nodded his head in agreement. After Frank had mounted up and headed back to his homestead, Joe walked to the store’s gun rack and counted the rifles. Just enough. He grinned and waited for the workmen to show up. If the Diamond and GP hands showed up in town to make trouble, they would certainly be in for a surprise.

  Frank didn’t know if Rogers and Grant would even think of attacking the town, but it never hurt to be ready for anything. Frank could not think of anything else he could do.

  At his homestead, Frank fed Dog, and then fixed a pot of coffee and sat outside on a bench, watching the day gently fade into night. If Mark Rogers was in bad shape, that meant that his son, Mark Junior, would be stepping into the leadership role. Frank didn’t know if that was good or bad. But he reckoned he’d soon find out.

  It was a quiet night, and a cloudy one. The air was heavy and smelled like rain. That would be all right, for the ground needed a good soaking. It would help the crops. Frank smiled as he struck a match on his pants leg and put the flame to the cigarette he’d built. He was a little surprised to find he was thinking like a farmer. Well, it wouldn’t be a bad life, he supposed. His thoughts abruptly switched to Lydia Carmondy, and that made him uncomfortable. He forced the woman out of his head and sent her back to her brother. Frank did not want any romantic entanglements at this stage of his life. Every time he got seriously involved with a lady, it seemed as though he drew a losing hand. He was better off alone.

  He sipped his coffee and leaked smoke from his nostrils as his thoughts went back some years to the last time he’d seriously considered sharing his life with a woman. Her name was Angela and she was just on the right side of twenty years old. Her ma and pa owned a general store in Las Cruces, New Mexico Territory, and she worked there helping with the customers. She
hadn’t been what most men would call a “looker,” but she had a strong, honest face and a laugh that would warm Frank’s heart whenever he heard it.

  He’d gone in to buy supplies one day after deciding to stay in a rented cabin for a few weeks to let the snow in the mountain passes melt down enough for him to ride through them on his endless journey.

  Angela was waiting on an Indian couple, and was laughing and teasing their young son as she slipped him a piece of peppermint candy without charge. Frank found himself smiling for the first time in over a month at her infectious laughter and easy manner with people.

  When she came over to the counter to add up his purchases, he asked her where the best food could be found in the town. She’d smiled and, with a blush creeping up onto her cheeks, said, “Well now, mister, that’d be my house of course, especially on Sunday afternoons when I fry up a couple of chickens for my parents.”

  Frank had laughed and replied, “That sounds awfully tempting, but I need a place I can go to and eat.”

  She’d stared at him seriously for a moment, taken a deep breath, and said, “Supper’s at seven, and if you’re late, don’t expect there to be much left because it doesn’t last long.”

  Frank tipped his hat and left without thinking to ask directions to Angela’s house or even to get her name. Both of these tasks he accomplished before Sunday rolled around, and he showed up at ten minutes to seven, dressed in his best Sunday-go-to-meeting finery.

  Angela’s parents had been as charming and as welcoming to a stranger as she had been, and the evening was one of the most enjoyable Frank could remember.

  So too were the picnics and rides in the countryside that he and Angela began to have on almost a daily basis. Weeks passed, the snow began to melt, and still Frank stayed in Las Cruces. He began to inquire of the local banker about ranches in the area that might be up for sale, and he even went so far as to begin to attend church on a regular basis with Angela and her parents.

  He’d asked her to marry him, and they’d gone to see the preacher to set a date for the ceremony, when Angela began to cough and came down with a high fever. The doctor said later it was pneumonia, and that she had about a fifty-fifty chance of surviving it.