EIGHTEEN
Conrad Browning began to whimper as cold winds whipped past his horse, swirling around the two men escorting him toward higher peaks.
“I'm freezing,” he said, his teeth rattling, as darkness blanketed the mountains.
Cletus Huling gave the boy a steely look as their horses plodded up a switchback toward Glenwood Springs, and the valley beyond.
“You want me give this baby something to complain about?” Diego Ponce said, pulling a foot-long bowie knife from his stovepipe boot, snowflakes dusting his sombrero and his dark black beard.
“Yeah. Shut the bastard up,” Cletus said, reining his horse around a knot of piñon pines. “I'm tired of listenin' to the son of a bitch bellyache.”
With one sudden motion Diego grabbed a fistful of Conrad's hair and, jerking him sideways out of the saddle, sliced off the tip of his left ear.
Blood poured over Conrad's woolen greatcoat as he let out a piercing yell that echoed from the slopes around them, startling the horses.
Cletus, leading the way to Ghost Valley, turned back in the saddle to watch the pain on Conrad's face.
Diego laughed, tossing the piece of the boy's ear into a snowdrift. “Now he have something to cry about,” Diego said, wiping the blood from his knife on one leg of his badly worn leather chaps.
Blood seeped down Conrad's cheek as he held his palm to the wound. “My father will get you for this!” he cried, slumping over in the saddle.
“That ol' man of yours don't give a damn what happens to you,” Cletus said. “He never did come up with the money Ned an' Victor wanted from him. Only he'd better bring the money this time or you're a dead son of a bitch.”
“Dad came after me,” Conrad said, nursing his missing ear tip with a handkerchief he removed from an inside pocket of his snow-laden coat.
“Morgan never did get to Ned,” Cletus reminded the kid. “He's way past his prime. He got too old to mess with the likes of Victor an' Ned. At least that's what everybody says about Frank.”
“You'll see,” Conrad whimpered, tears brimming in his eyes as their horses climbed higher into the Rockies. “My dad will make you sorry for what you've done to me. Both of you will be dead.”
“You want me kill this loudmouth little
bastardo?”
Diego asked.
“Naw. Let him bleed an' let him cry as loud as he wants,” Cletus replied. “Ned promised us a ten-thousand-dollar share of the ransom he's gonna get from Morgan, an' we're damn sure gonna collect it.”
Diego frowned a moment. “Does this Morgan have that kind of money?”
“He's got plenty, according to Ned. We ain't gonna take no chance by killin' the boy.”
Diego put his knife away. “If he make more noise I cut off his other ear. Then he don't hear so goddamn good when he make all this noise.”
“Suits the hell outta me,” Cletus replied. “Far as I know he's worth the same to us with or without ears. All we gotta do is find this place Ned called Ghost Valley, an' I've got us a map to it.”
“How come we don't just shoot this worthless little piece of cow shit?”
“We need to keep him alive so his daddy will see he's okay,” Cletus replied. “That's how we get the ten thousand, accordin' to what Ned told me.”
“I say we kill him.”
Cletus glanced up at the mountains looming before them. “I reckon that's why you're flat broke, Diego. You leave the thinkin' part to me.”
Diego went into a sulk.
Conrad kept the handkerchief against his ear as their horses began a steeper climb.
Once, Diego glanced over his shoulder at their back trail.
“I do not see nothing, Señor,” he said.
Cletus turned up the collar on his mackinaw and kept on riding, shivering, wishing they'd brought along more whiskey. There had been plenty of it for sale at Trinidad. All they had between them was a half pint of red-eye.
* * *
“Shut up!” Diego demanded, sending a boot crashing into Conrad's skull.
The boy screamed, toppling over on his back after the savage blow.
“Take it easy on the little bastard,” Cletus warned. “We got us a ten-thousand-dollar package there if you don't kill him.”
“It is
muy frio,
” Diego said, shuddering. “I don't like to listen to this boy complain.”
“Tie somethin' over his damn mouth,” Cletus said while he was tying his horse in a clump of trees. “We're gonna make us some coffee so my insides don't freeze. Bring that bottle so we can put a little bite in it.”
“Por favor, señor,
” Diego said, “but the bottle is almost gone.”
Cletus whirled toward his Mexican companion. “You been drinkin' it this whole time?”
“It was cold, Señor.”
Cletus jerked out his revolver. “You got any idea how cold it's gonna be if you're dead, Meskin?”
Diego glowered. “You would not shoot me.”
“I goddamn sure will if that pint is empty. Fetch it for me now!”
“But there is only a little bit left,
jefe.
”
“If there ain't enough to keep me warm, you're a dead son of a bitch, Diego. I paid for that pint with my own goddamn hard money.”
“Maybeso there are a few swallows, Señor.”
“There'd damn sure better be more'n that, you rotten Meskin bastard.”
Diego turned toward his horse to reach into his saddlebags. A shot rang out.
Diego Ponce slumped to the snow on his knees with a dark stain blackening his coat. His horse snorted and bounded away in the snow, trailing its reins.
“Never did have no use for a thirsty Meskin,” Cletus said as he holstered his pistol.
Diego began coughing up blood.
Conrad drew back into a ball when the roar of the gunshot faded into the pines.
“You . . . killed your partner,” Conrad stammered.
“Diego never was no partner of mine. I couldn't sleep good at night, worryin' if he'd slit my damn throat when he took the notion.”
Dried, frozen blood was caked on Conrad's left cheek. “I've never met anyone like you,” he said, his voice quivering from the cold.
Cletus grinned. “Ain't likely that you ever will again, boy,” he said. His eyes slitted. “You just remember one thing, kid. I'll kill you quicker'n I just killed Diego if you mess with me.”
“I understand,” Conrad said. “You've made yourself perfectly clear.”
* * *
Cletus recognized them as Pawnees. Four Indians rode over a ridge clad in buffalo robes, almost hidden by veils of snowflakes.
“Injuns,” he grumbled, swinging his horse off the trail as quickly as he could.
He glared at Conrad. “Now you shut the hell up, boy, or I'll kill you same as I'm about to kill them damn redskins over yonder.”
“I won't say a word,” Conrad stammered, his reply muted by half-frozen lips.
Cletus jerked his ten-gauge shotgun from its boot and swung to the ground . . . the range between him and the Indians was close enough for a scattergun.
“Get down off that horse,” Cletus snapped with the wind at his back so his voice wouldn't carry, aiming the gun at Conrad when his boots touched new-fallen snow.
But Cletus realized it was too late to hide from the four Indians when he heard a distant war cry.
“I said get down, you little bastard!” he shouted to Conrad as the mounted warriors came toward them at a gallop with ancient muskets to their shoulders.
A distant rifle shot cracked in the stillness of the snowstorm. A lead ball struck a tree behind Cletus, spooking his horse.
“Take this, you rotten bastards,” he hissed as he fired off one barrel of his Greener.
A thundering blast shook the pine forest around them when his ten-gauge exploded. Somewhere in the swirling snow in front of them, he heard a scream.
Then a shape came lunging toward him, a feathered Indian on a buckskin horse.
Cletus fired again, satisfied when he heard a piercing yell in front of him. He watched the Pawnee topple off his horse as the buckskin pony swerved away from the gunshot.
He cracked open the barrels in the nick of time, jamming two more cartridges into the smoking chambers. Just as he snapped the gun closed, another rifle barked.
A snow-laden limb above Cletus broke in half with a dull crack, showering him with white flakes. But he did not allow anything to distract him from taking aim at the last two charging Indians.
One warrior was ripped from the back of his sorrel pony as if he'd run into an invisible stretch of rope. The Pawnee went tumbling over his horse's rump, tossing his long-barrel rifle in the air.
“One more,” Cletus whispered, turning so his aim would be perfect.
He closed his finger around the second trigger of his bird gun. The kick from the stock almost took him off his feet when the load of buckshot spat forth.
A slender Pawnee warrior aboard a black pony went flying off the animal's withers without ever firing a shot, his buffalo robe tenting behind him where balls of molten lead shredded his ribs and spine.
“Gotcha!” Cletus said, watching the pony gallop away trailing its jaw-rein.
Then there was silence. As a precaution against more of the red savages, Cletus reloaded his Greener.
“You killed all of them,” Conrad said, hunkered down behind a tree.
“That's what I aimed to do, boy,” he said, “and if I take the notion, I'll kill you same as them.”
“You killed your own partner, the Mexican fellow,” Conrad went on.
“The sumbitch had it comin',” Cletus replied, turning his freshly loaded gun on Conrad. “Shut the hell up or I'll do the same to you.”
“But I'm worth more to you alive.”
“Maybe,” Cletus muttered. “Only I don't think Frank Morgan is gonna know the difference if he brings that money to Ghost Valley. If his saddlebags are full of gold, like they's supposed to be, Ned's gonna kill him anyhow, if Victor or one of his men don't get to him first.”
* * *
When Cletus was satisfied that there were no more Pawnees in the area, he ordered Conrad into the saddle.
“We got lots of miles to cover, kid, so shut up with the goddamn whimperin'.”
Cletus mounted and led Conrad's horse toward higher elevations as the snow continued to fall. By his own reckoning they had two more days of hard riding facing them before they reached the valley.
NINETEEN
A soft touch on his forehead awakened him. He knew he'd been dreaming. A knifing pain spread slowly through his left shoulder
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You're at our cabin,” a gentle voice replied.
His eyes opened slowly. “Our cabin?”
“Mine an' Dad's.”
Things came back to Frank by degrees. He recalled the gunshot that had taken him unawares, a shot from behind him. “That'd be Buck, the old gent who brought me here. Seems like he had a beard. Rode a pinto pony. Right now, that's about all I remember. He was showing me how to find Ghost Valley. I went down into the valley alone.”
“That was my pa who brought you here.”
“Where is he now?”
“He rode off a while ago to see if any of that Pine or Vanbergen bunch was close to our cabin. He said he'd be back before sundown.”
“How bad is my wound festering?” Frank asked, reaching for his left shoulder.
“It has blood-poisonin' streaks. I changed the bandage a while ago.”
“I've got to get out of this bed,” he groaned, trying to lift himself off the mattress. Somewhere near the foot of the bed, Dog whimpered.
“You ain't goin' no place, Mr. Morgan,” Karen said with a firm note in her voice. “You lost a lot of blood. Drink some more of this whiskey.”
“I won't turn it down,” Frank answered, blinking to clear away the fog from his slumber.
Karen handed him the jug, helping him hold it to his lips until he took a swallow.
“That stuff burns,” he gasped, letting his head fall back on the pillow.
“It's supposed to. Pa says that's what makes it good for an ailin' body.”
He tried for a smile, admiring the smooth lines of Karen's face. While he was in no shape to be courting a woman, he found Karen Waite to be very attractive.
A gust of wind howled through a crack in the log cabin and he heard snowflakes falling on the roof. “I take it the storm hasn't broken yet.”
Karen set the clay jug on the floor. “Pa says it could last for a couple of days . . . a squall, he calls it.”
He gazed up at the sod roof of the cabin. “I've got to get back on my horse. Vanbergen and Pine could slip away under the cover of this snow.”
“You can't sit a horse in the shape you're in, Mr. Morgan,” she said.
“I sure aim to try,” he told her, flexing the muscles in his left arm, wincing when more lightning bolts of pain shot through him.
“Not till Pa gets back,” she said.
“You don't understand. I've . . . ridden a long way to have my revenge against Ned an' Victor for what they did to my wife and to my son a few weeks ago.”
Karen stood up, leaving the whiskey beside his cot on the dirt floor. “Wait till Pa gets back. It's nearly dark now anyhow. Nobody in his right mind is gonna go anywhere in a snow storm like this.”
Frank surrendered to her logic . . . for now. “Okay. Just don't let me drift off to sleep again.”
“Rest'll be the very best thing for you right now, Mr. Morgan.”
“Why don't you call me Frank?”
“Wouldn't be proper. We ain't acquainted.”
He grinned. “Then let's get acquainted. Tell me why a pretty girl like you is living up here in these mountains with her father.”
“He needs me.”
“It has to be more than that. Buck seems like he's able to take care of himself.”
“All we've got is each other,” Karen said quietly, moving over to the woodstove to add more pine limbs.
“Why did you come up here with him in the first place?” Frank asked.
“To be away from folks. Pa had a hard time durin' the war an' he didn't want to be around so many people. Nothin' up here but deer, elk, an' grizzly bears, besides the smaller varmints along the creeks.”
“Don't you ever get lonely?”
“No. I like it up here.”
Another blast of wind screamed around the eaves of the small cabin.
“But you're miles from any settlement.”
She turned away from the potbelly to stare at him. “When we feel the need to see folks we can ride down to Glenwood Springs, or over to Cripple Creek. When we don't, there ain't nobody who bothers us up here.”
“Sounds peaceful,” he said, reaching for the whiskey with his right hand.
“It is. Pa wants it that way.”
“Why?”
“On account of the war. He said he's seen enough of what men can do to each other.”
“I understand that,” Frank said, taking a big swallow of corn whiskey.
“You sound like pretty much of a loner yourself,” Karen said as she closed the stove door.
“I am. I reckon it's for the same reasons your pa likes it up in these mountains. It don't take long for a man to get enough of civilization.”
“We get by,” Karen said. “The winters can be hard sometimes.”
“And cold,” Frank surmised.
“The cabin stays warm. We get ready for winter with plenty of firewood. This place could use a few more chinks between some of the logs.”
Frank pushed a moth-eaten wool blanket off his chest and struggled to a sitting position, movement that only increased the pain in his left side.
“You shouldn't be movin' around, Frank,” she said, coming over to him.
“I can't stay here. I've got business over in that . . . Ghost Valley, they call it.”
“It'll keep for a few days,” Karen assured him.
“Not this,” Frank said darkly. “I've been looking for those jaspers for weeks. It won't be settled until Ned Pine and Victor Vanbergen are dead.”
“Pa says you're a killer.”
He took the whiskey jug again and drank deeply before he answered her question. “There was a time when I made a living at it. But not now.”
“You just said . . .” Karen's voice faded.
“This is different. This is personal.”
“You won't be strong enough,” she warned. “This cold drains all the strength out of a body.”
“Not mine,” he replied. “I'm used to the cold . . . or the heat.”
She came over to him and sat beside him on the cot, with worry in her eyes. “Pa says you aim to go up against that bunch of outlaws single-handed.”
He nodded, and drank more whiskey.
“You don't know those men,” Karen said. “They're all paid killers.”
“I know 'em real well. That part don't scare me one little bit. They shot me, but it was because I got careless and let one of 'em get behind me.”
“But Pa said your son was safe now, down in Trinidad or thereabouts.”
“I aim to make 'em pay for what they did to Conrad. I won't let 'em get away with it.”
“Pa says there's a lot of them hard cases in the valley.”
“I've thinned 'em down by a few.”
“You killed some of them?”
“A handful. Your father gave me some help.”
“Pa said he wasn't gonna kill no more men after the war was over.”
Frank sighed. “I reckon he made an exception. I owe him for what he did.”
“We came up here to live peaceful,” Karen whispered, staring at a cabin window covered with deer hide.
“I may have pulled him into a fight that wasn't any of his affair,” Frank explained.
“Did you ask him to help you kill those men?”
He wagged his head. “Nope. He did it on his own and that's a fact.”
Karen was thoughtful a moment. “We try to live quiet. Even when those Indians come around, Pa gets along with 'em and gives 'em what they want.”
Frank remembered the Indian he'd seen outside the cemetery at Glenwood Springs. “Do you mean the Old Ones? The Ones Who Came Before?”
“Some call 'em that,” Karen admitted, although she seemed nervous about it.
“Are they Utes? Shoshoni?”
“No one knows. They've lived here for a very long time. I only saw 'em a few times. Pa says they're real careful about showin' themselves to strangers.”
“Who are they?” Frank wanted to know.
“Ask Pa about it.”
“I already did. He didn't tell me much.”
Karen got up off the cot, as though she didn't care to talk about it anymore. “I'll warm up some more of this soup. It'll help you get your strength back.”
“You didn't answer my question,” he persisted.
“I didn't aim to. Ask my pa about it.”
The pain in Frank's shoulder forced him back down on the bed and he closed his eyes.
The Indian he saw beyond the cemetery fence at Glenwood Springs had seemed real enough.
He tried to recall what Doc Holliday told him about the local Indians. Some folks claimed they were like ghosts from the past, some tribe called the Anasazi.
“I saw one of them,” he told Karen.
She turned quickly from the potbelly where she was warming his soup.
“It's true,” he said. “I couldn't get a good look at him, but he was there, and he spoke to me.”
“You're joshin',” Karen said.
“I'm completely serious.”
She went back to her cast-iron pot. “An' just what did this Indian say?”
“He directed me to Ghost Valley. That's one reason why I'm here.”
“What's the other reasons?” she asked without turning around to look at him.
“A white man, a gunfighter by the name of Doc Holliday, told me this is where I could find Pine and Vanbergen.”
“You'll have to ask Pa about that. I mind my own business when it comes to gunfighters an' Indians. Only, Pa told me you were a gunfighter, so I reckon I shouldn't be talkin' to you now.”
“That was a long time ago,” Frank said sleepily as the corn whiskey began to do its work.