THIRTY-ONE
Frank wasn't quite sure what he had seen. For no apparent reason at all, Ned Pine had fallen off the bluff. And Frank had been almost sure he'd seen the same Indian, standing back in the forest, although the distance had been too great to be absolutely certain.
Buck rode up on his pinto.
“That was Ned Pine,” Frank said. “I recognized him just before he fell.”
“Maybe he didn't fall,” Buck said knowingly.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I'm sure you saw that redskin.”
Frank nodded. “I thought I did.”
“Maybe what we both just witnessed was Anasazi justice, Morgan. This was their homeland. Could be they ain't all that fond of intruders.”
“But no one was near him when he fell.”
“Another one of them arrows coulda got him, only I never saw no arrow fly.”
“Neither did I,” Frank replied, “but it sure did look like something knocked him off that ledge.”
“Why worry about it, Morgan? That feller's damn sure dead down there.”
“I'm going down after my son. It'd probably be best if you stayed here.”
“I'll do whatever suits me, Morgan,” Buck replied as Frank turned his horse for the valley floor.
* * *
He rode up on the body. His bay snorted, smelling blood among the rocks.
“You got yours, Ned,” Frank said savagely. “Now all I've gotta do is find Vanbergen and get rid of him, along with the rest of your boys.”
But when he looked closely at the body of Ned Pine, he saw no arrow in him. How could Pine have been knocked off the cliff without being wounded? Ned's fall made no sense.
“I don't suppose it matters any,” Frank said with a sigh, wheeling his bay away from the boulders where Ned Pine would spend eternity, while the wolves and coyotes cleaned his bones.
The land was clear leading toward the abandoned mining town, yet Frank rode straight across it without bothering to look for shelter. His mind was made up. He would kill Victor and whoever else was holding Conrad, even if it cost him his own life in the process. Enough damage had been done to young Conrad for the sake of revenge, and Frank aimed to bring it to a permanent end once and for all this very morning.
* * *
“Untie him,” Tip said.
The half-breed Apache shook his head. “Ned will kill both of us if we let him go.”
Tip was standing at the door. Victor Vanbergen had died a slow death a few minutes ago. “That was Ned that fell off them rocks up yonder. Vic's dead, an' so is Ned. Morgan don't plan to hand over no money. All he aims to do is kill us an' git his boy back. Untie the little bastard an' let's saddle our horses so we can clear out.”
“You're sure it was Ned?”
“Real damn sure. Cut them ropes off. I'm gonna go saddle my horse. You can stay if you want. I'm headed back to Texas where it's warmer.”
The half-breed Apache cut Conrad's bindings with a long bowie knife and picked up his rifle. “I'm going with you, Tip,” he said. “This whole thing was a mistake.”
Tip stepped out into the snow with the half-breed close at his heels. Inside the cabin, Conrad rubbed his bleeding wrists and got out of the chair.
A man aboard a bay horse was sitting his saddle near the corral. He held a rifle to his shoulder.
“Son of a ...” Tip cried, reaching for his pistol.
A .44/40-caliber slug lifted him off his feet, for the range was close. It felt as though his throat collapsed, and he dropped his pistol to reach for the white-hot pain racing down his neck.
“Wait, Morgan!” the half-breed shouted. “Your boy is . . .”
The half-breed Apache spoke too late. Another powerful slug came from Frank's rifle, sending the breed into a curious, one-footed spin when the bullet hit his breastbone. He fell in a heap without drawing his pistol, gasping for breath with blood leaking from his buckskin shirt.
Tip continued to strangle on his own blood, rolling back and forth in red snow. Then his arms and legs went slack and he lay still.
* * *
Frank climbed painfully from the saddle, expecting more trouble from inside the shack, not knowing how many men Vanbergen had left. And there was Victor Vanbergen himself to deal with, a vendetta Frank had long nurtured.
But what he saw coming out the cabin door made him hold his fire. A slender figure with a bloody bandanna around his head walked hesitantly outside.
“Is that you, Conrad?” Frank called.
“It's me.” Conrad saw the two fallen bodies halfway to the corral. “That's the last of them. You killed them all,” he said in a thin voice.
“Where's Vanbergen?”
“Ned Pine killed him. They got in an argument over the money you were supposed to be bringing. Vanbergen went for his gun and Pine shot him. He's lying dead over there by the front door.”
“What happened to your face? To your head?”
“One of them who captured me cut off the top of my ear. The bleeding has stopped, pretty much.”
“I'm sorry, son. This has all happened to you on account of me.”
Conrad took a few steps toward Frank, then stopped and gave a weak grin. “I suppose I should have been more careful. I thought this was over the first time.”
“It's over now. Pine is dead and so are the others. I give you my word they won't be bothering you ever again. It's finished business.”
Conrad looked down at his lace-up shoes. “I reckon I'm glad you came for me again. They talked like they intended to kill me if you didn't show up with fifty thousand dollars in ransom money.”
“I came because I love you, son.”
“Seems like you've had a real strange way of showing it all these years.”
“I've already told you the story about your mother, and what happened between us. I didn't feel I had a choice, and then they killed her. Vivian was the only woman I've ever loved, and she gave you to me, a son I'd never seen.”
“It's okay,” Conrad replied. “Right now I think I'd like to get the hell out of this place.” A sound made Conrad turn. He saw a man mounted on a black and white pinto, waving a long rifle at them before he wheeled his mount and rode off to the south.
“Who is that?” Conrad asked.
Frank watched Buck ride away. “One of the best friends a man could ever have, son. Buck Waite is his name, and without his help, and his daughter's help, you'd probably still be a prisoner here. We'll stop by their cabin on our way back south. Pick a horse from the corral and I'll help you saddle it.”
“I can saddle my own horse,” Conrad said, moving toward the corral.
THIRTY-TWO
Karen was cleaning Conrad's ear. Buck had taken off Frank's shirt to add a pungent ointment of bear grease and wintergreen to his shoulder wound.
“I still can't figure what happened to Ned Pine,” Frank said.
“Does it matter?” Buck asked.
“Not really, I reckon.”
Conrad spoke up. “We saw some Indians when Cletus Huling was bringing me into the valley. The funny thing was, they weren't carrying guns.”
“One of them killed Huling with an arrow,” Frank said as Buck began winding strips of cloth around his fevered shoulder. “But there wasn't any arrow in Ned. I rode up close to where he fell for a good look.”
Karen finished putting salve on Conrad's ear, and put a clean piece of white cloth around his head. “That should do it,” she said.
“I'm grateful, ma'am,” Conrad replied, standing up near the stove to warm his hands.
Frank put on his shirt, doing it carefully, then sleeved into his mackinaw. Dog sat near his feet, watching everyone in the smoky cabin.
“I made some elk soup,” Karen said. “Best the both of you have some before you take off.”
“I'm sure as heck hungry,” Conrad said, smiling for the first time since Frank had seen him.
Frank stood up. “You make some mighty good soup, Karen, only that bark tea made me see things once in a while I was down in the valley.”
“You mean the Indians?”
“I just saw one. Saw him twice.”
“You weren't seeing things. We see them from time to time, but not very often.”
“Then they're real,” Frank said. “I was told they were ghosts from long ago.”
“They're real enough,” Karen told him, ladling soup into tin cups.
Buck gave his daughter a glance. “You be quiet, girl,” he said gruffly.
“But why, Pa?”
“Because I said so. They let us live up here because we don't talk about 'em. We don't bother 'em either. They go on about their business, same as us.”
“All Frank asked was if they were real or not. Don't see what's wrong with that.” She handed Conrad and Frank cups of soup.
Frank decided it didn't matter, and dropped the subject. As far as he was concerned, the arrow in Cletus Huling was real enough to kill him. “We're headed back south. It'll take us a few days to get back to Durango. I want both of you to know how much I appreciate what you've done.”
“That goes for me too,” Conrad said. “My father told me what you did for him after he was wounded.”
Frank's soup was salty, but delicious. “We owe you a big debt,” he said.
“You don't owe us nothin',” Buck replied. “We'd do the same for damn near any stranger who didn't come up here with no bad intentions.”
“Including killing some of the men who were holding his son for ransom?” Karen asked.
“Maybe,” Buck mumbled, turning his back to Frank. “It would kind'a depend on the man, or the men. That outlaw bunch didn't cause us no trouble.”
Karen came over to Frank and stared into his eyes for a moment.
Frank allowed an uncomfortable silence to pass. “And a special thanks to you, for the tea and whiskey you made,” he said.
“Pa gathered up the bark. All I did was brew the tea for you.”
“No matter. It must have helped. I feel a lot better already.”
She lowered her voice. “You come back sometime, Frank Morgan. I'll miss seein' you.”
“And I'll miss seeing you too, Karen. You've got my promise I'll come back one of these days.”
“I hope that's a promise you'll keep.”
“I always keep my word, 'specially to a pretty lady.”
She turned away then and went back to the woodstove to fix Buck a cup of soup.
Frank drained his cup. “It's time we got going,” he said to Conrad. “We've got half a day of daylight left and we'll need to find a campsite.”
Conrad picked up a torn woolen blanket he'd taken from the shack in Ghost Valley. “I hope we won't freeze to death tonight,” he said, shivering in spite of the warmth of the log cabin.
“We'll build a big fire,” Frank said, grinning. “I've got plenty of coffee and fatback. We'll boil a big pot of beans too.”
Frank went over to shake Buck's hand. “Thanks again, Buck, for all you did.”
“Wasn't nothin',” Buck answered. He glanced over at Conrad briefly. “Just glad you got your boy back. That bunch wasn't no outfit to take lightly.”
“How well I know. But they're all dead now, and this is the end of it.”
Then he walked over to Karen, and in spite of her father's presence, he bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks, lady,” he said gently, handing her the soup cup. “I'll see you again. Can't say when.”
“I understand, Frank. You'll always be welcome here with me an' my dad.”
* * *
They rode southwest under clear skies, across meadows of melting snow with the sun directly overhead. For several miles neither one of them said anything, leaving Ghost Valley behind them.
Finally, Conrad spoke. “What was all that about the Indians not being real?”
“Just a folk tale, I imagine. Some folks believe they're ghosts of an ancient tribe that used to live here hundreds of years ago.”
“But I saw them.”
“So did I. At least I think I did.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Dog let out a low growl, aiming his nose toward the horizon.
“There's one of them now,” Frank said, pulling his bay to a halt.
“I see him,” Conrad said, hauling back on the reins of his brown gelding.
On a mountain slope in the distance, they saw an Indian on a red and white piebald. He merely sat there in an open spot between the trees, watching them.
“He's the same one,” Frank said quietly. “The same one I saw just before Ned Pine fell off that cliff.”
“Let's see if we can ride up and talk to him,” Conrad said, his voice full of excitement.
“I doubt if he'll be there when we get there, but we can try,” Frank told his son.
They kicked their horses to a slow trot, making for the snowy slope where the Indian sat.
“He isn't leaving,” Conrad said.
Frank kept the Indian in sight, guiding his horse with his knees. Dog trotted farther out in front, the hair down his back standing rigid.
They rode down into a ravine where snowdrifts were deep, and for a moment, the Indian was out of sight. When their mounts climbed out of the arroyo, Frank discovered that the Indian was gone.
“Where did he go?” Conrad asked.
“Can't say for sure,” Frank answered. “We'll follow his tracks when we get up there.”
They urged their horses up a steep climb to reach the spot on the mountainside where they had both seen the Indian, Frank opening his coat so he could reach his pistol if the need arose. When they arrived at the place, Frank studied the ground for several minutes.
“No tracks,” he muttered. “It isn't snowing now, so it just ain't possible that a horse wouldn't leave any tracks.”
“But we both saw him,” Conrad protested.
“We both thought we saw him.”
“I know what I saw,” Conrad said with assurance. “It was an Indian on a spotted horse.”
Frank took a deep breath. “I know,” he said. “The same one I saw just before Ned Pine fell. It's mighty hard for a man to understand.”
“Maybe he was just making sure we were leaving,” Conrad suggested.
“That may be it, son.”
“Let's keep riding. I'm darn near frozen all the way to my toes.”
“So am I,” Frank said, giving the forest around them a final look.
They heeled their horses farther up the slope. For a time, Frank kept looking over his shoulder, wondering.
At the crest of a switchback leading up a mountain, Conrad spoke again. “Tonight, when we find a camping place, maybe you can tell me more about what happened between you and my mother back then.”
Frank's shoulders slumped. He knew he didn't want to remember what had happened to his beloved Vivian so long ago, but for the sake of his son, he'd talk about it one more time, to help bring them closer together. “Okay, but it isn't a very pretty story.”
“I'm old enough now. No matter what happened, I'd like to hear it.”
Frank wondered. “Maybe there's some of it you shouldn't hear.”
“I've been puzzled by it most of my life. Some things my grandfather told me didn't add up, and when I asked him pointed questions about it, he always dodged the matter, saying there were things I did not have to know, that what happened was best left in the past for my own sake.”
“More likely for his sake.”
Conrad gave him a piercing look. “What do you mean by that?”
“I'll tell you my side of it, son. Then you can make up your own mind.”
“Just so long as you tell me the truth.”
“I'll do that. You've got my word on it. No point now in telling it any other way. Your mother was a good woman, the best woman I've ever known. If nothing more than for the sake of her sweet memory, I'll tell you everything, and then you can be the judge.”
“I'd appreciate it. All these years, I've been feeling like there was some dark secret being kept from me.”
“It wasn't my idea,” Frank said. “Tonight, when we find a place to camp, I'll start right from the beginning, and I swear I won't leave anything out.”
They rode side by side down the switchback. Frank knew there would be hard parts of the story to explain... especially all the years he'd spent away from his only son.
But he would try. If for no better reason than for the sake of Vivian's memory.