The Loner (7 page)

“Damn straight,” Carlson said.

“Well, I’m here to tell you, that ain’t gonna happen.”

The men stared at him in surprise. Some of them, like Rattigan, didn’t seem to care all that much. Others, like Titus Gant and the Winchell brothers, looked mad.

Carlson was the most upset, though. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?” he demanded. He waved a big hand toward Rebel. “She’s right there, and she can’t do a damned thing to stop us. Why can’t we take turns with her?”

“Because I say you can’t,” Lasswell said. “I’m the boss of this outfit, and what I say goes.”

“Is it because you want her for yourself?” Gant asked. He wore a black frock coat and a string tie, and when he wasn’t holding up banks or trains—or kidnapping women—he dealt faro in saloons. His voice was soft, but Lasswell recognized a dangerous quality in it. Maybe Carlson
wasn’t
the one he ought to be worrying about the most.

“That ain’t it,” he said. “We took Mrs. Browning for the ransom money. That’s all I’m thinkin’ about.”

“Her husband won’t know that he’s not getting her back in exactly the same condition as he saw her last until after he’s paid the money,” Gant pointed out.

“Yeah, well, what if he won’t hand over the loot until he’s talked to her? If she tells him that you fellas molested her, he might not pay.”

Gant shook his head. “That’s loco. He won’t be calling the shots. If he tries anything like that, we’ll just kill ’em both and take the money anyway.”

“Not if he’s hidden it somewhere.” Lasswell was trying to think of arguments he could use to convince them without having to tell them the truth. “I’m tellin’ you, we got to be careful and cover all our bets.”

Gant sneered and brushed his coat back. “And I’m telling you I intend to have that woman before we give her back to her husband.”

Lasswell sighed. He read the challenge on Gant’s face and in the gambler’s stance, and he knew that he couldn’t let it go unanswered.

With a flickering move that filled his hand and gave Gant no chance, Lasswell drew and fired.

He was close enough so that the bullet drove Gant back a couple of steps as it thudded into his chest. Gant tried to draw, but his body was no longer following his commands. He weaved to the side and then spun off his feet, crashing to the ground.

Lasswell stood there, apparently as casual as he had been a couple of heartbeats earlier, when Gant was still alive. Smoke curled from the barrel of the gun in his hand.

“Let’s make it simple,” he said. “None of you are gonna bother Mrs. Browning because I say you ain’t. That plain enough for you?”

Nobody argued, not even Carlson. A few of the men muttered agreement, and the gathering broke up, the men drifting away to see to their horses or roll a smoke or get a card game going. Lasswell told the Winchell brothers to grab some shovels and start digging. They had both Gant and Ray Duncan to bury.

Moss came over to Lasswell, who had replaced the spent shell and pouched his iron. “I remember you now,” he said quietly. “You were part of that big feud in Texas about twenty-five years ago. Seems like I recall hearin’ something about a shoot-out in a saloon in Comanche. Fella named Lasswell downed four of the other bunch even though he had a couple of slugs in him.”

“I’m still carryin’ around one of those slugs,” Lasswell said, “and it hurts like the dickens whenever it’s about to rain.”

“Hell, man, you’re a gunfighter!”

Lasswell shook his head. “Not to speak of, not when there are men like Frank Morgan still alive. That’s why I wouldn’t go into this job with just me and the boys who’d been ridin’ with me. Just the chance we might have to go up against Morgan is enough to make me mighty careful.”

“Well, I reckon you won’t have to worry about any of them comin’ at you head-on,” Moss said. “After seein’ that draw, they won’t want to do that. Gant was a pretty slick gun-thrower, and he didn’t even clear leather.” A shadow of a smile crossed Moss’s granite face. “All you’ll have to do is watch out behind you.”

“I always do,” Lasswell said.

After night had fallen—after what had been the longest day of his life, without a doubt—Conrad went out to the carriage house and hitched the big buckskin horse to the buggy. The animal was more than just a buggy horse; Conrad had used him as a saddle mount before and knew the buckskin had plenty of speed and stamina. He stowed his saddle in the back of the buggy, along with the Winchester and the shotgun and the coiled shell belt.

He hoped he wouldn’t need any of those things. He hoped that he would turn the money over to the kidnappers and that they would give him Rebel in return. But if it didn’t work out that way, he was going after them. He would kill anyone who got in his way, until his wife was safe again.

It would take about two hours to reach Black Rock Canyon, Conrad estimated. He drove out of Carson City a quarter of an hour before ten o’clock, to give himself plenty of time. The carpetbag with the fifty thousand dollars in it was at his feet.

On his way out of town, he stopped at the Western Union office to see if there were any more messages from Claudius Turnbuckle concerning Frank Morgan, but of course there weren’t. Conrad had known there wouldn’t be. But he had checked just to make sure.

The kidnappers had picked a good night for their evil purposes. The moon was only a thin sliver of silver in the sky, so the night was at its darkest, lit mostly by the millions of stars. They wouldn’t do much good in Black Rock Canyon.

Conrad’s thoughts were a confused, frightened jumble in his head. Most of the fright was for Rebel’s safety, of course, but he knew he was nervous about how he would handle himself tonight as well. Danger had tested him in the past and he had always come through, but that was no guarantee he would again. He had big footsteps to follow, the footsteps of Frank Morgan.

That’s loco, Conrad,
he seemed to hear his father saying.
Follow your own trail, not mine, and don’t walk in fear. You’ll be all right. You’ll do just fine. Do your best, and don’t back down.

Conrad took comfort from the words. A flesh-and-blood Frank Morgan would have been better, but right now he would take what he could get.

He was able to find the trail to Black Rock Canyon without much difficulty, although a time or two he worried that he had taken a wrong turn. Eventually, though, he spotted the huge rock formation that loomed above the canyon and knew he was in the right place. The bluff towered eighty or a hundred feet above the canyon floor, and formed a patch of even deeper darkness because it blotted out some of the stars. Conrad saw it above the tops of the pine trees that bordered the trail.

He didn’t know when or how the kidnappers would stop him and demand the ransom, but he assumed they would whenever they were good and ready. He didn’t bother taking out his watch to check the time. He would have had to strike a match in order to see it, and he didn’t want to do that.

Every muscle in his body was taut with tension. His heart pounded, causing the blood to pulse in a frantic drumbeat inside his head. He had trouble catching his breath. He imagined this must be what it felt like to be drowning.

Suddenly, a voice called out, “That’s far enough, Browning!”

Conrad hauled back hard on the reins. He was glad the kidnappers were confronting him at last. Anything was better than just driving slowly along in the buggy and waiting for them to show themselves.

What happened next surprised him. Several torches blazed into life along both sides of the trail. The harsh light from them washed over the buggy so that Conrad couldn’t make a move without the kidnappers being able to see what he was doing. They were smart. They didn’t trust him any more than he trusted them.

A man stepped out into the middle of the trail, in front of the buggy. Conrad half expected to see the ginger-bearded man, but this fellow was one he’d never seen before. He was tall and burly, with a deeply tanned, rough-hewn face.

“Are you alone, Browning?” he asked.

“Your note said for me to come alone,” Conrad snapped. “I’m cooperating. I want my wife back.”

“You’ll get her, if you do as you’re told. If you don’t…” The man waved a hand toward the trees alongside the trail. “There are a dozen rifles trained on you right now. Try any tricks, and you’ll wind up ventilated.”

Conrad looked toward the trees. Enough light from the torches penetrated into the shadows underneath them for him to be able to see the barrels of those rifles the kidnapper had mentioned. He also caught glimpses of some of the men holding the weapons. He recognized several of them from the previous encounter, including a huge, moonfaced man who was so big, he stuck out from both sides of the tree trunk he was using for cover, a bearded Mexican with a steeple-crowned sombrero, and an older, ugly man in a black vest and with black sleeve cuffs. Conrad stared at them over the barrels of their rifles and committed each face to memory in turn.

He would never forget any of them. Their images would be burned into his brain until the day he died.

Which might be today, he reminded himself. He was badly outnumbered, if it came down to a fight.

A wry smile tugged at his mouth. “You should hope your men are good shots,” he said to the spokesman.

That comment put a frown on the man’s face. “Why the hell do you say that?”

Conrad nodded to the right of the trail, then the left. “You’ve got six men on each side of the trail. If they shoot at me and miss, they’re liable to hit some of the men on the other side.”

The spokesman frowned. “Never you mind about that. You got the money?”

Conrad didn’t even glance down at the carpetbag at his feet. Nor did he answer the man’s question. Instead, he asked coolly, “Do you have my wife?”

“Oh, we got her, all right. Don’t you worry about that.”

“Let me see her.” Conrad supposed that Rebel was somewhere back in the trees, with at least one of the kidnappers guarding her.

Instead, the kidnappers’ spokesman took him by surprise by pointing at the sky and saying, “Look up.”

For a terrible moment, Conrad thought the man was saying that Rebel was already dead and was pointing toward heaven, but then as he lifted his eyes, he saw another torch flare into life. This was on top of the rocky bluff that overhung the canyon. Conrad gasped as he saw the two figures illuminated by the torch’s glare.

Rebel was one of them, standing perilously close to the bluff’s edge. The other one, right behind her, was the bearded man Conrad had pegged as the leader of the kidnappers. He had hold of Rebel’s arm with one hand. The other pressed the barrel of a revolver into her side.

“Oh, my God!” Conrad cried. “Rebel! Rebel, can you hear me?”

“I hear you, Conrad!” she called down to him. “And I love you!”

“I love you, too!”

The craggy-faced man in the trail said, “That’s touchin’ as all hell. Let’s see the money, Browning.”

Conrad had to tear his eyes away from Rebel. It wasn’t easy. He glared at the man and said, “You don’t get the money until my wife is safely in this buggy with me.”

The man shook his head. “You ain’t givin’ the orders. Here’s how it’s gonna work. You give us the money and then stay right where you are. We leave, and our man leaves your wife up on top of that rock. There’s a trail down. She can make it if she’s careful. She climbed up there after all. Once we’re gone with the money, she can climb down, and the two of you can go back to Carson City. You’ll never see us again. Sound good?”

“The part about never seeing you again does,” Conrad lied. He planned to see each and every one of them again, either at the end of a hangman’s rope, or over the barrel of a gun.

But that would come later, after Rebel was safe.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll turn over the money. But I want your men to pull back, so that I don’t have all those guns pointing at me.” He paused. “They make me nervous.”

The man thought it over, then shrugged. He drew his Colt and called, “All right, you fellas heard the man. Back off so it’s just him and me. That all right with you, Browning?”

“Let’s see them do it first,” Conrad said.

One by one, the kidnappers stepped out from behind the trees and moved along the trail, withdrawing until they were about fifty yards behind their spokesman. That gave Conrad an even better look at their faces. He would know them when he saw them again, that was for sure.

“Now, damn it,” the craggy-faced man said. “We’ve done what you wanted. Turn over the money, or we’ll just kill you both and take it.”

Conrad knew he had to risk it. He bent over and reached down to pick up the carpetbag, and as he did so he felt the pressure of the gun that was tucked into his trousers at the small of his back, under his coat. He hefted the carpetbag and stood up in the buggy. With a grunt of effort, he tossed it over the buckskin horse’s head. Dust puffed up around the bag as it landed in the trail, almost at the man’s feet.

He took an eager step forward and reached down to unfasten the catches on the bag. As he threw it open and saw the packets of bills inside, a grin creased his face.

“You can count it if you want,” Conrad said coldly.

“I don’t reckon that’ll be necessary. You’ve played square with us. Now we’ll play square with you.” The man closed the bag, fastened it, and picked it up. He carried it over to where one of the torches was stuck upright in the dirt beside the trail. He wrenched the torch free and waved it over his head. Conrad supposed that was the signal to the man on the bluff with Rebel that they had the money.

Maybe now they would let her go, he thought. No tricks, he prayed. Please, no tricks.

“Browning!” the man on the bluff shouted.

Conrad’s head jerked back as he gazed upward. He hoped to see the man let go of Rebel and retreat, but that didn’t happen. Instead, as the man stepped behind her, he called, “What happens now is on your head! Welcome to hell!”

“Noooo!” Conrad screamed.

Rebel must have realized what was going to happen next. She twisted and tried to strike at the man, but she was too late. Muzzle flame spurted as the man fired. Rebel cried out in pain as the bullet tore into her and knocked her backward.

Right off the bluff.

Conrad couldn’t believe his horror-stricken eyes as he saw Rebel stumble back into empty air and then plummet toward the base of the bluff so far below. Even though it took only the blink of an eye for her to disappear into the trees, the fall seemed to last an eternity.

Instinct sent Conrad’s hand flashing to the gun at the small of his back. He whipped it out and tilted the barrel upward, blazing away at the man atop the bluff, the man who had just shot Rebel. The bastard was already gone, though, having leaped back out of Conrad’s line of fire.

He jerked his eyes back down and saw that the man in the trail was still standing there, apparently dumbfounded by what had just happened. Evidently, it had taken him by surprise just as much as it had Conrad. But he recovered quickly from the shock and clawed at the gun on his hip.

Conrad grabbed the reins, yelled, “Hyaaah!” and sent the buckskin leaping forward. The kidnapper had to leap to one side to avoid being trampled by the big horse. He couldn’t get out of the way of the buggy, though. The vehicle clipped him and sent him spinning off his feet. He screamed as he fell, and from the lurch Conrad felt, he was pretty sure one of the wheels had passed over the man’s legs.

Standing in the buggy, holding the reins with one hand and the Colt with the other, Conrad sent the buggy racing toward the rest of the kidnappers. He emptied the revolver as he charged them, and between the flying lead and the racing horse and buggy, the men were forced to scatter. They fired back at Conrad as they scurried out of the way. He heard some of the slugs whine past his head, but he ignored them.

He didn’t care if they killed him. He was sure that Rebel was dead. Shot at close range like that, followed by the fall off the bluff…There was no way she could have survived. So, actually, they had already killed him. His heart might still beat and his lungs might draw breath into them, but he was dead, right along with his beloved Rebel.

He charged through the kidnappers and kept the buggy moving, not stopping until he had gone a couple of hundred yards, well out of reach of the light from the torches that still blazed alongside the trail. Then he hauled the horse to a halt and leaped out of the buggy. He tore off his outer clothing, revealing the black garb that would be impossible to see in the shadows. Moving swiftly and efficiently, he reached behind the seat, picked up the gunbelt, and strapped it on. The holster already held a loaded Colt. The black Stetson was next, tugged down on his sandy hair. Then he retrieved the Winchester and the shotgun and loped off into the darkness, carrying one in each hand.

Shots roared, but the kidnappers had to be firing blindly because they couldn’t see him in the shadows as he circled back toward them. After a moment, a man bellowed, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire, damn it!” Conrad thought the voice belonged to the ginger-bearded man. “Forget Browning! Leave him alive!
Just get that money!
”

They had all charged after him, determined to kill him, and had forgotten momentarily about the ransom. Conrad hadn’t forgotten, though. That money was the bait that would bring them to him, so that he could kill them. He reached the trail and dashed out into the light. The carpetbag still lay there, close to the man he’d run over with the buggy. That man had pulled himself to the edge of the trail, dragging what appeared to be two broken legs behind him. He was whimpering in pain, but he let out a shouted curse as he saw Conrad coming.

“He’s here! The son of a bitch is here! He’s after the money!”

Men came running from the other direction, but they were too late. Conrad dropped the Winchester next to the carpetbag and whirled toward them, using both hands to brace the shotgun as he eared back the hammers and pulled the triggers. The double charge of buckshot exploded from both barrels with a thunderous boom.

Conrad heard yells of pain, but didn’t know how many of them he’d hit or how badly they were wounded. He dropped the scattergun, snatched the rifle and the carpetbag from the trail, and darted past one of the torches into the trees again.