Authors: J.A. Johnstone

The Loner: Crossfire (2 page)

BOOK: The Loner: Crossfire

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Chapter 2

Instinct took over, as it always did when danger threatened. Conrad’s hand stabbed toward the Colt on his hip as he whirled.

His keen eyes instantly spotted two men with guns about twenty feet from him. They stood next to a parked wagon, evidently intending to use it for cover if they needed to. Smoke curled from the revolver held by one man, and the other would-be assassin was lining up his shot.

Conrad crouched and fired as the second man squeezed off a round. The two reports blended together into one blast. The gunman’s aim was a little high and Conrad heard the slug whine over his head.

Conrad’s bullet slammed into the gunman’s left shoulder. The impact was enough to make him cry out in pain and spin to the pavement as he dropped his gun and clutched at his bulletshattered shoulder.

The first man fired again, but he was on the move. His shot went wild and missed Conrad by several feet. Someone screamed behind him and he knew the stray bullet must have found an unintended target.

As the gunman darted around the horses hitched to the wagon, Conrad held his fire. He didn’t want to hit any of the animals.

The man he had wounded was groping for the gun he’d dropped a few seconds earlier. Conrad kicked the revolver as he dashed toward the wagon and sent the gun spinning along the street, well out of reach. The wounded man groaned and slumped on the pavement again as he appeared to pass out from the shock of his injury.

Conrad knew the man he had shot ought to survive. It was unlikely he would bleed to death since he was practically on the front steps of the hospital. Wanting at least one of the bushwhackers alive to question, Conrad ran after the one who had disappeared into the mouth of the alley across the street, between a saloon and a hardware store.

All along the street, people were yelling and scattering, getting out of the line of fire. He pressed his back to the front wall of the saloon next to the alley and listened.

He didn’t hear running footsteps, but was pretty sure he heard harsh breathing coming from deeper in the alley. The man was waiting for him. As soon as he showed himself, he’d be silhouetted in the mouth of the alley and the gunman would open fire.

Instead of waltzing right into that trap, Conrad slapped aside the batwings and hurried into the saloon. People gawked at him and got out of his way as he headed toward the stairs at the back of the room. A bartender with a bungstarter gripped firmly in his hand moved to block Conrad’s path. “Hey, mister, what do you think you’re—”

He stopped short and stepped back from the cold-eyed glance Conrad gave him.

Taking the stairs three at a time, Conrad got to the second floor landing in a hurry. Turning to the right, beside the alley where the bushwhacker was hidden, he jerked open the closest door and found the shabby bedroom inside empty. He went to the open window and peered out cautiously.

He saw what he wanted to see. About a dozen feet from the street, the gunman crouched behind a rain barrel, watching the mouth of the alley. His gun was leveled over the top of the barrel, and all his attention was focused in that direction as he waited for Conrad to appear.

It would have been easy for Conrad to gun him down from the window. But when you shot somebody, there was always a risk you would kill them. He didn’t want that. He wanted the man to talk and reveal who had hired him to murder Conrad Browning.

As if the answer would come as any surprise ...

The window in the next room was almost directly above the place where the gunman was hidden. Conrad hurried there and opened the door. He wasn’t lucky enough to find the room unoccupied. A redheaded woman clutched the sheet on the bed to her naked bosom, which was ample enough that it wasn’t easily covered. Beside the bed, a fat, pale, hairy gent was struggling frantically to get back into his clothes.

Conrad saw the anger on her face and knew she was about to yell at him. He held the index finger of his left hand to his mouth in a shushing gesture and showed her the gun in his right hand. Her eyes, as well as her mouth, opened wide, but the only sound that came from her was a frightened little squeak.

Half dressed, the redhead’s customer rushed past Conrad and out the door, obviously determined to get as far away as fast as he could.

Conrad moved silently toward the open window and looked out. The bushwhacker was still below in the alley, crouched behind the barrel.

Judging the distance from the window to the ground, Conrad decided the drop wouldn’t be too bad. He slid his Colt back in its holster and lifted a leg over the windowsill. He had just gotten his second leg out the window and was perched on the sill when heavy footsteps pounded into the room behind him and a deep voice bellowed, “Hold it right there, mister! You can’t just—”

Conrad glanced over his shoulder and saw a big man with a lawman’s badge pinned to his coat entering the room with a shotgun in his hands. Somebody had called the law on the loco hombre who had run into the saloon brandishing a six-shooter.

The man in the alley heard the shout, and jerked his head up toward the window. His eyes widened in surprise and he lifted his gun up, but Conrad had already let go and leaped toward him.

Conrad crashed on top of the man and drove him against the rain barrel, which turned over and sent water flooding into the alley. They rolled over the barrel and were spilled into the dirty lake that had formed. Conrad clamped his left hand on the man’s right wrist and shoved the gun aside as a shot blasted from it. The slug thudded into the wall of the hardware store next door.

Smashing his right fist into the man’s face he drove the back of the man’s head into the mud. The man heaved and bucked but Conrad twisted his wrist so hard that bones ground together. The man howled in pain and dropped the gun.

Conrad grabbed the man’s coat, rolling over in the muck as they struggled. He twisted his body aside just in time to take the vicious blow aimed at his groin on his thigh instead. His leg went numb for a moment, but at least it didn’t incapacitate him as it would have had it found its intended target.

As they fought the gunman managed to lock his hands around Conrad’s throat. Conrad looked up past the man’s furious face and saw the lawman leaning out the window on the second floor. The star packer was yelling, but Conrad couldn’t make out the words over the roaring of his blood in his head as the bushwhacker tried to choke the life out of him.

Cupping his hands, he slapped them over the man’s ears as hard as he could, assaulting the eardrums. The man yelped in pain and loosened his grip. Conrad broke it and flung him off. The man rolled across the muddy alley and came to a stop against the wall of the hardware store.

Conrad scrambled after him. The man jerked a leg up and tried to kick Conrad in the stomach, but Conrad grabbed his foot and twisted it. The man yelled and was forced to roll over onto his belly to keep Conrad from breaking his leg.

Conrad let go of the leg and dropped on top of the man, landing hard with both knees in the small of his back. He grabbed the man’s hair and slammed his face into the ground twice. That was finally enough to knock the fight out of the man. He stopped struggling and lay there gasping.

“By God, stop attackin’ that fella or I’ll shoot!”

Conrad looked up at the lawman, who had his shotgun pointed at the two men in the alley. Conrad was a little out of breath. “Be careful ... with that Greener, Marshal. If it goes off ... you’ll kill both of us down here.”

“Stand up and move away from that man, you damn loco weed!” the badge-toter ordered. “You’re under arrest for attempted murder, assault and battery, unlawfully dischargin’ a firearm, trespassin’, and anything else I can think of !”

Conrad gestured toward the semiconscious man at his feet. “Blast it, he’s the one who tried to kill me! Him and his partner I wounded out on the street.”

“So you’re the one who shot that hombre! I might a’ knowed it. Take your gun out and drop it.”

Conrad snorted in disgust. “Not hardly. It’s nearly brand-new. I’m not going to drop it in the mud.”

The lawman sputtered angrily for a moment, then said, “Stay right there! Don’t you move, you hear me?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Conrad said.

Not until he found out for sure who had tried to have him killed.

Chapter 3

By the time the burly lawman got down the stairs in the saloon and reached the alley, three more men wearing badges and carrying shotguns had run up. They were standing next to Conrad. The first lawman waved his Greener and ordered, “Disarm that man and take him into custody!”

“Settle down, Hargity,” the other deputy said. “This is Conrad Browning. We’re not going to arrest him.”

Hargity scowled. “Who?”

“He used to live here. In fact, he was one of Carson City’s leading citizens. Owns railroads, mines, banks, ships, you name it. Friend of the governor.”

“That don’t matter,” Hargity snapped. “He shot a man on the street, raised hell in that saloon, and assaulted this fella. I say he’s under arrest!”

“If you’d bothered to question any witnesses,” said the lawman who had introduced himself to Conrad as Deputy Wallace, “you’d know this man and the one Mr. Browning shot tried to kill him right in front of the hospital. That’s the first thing Stevens and I determined when we got here. Mr. Browning fired his gun in self-defense, and he was trying to apprehend the second gunman.” Wallace nudged the bushwhacker, who lay on the muddy floor of the alley. “Looks like he succeeded.”

“But ... but ...” Hargity sputtered.

“No offense, but I’m chief deputy,” Wallace said. “You and Stevens take this man and lock him up.”

“I’m going to want to ask him some questions later,” Conrad said.

Wallace nodded. “That’s fine, as long as Marshal Owens goes along with it. Right now I want to go see how that man you wounded is doing. Are you coming along?”

“Yes, I am,” Conrad said. “He may be able to tell me what I want to know.”

“Who paid the two of them to ambush you?”

Conrad nodded. “That’s right. I’ve got a pretty good idea, but I’d like for it to be confirmed.”

The slender, solemn-faced Wallace motioned for Conrad to follow him and left the alley, heading across the street to the hospital. The lobby was in an uproar, not surprising since there had been a gun battle right outside. Dr. Liam Taggart was talking to several men, some in white coats, the rest in business suits.

Taggart spotted Conrad approaching with Deputy Wallace and came across the lobby to greet them. “Are you all right, Mr. Browning? The rumor is that you were the target of an assassination attempt.”

“That’s true, but I’m fine,” Conrad said. He looked down at his mud-splattered clothes. “Nothing hurt but my dignity and my wardrobe.”

“I’ll have a nurse tell Mr. Vincenzo right away that you’re all right. He was quite worried when he heard the shots. He seemed to think it was a foregone conclusion you were involved in the trouble, whatever it was.”

Conrad smiled. “Arturo knows me pretty well.”

Taggart crooked a finger at a nurse and gave her the message to deliver to Arturo, then Conrad asked the doctor, “What about the wounded man? I assume he was brought in here.”

Taggart nodded. “Yes, he’s in surgery at the moment to repair his shoulder. You shot him?”

“Seemed like the thing to do at the time,” Conrad said.

“Your bullet did an extensive amount of damage. I doubt he’ll ever be able to use his left arm properly again.”

“Then maybe he won’t try to bushwhack anybody else,” Wallace said. “We’re going to want to talk to him.”

“You’ll have to wait a good long time. It’ll take a while for the ether to wear off.”

Wallace shrugged. “We have another prisoner we can question, I suppose. In the meantime, I’m going to assign a deputy to guard this one. There’ll be somebody outside the man’s room all the time until he’s healthy enough for us to take him to jail.”

“That’s fine, Deputy, as long as it doesn’t interfere with anything of a medical nature we have to do.”

“There’s something else, Doctor,” Conrad said. “During the shooting, I heard someone cry out when one of the shots missed me. Was somebody hit by a stray bullet?”

“As a matter of fact, that’s right,” Taggart said. “A young woman was struck.”

Conrad frowned worriedly. “Was she badly hurt?”

“Scared out of her wits more than anything else. The bullet barely nicked her hip before smashing into a lamppost. She’ll be sore and limp for a week or so, but she’ll be fine. We have her in a ward right now, mostly because she’s bordering on hysteria. She’s so upset about being shot.”

“Send all her bills to Claudius Turnbuckle. He’ll see to it they’re taken care of.”

“That’s pretty generous of you, considering the young lady’s injury was an accident.”

“The only accident was that she got hit instead of me,” Conrad said. “I’m getting mighty tired of things like that happening.”

The prisoner was a lantern-jawed man with a drooping black mustache. His gray tweed suit was covered with drying mud stains. Conrad hadn’t noticed those details during the brief shoot-out and the fight that followed. He had been too busy trying to stay alive.

“His name’s Ed Gillespie,” Chief Deputy Wallace told Conrad as they stood outside the cell. “We didn’t have any trouble identifying him. He’s a cheap holdup artist and gunman. Been in and out of jail for years, but we’ve never been able to convict him of murder and send him to the gallows, even though we’re pretty sure he’s killed several people. The man you shot is probably Walt Farley. He and Gillespie have been mixed up in plenty of shady deals together.”

Gillespie sat on the bunk inside the cell not saying anything. He kept his eyes turned toward the floor and didn’t acknowledge that Conrad and Wallace were there. His jaw was swollen and sported several bruises from Conrad’s fist.

Wallace grasped one of the bars in the cell door. “Gillespie, you can make it easier on yourself if you’ll answer a few questions.”

Gillespie didn’t look up. It was like he hadn’t heard Wallace and didn’t know the deputy was there.

“Come on,” Wallace said. “You’re going to prison no matter what you do, but you know we can make it a lot rougher on you if we want to. You and Farley didn’t go after Mr. Browning and try to kill him in broad daylight on some whim. You’d only do a thing like that if you were being paid to. I want to know who you’re working for.”

Gillespie continued staring at the floor.

Wallace looked at the prisoner for a moment, then sighed and shook his head. “Sorry,” he muttered as he turned to Conrad. “We can work him over until he talks, but it may take a while.”

Conrad looked along the section of cell block in the city jail. The other cells were empty. “Or you can step outside for a few minutes and let me talk to him.” He rested his hand on the butt of the Colt at his hip.

“Now wait a minute.” Wallace held up his hands. “You can’t just—”

“Why not?” Conrad broke in. “You said yourself he’s a killer who’s gotten away with murdering people in the past. Anything that happened to him now would be a fitting punishment, don’t you think?”

For the first time Gillespie’s eyes flicked up, then back down. He had heard what Conrad said and knew what he meant.

“Marshal Owens would never forgive me if he found out I let you get at a prisoner,” Wallace said. “It’d mean my job, Mr. Browning. I’m sorry.”

“What do you make in a year, Deputy?”

Wallace frowned and named a figure.

“I can pay you twice that and never even know the money is gone. You can probably find another job in two year’s time, don’t you think?”

Wallace rubbed his jaw and appeared to be pondering the idea. “I’m sure I could,” he muttered. “If things got too loud back here, though, I might have to spread around a little more cash to keep it quiet.”

“Whatever it costs.” Conrad’s voice was as cold as the snow that capped the mountain peaks outside Carson City. “The money doesn’t matter.”

Gillespie swallowed hard. “Wait a minute. Deputy, you can’t let this—this—”

“You hear something, Mr. Browning?” Wallace asked. “It’s funny, I was talking a minute ago and nobody seemed to hear me. Now I’m not sure I can hear anything.”

Gillespie came up off the bunk and grasped the bars. “Wait, damn it! I’ll tell you what you want to know. Just don’t let this loco varmint anywhere near me!”

Wallace leaned his head to the side, indicating Conrad should back away from the bars. Conrad cooperated as Wallace glared through the bars and asked, “Who paid you to kill Mr. Browning here?”

A cunning look appeared on Gillespie’s battered face. “First you gotta tell me ... is Walt all right?”

“You’re concerned about your friend.” Wallace sneered. “How touching. Yeah, he’s in the hospital. They fixed his busted shoulder. He’ll be laid up for a while ... and then he’ll be in prison. Maybe the judge’ll put the two of you in the same cell. That sound good to you?”

“Shut your nasty mouth,” Gillespie snapped. “Walt’s a good hombre. Always been square with me. That’s all. As for who paid us to go after this fella, you go talk to Carl Monroe. That’s all I got to say.”

Wallace jerked his head in a nod. “I reckon that’ll do, for now.”

“You ... you wouldn’t have really turned that lunatic loose on me, would you, Deputy?”

Wallace’s answering smile was wolfish. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

Once they were outside the cell block, Conrad asked, “Who’s Carl Monroe?”

Wallace grunted. “Lawyer. Crooked lawyer. I wasn’t surprised to hear Gillespie mention his name. Gillespie and Farley have been tied in with Monroe before. Don’t you remember Monroe from when you lived here before? His name turned up in the paper quite a bit, any time there was some big swindle or scandal.”

“I was busy with other things,” Conrad said.

Like running a business and being married to a beautiful, wonderful woman,
he thought. He hadn’t spared any attention for petty crooks.

“We’ll haul Monroe in and talk to him, but I don’t know how much we can get out of him,” Wallace said. “He’s got a reputation for being pretty tight-lipped. I’m not sure a little act like the one you put on for Gillespie would work on a hardboiled character like Monroe.”

“Act?” Conrad repeated with a faint smile.

He left Wallace standing outside the cell block as the deputy watched with a worried frown on his face.

BOOK: The Loner: Crossfire

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