The Loner: Dead Man’s Gold (2 page)

New Mexico Territory, 229 years later

The man who called himself Kid Morgan reined the buckskin to a halt as he topped a ridge dotted with gnarled mesquites and clumps of hardy grass. This was a dry, rugged land, inhospitable to men and animals and hard on vegetation.

The Kid leaned forward in the saddle and watched as a wagon raced from right to left across the flats in front of him. A couple of hundred yards back, three men on horseback galloped after the vehicle, steadily gaining on it.

The Kid’s eyes narrowed. The riders weren’t shooting at the wagon, just chasing it. He didn’t know what was going on, and these days he made it a policy to mind his own business. Over the past year, he had experienced quite a bit of tragedy and strife in his life, and now he wanted nothing but to be left alone. To drift aimlessly, not caring about anything. He wasn’t looking for trouble.

Although a person wouldn’t know that to look at him. The walnut grips of the Colt .45 holstered on his right hip showed signs of considerable use. Saddle sheaths were strapped to both sides of the buckskin’s rig; the stock of a Winchester repeater stuck up from one of them, while an old Sharps Big Fifty was snugged in the other one. In addition to the three guns, The Kid carried a Bowie knife in a sheath attached to his belt on the left side, angled slightly so that he could reach across his body and draw it in a hurry if he needed to.

Yeah, he was armed for trouble, and the eyes under the shade of the broad-brimmed brown hat were keen, always watchful for any signs of danger. But just because he was alert didn’t mean he was going to go rushing blindly into every ruckus that came his way.

He kept telling himself that, anyway.

The wagon was just about even with him. Two men swayed back and forth on the driver’s seat as the vehicle careened along. The terrain looked absolutely flat from up there on the ridge, but The Kid knew that it was rougher than it appeared when you were actually down there driving a wagon over it. The man handling the reins lashed at the rumps of the team with the trailing ends of the lines, trying to urge the horses on to greater speed.

He might as well give up, thought The Kid. That wagon wasn’t going to be able to get away from men on horseback. It just wasn’t fast enough.

The pursuers still hadn’t opened fire. Evidently they just wanted to overhaul the wagon and stop it. The Kid had no idea why. None of his affair, he told himself again. He lifted the buckskin’s reins, poised to turn the horse away and ride back down the far side of the ridge when the wagon jolted particularly hard over a rough spot, and the driver’s hat flew off.

Long red hair that was bright in the sunlight spilled down the figure’s back.

“Well, hell,” The Kid said softly.

So that was a woman at the reins, he thought…although it might be a man with really long hair; it was hard to be sure at this distance. But he knew in his gut it was a woman, just as he knew that now he couldn’t ignore what was going on, couldn’t just turn and ride away.

Couldn’t because the beautiful blond ghost who haunted him wouldn’t want him to.

He reached for the Winchester and pulled it from its sheath. Working the rifle’s lever to throw a bullet into its firing chamber took only a second. Kid Morgan brought the Winchester to his shoulder, nestled his cheek against the smooth wooden stock, and rapidly cranked off three rounds, placing them about halfway between the wagon and the three riders, who had closed to within fifty yards.

Those horsebackers might not hear the shots over the pounding of their mounts’ hoofbeats, but they couldn’t miss the way dirt and rocks sprang into the air where those slugs smacked into the ground in front of them. The Kid knew by the way they reined in so sharply that they had seen the bullets hit. One of the men hauled back on the reins so hard his horse stumbled and went down in a welter of kicking legs. Dust billowed around the fallen man and horse.

The other two men yanked their mounts around and pulled rifles from saddle boots. If they had simply turned and ridden away, The Kid would have let them go. But they clearly wanted to make a fight of it. He heard the sharp crack of shots and then the whine of a bullet passing over his head.

They had called the tune, he thought. Let them dance the dance.

Shooting uphill or downhill, either one, was tricky, which was why the first hurried shots from the riders on the flats were high. The Kid didn’t give them the chance to correct their aim. Rapidly, but without rushing, he fired four shots of his own. One of the men hunched over in the saddle but didn’t fall. The other twisted around and then, as his horse bolted, toppled off the animal’s back. His foot hung in the stirrup, though, so the horse dragged him as it continued to run back the way it had come. His foot didn’t come loose for a couple of hundred yards. When it did, he lay there motionless on the sandy ground.

The wounded man who was still mounted didn’t try to keep the fight going. Instead he turned his horse and kicked it into a run after the one that had dragged off his companion. The Kid’s eyes narrowed as he lowered the Winchester and watched the man flee. He might have been able to hit the hombre again, even at that range, but he didn’t attempt the shot.

Maybe that was a mistake. Letting an enemy go usually was, thought The Kid. But that hombre didn’t know who he was. Besides, the man was wounded and might not live.

The wagon had kept going without slackening speed. It was vanishing in the distance to the east, its location marked by the plume of dust raised by its wheels and the team’s hooves. The Kid glanced in that direction, then clicked his tongue at the buckskin and heeled the horse into motion.

The horse that had fallen had managed to get back to its feet and apparently was unhurt. It was wandering around aimlessly near its former rider, who still lay on the ground. The Kid headed for that man first, because he might be alive and pose a threat. The one who’d been shot and dragged was dead, more than likely.

The Kid held the Winchester ready for instant use as he approached the fallen man. When he was close enough, he brought the buckskin to a stop, dismounted, drew the Colt with his right hand and used the left to slide the rifle back in its saddle sheath. He kept the revolver trained on the man as he walked over to him.

When he was still several yards away, The Kid could see that the man’s head was twisted at an odd angle. He must have landed wrong and broken his neck, The Kid thought. He stepped closer, saw the glassy, lifeless eyes, and knew that the man was dead. The hombre wore range clothes and had a hard-featured, beard-stubbled face. Might have been an outlaw, might not have been. The Kid didn’t know, had never seen the man before. But the other two had been quick to shoot at him, and those hadn’t been warning shots, like the first ones he’d fired. He had no doubt that the trio had been up to no good by chasing the wagon.

A whistle brought the buckskin to The Kid’s side. He mounted up and rode across the flats to check on the other man. As he had thought, that one was dead, too, drilled through the body by one of the slugs from The Kid’s Winchester. A bloody froth drying around the man’s mouth told The Kid that he’d ventilated at least one of the man’s lungs.

This fella had the same hardcase look to him, The Kid noted. He supposed that they’d intended to rob the pilgrims in the wagon.

The buckskin pricked up his ears and tossed his head. That caught The Kid’s attention. He turned to look and saw that the horse was reacting to the approach of the wagon, which was rolling steadily toward him at a much slower pace than it had been making earlier. The people on it realized that they weren’t being chased anymore and had turned around to see what was going on.

Curiosity like that could get folks into trouble, The Kid reflected. It would have been smarter for them just to be thankful that someone had stepped in to help them and keep going.

He hoped they didn’t want to spend a lot of time being grateful. He wasn’t looking for gratitude.

The wagon came to a stop beside the other dead man. The passenger climbed down from the seat and knelt beside the corpse, probably checking to make sure the man was dead.

The Kid put a foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the buckskin. He thought about waving to the people with the wagon and then riding on without talking to them.

The driver hopped to the ground, and strode toward him. Now that The Kid was closer, there was no mistaking the fact that the slender but well-curved figure of the driver belonged to a woman. The long red hair swayed around her face and shoulders in the hot wind that blew across the flats.

The man he had once been had prided himself on being a gentleman. There was enough of that left in Kid Morgan to keep him from turning his back on the woman and riding away. Instead, he hitched the buckskin forward at a walk to meet her.

She moved like a young woman, and as he came closer, he saw that estimation was correct. She was in her mid-twenties, he guessed, with a lightly freckled face that was attractive without being classically beautiful. She wore trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, and The Kid was somewhat surprised to see that she had a gunbelt strapped around her waist. It was unusual enough to see a woman in pants; to run across one who was packing iron was even more uncommon.

She stopped and put her hands on her hips, which meant her right hand was pretty close to the butt of the holstered revolver she wore. He supposed that she didn’t fully trust him, which probably wasn’t a bad attitude. While civilization had spread across much of the land, there were still some wild places left, and this remote area of southern New Mexico Territory certainly fit that description. Outlaws still roamed here, Mexican banditos sometimes raided across the border, and occasionally even bands of bronco Apaches from the mountains south of the Rio Grande ventured this far north in search of plunder. It was smart to operate under the assumption that anybody you met might mean you harm.

He reined in and held up a hand to show her that he didn’t. With a polite nod, he called, “Hello.”

She didn’t return the greeting. Instead, she asked bluntly, “Is that other man dead?”

“He is,” The Kid replied.

She glanced over her shoulder at the man who’d been on the wagon with her. He still knelt next to the first dead man. Then she looked at The Kid again and said with an intensity he hadn’t expected, “Good. I wish you’d gone ahead and killed the third one, too.”

The Kid couldn’t keep his eyes from rising in surprise. She saw that and said, “You must think I’m a bloodthirsty bitch.”

“No, ma’am,” The Kid said. “I don’t know you well enough to venture an opinion either way.”

“You don’t know how they’ve been dogging our trail, either, making life miserable for us. Now Fortunato is just going to send more men after us, once the one you wounded gets back and tells him what happened.”

“Could be, ma’am.” The Kid reached up and tugged on the brim of his hat. “Good luck to the both of you.”

He started to turn the buckskin away, when she cried, “Wait!”

The Kid paused.

“Don’t you want to know what it’s all about?”

“No offense, ma’am, but I figure that’s your problem, not mine.” The Kid had just spent several months taking care of personal business that had turned bloody and heartbreaking. He wasn’t in the mood to take on anybody else’s trouble.

“You mean you’re going to just ride off and…and leave us here?”

“You don’t have to worry about those men anymore. The one who was wounded won’t bother you again. He looked like he was hit pretty hard. You should have time to get where you’re going.”

“How do you know that? You don’t know where we’re going.”

“No, I don’t,” The Kid admitted. She was a stubborn woman, and he was losing his patience. “And I don’t care, either.”

He pulled the buckskin’s head around a little harder than he intended and immediately felt bad about taking his anger out on the horse. The buckskin was a damned fine animal.

“They’re going to try to kill us again, you know!” the woman shouted at The Kid’s back. “Fortunato doesn’t want us to find it before he does!”

He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to stop and ask who Fortunato was, and what they were looking for, and why Fortunato wanted to find it first. There had been a time when he would have been very curious if he had found such a puzzle facing him. Not now, though.

The woman cried out suddenly, not in anger but in pain, and a second later, The Kid heard the faint boom of a high-powered rifle. He whirled the buckskin around and saw the woman staggering to one side, her right hand clutching her upper left arm. A crimson stain appeared under her fingers, spreading as blood welled from her arm.

The Kid’s head jerked toward the east, where some low hills rose. The sun was quartering down toward the western horizon, and its rays struck a reflection from something in those hills. A pair of field glasses, maybe…or a telescopic rifle sight.

The Kid sent the buckskin racing toward the woman. She was still stunned from being wounded. He didn’t know how bad the injury was, but he knew the next shot from that distant marksman might be fatal. He brought the horse to a sliding stop beside her, leaned down, and wrapped his left arm around her. She cried out again as he lifted her off her feet and set her in front of him.

Then he was galloping toward the wagon, and as he approached he shouted to the woman’s companion, “Get back on the wagon! Get it moving!”

Those hills were close to a mile away. That had been one hell of a shot to come as close as it had to killing the woman. The Kid knew instinctively that that had been its intent. She had said that this fella Fortunato would try again to kill them. The Kid wondered briefly if Fortunato himself was the one who’d pulled the trigger.

The woman’s traveling companion was an older man. He had taken his hat off, and his white hair shone in the sun. The Kid shouted at him again to get on the wagon and get the vehicle rolling, and this time the man gave a little shake of his head and reacted, as if he hadn’t fully understood the first time. He clapped the hat back on his head, ran to the front of the wagon, and clambered up on the seat.

The Kid’s back was to the rifleman. His skin crawled. He knew that if he was targeted and the bullet found its mark, he would never hear the shot. The bullet would travel faster than the sound of its firing. But all he could do was keep going and wait for the dreadful impact of the lead, if such was his fate.

He reached the wagon. The old man was slapping the reins against the backs of the team and shouting at the horses. They broke into a run, which rocked the old-timer back on the seat as the wagon jolted into motion. He regained his balance and started slashing at the horses’ rumps again as The Kid rode past.

The Kid thought about veering in close to the wagon and transfering the woman to the seat, but decided that was too dangerous. If she slipped, she might fall under the wagon wheels. Anyway, she was probably safer right where she was, with his body serving as a shield from any bullets that came their way.

He looked back as the buckskin pulled slightly ahead of the wagon. No matter how high-powered that rifle was, they had to be at the very outer edge of its range. At distances like that, a couple of hundred yards could make a big difference.

The Kid remembered his father, Frank Morgan, telling him about an old friend of his, a buffalo hunter named Billy Dixon, who had made a mile-long shot during an Indian fight down in Texas twenty-some-odd years earlier, shooting a chief’s horse right out from under him at that range. But that had been a spectacular shot, a once-in-a-lifetime shot, and probably more than a little bit of luck had been involved, too.

Despite the fact that he thought they were probably safe now, The Kid kept the buckskin running and waved for the old man to keep the wagon moving, too. He didn’t slow down until they had put another five hundred yards behind them. Even then he just slowed down and didn’t stop, even though he was sure they were out of range of the rifleman in the hills.

When he looked back, he saw the sun glint on something again. He knew it was probably a foolish thing to do, but he lifted a hand in a mocking wave of farewell.

Then he turned back to the woman and asked, “Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer him. Her head lolled loosely on her neck. The Kid bit back a curse. His left arm was still tight around her, just under her breasts, and he could feel her heart beating so he knew she wasn’t dead. She must have passed out, he thought. He needed to find some place where they could stop safely and he could take a look at that wounded arm to see how bad it really was.

The arid flats stretched for a couple of miles, but he saw more hills and some green where they ended. There might be a little shade and some water, and both of those things would be welcome.

He kept moving at a steady pace, staying a short distance ahead of the wagon. As he rode toward the hills, he thought about how his desire to avoid other people’s trouble had gone by the wayside. There had been a time, before he was the man he was now, when he truly
didn’t
care about what happened to anybody else. That was before he had met his real father, who had started him on the path to growing up, and before a beautiful blonde named Rebel had come into his life and finished the job of turning him into a decent hombre.

Rebel was gone now, although there were times when he still seemed to see her, to hear her voice, even to feel the soft caress of her hand against his cheek. But the lessons she had taught him remained. She had never turned her back on people in trouble.

And she wouldn’t let him do it, either, no matter how much he wanted to just be alone, to drift and not care.

He saw some trees at the base of the nearest hill and knew there must be a spring there. All the waterholes in this part of the territory were spring fed, except for a few
tinajas
that caught the occasional rain, and they were dry a lot more often than not. As they came closer, he saw grass growing. The horses would welcome some graze. The woman and the old man could camp there tonight, he thought.

The spring bubbled out of a rocky outcropping at the bottom of the hill and formed a pool about fifteen feet wide. The horses headed straight for it once they smelled it. The Kid reached it first and waited for the wagon to get there. When it did, he motioned for the old man to stop short of the water.

“Set the brake!” he called to the old-timer. “I want to check the water before we let the horses drink, and I need help with the girl.”

The old man nodded and hauled back on the brake lever. The horses in the team pulled against it but were unable to reach the water. The old man scrambled down from the wagon and hurried over to The Kid.

“Help me put her on the ground,” he said as he carefully lowered the young woman. The old man was too frail to take her in his arms—he probably didn’t weigh any more than she did—but he was able to steady her long enough for The Kid to throw a leg over the saddle and slide down from the buckskin’s back. He got one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees and lifted her, carrying her over to the grass alongside the pool so he could place her there carefully on the ground.

Then he stepped over to the pool, hunkered on his heels, and cupped a handful of water in his palm. It didn’t smell of alkali, and when he tasted it, it was clear and cool and sweet.

With a nod, he told the old-timer, “All right, let the horses drink.” He straightened, went to the buckskin, and led him over to the pool as well. “Not too much,” he cautioned the old man. “That’s not good for them.”

“I know a thing or two about horses, young man,” the old-timer said. He was short and slender. Startlingly blue eyes were set deep in a lined and weathered face. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat with a low, round crown, a white shirt, and black trousers.

“No offense,” The Kid said. He went back to the young woman and knelt beside her.

The old-timer came over to join him. “Is she all right?”

“That’s what I’m about to find out. Why don’t you find a rag and get it wet? We’ll need to wash the blood away from the wound.”

“All right.” The man went back to the wagon as The Kid took hold of the woman’s sleeve and ripped it away from her shoulder.

He was pleased to see that there weren’t any entry and exit wounds on her arm. Instead, there was just a bloody furrow on the outside of her upper arm. The bullet had nicked her, creating a messy but not serious wound. It had traveled far enough before striking her that it had lost some of its power, which helped. All he really needed to do was clean the wound and bind it up. He had a flask of whiskey in his saddlebags. That would do for swabbing out the bullet crease, even though it would burn like hell.

The Kid turned his head to see how the old man was coming along with the chore he’d given him. Because of that, he didn’t see the young woman move. He sensed it, though, and a second later he felt the hard jab as she dug the muzzle of her pistol into his belly.

“Don’t move,” she said, “or I’ll blow your guts out.”