The Loner: Trail Of Blood (21 page)

“At the Elam Livery Stable?”

The man had started to brush past The Kid but he stopped and frowned. “A man’s got to eat, and so does the rest of his family. You can work for somebody without agreein’ with everything he does. If it wasn’t you holdin’ down that job, it’d be somebody else.”

“That’s a convenient way to think,” The Kid said, not bothering to keep the scorn out of his voice.

The man’s already florid face flushed a deeper shade of red. Instead of angry words, though, he said quietly, “You ain’t from around here, mister. You don’t know how it is.”

“You can answer one more question for me.”

“I told you—”

“Where can I find Mrs. Shanley’s orphanage?” The Kid’s words cut through the local’s protest.

The man looked surprised by the question. His eyes widened for a second, then narrowed in suspicion. “Why do you want to know? You and your friend in the buggy there don’t look like orphans to me.”

“As a matter of fact, both of my parents
are
deceased,” Arturo said. “But it happened a long time ago, so I don’t really think of myself as an orphan.”

“And my father’s still alive,” The Kid said.
As far as I know
, he added to himself. As perilous a life as Frank Morgan led, he supposed he couldn’t make that assumption.

The liveryman said, “I don’t really care. I don’t mix in things that don’t concern me, and that Shanley woman and her blamed orphans are one of ’em.”

With a hostile glare, he walked off down the street toward the stable.

“Well, he was certainly an unhelpful fellow,” Arturo said.

“Not completely. He told us more about how things are around here. Not very good, from the sound of it. Elam and his men have this town treed.”

“By that you mean everyone is afraid of them?”

“Yeah.” The Kid looked up the street and rubbed his chin. “I’m curious why he didn’t want to say anything about the orphanage. That doesn’t seem like something that would get anybody in trouble.”

He untied the black’s reins but didn’t mount up, leading the gelding up the street.

Arturo brought the buckboard alongside him. “Where are we going, Kid?”

“To see somebody who maybe won’t mind telling us about the orphanage.”

The Kid angled across the street toward the church. It was a whitewashed frame building with
a square bell tower that had a tall wooden steeple on top. As he looked along the side of the building he saw the fenced graveyard behind it. A few small cottonwood trees provided shade where the citizens of Powderhorn who had passed on had been laid to rest.

It put him in mind of another cemetery, located in a small town in New Mexico. As The Kid’s mouth tightened into a grim line, he put those thoughts out of his mind. It wouldn’t do to think too much about the woman who was buried there, even though he would never forget her, or the happiness she had brought him.

Or the scars her murder had seared into his soul.

As The Kid tied the black’s reins to the buck-board Arturo asked, “Shall I come with you, sir?”

“That’ll be fine.”

They stepped into the church and walked through a small foyer into the sanctuary. It was cooler inside, out of the sun. “Hello?” The Kid called. The word echoed back from the stained-glass windows and the high ceiling.

“Up here,” a voice said from behind and above them.

The Kid turned and looked into the foyer where a narrow door stood open a few inches. He opened it more and saw a ladder propped inside the tiny room. Light spilled through an open trapdoor at the top of the ladder. It led up into the bell tower, The Kid thought.

“Wait there and I’ll be right down,” the same voice said. A moment later, a man’s shape blocked
off the light coming through the trapdoor. He started climbing down the ladder.

When he reached the bottom he stepped off and brushed his hands together. “I was working on the bell,” he explained with a smile. “On the rope, actually. It was getting rather frayed. Wouldn’t do to have it snap some Sunday morning while I’m ringing the bell to summon the faithful to services.”

“No, I suppose not,” The Kid said. “Are you the pastor here?”

The man nodded. “That’s right.” He was young, no more than twenty-five, with a friendly, slightly rounded face and brown hair. He wore a pair of corduroy trousers and a work shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his forearms. “Thomas Kellogg.”

“Pleased to meet you, Reverend.”

The minister shook his head. “Please, no reverend. Just Tom is fine, or Brother Tom if you insist. I saw you gentlemen ride into town.” With a grin he pointed a thumb up at the steeple. “There’s a good view from up there, you know. In a land as flat as this, you can see a long way from any sort of elevation.”

“I’m sure you can,” The Kid said. “We were hoping you could tell us where to find a lady named Shanley.”

“Mrs. Shanley who runs the orphanage?” Instantly, the amiable expression disappeared from Kellogg’s face and his eyes and tone became guarded. “Why do you want to know?”

“I need to ask her about something.”

“And who are you, exactly?”

The Kid kept a tight rein on his impatience. “They call me Kid Morgan.” That was the literal truth. He didn’t want to lie to a man of God.

Kellogg surprised him by asking, “Not
the
Kid Morgan? The one in the dime novels?”

The Kid had heard the old saying about life imitating art. In his case, it was more complicated than that. When he had decided to let everyone believe for a while that Conrad Browning was dead, he had hidden his true identity behind a new name. In choosing that name, he had considered the fact that authors working for publishing companies back east had written dime novels about his father, Frank Morgan. From there it had been a natural leap to calling himself Kid Morgan. Very few people actually knew that Frank was his father, so he didn’t think the name would give him away.

However, he had never expected that he would become well-known enough, quickly enough, to inspire dime novels about
him
. Evidently those lurid, yellow-backed novels had an avid readership that was always hungry for more heroes, more adventure. The Kid had seen a few of the Kid Morgan books and been baffled and amused by them.

Seeing his reaction, Kellogg hurried on, “Oh, I know, a preacher’s not really supposed to read such things. But they’re so exciting, and from time to time they teach good moral lessons. I
mean, good always triumphs over evil in the end, doesn’t it?”

“In dime novels, maybe,” The Kid said, again trying not to think about Rebel.

“Well, it’s really an honor to meet you,” Kellogg said as he shook hands with The Kid. Then he grew more serious. “But I’d still like to know what your business is with Theresa. I mean, Mrs. Shanley.”

If he was going to trust anybody, The Kid told himself, it ought to be a preacher. “I’m looking for some children.”

“She has quite a few.” Kellogg frowned. “Although I’m not sure that a man such as yourself … I mean, a man with no permanent place of residence … I mean …” The minister was starting to look really flustered.

“You mean a drifting gunfighter is not really the sort of man you’d think would want to adopt an orphan?”

Kellogg nodded. “No offense intended, but yes, that thought did cross my mind.”

“I’m not planning to adopt. I’m looking for two children, a boy and a girl. Twins. Between three and four years old.”

“Again, in all good conscience, I have to pry into something that may not be any of my business—”

“It’s not,” The Kid cut in. “But I’ll tell you anyway. I don’t have to adopt those children. They’re already mine. I’m their father.”

For a long moment, Kellogg didn’t say anything. Finally, he asked, “Where is the mother?”

“Dead,” The Kid said. “Do you know if Mrs. Shanley has them?”

Kellogg waved a hand. “I’ve only been the pastor here for a year and a half, Mr. Morgan. Before that I was in Springfield, Missouri. There are several children of that age in Mrs. Shanley’s care, but I don’t know how they came to be with her or if any of them are brother and sister. I can tell you that I never noticed any twins among them.”

“Fraternal twins don’t always look that much alike,” The Kid pointed out.

“Oh, so they’re fraternal twins?”

The Kid took a deep breath. “I don’t know.” It bothered him to admit that.

It bothered Kellogg, too. “You expect me to believe these children belong to you, and you don’t even know if they’re identical twins?”

“It’s a long story,” The Kid snapped. “Are you going to tell me where to find the orphanage or not?”

Kellogg didn’t answer the question directly. “You know, when I first saw the two of you come into town, I thought maybe you were some more of Mr. Elam’s men.”

Arturo said, “Do I look like a hired gunman to you, sir?”

Kellogg shrugged. “I’ll admit, you don’t. Who are you?”

“I work for The Kid here. I’m his batman, as the British call it.” When Kellogg looked baffled by
that answer, Arturo added, “His valet, assistant. Call it what you will.”

That just confused the minister more. “A gun-fighter’s got a valet?”

The Kid tried not to get too exasperated. “Another long story. Please, Reverend … I mean, Brother Tom. The children I’m looking for may not be with Mrs. Shanley, but I have to be sure. Just tell me where to find her place, if you will.”

“I’ll do better than that,” Kellogg said with an abrupt nod, as if he had made up his mind about something. “I’ll take you there.”

“I’d be obliged for your help.”

“If I can help reunite a father with some lost children, well, that’s just one more way of doing the Lord’s work, as I see it.”

“Nobody’s going to argue with you there,” The Kid said.

“It’s an easy walk,” Kellogg said as he led them out of the church. “Up here and around the corner on Fifth Street.”

The houses of Powderhorn’s citizens were on the cross streets. Kellogg took them to one that rose three stories, with a gabled roof and trees growing around it. It would have been a stern, forbidding-looking place without the flower beds in front of it and the bright curtains in the windows. On his way into town, The Kid had been looking for some ugly, institutional-appearing building, probably of stone or brick. He wouldn’t have picked out that place as an orphanage. It looked
more like the private home of a well-to-do businessman.

“Mrs. Shanley and her husband were some of the original settlers in Powderhorn,” Tom Kellogg explained as he, The Kid, and Arturo went through a gate in the whitewashed picket fence around the front yard. “He had something to do with the railroad, and he also established a very successful store here. But then a fever came through the area, he caught it, and passed away. So did the Shanleys’ children. Since Mrs. Shanley was left alone, she took in the children of the families where both parents had died of the fever. That’s how the orphanage got started. At least, that’s the way I’ve heard the story. I didn’t live here then, you know. But I have no reason to doubt that it’s true.”

Neither did The Kid. He felt his heart pounding harder as the three of them went up the walk to the front porch. His son and daughter could be in there, only a few yards away from him.

“I’m surprised the kids aren’t out playing,” he commented, more to have something to say than anything else.

“The younger ones are napping, the older ones are studying. Theresa insists on a good education.”

Kellogg knocked on the door frame. A moment passed, and then the door swung open.

The fact that Kellogg had a habit of referring to Mrs. Shanley by her given name should have warned him, The Kid thought, and so should have
the preacher’s comment about her own children dying of the fever.

But in his anxiousness to find out if his kids were there, he hadn’t considered those things, and so he was surprised to see that the woman standing in the doorway with a smile on her face was a beautiful blonde who couldn’t be any more than thirty years old.

“Hello, Tom,” the woman said to Kellogg. “What brings you here?” She looked past him at The Kid and Arturo. “And who are your friends?”

“This is Mr. Morgan and his … helper,” Kellogg introduced them. He added to Arturo, “I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”

Arturo swept his hat off and stepped forward to take hold of Theresa Shanley’s hand. “Arturo Vincenzo, madame,” he told her as he bowed. He pressed his lips to the back of her hand. “At your service.”

Theresa looked a little surprised, as anybody would have under the circumstances. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mister … ah, Vincenzo, was it?”

The Kid took his hat off and suppressed the impulse to toss Arturo aside. Fortunately, Arturo didn’t linger over his hand kissing. As he stepped back, The Kid moved forward and said, “Ma’am, we’re looking for a couple of children who may have been left here in your care a few years ago.”

Theresa’s voice was a little cool and wary as she asked, “What’s your relation to these children, Mr. Morgan?”

“They’re my—the Kid’s voice caught a little—“they’re my son and daughter.”

“I only have children here who have been orphaned.”

“That’s just it. The woman who brought them here would have told you some sort of story to explain why she had to leave them with you. She probably told you that their parents were dead.”

“Why would she have done a thing like that?” Theresa wanted to know.

Tom Kellogg said, “It’s probably a long story.”

The Kid nodded. “It is.”

“So why don’t we go inside?” Kellogg suggested.

“Of course,” Theresa said. “Where are my manners? Come in, please.”

She stepped back and ushered them into the house. They went into a comfortably furnished parlor.

“Would you like some coffee or lemonade?”

Kellogg smiled. “Lemonade would be nice. I’ve been replacing that worn-out bell rope in the steeple this afternoon. It was thirsty work.”

“Sit down, gentlemen. I’ll be right back.”

Though he was trying hard not to show it, The Kid’s emotions were running wild inside him. After all the danger and worry, he might be on the verge of reclaiming his children. Or rather, claiming them for the first time, he told himself, because he had never seen them before. It was a
thrilling moment and a frightening one, all at the same time.