The Loner Read online

  As Morgan lowered the gun, Bearpaw said, “Do you see any marks on the tree?”

  Morgan gave a disappointed shake of his head. “No.”

  “How about on the bluff right behind it?”

  A sigh came from Morgan as he counted. “I see five places where bullets hit the bluff. I missed with every shot.”

  “And that tree wasn’t even shooting back at you like Garrity and Jessup were. You see, I told you you were lucky.”

  “You were right,” Morgan admitted. “What did I do wrong?”

  “You didn’t listen. I told you to draw and fire at the tree. I didn’t tell you to do it fast.” The Paiute gestured toward the gun in Morgan’s hand. “Reload and let’s try it again.”

  This time Morgan understood what he was supposed to do. He holstered the revolver, faced the tree, and drew the gun again. He didn’t waste any time about it, but he didn’t rush either, as he lifted the gun and aimed at the pine. A second elapsed between each shot, giving him time to line his sights again.

  This time chunks of bark and splinters flew in the air as the bullets chewed into the tree. Only one round missed and thudded into the bluff behind the pine.

  “That’s more like it,” Bearpaw said.

  “But way too slow to beat anybody to the draw,” Morgan pointed out.

  “What if the man you’re facing is faster than you but a terrible shot? If he gets off three rounds and misses with all of them, and you just fire once but hit your target, you’re going to win.”

  “And what happens if I face somebody who’s faster than me and just as accurate?” Morgan wanted to know.

  “Oh, well, in that case . . . you’ll die.”

  Morgan laughed. He couldn’t help it. As he shucked the empties from the Colt and started reloading, he said, “I’m going to try again.”

  “Of course you are. I didn’t expect any less from you.”

  For the next hour, the two men stood beside the creek while Morgan practiced, pausing from time to time to let their ears have a break from the roar of gunshots. Morgan concentrated on hitting the tree, but even so, his draw became faster and smoother the more he repeated it. By the time Bearpaw said, “All right, I think we’ve burned enough powder for today,” Morgan felt like he had made some real progress. It was just a start, of course, but still, he was pleased.

  He was glad to stop, though, because his arm was getting tired. Drawing and firing a Colt .45 took quite a bit of effort. As Morgan reloaded for the final time, Bearpaw said, “Those arm muscles are probably going to be sore tomorrow.”

  “I can put up with it.”

  “How about your side? Any pain from that wound?”

  “It aches,” Morgan admitted. “Not so much that I can’t stand it, though. I’m more interested in knowing how you thought I did today.”

  “Like I said, you have a considerable amount of natural talent. I didn’t see anything today to make me doubt that.”

  “How long do you think it’ll be before I’m ready to tackle Lasswell and the others?”

  Bearpaw rubbed his chin and shook his head. “Now, that I couldn’t tell you. You’re not ready yet, I know that.”

  “You’ll tell me when I am?”

  “Sure, Kid.”

  Morgan wasn’t sure whether to believe him. He wondered if Bearpaw would keep on insisting that he wasn’t ready yet, in an effort to keep him safe. If that was the case, it wasn’t going to work.

  His shattered soul was still crying out for vengeance, and he could deny it for only so long before he had to answer its call.

  Dr. McNally was waiting for them when they got back that afternoon. With a worried frown on his face, he said to Morgan, “I don’t know if gallivanting around all over the country is good for you in your condition, son.”

  “We just rode down to Bearpaw’s cabin,” Morgan explained. “I told Eve that’s where we were going.”

  “How’s your side?”

  “It’s fine. A little achy, but not bad.” Morgan didn’t mention that his right arm ached a lot worse from the workout he had given it today.

  “You youngsters are just too restless for your own good,” McNally groused. “All I can do is tell you to be careful . . . and that I’m not going to be very happy with you if you undo all the hard work Eve and I have put in to get you healed up as much as you are.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Morgan promised.

  Over the next two weeks, Morgan rode down to Bearpaw’s cabin every day to practice with the Colt. Eve still seemed bothered by having him around, so he thought it was better to get away from the place for a while each day. Sometimes, Bearpaw came to the McNally house to get him; other times, Morgan just showed up at the Paiute’s cabin, ready to do some shooting.

  Nor was Bearpaw content just to help Morgan with the Colt. He wanted to see how the young man handled a Winchester, too. Morgan’s sure eye and steady hand made him an excellent shot with the rifle.

  One day, Bearpaw handed Morgan his old Sharps. “Try this buffalo gun,” the Paiute suggested. “It’s got a mighty powerful kick, though, so be ready for it.”

  “I can handle it,” Morgan said confidently as he took the rifle.

  “You’re going to need something farther away than that tree to shoot at,” Bearpaw mused. “A Sharps like that has quite a range. I’ve heard stories about how one of your people once used a Sharps to knock one of my people off his horse at distance of about a mile down in the Texas Panhandle.” He squinted off across the field and then pointed. “See that white blaze on that pine yonder, where the bark’s been peeled off? It’s only about two hundred yards away, so I’m sure you can hit something that close.”

  “Close?” Morgan repeated. “I can barely see it, let alone hit it!”

  “What happened to that confidence of yours? Give it a try. You might want to find a branch or something to rest the barrel on first, though. A Sharps is pretty heavy.”

  Morgan found a branch low enough on one of the pines to support the rifle barrel while he drew a bead on the distant target. He eared the Sharps’s hammer back as Bearpaw instructed him, took a deep breath, lined up the sights, and gently squeezed the trigger.

  What felt like the kick of a mule slammed against his shoulder and knocked him back a couple of steps.

  “Son of a—” Morgan exclaimed.

  Bearpaw grinned at him. “I told you it had a heck of a kick. I saw wood fly on that tree, though. Not bark. Wood.”

  “You mean I hit the mark?”

  “You sure did.”

  Morgan felt a surge of pride. The marksmanship by itself meant nothing to him, but it was important because it might someday help him in his quest to avenge Rebel’s death.

  “A Winchester is a mighty fine gun,” Bearpaw went on, “but when you need to make a long-range shot, nothing is better than a Sharps. You might want to think about getting one.”

  Morgan nodded. “I’ll do that. Can I try again with this one?”

  “If you think your shoulder can stand it. Here, let me show you how to reload . . .”

  Late that afternoon, Morgan headed back to Sawtooth. The sun had dipped halfway behind the mountains to the west when he reached the McNally house. He started around the house, intending to put the buckskin in the shed and tend to the horse, when a rider moved out of some nearby trees and hailed him.

  “Morgan? Kid Morgan?”

  “That’s right,” Morgan replied as he reined in. A bad feeling caused his muscles to tense. “What can I do for you?”

  “My name is Duke Garrity,” the man said, “and that was my little brother you killed a couple of weeks ago. So you can fill your hand, you bastard, because you’re about to die!”

  Chapter 14

  Garrity didn’t give Morgan a chance to explain, or even to say a single word. He just reached for his gun, his hand moving to the Colt on his hip with blinding speed.

  Morgan knew his life hung by a slender thread. Impulse cried out for him to rush his own dra
w, but the lessons hammered into his head by Phillip Bearpaw counteracted that urge. Even though he drew fast, he stayed under control. Garrity’s gun roared first, but Morgan’s blasted a fraction of a second behind it, the shots coming so close together that they were barely distinguishable from each other.

  Garrity cried out and went backward out of the saddle to land on the ground with a heavy thud. His horse moved skittishly away from him.

  Morgan threw his left leg over the buckskin’s back and slid to the ground, coming to rest in a crouch with his gun still trained on Garrity. The man rolled onto his side and reached ahead of him, trying to get his hand on the Colt he had dropped when he toppled off his horse. His fingers fell short of the gun butt. He struggled mightily to reach the weapon, but failed. With a gasp, he slumped face-first onto the ground. His outstretched fingers twitched a time or two and then were still.

  Morgan moved forward and kicked Garrity’s gun well out of reach. At that moment, the rear door of the McNally house burst open and the doctor rushed out, brandishing a shotgun. “What in blazes happened?” he demanded. “What were those shots?”

  “That hombre rode out of the trees and threw down on me,” Morgan explained with a nod toward Garrity’s body as he replaced the spent shell in the Colt. “He was the older brother of that fella Garrity I had to kill a couple of weeks ago.”

  Eve had followed her father out of the house. She stopped behind McNally and listened to Morgan’s explanation. Morgan holstered the Colt and moved toward her, saying, “It’s all right, I’m not hurt—”

  Without warning, she threw herself at him and started pounding his chest with her fists as she screamed, “Go away, go away, go away! We don’t want you here! We don’t want your kind around!”

  Morgan stood there stunned, not even trying to stop her from hitting him. He knew she had seemed upset ever since the night of that first gunfight, but never in a million years would he have expected a reaction like this from her.

  After a moment, Eve’s fury seemed to run out of steam. She stumbled back a step, raised her trembling hands and covered her face with them, then said in a broken voice between sobs, “Please, just . . . just go away . . .”

  Inside the house, Gramophone music played. Morgan wasn’t sure if Lucinda McNally had even heard the shots, lost as she was in her own world.

  McNally lowered the shotgun and moved to his daughter’s side. As he slid an arm around Eve’s shoulders, he urged gently, “Come on back inside, honey. You don’t need to be out here right now.”

  “M-make him go away, Pa,” she said as she allowed him to turn her toward the house. “Make him understand we don’t want him here.”

  After everything that had happened, Morgan would have thought that it impossible for his heart to harden any more, but at the sound of those anguished words, it did. He felt it happen, the chill stealing over him like frost creeping across the grass on a cold morning. “Eve, I’m sorry—” he began, but Dr. McNally looked back over his shoulder and shook his head, signaling for Morgan to leave it alone.

  As father and daughter went inside, Morgan sighed heavily and caught up the reins of his horse. He collected the dead man’s horse as well and led them both to the shed. By the time he got there, Marshal Zeke Chambliss arrived to check out the gunshots, accompanied by one of his deputies. The lawman still wore his left arm in a sling, but according to McNally, his injuries were healing well.

  “What happened here, Kid?” Chambliss asked as he and his deputy stood there in the gathering dusk, looking down at the body of Duke Garrity.

  Morgan explained about Garrity forcing the shoot-out. Chambliss scratched his jaw and said, “That name’s familiar. I think I’ve seen a few reward dodgers on him come through. Didn’t put the name together with that fella you ventilated a couple of weeks ago, though. This one’s a bad hombre. Got three or four killin’s to his credit, if I’m rememberin’ right, as well as some holdups.”

  “He was fast,” Morgan said with a nod. “Faster than his brother.”

  The deputy chuckled. “But not fast enough to beat Kid Morgan.”

  Morgan didn’t say anything to that. The body on the ground spoke for itself.

  But it didn’t say as much as Eve had before her father took her in the house.

  McNally came back out a short time later while Morgan was tending to the buckskin, giving the horse some grain and water. He had already unsaddled the buckskin and rubbed him down. Chambliss’s deputy had led Duke Garrity’s horse up the street to the livery stable, where it would be cared for for the time being. Garrity’s body had been loaded into the back of the undertaker’s wagon and carted off as well.

  The doctor didn’t have his shotgun with him this time. He stopped in front of the shed and jammed his hands in his pockets. Even in the gloom now that the sun was down, Morgan could see the unhappy expression on McNally’s weathered face.

  “I’m sorry about what happened, son,” McNally said. “I’ve been afraid that Eve was building up to something like that ever since that other night.”

  “The night I saved her from those hardcases, you mean?” Morgan asked coolly.

  “Don’t think for a second that we’re not grateful to you, Eve and me both. She was scared to death that night, especially when the shooting started, and she was mostly scared for you, I think. Her gratitude was real. But so was what she felt when she found out that you’re a gunfighter.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  McNally sighed. “You know my son Joe died a couple of years ago.”

  “Of course,” Morgan said with a nod. “I’m sorry.”

  McNally took one hand from his pocket and rubbed his jaw. “My wife’s never recovered from what happened to that boy,” he said. “You know that. You’ve seen it for yourself.”

  “I’m sorry about that, too,” Morgan said quietly.

  As if he hadn’t heard, McNally went on. “But in her own way, Eve’s never recovered either. She works so hard helping me and taking care of her mother so that she’s too busy to think about what happened. That’s what I believe anyway.”

  “I mean no offense, Doctor, but . . . what did happen?”

  McNally looked squarely at Morgan and said, “My boy was killed in a fight. A gunfight.”

  A sort of understanding dawned inside Morgan. He couldn’t have picked a worse identity to assume as far as Eve was concerned than that of a gunfighter. Having him around reminded her too much of what had happened to her brother.

  McNally went on. “The thing of it is, Joe wasn’t even involved in the trouble. He was just walking down the street in Sacramento when two men arguing about which one was faster on the draw decided to pull their guns and start blazing away at each other. They were both fatally wounded, but as one of them went down, he fired a final shot that missed the other man and hit Joe instead. Joe never had a chance to make it to cover when the shooting started. The bullet hit him in the head. Killed him instantly, I expect, like a bolt out of the blue.”

  “I’m sorry,” Morgan said, and meant it. “No offense, Doctor, but that didn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “Maybe not, but in Eve’s mind, you’re the same sort of man as the ones who killed her brother and caused her mother to be . . . the way she is. You can’t expect her to forget. She sees too many reminders of what happened every day. Every time Lucinda plays that Gramophone . . .” McNally’s voice trailed away as he shook his head. “I think she was afraid from the start that you’d turn out to be a gunman. It wasn’t until she heard, though, that you’re this notorious Kid Morgan that it got to be too much for her.”

  Morgan felt a strong impulse to tell the doctor that it was all a lie, that he wasn’t really a gunfighter, just a businessman from back East named Conrad Browning. He wanted to tell Eve, so she would see that she was wrong about him.

  And yet, doing that had the potential to ruin his plan. He wasn’t even sure that it was true anymore either. Conrad Browning had kill
ed the Winchell brothers, and maybe there had still been a little of Conrad left the night he faced down Garrity and Jessup.

  But Conrad couldn’t have killed Duke Garrity. The man was too slick with a gun for Conrad.

  It had taken Kid Morgan to do that.

  Knowing that it was too late for him to change the path he had chosen—or the path that had chosen him, some might say—he sighed and said, “I reckon the best thing for me to do is leave.”

  McNally shook his head. “I won’t turn out an injured man. Never have and never will.”

  “I’m all right, Doctor,” Morgan said. “Maybe not at full strength yet, and maybe that wound hasn’t completely healed, but I’m strong enough to travel.”

  “You know that a wound like that would put most men flat on their backs for at least a month. It hasn’t even been three weeks.”

  “Long enough is long enough,” Morgan said.

  “But where will you go?”

  Morgan peered off into the night. “Like I’ve told you, I have business to tend to. I don’t know exactly where it will take me.”

  “At least wait until morning to leave,” the doctor urged. “You can’t ride off at night like this.”

  Morgan thought it over for a moment and then nodded. “I reckon I can do that. I’ll try to stay out of Eve’s way while I’m still here. I don’t want to upset her any more than I already have.”

  McNally put a hand on Morgan’s shoulder and squeezed. “You couldn’t have known.”

  But he should have, Morgan thought. After all, didn’t gunfighters always carry death and suffering with them, wherever they roamed?

  Eve had gone to her room when she went inside the house, so Morgan didn’t see her again that night. He slept fitfully and woke early. He thought it might be a good idea to get the buckskin ready to ride and leave before Eve had a chance to see him and get upset again.

  She was in the kitchen when he walked in, though, already preparing breakfast even though dawn was still at least an hour away. “Good morning,” she said without looking around at him as she stood at the stove putting biscuit dough in a pan. “Pa tells me you’re leaving today.”