The Loner: The Big Gundown Read online

  Morgan thought fast. Those were good questions, and he should have expected the colonel to ask them.

  “I guess she was in her hotel room when the shelling started,” he said. “I wound up out in the hallway with her and all the other guests who were trying to get out of there before the place came crashing down around them. When I saw her, I remembered that you had mentioned her in the saloon and talked about how you were going to have everything that belonged to Edward Sheffield.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “I had a hunch that included Mrs. Sheffield. Was I right, Colonel?”

  Stiffly, Black replied, “At one time, the lady and I were engaged to be married. It’s an ugly story, Lieutenant, full of greed and treachery, and I’m not sure I want to share all the details with you.”

  “No need for you to do that, Colonel, I assure you. I’m interested in your goals for the future, not what happened in the past.”

  Black nodded. “Very well. Go on.”

  The Kid shrugged. “There’s not much left to tell. Once we got outside, I grabbed Mrs. Sheffield and took her to the stable where my horse was. I knew you had to be responsible for what was happening. I mean, who else in this neck of the woods has a cannon?”

  That brought another chuckle and a nod from Black.

  “I got the lady on my horse and set out to find you. It didn’t take long. Actually, of course, you found us, which is what I thought might happen.”

  “Then luck was with us all around. Since you didn’t show up on the ridge as I’d told you, I thought you weren’t going to be joining us after all. If you’d been alone when I spotted you later, I might have ordered my men to kill you. Of course, I couldn’t put Mrs. Sheffield in danger, so I ordered them to hold their fire.”

  “Like you said, Colonel…luck.”

  “Why didn’t you keep the appointment? You had time to get your horse and gather your gear before the attack began.”

  “Sheffield cornered me and tried one more time to get me to work for him. I got away from him as fast as I could, but it wasn’t fast enough. Or maybe it was just fast enough, because that way I was in the hotel and was able to get hold of Mrs. Sheffield for you.”

  “Indeed. Well, it’s clear from everything that’s happened that you were meant to be part of my campaign, Lieutenant. I’m not an overly superstitious man, but I know an omen when I see one.”

  The Kid nodded. “Yes, sir. I do, too.”

  Black drained the last of the brandy from his snifter and then turned to set the empty glass back on the sideboard. “It’s been a long night. I believe I’m going to turn in. I’m sure Señora Lopez will be back in a few minutes to show you to your quarters. Get some rest, Lieutenant. Later today, we’ll meet with Captain Devlin and a few of the other officers and plan the next move in our campaign.”

  “What’s left?” The Kid asked. “You looted Titusville of pretty much everything that’s worth anything and burned down half the town. There might be some ore at the mine—”

  Black cut him off with a curt gesture. “You forget, Lieutenant, Mrs. Sheffield is our prisoner, and her husband, despite being a despicable man, is smart enough to realize that once he discovers that she’s no longer in Titusville. He’s going to gather his hired guns and come after her…and we’re going to be ready for him.”

  The Kid didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t doubt for a second that the colonel was right. Sheffield would send Phil Bateman and the rest of his gunmen to find his wife. Sheffield might even come along himself. And if Colonel Black had his way, they would ride right into an ambush of some sort. Black might be crazy, but he was a shrewd strategist. That ambush could easily turn into a massacre.

  Unless The Kid figured out some way to stop it.

  Chapter 28

  Almost as soon as Black left the room, before The Kid had a chance to look around, Señora Lopez reappeared. “Follow me, señor,” she said in her stolid voice. “Your room is ready.”

  She led him through the dining room, which was furnished with a long, polished hardwood table that wouldn’t have been out of place in a fine mansion back east. They went down a short corridor lit by candles in wall sconces to another hallway running perpendicular to the first one. Just how big was this hollowed out, house-under-the-rock, anyway, The Kid wondered?

  “Is Señora Sheffield’s room back here?” he asked, but the Indian woman ignored him as if she didn’t understand the question or hadn’t even heard it. He didn’t try asking her again. He knew she wouldn’t answer.

  She opened a door into a small, sparsely furnished, windowless room that reminded The Kid of a monk’s cell, although he had to admit that the bed looked pretty comfortable. A single candle in a metal holder burned on a small table beside the bed. There was also a rug on the floor.

  “Do you need anything, señor?” the woman asked.

  A wave of drowsiness hit The Kid as soon as he saw the bed. The long, action-packed hours of the day before, followed by the night spent in the saddle, were all catching up to him. Wearily, he shook his head and said, “No, señora, I’m fine.”

  She nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her. As soon as she was gone, The Kid took off his hat, coat, and gunbelt and placed them on the room’s single cane-bottomed chair, which he moved over within easy reach of the bed. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed to remove his boots. No sooner had they thumped to the floor than he sprawled onto the mattress. It was all he could do to turn and raise up enough to blow out the candle.

  When he did, utter darkness filled the room. Under the cliff like that, no light penetrated at all. The Kid wasn’t able to see his hand in front of his face.

  Not that he was looking. He had already closed his eyes, and sleep claimed him almost before he could draw a breath.

  Morgan slept like a rock, and he had no idea how much time had passed when he gradually came to realize that there was light in the room again. He saw it even through his closed eyelids. With an effort, he pried his eyes open, squinting against the glare of a lantern held in Señora Lopez’s hand as she stood beside the bed.

  “Colonel Black wishes for you to join him in the dining room, señor,” she said.

  The Kid sat up and groaned as stiff muscles protested. He hadn’t had enough rest to make up for the punishment he had put his body through the past few days. He lifted a hand, rubbed his temples for a moment, then scrubbed his palm across his face. He shook his head in an attempt to dislodge some of the cobwebs. Then he looked up at Señora Lopez said, “I’ll be there in a moment.”

  “In the dining room,” the Indian woman reminded him. She took a match from a pocket in her long skirt and used it to light the candle on the bedside table. “And El Coronel does not like to be kept waiting.”

  The Kid nodded and muttered, “Fine, fine.” He swung his legs off the bed and reached for his boots.

  When Señora Lopez was gone, he noticed that someone had brought a basin and a pitcher of water into his room while he slept, and placed them next to the candle. A frown creased his forehead. He didn’t like the idea that he had slept so deeply people could waltz in and out of the room without him even knowing about it. The light from the señora’s lantern had woken him that time. Why hadn’t it the time before?

  He put on his boots, then stood up and poured some water into the basin. Cupping his hands in it, he splashed the water on his face and rubbed it in vigorously. That refreshed him a little. A folded cloth lay on the table with the basin. He picked it up and dried his face.

  The faint whisper of a footstep behind him made him whirl around. His hand dipped to the coiled gunbelt on the chair and snatched the Colt from its holster. Crouching slightly, The Kid faced the doorway with the leveled gun in his hand.

  His finger froze on the trigger. A woman stood just inside the door of the room, but it wasn’t Señora Lopez. This one was considerably younger, no more than twenty. The faint coppery tone of her skin, the high cheekbones, and the raven-black hair that swept down ov
er her shoulders like dark wings testified that she had Indian blood, too, but her eyes were a startlingly pale blue.

  “Oh,” she said. “I am sorry, señor. I did not mean to startle you.”

  The Kid straightened and lowered his gun. “You did more than startle me, señorita. You almost got your head blown off.”

  “You almost…shot me?”

  “That’s right,” The Kid said impatiently. “Don’t you see this gun?”

  Then he caught his breath as he realized that, no, she didn’t see it. Those striking blue eyes hadn’t moved or reacted to anything since she came into the room. They just peered straight ahead tranquilly, sightlessly. She had heard him spin around and draw his gun.

  “You’re blind,” he said.

  “Sí, señor.” She smiled. “My name is Elena. I brought you water. Do you require anything else?”

  She was used to getting around in pitch blackness. That was how she had been able to come into his room with the pitcher, basin, and cloth without waking him, he realized. She hadn’t needed any light.

  He recalled that she had asked him a question. He said, “No, gracias, señorita, I’m fine.”

  She nodded. She was very beautiful, The Kid thought, with striking features and a slender but well-curved body. The short-sleeved white blouse she wore was scooped low enough at the neck to reveal the upper swells of her breasts.

  Without saying anything else, she left the room. As The Kid holstered his gun and then buckled on the gunbelt, he thought about her gliding soundlessly around the outlaw stronghold, moving through the darkness like some sort of phantom. The thought was enough to make a little shiver go up his spine.

  The Kid put on his hat—the black one with silver conchos on the band that Glory Sheffield had picked out for him in Titusville—and shrugged into his coat. Even though it got as hot as hell’s hinges in that part of Arizona, there in those chambers under tons of rock, the air was comfortably cool.

  As he emerged from his room, The Kid wondered where Glory was being held. Several doors opened off the corridor into what he assumed were other bedrooms. Since there was no one in the hallway at the moment, he moved along it as quietly as he could, pausing in front of each door and leaning close to see if he could hear anything from the other side. He watched closely as he did so, not wanting the ghostly Elena to slip up on him again.

  He didn’t hear anyone moving around in the other rooms, and Colonel Black was waiting for him, so he turned and went to the corridor that led back to the dining room.

  Black, Devlin, and a couple other members of the gang were seated at the table when The Kid came in. Black frowned at him and said, “Lieutenant Morgan, you’re late.”

  “My apologies, sir,” The Kid said formally. He didn’t try to make any excuses, sensing that Black wasn’t the sort who would be interested in them.

  “Don’t let it happen again,” the colonel snapped.

  “Of course not, sir.”

  Black waved him into one of the empty chairs. “At ease, Lieutenant. Join us. Señora Lopez has prepared a meal for us. We’ll eat, then discuss our plans.”

  The Kid realized that he was ravenously hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten anything. As he sat down, he said, “Thank you, sir.”

  Señora Lopez came through a side door that probably led to the kitchen, followed by Elena. Both women carried platters of food: tortillas, mounds of scrambled eggs, a mixture of strips of beef and peppers and onions. The men helped themselves as soon as the platters were on the table, heaping eggs, beef, peppers, and onions onto the tortillas. The food smelled good, and the even more tantalizing aroma of coffee brewing came from the kitchen. Señora Lopez and Elena left and came back with the coffee pot and cups. The señora poured.

  The Kid dug in and indulged his hearty appetite. The food was good, and the coffee with which he washed it down was even better. The food and drink began to make him feel human again, restoring some of the strength that the past few days had drained.

  The other two outlaws were Boyd Cranston and Micah Terhune, according to the introductions Colonel Black made. Both men were captains, like Devlin. Black told them, “Lieutenant Morgan is going to serve as my aide-de-camp, gentlemen.”

  Terhune’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as he looked across the table at The Kid. “You’re the fella who was on the train, aren’t you? The one who was hell on wheels in that fight?”

  The Kid shrugged. “No offense, Captain, but when people shoot at me, I tend to shoot back.”

  “That’s a good answer, Micah,” Cranston said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t want a man in our outfit who wasn’t ready for a fight.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Terhune said, but he didn’t sound wholly convinced.

  Devlin said, “The colonel says Morgan’s working with us now, and what the colonel says, goes.”

  Terhune nodded. “Sure. I never figured otherwise.”

  Devlin turned to Black and asked, “What’s our next objective, Colonel?”

  Black sipped his coffee and looked smug. “We get to sit back and wait for the enemy to come to us for a change, gentlemen,” he said. “Sheffield will want revenge for what we’ve done, and we have something else he wants, too.”

  Cranston grinned. He was a tall, handsome man with a shock of blond hair. “You’re talking about the lady.”

  Black saluted Cranston with his coffee cup. “That’s exactly right, Captain. By now he’s realized that Mrs. Sheffield is no longer in Titusville, and his first thought will be that we took her with us. He may even be able to locate witnesses who saw us riding out of town with her on Lieutenant Morgan’s horse. I imagine at this moment, he’s frantically putting together a rescue party.”

  “How’s he gonna know where to look for her?” Terhune asked.

  “I’m coming to that, Captain.” Black looked up at the majordomo, Lopez, who had entered the dining room and stood unobtrusively to one side with his hands clasped behind his back. The colonel nodded to Lopez, who turned and left the room.

  Lopez came back a moment later with a man accompanying him. The newcomer was tall and skinny, with thinning hair and a prominent Adam’s apple. He wore a brown tweed suit, and he looked familiar to The Kid. It took a minute for him to recognize the man as the clerk in the mining company headquarters who had tried to stop him from entering Sheffield’s private office.

  The man had a brown felt hat in his hands, and although he was clutching the hat nervously, he didn’t really act like a prisoner, The Kid thought. That impression was confirmed when Black said, “Welcome, Mr. Dunbar. Would you like some coffee?”

  Dunbar shook his head and said quickly, “No, I’m, ah, fine, Colonel, just fine. I’d like to be done with this meeting so that I can get back to Titusville.”

  “What there is left of it, huh?” Black asked with a slight smile.

  “The mining company offices are largely intact, and the mine itself is still in operation. There’s plenty of work to do.”

  “The Gloriana Mine…isn’t that what Sheffield calls it now?”

  Dunbar nodded. “Yes, sir. He changed the name last year when he married the, ah, current Mrs. Sheffield.”

  “Of course.” Black waved at one of the vacant chairs. “Sit down, Mr. Dunbar.”

  The clerk looked like he didn’t particularly want to, but he didn’t argue. He pulled the chair back and sat down, perching on the edge of the seat with his hat on his lap.

  The Kid wasn’t really surprised to see Dunbar. He had already figured out that Black had spies working for him in both Bisbee and Titusville. Dunbar was obviously one of those spies. He had probably been feeding information to Black about ore shipments, as well as Sheffield’s plans to visit the settlement in the Dragoons. Maybe Dunbar hated Edward Sheffield for some reason, or maybe it was just a matter of money. A lot of men would turn traitor if the price was right.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, why did you summon me here, Colonel?” Dunbar said. “It’s
a long ride from town. As it is, I won’t be able to get back there before dark.”

  Black got to his feet and began walking around the table. “I sent for you because I need you to deliver a message for me, Mr. Dunbar.”

  “What sort of message? To who?”

  “I think you know who the message is intended for. Your employer, of course. Your other employer, I should say. Edward Sheffield.”

  Dunbar swallowed hard and nodded. He looked over his shoulder at Black, who had walked behind his chair. “All right,” he said. “What is it you want me to tell him?”

  “Actually, you won’t be telling him anything. You’re going to take a letter and a map to him.”

  “I suppose I can do that.”

  “I’m absolutely certain that you can, Mr. Dunbar,” Black said.

  With that, he pulled his saber from its scabbard with a smooth motion, grasped the weapon with both hands, and brought the razor-sharp blade around in a hard swing that buried it deep in the side of Dunbar’s neck.

  Chapter 29

  Blood spurted across the table and the remains of the meal as Dunbar screamed and lurched violently forward in his chair. Micah Terhune yelled, “Damn!” as he, Devlin, and Cranston sprang out of their chairs.

  The Kid didn’t move, his iron will holding him still. It was already too late for him to do anything for Dunbar.

  Colonel Black jerked the saber free. Dunbar thrashed around in his chair, pawing at the hideous wound in his neck as blood continued to gush from it. Black set himself and swung the saber again. This time the keen edge of the blade caught Dunbar on the back of the neck and sank deep, grating against bone as the impact of the blow knocked Dunbar forward onto the table.

  Black pulled the saber loose and raised it over his head still holding it with both hands. Dunbar’s frantic struggles were getting more feeble as his panic-stricken heart pumped more and more blood out of his body through the gashes in his neck.