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  Laura leaned closer to him, still gripping his arm. “But, Frank, you said yourself that you didn’t know any of these people until you rode into the valley a few days ago. There’s no reason you have to take Embry’s side in this. For all you know, he’s in the wrong, and his claim on the western half of the valley is fraudulent.”

  “He seems like an honest man to me,” Frank said.

  “Perhaps he is. Perhaps he’s well intentioned. That doesn’t mean he’s not wrong anyway. And I can tell you without a doubt that Gaius Baldridge is an honest, honorable man, a true pioneer in this part of the country.”

  The pioneer part was true, no doubt about that, Frank thought. And maybe Baldridge had been honest and honorable back in those days. Everything Frank had seen and heard so far seemed to indicate that he had been.

  But that didn’t change the facts now. Frank couldn’t stop a harsh note from creeping into his voice as he said, “Some of those men Baldridge has hired are nothing but professional killers.”

  Including his and Laura’s own son.

  Anger flashed in her eyes as she said, “I’ve heard the same thing said about you many times, Frank. Whether you ever wanted it or not, you have the same sort of reputation that Brady is starting to acquire. Are you saying that you’re better than him?”

  Frank had had enough of this.

  “I’m saying that I’m not going to abandon Embry and the Boxed E and come over to Baldridge’s side,” he told her. “I figured out pretty quick that’s what you were after with this conversation.”

  Her nostrils flared as she drew in a deep, sharp breath and took a step back from him.

  “Frank, you have this all wrong—”

  “I don’t think so. You believe that if Baldridge had both me and Brady on his side, there’s no way the Boxed E could win. Baldridge would get what he wants, and so would you ... although I’m not sure yet exactly what that is.”

  Her voice was cold and angry as she said, “I wanted you to get to know your son, and I thought maybe you and I could recapture something we lost a long time ago. Something we never should have let get away from us. That’s all.”

  “Well, if that’s true, I’m sorry,” Frank said. “But I’m sticking with Embry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Laura said, although her expression said she was much more angry than she was regretful. “I think you’re making a big mistake—”

  A sudden commotion from outside made her stop. Both of them looked toward the door of the town hall, which still stood open. Shouts and curses filled the air. Frank started for the door.

  He expected to hear shots ring out at any second, but by the time he reached the porch there hadn’t been any gunfire.

  There was plenty of trouble, though. A big knot of men slugging and punching at each other filled the street in front of the town hall. It was a full-fledged brawl between the ranch hands from the Boxed E and Baldridge’s crew of gunmen.

  “Oh!” Laura gasped as she stepped onto the porch behind Frank. She moved up beside him and clutched his arm. “They’re going to kill each other if somebody doesn’t stop them!”

  “Not likely as long as nobody goes for a gun,” Frank said. He glanced along the street. Marshal Trask was nowhere in sight, and neither was the wagon where all the guns had been placed. Frank spotted the vehicle parked in front of the marshal’s office. Moving that armament away from the town hall while the inquest was going on was probably a good idea ... but some of the men from both sides who hadn’t gone into the hall still had their guns. All it would take was a single shot from somebody to turn this ruckus deadly.

  Baldridge stood at the edge of the porch, shouting, “Stop it! Stop it, I say!”

  But no one paid any attention to him. This was more than a fight. It was fast becoming a riot.

  Jubal Embry was right in the middle of it, despite his age. His hat had been knocked off and one eye was swelling and darkening, but he continued trading punches with one of the B Star riders. A few feet away from him, Hal Embry and Gage Carlin were locked up in their own battles with a couple of Baldridge’s men. The two sides seemed to be evenly matched as they whaled the tar out of each other.

  Frank looked for both Salty and Brady, and he found them at the same time. That was because Brady was behind the old-timer with an arm locked around Salty’s neck under the jutting white whiskers. A hate-filled grimace twisted Brady’s face as he bore down hard on Salty’s throat. The old man’s face was turning purple.

  Brady was going to choke the life out of Salty if somebody didn’t stop him.

  Frank didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think about the fact that Brady was his son. All he knew was that Brady was about to kill his friend, and Frank didn’t intend to let that happen.

  Frank pulled his arm free from Laura’s grip, and with a bound, he was off the porch and plunging into the melee. His powerful shoulders brushed men aside as he plowed through the struggling crowd toward Salty and Brady.

  Brady didn’t seem to see Frank coming. He was concentrating on choking Salty, and a gleeful expression appeared on his face as the old-timer’s struggles grew feeble. Another minute or two and Salty would be dead, and Brady was eager for that to happen.

  When Frank reached them, he roared, “Brady!” The young man finally looked up ...

  Just in time for Frank’s fist to smash into his face with the force of an explosion. Frank had put all his considerable strength behind the haymaker.

  Brady let go of Salty and flew backwards. He collided with a couple of struggling men and bounced off them to fall to the ground. In the middle of the battle like this, he was in danger of being trampled, so Frank stepped forward, leaned down, and grabbed his shirt front. Frank hauled the stunned young man to his feet. Blood welled from Brady’s nose, which had been flattened by the impact of Frank’s fist.

  Frank slung Brady clear of the battle. Brady fell, rolled over a couple of times, and came to a stop against the town hall porch. Frank didn’t pay any attention to him after that. Instead he moved quickly to the side of Salty, who had collapsed, and dropped to a knee next to the old-timer.

  Sliding an arm around Salty’s shoulders, Frank lifted him to a sitting position. Salty was gagging and coughing as he tried to drag enough air back into his lungs, and his face was still red, but at least he was alive. Frank figured he would be all right once he caught his breath.

  “I ... I’m ... much obliged ... Frank,” Salty managed to say between hacking coughs and rasping breaths. “I couldn’t get loose ... from the varmint.”

  “You just take it easy, Salty,” Frank told him. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, I reckon ... I will be ... thanks to you.” Frank looked over toward the town hall. He saw that Laura had come down from the porch and was kneeling next to her son, heedless of the dust she was getting on her expensive dress. She had Brady’s bloody head resting in her lap. He appeared to still be in a stupor.

  He came out of it, though, with a sudden start. He lurched up into a sitting position. His mouth worked furiously. Frank figured Brady was cursing, although he couldn’t hear the words over the uproar around him.

  There was no doubt about what happened next. Ignoring his mother’s clutching hands, Brady levered himself to his feet. As two men who were punching at each other reeled close to him, he reached out and plucked out the gun that rode in one man’s holster. Lifting the weapon, he thumbed back the hammer and pointed the gun right at Frank.

  Chapter 20

  With blood from his broken nose covering the lower half of his face, Brady strode toward Frank. Men saw the blood and the gun and got out of his way.

  “Look out, Frank!” Salty exclaimed as he saw Brady coming.

  Since Salty had recovered a little from almost being choked to death, Frank stood up and moved in front of the old-timer. He regarded Brady with a hard, level stare as the young killer stalked toward him. The fight came to an end around them as men hurried to get out of the way of any flying bullets.r />
  “You bastard!” Brady yelled in a blood-thickened voice as he came to a stop in front of Frank and threatened him with the gun. “You broke my nose!”

  “And you almost killed my friend,” Frank said. “I reckon you got what was coming to you.”

  “I ought to blow your brains out!”

  Frank wondered how Laura was taking this confrontation, but he didn’t take his eyes off Brady to look toward her, not even a glance. The gun Brady held was a single-action Colt, and with the hammer pulled back like that, all it would take to fire it was a little pressure on the trigger. Frank didn’t know how much; the gun’s owner could have filed it down to hair-trigger sensitivity.

  “I’m unarmed, Brady,” he said. “You shoot me in cold blood in front of a hundred witnesses and you’ll hang. Baldridge won’t be able to help you, and neither will your mother.”

  From off to one side, Jubal Embry said loudly, “If he shoots you, he won’t live to hang, Morgan! My men will gun him down like the dog he is!”

  Frank’s jaw tightened. Embry just couldn’t seem to help himself when it came to making a bad situation worse. If the Boxed E hands who were armed started shooting at Brady, then the B Star hired guns would return the fire. In the blink of an eye, this confrontation in the street would become a bloodbath.

  “Put the gun down, Brady,” Frank said quietly. “This isn’t the time or place for you and me to settle things.”

  Brady’s lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl. “It’s as good as any. You’ve been hanging around too long, old man. This is my time now!”

  Frank had been easing closer, a fraction of an inch at a time. He could see the craziness, the urge to kill, lurking in Brady’s eyes, and he knew he couldn’t afford to wait any longer.

  With the same sort of speed that made him feared and respected from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border, from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, he sprang forward and lashed out with his left arm. His forearm came up under Brady’s wrist, which caused the gun to jerk toward the sky as it blasted.

  At the same time, Frank brought his right fist flashing up and hit Brady again, this time on the jaw. Brady’s head jerked to the side and he flew off his feet. Frank went after him. He reached down and plucked the revolver from Brady’s hand, then stepped back quickly with the gun ready in his own grip in case any of Brady’s men opened fire on him.

  No shots rang out. The crowd watched in stunned silence. The only sound was a low whimper from Brady as he lay in the dusty street with blood still dripping from his nose.

  Then Laura cried shrilly, “Let me through! Let me through!”

  Men got out of her way. She reached Brady and dropped to her knees at his side. For the second time in a matter of minutes, she lifted his head into her lap.

  This time, though, she lifted her head, fixed cold, angry eyes on Frank, and said, “I hope you’re happy. Beating your own son to within an inch of his life. You should be proud of yourself, Frank.”

  Frank opened the Colt’s cylinder, shook out the cartridges that remained in it, then dropped the empty gun in the dust next to the bullets.

  “What was I supposed to do, stand there and let him choke my friend to death? Tell him to go ahead and shoot me, that it was all right?”

  “Go to hell,” she whispered through clenched teeth.

  Marshal Trask broke into the tense scene by striding up and shouting, “Break it up! Break it up! The next man who throws a punch will spend a month in jail! Clear the street! Clear the street!”

  “You’re about ten minutes too late, Marshal,” Salty told him. “Where were you when all this ruckus broke out?”

  “Where I was is none of your business, old man,” Trask snapped. He was still carrying the shotgun. He brandished it and went on. “Clear the street, I said! I’ll arrest anybody I see out here ten minutes from now!”

  “Boxed E, with me!” Jubal Embry ordered. He stomped off toward the Feed Barn. Hal and Gage Carlin and the other men followed him.

  Baldridge stepped up to Laura and Brady and said, “Let me help you with him, my dear.”

  He bent to take hold of one of Brady’s arms. Laura got on her son’s other side, and between them, they lifted Brady to his feet. He was still only semiconscious, but he was able to shake his head and mutter incoherently. Finally, he said, “Lemme go ... lemme go!” and tried to pull away from them.

  Baldridge used his free hand to motion curtly to some of the other hired guns from the B Star.

  “Take him to the doctor’s office,” he ordered. “That nose will need medical attention. Then put him on his horse, and all of you go back out to the ranch. Stay there until I tell you other wise.”

  Two men stepped forward, slung Brady’s arms over their shoulders, and half-carried him down the street toward Dr. Hutchison’s place. The rest followed, with plenty of snake-eyed stares directed toward the Boxed E crew along the way.

  Baldridge put a hand on Laura’s shoulder and said, “I think I should have the horse hitched to the buggy so we can go on out to the ranch as well.”

  She glared at Frank as she nodded and said, “I believe you’re right, Gaius. There’s nothing here in town for me.”

  Baldridge put his arm around her and led her away. As they walked off, Salty stepped up beside Frank, still rubbing his abused throat, and said hoarsely, “If you had any hopes of patchin’ things up with that gal, Frank, I reckon they’re pretty much done for now.”

  “That was never my plan,” Frank said. “I hoped we could be friends, but that’s all.”

  “Hard to believe any son of yours could turn out to be so low-down mean and rotten.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Frank agreed. Conrad Browning had been arrogant and abrasive when Frank first met him, but he had been able to see a spark of decency in the boy, a spark that had since been fanned by life’s tragedies into a flame that had tempered Conrad and transformed him into a fine young man.

  There was no such spark in Brady Morgan, and Frank didn’t know whose fault that was. He supposed it didn’t really matter.

  “Let’s go on over to the Feed Barn with the others,” he suggested.

  Salty nodded and said, “Yeah, some coffee might help this poor ol’ throat of mine.”

  Still alert for an attack, they walked over to the café and went inside. The place was crowded with the extra customers from the Boxed E, and Katie Storm was busy behind the counter pouring coffee and placing plates full of food in front of the men on the stools.

  One of those men was Hal Embry. He looked like he wanted to talk to Katie, but the way she was bustling around, he had no chance to do so.

  Solomon Storm was doing more than cooking right now. He went back and forth from the kitchen in his stained white apron, carrying plates of food that he delivered in surly fashion to the tables. None of the men seemed to mind Solomon’s less-than-friendly demeanor. They were used to it, and they were hungry as well, so they dug into the food.

  “Dang, the place is full up,” Salty complained.

  “Morgan!” Jubal Embry called from one of the tables. “Come on over here!”

  “There’s two empty chairs at Embry’s table,” Frank pointed out to Salty. “Let’s go.”

  They joined Embry, Gage Carlin, Bill Kitson, and another of the Boxed E hands Frank didn’t know. As Frank and Salty sat down, Embry went on. “I reckon maybe I was wrong about you and this old pelican, Morgan.”

  “Old pelican, is it?” Salty challenged.

  Frank and Embry both ignored that remark. Frank asked the cattleman, “What do you mean about being wrong?”

  “I mean I had you pegged as a hired killer at best, or a spy for Baldridge at worst,” Embry said. “I ain’t sure about the hired killer part, but if you’re really workin’ for Baldridge, you’re playin’ the deepest game I ever did see. The way you busted Brady Morgan’s nose, it looked like the two of you just plumb don’t get along. And it damned sure looked like he wanted to kill you. Came pretty doggoned c
lose, I’d say. If that was an act, it was a mighty good one.”

  “It wasn’t an act,” Frank said, and he couldn’t stop a note of regret from sneaking into his voice. “He came close to pulling the trigger as soon as he pointed that gun at me.”

  “If he had, there would have been a hell of a lot more blood spilled out there in the street.”

  Frank nodded and said, “That’s why I’m glad he didn’t. As for me being a hired gun or a regulator, whatever you want to call it ... I’m not, Embry. I’ve told you that before.”

  “So I can’t pay you to get rid of Brady and the others?”

  “No.” Frank’s answer was flat and hard, with no room for compromise. But then he said, “I’ll ride for you, though, and back your play against Baldridge. I just won’t take money to do it.”

  Embry frowned in confusion. “Why risk your life to help us, then?” he asked.

  “Because I think you’re in the right.”

  Embry stared at him for several seconds, then slowly nodded.

  “I remember when a lot more people felt that way about things,” he said. “It’s a shame more of ’em don’t these days.”

  Solomon came up to the table with plates of fried chicken, potatoes, and greens.

  “Here,” he said as he set them in front of the men.

  “We didn’t even tell you what we wanted yet,” Embry said.

  “You’ll eat what I give you and like it,” Solomon snarled. He turned and stalked off.

  Embry grinned and said, “I like that old fella. He’s the only man I know who’s more cantankerous than I am.” He grew more serious as he continued, “I’m glad to have your help, Morgan. Can’t be easy for you, bein’ on the opposite side from your boy like that. Those two punches you landed on him were real honeys, though.”

  Frank picked up a piece of fried chicken. “From what I’ve seen of Brady Morgan, I’m not sure I’d want to claim him. I know that’s a harsh thing to say, but he came mighty close to killing Salty.”

  “That’s the truth,” the old-timer rasped. “I reckon it’s gonna take a few glasses of tonsil varnish later on ’fore my throat stops hurtin’.”