Slaughter Read online

  “After you handed Hatch a beating, you mean?” A harsh laugh came from Magnusson. “Let me worry about the drillers. I’ll pass the word that you’re working for me now, and they’ll leave you alone.”

  “I need more than to have them leave me alone. They’re going to have to cooperate with me.”

  “Leave that to me,” Magnusson snapped. “They all know better than to go against my orders.”

  Frank didn’t doubt that. Magnusson was big enough to hold his own in a brawl with any of his men, and from the knobby-knuckled look of his hands, he had banged his fists against the faces of other men on numerous occasions in the past.

  “If we’re having a drink to celebrate this new alliance,” Astrid said, “where’s mine?”

  Magnusson frowned at her. “You don’t need a drink,” he said. “Whiskey isn’t ladylike.”

  Astrid smiled at Frank. “My brother has the usual protective attitude toward his little sister, Mr. Morgan. But I assure you, I’m all grown up.”

  She was more than grown up by several years, Frank thought, but of course it would have been impolite to say as much. So instead, he said, “To tell you the truth, I’m not much of a whiskey drinker myself, Miss Magnusson.” He handed his empty glass to the oilman. “So I reckon that’ll do me. It’s been a long day, and I believe I’ll be heading back to the hotel.”

  “We’ll ride out to the valley together tomorrow,” Magnusson suggested, “and I can show you where all my rigs are.”

  That sounded like a good idea to Frank. He nodded his agreement and said, “I’ll meet you here after breakfast?”

  “Fine. Astrid, fetch Mr. Morgan’s hat.”

  “I’ll show you out, too, Mr. Morgan,” she said as she linked her arm with his.

  That drew a disapproving frown from her brother, but Frank couldn’t very well pull away from her. That would have been rude.

  “Don’t pay any attention to the way my brother barks and growls, Mr. Morgan,” Astrid said as she and Frank went back along the hall toward the foyer and the front door. “That’s just his way. He doesn’t really mean anything by it. He’s always taken good care of me.”

  “I imagine he has.”

  “He forgets sometimes, though, that I’m only a year younger than he is. I’m twenty-nine years old, Mr. Morgan . . . and I haven’t spent those years in a nunnery.”

  She had tightened her arm around his so that her right breast pressed warmly against his left arm. Frank was well aware of that pressure, as well as the fact that he was almost old enough to be Astrid’s father.

  That didn’t seem to bother her, though.

  “I don’t reckon we’ll be seeing a lot of each other,” he said as they reached the foyer and he extricated his arm from hers as discreetly as possible. “I’ll be out in the valley a lot, trying to find out who’s bothering those rigs of your brother’s.”

  “You don’t think it’s the cowboys from those ranches?”

  “It looks that way,” Frank admitted. “But I intend to find out for sure.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll be coming here from time to time. In fact, I intend to make certain of it by inviting you for dinner at least once a week.”

  “Your brother might have something to say about that.”

  Astrid’s chin lifted in a gesture of defiance that was already becoming familiar to Frank. “Victor runs the oil field, I run the household. He knows better than to argue with me too much about such things.”

  I’ll bet a hat he does, Frank thought.

  She handed him his Stetson. “Good night, Frank. You don’t mind if I call you Frank, do you?”

  “Not at all,” he said.

  “And I’m Astrid.”

  “All right . . . Astrid.” Frank put his hat on and nodded. “Good night.”

  For a second, he thought she was going to come up on her toes and kiss him. But she wasn’t quite that forward, for which he was grateful.

  He was already walking a thin enough line, pretending to work for Victor Magnusson when in reality he was just as much concerned with the welfare of the ranchers Magnusson considered his enemies. He didn’t need the added complication of having Astrid pursuing him romantically.

  Not that she wasn’t a very attractive woman . . .

  Frank pushed that thought out of his head as he rode back to the hotel. This had been one of the longest, most eventful days he had spent in quite some time, and he was ready for a good night’s sleep.

  Chapter 21

  After everything that had happened, some men might have found it difficult to relax and doze off. They might have lain in bed, stared at the darkened ceiling, and tried to sort through all the action-packed incidents of the past twenty-four hours.

  Not Frank Morgan. Like most veteran frontiersmen, he had acquired the ability to rest whenever and wherever he got the chance, and he was asleep less than a minute after his head hit the pillow in his hotel room.

  He was up early again the next morning as well, also a long-ingrained habit. He didn’t know whether or not Victor Magnusson was an early riser, though, so he lingered over his breakfast.

  The sun was up by the time Frank reined Goldy to a halt in front of the rented mansion where the Mag-nussons were staying. He wondered whether Astrid was awake yet.

  Victor Magnusson was up and around and must have been watching for him. The oilman strode out the front door and gave Frank a nod.

  “My horse is around back in the shed, but he’s already saddled up. I’ll be right back.”

  “You’re the boss,” Frank said.

  “And don’t you forget it,” Magnusson snapped.

  Frank didn’t particularly like the man, and comments like that didn’t make him any fonder of Magnusson. But mere dislike didn’t mean that Magnusson was to blame for what had been happening in the valley.

  While Magnusson was fetching his mount, Frank sat easily in his saddle and looked at the big house, which was even more impressive in the early morning light. He thought he saw a curtain move in one of the windows on the second floor, but he couldn’t be sure about that.

  Astrid, he thought. She was looking out at him.

  The curtain fell closed quickly, though, if it had even moved to start with, as if she didn’t want him to know that she was there in the window.

  Magnusson came back a moment later riding a tall black gelding. He sat his saddle with ease and obviously was accustomed to riding.

  The butt of a Winchester jutted up from the saddle boot on Magnusson’s horse. He also wore a revolver in a cross-draw on his left hip, with a cavalry-style flap that snapped down over the gun.

  Instead of the suit he had sported the day before, today he had on high-topped boots, whipcord trousers, and a plain work shirt. His hat was the same Stetson, though.

  As they rode, Magnusson looked at Dog jogging along beside them and asked, “Is that animal part wolf?”

  “I don’t really know,” Frank admitted. “He’s never said one way or the other.”

  Magnusson grunted. “Well, keep him away from me. I don’t like dogs.”

  Frank recalled that John J. Stafford had said pretty much the same thing. What was wrong with these people here in southern California that they didn’t like perfectly good dogs?

  He put that question out of his mind, figuring it would take too long to answer, and rode on with Magnusson. As they passed through the streets of Los Angeles, Frank looked at the dozens of oil wells dotting the landscape and shook his head in disbelief.

  “It beats me why folks would want one of those things in their front yard.”

  “The answer to that is simple,” Magnusson said. “Money. They get paid a royalty for every barrel that comes out of the ground. There are a lot more rich people in this town now than there were a few years ago, and they’re only going to get richer.”

  “There are other things in life besides money,” Frank pointed out.

  Magnusson shrugged. “Sure there are. But it’s a lot easier to ap
preciate and enjoy those things if you have plenty of money.”

  Frank couldn’t argue with that, at least where most people were concerned.

  But as for himself, he hadn’t been any happier after he’d inherited half of the Browning financial empire. Less so actually, because the only reason those riches belonged to him was because Vivian Browning, one of the loves of his life and the mother of his child, was dead.

  Frank would have traded all that wealth for Vivian’s continued well-being without even a moment of hesitation.

  That would mean changing the past, though, and it couldn’t be done. All a fella could do was try to live with what had happened and go on the best he could.

  “Some of these rigs are yours, you said?” he asked Magnusson.

  The oilman nodded. “That’s right. There hasn’t been any trouble with the wells here in town, though. People here are happy for us to drill on their land. The only problems have been out in the valley, with those stubborn ranchers.”

  Magnusson thought of Dolores Montero and the other ranchers as being stubborn. To Frank, it just seemed like they were trying to preserve the way of life they had always known.

  He understood that attitude. Over the decades, he had witnessed the West changing around him, in some ways for the better, but often not. He couldn’t see how having a bunch of clanking, clattering, stinking oil wells all over the place was actually going to help anything.

  But maybe the times were passing him by, too. In only a few more years, it would be a new century. The twentieth century.

  Out with the old, in with the new. And Devil take the hindmost.

  Frank and Magnusson followed the road through the pass over the Santa Monica Mountains, and by mid-morning found themselves in the San Fernando Valley. Magnusson pointed out some of the oil drilling rigs they passed as belonging to him.

  “Any trouble with these?” Frank asked.

  “No, but we’re not on Montero range yet. That’s where most of the problems have been.”

  Frank spotted a haze of dust in the air some distance ahead of them. That much dust had to be caused by either a herd of cattle or a large group of riders moving fairly fast. He wondered which one it was.

  A short time later, Frank reined in abruptly as he heard some popping sounds in the distance. Beside him, Magnusson brought his horse to a halt as well.

  “What’s wrong?” the oilman asked.

  “Hear that?”

  Magnusson frowned. “That’s not a donkey engine backfiring, is it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Frank replied with a shake of his head. “Those are gunshots.”

  “Damn it!” Magnusson burst out. “My men are being attacked again. Come on, Morgan!”

  With that he jabbed his boot heels into his horse’s flanks and sent the animal lunging ahead in a gallop. Grim-faced with concern, Frank leaned forward in the saddle and urged Goldy into a run as well.

  Magnusson was racing blindly into trouble, Frank thought, and they had no idea what they would find when they reached the site of the battle. From what he had heard, though, before the pounding hoofbeats drowned out all other sound, quite a few guns were going off.

  The road they were following wound through rolling hills and then cut straight across Montero range, Frank recalled from his visit to the valley the day before. Much of the landscape appeared flat at first glance, but that appearance was deceptive. It was cut through with gullies and shallow ridges and dotted with brushy, wooded knobs.

  As Frank and Magnusson approached one such ridge, Frank spotted spurts of powder smoke coming from the guns of men firing from the top of it. The shots were aimed at a cluster of three drilling rigs on the other side of the road, with a large, circular wooden tank nearby. The drillers had taken cover behind storage sheds, as well as behind the derricks themselves, and were returning the fire.

  “Those damned cowboys!” Magnusson yelled as he and Frank galloped toward the wells. “Somebody’s gonna get killed this time!”

  Frank thought that Magnusson might be right. This battle was a small-scale war, with a heap of powder being burned on both sides. Any time that much lead started flying around, the odds were that someone would die.

  A bullet whipped past Frank’s head as he and Magnusson approached the rigs. The riflemen on the ridge had noticed the two of them. They were targets now as well.

  Magnusson headed for one of the sheds. Frank stayed with him. As they reached the shelter of the sturdy little building, they reined their mounts to skidding halts. Frank swung down from the saddle almost before Goldy had stopped moving. He hung on to the reins, keeping the stallion with him.

  One of Magnusson’s men, clad in oil-smeared overalls, crouched behind the shed with a rifle in his hand. When he turned to look at the newcomers, Frank recognized him as Rattigan, the man who’d been driving the wagon full of drillers he had encountered the previous morning.

  Rattigan swung the rifle barrel toward Frank, crying, “Damn it, Boss, look out! He’s one of them!”

  Magnusson grabbed the Winchester’s barrel and roughly forced it down. “Hold your fire, you idiot! Morgan works for me now!”

  Rattigan’s eyes widened in surprise. He looked like he could barely believe what he had just heard.

  Frank nodded at Rattigan to confirm what Magnusson had said.

  “That’s right, Rattigan,” he told the driller. “We’re on the same side.”

  “Hatch isn’t gonna like that,” Rattigan muttered.

  “I don’t give a damn what Hatch likes,” Magnusson snapped. “What’s going on here?”

  “Those cowboys started shooting at us from the top of the ridge. The bullets just came out of nowhere. They didn’t give us any warning, just opened up on us.”

  “The hell you say!” Magnusson exploded angrily.

  Frank asked, “How do you know they’re ranch hands? Did you get a look at any of them?”

  “How could we get a look at them?” Rattigan replied with a look of withering scorn. “They’re a hundred yards away, in those trees on the ridge. Anyway, we were all too busy ducking bullets and running for cover to stand around gawking at the bastards!”

  “Anybody been hurt so far?” Magnusson asked.

  Rattigan gave him a bleak nod. “I saw a couple of men go down. I don’t know how bad they were hit. Some of the men dragged them behind cover.”

  Frank looked around the cluster of rigs, and saw the two men Rattigan referred to lying behind the base of one of the derricks. They weren’t moving, which didn’t bode well, and even from a distance Frank could see the bright crimson splashes of blood on their work clothes.

  Magnusson jerked his rifle from its saddle sheath and roared, “This is the last straw! We’ll wipe those damned cattlemen out if we have to!”

  “Take it easy,” Frank told him. “Flying off the handle’s not going to help.”

  Magnusson swung toward him with a savage glare. “Whose side are you on, Morgan?” he demanded. “I knew I was a fool to trust you! My sister never should have roped you in on this deal!”

  “I’m on your side, like I told Rattigan,” Frank said, meeting the oilman’s furious expression with a level stare of his own. “But wholesale slaughter’s not going to solve anything.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Magnusson grated. “If we wipe out the Montero punchers, they can’t ever ambush us like this again!”

  That logic was indisputable, but Frank knew it wouldn’t end there. In a war like Magnusson wanted to wage, one side seldom wiped out the other. What usually happened was that the enemies slugged away at each other until both sides were destroyed.

  “Tell your men to hold their fire.”

  “What are you going to do?” Magnusson asked as Frank grasped the saddle horn and swung up onto Goldy’s back.

  “I’m going to circle around, get up on that ridge, and try to put a stop to this fight without anybody else getting hurt,” Frank said.

  Magnusson shook his head. �
��They saw you riding up with me. They won’t hold their fire. They’ll just gun you down like they’re trying to do to us.”

  “They’ll have to hit me first,” Frank said with a humorless smile, “and Goldy and I don’t intend to let that happen.”

  With that, he pulled the stallion around and heeled Goldy into a gallop again. They burst out from behind the shed and thundered back onto the road, heading away from the drilling rigs.

  Frank leaned forward, low in the saddle, as bullets whined spitefully around them, searching for him like blazing messengers of death.

  Chapter 22

  Frank headed back the way he and Magnusson had come. Slugs kicked up dust in the road around Goldy’s flashing hooves.

  None of the shots found either horse or rider. The stallion was moving so fast, it would have taken an extremely accurate shot to bring either of them down.

  Once he was out of rifle range, Frank cut to the west, leaving the road and heading toward the spot where the ridge slanted down to the flatter ground.

  The bushwhackers on the ridge might not see him coming right away because of one of the brushy knobs that jutted up and blocked their view, but they could be looking for him anyway. If they had recognized him, it was unlikely they would assume that the notorious Drifter would just cut and run. They would be expecting him to try something.

  On the other hand, maybe they hadn’t gotten a good enough look at him to realize who he was.

  There was only one way to find out, Frank told himself. He knew he couldn’t ride off and leave the drillers pinned down there to be picked off one by one, no matter how abrasive Victor Magnusson was.

  He circled all the way around the ridge, then dropped off Goldy when he spotted a gully that ran all the way to the top of the slope. Dog crowded close beside him as Frank began making his way up the gully. Goldy would stay close at the bottom, waiting for Frank to either return or summon him with a shrill whistle.

  Frank had his Colt in his hand, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it, at least not to kill. He followed the sound of shots, making his way through the thick brush with a minimum of noise. He had a pantherlike grace about him that enabled him to approach one of the bushwhackers from the rear without even the faintest crackle of branches to warn the man.