Slaughter Read online

  Frank’s revolver came up and roared twice as he attempted the almost impossible feat of shooting the torch out of the air, hoping that if he could hit it, his bullets would knock it clear of the tank.

  That was too much to hope for, even for a phenomenal Coltman like The Drifter.

  The torch dropped out of sight behind the circular wooden walls of the tank.

  And the world exploded.

  Chapter 26

  That’s what it seemed like to Frank anyway as a huge ball of fire erupted where the storage tank had been an instant earlier and the concussive roar of the explosion slammed into him, knocking him off his feet.

  He rolled over and snatched his hat from the ground where it had fallen. As he surged to his feet, he flung up his arm to shield his face as much as he could from the terrible heat of the fire.

  That heat pounded at him like a fiery fist. As he staggered away from the searing assault, Frank looked around for Magnusson. He spotted the oilman lying huddled on the ground a few yards away.

  Frank clapped his hat on and hurried over to Magnusson’s side. He realized that he still clutched his Colt in his right hand. The gun wouldn’t do any good against the roaring fire, so he holstered it.

  Then he bent and got both hands under Magnusson’s arms. With a grunt of effort—Magnusson was a big man after all—Frank hauled him to his feet.

  Magnusson shook his head groggily, the first sign Frank had seen that the man was even still alive. He would have fallen, though, without Frank’s strong grip holding him up.

  Frank put his mouth close to Magnusson’s ear and shouted, “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  He knew that’s what he was saying, but he couldn’t hear the words even though he was the one who spoke them. He was deaf, he realized, and the roaring he heard wasn’t from the fire. It was inside his own head.

  Gripping Magnusson’s shoulders, he shook the oilman. Magnusson’s eyes began to focus again. He stood straighter, and Frank let go of him.

  The explosion had probably deafened Magnusson, too. Frank gestured instead of yelling, indicating with his hands that they needed to get away from the blazing storage tank.

  The tank wasn’t the only thing that was on fire, Frank saw as he glanced around. Burning oil had been thrown all over the area by the blast. The sheds were burning, and so was one of the derricks.

  That well went up suddenly with a huge, whooshing explosion. Frank felt it more than heard it, a massive thump that shook the ground under his feet and staggered him and Magnusson. A column of flame a hundred feet high shot into the air, followed by billowing clouds of black smoke.

  The smoke rolled across the ground, choking the men who were caught in it. Frank gripped Magnusson’s arm and stumbled blindly forward. The smoke would kill them if they didn’t get clear of it.

  But they also ran the risk of getting caught in the rapidly spreading flames. The other oil wells were liable to explode at any minute, too. The odds of anyone coming out of this holocaust alive kept climbing.

  Added to that was the fact that the hardcases who had attacked the wells in the first place were still shooting into the conflagration. Frank couldn’t see the muzzle flashes because of the smoke, or hear the blasts because he was still deaf from the explosion, but a couple of times he felt the lash of a slug through the air near his head.

  He and Magnusson abruptly burst out into a clearing in the smoke that had been formed as the billowing clouds eddied around. Frank’s eyes were stinging and watering so much, he still couldn’t see very well. He blinked and looked around as best he could.

  The sky was a bizarre orange-red dome lit by the hellish blaze. Frank spotted a couple of men on horseback galloping toward him and Magnusson. More flame spurted from the muzzles of their guns as they opened fire.

  With that glare surrounding them and the smell of burning brimstone thick in the air, Frank thought for an instant that he and Magnusson must have already died and landed in Hell. Those gunmen were two of Satan’s imps, trying to ride them down on devil horses.

  But then he came back to reality as that awful moment passed. Those men weren’t demons. They were just cold-blooded, hired killers. He dealt with them the way he always dealt with varmints like that.

  He brought his Colt up and blew the sons of bitches out of their saddles.

  The heavy revolver roared twice, and both of the gunmen flew backward as if slapped from their horses by a giant hand. That emptied Frank’s gun, though, and there was no time now to reload.

  “Come on!” he shouted at Magnusson, and he was surprised to realize that he actually heard the words this time, though they were still faint.

  He lunged toward the horses the killers had been riding and grabbed the dangling reins of one of them. Hauling the spooked animal’s head down, Frank brought it under control and then shoved the reins into Magnusson’s hands.

  “Go! Get out of here!”

  Magnusson’s hearing had to be coming back, too, because he responded, “What about my men?”

  “There’s nothing you can do for them now! They’ll either make it out or they won’t!”

  Frank didn’t like having to take that fatalistic attitude, but the same thing could be said of him and Magnusson. Their fate was, to a large extent, out of their hands.

  Magnusson hesitated, but only for a second. He grabbed the horn and swung up into the saddle. He waited, though, until Frank had caught the other horse’s reins before he spurred away through the smoke.

  Frank was right behind him, thundering through the black, choking clouds. The heat in the air seemed to sear his nose and throat and lungs. He bend forward over the horse’s neck and held his hat down with one hand as he rode.

  It would have been nice to be able to see what he was riding into, but that was impossible. The smoke had closed in again, and Frank was as blind as if someone had wrapped a thick woolen blanket around his head. Just about as hot and half suffocated, too.

  Another massive explosion came from somewhere behind him. That would be the third well detonating, he thought. This oil field of Magnusson’s was ruined.

  There was no telling how long the wells would continue to burn either. Frank had no idea how anybody would even go about extinguishing such a terrible blaze.

  Suddenly, he emerged from the smoke again. Blessedly clear air filled his lungs. He looked around for Magnusson or some of the drillers, eager to see if anyone else had escaped.

  Instead of the oilman, Frank saw a group of riders about twenty yards away. They appeared to have been sitting there watching the towering columns of flame shoot up from the burning wells. They spotted Frank and hauled their mounts around to charge toward him.

  His Colt was empty, but he saw the butt of a Winchester sticking up from a saddle boot strapped to the horse he had “borrowed” from one of the dead outlaws. He grabbed the rifle and jerked it from the boot.

  Of course, he had no way of knowing whether or not it was loaded, he told himself as he brought the weapon up. He worked the lever, aimed at the hardcases attacking him, and squeezed the trigger.

  With a welcome whipcrack of sound, the Winchester bucked against his shoulder. One of the gunmen slewed halfway around in his saddle and then slipped off his horse’s back completely, crashing to the ground.

  Even before that man hit the dirt, Frank had cranked another round into the rifle’s firing chamber—at least he hoped that he had—and drew another bead. The Winchester blasted again. A second man fell, drilled by the steel-jacketed bullet.

  That was enough for the gunmen. They peeled away, obviously unwilling to face any more of the deadly accurate fire from the rifle Frank had appropriated.

  That was a stroke of luck, because when Frank tried to send a round after them to hurry them on their way, the Winchester’s hammer clicked on empty.

  He jammed the rifle back in the saddle boot and reached to the loops on his shell belt for fresh cartridges, which he quickly thumbed into the Colt’s cylinder. When
he had a full wheel, he holstered the gun and started looking for Magnusson again.

  His ears were still ringing a little, but most of his hearing had come back. The sound of racking coughs led Frank to the oilman.

  He found Magnusson in some trees across the road from where the wells had been. Magnusson lifted the reins and started to pull his horse away until Frank called, “Hold on, Magnusson! It’s me, Morgan!”

  “Morgan! You made it out of that hell alive?”

  “Appears so,” Frank said as he brought the outlaw’s horse to a stop next to Magnusson’s mount. “Are you hurt?”

  Magnusson shook his head. “I’ll be coughing up smoke for a month,” he said in a hoarse voice, “but that’s all. We’re both damned lucky.” He laughed humorlessly. “If you can call it lucky to have thousands of dollars worth of oil go up in smoke.”

  “You’re still drawing breath, even if it hurts,” Frank pointed out. “I’d call that lucky, considering.”

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  “Have you seen any more of those gunmen around?”

  “No, but I heard some shooting a minute ago. Was that you?”

  “I ran into a few of them right after I got out of the smoke and swapped a little lead with them. They lit a shuck after I dropped a couple of them.”

  “I wish you’d killed all the bastards!” Magnusson said with savage anger in his voice. “They may not have ruined me tonight, but they’ve come damned close!” He glared over at Frank. “Are you sure that bunch from the Montero ranch didn’t have anything to do with this?”

  “Positive,” Frank said, but he didn’t go into any details about how he had followed the gang here from their hideout in the San Gabriel Mountains, on the other side of the valley.

  “Well, I’m sure Dolores Montero will be glad to hear about what’s happened tonight anyway, whether it was her doing or not.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. She just wants to be left alone to keep the ranch running the way her husband intended.”

  Magnusson shook his head. “She’s not gonna be able to do that. Everybody knows there’s oil down there now. If I’m not the one who goes and gets it, somebody else will.”

  Frank sighed. He knew that Magnusson was right. The same thing had happened here in California back in ’49. Frank was a little too young to remember it firsthand, but he had talked to older men who’d joined the steady stream of Argonauts going west in search of gold.

  The same thing had happened up in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory in ’76 when gold was discovered there. Frank had been in the roaring boomtown of Deadwood, even though he’d had no real interest in prospecting. That just seemed to be where folks went back in those days.

  And now it was happening all over again here in southern California, only it was black gold now that everyone sought. They didn’t go after it with picks and shovels, but rather with drills and engines. Bubbling up from the ground it came, bringing with it the power to make men millionaires . . . or paupers if their luck was bad.

  But either way, the search would go on. Magnusson was right about that.

  It didn’t have to be accompanied by violence, though. Magnusson and Dolores Montero would work out some sort of arrangement that would be tolerable to both of them, if Frank had to sit them down at a table at gunpoint and force them to negotiate.

  That would have to come later, though. Right now, he still had to find out who was really behind the trouble that had culminated tonight in those massive explosions.

  But the first step was to see if there were any survivors besides him and Magnusson.

  The smoke was beginning to clear somewhat, although the flames still leaped high above the destroyed wells and storage tank. Frank couldn’t even see the sheds anymore; they had burned to the ground.

  All three derricks still stood, although they were aflame. As Frank and Magnusson watched, one of them collapsed in a shower of burning beams, sending a renewed burst of flames and sparks high in the air. The other two derricks followed suit a moment later, prompting Magnusson to shake his head sadly.

  “Mr. Magnusson! Mr. Magnusson!”

  The shouts came from the left. Frank and Magnusson turned their horses in that direction and saw half a dozen men hurrying toward them. A couple of the men limped, and one had to be helped along by his companions.

  Frank recognized Rattigan as the men came up. He was glad to see that some of the drillers had made it out of that inferno.

  “Rattigan,” Magnusson said in a choked voice, “are you the only ones left?”

  “As far as we know, Mr. Magnusson. I . . . I don’t reckon the other fellas made it.”

  “God!” Magnusson burst out. “Seven men dead, and that doesn’t even count the ones who were killed earlier! Somebody’s going to pay for this!”

  “You can bet a hat on it, Magnusson,” Frank said.

  The oilman turned toward him. “Five thousand dollars if you kill the man responsible for this, Morgan!”

  “You don’t have to put a bounty on his head. I’ll see to it that justice catches up to him anyway.”

  “Well, just remember what I said, if it means anything to you.”

  It didn’t, but Frank didn’t bother arguing with the man. Instead, he just jerked his head in a curt nod, then hipped around in the saddle as he heard the swift rataplan of approaching hoofbeats.

  Magnusson heard them, too. “Are they coming back to try to wipe us out for good?” he asked tensely.

  “Don’t know,” Frank said as he drew his gun, “but I reckon we’ll find out in a minute or two.”

  Chapter 27

  Magnusson and the surviving drillers had lost their weapons in their flight from the huge fire, so they were unarmed. Frank had six bullets in the Colt and a few more in the loops on his belt.

  That wasn’t much with which to hold off a gang of killers . . . but Frank intended to do the best he could.

  Instead, as a group of a dozen riders came into view moving fast up the road toward the wells, he recognized Pete Linderman in the lead. The Salida del Sol foreman was backed by some of the Montero punchers.

  The newcomers were bristling with guns, so they looked plenty threatening, but as Linderman spotted Frank, Magnusson, and the drillers, he held up a hand to slow his companions. They jogged on up to the group that had escaped from the fire and reined in.

  “Good Lord!” Linderman exclaimed. “Even from the ranch house, it looked like the whole world was on fire over here, and that’s just about right! I never saw such a thing in all my life. I’d just as soon never see it again.”

  “You and me both, Linderman,” Magnusson said with a scowl. “You and me both.”

  “What did you do, accidentally set the whole shebang ablaze?”

  Frank said, “There was nothing accidental about it. The hombres who bushwhacked both sides earlier today came back and did this.”

  “We thought we heard some shootin’ before all hell broke loose.”

  “They were trying to wipe me out,” Magnusson said, “but they’ll find out that I don’t give up so easy!”

  Linderman grunted. “Reckon I can vouch for that.”

  Magnusson glared at him, but Linderman ignored the oilman as he turned to Frank.

  “Are you hurt, Morgan?”

  Frank shook his head and said, “Just a little ringing in my ears from the explosions, that’s all. But Magnusson lost another seven men, looks like.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Magnusson, why don’t you and your men come on back to the ranch with us? You can get cleaned up and patch up your wounded.”

  “I don’t think so,” Magnusson snapped. “Morgan’s convinced that Señora Montero didn’t have anything to do with this, but I’m not so sure.”

  Linderman stiffened in his saddle, and for a second Frank thought the foreman was going to slap leather over that not-so-veiled insult to the lady.

  But then Linderman forced himself to relax with a visible effort
and said, “Go ahead and be a damned fool if you want to, mister. That’s up to you. We were just tryin’ to help.”

  “How about if you send a wagon over here?” Frank suggested. “That way Magnusson’s men can get back to town.”

  Linderman considered the idea for a moment, then nodded. “I reckon we can do that.”

  “I’m obliged to you for any help you can give us,” Magnusson said gruffly. Obviously, the idea of being in debt to Dolores Montero didn’t sit well with him, but he had to do whatever he could for his men.

  Linderman sent a couple of the cowboys back to the ranch headquarters to fetch the wagon, then turned to Frank and asked, “Did you manage to account for any of the varmints who did this?”

  “We downed some of them,” Frank said with a nod. “Let’s have a look around and see if we can find any of the bodies.”

  Magnusson rode with them. The rest of the ranch hands and the surviving drillers stayed where they were, eyeing each other warily. None of them were ready to completely trust their former enemies.

  Frank headed for the spot where he had shot two men out of the saddle. He was sure that both hombres had been either dead or badly wounded. They hadn’t gotten up and walked off on their own.

  But they were gone nonetheless.

  “The rest of the bunch took the bodies with them,” Frank said. “They’re being mighty careful. They must be under orders not to leave anything behind that might let them be traced back to the man who hired them.”

  Linderman thumbed his hat back. “Who do you reckon that might be, Morgan?” He glanced at the oilman. “We’ve spent so long thinkin’ it was Magnusson here who was puttin’ the burrs under our saddle, it’s hard to figure on anybody else bein’ to blame.”

  “Well, you know better now,” Magnusson snapped. “If you’re not responsible for this . . . this devastation”—and he wearily waved a hand toward the still-burning wells—“then it’s obvious that there’s a third party involved.”