Avenger Read online

  “Then why are you here? Notorious gunman like you,” Lowell blustered, “you’ve got to be looking for trouble.”

  Frank’s jaw tightened a little, but he managed to rein in his temper. “Now there’s where you’re wrong, Sheriff. I’m not looking for trouble at all.”

  And that was the truth.

  Frank was looking for justice.

  He didn’t bother explaining that, however. He just sat there calmly as the florid-faced lawman sputtered out several more warnings. This wasn’t the first time some badge-toter had jumped to all the wrong conclusions about him, and if he survived the showdown at Buckskin, it probably wouldn’t be the last.

  “You just remember what I told you, Morgan,” Lowell said as he got to his feet.

  Frank nodded. “Every word of it, Sheriff.”

  The lawman stomped out of the dining room. Some of the hotel’s guests at the other tables were staring at Frank now, wondering what the confrontation with the sheriff had been all about. He smiled and nodded to them, and they looked away.

  Frank wasn’t going to let this encounter spoil his dinner. He ordered deep-dish apple pie for dessert and thoroughly enjoyed it. He washed down the pie with another cup of coffee, and then went upstairs to his room.

  After turning in, he found himself staring up at the ceiling of his hotel room, replaying in his head everything that had happened during the past week or so since the shoot-out at Dutton’s estate.

  He had left Willoughby there, alone with the bodies of the seven dead gunmen. The secretary had promised not to tell the authorities what had happened. He would claim that he had heard a lot of shooting outside the house, but was too afraid to venture out and see what was going on. Frank hadn’t known whether to believe him or not, but short of killing the man in cold blood, there was nothing else he could do—and he wasn’t a murderer and never had been. He’d left the estate, circling around to avoid the fire wagon that was on its way with bells clanging. Smoke from the burning boathouse had continued to climb into the sky.

  When Frank got back to Magnolia Station, he retrieved his war bag and caught one of the trolleys into Boston, knowing that when he got there the police might be waiting to arrest him. That hadn’t happened, though, and after spending the night in a small, rundown hotel in a bad part of town, he bought a newspaper and read the story on the front page about a gun battle in Magnolia, at the summer home of attorney Charles Dutton, who was said to be out of town on business. Dutton’s secretary, Claude Willoughby, had been at the house, but claimed to know nothing about what had happened. Since all the dead men found on the place were criminals known to the Boston police, speculation was that they had killed each other in some sort of falling-out among thieves. Why they had chosen the Dutton estate for their bloody fracas remained a mystery.

  Another mystery was the identity of a man dressed like a cowboy, who had inquired at Magnolia Station as to the whereabouts of the Dutton place not long before all hell broke loose out there. That unknown range rider seemed to have vanished, and whether or not he had any connection with the killings was unknown as well.

  Frank had smiled as he left the newspaper in the lobby of the hotel. Surprisingly, Willoughby had kept his word and not told the police about him. As Dutton’s secretary, Willoughby had to have some knowledge of the crooked lawyer’s crimes. Maybe meeting Frank had stiffened his backbone a little. Maybe he was actually trying to do the right thing.

  All Frank knew for sure was that he was able to get out of Boston before the police came looking for him. As the train pulled out, he bade the city good-bye and good riddance. He had seen enough of the East. He was ready to go home.

  And luckily, that was the direction in which the trail he was following led.

  Although he had kept an eye out for bushwhackers or any other traps laid by Dutton’s agents, no one bothered him as he headed west by rail, and he didn’t run into anything else to divert him from his goal. He didn’t begrudge the time he had spent helping the folks in Elysium or giving Buffalo Bill Cody a hand, but he hoped that nothing else would crop up to sidetrack him.

  It didn’t. He reached Denver without incident, paid a visit to his lawyers there, reclaimed Stormy and Dog from the people who had been taking care of them, and loaded them all on the train bound for Virginia City. From there, he would have to head for Buckskin on horseback.

  Buckskin . . . He hoped that would be the last stop on this long, twisting vengeance trail. With that thought in his mind, he finally dozed off.

  The next morning he hunted up a livery stable and bought a packhorse. The next stop was a general store, where he stocked up on supplies. He figured it would take him at least two days of riding to reach Buckskin.

  Once the supplies were loaded, he mounted up and rode out with Dog trailing behind him. He had no farewells to make before he left. The only person he’d really met in Virginia City was Sheriff Abner Lowell, and he knew the lawman wouldn’t be sorry to see him go. Lowell probably had at least one deputy keeping an eye on him. The sheriff would be relieved when he got the report that the notorious Frank Morgan had left town.

  The peaks of the Sierra Nevadas rose to his right as he rode southeast. The terrain through which he traveled flattened out some and grew more arid, but he could see an offshoot of the mountains rising green and gray in front of him. That was his destination, and even though in this clear air the mountains seemed close enough that he could reach out and touch them, he knew that in reality they were a lot of miles away.

  He made camp that night in a rugged badlands area. Even though the Paiutes and other hostile tribes who had once roamed this area had long since been pacified, out of habit he kept his fire small and put out the flames before full darkness fell. Summer or not, at these high altitudes the nights were chilly, so he rolled in his blankets and went to sleep with Dog curled up beside him and Stormy cropping at the sparse grass nearby. The animals were the best sentries any man could ask for. They would let him know immediately if anybody or anything came skulking around.

  Frank was on the trail again before sunrise the next morning, as soon as there was enough gray light in the sky for him to see where he was going. By midday, he had crossed the Walker River and was climbing into timbered foothills again. His skin tingled and every nerve in his body was vital and alive. Stormy and Dog seemed to feel the same way. It felt so good to be out in the open again that Frank almost wished they could just keep drifting for a while.

  Almost . . . but not quite.

  He couldn’t forget what had brought them here in the first place.

  Dutton was still out there somewhere, and as long as he was alive and free to draw breath, Frank couldn’t abandon his quest.

  Off to the west was the border between Nevada and California, and ahead were the mountains of the Wassuck Range. The old ghost town of Buckskin would be nestled in the folds of those mountains, in a narrow valley bisected by a creek. Frank had memorized the route and all the landmarks on the old topographical map in the assay office, so he had no trouble following the trail. By late afternoon, he knew he was close.

  Willoughby had spoken about an army of gunmen. Frank proceeded carefully, knowing full well that Dutton might have guards posted outside the ghost town to watch for him.

  He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he got there. He supposed that would depend on what he found. He couldn’t just ride in and start shooting. If Dutton had as many hired guns around him as Frank suspected he did, an open, frontal assault would probably just get him killed. Some stealth would probably be required to cut down the odds against him before he made his final attack.

  Frank thought about stories he’d heard concerning the famous gunfighter Smoke Jensen. Smoke had taken on whole towns full of outlaws and killers on numerous occasions, but he had a lot of friends, starting with the rugged old mountain man Preacher and the gambler/gunman Louis Longmont. The ranch hands who worked for Smoke on his Sugarloaf spread were a salty bunch too. Smoke had usual
ly had a dozen or more fast guns siding with him when he went against those long odds.

  Frank, on the other hand, was a loner and always had been. Oh, sure, he had befriended Ranger Tyler Beaumont down in Texas, and he had even mended some fences with his son Conrad and fought at his side on occasion. But by and large, Frank went into battle alone except for Stormy and Dog. This ruckus probably wouldn’t be any different.

  The three of them would just have to be enough, he told himself with a grim smile. But after all these long years of playing a lone hand, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to have friends, to settle down in one place and stay there for a while instead of always being on the move....

  The pleasant speculation conjured up by those thoughts lingered in his mind for a few moments, but then it was cast aside roughly by a sudden flurry of sounds that made Frank lift his head and sit up straighter in the saddle. The rapid slamming of gunshots drifted through the clear mountain air, coming from somewhere up ahead of him. Even though the shots weren’t being directed at him, he could tell by the urgent sound of them that they were serious.

  Somebody was in trouble up there—a whole heap of trouble.

  Chapter 29

  There was a rise in front of him. Frank urged Stormy up the slope at a fast pace, and didn’t rein in until the Appaloosa had reached the top. From there, he could look down into a narrow valley, and the ramshackle buildings that lined a main street and a couple of cross streets told him that he had been closer to Buckskin than he thought he was. That was the old ghost town right down there, no more than half a mile away.

  And about midway between the abandoned settlement and the ridge where Frank sat his horse, a lone rider plunged and careened along the trail, trying desperately to escape from half-a-dozen pursuers who were also on horseback. The guns in their hands spouted flame as they fired at the fugitive.

  Frank had no idea who those people were or what the right and wrong of this situation might be, but he instinctively rebelled at the notion of such long odds. Not only that, but chances were the six gunmen were some of Dutton’s hired killers, and there was that old saying about the enemy of an enemy being a friend....

  He was reaching for his Winchester, intending to spray some lead among those hardcases and maybe give the lone rider a chance to escape, when the fugitive’s mount suddenly lurched, stumbled, and fell. The horse had probably been hit by one of those bullets that were flying around.

  The rider was thrown out of the saddle and sailed through the air, only to hit hard on the trail ahead of the fallen horse and roll over a couple of times. Frank left his rifle where it was. He couldn’t help that poor hombre now. The gunmen were too close.

  Frank caught his breath and stiffened in surprise as he saw that the fugitive’s hat had come off, releasing waves of long blond hair that tumbled around the person’s head. Some Western men, such as Wild Bill Hickok and Commodore Perry Owens and the ill-fated George Armstrong Custer, sported long hair, but Frank didn’t think that was what he was looking at here. That hunch was confirmed when the men who had been giving chase dismounted and yanked the fugitive upright. The plaid shirt worn by the person who had been trying to get away was tight enough to leave no doubt that the fugitive was a woman, and a shapely one at that.

  Frank edged Stormy farther back into the shadows of the trees as he continued watching the scene play out below him. The woman, who appeared to be shaken up a little by her fall but not badly hurt, was marched to the horses and forced to mount and ride double with one of the gunmen. The whole group headed back into Buckskin.

  Frank took a pair of field glasses from his saddlebags and studied the town itself. Most of the buildings seemed to be in a state of disrepair, but only a few had begun to collapse. The rest were still standing, and could have been fixed up if anybody wanted to go to the trouble of doing so. Half a dozen of the cabins looked lived in. Buckskin wasn’t completely a ghost town, he thought. That wasn’t uncommon. Even though the mines had closed down, a few diehards had remained because they liked it here.

  And those poor folks had probably been taken by surprise when Dutton rode in with a score or more of gunmen at his back and took over the place.

  Frank shifted his gaze to the group of riders, who had now reached the settlement with their prisoner. They drew rein in front of the largest business building in town. The batwinged doors hanging in the entrance told Frank it was a saloon, or at least had been one when Buckskin was a thriving community. The batwings were pushed aside as the men dismounted, and the sight of the man who stepped out onto the boardwalk made Frank’s teeth grind together in rage.

  Charles Dutton hadn’t changed a whole lot, Frank thought as he studied the man through the field glasses. Dutton looked a little older and more haggard, probably from worrying—rightly so—that Frank intended to kill him. He was well dressed and wore a brown felt hat. He hooked his thumbs in his vest and watched with a satisfied expression on his face as a couple of the men grabbed hold of the woman’s arms and pushed her onto the boardwalk in front of him.

  Frank couldn’t hear anything that was being said, of course, and he couldn’t see the woman’s face. But he could tell by the stiffness of her spine and the way she struggled against the cruel grip of her captors that she still had plenty of fight in her. Dutton looked angry, and Frank wondered if the woman was giving him a tongue-lashing.

  Dutton turned and motioned to someone inside the saloon. A moment later, an older man was shoved out onto the boardwalk from inside the building. He wore the ragged flannel shirt and patched overalls and battered old hat of a down-on-his-luck prospector. He was a thick-bodied man with a florid face that at the moment wore an expression of fear. Not so much for himself, Frank decided, but for the woman. Given their ages, Frank wondered if she was the man’s daughter or granddaughter.

  Dutton spoke rapidly to the older man and gestured toward the woman. The older man shook his head. Dutton made a sharp motion to the men holding the woman. They pushed her toward the older man, who took her in his arms and hugged her, obviously relieved. He turned and led her into the saloon with an arm around her shoulders.

  Dutton seemed to be satisfied. He nodded to the men who had captured the woman, and they walked off leading their horses. When Frank saw them go into a barn, he knew they were going to unsaddle and put the horses up. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the six men emerged from the barn and walked back toward the saloon. Frank’s gaze lingered on each of their faces in turn as he committed them to memory.

  Two of those faces he recognized. They belonged to Carl Dekker and Roy Hansen. They were hired guns and occasional outlaws who would do just about anything as long as they were being well paid. Just the sort of men that Dutton would hire to do his dirty work. They were scum—but dangerous scum. Frank had no doubt the other men were the same sort of no-account hombres.

  He finally lowered the field glasses, confident that he hadn’t been spotted. As he tucked them away in the saddlebags, he thought about how he could have taken out his Winchester and tried a long-range shot at Dutton. It would have been too risky, though, especially with the young woman and the old prospector standing right there. At that distance, being off even a fraction of an inch in his aim could mean that the bullet would be several feet off its mark. Too dangerous when there were innocents possibly in the line of fire.

  He had to find out as much as he could about the situation in Buckskin before he took action. He needed to know how many men Dutton had and where they were located. Likewise, he needed to know how many innocent people were left in the ghost town and where they were. From the looks of what he had seen so far, Dutton and his men had taken the citizens prisoner when they rode in. The blonde had gotten her hands on a horse somehow and tried to get away, but her escape attempt had failed. Frank knew that Dutton wouldn’t hesitate to use all the captives as hostages, or even as human shields if need be.

  He glanced at the sky. The sun was lowering rapidly toward the peak
s. It would be dark before much longer.

  And once night had fallen, Frank decided, it would be time for him to slip into Buckskin and see what he could find out.

  He had brought some jerky with him in the supplies he’d purchased in Virginia City, and as the sun dipped below the mountains and its red glow began to disappear from the sky, he found a good place to leave Stormy and sat down on a fallen tree to gnaw on a strip of the tough dried meat. He washed it down with water from his canteen and watched the thick shadows of evening form.

  When he thought it was dark enough, Frank took off his boots and pulled on a pair of soft, high-topped moccasins that would let him get around without making as much noise. He took a sheathed bowie knife from his saddlebags and attached it to his belt on the left side. Patting Stormy on the shoulder, he murmured, “Stay here, big fella. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Then, with the big cur trailing him and the Winchester in his hand, he set off toward Buckskin, taking his time and covering the half mile or so in about twenty minutes. Once along the way, a low growl from Dog alerted him, and they both froze where they were while a man on horseback rode past some fifty yards away from them. He had no idea they were there. The moon wasn’t up yet, but enough stars had appeared in the sable sky above for Frank to be able to make out the rifle the man carried. One of the guards Dutton had posted, sure as shootin’.

  Once the sentry had moved on, Frank and Dog resumed their approach to the ghost town. As they drew closer, Frank heard music drifting through the night. From the rinky-tink sound of it, the player piano inside the saloon still worked despite its age.

  The windows of the saloon were brightly lit, as if every lamp in the place were burning. Only a few of the other buildings showed any lights, though, and the cabins Frank had noticed earlier that had looked like they were occupied were among the darkened ones. Frank wondered if Dutton’s gunmen had rounded up everybody who still lived in Buckskin and brought them to the saloon, where it would be easier to keep track of all of them. That seemed possible, even likely. And some of the hired killers were scattered around the settlement so that if Frank showed up, they would have a variety of angles from which to try to kill him. Dutton was approaching this like a military mission, and he had turned Buckskin into a fortress.