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  “Feel like doing it now?”

  “Naw, I’ll wait.”

  “Until my back is turned?”

  “Goddamn you, Morgan. I ain’t no coward.”

  Frank cut his eyes to Till. “You boys looking to avenge the death of Hayden?”

  “He was a pal.”

  “He was a loudmouth trouble-hunter, Till. And you know it.”

  “He was still a pal.”

  “Ride on, Till. All of you. Leave me be. I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “I’m gonna ride on, Morgan,” Mack said. “After I kill you.”

  “Shut up, Mack,” Todd Crow told him.

  “You shut up, Crow. I aim to kill Morgan.”

  “You’re a fool,” Till told him.

  “Oh, yeah?” Mack yelled. “Well, watch this!” He grabbed for his pistol.

  Frank shot him. At this range, the .44-40 slug blew a hole in Mack’s chest about the size of a silver dollar and knocked him backward out of the saddle. Mack was dead before he hit the ground.

  Till looked at his dead former riding pard. “He’s got kin, Morgan. The Bookbinder brothers was Mack’s cousins.”

  “And you think they’ll come looking for me?”

  “I know they will. All three of ’em. Jules, Kenny, and Al.”

  “You boys bury your pal and then turn around and head the other way. Don’t follow me. If I find you on my back trail, and I’ll be checking often, I’ll lay up and wait for you and I’ll kill you. All of you.”

  “Oh, we got time, Morgan,” Boyd said. “Nothin’ but time. We’ll be a-seein’ you. Bet on that.”

  “Dismount and take off your gun belts, hook them on the saddle horns, and then start digging,” Frank told them. “I’ll just be on my way. Don’t dog my trail, boys. I mean it.”

  When they’d dismounted and had their gun belts hanging on the saddle horns, Till Brackman looked up at Frank. “You don’t have to worry about me back-shootin’ you, Morgan. When I kill you, it’ll be face-to-face.”

  Frank climbed down from the rocks and walked over to his horses. He rode back to the stage road and looked at Till and Boyd as they dragged Mack’s body off the road. Todd had gotten a shovel from their packhorse and was digging a hole a few yards off the road.

  “You boys bury him deep now,” Frank called. “You wouldn’t want the critters to dig him up and eat him now, would you?”

  “Go to hell, Morgan,” Todd called back.

  Frank put his back to the three gun slicks and turned Stormy’s nose toward Prescott.

  * * *

  Frank’s ride to Prescott was uneventful after the confrontation on the stage road. He stabled his horses, got Dog a sack full of scraps from a café, and then got a room in a hotel. After a bath and a change into clean clothes, Frank stepped out onto the boardwalk.

  Two men stepped up to stand beside him, one on either side. “There’s another man right behind you, Morgan,” one said. “Just stand easy.”

  “All right,” Frank replied. “What’s on your mind and who are you?”

  “We’re deputies, Morgan. And preventing trouble is on our mind.”

  “I’m not here to cause any trouble.”

  “We only have your word for that.”

  “My word’s been good enough for many years, boys. If there is any trouble, I won’t be the one who starts it. You mind if I roll me a smoke?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Cigarette lit, Frank asked, “Why the concern about trouble?”

  “You got people looking for you, Morgan. We heard about the trouble on the stage road.”

  “Stagecoach driver spread the word?”

  “That’s right. Till Brackman and the Crow Brothers was nightin’ at a way station.”

  “What’d they say about it?”

  “Just that you killed a pard of theirs.”

  “That pard was a man named Mack. He pulled on me after I took exception to the four of them doggin’ my trail.”

  “The sheriff figured it might have been something like that. But he couldn’t figure why the other three didn’t buy into it and drag iron.”

  “Maybe they figured it wasn’t a good day to die.”

  The deputy chuckled and relaxed. “That would sure be a good reason, I reckon.”

  “I killed Ray Hayden after he braced me in Wickenburg. Till and the others were friends of his.”

  “I don’t know much about the Crow Brothers,” the deputy said. “But Till Brackman is a sure-’nuff bad one.”

  “He’s quick and he’s mean, for a fact. But I don’t think he’ll show up here in Prescott while I’m here.”

  “If he does?”

  “Then I reckon there’ll be trouble.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Thanks.”

  The three lawmen walked away.

  “Starting out to be a very interesting trip,” Frank muttered.

  Four

  “I’m headin’ north in a few days,” the man said to Frank over a beer. “But I’m told some renegade Indians are raiding north of here. Looking for some men to ride along with.”

  “I’m heading north in a day or two,” Frank told him. “Little settlement called Flagstaff. ’Bout ninety miles from here, so I’m told.”

  “Any particular reason for headin’ that way?”

  “I was going due east, over the Muggyown Rim. But that can get kind of rough. I changed my mind.”

  “Want to ride along with us?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  The man smiled and stuck out his hand. “I’m Jack Barnes. Got my wife and kids with me. My woman’s a good cook. You won’t go hungry.”

  “Now I know you got a deal.”

  “We plan to pull out day after tomorrow, at dawn. All right with you?”

  “That’s fine. How many others do you have lined up?”

  “Two other families. We’re all in wagons. You sure we won’t slow you down, put you off schedule?”

  Frank smiled at that. “I’m sure. I’m on no schedule. But are you sure you want me to ride along with you?”

  Jack grinned. “Why not? Are you a wanted man?”

  “I’m Frank Morgan.”

  The smile on Jack’s face slowly vanished. He blinked a couple of times. “The Frank Morgan? The gunfighter?”

  “I reckon so.”

  Slowly, the smile returned to the man’s face. “My girls will be thrilled, Mr. Morgan. And so will my wife.”

  “Drop the mister, Jack. It’s Frank.”

  “All right . . . Frank. Done. We’re camped just outside of town. On the north side. We’d be proud to have you for supper. Can you make it?”

  “I’ll be there, Jack. Thanks.”

  “I’ll see you about five then. Golly, I can’t wait to tell the others. See you later, Mr. . . . ah, Frank.”

  “See you then, Jack.”

  As he watched the man walk out of the saloon, Frank thought: People are moving all over the country, looking for... what? Jack Barnes’s clothing was not worn or patched or dirty, and he did not speak as an uneducated man. So what was he looking for in life, for himself and his family? For that matter, Frank thought with a silent sour note, what the hell am I looking for?

  * * *

  Julie Barnes was a very attractive woman, in her mid-thirties, Frank guessed. Their two daughters were Rebecca and Susan. Rebecca (Becky as she preferred to be called) was sixteen, Susan had just turned fourteen.

  Frank couldn’t keep up with all the other kids’ names, but the adults were Roland and Joan Sutton and Dick and Ruby Carter. Between them, they had six kids, two boys, four girls. Frank figured that eventually he’d get all the kids’ names straightened out. Maybe by the time they reached Flagstaff.

  Supper was a feast for Frank. Julie had fixed some really good homemade stew and lots of it, with fresh-baked apple pie for dessert. Lots of fresh-baked bread and plenty of good coffee. Joan Sutton fried some chicken and boiled some potatoes and fixed up some li
p-smackin’-good gravy. Ruby cooked up a mess of vegetables and fixed some rice puddin’. The kids all made a big fuss over Dog, and hand-fed him until he was so full he could hardly walk.

  “Pig,” Frank whispered to him.

  Dog showed him his teeth.

  The boys all wanted to see Frank’s Peacemaker, but Frank could tell that Joan Sutton didn’t much cotton to that idea, and he told the boys maybe later on up the trail.

  “My wife is a very devout Christian woman, Mr. Morgan,” Roland told him. “She doesn’t like guns.”

  “Do you have any weapons?”

  “Oh, yes. I told Joan before we got married that God, guts, and guns were the backbone of this nation and it was our right and duty to have guns. She didn’t like it, but she said no more about it.”

  “This is mean country to be unarmed.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Dick Carter played the guitar and Ruby had a pleasant voice, and they entertained the gathering for a time after supper.

  Frank learned that all three families had originally settled close to each other down near the border, but both Mexican and Anglo bandits and rampaging Indians had finally convinced them to pull up stakes and head north.

  “We’re all of us plannin’ on doin’ some ranchin’ and farmin’ over near Santa Fe,” Dick told Frank. “We got us some capital and maybe we can make a go of it. How ’bout you, Frank?”

  “I’m looking to buy some land over in that direction myself. Might turn out that we’ll be neighbors.”

  “Hey, now,” Jack said. “That would be great.”

  Yes, it would, Frank thought. A home of my own, with good neighbors living close by.

  That’s a nice thing to dream about, for a fact.

  “You never can tell,” Frank said. “Well, thanks for the fine meal and the good company. I’ll see you folks day after tomorrow and we’ll hit the trail.”

  “Good night, Mr. Morgan,” the kids chimed.

  Frank smiled at them.

  * * *

  The outlaws hit them just north of the Big Chino Wash, about halfway between Prescott and the main stage road that ran east and west. The small wagon train rounded a curve in the road, and the morning’s quiet was shattered by gunfire from a half-dozen locations among the rocks along both sides of the road. Frank saw Roland Sutton take a round in the center of his forehead that blew out the back of his head. The man toppled backward into the covered bed of the wagon. His wife began screaming in shock and panic.

  Dick Carter managed to get his pistol from leather before a bullet cut him down. The kids were screaming and yelling, and that was the last thing Frank remembered before a white-hot pain touched the side of his head and dropped him into darkness.

  Frank awoke to a terrible pain in his head; a deep throbbing that surged through him with every beat of his heart. He tasted dirt in his mouth and opened his eyes. He was lying facedown by the side of the road. He slowly and very carefully turned his head. He looked square into the eyes of Dog, sitting a few feet away, looking at him.

  “Hello, boy,” Frank managed to whisper. “What the hell happened here?”

  Dog came to him and licked his face.

  Then Frank remembered the attack.

  He lay very still for a few more moments, and then, with what seemed to be a tremendous effort on his part, managed to crawl to his knees. He groaned as his world swayed and shifted all around him. He closed his eyes and waited for a few moments before opening them again. The landscape had settled down.

  Frank was thirsty to the bone, his mouth cotton-dry. He tried to spit, and could not muster up enough saliva to even do that. He slowly rose to his feet and stood there for a moment, swaying like a drunk man as his world moved all around him. When everything stopped shifting, Frank took a closer look around him. About a hundred yards away he spotted one lone team and wagon sitting in the road. He heard a snicker, and looked around as Stormy and the packhorse came out of the rocks and walked up to him. He dropped his hand to his gun butt. It was still in his holster. He searched but he couldn’t find his hat.

  “Damn,” Frank said. “That was a new hat too.” Then Frank remembered the women and the kids. “Oh, God!” he muttered.

  He picked up the lead rope to the packhorse and managed to get into the saddle. He rode up to the wagon and looked inside. It was empty of everything except the body of Roland Sutton. The outlaws must have taken the contents and distributed the goods among the other two wagons. But where were the others? He didn’t like to think about what might have happened to the women and the girls. He felt pretty sure he knew. Staying in the saddle, he circled the wagon and located his hat, off the road a few yards. He dismounted and got his hat and tried to put it on. It wouldn’t fit over the lump and the cut on his head. Frank got his canteen and had a long drink, then got back into the saddle and hung his hat on the saddle horn.

  He began searching for any survivors of the attack, working in a circle all around the road. It didn’t take him long to find the body of Jack Barnes. The man had been shot several times, but had managed to crawl off the road and into the rocks; there he had died. Frank could find no sign of Julie or the girls.

  Another five minutes of searching on the other side of the road and he found Dick Carter, shot to bloody rags. A few yards away he found the naked body of Ruby Carter. She had been raped and then killed. No sign of the Carter children.

  The remaining two women, the six girls and the two boys, had been taken alive and carried off. Frank pulled the wagon off the road and unhitched the team. He then began burying the bodies. It was slow work, for his head was hurting really badly. He stopped often to rest, but eventually got the job done. Then Frank built a fire and made himself a pot of coffee. He sat down on the ground to think things out as best he could.

  While the coffee was making, Frank rolled a cigarette and carefully bathed the side of his head with a wet cloth. He felt some better after doing that. Then two cups of hot strong coffee and another cigarette made him feel even better and he could think straighter.

  There wasn’t a doubt in his mind but that the women had been taken by some members of one of the Val Dooley gangs. He’d heard back in Prescott that the gangs were working all over two states. And he’d also heard that the combined gangs numbered close to two hundred and included Mexicans, Anglos, renegade Indians from half a dozen different tribes, and also Comancheros.

  “Hell of a volatile mixture,” Frank muttered, sitting by the fire and pouring himself another cup of coffee. He looked up as he felt the pounding of many hooves slightly tremble on the ground beneath him.

  A dozen or more riders reined up. As they spotted him, Frank lifted both hands to show them he meant no harm.

  “That’s Frank Morgan!” he heard one man yell.

  “Morgan,” a man with a star on his chest said as he rode over and dismounted, “I’m the sheriff of this county. You seen any large numbers of men ride through here?” Before Frank could reply, the sheriff squinted his eyes and exclaimed, “What the hell happened to your head?”

  Briefly, Frank explained, ending by pointing and saying, “The men and the woman are buried over yonder. I reckon the outlaws took the other women and the kids.”

  “You think it’s some of Dooley’s bunch?”

  “I do.”

  The sheriff yelled for his men to check out the graves and carefully mark their locations on a county map, then turned back to Frank. “You need a doctor, Frank?”

  “No. Thank God, I’ve got a hard head. I reckon they saw all the blood and figured I was dead.”

  “Feel up to giving me a description of the women and the kids? I’ll get it out over the wires immediately.”

  “Sure. While I write them out, why not pull up a piece of ground and have a cup of coffee?”

  “Sounds good to me. I’m butt-sore from hours in the saddle. And I’m gettin’ too damn old for all this.”

  “It’s only going to get worse until Dooley is dead.”r />
  The sheriff paused in his pouring of coffee and eyed Frank. “You have that job in mind, Morgan?”

  Frank’s smile was thin. “You bet I do, Sheriff. I damn sure do.”

  Five

  The sheriff and his posse rode on, and Frank put out the fire and stowed his coffeepot. He mounted up and began riding in a slow circle all around the ambush site, trying to make some sense out of all the hundreds of hoofprints. The gang that had hit the small wagon train must have numbered about thirty, Frank concluded after sorting out many of the tracks. And they had split up into three groups. One group of eight or ten had headed south. Another group of about the same size had headed west. The final group, which included the stolen wagons and the hostages, had left the road a few miles from the ambush site and headed northeast, straight for some rough country. Frank followed the third group, knowing they would have to abandon the wagons before long. The country would be too rough to get a wagon through, unless someone had cut a road that Frank knew nothing about . . . which was entirely possible, for he had not been in this area in quite a while.

  An hour later Frank came upon an abandoned wagon and team. The gang had left the horses still hitched up. “Bastards,” Frank muttered, dismounting and setting the team free to search for food and water. He knew that somebody would come along and claim the animals for themselves, for they were good stock.

  “So they had hidden horses here,” Frank said to the blue and cloudless sky. “Now I wonder if they knew how many women were going to be in the wagons.”

  Probably, he silently concluded. That meant they had to have spies reporting to them, and if they had eyes and ears in one town, they probably had them in others.

  “Hell of an operation,” Frank said. “I guess the rumors were true.”

  He looked up into the sky; still a few more hours of daylight left. But he didn’t want to ride into an ambush. He would follow the trail for another hour and try to pick up any shoe marks or stride that would help identify the horse later on. Then he would make camp for the night.

  He still didn’t know, and probably never would know, why his horses and gear had not been taken by the outlaws. He could only guess that when he was hit and knocked out of the saddle, his horses bolted for the rocks. Dog would have taken off with them, and Dog had probably kept them in the rocks until the outlaws were gone. Dog was more than a pet and a watchdog. He was a survivor, first, last, and always.