The Morgans Read online

  Of course, without looking into things, he had no way of knowing if what Antonia Escobar said in her letter was true. But Frank had figured that drifting toward Tucson was as good a direction as any, so he had bought some supplies and headed out.

  Now he told Pete McRoberts, “I’m supposed to meet somebody at the hotel, but I don’t know if anything will come of it.”

  “Well, I hope you don’t wind up shootin’ up the town. That’d be bad for business. Tucson’s civilized these days, don’t you know. O’ course, you get outta town and things is just about as wild as they ever was. You heard about that fella Diego Ramirez who’s runnin’ high, wide, and handsome down along the border?”

  “Can’t say as I have,” Frank replied with a shake of his head.

  “He started out claimin’ to be a revolutionary and sayin’ that he wanted to replace ol’ Presidente Díaz, but you know as well as I do what that really means. He’s just a durned ol’ bandido. The Rurales done run him outta Mexico, so he’s been raisin’ hell on this side of the border, just like in the old days.”

  “I’ve been over in Texas, and I didn’t hear anything about this fella there. I guess every place has its own troubles.”

  “Truer words were never spoke,” the old-timer agreed solemnly.

  Frank left the livery stable and followed the directions McRoberts had given him. A few minutes later, he saw a large building on the left side of the street that matched the liveryman’s description, three stories tall, made of adobe and thick wooden beams, with a slate roof. The architecture was Mexican, and an ornately painted sign on the side of the building identified it as the Plaza del Sol Hotel, as if Frank had had any doubts.

  He crossed a wide, shady veranda to a pair of heavy wooden doors. People were coming and going, but Frank wasn’t the sort of man who blended easily into a crowd. He felt eyes on him as he walked into the big lobby. The building’s thick adobe walls made it cool in here, and that felt good after the heat of the sun.

  Stopping in front of the counter where people checked in and out of the hotel, Frank waited until the clerk looked up at him and then said, “I’m looking for Señorita Antonia Escobar.”

  “You were supposed to meet the lady here, sir?”

  “That’s right, but not at any set time because I didn’t know for sure when I’d arrive. If you could send a message up to her room . . .”

  “That’s not necessary. I saw Miss Escobar go into the salon a few minutes ago.” The clerk pointed across the lobby toward the arched entrance into another room. “I believe she takes tea in there every afternoon about this time.”

  Tea. Well, that was all right with Frank. He preferred coffee, but a cup of tea now and then was fine. He nodded to the clerk, said, “Obliged,” and started to turn away.

  “Did you wish to rent a room, sir?” the clerk called after him.

  Frank looked back over his shoulder and said, “Don’t know yet. Probably won’t know until I talk to the lady.”

  “I just thought you might like to freshen up a bit . . .”

  “Wash off some of the trail dust, you mean?” Frank grinned. “I’ll try not to get your fancy salon too dirty, sonny.”

  The clerk looked flustered but didn’t say anything else. Frank walked across the lobby and into the salon.

  About the time he got there, he realized he should have asked the clerk what Señorita Escobar looked like. He really had no idea. But as he stepped into the room, which was furnished with a number of dainty tables and chairs, he spotted a young woman sitting alone at one of the tables and had a sudden hunch that she was who he was looking for.

  She was the only woman in the salon who was by herself. Three middle-aged women were sitting with men who were pretty obviously their husbands. The one Frank pegged as Señorita Escobar was in her twenties, he estimated, and very pretty with golden skin and raven-black hair pulled into a bun at the back of her head. The dress she wore probably wasn’t terribly expensive, but she made it look elegant anyway.

  Frank was long past the age when the charms of a pretty girl had much influence on him, but he still admired beauty and this gal fell into that category. He took off his hat as he approached her. She glanced up at him, then looked again, sharply, and came to her feet, the cup of tea in front of her momentarily forgotten.

  “Señor Morgan?” she said.

  “Señorita Escobar?” he replied as he held his hat in front of him in his left hand.

  “That is right. I was not sure you would come, but now that you are here . . .” She paused for a moment, as if unsure how to go on, then said, “You are a large, impressive man, just as Don Felipe described you.”

  Frank smiled and said, “How is the old rapscallion? I haven’t heard from him in a long time.”

  “He is well,” she said. She waved a hand at the empty chair on the other side of the table. “Please, Señor Morgan, sit down.”

  Frank eyed the fragile-looking chair with some wariness. He supposed it would hold him up, as long as he was careful. He said, “You first, por favor, señorita,” then when she had sat down again, he lowered himself onto the chair and set his hat on the floor beside him.

  “You are a gentleman,” she commented.

  “That’s the way I was raised. Figure being polite doesn’t cost anything, so a man might as well. Or at least try to.”

  “I can already tell that I did the right thing by writing to you. Will you have a cup of tea?”

  “Sounds fine,” Frank said, nodding.

  Antonia smiled and signaled to a white-jacketed waiter who brought over another cup of tea in a fine china saucer. Frank sipped it and nodded appreciatively.

  “You are not quite what I expected, Señor Morgan,” Antonia said as she toyed with her cup. “Oh, you are big and tough, no doubt about that, but you are well-spoken, like an educated man. I mean no offense.”

  “None taken,” Frank assured her. “As for being educated, most of it is because I like to read and always have a few books in my saddlebags. It’s been like that for many years. Plenty of nights on the trail spent reading by firelight. I’m reading a novel by Jules Verne now.”

  Antonia smiled slightly and shook her head to indicate that she wasn’t familiar with the French author. Then she grew solemn and said, “I am so relieved that you have come to help us. My father does not know that I wrote to you. His pride, you know . . . He sees it as somehow shameful to need to ask for help.”

  “I haven’t agreed to take a hand in this yet,” Frank reminded her. “I’m going to need to know a lot more about what’s going on.”

  “Of course. Perhaps you could come up to my room, and I can tell you all about it . . . ?”

  Frank shook his head and said, “That wouldn’t do your reputation any good, señorita.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, stopped, then laughed softly.

  “You are right, Señor Morgan. Then we shall have dinner together tonight in a respectable manner and discuss everything then. There is a good restaurant near here called the Ruby House.”

  “That sounds fine to me,” Frank agreed. He grinned. “The clerk out yonder in the lobby seemed to think I needed to clean up, and that’ll give me a chance.” He took another sip of the tea, then stood up and reached into his pocket for a coin.

  She stopped him with a shake of her head.

  “There is no need, señor.”

  “Well, then, dinner will be on me. We’ll meet in the lobby in about an hour?”

  She inclined her head and smiled as she said, “As you wish.”

  Frank nodded farewell and didn’t put his hat on until he was in the lobby again. He went to the desk and told the clerk, “Reckon I’ll take that room after all. And do you think you could have a tub and some hot water sent up?”

  The clerk looked a little dubious until Frank dropped a double eagle on the counter in front of him. Then the man said quickly, “Certainly, sir. Right away. Welcome to the Plaza del Sol.”

  Frank
grunted and said, “Glad to be here.”

  At least he would be once he found out what was actually going on, he mused . . . because as much as he wanted to accept what pretty little Antonia Escobar had told him, he wasn’t sure yet that he believed a word of it.

  Chapter 4

  Frank walked back to the livery stable to get his saddlebags and Winchester. By the time he returned to his hotel room, a tub was waiting for him, full of water so hot that little wisps of steam curled up from its surface. He stripped off his dusty clothes and sank into the tub with a grateful sigh as the water’s warmth enfolded him.

  The clerk had given him a wary glance as Frank walked through the lobby carrying the rifle. The fella probably thought it was bad enough that Frank was packing the Colt on his hip. The long gun just made it worse.

  Pete McRoberts was right: Tucson was civilized now, like most other big towns. It was more and more uncommon to see a man carrying a gun, let alone two of them and a bowie knife, which Frank normally had sheathed on his left hip. A lot of places had uniformed police now, instead of a town marshal and deputies. Folks relied on them to keep the peace and no longer knew what it was like to depend on themselves to protect their families in times of trouble.

  Frank stomped his own snakes and always would. If that put him out of step with everybody else, then so be it. He was too old to care what people thought of him—not that he had ever really worried much about that.

  Once he had soaked the trail dust off him and some of the aches out of his muscles, he dried and got dressed in fresh clothes, then buckled on his gun belt. He left the Winchester there in the hotel room, not expecting to need it while he was having dinner with Antonia Escobar.

  When he reached the lobby, he didn’t see Antonia, but he was a little earlier than the time they had agreed upon. The same clerk was at the desk. He didn’t look down his nose as much now that he knew Frank had money and could afford to stay here. He even managed a smile as Frank approached.

  Nodding toward the opposite side of the lobby from the salon where he and Antonia had talked earlier, Frank said, “I see you’ve got a bar here in the hotel. When Señorita Escobar comes down, send a boy in there to fetch me.”

  “Of course, Mr. Morgan.”

  “The Ruby House, is it a good place to eat?”

  The clerk’s smile was genuine as he said, “Oh yes, it’s very good. Are you and, ah, Señorita Escobar going to dine there this evening?”

  “And talk business,” Frank said. He didn’t care for the slight smirk on the clerk’s face as the man asked the question. He supposed that being in the hotel business, the clerk was accustomed to seeing older men with much younger women, but Frank wasn’t that sort.

  He turned and walked into the bar, which had a lot of dark wood and polished brass to go with the adobe walls. Two men were drinking at the far end of the hardwood bar, while the tables were empty except for one where a quiet poker game was going on.

  A bartender wearing a red vest over a white shirt with sleeve garters came over and nodded to Frank as he asked, “What can I get you, mister?”

  “Wouldn’t happen to have a phosphate, would you?”

  “Lemon flavored?”

  Frank smiled and said, “That sounds mighty good.”

  “Comin’ right up.”

  The bartender began preparing the drink, which involved putting lemon juice in a glass and then pouring in phosphate from a bottle and watching it foam up. The men at the other end of the bar noticed what he was doing, and one of them said, “That’s a kid’s drink you’re making. I don’t see any youngsters in here.”

  The bartender nodded toward Frank and said, “This gentleman right here ordered it.”

  “He did, did he?” The man hooked his thumbs behind the gun belt he wore and sauntered along the bar toward Frank. His friend followed him. The one who had done the talking so far wore a brown tweed suit and vest and had a string tie knotted around his skinny neck. A derby hat sat atop his angular face. He came to a stop a few feet from Frank and grinned as he asked, “Something wrong with your belly, friend?”

  “Not that I know of,” Frank said.

  “I just wondered ’cause, you know, you’re fixing to drink what a little kid would, instead of a real man’s drink. Maybe you can’t afford a whiskey. Tell you what, I’ll buy one for you.”

  “No need. I can afford what I want. And I’d rather have this,” Frank said as the bartender set the foaming glass of lemon phosphate on the bar in front of him.

  “Why, that just don’t make a lick of sense, a grown man acting like that. When somebody offers to buy you a drink, you damn well ought to accept it.”

  “You can pay for this phosphate if you want to, I suppose,” Frank said. He reached for the glass . . . with his left hand.

  “Pay for one of those blasted fizzy things? Hell, I got more self-respect than that. More self-respect than you, if you plan on actually drinking that concoction.”

  Frank lifted the glass to his lips, took a sip, and nodded in satisfaction.

  “Good,” he said to the bartender.

  The man in the derby sneered as he said, “I guess a man with a yellow belly needs a yellow drink.”

  Frank had sized this hombre up the minute the man started talking to him. He was looking for trouble, looking for somebody he could bully and harass just for the fun of it. He must not have been a very good judge of character, because clearly he believed Frank would stand for that.

  The man with him wasn’t quite so oblivious. He put a hand on his friend’s arm and said, “Listen, Bracken, maybe you’d better just—”

  Bracken shook him off and said, “Don’t interrupt me, Kern. I’m talking to this fella and his yellow belly.”

  Frank swallowed some more of the phosphate and then set the glass on the bar.

  “That’s twice you’ve said that,” he told Bracken. “Probably be a good idea not to say it again.”

  Bracken snarled at the bartender, “Pour a damn drink. Pour two of ’em.”

  The bartender said, “This is a nice quiet place, no trouble—”

  “I’m not starting trouble,” Bracken insisted. “If this gent will have a drink with me, we’ll just call it square and move on. Now pour the damn drinks.”

  The bartender swallowed and shifted his feet nervously, but he took two glasses off the back bar, set them on the hardwood, and splashed whiskey from a bottle into them.

  Bracken nudged one of the glasses closer to Frank and said, “How about it? Have a man’s drink.”

  “I’m fine with this,” Frank said as he picked up the phosphate in his left hand again.

  “Well, I’m not, you yellow-bellied son of a—”

  Bracken’s hand dived toward the gun on his hip even as he called out angrily. His fingers hadn’t closed around the revolver’s grips when Frank, with a flick of his left wrist, threw what was left of the phosphate into Bracken’s face.

  Bracken jerked back, let out a startled yell, and pawed at his stinging eyes with his left hand. He was determined enough to complete his draw with the right hand, but as the gun came out of its holster, Frank closed his left hand around Bracken’s wrist and prevented him from raising the gun. An instant later, Frank’s right fist crashed into the man’s jaw and slewed his head to the side. The derby hat went flying. Bracken’s knees buckled.

  Frank plucked the gun from his hand and stepped back to give Bracken some room as the man fell to his knees. He toppled forward and landed with his face on the floor, out cold from the sledgehammer punch Frank had landed.

  Frank flipped the gun up and caught it deftly so that its barrel pointed at the other man. His thumb rested easily on the hammer.

  “You taking cards in this game, mister?” Frank asked quietly.

  The other man held up both hands and backed away hastily as he said, “Not hardly, mister. Bracken dealt the hand and it was his to play.”

  “That’s the way I’d look at it, too. I don’t go hunting for trou
ble.” Frank placed Bracken’s revolver on the bar and went on, “Why don’t you get him out of here? He can come back for his gun later.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Bracken was starting to move around a little and make incoherent noises. His friend bent, got hold of him under the arms, and hauled him to his feet. His legs were pretty rubbery, but his friend managed to steer him in staggering fashion toward the lobby. Frank was surprised to see Antonia Escobar standing in the bar entrance watching. She smiled as she stepped back out of the way to let Bracken and his friend past. They stumbled on through the lobby and out of the hotel.

  “Bravo,” Antonia said as she came on into the bar and walked up to Frank.

  He grunted and said, “I told the clerk to send a boy in here to fetch me when you were ready to go.”

  “I know, but I told him I could fetch you myself. I’m not such a delicate flower that merely stepping into a bar will cause me to wilt, you know.”

  “I never figured it would.”

  The bartender spoke up, saying, “I’m obliged to you for not killing that loudmouth, mister. I purely do hate mopping up blood.”

  Frank looked over at the man and asked, “Is he a regular in here?”

  “Never saw the man before today. He and his friend must have drifted into town. With any luck they’ll keep on drifting.”

  Frank nodded. He hoped that would be the case, too. But he would keep his eyes open for the two men while he was still here in Tucson. More than once, some fellow had braced him and he’d allowed the person to live, only to have to deal with him again later in fatal fashion. Some men just had too much foolish pride to let such a thing go.

  “Let’s go on and have supper, if that’s all right with you,” he said to Antonia.

  “It’s very much all right.” She offered him her arm, and he took it. As they walked into the lobby, she went on, “Don’t worry about what I saw back there. I know you’re capable of violence, Señor Morgan. I would not have written to you if that were not the case. And yet clearly, you are a man capable of restraint as well.”