Ghost Valley Read online

  Riding past a blacksmith’s shop, he noticed a new pine coffin on a pair of sawhorses. “One less back-shooting bastard to worry about,” he said aloud, urging his horse to a short lope as he rode away from Glenwood Springs into a dense ponderosa forest.

  Less than a quarter mile from town he found the two-rut wagon road Doc Holliday had described. Frank reined his horse to a halt and looked behind him. No one was following him now, but it was too soon to tell.

  He swung onto the wagon ruts and started up a steep hill. The pines grew so close to the road they were like walls on either side. Deep shadows lay before him. It was the perfect place for an ambush.

  “Out front, Dog!” Frank bellowed.

  Dog understood his job. He trotted out in front of Frank and the bay until he was more than a hundred yards ahead.

  “A little insurance,” he said, pulling his Winchester from its saddle boot to jack a shell into the firing chamber. He lowered the hammer gently and rested the rifle across the pommel of his saddle.

  He slowed the bay to a walk and kept his eyes glued to the ruts and shadows. If Pine or Vanbergen meant to jump him on his way to the valley, they’d have their hands full.

  Dog continued up the steep ascent without making a sound or giving a warning. The old dog’s senses were as keen as ever and he was rarely taken by surprise.

  “Let the bastards come, if they want,” Frank said grimly. “I got a little surprise for ’em....”

  SEVEN

  Frank rode slowly between the pines, stopping every so often to check his back trail, and to listen for the sounds of another horse. Dog sat in the middle of the road panting, watching the man and the horse behind him, when Frank reined his animal to yet another stop.

  “It’s quiet,” he whispered. “Maybe too damn quiet.”

  But there was no evidence that anyone was following him, and Dog had sensed nothing ahead.

  “Getting jumpy in my old age,” Frank told himself, although he had the eerie feeling that he was being watched.

  He heeled his horse forward, continuing up the steady climb toward snowcapped peaks. The creak of saddle leather and the soft drum of the bay’s hooves filled the silence around him for a time.

  Then Dog halted suddenly, hair rigid along his backbone as he looked to the east.

  Frank drew rein on his horse at once, scanning the dark forest. A marksman worth his salt could kill him easily from those pines. Perhaps it was time to proceed with more care until he cleared this part of the road.

  He swung out of the saddle, using his bay for a shield to continue moving northwest, walking beside the horse’s shoulder. And still, Dog didn’t move, watching the trees with a low growl coming from his throat.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Frank muttered, moving off the road to enter black forest shadows where he would make a more difficult target. Balancing his Winchester in the palm of his hand, he crept along at a snail’s pace.

  “What is it, Dog?” he whispered when he came to the spot in the road where his dog remained frozen between the ruts.

  Dog wouldn’t look at him, staring at the same spot on a wooded ridge, still growling.

  Now Frank was sure something, or someone, was out there. It would be a fool’s move to continue along the road until he found out what it was.

  He ground-hitched the bay and started walking softly among the pine trunks, using them for cover wherever he could. Dog trotted up beside him, his attention still fixed on the ridge.

  I wonder if it’s that Indian again, Frank thought.

  Dog had never given him a false signal despite the cur’s advancing age.

  With no warning, the sharp crack of a rifle’s report sounded from the ridge. Frank threw himself on the ground behind a ponderosa trunk, listening to the bullet sizzle high above his head.

  “Damn, that was close,” Frank said, gritting his teeth in anger. He knew now that he should have been more cautious, coming around behind the ridge instead of approaching it head-on.

  “I missed you, Morgan!” a distant voice shouted. “But I ain’t done yet!”

  Dog was crouched beside him . . . it wasn’t the first bullet the animal ever heard.

  One of Pine’s or Vanbergen’s men, Frank thought. There may be more than one.

  “Stay, Dog,” he whispered, crawling backward away from the tree, keeping it between him and the shooter.

  Frank took off in a crouch, dodging and darting from one pine to the next, his chest welling with rage.

  Moving as quickly as he could, he began a wide circle that would take him around to the back of the ridge.

  * * *

  He sighted a prone form using underbrush for cover at the top of the switchback, partially hidden in the shade to keep sunlight from gleaming off his rifle barrel.

  “Gotcha, you bastard,” Frank whispered, drawing a bead on the man’s back. Frank wouldn’t shoot a man in the back without giving him a fair warning.

  “Hey, asshole! I’m back here!” he cried.

  The rifleman flipped over on his side, bringing his gun around as quickly as he could. It was just what Frank had been waiting for.

  He triggered a .44-caliber slug into the man’s belly. The explosion near his ear almost deafened him.

  “Shit!” the rifleman bellowed, jerking when the bullet found its mark. A crimson stain exploded on his shirtfront. He dropped his rifle to grab his belly with both hands.

  Frank came to his feet, still covering the bushwhacker as he started toward him. Taking careful steps, he started up the back of the ridge.

  “Jesus! I’m shot!” the gunman moaned, blood pouring between his fingers.

  “That’s a real good calculation of your situation,” Frank told him. “You’re gonna die for Ned Pine and Victor Vanbergen. Ask yourself if it was worth whatever they were paying you to ambush me.”

  “You ain’t gonna just leave me here, Morgan.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m gonna do. I hope you die slow, so you can think about what you just tried to do. Hurts a bit, don’t it?”

  “You bastard.”

  “I’m not a bastard. My ma and pa were married. You’ve been wrong about nearly everything so far, cowboy.”

  “You gotta get me to a doctor.”

  “I don’t have to do a damn thing except climb on my horse and be on my way.”

  “I can tell you where to find Ned an’ Vic, only you gotta help me.”

  “I already know where they are.”

  “How the hell’d you find out?”

  “An Indian told me.”

  The gunman raised his head to stare at Frank. “You seen ’em too?”

  Frank merely nodded.

  The shooter’s head fell back on the grass. “Help me, Morgan. I’ll be dead before dark if you don’t.”

  “Seems a shame. I’m touched by your predicament. I was on my way to Ghost Valley when some son of a bitch tried to shoot me from ambush. But I got behind you and shot you instead, and now you want me to have sympathy for you?”

  “Damn, Morgan. My belly hurts. I’m dyin’.”

  “Appears that way. I’m gonna find your horse and turn it loose while you leak blood all over this pretty green grass. I fully intend to leave you right here.”

  “It was just business, Morgan. Ned hired me to take you out. You’re a hired gun, so you oughta know it damn sure ain’t nothin’ personal.”

  “I’m not taking it personally.”

  “You gotta help me get to a doctor.”

  “Like hell. All I’ve got to do is keep riding toward that valley.”

  “We shoulda killed that boy of yours when we had him, you cold-blooded sumbitch.”

  “I’m no kind of son of a bitch. If you weren’t already dying, I’d kill you over a remark like that.”

  The gunman’s breathing became ragged.

  “Hear that sound, back-shooter?” Frank asked, grinning a mirthless grin. “That’s a death rattle in your chest. It won’t be long now.”
<
br />   “Help . . . me.”

  “Not today, cowboy. I’ve got business with your bosses and it won’t wait.”

  “Nobody . . . can be ... that cold.”

  “You just met him,” Frank said savagely before he wheeled away to look for the shooter’s horse.

  He found a dun gelding in a ravine and pulled the saddle off it, tossing the saddle to the ground. Frank slipped off the bridle and gave the horse its freedom.

  As he was turning to climb back up the ridge, he thought he saw a shadow move in the forest higher above him. A reflex—he raised his rifle and moved behind a pine tree.

  “I know I saw somebody,” he whispered.

  But no matter how closely he looked, he saw nothing now and it gave him a spooky feeling. Who the hell would be watching him unless he came here to shoot at him? he wondered.

  He pondered the possibility that the Indian who spoke to him at the Glenwood Springs cemetery was watching him again. But he couldn’t quite make himself believe in old Indian ghosts. It had to be a Ute or a Shoshoni, a flesh-and-blood Indian.

  After a final examination of the woods he strode back to the spot where the gunman lay. The bushwhacker’s eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow.

  “Adios, you yellow bastard,” Frank said, trudging back toward his horse and the dog.

  He found his bay ground-hitched where he’d left him, and Dog sat patiently a few yards away in the tree shadows.

  “Out front, Dog,” Frank said, climbing into the saddle with his Winchester. He wondered if any more attempts would be made on his life before he found the valley.

  * * *

  He rode up on a clear, running brook coming out of the mountains. Gazing north, he could see faint traces of a trail following the east bank of the stream.

  Frank whistled Dog back from the far side of the shallow creek and began the steeper climb. Dog seemed unconcerned by anything flanking the trail, moving farther ahead with his ears drooping.

  The bay began to struggle climbing rocky spots, bunching its muscles to make the ascent. Foamy lather began to form on its neck and shoulders and its breathing grew labored at the higher altitude.

  Frank saw small brook trout in the stream, suspended in deeper pools above glittering beds of colorful stones. Had it not been for his deadly purpose here, he would have stopped to enjoy the clean, pine-scented air and spend time relaxing, maybe even go fishing for a spell.

  But this was a business trip, with scores to settle, and the only thing on his mind was finding Vanbergen and Pine and the rest of the gang. If Frank Morgan had his way, a peaceful valley hidden between these peaks would run red with blood before the week was out.

  Gray clouds began to scud across the sky, coming from the north, and soon the forest shadows were dim when the sun was blocked out. Frank supposed it wasn’t too late in the year for a spring snowstorm. At higher elevations, it could snow almost any time.

  He had plenty of warm clothing and a mackinaw, just in case, and a pair of worn leather gloves. While snow wasn’t the weather he would have ordered for a manhunt, it might give him cover when he found the gang.

  A chill wind came with the clouds, and he shivered once. It had been snowing when he’d finally caught up with Ned and Vic and Conrad before.

  “Maybe it’s a good omen,” he mumbled, turning up his shirt collar.

  Before long he could feel a hint of ice on the winds as the stream coursed higher. Tied around his bedding behind the cantle of his saddle was a small canvas tarp to keep things dry, and it also served as a makeshift lean-to when snow or rain forced him to a halt.

  “It don’t matter what the weather’s like,” he said savagely, keeping his eyes on the trail. “A goddamn hurricane won’t keep me from finding that valley.

  Mile after empty mile passed quietly under the bay’s hooves without Dog giving any indication of danger. Frank slumped in the saddle, deciding upon a stop for jerky and a tin of peaches in another hour or so.

  Farther ahead, high on a switchback, he glimpsed a black bear watching him.

  “Proof enough the way is clear for a spell,” he told himself in a hoarse whisper.

  * * *

  He came to a small clearing an hour later, and halted his horse to swing down. With water from the stream, he could eat salted pork and sweet peaches here, with a good vantage point for watching his surroundings.

  He opened a package of butcher paper and sat on a nearby rock to chew jerky, saving the peaches for a final touch. He dipped a tin cup full of water from the stream while his horse grazed on the clearing’s grasses.

  Dog sat on his haunches in front of him with a begging look in his eyes.

  “You’ll get some,” Frank promised. “Humans eat first around here.”

  He tossed Dog a scrap of jerky, and had begun opening the peach tin with his bowie knife, when suddenly Dog jumped up, snarling, looking east.

  “Take it easy, stranger,” a thin voice said from behind him. “I’ve got my Sharps aimed at yer back.”

  Frank glanced over his shoulder, his blood running cold. “How the hell did you slip up on me, old-timer?” He saw an old man dressed in buckskins covering him with a long-barrel buffalo gun.

  “ ’Twas easy. You been pretty careful most o’ the way, but yer belly got the best of you.”

  Frank wondered if he had time to make a play for his pistol before a bullet took him down. “Are you aiming to kill me?”

  “Nope. Jest curious. You shot a man back yonder a ways an’ I was wonderin’ about it.”

  “He was trying to bushwhack me.”

  “I seen that. Still didn’t know what it was all about.”

  “He was one of the men who kidnapped my son. I got my boy back, and now I aim to make the men who took him pay.”

  “Sounds reasonable enough.”

  “I take it you’re not with them. If you were, you’d have already killed me.”

  “If you mean that bunch down in Ghost Valley, I damn sure ain’t none of their kind.”

  “Will you put that gun down and have some peaches?”

  “I might. I’ll give it some thought.”

  “My name’s Frank Morgan.”

  “I’m called Buck Waite.”

  “I’d sure be obliged if you lowered that gun.”

  “Don’t make a snatch fer that pistol you’re carryin’. I’ve got one myself an’ I’ll kill you deader’n pig shit if you do.”

  “No reason for a gun, I don’t reckon, if you don’t aim to shoot me.”

  The man with shoulder-length red hair and a red beard flecked with gray lowered the muzzle of his rifle. Frank noticed he had an old Navy Colt tucked into a deerskin belt around his waist.

  “Come have some peaches,” Frank offered. “If you’re willing, I need to ask you about getting into that valley. It’s real clear you know your way around these mountains.”

  EIGHT

  “So you claim yer name is Morgan,” Buck said, spearing a slice of peach with the tip of a heavy bowie knife. “Some men who come to this country don’t use their right name. You right sure yer name is Morgan?”

  “I’m Frank Morgan.”

  Buck’s rifle lay near his feet. His left hand was never tar from his pistol. He gave Frank an appraising look. “You stalked that feller pretty good. I was watchin’.”

  “I thought I saw someone higher up. Just a shadow moving in the trees.”

  “I don’t git around good as I used to. Old age, an’ the damn rheumatiz in my joints. I couldn’t fool this dog much, but there was a time when I could.”

  “What puts you in these mountains?” Frank asked, though by the look of the old man the answer was clear. He made his living off the land.

  “I run a few traplines. Sell a few elk and bear hides now an’ then. Mostly I just live. Fish for trout. Enjoy the scenery. ”

  “So you’re a mountain man?”

  “Nope. The real mountain men are long gone, or dead an’ buried. There ain’t as much wild
game as there used to be. I came here after the war. Wanted to be away from so-called civilization after watchin’ neighbors kill each other over a bale of cotton an’ nigra slaves. I gave up on what men call bein’ civilized after thousands an’ thousands of men got shot over somethin’ they didn’t understand. I fought for the Confederacy, but I never owned no slaves. Them slave owners let us poor men do their fightin’ for ’em while they smoked big cigars an’ drank whiskey. I got tired of bein’ civilized after I killed half a hundred men just ‘cause they was wearin’ blue. I came up here after my wife died from yellow fever. I made up my mind to live here as long as I could, until I got too old an’ feeble to take care of myself.”

  “Tell me about Ghost Valley.”

  Buck, almost toothless, slurped on a piece of peach. “It’s an old mining town. The placer mines played out years ago. It’s a ghost town now.”

  “Vanbergen and Pine and their men are there?”

  “Sure are. I’d call ‘em sorry sons of bitches. Won’t bother me none if you kill ’em all. They shoot more deer an’ elk than they kin eat an’ don’t smoke the rest . . . leave it on the ground to rot. Git drunk as hell an’ shoot guns in the air. Make a helluva ruckus, pissin’ in the stream so’s a man don’t know what he’s drinkin’. They could use a good killin’, if you ask me.”

  “That’s what I aim to do.”

  “It’s gonna snow,” Buck said, glancing up at the dark gray skies above them. “By tomorrow mornin’ these slopes will be plumb white.”

  “That won’t bother me. Maybe it’ll give me some cover when I slip up on ’em.”

  “You any good at slippin’ up on a man, Morgan? You got careless a time or two back yonder. The dog most likely saved your life when he sounded. I heard him growl.”

  “I reckon I was. This old dog has saved my skin more than once.”

  “I’ve got a dog back at my cabin. Feed him bear meat so he’ll have some tallow on his bones. Like me, he’s gettin’ a mite old fer this country. Won’t be long till both of us have to head fer lower ground an’ stay there.”

  “How many men are camped at the abandoned town?”

  “Hard to tell. Helluva lot. They come and go.”