Slaughter Read online

  Then as Hatch lurched toward him, Frank powered forward, burying his head and shoulder in the driller’s belly. Frank kept his legs driving ahead. He wrapped his arms around Hatch’s thighs and lifted, and once again Hatch left the ground and came crashing down on his back.

  Frank didn’t give him a chance to recover this time. Instead, he landed on top of Hatch, planted a knee in his belly, and smashed a right and then a left into the man’s jaw. Hatch’s eyes rolled up in their sockets. He shuddered once and then lay still, out cold for the moment.

  Breathing hard, Frank pushed himself to his feet. He turned toward the wagon and saw the other drillers staring at him in amazement. It was possible they had never seen Hatch defeated before.

  “Am I going to have trouble . . . with any of the rest of you hombres?” Frank asked, pausing in the middle to draw a breath into his body.

  A couple of the men looked like they wanted to climb down from the wagon and take up the battle, but the driver, Rattigan, said, “Damn it, that’s enough! I’m still in charge of this crew, and I’m telling all of you to sit down.”

  “But he knocked Hatch out!” one of the men protested.

  “Then I’d say he’s earned the right to go on about his business in peace,” Rattigan snapped. “Besides, Mr. Magnusson gave us clear orders when we went off shift. We were supposed to stay out of trouble. I don’t know about the rest of you, but all I’m interested in right now is cleaning up, getting some sleep, and then maybe a drink or two to wash down a good meal.”

  The man who had complained scratched his head and said, “I got to admit, that sounds pretty good. But what do we do with Hatch?”

  “Some of you get down and throw him in the wagon. I imagine he’ll come to by the time we get over the mountains.”

  While the drillers were picking up Hatch’s limp form and loading it in the wagon, Frank got a rag from his saddlebags and wiped his hands and face as clean as he could. They had gotten smeared with oil while he was grappling with Hatch.

  There was nothing he could do about the stains on his clothes. He hoped there was a Chinese laundry in Los Angeles that could get them out.

  “Worried because you got a little oil on you, mister?” Rattigan asked. “It won’t kill you, you know.”

  “I’m not worried about that at all,” Frank said. He put the rag away and reached for his hat. “If I was you, I’d be more worried about my friend going around looking for trouble.”

  “We haven’t had to look for it. It keeps coming to us, and I suppose it will as long as you damn cowboys keep taking potshots at us and destroying our rigs.”

  A frown creased Frank’s forehead. “I hadn’t heard anything about that.”

  “Then you must not have been paying attention,” Rattigan snapped. He turned his head to look at his companions. “You got Hatch loaded back there?”

  “Yeah,” one of the drillers replied. “Looks like he’s startin’ to come around a little.”

  “Good. I was afraid for a minute there that this cowboy had killed him.”

  Frank didn’t waste his breath correcting Rattigan about him being a cowboy. He just said, “Hatch will have a headache, but he ought to be all right when he wakes up.”

  Rattigan snorted. “Don’t act like you care, mister. We know you don’t give a damn about any of us drillers. You’d just as soon see all of us dead.”

  Frank didn’t feel like arguing. He buckled on his gunbelt and stood at the side of the road beside Stormy and Dog as Rattigan slashed at the rumps of his team with the wagon’s reins. Grudgingly, the mules leaned into their harness and the wagon lurched into motion.

  All the drillers glared at Frank as the wagon rolled past him. He returned a cool, steady stare and didn’t mount up until the vehicle was a good fifty yards up the road toward the mountains. He hadn’t seen a rifle in the wagon, and he was well out of range now of the only handgun he’d seen.

  “Those fellas were sure on the prod,” he said to Stormy and Dog when he had swung up into the saddle. While he didn’t doubt what Stafford had told him about the drillers being to blame for the trouble in the valley, it was obvious that the hostility went both ways.

  He rode on toward the Montero ranch, giving the oil derricks he passed a wide berth. Rattigan had mentioned a man named Magnusson and indicated that the drillers worked for him. Frank wondered how many of the wells he was passing belonged to Magnusson.

  When he came to a long, tree-lined ridge, he knew he was getting close to the ranch. He was probably on Montero range already, he told himself as he thought back to the markings on the map Stafford had shown him.

  Not surprisingly, when Frank topped the ridge, he spotted a large number of cattle grazing on the grassy hills that rolled gently away to the north and west. He reined in and rested his hands on the saddle horn, leaning forward in the leather to ease his back.

  It was mighty pretty country he saw in front of him. Not too many trees, but plenty of grass. Canyons in the foothills on both sides of the valley would offer some shelter in case of bad weather, but Frank knew that the climate here was usually some of the most pleasant to be found anywhere. It was easy to see why the Californios who had settled here when Spain still ruled the region had picked this valley for their ranchos.

  While he was stopped on top of the ridge getting the lay of the land, Frank fished a spare shirt out of his saddlebags and put it on in place of the oil-stained one. He couldn’t do anything about the jeans he wore. He would have to put up with them being dirty until he got back to town.

  Feeling more presentable, he stowed the stained shirt away and rode on. He hadn’t gone very far when several men on horseback emerged from some trees and came toward him. He could tell that they carried themselves with a certain wariness, and considering the history of trouble in the valley, he didn’t blame them.

  There were four men, Frank saw as they drew closer, a couple of vaqueros in charro jackets and broad-brimmed sombreros. The other two riders were gringo, wearing dusty range clothes.

  All four men were well armed. One of the vaqueros packed two irons, the belts crisscrossing around his hips, and the others sported one revolver apiece. Winchesters jutted up from saddle boots on all four mounts, though.

  Frank kept riding until he was about twenty yards from the men; then he reined in to wait for them to come to him. They did so, fanning out so that they faced him in a wide-spread line. If any gunplay broke out, not even The Drifter would be able to drop all four men before one of them ventilated him.

  Smart, he thought . . . and it showed that they were used to trouble.

  He kept Stormy’s reins in his left hand and raised his right, palm out, to show them that he wasn’t looking for a fight.

  “Howdy,” Frank called. “You fellas from the Montero ranch?”

  “What business is it of yours?” one of the gringo cowboys asked in a suspicious tone. “Who are you, mister?”

  “Name’s Frank.” He didn’t offer anything except the front handle. “Thought maybe I’d talk to the ramrod and see if the spread’s hiring right now.”

  One of the vaqueros said something in low, rapid Spanish. Frank caught enough of the words to know that the hombre was commenting on how old he was.

  “I can still make a hand,” he said sharply.

  The other cowboy pointed and said, “From the looks of that grease on your jeans, you been makin’ a hand on one of those damned drillin’ rigs.”

  “Not hardly,” Frank said with a shake of his head. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I had a run-in back up the road with a whole wagonload of drillers. One of them climbed down and said he was going to teach me a lesson. I reckon he was the one who got taken to school, though.”

  Smiles played briefly over the faces of the men, but then they looked cautious again. “You happen to catch the name of the man you tangled with, Señor?” asked the vaquero who had said something about Frank being old.

  “His name was Hatch.”

 
That raised their eyebrows. “You beat Hatch in a fair fight?” one of the cowboys asked.

  “I did.”

  “How do we know you’re tellin’ the truth?” the other cowboy asked.

  Frank’s voice hardened, as did his expression. “Because I’m not in the habit of lying,” he said.

  “No offense, mister. We believe you. Don’t we, boys?”

  The others nodded.

  “It’s just that we’ve had a passel of trouble around here lately,” the man went on. “Stock rustled, cowboys bushwhacked, water holes poisoned . . . you name it, it’s been happenin’. And those damn oil drillers are behind all of it. So you can’t blame us for bein’ a mite leery of a man with grease on his pants, even one wearin’ a Stetson like yours.”

  Frank shrugged. “No offense, I reckon. If you hombres want to point me toward the ranch headquarters, I’d be much obliged.”

  “We’ll do better than that. We’ll take you there.”

  Frank knew they probably hadn’t been on their way to the hacienda, but they insisted on providing him with an escort. Of course, what they really wanted to do was keep an eye on him. He couldn’t really blame them for that.

  The riders swung around and pretty much surrounded Frank as they continued along the road from Los Angeles. Despite their vigilance, they were friendly enough, and Frank quickly learned their names. The two white cowboys were Thackery and Bullard; the vaqueros were called Santiago and Lupe, short for Guadalupe.

  “I heard talk in Los Angeles about the trouble you’ve been having up here,” Frank said truthfully enough. “Sounds like things have gone to hell since those oil drillers came in.”

  “There’s been drillin’ in the valley for a long time,” said Bullard, the older of the two cowboys. “Never like it’s been the past couple o’ years, though. Damn derricks sproutin’ up all over like weeds. If you’ve been to town like you said, then you know it’s even worse there.”

  Frank nodded. “You can’t hardly see the houses because of all the derricks.”

  Thackery said, “That’s the way it’ll be out here in the valley if the drillers have their way. They’re tryin’ to crowd out the ranchers who’ve been here for a hundred years or more. They don’t give a damn about cattle and horses. They just want that damned stinkin’ oil.”

  “Folks use the stuff for a lot of different things now,” Frank pointed out.

  “And they got along just fine without it for a lot of years before that,” Thackery argued. “As far as I’m concerned, we don’t need it. We can get along without it.”

  Maybe that was true, Frank thought, but once people got used to having something, they never wanted to give it up. Folks had worn animal skins and lived in caves once, too, but he didn’t figure anybody wanted to go back to those days.

  The ranch headquarters came into view. A large group of buildings sprawled along the bank of a narrow creek, including a massive barn, a number of adobe shacks that were probably used for storage and a blacksmith shop, a long, low adobe building that had to be the bunkhouse, and the hacienda itself, a huge, beautiful house of whitewashed adobe with red tile roofs in the Spanish style on the various wings. Looking at it, he found it easy to believe that the Montero family had been the leading citizens in the valley for a long time.

  “Who’s the foreman?” Frank asked as they approached the buildings.

  “Pete Linderman’s the ramrod,” Bullard replied.

  “Think he’s looking to take on another hand?”

  Bullard shrugged. “Couldn’t say. We lost a boy yesterday, so he might. Even if Pete wants to hire you, though, Señora Montero will have the final say.”

  That surprised Frank a little. He had figured that after the death of her husband, the old widow would have turned over the day-to-day details of running the ranch to the foreman and the crew.

  They had to pass the bunkhouse to get to the hacienda. As the group of riders rode past, several men emerged from the building, no doubt drawn by the hoofbeats. They looked curiously to see who the stranger was accompanying the Montero hands.

  That was when one of them suddenly clawed his gun out of its holster and ran forward, shouting, “That’s him, damn it! That’s the gunslingin’ bastard who killed Lonnie!”

  Jeff, Frank thought as he looked at the distraught young man charging toward him.

  Now that was a stroke of bad luck for you.

  Chapter 8

  Even though Frank hoped to obtain the cooperation of the folks on the Montero spread, he wasn’t going to just sit there and let Jeff run up and shoot him, as the young cowboy seemed intent on doing. Frank’s hand started to move toward the butt of his Colt.

  But before he was forced to draw, one of the men who had come out of the bunkhouse with Jeff lunged after the youngster and grabbed his collar. He slung the cowboy roughly to the ground and then kicked the gun out of Jeff’s hand.

  “You damn fool!” he burst out. “You think Morgan was just gonna sit there and let you plug him? I swear, Jeff, sometimes you’re so stupid I think I should’ve let him blow a hole in you.”

  “Aw, Pete,” Jeff said as he lay there in the dust nursing his aching wrist where the man had kicked him. He sniffled back tears. “He killed Lonnie.”

  “Because Lonnie was an even bigger idiot than you and drew on Frank Morgan.” The man turned to Frank, who had reined in along with the other riders, and gave him a curt nod. “I’m obliged to you for not ventilating this loco young pup, Mr. Morgan.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t have to,” Frank said honestly. “I reckon you’d be Pete Linderman, the ramrod hereabouts?”

  The man nodded again. He was stocky, with the permanently bowed legs and ruddy face of a man who spent most of his life in the saddle. Graying blond hair showed under his battered Stetson.

  “Yeah, I’m Linderman. I won’t say it’s good to meet you. What are you doin’ out here anyway?”

  Bullard spoke up. “He said he was lookin’ for a job, Pete.” The old puncher’s hand rested on the butt of his gun. “He didn’t tell us he was a gunslinger, nor that he was the one who killed Lonnie.”

  Linderman hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt and regarded Frank curiously. “Why’s The Drifter lookin’ for a job like any grub-line rider, especially here?”

  Frank shrugged his shoulders casually. “A man’s got to eat,” he said. “As for Lonnie, I didn’t have any idea he rode for the Monteros. And if Jeff told you the truth about what happened yesterday, you know that he didn’t give me any choice. I tried to handle it without having to shoot him.”

  “Yeah, I reckon,” Linderman said in clipped tones. “Lonnie was a hothead, right enough. Thought he was fast on the draw and was anxious to prove it.” The ramrod’s voice grew even harder. “But he was one of us. You can’t expect us to welcome you with open arms, mister, no matter what happened.”

  Frank knew Linderman was right. This was going to complicate the chore he had agreed to take on for Stafford.

  Just then, a new voice cut through the warm morning air. It belonged to a woman, and it demanded, “What’s going on over there, Pete?”

  Everyone looked around, including Frank. He saw a tall, lithe figure striding toward them. The woman carried herself with a confidence that bordered on arrogance.

  If beauty counted for anything, she had good reason to be confident. She was strikingly attractive. Tight, black leather trousers hugged her legs and hips. She wore a matching black vest over a bright red silk shirt. Thick, wavy hair as dark as midnight tumbled around her shoulders.

  Frank was old-fashioned enough that the sight of a woman in trousers bothered him a little, but he had to admit that this lady managed to make it look good. At first glance, he thought she was in her twenties, but as she came closer he saw that she was older than that, with a few lines of experience around her eyes and mouth that did little if anything to detract from her beauty.

  From the imperious way she sounded and the way she carried herself, she had to b
e one of the Monteros, Frank decided. Probably the daughter of old Francisco and Dolores.

  Linderman reached up and touched the brim of his hat as he said, “This is nothin’ you need to concern yourself with, ma’am. This fella showed up lookin’ for a job, but I was just about to tell him that we don’t need any more hands right now.”

  A slight frown creased the smooth, golden tan forehead. “But what about Lonnie?” she asked. “We need someone to replace him, don’t we?” She looked at Jeff. “And what are you doing lying on the ground, Jeff?”

  The young cowboy was still holding his injured wrist, so he lifted both arms to point at Frank. “He’s the one who killed Lonnie! He’s Frank Morgan, the gunfighter!”

  The woman’s gaze swung back to Frank. “Is this true?” she asked in a cool, unfriendly voice.

  Frank nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “You got in a gunfight with a young man who was still wet behind the ears and killed him?”

  “Only after he took a shot at me,” Frank said, letting his own voice get a little chillier. “I give you my word, miss, I didn’t set out to kill Lonnie. He forced me into it.”

  She looked at Jeff again. “Is he telling the truth?”

  “Well . . .”

  Linderman spoke up, saying, “I reckon it’s true enough. Morgan walloped Lonnie and then tried to leave without any shootin’, but Lonnie threw down on him.” The ramrod spat in the dust. “Can’t expect a man to just stand there and let somebody blaze away at him.”

  “No,” the woman said, “I suppose you can’t.” She faced Frank. “Very well, Mr. Morgan. I agree with Pete that hiring you wouldn’t be wise, but hospitality demands that we not turn you away empty-handed. Feel free to water your horse and your dog, and you’ll stay for lunch.”

  Frank nodded. “I’m obliged to you, Señorita, but maybe you’d better check with your mother and make sure it’s all right to be handing out invitations like that.”

  She smiled, and Linderman chuckled. He said, “I’ll take care of his horse for him, Señora Montero.”