The Loner: Trail Of Blood (3 page)

“We got a Winchester back there in the caboose,” one of the brakies said. “I threw some lead at those varmints as the train was pullin’ away, but I don’t know if I hit any of ’em or not.”

“It’s all right if you didn’t,” Conrad told the man while he reloaded the round he had expended on the robber who had fallen underneath the train. “You discouraged them from coming after us, anyway.”

“Asa’s got this thing flying,” the conductor said. He had a makeshift bandage tied around his arm. “Somebody better get up to the engine and tell him it’s all right to slow down.”

“We passed the water stop at Yucca Flats,” Conrad pointed out. “Can we make it to Monahans without taking on more water?” He didn’t particularly want the train to have to back up to the water tank, not with several owlhoots still roaming around the area.

“I’ll check with the engineer, but I’m pretty sure we can,” the conductor said. “Especially if he slows down.” The man looked at Conrad and shook his head in awe. “I never saw anybody take on a whole gang of killers and nearly wipe them out. How’d you learn to shoot like that, Mr. Browning?”

“It’s a knack.”

In truth, it was an ability inherited from his father, a natural talent he had never known he possessed until great tragedy had forced him to pick up a gun and become an avenger. Since then he had worked diligently to improve his gun-handling skill.

Normally he didn’t go out of his way to demonstrate it and wouldn’t have displayed it if circumstances hadn’t forced him to. Not many people knew that Conrad Browning, businessman, financier, stockholder in mines, railroad lines, shipping concerns, banks, and numerous other enterprises, was the son of Frank Morgan, the Drifter, last of the fast guns.

Or perhaps next to last. When pushed to it, Conrad could almost match his father’s blazing speed with a Colt.

The conductor said, “Maybe you’d better go talk to that butler fella who works for you and let
him know you’re all right. He was so worried he was about to have a fit when we came through your private car a minute ago.”

Conrad pouched both irons in the cross-draw rig and smiled a little. Arturo was the high-strung sort, all right.

The conductor and the brakemen continued on toward the engine while Conrad left the passenger car and headed for the caboose. He had to climb onto the top of the baggage car and the express car to reach the rear of the string. That was the way the trainmen had come, but they were experienced at navigating the top of a swaying car. It was trickier for Conrad, but his sense of balance and superb reflexes enabled him to manage it without any trouble.

He climbed down to the platform of the private car and went inside. As he stepped into the sitting room, he found Arturo pacing back and forth restlessly. The valet stopped short, stared at him for a second, and exclaimed, “You’re alive!”

“And relatively unharmed,” Conrad said, holding up his gravel-scratched hands.

For a moment he thought Arturo was going to hug him, but of course that would have been much too great a breach of decorum. Instead, Arturo looked down at Conrad’s knees and frowned. “You’ve ruined those trousers, in addition to getting blood all over the rug.”

“You knew you were going to work for a barbarous American when you took this job,” Conrad pointed out.

“Yes, I did, but I didn’t know you were going to
wreak this much havoc before we even reached our destination.”

Conrad’s smile disapeared and was replaced by a tight, grim mask. “Believe me, Arturo … I’ve just started wreaking havoc.”

Arturo hesitated, then as the train began to slow, he said, “Why don’t you allow me to tend to those cuts on your hands, sir, and then you can don clean raiment. I’m sure the, ah, train workers will come and dispose of the, ah …”

“Corpses.”

“Yes, the corpses you left in your wake.”

Conrad relaxed and let the valet clean the minor damage to his hands. None of the scrapes were bad enough to require a bandage.

Arturo was an Italian by birth, although he spoke perfect English, without a trace of an accent. He had been educated not only in his homeland but also in England. Coming from a long line of servants, at one time he had worked for a deadly enemy of the notorious gunfighter known as Kid Morgan … who was, in reality, Conrad Browning.

A few years earlier, Conrad had been rich, successful, and happily married to a beautiful young woman named Rebel. His life had been close to perfect.

But in nature, perfection is always short-lived. So it was with Conrad Browning. His wife had been murdered, his life turned upside down. Since it had appeared he had died in a related outburst of violence, for a while Conrad had allowed everyone to believe he was dead. During
that time, he recuperated from his injuries and taught himself how to be a cold, ruthless killer. He came up with a new identity, Kid Morgan, taking the name from his famous father, so Rebel’s murderers wouldn’t know Conrad Browning was actually alive and on their trail.

One by one, Kid Morgan had tracked down the men he was after and had his vengeance on them. Eventually the trail had led The Kid to the person behind his wife’s death: Pamela Tarleton, who had once been engaged to Conrad Browning. Her twisted nature had brought about her own accidental death, completing Kid Morgan’s quest.

That had left The Kid facing a heartbreaking revelation. All the blood, all the death, had not brought Rebel back. The emptiness caused by her loss was still inside him. Knowing that he could not return to his life as Conrad Browning while he felt that way, he chose to remain Kid Morgan, a loner riding through the West, drifting in and out of an assortment of dangers. His essential nature, no matter what he called himself, would not allow him to turn his back on people in trouble.

It was during one of those adventures that he had run up against Arturo’s former employer, an Italian count willing to kill anyone in his way to get what he wanted. Tangling with Kid Morgan had not turned out well for the count, and Arturo had wound up without a job when Fortunato died in the New Mexico wasteland known as the
Jornada del Muerto
.

By that time, the lawyers representing Conrad Browning’s business interests knew he was still
alive, as did his father Frank Morgan. Having developed a liking for Arturo, The Kid had sent him to San Francisco, where Conrad’s lawyers had no trouble finding a job for him. He had remained in that position until recently.

Kid Morgan had resumed drifting, until a case of mistaken identity had landed him in New Mexico’s Hell Gate Prison. Through a series of harrowing adventures, he had escaped and believed he had cleared his name.

Being captured by ruthless bounty hunters proved him wrong. Again he had escaped with his life, but in the process The Kid had discovered he had a shadowy enemy, pulling the strings behind the scenes to make his life a living hell. In order to deal with that threat, he had put aside his identity as Kid Morgan and fully resumed the mantle of Conrad Browning. Things had come full circle … in more ways than one.

A showdown in Santa Fe had revealed the mastermind behind The Kid’s troubles to be Roger Tarleton, Pamela’s cousin. The Tarleton family was still seeking vengeance on Conrad, and Pamela herself had reached out from the grave to drive one final knife into his heart.

He didn’t have to reread the letter from her that Roger Tarleton’s lawyer had delivered to him. Every word of it was etched into his soul.

That staggering discovery might have been more than some men could stand. But the man who was both Conrad Browning and Kid Morgan had been forged in a crucible of tragedy and grief, and though he was broken, that unholy fire had fused him together again, leaving him stronger than before. After reading that letter, he had allowed himself a moment of horror and sadness …

And then he started making plans for how he would find his lost children.

One thing was certain. Conrad would have to
take up the trail first, not The Kid. He knew better than to trust
anything
Pamela had written in that letter. She had indicated the twins were hidden away somewhere in the West, but that was likely not true. After he had broken their engagement, she had remained in Boston, where both of them had lived at the time. He was confident that was where she would have given birth to the children.

So that was where the trail would start. Conrad Browning was much better suited to dealing with the East than The Kid was, so it was Conrad that had boarded a train in Santa Fe and set off on the journey that would take him back to Boston.

He hadn’t boarded the train alone, however. If he was going to fully assume the identity of Conrad Browning again, he needed a servant. Conrad wouldn’t travel without a valet. That was what his friends and associates back East would expect.

He’d thought of Arturo and sent him a telegram, offering him the job. Arturo was more than happy to leave his current employer and accept the offer. True, Arturo was eccentric and set in his ways, but he was also loyal and intelligent, two qualities Conrad expected might come in handy before he found what he was looking for.

“There,” Arturo said when he finished cleaning the scrapes and cuts on Conrad’s hands. “I think you’ll be fine until the next time you attempt to exterminate every owlhoot and gunman west of the Mississippi.”

“Well, I’ve sort of got a cut on my back, too,
where one of those train robbers tried to stab me …”

Arturo rolled his eyes. “Turn around and let me see. Of course. The coat is ruined, too. It’s a good thing you’re filthy rich, sir, the way you go through clothes. Trouble just lies in wait for you, doesn’t it?”

“Seems that way,” Conrad muttered. “It was just a coincidence those men attempted to hold up the train we’re on.”

“Coincidence, sir … or the universe attempting to tell you something?”

“Like I’m jinxed?”

“I don’t believe in superstition. But you must admit, it seems as if you can’t go anywhere without someone shooting at you and trying to kill you.”

Conrad chuckled. “Then I guess it’s a good thing I can afford plenty of bullets, too.”

Three days later, Conrad and Arturo disembarked from a train in Boston. Arturo fussed around, supervising the unloading of their baggage, while Conrad leaned on the silver-headed walking stick he carried at times. His leg had been injured while dealing with the threat of the bounty hunters in New Mexico, and every now and then it twinged a little. The exertion of stopping the train robbery in Texas had left it aching.

“I’ve engaged a carriage for us and a wagon for our bags, sir,” Arturo reported. “I just need to tell the drivers our destination.”

Conrad nodded and gave him the address of the mansion on Beacon Hill. The big house had belonged to his mother Vivian and her husband, and later Conrad and Rebel had begun their married life there before moving to Carson City, Nevada. Since then the house had been closed up and vacant, dust settling on the covers over the furniture.

Conrad wasn’t looking forward to returning to his childhood home. It contained a lot of memories, memories he didn’t necessarily want to stir up again. If it proved to be too much to deal with, he could always pack up and move to one of the opulent hotels downtown, he told himself.

“Have you been to Boston before, Arturo?” he asked the valet as they left the train station in the rented carriage.

“Yes, sir, on several occasions with Count Fortunato. It’s one of the more civilized cities here in America, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Conrad replied with a smile. “Of course, I’m not as fond of civilization as I once was. I’ve gotten used to the frontier. Life out there is more honest, more open, more direct.”

“More dangerous and barbaric.”

Conrad inclined his head. “Depends on how you look at it, I suppose.”

Arturo regarded him shrewdly. “I must say, sir, you’ve changed a great deal since the first time I saw you. Back then, you were wearing that horrible fringed jacket and that big hat, carrying enough weapons to be a walking arsenal! Now you appear to be a fine gentleman of culture and breeding.”

“But appearances are deceptive, eh?” Conrad asked, chuckling.

“That’s not what I meant at all. But you must admit, sir, you are a rather complicated individual.”

“Most folks are, when you get down to it.”

“Not I, sir. I am exactly who I appear to be.”

“Well, I suppose we need a few things in the world we can count on.”

Conrad felt a twinge of apprehension when the carriage drew up in front of the mansion. It was a big house of red brick with a gabled roof, but it seemed to be some sort of monster, squatting there waiting for him to come close enough so it could spring on him and devour him. With his heart pounding, he said, “Wait, Arturo. Have the driver take us to a hotel instead.”

“Are you sure, sir? This is your family home.”

The only family he had left was Frank Morgan, and Frank had nothing to do with that monstrosity of a house. Frank was somewhere out west, roaming the high country, or the deserts, or the forests.