The Loner (9 page)

He wanted to stop and drag air into his lungs, but there was no time for that. Winchell came at him, flailing punches. Conrad lowered his head and bulled forward, tackling Winchell. They rolled across the floor, winding up almost under the buggy horse. The animal danced away skittishly as Conrad grappled with the kidnapper. Hatred mixed with desperation allowed him to find the last bits of strength remaining in his body, and he grabbed Winchell’s shirt and heaved the man against one of the buggy wheels.

Winchell’s feet slipped out from under him, and he went down. Conrad reached up and slapped the horse’s rump. The buckskin leaped forward, and since he was still hitched to the buggy, the vehicle lurched ahead as well.

The iron-tired wheel rolled right over Winchell’s throat, cutting short the terrified scream that had started to well from the kidnapper’s mouth.

Conrad looked away as the wheel crushed the man’s throat. The horse backed up, but the damage was done. Winchell thrashed wildly as he tried to get air into his lungs. His face turned purple, then blue. Then his spasms subsided and he lay still, except for a few twitches as his muscles caught up to the fact that he was dead. For the second time tonight, Conrad had used the buggy as a weapon, and this time it had been lethal.

He reached up, caught hold of the buckskin’s harness, and pulled himself to his feet. Winchell had choked to death, he thought as he looked down at the body, but not at the end of a rope. Conrad didn’t care. One more of the kidnappers was dead; that was all that mattered.

And as he gazed at the corpse, an idea began to form in his mind, an offshoot of things that had happened earlier. The remaining kidnappers might worry that he would come after them and try to avenge his wife, but they wouldn’t think that if they believed he was dead. In fact, they might even let their guard down a little if they thought he was no longer a threat.

For the first time since this terrible night began, a smile touched Conrad’s lips. An agonized, haunted smile, to be sure, but still…

He pulled Winchell’s body clear of the buggy and then unhitched the horse and turned it into its stall. He picked up the rope he had used to tie Winchell to the post and saw that it was badly frayed. Running his fingers over the back of the post, Conrad found the rough spot where Winchell must have worked the rope back and forth until it parted. Even before that, he had worked his hands free from the belt. That had been going on all the time he was questioning the man, Conrad thought, and he hadn’t even noticed because he was so light-headed from loss of blood and had been concentrating on what Winchell was telling him.

Weaving, Conrad walked back into the house and went to his study. He barely had the strength to pull out some paper and a pen, and the letters he scratched onto the paper wavered and blurred. That was all right; he wanted people to think that he had written the letter in a state of great emotional distress. Actually, he was cold inside just then, numb to everything except the need for vengeance.

Leaving the letter in the middle of his desk where someone was sure to find it, he went upstairs and stepped into the bedroom. He had to say good-bye to Rebel. For the next several minutes, he spoke from the heart, telling her how much he loved her and how sorry he was for everything that had happened, then finished by saying, “I promise you that they’ll all pay for what they did. Each and every one of them.” He knew that if the situation were reversed, she would have devoted the rest of her life to hunting down his killers. He could do no less for her, and he knew she would understand.

“I love you,” he whispered one last time, and as he turned away, he thought he heard a whisper saying the same thing, brushing across him like a warm breeze.

Although not an overly religious man, Conrad prayed for strength to finish this as he went downstairs. He had a small supply of cash for emergencies in the desk. He stuffed the bills under his shirt, on the side that wasn’t soaked with blood. He planned to take only one revolver and the Winchester with him, so he left the spare Colt on the desk, holding down the letter that explained how he couldn’t go on living after what had happened to Rebel.

Dawn wasn’t far off now. The eastern sky was gray as he walked behind the house to the carriage house, taking with him a jug of kerosene he’d picked up in the kitchen. He went inside and saddled the buckskin, then led the horse out and tied the reins to an iron bench that sat beside the path between the house and the carriage house.

“Be back in a minute, big fella,” he whispered as he patted the horse’s shoulder. He went inside and began splashing the kerosene around the interior of the carriage house. The building was far enough away from any other structures that Conrad was confident a fire wouldn’t spread beyond it. When he was finished, he tossed the empty jug aside and walked over to Jeff Winchell’s body.

Kneeling next to the dead kidnapper, Conrad slipped the Colt from its holster and pressed the muzzle to Winchell’s right temple, the same place a man would hold a gun if he intended to blow his own brains out. He pulled the trigger.

Then he stood, holstered the gun, and took a match from his pocket. He went to the doorway, rasped the match alight against the jamb, and tossed it into a puddle of kerosene, which went up with a fierce
whoosh!

Conrad turned his back and walked away. Now that Rebel was gone, his only living relative was Frank Morgan. He would have to stop somewhere and send a wire to Claudius Turnbuckle, advising the lawyer that he was really still alive and swearing him to secrecy. Conrad wanted Turnbuckle to let Frank know that he wasn’t dead; he didn’t want his father grieving over him. Let Frank grieve over Rebel. That was enough.

Conrad untied the buckskin’s reins and climbed into the saddle. He knew he was on his last legs, but he wanted to get well away from Carson City before he stopped to seek medical attention. Maybe he could find a sawbones in some small settlement up in the mountains.

He didn’t look back as he rode away, but he could hear the flames crackling behind him, consuming the body that everyone would believe was his. He wouldn’t be here for Rebel’s funeral, and he deeply regretted that, but he could come back some day and visit her grave. He would tell her that he had avenged her death, that everyone responsible for what happened to her was gone.

Everyone but him.

He forced that bitter thought out of his mind. As of tonight, Conrad Browning was dead, too, another victim of whatever he had become. Yeah, Conrad was dead, he told himself as he swayed in the saddle. Long live…long live…

Well, he would work on that. Later.

Conrad didn’t know where he was or how long he had been unconscious. He didn’t even recall passing out. The last thing he remembered was riding alongside a tree-lined, sun-dappled creek in the foothills somewhere northwest of Carson City. It was the middle of the day. He had been riding for hours after leaving the city and the burning carriage house behind him, floating in and out of awareness and trusting that the buckskin would continue following the trail.

He didn’t remember when he had last eaten, but he had no appetite. As he rode along beside the stream, though, he was suddenly achingly thirsty. The sight of the water dancing and bubbling along the rocky creek bed prompted him to dismount. The merry chuckling of the stream drew him like a siren’s song. Conrad dropped to his knees at the edge of the water and leaned forward, longing to plunge his head into the crisp, cold stream.

That was the last thing he remembered until this very moment.

Slowly, he became aware of several things. He was lying on something soft and comfortable, and when he moved his fingers, he felt a sheet under them. Another sheet covered him. Something tight around his midsection made it a little difficult to breathe. His eyes were closed, but he saw light through the lids. Light and shadow. Someone was moving around near him. He heard music, far enough away that it had to be coming from another room. Someone playing the piano?

And closer, someone humming softly, keeping time with the tune.

Conrad forced his eyes open. He winced against the glare of sunlight slanting in through a window with gauzy yellow curtains over it. A shape moved between him and the light. He squinted as his vision tried to adjust.

The other person in the room with him was a woman. A young woman, Conrad thought, although her back was to him and he couldn’t see her face. The way she moved as she opened a drawer in a chest and placed some folded linen inside it seemed to indicate youth, though. So did the long, thick auburn hair that hung down her back. She was still humming along with the music as she closed the drawer and turned away from it, but the humming stopped abruptly as she saw him looking at her.

“You’re awake,” she said.

That seemed pretty obvious to Conrad. He started to say,
That’s right,
but his voice didn’t work very well. What came out of his mouth was more of an incoherent croak.

“Don’t try to talk just yet,” the woman said as she came toward the bed. “Let me get you some water.”

He could tell for sure now that she was young, just as he had thought, and the part of his brain that still recognized such things realized that she was pretty, a fair-skinned, green-eyed redhead with a faint dusting of freckles across her nose.

She picked up a pitcher and a glass from a table beside the bed. She poured a little water in the glass, then leaned over the bed and slipped her other hand behind Conrad’s head, lifting it and supporting it as she brought the glass to his lips.

“Not too much now,” she said. “As weak as you are, you don’t want to rush anything.”

He was weak, all right. Every muscle in his body was limp. He didn’t think he could get out of this bed if it was on fire.

He drank eagerly, but she gave him only a little water, not enough to ease the parched condition of his mouth. After a moment, she let him take another sip. Then she carefully lowered his head to the pillow.

“That’s enough for now,” she said. “I’m going to go tell my father that you’re awake.”

This time when he tried to speak, he could form words in a husky whisper, but he barely had enough strength to get them out. “Wh…where…am…”

“Where are you? A little settlement called Sawtooth.”

“N-Nevada…?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s over the line in California. We’re not far from Nevada, though.”

Conrad managed to nod. With a sigh, he closed his eyes as the young woman hurried out of the room, but he didn’t pass out again. So he had managed to ride across the border into California. That didn’t surprise him all that much. He hadn’t known where he was, and he had no specific destination in mind. He’d just wanted to get away from Carson City and the great tragedy he had left behind him.

Except he would never really leave it behind him, he realized as the image of Rebel’s broken, wounded body filled his brain. He shuddered and felt like he ought to cry, but no tears came. Maybe the large amount of blood he’d lost had caused them to dry up.

Or maybe they were just frozen solid, like his heart.

The music in the other room had stopped while the young woman was giving him a drink, but now it started again. As Conrad listened to it, he realized that it wasn’t coming from a piano. The notes had a slightly tinny quality to them. He decided that they came from a Gramophone cylinder. It was somewhat unusual to find one of the newfangled machines in some backwater frontier settlement, he thought, but he had heard them before and was convinced that was what it was.

Footsteps approaching the bed made him open his eyes again. He saw a gray-haired man in a rumpled shirt and vest, with a string tie around his neck, looking down at him. “So you’re awake,” the man said.

Whoever these people were, they sure had a grasp of the obvious, Conrad thought. He nodded and husked, “I could…use some more water.”

The man gestured to the young woman, who had followed him into the room. “Go ahead and give him some, Eve,” he said. “It’s not going to hurt him. Burning up with fever like he is, he can use all the fluid he can get.”

“All right, Pa.” The glass on the table beside the bed still held some water. She supported Conrad’s head again and helped him drink. Greedily, he sucked down the rest of the water in the glass.

His voice was a little stronger when he spoke again. “You say I’ve got fever?”

The man nodded. “That’s right. The wound in your side had festered by the time you got here. I cleaned it up the best I could, but the infection had spread. You’re still trying to fight it off, and I’ll be honest with you, there’s not much I can do to help you, other than keeping you comfortable and seeing that you get some nourishment. Your own body will have to do the rest.”

Conrad didn’t think his body was capable of doing much of anything right now. The effort of lifting his head a couple of times to drink had exhausted him. He wasn’t sure he could move again.

“Are you…a doctor?”

The man nodded. “That’s right, son. My name’s Patrick McNally.” He inclined his head toward the young woman. “My daughter Eve.”

“Thank you…for helping me,” Conrad said. “How long have I…been here?”

“Three days,” McNally replied.

That answer surprised Conrad. He had supposed it was later in the same day on which he had passed out beside the creek. He was lucky he hadn’t fallen into the stream and drowned.

“I’ve been…unconscious…for three days?”

“Oh, no,” Eve McNally said. “You’ve come to several times. But you were never as clearheaded then as you seem to be now. That’s a good sign, isn’t it, Pa?”

McNally nodded. “A very good sign. When a man’s mind starts working again, a lot of times his body follows along. You regained consciousness enough so that we could give you water and a little broth, but this is the first time you’ve talked. Coherently anyway.”

A sudden worry struck Conrad. He wanted everyone to think that he was dead, but from the sound of it he’d been babbling away to the McNallys.

“What did I…say?”

Eve smiled. “You must be a student of history. You kept talking about the War Between the States.”

“I…what?”

“You went on and on about the rebels.”

A pang like a knife struck deep in Conrad’s chest. He was glad they hadn’t realized what he was really talking about, but the reminder of his loss was painful.

“You mentioned the name Lasswell, too,” McNally added. “A lot of other names as well, but that was the one you talked about the most. Is that your name, son? Are you Lasswell?”

Conrad closed his eyes for a second and shook his head. “No,” he whispered. “I’m not Lasswell.”

“What is your name, then?”

He hesitated, then said the first thing he thought of. “It’s Morgan.”

“Is that your first name or your last name?”

“Just…Morgan.”

Eve touched her father’s sleeve. “Pa, you know it’s not polite to pry too much into a man’s business. Anyway, he needs more rest, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” McNally admitted with a nod. He leaned over the bed and rested his hand briefly on Conrad’s forehead. “Still got fever.”

“I’ll get a cloth and bathe his face.”

“That’s a good idea. It’ll help him rest.”

Both of them went away. A few minutes later, Eve came back with a basin and a rag. She pulled up a chair beside the bed, dipped the rag in the water in the basin, wrung it out, then wiped the wet cloth over Conrad’s face. It felt wonderfully cool and soothing. He closed his eyes and let himself concentrate on the sensations.

Somewhere along the way, the music had changed again. Conrad didn’t recognize the song, but it held more than a hint of melancholy. “That music,” he whispered without opening his eyes. “Where does it…come from?”

“Oh, that’s just…my mother.”

Conrad heard the slight hesitation in her answer, but he was too tired to ask her about it. And, he supposed, it was really none of his business.

He faded off to sleep without really being aware of it.

When he woke again, night had fallen. Or maybe it was several nights later, for all he knew. The sky outside the window, on the other side of the yellow curtains, was dark. The lamp on the table was turned so low that Conrad could barely see.

After looking around the room for a moment, though, he spotted Eve McNally sitting in a rocking chair in the corner. Her head was tilted back and her eyes were closed. She seemed to be asleep. Conrad watched her for a moment, then cleared his throat.

The swiftness with which she came alert in the chair told him that she was accustomed to sitting vigil with sick people. She had probably handled that duty for her father’s patients many times. She stood up, came over to the bed, and rested her hand on Conrad’s forehead.

“You still have fever,” she told him. “You’re burning up.”

He knew that from the chills that ran through him, causing him to shudder. All his senses seemed a little distorted as well. “Water,” he whispered.

Eve gave him a drink. As she lowered his head to the pillow, she said, “I should go get my father.”

“Is he…asleep?”

“That’s right, but I know he’d want me to wake him.”

Conrad found the strength to give a tiny shake of his head. “No need. He said…there was nothing he could do…but what you’re…already doing.”

“Well…I suppose that’s true.” She pulled the straight chair closer to the bed and reached for the basin and the rag.

“Is it…the same day?”

Eve smiled. “You mean the same as when you were awake before? Well, technically, no, I suppose, since it’s after midnight. But I know what you mean, and yes, it’s only been about ten hours since you were awake.”

“Have I…babbled any…since then?”

She shook her head as she started wiping his face with the wet cloth. “No, you just moaned every now and then. You haven’t been trying to fight the Civil War over again.” She paused, then went on. “Your father must have told you about the war. You’re not old enough to have fought in it yourself.”

As a matter of fact, Frank Morgan had been in the war. Conrad knew he’d fought for the Confederacy. But Frank had never really talked much about the experience, and Conrad hadn’t pressed him for details.

He didn’t confirm or deny Eve’s speculation. After a moment, she said, “My father worked in a Union field hospital. He wasn’t old enough then to be a doctor, so he was an orderly. All the terrible things he saw there were what convinced him to study medicine. He said there had to be something better that doctors could do.”

Conrad felt too bad to really care that much about what Eve was saying, but the sound of her voice was soothing, like the wet rag on his heated face. He wanted to keep her talking, so he murmured, “How did you wind up…in Sawtooth?”

“Father practiced for a long time in Sacramento. That’s where I was born and raised. But then my mother…got sick, and he wanted to go someplace where he wouldn’t have as many patients or be as busy, so he could devote more time to taking care of her. My uncle owns the Sawtooth general store, so he suggested that we move out here. He said the town needed a doctor.”

“It’s a…mining town?”

“Mining and ranching,” Eve said with a nod. “It’s a nice place to live. Nothing like Sacramento, of course.”

Conrad thought he heard a trace of wistfulness in her voice. That wasn’t surprising. A young, vibrant woman, raised in a bustling city, was bound to find a little frontier settlement like this somewhat confining.

He wondered what was wrong with Eve’s mother. Nothing that would keep her from playing a Gramophone, obviously. But he didn’t think it would be courteous to ask, and old habits died hard.

“What about you, Mr. Morgan?” Eve asked. “Where are you from?”

Conrad smiled. “Thought you told your pa…it wasn’t polite to pry.”

“Yes, but turnabout is fair play, as the old saying goes.”

“Boston,” he said. “I was…raised in Boston.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Really? I thought you didn’t sound like you’d been a Westerner all your life.”

“I’ve only lived out here…a short time.”

“I hate to admit it, but the way you were dressed when Bearpaw brought you in, I thought you might be a desperado of some sort. Those black clothes and the guns, I mean.”

“Bearpaw?” Conrad repeated with a frown.

Eve took the cloth and dipped it in the basin again. “Oh, that’s right, you don’t know how you got here, do you?” she asked as she wrung it out. “Phillip Bearpaw found you lying next to Sawtooth Creek, unconscious. He thought you were dead at first, but when he saw that you were still alive and had been wounded, he put you on your horse and brought you here. I’m sure he saved your life.”

“I suppose he did. Phillip Bearpaw, eh?”

“That’s right. He’s a Paiute, but an educated one. He and my father are friends.”