sanctuary.
It was hard to blend in when you were the last of the really fast guns.
Some of the others were still alive—Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Smoke Jensen were three that Frank could think of right off the top of his head. Somehow they had managed to settle down. John Wesley Hardin was still alive too, but he was in prison. Bill Hickok, Ben Thompson, Doc Holliday, Luke Short ... They were all dead, along with most of the other shootists and pis-toleers who had made a name for themselves at one time or another on the frontier.
It was a sad time, in a way. A dying time. But a man couldn’t stop the march of progress and so-called civilization. Nor was Frank Morgan the sort of hombre to brood about it and cling to the fading shadows of what once had been. He looked to the future, not the past.
Now the future meant finding a warm, hospitable place to spend the winter. It was November, and up north the snow and the frigid winds were already roaring down out of Canada to sweep across the mountains and the plains, all the way down to the Texas Panhandle. Hundreds of miles south of the Panhandle, however, here in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and the temperature was quite pleasant. Frank even had the sleeves of his blue work shirt rolled up a couple of turns on his muscular forearms.
He was a lean, well-built man of middle years, with gray streaking the thick dark hair under his Stetson. His range clothes were of good quality, as was his saddle. A Colt .45 was holstered on his hip, and the stock of a Winchester stuck up from a saddle sheath under his right leg. He rode a fine-looking Appaloosa called Stormy and led a dun-colored packhorse. The big shaggy cur known as Dog padded alongside him as Frank rode down a trail that cut its way through the thick chaparral covering the mostly flat landscape.
Frank didn’t know exactly where he was, but he thought he must be getting close to the Rio Grande. Some sleepy little border village would be a good spot to pass the winter, he mused. Cool beer, some tortillas and beans and chili, maybe a pretty senorita or two to keep him company ... It sounded fine to Frank. Maybe not heaven, but likely as close as a gunfighter like him would ever get.
Into every heavenly vision, though, a little hell had to intrude. The distant popping of gunfire suddenly came to Frank’s ears.
He reined in and frowned. The shots continued, coming fast and furious. They were still a ways off, but they were getting closer, without a doubt. He heard the rumble of hoofbeats too. Some sort of running gun battle, Frank decided.
And it was running straight toward him.
He had never been one to dodge trouble. There just wasn’t any backing down in his nature. Instead he nudged his heels into Stormy’s sides and sent the Appaloosa trotting forward. Whatever was coming at him, Frank Morgan would go right out to meet it.
Now he could see dust clouds boiling in the air ahead of him, kicked up by all the horses he heard. A moment later, the trail he was following intersected a road at a sharp angle. The pursuit was on the road itself, which was wide enough for a couple of wagons and a half-dozen or so riders.
Only one wagon came toward Frank, a buckboard that swayed and bounced as it careened along the road. The dust from the hooves of the team pulling it obscured the occupants to a certain extent, but Frank thought he saw two men on the buckboard, one handling the reins while the other twisted around on the seat and fired a rifle back at the men giving chase.
There were more than a dozen of those, Frank saw. He estimated the number at twenty. They rode bunched up, the ones in the lead banging away at the fleeing buckboard with six-guns. The gap between hunter and hunted was about fifty yards, too far for accurate handgun fire, especially from the saddle of a racing horse. But the rifleman on the buckboard didn’t seem to be having much better luck. The group of riders surged on without slowing.
Frank had no idea who any of these men were and didn’t know which side he ought to take in this fight. But he’d always had a natural sympathy for the underdog, so he didn’t like the idea of two against twenty.
He liked it even less when one of the horses in the team suddenly went down, probably the result of stepping in a prairie-dog hole. The horse screamed in pain, a shrill sound that Frank heard even over the rattle of gunfire and the pounding of hoofbeats. Probably a broken leg, he thought in the instant before the fallen horse pulled down the other members of the team and caused the buckboard to overturn violently. The two men who had been in it flew through the air like rag dolls.
Frank sent Stormy surging forward at a gallop. He didn’t know if the men had survived the wreck or not, but it was a cinch they were out of the fight, at least for the moment, and wouldn’t survive the next few seconds unless somebody helped them. He drew the Winchester and guided Stormy with his knees as he brought the rifle to his shoulder and blazed away, firing as fast as he could work the repeater’s lever.
He put the first couple of bullets over the heads of the pursuers to see if they would give up the chase. When they didn’t but kept attacking instead, sending a couple of bullets whizzing past him, Frank had no choice but to lower his aim. Stormy’s smooth gait and Frank’s years of experience meant that he was a good shot even from the hurricane deck. His bullets laced into the crowd of gunmen in the road.
Frank was close enough now to see that most of the pursuers wore high-crowned, broad-brimmed sombreros.
Two of the bandits plunged off their horses as Frank’s shots ripped through them, and a couple of others sagged in their saddles and dropped out of the fight, obviously wounded. The other men reined their mounts to skidding, sliding halts that made even more dust billow up from the hard-packed caliche surface of the road. Clearly, they hadn’t expected to run into opposition like that which Frank was putting up now.
But the odds were still on their side, and after a moment of hesitation they attacked again, yelling curses and firing as they came toward the overturned wagon.
Both of the men who had been thrown from the wreck staggered to their feet as Frank came closer. He didn’t know how badly they were hurt, but at least they were conscious and able to move around. They stumbled toward the shelter of the buckboard as bullets flew around them.
While Stormy was still galloping, Frank swung down from the saddle, as good a running dismount as anyone could make. He had the Winchester in his left hand. With his right, he slapped the Appaloosa on the rump and ordered, “Stormy, get out of here! You too, Dog!”
