Revenge of Eagles

The horse veered off into the chaparral at the side of the road, finding an opening in the thorny stuff. The big cur was more reluctant, obviously hesitant to abandon his master in the middle of a fight. Frank didn’t want to have to worry about him while he was battling for his life, though, so he added, “Dog, go!”

With a growl, Dog disappeared into the brush.

Frank ran to the wagon and joined the two men who were already crouched behind it, firing revolvers at the charging bandidos. The man who had been using the rifle earlier had lost the weapon when the buckboard flipped over. Both of them had managed to hang on to their handguns, though.

The buckboard was on its side, turned crossways in the road. The horses had struggled back to their feet, except for the one with the broken leg, and they lunged and reared in their traces, maddened by the gunfire and the reeking clouds of powder smoke that drifted through the air. A couple of them had been wounded by flying lead.

Frank rested his Winchester on the buckboard and opened fire again, placing his shots carefully now that he had a chance to aim. One of the raiders flipped backward out of the saddle as if he had been swatted by a giant hand, and another fell forward over his mount’s neck before slipping off and landing under the horse’s slashing hooves.

Bullets pounded into the buckboard like a deadly hailstorm of lead. The thick boards stopped most of them, but a few of the rounds punched through, luckily missing Frank and his two companions. The shots from the men fighting alongside him were taking a toll on the attackers as well. Less than half of the bandidos were unscathed so far. The others had been either killed or wounded.

The Winchester ran dry. Frank dropped it and drew his Colt. The range was plenty close enough now for an expert pistol shot like The Drifter. He triggered twice and was rewarded by the sight of another rider plummeting from the saddle.

The gang of bandidos had had enough. They wheeled their horses, still snapping shots at the buckboard as they did so, and then lit a shuck out of there. Frank and the two men threw a few shots after them to hurry them on their way, but the riders were out of pistol range in a matter of moments.

Frank holstered the Colt and picked up the Winchester, then proceeded to reload the rifle with cartridges from his pocket in case the raiders turned around and tried again. From the looks of it, though, the bandits had no intention of returning. The dust cloud their horses kicked up dwindled in the distance.

“Keep riding, you bastards!” growled the older of the two men from the buckboard as he shook a fist after the bandidos. “Don’t stop until you get back across the border to hell, as far as I’m concerned!”

The man was stocky and grizzled, with a graying, close-cropped beard. Most of his head was bald. His hands and face had a weathered, leathery look, an indication that he had spent most of his life outdoors.

The second man was younger, taller, and clean-shaven, but he bore a resemblance to the older man that Frank recognized right away. He pegged them as father and son, or perhaps uncle and nephew. Both men were dressed in well-kept range clothes that would have looked better if they hadn’t been covered in trail dust. They had the appearance of successful cattlemen about them.

Frank spotted the other rifle lying on the ground about twenty feet away. He nodded toward it and said, “Better pick up that repeater, just in case they come back.”

The older man snorted contemptuously. “They won’t be back! Bunch of no-good, cowardly dogs! They travel in a pack and won’t attack unless the odds are ten to one in their favor.”

“And we cut those odds down in a hurry,” the younger man said. He hurried over to retrieve the rifle anyway, Frank noted.

The riders had disappeared in the distance now, without even any dust showing. Deciding that they were truly gone, Frank walked out from behind the buckboard and went to check on the men who had fallen from their horses during the fight. He counted seven of them. Six were already dead, and the seventh was unconscious and badly wounded. Blood bubbled from his mouth in a crimson froth with every ragged breath he took, and Frank heard the air whistling through bullet-punctured lungs. The man dragged in one last breath and then let it out in a shuddery sigh, dying without regaining consciousness.

Frank’s expression didn’t change as he watched the man pass over the divide. Any man’s death diminishes me, John Donne had written, and in a philosophical way Frank supposed there might be some truth to that. Donne, however, had never swapped lead with a bandido.

Five of the men were Mexicans, typical south-of-the-border hardcases. The other two were Americans of the same sort. Frank checked their pockets, found nothing but spare shells for their guns and some coins.

A pistol shot made him look around. The younger man had just put the injured horse out of its misery.

Frank walked back to the buckboard. The younger man began unhitching the team and trying to calm the horses. The older man met Frank with a suspicious look. He asked, “Who are you, mister? Why’d you jump into that fracas on our side?”

“My name’s Morgan,” Frank said, “and I just thought it looked like you could use a hand. I never have liked an unfair fight.”

The man nodded and wiped the back of his hand across his nose, which was bleeding a little. That seemed to be the only injury either of them had suffered in the wreck of the buckboard. They had been mighty lucky.

“Well, the boy an’ me are much obliged. My name’s Cecil Tolliver. That’s my son Ben.”

Ben Tolliver paused in what he was doing to look over at Frank and nod. “Howdy.” He turned back to the horses and then paused and looked at Frank again. “Wouldn’t be Frank Morgan, would it? The one they call The Drifter?”

Frank tried not to sigh. Just once, he thought, he would like to ride in somewhere and not have somebody recognize him almost right away.

And it would have been nice too if nobody shot at him.

CHAPTER 2

“Yes, I’m Frank Morgan,” he admitted.