'You done the world a favor, Frankie,' one told him.
'I never did like that sorry bastard,' another told him.
'Here you go, Frankie,' another puncher said, holding out Luther's guns. 'You throw away that old rust pot you been totin' around and take these. You earned 'em, and you'll probably damn shore need them.'
'What do you mean, Tom?' Frank asked.
'Frankie ... Luther was a bad one. He's killed four or five men that we know of with a pistol. He's got himself a reputation as a gunman. There'll be some who'll come lookin' to test you.'
'Test me?'
'Call you out, boy,' the foreman said. 'You're the man who killed Luther Biggs. They'll be some lookin' to kill you. Stay ready.'
'I don't want no reputation like that,' Frank protested.
'Your druthers don't cut no ice now, boy. You got the name of a gunman. Now, like it or not, you got to live with it.'
--------
*Two*
Frank drifted for a couple of months, clear out of Texas and up into Oklahoma Territory. He hooked up with two more young men about his age, and they rode together. Their parents were dead, like Frank's, and they just plain hadn't wanted to stay with brothers or sisters ... as was the case with Frank.
By then the story had spread about the shoot-out between young Morgan and Luther Biggs. Frank never talked about it; he just wanted to forget it. But he knew he probably would never be able to do that ... not completely.
The War Between the States was only a few months away, the war talk getting hotter and hotter. One of the boys Frank was riding with believed in preserving the Union. Frank and the other boy were Southern born. If war did break out, they would fight for the South.
The trio of boys separated in Arkansas when they received word about the beginning of hostilities between the North and the South. Frank joined up with a group of young men who were riding off to enlist in the Confederate Army. He never knew what happened to the other two boys.
For the next four years Frank fought for the Southern cause and matured into a grown man. He became hardened to the horrors of war. At war's end, Frank Morgan was a captain in the Confederate Army, commanding a company of cavalry.
Rather than turn in his weapons, Frank headed west. During that time he had been experimenting with faster ways to get a pistol out of the holster. He had a special holster made for him at a leather shop in southern Missouri: the holster was open, without a flap, and a leather thong slipped over the hammer prevented the pistol from falling out when he was riding or doing physical activities on foot. Frank practiced pulling the pistol out of leather; he worked at it for at least an hour each day, drawing and cocking and dry firing the weapon. The first time he tried the fast draw using live ammunition, he almost shot himself in the foot. He practiced with much more care after that, figuring that staying in the saddle with just one foot in the stirrup might be a tad difficult.
By the time Frank reached Colorado, his draw was perfected. He could draw -- and fire -- with amazing accuracy, and with blinding speed.
And that was where his lasting reputation was carved in stone. He met up with the Biggs brothers -- all four of them.
He was provisioning up in southeastern Colorado when he heard someone call out his name. He turned to look at one of the ugliest men he had ever seen: the spitting image of Luther Biggs.
'I reckon you'd be one of the Biggs brothers,' Frank said, placing his gunny sack of supplies on the counter.
'Yore damn right I am. And you're Frank Morgan. Me and my brothers been trailin' you for weeks.'
'I got the feelin' somebody was doggin' my back trail. Never could catch sight of you.'
'Our older brother, Billy Jeff, run acrost a man who knowed you. I disremember his name. That don't matter. He said you come out of the war all right and was headin' up to the northwest. Tole us what kind of hoss you was ridin', and what you looked like now that you was all growed up. But here and now is where your growin' stops, Morgan.'
'Take it outside, boys,' the store owner said. 'Don't shoot up my place. Gettin' supplies out here is hard enough without this crap.'
'Shet up, ribbon clerk,' Biggs said. Then his eyes widened when the store owner lifted a double-barreled shotgun and eared both hammers back.
'I said take it outside!'
'Now don't git all goosey, mister,' Biggs said. 'We'll take it outside.'
'You do that.'
'You comin', Morgan, or does yeller smell? I think I smell yeller all over you.'
'Don't worry about me, Ugly Biggs. You go run along now and get with your brothers, since it appears that none of you have the courage to face me alone.'
The storekeeper got himself a good chuckle out of that, and a very dirty look from Biggs.
'Don't you fret none about that, Morgan. I'd take you apart with my bare hands right now, 'ceptin' that would displease my brothers. They want a piece of you, too. And what is this ugly crap?'
'You, Ugly. You're so damn ugly you could make a living frightening little children.'
