Tom turned in the direction Zeke was pointing. 'I don't see nothin'. You're imagining things.'
'I was sure I saw somebody headed toward us.'
'Who the hell would it be?'
' This bad light plays tricks on a man's eyes. I wish it wasn't so damn dark tonight.'
'You're seein' things. Relax.'
'Pass me that whiskey,' Zeke said. 'Could be I'm just too cold.'
Tom handed Zeke the bottle. Half of its contents were missing.
Zeke had raised the bottle to his lips when suddenly a dark shape appeared on top of the boulder behind Tom.
An object came twirling through the air toward Zeke, and then something struck his chest. 'Son of a...' he cried, driven back in the snow by a bowie knife buried in his gut just below his breastbone.
'What the hell?' Tom cried, scrambling to his feet as Zeke slumped to the ground.
A heavy rifle barrel slammed into the back of Tom's head and he sank to his knees, losing consciousness before he fell over on his face.
Zeke cried, 'What happened?'
The shape of a man stood over him.
' Who ... the hell ... are you?'
'Frank Morgan,' a quiet voice replied.
'Oh, no. We was supposed ... to be watchin' for you.'
'You weren't watching close enough, and now you'll pay for it with your life.'
'Please don't ... kill me. I've got a wife back home.'
'You're already dead, cowboy. The tip of my knife is buried in your heart.'
Waves of pain filled Zeke's chest. 'No!' he whimpered, feeling warm blood flow down the front of his shirt.
'I'm gonna cut your pardner's throat,' the voice said. 'He has to die for what you did to my son.'
'It was ... Ned's idea,' Zeke croaked.
'You went along with it,' the tall man said, bending down to jerk his knife from Zeke's chest.
As Zeke's eyes were closing he saw Frank Morgan walk over to Tom. With a single slashing motion, Morgan whipped the knife across Tom's throat.
Zeke's eyes batted shut. He didn't feel the cold now.
--------
*Fifteen*
Tiny snowflakes fell in sheets across the abandoned town. The bottom of the valley floor was covered with several inches of white.
An eerie silence gripped Ghost Valley as Frank made his way down slippery rocks and sheer cliffs, following the old Anasazi trail Buck Waite had shown him.
Smoke curled from a rock chimney as Frank watched a shack in the middle of town, after he had made slow but careful progress across the valley. Behind the cabin, more than a dozen horses stood with their tails to the wind in crude pole corrals. A pile of hay was stacked in one corner.
He moved quietly through the scrub pines. To the north Buck was covering the cabin from a cluster of rocks at a range of more than five hundred yards.
'I hope he's a good shot from a distance,' Frank said under his breath, slipping among the trees. The red- bearded old man had proved to be an excellent woodsman, but from the top of the rimrock he'd have to be good, better than most men, to hit anything, even with a long-range rifle like his Sharps .52 buffalo gun.
Frank thought about Conrad, safe back in Trinidad. 'It's time I made Pine and Vanbergen pay,' he said, creeping closer to the cabin.
The patter of small snowflakes rattled on his hat brim and the crunch of new-fallen snow came from his boots when he put his feet down.
'No way to do this quiet,' Frank said, still being careful with the placement of each foot.
A horse snorted in the corrals. Frank remained motionless behind a pine trunk until the animal settled. A range-bred horse would notice him making an advance toward the cabin. A horse raised in a stable wouldn't pay him any mind. There was a big difference in horses. Frank had always preferred the range-bred variety.
A blast of northerly wind swept across the top of the valley, and Frank knew that Buck was freezing his ass off, waiting for things to start.
A bit of luck, Frank thought, to run across Buck Waite when he least expected to find any help tracking down the outlaws. While he usually worked alone when he was employing his guns, it was a comfort to know Buck was up there with his rifle.
Moving carefully toward the back of the cabin, he sighted an outhouse behind the place, nestled against the trunk of a small ponderosa pine.
