'There was a gold rush on back then. Men were finding gold nuggets as big as marbles.'
'But you never found any,' Frank said.
'Not even a flake of placer gold. This country had been panned out by the time I got here. The only other way is to dig into these rocky slopes. I never was much for using a pick and a shovel.'
'So you've turned to trapping?'
'It's a living. I'm happy up here, just me and old Martha for company. I had me a Ute squaw once, only she ran off with a miner who had gold in his purse.'
'I owe Martha a sack of corn,' Frank remembered. 'She heard this bad bunch sneaking up on us.'
Tin Pan smiled. 'Martha earns her keep. She can tote three hundred pounds of cured pelts and she don't ever complain. Once in a while she gets ornery and won't cross a creek if it's bank-full, but I reckon that just shows good sense.'
'You don't get lonely up here?'
'Naw. There's a few of us old mountain men still prowling these peaks. We get together once in a while to swap tales and catch up.'
'I think I understand,' Frank told him. 'I've got a dog. I call him Dog. He's better company than most humans. I've had him for quite a spell.'
'Same goes for Martha,' Tin Pan said, glancing into the pines where his mule and the horses were tied. 'She's right decent company, when she ain't in the mood to kick me if I don't get the packsaddle on just right.'
Frank chuckled. 'I want you to know I'm grateful for you helping me with those gunmen.'
Tin Pan gave him a steady gaze. 'You're takin' on too much, Morgan, tryin' to go after eleven more of 'em all by your lonesome.'
'I don't have much of a choice. They're holding my son hostage. I can't turn my back on it.'
'Maybe you do have a choice,' Tin Pan said after he gave it some thought.
'How's that?'
'I might just throw in with you to help get that boy of yours away from Ned Pine. I ain't no gunfighter, but I can damn sure shoot a rifle. If I find a spot on the rim of that canyon, I can take a few of 'em down with my Sharps.'
'It isn't your fight,' Franks said. 'But I'm grateful for the offer anyhow.'
'I've been in fights that wasn't mine before,' Tin Pan declared. 'Let me study on it some. I'll let you know in the morning what I've decided to do. I'd have to ask Martha about it. She don't like loud noises, like guns.'
* * * *
Frank's eyes blinked open. The cabin was dark. Was it fate that had led him to Buck Waite and his beautiful daughter while he was on yet another manhunt?
It was hard to figure why unexpected friends showed up just when he needed them.
--------
*Eighteen*
Conrad Browning began to whimper as cold winds whipped past his horse, swirling around the two men escorting him toward higher peaks.
'I'm freezing,' he said, his teeth rattling, as darkness blanketed the mountains.
Cletus Huling gave the boy a steely look as their horses plodded up a switchback toward Glenwood Springs, and the valley beyond.
'You want me give this baby something to complain about?' Diego Ponce said, pulling a foot-long bowie knife from his stovepipe boot, snowflakes dusting his sombrero and his dark black beard.
'Yeah. Shut the bastard up,' Cletus said, reining his horse around a knot of pinyon pines. 'I'm tired of listenin' to the son of a bitch bellyache.'
With one sudden motion Diego grabbed a fistful of Conrad's hair and, jerking him sideways out of the saddle, sliced off the tip of his left ear.
Blood poured over Conrad's woolen greatcoat as he let out a piercing yell that echoed from the slopes around them, startling the horses.
Cletus, leading the way to Ghost Valley, turned back in the saddle to watch the pain on Conrad's face.
Diego laughed, tossing the piece of the boy's ear into a snowdrift. 'Now he have something to cry about,' Diego said, wiping the blood from his knife on one leg of his badly worn leather chaps.
Blood seeped down Conrad's cheek as he held his palm to the wound. 'My father will get you for this!' he cried, slumping over in the saddle.
'That ol' man of yours don't give a damn what happens to you,' Cletus said. 'He never did come up with the money Ned an' Victor wanted from him. Only he'd better bring the money this time or you're a dead son of a bitch.'
'Dad came after me,' Conrad said, nursing his missing ear tip with a handkerchief he removed from an inside pocket of his snow-laden coat.
'Morgan never did get to Ned,' Cletus reminded the kid. 'He's way past his prime. He got too old to mess with the likes of Victor an' Ned. At least that's what everybody says about Frank.'
