It had been years since Frank Morgan went on the prowl to kill a man, or several of them. He'd tried to put his killing days behind him.
'Some folks just won't let it alone ... won't let it rest,' he told himself.
He had no doubt that he could kill Ned Pine, or Victor Vanbergen and their gangs. It would take some time to get it done carefully.
The soft patter of snowflakes drummed on his hat brim and coat. He thought about Conrad, hoping the boy was okay. A kid his age had no way to prepare for the likes of Pine and Vanbergen in these modern times. But back when Frank was a boy, the country was full of them.
'I'm on my way, son,' he whispered as a wall of white fell in front of him. 'Just hang on until I get there. I promise I'll make those bastards pay for what they've done to you.'
* * * *
Frank climbed out of the tub and toweled dry. It was time to stop living in the past and get on with the business of hunting down Ned Pine and Victor Vanbergen.
But as he put on clean denims and his last clean shirt, he had difficulty shaking the image of the man he'd seen behind the cemetery.
'There's no such thing as ghosts,' he told himself while he combed through his hair.
And still he wondered why the old man standing near the gate into the cemetery had claimed he couldn't see the Indian who walked back into the pine tree shadows.
Frank pondered the possibility that old age was robbing him of his senses.
--------
*Four*
Even at night, this part of the Rockies was beautiful land to behold. Glenwood Springs lay just north of the Colorado River in a valley between towering mountain slopes. It was country Frank knew well.
He walked through the quiet little town before he went to bed, thinking about Victor Vanbergen and Ned Pine. Now that his son was safely back in Durango, Frank knew the smartest thing he could do would be to forget about his quest for vengeance and go elsewhere. But that went against his grain. He just wasn't made that way.
He strolled out to the overgrown cemetery with a cigar in his mouth, remembering the Indian he had seen when he came to Glenwood Springs.
'The Ones Who Came Before,' he muttered with a note of sarcasm in his voice. The man he had seen was as real as the cigar between his teeth.
He leaned against a rusting wrought-iron fence to look at the gravestones, feeling the chill of mountain air wash down from the slopes around him.
'I knew you'd come back,' a voice said from the darkness, sending Frank's hand toward his gun.
'Don't shoot me. I ain't armed.'
A shadow moved in the pines west of the graveyard.
'Who the hell are you?' Frank demanded.
'We talked when you rode into town, mister. I was here when you said you saw one of the Old Ones.'
Frank's gun hand relaxed. 'What the hell are you doing out here this time of night, old-timer?' he asked.
'Visitin' my daughter.'
'Your daughter?'
'She's buried here. Died from the consumption. Sometimes I come out here just so's I can be close to her. Makes me feel better.'
The old man he'd seen beside the fence earlier in the day walked up to him.
'Sorry about your daughter,' Frank said.
'It's been two years, nearly. Can't sleep at night without thinkin' about her before I drop off.'
'The galloping consumption is a hard thing ... a rough way to die,' Frank said.
'She went fast. Less'n two months after we found out she came down with it.'
Frank understood the old man's grief ... _he'd_ lost a wife to a coward's bullet. 'It's hard to lose a loved one, no matter what the cause.'
'I asked around in town after you got here, mister. They say you're Frank Morgan the gunfighter. Ol' Man Barnes at the hotel told me. An' Smitty recognized you when you came to the hotel.'
'I don't make a living with a gun now,' Frank said. 'I gave all that up years ago.'
'But you was askin' about Ned Pine an' Vic Vanbergen. That don't sound like you come here with peaceable intentions, if you pardon me for sayin' so.'
It had begun to seem that Frank's past would haunt him for the rest of his life. He stared across the moonlit cemetery a moment. 'They killed my wife and took my son hostage. I got my boy back, but I still owe them a debt ... a blood debt, and I aim to see that they pay it.'
'Then you _are_ a killer.'
