J. Johnstone: The Loner: Inferno #12

One of the objects he was looking at sprang into sharp relief.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” The Kid said.

It was a covered wagon.

He moved the telescope, swinging its field of view along the line of wagons with their bleached canvas covers. He had seen covered wagons before, of course, but only one or two at a time. Never a whole train of them.

He knew that in the past, wagon trains had carried hundreds of thousands of immigrants to new homes on the frontier, but in this day and age, when the railroads reached almost everywhere, they were rare. Rare enough that The Kid had never seen one.

But that was what he was looking at, no doubt about it. Using the telescope, he made a quick count. Thirty wagons in the train stretched out, single file, for a couple of hundred yards.

A dozen or so outriders moved along with the wagons, flanking them on horseback. Two more riders were in the lead, several yards ahead of the first wagon in line.

Smiling faintly, The Kid lowered the telescope and shook his head. The heyday of the wagon trains might not be far enough in the past to consider what he was looking at as a bit of living history, but it was close.

His curiosity about what he was seeing wasn’t satisfied. He closed the telescope, tucked it back into his saddlebags, and heeled the dun into motion again, setting a faster pace.

The ground-eating trot quickly closed the gap between him and the wagons. As he approached, a couple of the outriders noticed him and peeled away from the vehicles to intercept him.

The men looked tough and competent, and each was armed with a pistol and a rifle. One of them raised his hand in a signal for The Kid to halt.

He wasn’t looking for trouble, so he hauled back on the dun’s reins and brought the horse to a stop. The two men walked their mounts closer.

“Something we can do for you, mister?” the one who had lifted his hand asked.

“Just thought I’d pay a visit to the wagon train.” The Kid nodded toward the cumbersome vehicles that continued rolling slowly westward, being pulled by teams of oxen. “I’ve never seen one like this before.”

“It ain’t a sideshow,” the other man snapped. “Just a bunch of honest, hard-workin’ folks who’re tryin’ to make better lives for themselves.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second. I told you, I’m not looking for trouble.”

“Go on about your business, then.”

The Kid’s jaw tightened. Being talked to like that rubbed him the wrong way. However, he didn’t want to get in a shooting scrape with these men, so he supposed the best thing to do would be to ride on around the wagons and ignore them.

He was about to do that when he saw one of the men who’d been leading the wagon train galloping toward them. The two outriders looked around, then one of them said, “Stay right there, mister. I reckon the boss wants to talk to you.”

The Kid thought about being contrary and saying he didn’t want to talk to the “boss”, but there didn’t seem any real point in that. He sat easy in the saddle and waited.

The man who rode up was an imposing, barrel-chested presence with a craggy, ruggedly powerful face. He reined in, then thumbed a gray hat to the back of his head and demanded, “Who’s this?”

“He hasn’t told us his name, Mr. Dunlap,” one of the outriders replied.

“Well, have you asked him?”

“Uh ... no, not really.”

The big man brought his horse closer to The Kid. “I’m Horace Dunlap, the wagonmaster of this train. Who might you be, mister?”

Dunlap had the look of a veteran frontiersman, so he had probably heard of Kid Morgan. That identity hadn’t existed only a few years earlier, but The Kid had developed quite a reputation in a short time.

Facing down Hammersmith and the rancher’s gun-crew had been different. The Kid didn’t see any need to play on that reputation at the moment, so he gave Dunlap a friendly nod and said, “Name’s Morgan.”

“Do you aim to cause us any trouble, Mr. Morgan?”

“Not a bit,” The Kid replied honestly.

“In that case, why don’t you come with me? We’ll ride up at the point, so we can talk.” Dunlap looked at the outriders. “You fellas get back to your posts.”

The two men didn’t look particularly happy about it, but they turned their horses and rode back to the wagons.

“They’re good hombres,” Dunlap went on, “but they take their jobs mighty serious-like.”

“That’s the best way to take a job,” The Kid said.

“That’s the God’s honest truth. Come on.”

Dunlap turned his horse, a big brown gelding, and The Kid moved alongside him on the dun. As they rode toward the front of the wagon train, Dunlap went on, “You must be wonderin’ what an outfit like this is doin’ out here.”

“I didn’t know there were any more wagon trains,” The Kid admitted. “Everybody travels by regular train now.”

“Not everybody. I’ve been leadin’ wagon trains west since ’67, and in all that time I’ve headed up at least one every year, sometimes three or four.” The wagonmaster paused. “The past few years, though, it’s only been one. And this one ... well, this is my last.”

The Kid looked over at him and cocked an eyebrow.

“I’m retirin’,” Dunlap said in answer to the unasked question. “I’ve had my fill of it. It’s time to settle down. So when these folks get where they’re goin’, I’ll be stayin’ there with ’em.”

The Kid wasn’t sure why Dunlap was being so open with him. Some men were just talkative, he supposed, and didn’t mind sharing the story of their lives.

The less The Kid had to talk or even think about his own past, the better.

As they rode past the wagons, he got a good look at the people on the high seats of the vehicles. Most of the teams were being handled by men who appeared to be farmers, or good hardy working stock, anyway. Some had women with them, and kids peeked out from most of the wagons.

Women were driving a few wagons. The Kid supposed they were widows or maybe the wives of some of the outriders. He noticed one in particular who had long, blond hair that had been pulled back and tied into a ponytail hanging far down her back from under her sunbonnet.

When he and Dunlap reached the front of the wagon train, Dunlap introduced The Kid to the other man riding up there.

“This is Scott Harwood, one of our scouts. Scott, meet Mr. Morgan.”

Harwood, a lean, dark-faced man who could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty, gave The Kid a nod. “Howdy.”

The Kid had a hunch Harwood was as taciturn as Dunlap was garrulous, so that probably made them a good team.

“Mr. Morgan’s never seen a wagon train before,” Dunlap continued. “Reckon he figured they didn’t exist anymore, that the locomotives run ’em all out of business.”

“There are still places the railroad doesn’t go,” Harwood said. “Like Raincrow Valley.”

“That’s the name of the place you’re headed?” The Kid asked. “Raincrow Valley?”

“Yep,” Dunlap said. “Prettiest place you ever saw. And you can help us get there, Mr. Morgan.”

That statement caused The Kid to raise his eyebrows in surprise. “Me? How can I help you?”

Dunlap gave him a shrewd look. “Come on. You reckon I don’t know the famous gunslinger Kid Morgan when I see him?”

Chapter 3

For a long moment, The Kid didn’t respond. When he spoke, he kept his voice flat and noncommittal. “I didn’t say anything about being a gunslinger.”

“You didn’t have to,” Dunlap said. “A fella I know pointed you out to me in a saloon in Santa Fe a while back. Told me you were about as fast as that other fella named Morgan. What’s his name? Frank?”