"I thought you said Morgan always worked alone," Tommy remembered.
"He does. That's what I can't figure," Pine replied, his pale eyes moving across the valley rim.
Pine's eyelids slitted. "Ain't heard no fire from Daryl or Pike."
"Morgan probably got to both of em," Victor suggested, "or the other bastard shootin' at us got 'em. We don't know who the hell he could be."
"Reckon that happened to the others?" Herb Wilson asked, facing a window. "They shoulda been back by now if they had any luck."
"Luck's a funny thing," Pine said. "Royce an' his boys may have run into Lady Luck when she was in a bad mood. The others oughta been back here by now."
Victor leaned against the door frame. "My daddy always said that if a man is lucky he don't need much of anything else. I got it figured that the others are all dead."
"What the hell would you know about it?" Pine cried, both hands filled with iron.
Victor was not disturbed by Ned's question, nor was he disturbed by Pine's bad reputation. "I'm an authority on luck, good and bad, Ned. I say our luck just ran out. Whoever this bastard Morgan is, he's good. It'll take a lot of luck for us to kill him."
Ned backed away from the window. "We ain't done yet with Morgan," he said.
Jeff Walker leaned against the windowpane. "There ain't nobody out there, seems like," he said.
Seconds later a bullet smashed the glass in front of his face. A slug from a .52-caliber buffalo gun entered his right eye.
"Damn!" Tommy said when Jeff was flung away from the window.
Jeff went to the dirt floor of the cabin with the back of his skull hanging by tendons and tissue. A plug of his brains lay beside the potbelly stove. A twist of his long black hair clung to the skull fragment.
"Holy shit!" Tommy cried, backing away to the center of the room. "Them's Jeff's brains hangin' out."
"Shut up!" Ned bellowed. "Give me some goddamn time to think!"
--------
*Sixteen*
Frank heard a distant rifle shot, figuring Buck had found another target. Then suddenly something struck his left shoulder and he went down, stunned, tumbling through the snow, his mind reeling.
He tried to scramble back to his feet. He heard Dog give a soft whimper, and then everything went black around him. He knew he was falling and couldn't help himself.
* * * *
He awakened to the smell of wood smoke. He saw the dim outline of a cabin roof above his head. Very slowly, waves of pain shot through his left side, down his arm, and across his ribs.
He heard himself groan.
"You okay, Morgan?" a faintly familiar voice asked from the mist around him.
"Where am I?"
"My place."
"Where the hell is your place? What happened to me down in that valley?" Slowly, events returned to him as he regained consciousness.
He saw a man with a tangled red beard leaning over him, and he tried to remember who the stranger was.
"You took a chunk of lead, Morgan. It ain't too bad nor too deep. I dug it out with my knife. I'm sure as hell glad you was asleep when I done it. You hollered like a stuck pig after I got it out."
"I suppose I'm lucky to be alive," he said, unable to recall how anyone could have gotten behind him to catch him with his guard down.
"That's fair to say."
"Your name is Buck ... Buck Waite. Things are coming back to me now."
"This here's my daughter, Karen. She fixed you some soup made outta dried wild onions an' elk meat. When you feel up to it, she'll give you some."
Frank's eyes wandered across the small log cabin, until they came to rest on a pretty young woman dressed in deerskin pants and a fringed top, with her dark red hair tied in a ponytail.
"Pleased to meet you, Karen," he mumbled. "Sorry it has to be under these bad circumstances. I feel like a damn fool right now."
She came over to him. He guessed her age at thirty or less, and as he first surmised, she was pretty. "You lost a lot of blood," she said. "Let me know when you want some soup."
"Something smells mighty good," Frank managed, "but I sure do wish I had a spot of whiskey to help with this pain in my shoulder."
"We've got some corn squeeze. Daddy makes it himself out of Indian corn in the summer."
"I could use some," Frank croaked, trying to sit up on a crude cot made of rawhide strips and pine limbs.
"Lie back down," Karen told him. "I'll fetch you some of the whiskey."
"Where's Ned Pine and the others?" he asked.
"Back down in Ghost Valley," said Buck. "I seen 'em find that patch of blood you left in the snow, so I figure they's sure they got you."
"They're wrong," Frank said. "I'm not dead yet ... unless this is all a dream."
"You ain't dreamin', Morgan," Buck said. "But it'll be a spell before you can move around."
"Where's Dog? And my horse?"
"The bay is out yonder in the corral. This dog of your'n won't leave the foot of your bed. Every time I try to take him outside, the bastard growls at me an' shows his teeth."
"He's harmless ... most of the time," Frank said.
"I ain't gonna take no chance. The damn dog can stay right where he is till hell freezes over for all I care."
Frank chuckled, although the movement in his chest pained him some.
"Here's your soup," Karen said, appearing above him with a steaming tin cup. "It'll be a bit salty. It's the only way we have to preserve the elk meat for the winter."
He sat up slowly and took the cup she offered him, finding a cloth bandage around his left arm and shoulder. "I'm much obliged to both of you," he said. He gave Buck a glance. "Buck didn't tell me that he had a beautiful daughter."
"Wasn't none of yer damn business till now," Buck answered quickly.
"Sorry." Frank took a sip from the cup, resting a trembling right elbow. "It's delicious."
Karen came back with a clay jug. She brought it over and set it beside him on the dirt floor of the cabin. "This here's the whiskey. Drink what you want. It's got a touch of a burn to it."
Buck scowled at his daughter. "It wouldn't be worth a damn if it didn't," he said. "Whiskey without no kick to it is just branch water."
"May as well take a bath in it," Frank agreed, reaching for the jug when his pain grew worse.
"It'll help," Buck said.
Frank's mind was on other matters right then. "How far is this place from Ghost Valley?" he asked.
"Far enough. They'll never find you here."
"You right sure about that?"
"Sure as I am that the sun's gonna rise tomorrow. You'll feel better by then."
Frank pulled the cork from the jug with his teeth, spat it out, and drank deeply from the corn whiskey. He took a deep breath and drank again. "That's mighty good squeeze," he said when he felt the burn all the way to his belly.
"I don't make bad shine," Buck said. "There's a secret to it."
"I'd say you've found the secret," Frank replied, then took a third swallow.
"Drink the soup if you can," Karen said, smiling at him. When she did, she was prettier than ever.
"I'll do my best," he said. Frank's mind returned to the business at hand. "Where are my guns?" he asked.
"I picked up yer Winchester when you dropped it. Yer pistol is over yonder by the potbelly stove."