"Feels good to be warm."
"It's the whiskey," Buck said.
"It's the soup," Karen added, giving her father a subtle wink.
"Like hell," Buck snapped. "Soup never did nobody so much good as the right kind of home-brewed whiskey."
Karen turned away without saying another word.
Frank drank more soup, chasing it with whiskey, as a dark mood settled over him. His plan for revenge against Ned Pine and Victor Vanbergen had ended with a bullet.
"Damn," he whispered, wondering how he could have been so foolish as to let a gunman get behind him.
Buck stirred in a rawhide chair near the potbelly. "Wasn't your fault, Morgan," he said.
"How's that?" Frank asked, taking note of the subtle curves beneath Karen's buckskins while she added split wood to the stove.
"It was snowin'," was all Buck said.
"I should have known better."
"Careless was all you was."
"Careless can get a man killed," Frank replied, settling back against a lumpy pillow. "Men in my profession know that real well."
"Maybe you shouldn't stay in that gunfightin' profession no longer?"
"I'd quit years ago. If it hadn't been what they did to my wife and my boy..."
Buck snorted softly. "Don't sound like that son of yours is much good at takin' care of hisself."
"He isn't," Frank agreed, feeling the whiskey soften the pain in his shoulder. "It isn't his fault. It's a long story that doesn't need telling, but I never got the chance to raise him proper."
"Maybe I'm just bein' nosy, but how's that?"
"Be quiet, Dad," Karen said. "He doesn't want to talk about it now."
"Sorry," Buck mumbled, returning to his sweetened coffee as snowflakes fell softly on the cabin roof.
"I was forced to leave my wife before the boy was born." Frank said it with anger thickening his voice. "I didn't see him at all until he was a grown man."
"There!" Karen snapped. "I told you not to pry into it, Dad."
"You've got my apologies again," Buck said.
Frank closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the past he wanted to forget. "It's okay. I've learned to live with it over the years."
Karen came over to him. "Do you want more soup? Or some coffee?"
"No, ma'am," he replied, noticing that Dog had come over to the cot to lick his hand. "I might be able to use more of that whiskey."
"Good squeeze, ain't it?" Buck asked, grinning.
"I've never tasted any better. As soon as I'm strong enough I'll need my horse ... and my guns."
"I figure I know why," Buck said.
"I came all this way for a reason. I'll feel better in a little bit."
"It'll be dark soon," Buck said. "No sense gettin' out in this cold when a man can't see. Whatever you aim to do to them fellers, it can wait till mornin'."
"I'm not much on waiting."
"You'll need your strength," Karen said, offering him the clay jug. "If you go out in this weather, it'll drain you something awful."
"She's right," Buck said. "Wait fer sunrise. The men you're after will be easier to see. Right now, I'm guessin' they figure they got you, even though they ain't found your body. In the snow back yonder you left a hell of a puddle of red, an' they'll think it's the end of you."
"I'm wasting time here," Frank said, swallowing more of the whiskey while he looked steadily into Karen's soft brown eyes. "I need to be on the move."
"Shape you're in," Buck said, "you won't be able to move very damn far."
Dog whimpered softly and licked Frank's hand again.
"You see?" Karen said with a smile. "Even your dog agrees with us."
"Dog never was all that smart," Frank told her, reaching for the dog's forehead to give it a rub.
"Is that his name?" Karen asked.
"I couldn't think of one much better at the time," he explained.
The woman giggled.
"What's so funny?" Frank asked.
"The name. I'm afraid to ask what name you gave to your horse."
"Mostly, I just call him Horse ... when I'm not mad at him over something."
Karen put the jug beside him on the mattress and walked over to the stove, warming her hands.
"Gonna get cold tonight," Buck announced. "I'll give that horse of yours an' my pinto a little extra corn. It's late in the year for a squall like this."
Buck got up and headed for the cabin door, hesitating when he reached for the latch string. "Maybe you brung all this bad weather with you, Morgan?"
His eyelids felt heavy, and he didn't answer the old man as he drifted off to sleep.
--------
*Seventeen*
Frank knew he was dreaming ... perhaps because of the wound in his shoulder and the whiskey Karen had given him. He found himself drifting back to another meeting with Pine in the lower Rockies, when he'd happened upon old Tin Pan Rushing and some help he hadn't expected while he was searching for his son.
* * * *
Tin Pan lit a small railroad conductor's lantern before he followed Frank into the trees. Yellow light and tree trunk shadows wavered across the snow as they walked with their backs to the wind and snow.
"The one that's moanin' is over here," Tin Pan said, raising his lantern higher to cast more light on the few inches of snow covering the ground.
"I hear him," Frank said, covering their progress with his Peacemaker.
"Hope he ain't in good enough shape to use his gun," Tin Pan said.
"He won't be," Frank assured him.
The first body they came to was a stumpy cowboy wearing a sheepskin coat. He lay in a patch of bloody snow. His chest was not moving.
" This is the feller I shot," Tin Pan said.
"I got the one who called himself Tony. He's farther to the right. Let's see what the live one has to say," Frank said with a look to the east. "The other two won't have much when it comes to words. I can hear the last one making some noise. Let's find him first."
"That'll be the one who called himself Buster," Tin Pan remembered.
"I don't give a damn what his name is. I'm gonna make him talk to me, if he's able," Frank replied, aiming for the groaning sounds.
A dark lump lay in the snow. Frank could hear horses in the trees about a hundred yards away stamping their hooves now and then, made nervous by the gunshots.
He came to the body of a man lying on his back, his mouth open, a rifle held loosely in his right hand. Blood oozed from his lips onto the flattened hat brim behind his head. The man groaned again.
Frank knelt beside him as Tin Pan held the lantern above his head.
"Howdy, Buster," Frank said.
Buster's pain-glazed eyes moved to Frank's face.
"You ain't Charlie," he stammered.
"Nope. I sure as hell ain't Charlie. Mr. Bowers and I met back on the trail. I shot him. Put him on his horse headed for Durango. That's fifty hard miles in a storm like this. A man would bet long odds against him making it all that way in the shape he's in. He's probably dead by now. But I gave him the chance to save his ass ... if he's tough enough to make that ride to Durango."
"You're ... Frank Morgan."
"I am."
"We thought it was Charlie's fire we seen."
"You were mistaken. You and your pardners made another big mistake when you tried to jump me. Tony, and some other fella who was with you, are both dead."