Karen stood up, leaving the whiskey beside his cot on the dirt floor. "Wait till Pa gets back. It's nearly dark now anyhow. Nobody in his right mind is gonna go anywhere in a snow storm like this."
Frank surrendered to her logic ... for now. "Okay. Just don't let me drift off to sleep again."
"Rest'll be the very best thing for you right now, Mr. Morgan."
"Why don't you call me Frank?"
"Wouldn't be proper. We ain't acquainted."
He grinned. "Then let's get acquainted. Tell me why a pretty girl like you is living up here in these mountains with her father."
"He needs me."
"It has to be more than that. Buck seems like he's able to take care of himself."
"All we've got is each other," Karen said quietly, moving over to the woodstove to add more pine limbs.
"Why did you come up here with him in the first place?" Frank asked.
"To be away from folks. Pa had a hard time durin' the war an' he didn't want to be around so many people. Nothin' up here but deer, elk, an' grizzly bears, besides the smaller varmints along the creeks."
"Don't you ever get lonely?"
"No. I like it up here."
Another blast of wind screamed around the eaves of the small cabin.
"But you're miles from any settlement."
She turned away from the potbelly to stare at him. "When we feel the need to see folks we can ride down to Glenwood Springs, or over to Cripple Creek. When we don't, there ain't nobody who bothers us up here."
"Sounds peaceful," he said, reaching for the whiskey with his right hand.
"It is. Pa wants it that way."
"Why?"
"On account of the war. He said he's seen enough of what men can do to each other."
"I understand that," Frank said, taking a big swallow of corn whiskey.
"You sound like pretty much of a loner yourself," Karen said as she closed the stove door.
"I am. I reckon it's for the same reasons your pa likes it up in these mountains. It don't take long for a man to get enough of civilization."
"We get by," Karen said. "The winters can be hard sometimes."
"And cold," Frank surmised.
"The cabin stays warm. We get ready for winter with plenty of firewood. This place could use a few more chinks between some of the logs."
Frank pushed a moth-eaten wool blanket off his chest and struggled to a sitting position, movement that only increased the pain in his left side.
"You shouldn't be movin' around, Frank," she said, coming over to him.
"I can't stay here. I've got business over in that ... Ghost Valley, they call it."
"It'll keep for a few days," Karen assured him.
"Not this," Frank said darkly. "I've been looking for those jaspers for weeks. It won't be settled until Ned Pine and Victor Vanbergen are dead."
"Pa says you're a killer."
He took the whiskey jug again and drank deeply before he answered her question. "There was a time when I made a living at it. But not now."
"You just said..." Karen's voice faded.
" This is different. This is personal."
"You won't be strong enough," she warned. "This cold drains all the strength out of a body."
"Not mine," he replied. "I'm used to the cold ... or the heat."
She came over to him and sat beside him on the cot, with worry in her eyes. "Pa says you aim to go up against that bunch of outlaws single-handed."
He nodded, and drank more whiskey.
"You don't know those men," Karen said. "They're all paid killers."
"I know 'em real well. That part don't scare me one little bit. They shot me, but it was because I got careless and let one of 'em get behind me."
"But Pa said your son was safe now, down in Trinidad or thereabouts."
"I aim to make 'em pay for what they did to Conrad. I won't let 'em get away with it."
"Pa says there's a lot of them hard cases in the valley."
"I've thinned 'em down by a few."
"You killed some of them?"
"A handful. Your father gave me some help."
"Pa said he wasn't gonna kill no more men after the war was over."
Frank sighed. "I reckon he made an exception. I owe him for what he did."
"We came up here to live peaceful," Karen whispered, staring at a cabin window covered with deer hide.
"I may have pulled him into a fight that wasn't any of his affair," Frank explained.
"Did you ask him to help you kill those men?"
He wagged his head. "Nope. He did it on his own and that's a fact."
Karen was thoughtful a moment. "We try to live quiet. Even when those Indians come around, Pa gets along with 'em and gives 'em what they want."
Frank remembered the Indian he'd seen outside the cemetery at Glenwood Springs. "Do you mean the Old Ones? The Ones Who Came Before?"
"Some call 'em that," Karen admitted, although she seemed nervous about it.
"Are they Utes? Shoshoni?"
"No one knows. They've lived here for a very long time. I only saw 'em a few times. Pa says they're real careful about showin' themselves to strangers."
"Who are they?" Frank wanted to know.
"Ask Pa about it."
"I already did. He didn't tell me much."
Karen got up off the cot, as though she didn't care to talk about it anymore. "I'll warm up some more of this soup. It'll help you get your strength back."
"You didn't answer my question," he persisted.
"I didn't aim to. Ask my pa about it."
The pain in Frank's shoulder forced him back down on the bed and he closed his eyes.
The Indian he saw beyond the cemetery fence at Glenwood Springs had seemed real enough.
He tried to recall what Doc Holliday told him about the local Indians. Some folks claimed they were like ghosts from the past, some tribe called the Anasazi.
"I saw one of them," he told Karen.
She turned quickly from the potbelly where she was warming his soup.
"It's true," he said. "I couldn't get a good look at him, but he was there, and he spoke to me."
"You're joshin'," Karen said.
"I'm completely serious."
She went back to her cast-iron pot. "An' just what did this Indian say?"
"He directed me to Ghost Valley. That's one reason why I'm here."
"What's the other reasons?" she asked without turning around to look at him.
"A white man, a gunfighter by the name of Doc Holliday, told me this is where I could find Pine and Vanbergen."
"You'll have to ask Pa about that. I mind my own business when it comes to gunfighters an' Indians. Only, Pa told me you were a gunfighter, so I reckon I shouldn't be talkin' to you now."
"That was a long time ago," Frank said sleepily as the corn whiskey began to do its work.
--------
*Twenty*
He saw Jake Allison standing at the end of a dusty street in Abilene, Texas, and he knew something was wrong, since this moment came from his distant past. Jake was a deadly gunman with a far-flung reputation as a quick-draw artist. And Allison was long dead, by the hand of Frank Morgan.
Jake came toward him, his gun tied low on his leg. He wore a flat-brim hat, stovepipe boots, and a leather vest, with a bandanna around his neck.