she said, “You still haven’t told me your name.”
“It’s Morgan.”
“Is that your first name or your last name?”
“Doesn’t matter. Some people call me The Kid, or Kid Morgan, so I guess you could say it’s my last name.”
Actually, he had given himself that name, taking the inspiration for it from a dime novel. He had assumed that identity to conceal who he actually was, and in time, the pose had become the reality. He had no intention of going back to being the man he’d been before.
“Kid Morgan?” Annabelle repeated, and the mocking tone in her voice put The Kid’s teeth on edge for a second. “That sounds like the name of some sort of desperado or gunfighter.”
The Kid shrugged and didn’t say anything.
“Wait a minute,” Annabelle said as wariness sprang up in her eyes. “Are you an outlaw, Mr. Morgan?”
He knew what she was worried about. She had been so anxious to blather on about wicked Italian counts and valuable old candlesticks that she might have revealed too much to the wrong man. After all, they had never seen him until an hour or so earlier and had no idea what he was capable of. He might kill them both and go after the Konigsberg Candlestick himself, or he might try to sell them out to Fortunato…
“I’m not an outlaw,” he said. Whether or not she wanted to believe him was up to her.
Evidently she did, because she looked relieved. Then she said, “Then you must be a gunfighter.”
The Kid didn’t deny it. That was the reputation Kid Morgan had, and he supposed there was some truth to it.
Annabelle leaned forward suddenly and clasped his arm with her right hand. “If you’re a gunfighter, Mr. Morgan…Kid…then I want to hire you.”
“Hire me? To do what?”
“To kill Eduardo Fortunato,” she said.
Chapter 4
The Kid felt a cold surge of anger inside him. This was the sort of thing that his father had been putting up with for years, he thought. Just because Frank Morgan had a reputation for being fast on the draw, most people believed that he could be hired to gun down anyone. That he was just a killing machine, a handy tool for whoever had the right price.
“You’ve got me mixed up with somebody else,” The Kid said tightly, making an effort to keep his anger under control. “I’m not an assassin.”
“But…I thought—”
“You thought wrong.”
Annabelle shook her head. “Then I apologize. I meant no offense, Mr. Morgan. The way you helped us made me think you were the kind of man who seeks adventure, and then when you admitted that you’re a gunfighter as well…” She shrugged her right shoulder, being careful not to move the left one and make her wounded arm hurt worse. “It was a natural enough mistake.”
If she wanted to believe that to make herself feel better, The Kid didn’t care. He stood up. “This’ll be a good spot for you to camp. I’ll help the padre tend to the horses, and then I’ll be moving on.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re not going to stay here tonight, too?”
“No, I reckon I’ll get on about my business…which doesn’t include killing Italian noblemen.”
Annabelle’s mouth tightened into an angry line. “I suppose I deserved that,” she snapped. “You can at least help me to my feet and give me back my gun before you go.”
“I said I’d help with the horses, too,” The Kid responded as he reached down, grasped her upraised hand, and pulled her to her feet. Then he picked up her gun and extended it to her butt-first. It was a double-action Smith & Wesson .38, he noted with approval, small enough for a woman to handle without too much trouble, especially if she practiced with it, but a heavy enough caliber to have some stopping power, too.
She took the weapon and slid it back into its brown leather holster. Then she stood and watched in silence as The Kid helped Father Jardine unhitch the team from the wagon. They hobbled the horses to keep them from wandering off, but the animals could still drink freely from the pool and graze on the grass that grew on its banks.
“You must forgive Annabelle, my son,” the priest said quietly when he and The Kid paused on the other side of the wagon. “She means well, she truly does, but she has little patience and our mission is very important to her.”
“What’s in it for her?” The Kid asked. “If you recover this fancy candlestick for the Church, what does she get out of it?”
“It was her research that led me here. Tell me, Mr. Morgan, have you ever heard of the Jornada del Muerto?”
The Kid nodded. “It’s a stretch of badlands north of here a ways, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, but its name means Journey of the Dead Man.”
“So?”
“Have you any idea how it got that name?”
“Not really,” The Kid replied with a shrug. “I suppose it’s because the place is so hot and dry, it’ll kill you if you try to cross it.”
“Many years ago…two centuries ago, in fact…one such man did try to cross it. Unwisely, as it turned out, because he died before he reached the other side. His name was Albrecht Konigsberg.”
The Kid smiled. “The man with the candlestick?”
“Exactly. He escaped from the Inquisition in Spain and came here to this land. I suspect that he stole the candlestick thinking that he could use it to pay his way to the New World. It was made of gold, after all, and decorated with fine gems. Somehow, though, he managed to hang on to it. Annabelle set out to trace his movements. She spent three years in Mexico doing so, pouring over endless piles of old government and Church documents. She was able to find a record of his arrival in Vera Cruz, and from there she traced him to Mexico City, where he was able to take on a new identity and serve as an advisor to the viceroy in charge of what was then New Spain. Konigsberg was a scientist, you see, an astronomer and astrologer who knew a great deal about the stars. But eventually his past caught up with him. Agents of the Inquisition found him, and he had to flee, taking the candlestick with him once again.”
“So he ran north,” The Kid guessed, “into what’s now New Mexico Territory.”
Father Jardine nodded solemnly. “Yes. He hid himself again by assuming a new identity as a trader known as El Aleman. However, his enemies ferreted him out after a time and he was forced to flee yet again. This time, his luck finally deserted him. With an Indian servant, he started across what is now known as the Jornada del Muerto but never reached the other side. There is a story about how an Indian near death stumbled into a mission and told stories of his master, a German who possessed a great treasure and hid it somewhere in the wasteland. But this was during the time soon after the Pueblo rebellion, when there was still much trouble with the Indians, and the priests and the soldiers at the mission had no time to see if the man’s story was true. Eventually it was forgotten.
