Part One
Part One
Johnny leaned against the splintery wood wall until the splash of a horse taking a piss on the other side moved him to a different stall; as he crouched down the pungent smell swept over him. He waved his hand in front of his nose a few times before he settled back, arms on knees, and bowed his head. He’d just left Wes in the bar, drinking up the money Johnny traded for the pocket watch he’d had for less than a day.
Was he really going back to everything he’d wanted to leave behind: drifting, hiring his gun, losing more of his soul with every dark day? For a minute he’d had a taste of what he might have had if his father hadn’t thrown his mama and him out….
Johnny stopped that thought. He’d always tried to be honest with himself, and he had to admit maybe things weren’t like he’d been told. He knew from his own experience that Murdoch Lancer had been looking for him for at least three years, and he knew who was behind what saved him in Mexico.
“Your father wants to see you.”
Father? But Papa had been dead for many years.
Wait.
“Lancer?” Johnny Madrid spoke the name for the first time. He knew he was addled from the heat and those miserable days in jail, but what did Lancer have to do with him? Why was this sweaty Pinkerton agent with a fat wallet buying his freedom?
“Willing to give you a thousand dollars for an hour of your time.”
A thousand dollars? That didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense until out of the corner of his eye Johnny saw the firing squad grinning and taking aim. He didn’t have to make sense of anything then. All he had to do was react. He bowled the gringo to the ground with his own body and rolled back, firing the gun he took from the guy’s holster without even knowing it. He shot his way out of there, hefted Chu into the Pink’s wagon, and galloped away on a rurale’s horse, promising to go to hell for a thousand dollars.
He knew he was being hired for his gun. The only reason for Lancer saving his ass and throwing that much money at him was that the man needed someone killed. As much as Johnny wanted out of the game, he couldn’t pass up that kind of money. So he headed to California, sure he would be taking the money and not so sure he wouldn’t be shooting Murdoch Lancer once he had it.
His legs had gone numb, so Johnny stood up, stretched, and paced around the barn a little. He’d been right about Lancer needing his gun, but discovering he had a half-brother and a sort-of sister drove thoughts of shooting his father right out of his mind. The ranch itself overwhelmed him with its size and its beauty. Naturally Lancer denied throwing him and his mother out, but the suggestion he could earn a third of the ranch stunned him. That unforced offer tore the first shred of doubt in the story his mother told.
The next shred tore after the fight with Scott by the water hole. Johnny tried to hide it, but Teresa’s comment about a gambler struck him deep in his chest.
Mama had hated gamblers. She avoided gaming towns like the plague and forbade him and his stepfather from entering any business supporting any form of gambling. Johnny and his Papa had wondered why, had even joked about it when she wasn’t around.
But according to Teresa his mother had left Lancer of her own free will, with a gambler. Why would a woman who hated gambling leave with a gambler?
Unless the hatred came later.
Why would a woman who hated blue eyes marry a gringo with blue eyes?
Unless the hatred came later.
Johnny picked up a saddle blanket, folded it, tossed it on the cold dirt, and sat on it. All this thinking was making him cloudy in the head. Like he’d said that first day, Murdoch’s telling of him and Mama leaving Lancer wasn’t the way he’d heard it.
But then again, his mama was not known for her truthfulness. She loved to tell stories—fantastical tales to entertain, to get attention, to encourage cantina patrons to buy another drink. Papa laughed with her and encouraged her to spin her yarns. He told her she should write books with her crazy stories in them. Those were happy times. Their little house was full of laughter and singing.
Johnny didn’t think back that far very often. It had been too painful, at first. Papa got sick and died, and then Mama drank too much and died, and it had taken everything Johnny had just to survive from day to day. By the time he’d established himself he was long out of the habit of thinking about the past.
But he remembered Mama told stories. And as far as he could tell, even though Murdoch Lancer was a grim, humorless man who asked too much of Johnny, he hadn’t ever lied. Hell, even that offer of a third of the ranch was real. They’d already signed the partnership agreement.
The one Johnny had just walked out on, for a horse and twelve dollars.
He screwed his eyes closed and laid his head back against the wall. He didn’t like where his thoughts were going. If Murdoch Lancer was telling the truth, that made his mother a liar.
If his mother was a liar, and Lancer hadn’t thrown them out, then maybe Johnny could have had food in his belly and a roof over his head after she died. Maybe, if he was the son of a respected rancher instead of an orphaned half breed, he wouldn’t have been beaten and cut and treated like he was less than shit. Maybe he could have gone to school or learned some other trade instead of the one he taught himself.
Maybe he would have learned to get along with his father, instead of blowing this chance and running away from home like a spoiled kid when he didn’t get his way.
It occurred to him that Mama had betrayed Murdoch, yet Murdoch had found a way to live with it. Otherwise he would never have invited Johnny home, would never have offered him his share of the ranch. If his father could move past Mama’s betrayal, Johnny could too. After all, he’d been hurt before and moved on...
“Johnny? Woo hoo…Johnny!” Shoot. It was Wes, of course, drunk as a skunk and coming in with plans to break that stallion right now. Smiling, Johnny talked him out of it, laid him down, and tucked him in. But even plastered, Wes must have picked up on something, because he asked Johnny if he’d be there in the morning. Why wouldn’t he be?
Johnny turned away and found himself nose to nose with the horse who started all this ruckus. With a deep sigh Johnny leaned against the short stall wall; the stallion nuzzled the top of Johnny’s head.
Huh. So he’d at least been handled, maybe even started by someone. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. If the horse had been trainable they’d have kept him and gelded him. Instead they turned him loose, so he was probably a rogue, and possibly dangerous. Wes would have a hard enough time with this one even once he was sober.
The next day found Johnny back in the bar, ignoring Wes drinking and groping the girls at the next table. Johnny was close to changing his mind, thinking maybe he should go back to Lancer and have it out with the old man once and for all. But then he looked out the clouded window and saw a familiar bay horse trotting in. The man sitting straight in the saddle was familiar, too, and for a second Johnny dared to hope Murdoch had sent his brother to ask him to come back.
But Scott had come of his own free will, and hearing that, Johnny’s mind made itself up. There was no way he’d show this man he barely knew any sign of indecision, no way would he share any of the thinking he’d been doing. Johnny stoppered up his thoughts of going back, stood his ground against his brother, and sent him on his way.
It took Wes dying to unstopper those thoughts again. Johnny saw clear as glass if he didn’t change his mind about leaving Lancer, he’d deal with death daily. Going back to that way of life would kill him as dead as poor Wes. It was time to man up, to swallow his pride, talk to his father, and find a way to be Johnny Lancer, rancher: son of Murdoch Lancer and brother of Scott Lancer.
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