Hell Town Read online

  “They can come back tomorrow night,” Frank said, “at different times. That way they won’t be arguing over…”

  “Linda,” the Chinese girl supplied, in unaccented English. She had probably been born in the United States, to immigrants who had come from China to help build the Central Pacific Railroad.

  “They won’t have to argue over Linda here,” Frank went on.

  The prospector frowned and said, “But what about tonight? I still got me one hell of an itch.”

  “You should’ve thought of that before you started threatening people.”

  The man shook a finger at Burton. “That fancy pants threatened me first! Called me an uneducated lout, he did!”

  Burton sniffed. “Simply stating a fact.”

  “Shut up, Professor,” Frank snapped. “You’re not making things any better.” He jerked a thumb at the prospector again. “You. Out.”

  The man went, but not before muttering a lot of curses on his way to the door. He slammed it behind him with more force than necessary.

  Professor Burton straightened his coat and hooked his thumbs in his vest. “I greatly appreciate the assistance, Marshal,” he said to Frank. “While I regret that you had to see me in a moment of mortal weakness, tempted by the lusts of the flesh, I’m glad you came along when you did and saved me from being forced to hand that recalcitrant buffoon the thrashing of a lifetime.”

  “Yeah, me too, Professor,” Frank said, his voice dry with sarcasm. “Now move along.”

  Burton frowned. “Surely you don’t mean that I have to leave? The altercation is over, and I assumed your decree was for that lout’s benefit—”

  “I said you were both leaving, and I meant it.”

  Burton looked like he wanted to argue, but the cold stare that Frank gave him seemed to make him think better of it. He turned to Linda and said, “I’m forced to bid you good evening, my dear, but I’ll see you tomorrow evening—”

  “I’ll be here,” she cut in, still speaking excellent English. She looked over at Frank and Clint and added with an inviting smile, “Either of you gents interested in a poke?”

  Clint licked his lips and started to say something, then changed his mind and gave a regretful shake of his head. “I reckon I’m on duty,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Frank told him. “We’ll make the evening rounds together, so you’ll know the routine.”

  That caught Burton’s attention. “You have a new deputy, Marshal?” the professor asked.

  “Yep. This is Clint Farnum. Clint, meet Professor Burton.”

  The two men shook hands, with Burton saying, “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, sir, though I wish it was in more decorous surroundings.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Clint told him. “I’ve met some of my best friends in whorehouses.”

  The three men left together, ignoring Rosie’s questions about how a lady was supposed to make any money in this town. The hour was late enough now so that not as many people were on the streets, even though the saloons were still open and doing a good business.

  “What brings you to Buckskin, Mr. Farnum?” Burton asked.

  “Oh, the marshal and I are old friends,” Clint answered. “I heard about him packing a badge here and thought maybe he could use a good man.”

  The part about them being old friends was stretching the truth a mite, Frank thought. He and Clint had known each other for a long time, but they had never been close. As for the rest of it…well, time would tell.

  “I hope you enjoy your stay here,” Burton went on.

  “I’m sure I will, Professor.”

  Burton said good night and angled off toward his cabin. Frank and Clint continued along the street, and Frank began checking the doors of the businesses they passed, making sure each one was locked up tight for the night.

  “I get the idea,” Clint said. “Got to take care of the storekeepers. They pay your wages, after all.”

  “It’s just part of the job—” Frank began.

  He was interrupted by the sudden blast of gunshots from behind them.

  Frank whirled around, drawing his Colt as he did so. Beside him, Clint Farnum’s gun seemed to leap into his hand with blinding speed, although actually he was a fraction of a heartbeat behind Frank on the draw. As Frank crouched, ready to return the fire, he realized that the shots weren’t directed at him and his new deputy. He spotted a dark form slumped in the street, in the area where Professor Burton had been walking.

  “Professor!” Frank shouted as he broke into a run toward the sprawled shape. He heard Farnum pounding along behind him, but with his longer legs he outdistanced the smaller man in just a few strides.

  The gunshots had stopped, leaving an echoing silence that filled the night. After a second, shouted questions began to come from the saloons. Everybody wanted to know what the shooting was all about.

  Frank had a terrible feeling he knew the answer. That angry prospector had lain in wait for Professor Burton and then drygulched him. Frank hadn’t seen a gun on the man and had figured he was unarmed. If he had been packing an iron, Frank would have taken it away from him to prevent just such an ambush from occurring.

  The prospector had either had a hidden gun, or he had fetched a weapon from his saddlebags. The how didn’t matter. What was important was that Burton was hit.

  Frank dropped to a knee beside the professor. He was aware that he was making himself a target, but he wanted to know how badly Burton was hurt. The wounded man lay facedown in the street. Frank grasped his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. As he did, Burton’s coat fell open and Frank saw the dark stain on the professor’s vest. It was low on Burton’s right side.

  Burton let out a groan, telling Frank that he was still alive anyway. Clint ran up, a little out of breath, and said, “I heard the fella running down that alley over there. I’ll go after him while you tend to the professor!”

  Before Frank could countermand that decision, Clint dashed off again, toward the dark mouth of an alley where the bushwhacker must have been lurking, waiting for the professor to come along. Even though it annoyed Frank that Clint had acted on impulse that way, without waiting for orders, he knew that his new deputy could take care of himself. He ripped Burton’s vest and shirt open to see just how bad the wound was.

  The light was uncertain, just what came from the moon and stars and the reflected glow from some lamp-lit windows down the street, but when Frank probed the wound with the fingers of his left hand, he found that it was just a shallow furrow in Burton’s side, a couple of inches above his waist. It had bled quite a bit, but was more messy than serious. The bullet hadn’t penetrated and done any real damage. Once the wound was cleaned and bandaged, it ought to heal without much trouble. Burton would be stiff and sore—he wouldn’t feel like visiting that Chinese girl Linda for a while, Frank thought—but in time he would be as good as new.

  Claude Langley came hurrying along the street with a lantern in his hand. As the light washed over Frank and the professor, the undertaker asked, “More business for me, Marshal?”

  “Not this time,” Frank said. “This one’s still alive. He needs to be patched up, though.”

  “I can do that,” Langley offered. “I’ll take him down to my place.”

  “Much obliged,” Frank said as he straightened to his feet. He looked toward the dark alley where Clint Farnum had disappeared in search of the bushwhacker. He hadn’t seen or heard anything of Clint since the deputy had run off.

  As Frank stalked toward the alley, gun in hand, more shots suddenly shattered the night air, coming from somewhere behind the row of buildings. He broke into a run and dashed along the alley, stumbling a little over some of the trash that littered the ground. He heard two different guns, and figured Clint had caught up to the man who had shot the professor. As he reached the other end of the alley, he saw Colt flame bloom in the darkness to his right.

  Pivoting in that direction, Frank spotted a dark shape as
it darted behind some barrels stored at the rear of a building. Spurts of gunfire came from a clump of trees nearby. Bullets tore into the barrels and splintered the wood as they punched all the way through the empty containers. The man who had taken cover behind them dashed into the open again as he realized that the barrels weren’t providing any real shelter from the gunfire after all.

  By the size of the running shape, Frank recognized the man as Clint Farnum. The deputy suddenly tripped and went down, right out in the open where he would be a perfect target for the gunman hidden in the trees.

  Before the bushwhacker could draw a bead on the fallen deputy, Frank leveled his Colt and squeezed off four rounds as fast as he could, leaving one round in the cylinder in case he needed it. The range was fairly long for a handgun, and the light was bad, but this was far from the first time that Frank had risked his own life, or that of someone else, on his skill with a Colt.

  He had aimed at the last spot he had seen muzzle flashes. Now, as Clint pushed himself up and seemed to be waiting for slugs to smash into him and drive the life from him, the bushwhacker’s gun fell silent. Frank kept his gun trained on the trees. After a moment, a figure staggered out of the shadows. He tried to lift the gun that he still clutched in his hand, but he lacked the strength to do so. He pitched forward onto his face and lay still.

  Frank covered the man as he started forward. Clint came to his feet and called, “Frank? That you?”

  “Yeah,” Frank replied. “Are you hit?”

  “No, just shaken up a mite from that hard fall I took. But I’d be plumb full of holes right now if not for you.”

  Frank went straight to the man he had shot. He toed the body over onto its back. Clint came up and snapped a match to life with his thumbnail, and as the harsh glare spread over the face of the bushwhacker, Frank recognized the angry prospector from Rosie’s place.

  “He must’ve really been mad about not gettin’ any,” Clint said with a faint chuckle.

  The front of the prospector’s overalls were stained with blood in three places where Frank’s bullets had struck him. His eyes were open and staring, and his chest rose and fell a couple of times before he shuddered and his final breath rattled in his throat. The staring eyes turned glassy.

  Frank started reloading the gun in his hand. As the match burned down and Clint dropped it before it could scorch his fingers, he asked, “How’s the professor?”

  “Not hurt too bad,” Frank replied as he thumbed fresh cartridges into the Colt’s cylinder. “It’s a good thing this hombre wasn’t a better shot, or the professor would be dead now. As it is, all he’s got is a bullet graze in his side.”

  “The professor’s a lucky hombre,” Clint said. “Like me. When I tripped and fell out there in plain sight, I figured I was a goner for sure.” He paused. “Thanks, Frank. I reckon you saved my life.”

  Frank grunted. “I’d do the same for any of my deputies.”

  “Hey! Hey, Marshal, you back here?”

  “Speaking of which…” Frank said as he turned to look toward the new voice. Catamount Jack hurried out of the alley carrying a lantern in one hand and a six-gun in the other. Frank called to him, “It’s all right, Jack. The shooting’s all over.”

  Jack came up and held the lantern high so that its light washed over all of them. “Sounded like a reg’lar war bustin’ out for a minute there.” He frowned at Clint Farnum. “Who’s this?”

  “My new deputy,” Frank said.

  “I’m bein’ replaced?” Jack practically yelped as his bushy eyebrows shot up.

  “Not at all,” Frank hastened to assure him. “Clint’s signing on as a second deputy, because the town is growing so fast…and trouble right along with it.”

  Jack grunted. “You can say that again.” He nodded toward the corpse. “I reckon this fella was tryin’ to grow some trouble of his own?”

  “That’s right. He had a run-in with Professor Burton earlier and then bushwhacked him.”

  “Yeah, I seen Claude Langley and some other fellas carryin’ the professor down to the undertakin’ parlor. Figured for sure he was dead, but Claude said he was just wounded and he was gonna patch him up, not plant him.”

  Frank slid his Colt back into the holster. “I guess I’d better go see about him. I’ll tell Claude to come back here with his wagon for this fella too.”

  “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the carcass,” Jack offered.

  “And I’ll finish making those evening rounds,” Clint volunteered.

  Frank thought it over and then nodded. “I’m obliged to both of you boys,” he said. “Seems like Buckskin is in good hands.”

  Hell Town

  Chapter 15

  A shudder went through Jessica Munro as she listened to the guns going off somewhere else in town. Even though she was in no danger—at least, as far as she knew—the thought that men were out there killing each other made her question her wisdom in coming here to this wild, untamed town.

  But Hamish was here, and he had insisted that she accompany him. As usual, what Hamish wanted, he got.

  Wearing a dark blue dressing gown—Hamish’s favorite color—Jessica thought about stepping over to the window and looking out. Perhaps she could see what was going on. At the same time, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself, so she stayed where she was, seated in front of a dressing table with a flyspecked mirror. She ran a bone-handled brush through her long, fair hair, which she had unleashed from its elaborate arrangement of piled-up curls so that it tumbled around her shoulders and down her back.

  She studied the bedroom’s reflection in the mirror. It was part of the hotel’s only suite, with a small sitting room adjacent to it where Hamish was going over some papers with his secretary, Nathan Evers. The place had been cleaned up considerably since their arrival that afternoon. Hamish had seen to it that the rooms he and Jessica would be using had been dusted and swept and mopped. Fresh linens that they had brought with them from San Francisco were on the bed. The furnishings in the room were comfortable enough, Jessica supposed. A tin bathtub sat in one corner, with the soapy water she had used to soak off the dust of their journey now cooling in it.

  She set the brush on the dressing table and looked at herself more closely in the mirror. Only the faintest suggestions of lines were visible around the corners of her eyes and mouth…but faint though they might be, they were there. Another five years and she would start to look her age, she guessed. She had worked hard to delay that onslaught, but there was only so much a person could do to hold back the ravages of the years. Right now she was a stunningly beautiful woman, but in time she would be merely very attractive. Would Hamish still want her then?

  She grasped the lapels of her robe and pulled them apart, revealing her breasts, turning back and forth in the chair to see if she could detect any signs of sagging. No, they were still as firm as they had been when she was a girl. She wondered how the straitlaced Nathan Evers would react if she were to step into the doorway between the bedroom and the sitting room and stand there with her robe open like this, so that he could see her breasts. She could always pretend it was an accident and claim that she thought he had left. She bet Nathan’s eyes would nearly pop out of his head at the sight. She smiled at that thought.

  Hamish would be angry, of course, but it wouldn’t last long. To tell the truth, she knew that deep down he enjoyed the way other men looked at her. Jealous he might be, but proud too. What greater accomplishment could a man have than to possess a wife that every other man wanted to bed?

  Well, a lot of money might be almost as good, she supposed…and Hamish Munro certainly had that. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be sitting here in this godforsaken hamlet of Buckskin, Nevada.

  She pulled the robe tight around her as she heard a footstep at the door between the rooms. By the time the door opened, she had the brush in her hand again and was running it through her hair. Hamish came into the room.

  Jessica met his eyes in the mirror and said, “M
r. Evers is gone?”

  “That’s right,” Hamish replied. “We’ve finished our work for the evening.”

  He was a compact man, only an inch or so taller than his wife. A fringe of reddish-gray hair remained around his ears and the back of his head; otherwise he was bald. At first glance, he didn’t look at all impressive, but he had a fire and a ruthless determination that made larger men do his bidding without question. He had made fortunes in both railroading and mining with the same basic tactic: If anyone presented an obstacle to what he wanted, he found a way to crush them. It was as simple as that.

  Jessica set the brush down again. “How long do you think we’ll be here?”

  Hamish took his coat off and draped it over the back of a chair. “That’s hard to say,” he replied as he removed his cravat and his stiff collar. “I’ll meet with Hammersmith tomorrow and get his report on the operation out at the Alhambra. I know that he’s hired some men, but I don’t think he has a full crew yet. Once the mine is producing ore at a suitable rate, I’ll leave it in his hands and we can return to San Francisco.”

  “But you don’t know how long that will be?”

  Hamish shrugged. “How can I? These things take time.”

  “You don’t even know for certain that there’s any silver left in the mine,” she ventured, knowing that to cast any doubt on his ultimate success usually annoyed him.

  “It’s there,” he snapped. “The Lucky Lizard is producing again, and the reports I’ve received indicate that the Crown Royal is too. So will the Alhambra.”

  “If that’s true, why did those mines sit there abandoned for so long?”

  “Our methods are better now,” Hamish said. “We can find ore in places that we couldn’t before.”

  Jessica didn’t pretend to understand the mining business. She supposed Hamish knew what he was talking about.

  He smiled as he came over to stand behind her. “You shouldn’t be worrying about things like that,” he said. He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Let me be concerned about the business. That’s my job.”