The Last Gunfighter: Killing Ground Page 15

  Brighton’s scornful laugh cut into the other man’s pompous voice.

  “Don’t start spouting that stuff at me, O’Hara. I know you’re not a real lawyer or a colonel. You’re just a cheap actor and con man.”

  “Now see here,” O’Hara began angrily.

  “No, you listen to me. Don’t start thinking that this case will ever really go to trial. I don’t want to risk it. That’s why Stample and his men are going to take care of the judge tomorrow. The delay that will cause ought to be enough to give them a chance to get rid of Morgan and Turnbuckle, too. With all of Woodford’s allies gone, and facing a formidable legal opponent like you, he won’t have any choice but to give in. Then we’ll all collect our payoff.”

  “I’ve actually had a considerable amount of legal training, you know,” O’Hara muttered. “I’ve played attorneys on numerous occasions.”

  “In numerous swindles, you mean.”

  “A role is a role,” O’Hara said with a scowl.

  “That’s right,” Brighton said. “Just play your part, O’Hara. Play your part, and leave the rest of it to me.”

  Judge Theodore Grampis was a bandy-legged man with deeply pitted eyes, a white brush of a beard, and long white hair that was seldom tamed, just jammed down under a bowler hat. If he had been dressed differently, in overalls instead of a sober brown tweed suit, he would have looked more like a prospector or a stagecoach driver than a distinguished jurist. He rode inside the coach that swayed along the rough trail, though, not on the jehu’s seat.

  Grampis had been a circuit judge for many years here in Nevada and was used to rough transportation and rougher characters. He carried an old cap-and-ball pistol under his coat and knew how to use it if he had to. His gnarled hand made an instinctive move toward the butt of that pistol as the driver called out, “Uh-oh. Looks like trouble up ahead, Judge.”

  Since Grampis was the only passenger today, he would have known the warning was directed toward him even if the driver hadn’t added his title. He took his hat off and placed it on the seat beside him, then stuck his head out the window. The wind plucked at his long white hair as he said, “What is it? Highwaymen?”

  “Looks like it. They got the trail blocked in front of us.”

  The stagecoach was going down a hill. The trail was relatively narrow, with high banks on either side, so there was no way the vehicle could turn around. It had to go straight ahead until it reached the bottom of the slope.

  And waiting down there, Grampis saw, were close to a dozen armed, masked men on horseback. Stagecoach robbers!

  The driver had begun to slow down. Grampis called, “Plow right through ’em! Can’t turn back, so we might as well go straight ahead!”

  The driver and shotgun guard exchanged worried looks. The guard said, “Judge, there’s too many of ’em. They’d shoot us to pieces.”

  “Oh, all right,” the judge grumbled. “Although it galls me to give in to lawlessness. Better to turn over the mail pouch and our valuables and get on to Buckskin with our lives, I suppose.”

  The driver hauled back on the reins even more as the stagecoach approached the bottom of the slope. The outlaws spread out so that their horses completely blocked the trail. As the stage rocked to a halt, one of the masked men bellowed, “Stand and deliver!”

  “Take it easy, mister,” the driver called back. “Don’t go gettin’ trigger-happy. We’re gonna cooperate.”

  “That’s bein’ smart,” the man, who was evidently the leader of the gang, said. “Toss down the pouch. Anything in the boot?”

  “Just the judge’s bag.”

  “Judge?” the boss outlaw exclaimed.

  “That’s right!” Grampis said as he swung the coach door open and hopped out with a nimble spryness that belied his age. “I’m Judge Theodore Grampis, and if you varmints know what’s good for you, you’ll turn around and hightail it out of here right now!”

  “Sorry, Judge,” the leader said with a chuckle, “but I ain’t afraid of you. He moved his horse forward. “We’ll have your money and your watch and anything else you got in your pockets that’s valuable.”

  “You damned thief! You’ll pay for your lawlessness—if not now, then someday!”

  “Hand it over, hand it over,” the outlaw snapped as he rode even closer.

  Grampis pulled his coat back and started to reach for an inside pocket where he kept his wallet.

  At that moment, the leader of the masked men shouted, “Look out! He’s got a gun!” The heavy revolver in his hand started to swing up.

  Grampis gaped up at him. It was true that the butt of the cap-and-ball pistol was visible as it jutted up from the holster where the judge wore it, but he wasn’t reaching for the gun. He was cooperating, about to hand over his wallet.

  The outlaw’s Colt crashed, flame spewing from its muzzle. The bullet slammed into the judge’s body and knocked him back a step. Several of the other outlaws opened fire as well, and Grampis was driven against the side of the stagecoach by the series of stunning hammer blows as the lead struck him. Blood welled from his mouth, staining his white beard crimson as he tried to shout at the crazy bastards that he wasn’t reaching for his gun.

  It was too late. The words wouldn’t come, and the strength had flowed from the judge’s muscles along with his blood. Death claimed him as he folded up and collapsed beside the stagecoach.

  The driver and shotgun guard hadn’t moved. They sat there on the box, stunned by the unexpected horror of Judge Grampis’s murder.

  “Old coot tried to grab his gun!” the leader of the outlaws cried. He swung his gun toward the driver and guard. “I reckon we better kill them, too.”

  The two men on the box threw down their guns. “Hold it, mister!” the guard said. “Don’t shoot! For God’s sake, please don’t shoot!”

  Their fates hung in the balance for a second, and then the boss outlaw jerked his head in a nod. “All right, boys,” he told the other robbers. “We won’t kill ’em. Get the mail pouch, and then cut the leaders free so it’ll take ’em a while to get where they’re goin’.”

  The masked man swung down from the saddle and pawed through the pockets of the dead judge, removing his wallet and watch. He opened the boot and took Grampis’s carpetbag as well, tying it on behind his saddle to go through for valuables later. Meanwhile, two of his men cut the lead horses free.

  Then the leader of the gang hefted the judge’s blood-soaked body and slung it back into the coach. Grampis’s corpse sprawled on the floor between the seats as the outlaw slammed the door. Then he mounted up as his men moved their horses to the side so that the trail was open again.

  With whoops and shouts and shots fired over the heads of the terrified driver and guard, the outlaws sent the stagecoach on its way toward Buckskin. Under the bandanna mask tied around the lower half of his face, Cy Stample’s brutal mouth curved in a grin.

  That old pelican of a judge had played right into his hands by having a gun under his coat. The driver and guard hadn’t been able to see exactly what happened from the box, so for all they knew Grampis really had tried to draw his gun and gotten ventilated for his trouble. It really did seem like a stagecoach robbery turned murderous, instead of the outright assassination that it was. Once those two got to Buckskin and told their story, nobody would be able to connect the judge’s shooting to Dex Brighton.

  And that was exactly the way Brighton would want it, Stample thought as he and his men headed for the abandoned mine. Stample knew the boss was upset with him because Frank Morgan and that lawyer, Turnbuckle, were still alive. But Brighton would see that this was a good day’s work. Yes, sir, a good day’s work indeed.

  Morgan and Turnbuckle wouldn’t be alive for much longer either. Stample was damned sure of that.

  Chapter 19

  Frank had never liked waiting around for something to happen, and Tuesday brought a couple of those instances. Phil Noonan still hadn’t returned from Carson City with the replies to Turnbuckle’s t
elegrams, and as morning turned to midday and then stretched into afternoon, the stagecoach carrying the circuit judge didn’t show up on schedule.

  Of course, there could be any number of reasonable, innocent explanations for that, Frank told himself as he sat on the porch in front of the marshal’s office, waiting. Catamount Jack sat with him.

  “Stagecoach should’a been here by now,” the grizzled deputy said.

  Frank nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Could’ve had a wheel come off or lock up. Might’ve even broke an axle.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Every so often you get an avalanche that blocks the trail, too, and then the coach has got to find some other way to go around. That’ll throw it behind schedule.”

  “Sure will,” Frank agreed in a mild, seemingly unworried voice.

  He wasn’t that calm inside, though. His instincts told him that something serious was wrong. If the stagecoach didn’t show up soon, he was going to have to saddle up either Stormy or Goldy and take Dog and go looking for it.

  Tip Woodford came along the street and stepped up onto the porch. “Stage ain’t here yet?” he asked, even though he could see for himself that the street in front of the stage station was empty.

  “Haven’t seen it,” Frank said.

  “It should’ve rolled in about an hour ago, shouldn’t it?”

  Frank nodded.

  “I think it must’ve busted an axle,” Catamount Jack said.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Tip agreed.

  A few minutes later, Diana walked up with Claudius Turnbuckle, whose arm was still in the black sling. “The stage is late, isn’t it?” the lawyer asked.

  Frank reined in the annoyance he felt. These folks were sure good at noticing, and stating, the obvious.

  “Let’s give it a little longer,” he said. “If it still doesn’t come in, then I’ll ride up the trail toward Carson City and see if I can find out what happened to it.”

  “Brighton’s men might try to ambush you again,” Turnbuckle warned.

  The same possibility had already occurred to Frank. Even though he had no proof that the gunmen who had attacked the Crown Royal worked for Dex Brighton, he knew it in his bones, and he knew that those gun-wolves might have stopped the stage to lure him out of town so they could try to bushwhack him again.

  He wasn’t going to ride blindly into a trap, but he couldn’t just ignore the fact that the stagecoach was late either.

  A sudden flurry of surprised shouts from the end of Main Street caught his attention. He stood up and stepped over to the railing along the front of the porch so he could lean out and look in that direction. So did the others who were waiting with him.

  “Son of a gun!” Catamount Jack exclaimed. “Looks like they run into trouble, all right!”

  The stagecoach rolled slowly into town, pulled by only two horses instead of the usual four. Frank knew that cutting the leaders free and running them off was a common tactic used by stagecoach bandits to delay a coach from getting to town and spreading the word of the robbery. Not as common as it once was, of course, because there were fewer and fewer stagecoaches these days and therefore fewer stagecoach holdups, but Frank still recognized immediately what he was seeing.

  He stepped down from the porch and moved at a fast walk toward the stage station, followed by Catamount Jack, Woodford, Turnbuckle, and Diana. The driver and shotgun guard didn’t appear to be hurt as they clambered down from the box. As Frank came up, the driver turned toward him and said, “Bad news, Marshal. We were held up about ten miles north of here.”

  Frank leaned over to look through the windows into the coach, but he didn’t see the judge who was supposed to arrive. “Anybody hurt?”

  “That’s the even worse news.” The driver jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the coach. “Judge Grampis is in there. The outlaws killed him.”

  “Old Grumbler Grampis, dead!” Tip said. “Lord help us. I’ve known him for years.”

  Woodford reached for the coach door, then stopped and said over his shoulder, “Take Diana back to the office, would you, Mr. Turnbuckle? This is liable to be pretty bad.”

  “It sure is,” the driver said. “They blasted him plumb to pieces.”

  Diana looked like she wanted to argue about being sent away, but she was pale and didn’t put up a fuss as Turnbuckle took her arm and said, “Come along, Diana. There are some things women shouldn’t be forced to see.”

  Once she was gone, Frank, Woodford, and Catamount Jack stood by the opened door and looked into the coach at the bullet-riddled body of the elderly jurist. Frank felt rage boiling up inside him. He hadn’t known Judge Grampis all that well, but he liked the old-timer. No one deserved to be savagely murdered like that.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said to the driver and shotgun guard.

  The two men explained about the masked outlaws lying in wait for them at a spot in the trail where the stagecoach couldn’t turn around and flee. “The judge wanted me to try to bull on through ’em,” the driver said. “We convinced him it’d be loco to pull a stunt like that, though. The polecats had us outgunned.”

  “So you stopped,” Frank said. He couldn’t blame the men for that, under the circumstances they had described. “What happened then?”

  “The outlaws told us to stand and deliver. I started to throw the mail pouch down when Judge Grampis got out of the coach. The fella who seemed to be the boss of the gang told him to hand over his valuables, and then he yelled out that the judge was goin’ for a gun and all hell broke loose.”

  The shotgun guard put in, “Must’ve been at least half a dozen of those bastards plugged the judge. Then they said they were gonna kill us, too, but they decided not to.”

  Frank leaned into the coach to take a closer look at Judge Grampis’s body. He lifted the judge’s coat and saw the butt of the old pistol.

  “That was a mighty foolish play, trying to draw on that many men who already had their guns out and ready,” Frank commented.

  The driver took off his hat and wiped a bandanna over his bald head. “You didn’t hear the judge when he was yellin’ for us to bust right through ’em, Marshal. That old pelican was just spoilin’ for a fight.”

  Tip Woodford nodded. “Grumbler was like that, Frank. Never one to stand aside or take anything from anybody. Not a bit of back-up in him. He was as fair and honest as the day is long. I knew he wouldn’t give me any favors in the court case with Brighton, but I knew Brighton wouldn’t stand a chance in hell of buyin’ him off either. He would have decided things accordin’ to the law, and nothin’ else.”

  “Well, he won’t decide anything now,” Frank said. “You know what that means, don’t you, Tip? There won’t be any trial tomorrow. You’ll still have Brighton’s claim hanging over your head.”

  Woodford rubbed his jaw. “Yeah. That’s mighty bad luck. I don’t see how you can blame this on Brighton, though, Frank. The stagecoach got held up, which ain’t all that common but ain’t unheard of either, and Judge Grampis made the mistake of tryin’ to fight back. Seems pretty simple to me.”

  “Yeah, it does,” Frank agreed as he nodded.

  But he had learned not to believe that anything was as simple as it might appear at first.

  “There’s only one thing to do now,” he went on. “We’ll have to send word to Carson City and get another judge sent out.”

  “That could take weeks.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. The governor’s liable to appoint a special judge to take Grampis’s place, given the circumstances of his death and the seriousness of the case that was waiting for him here in Buckskin. There’s one thing I’m sure of, though.”

  “What’s that?” Catamount Jack asked.

  “I’m going to see to it personal-like that the next judge gets here safe and sound,” Frank said.

  In Dex Brighton’s hotel room, Brighton smiled tightly as O’Hara reported what he had just overheard on the street.

 
“It sounds like your man Stample succeeded admirably this time,” O’Hara was saying. “The judge is dead, the case is delayed, and everyone is completely convinced that the tragedy occurred during a simple stagecoach robbery that had nothing to do with you.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure that Morgan is convinced,” Brighton replied. “He wouldn’t have lived as long as he has if he wasn’t fairly smart. But as far as everyone else is concerned there’s no connection between us and the judge’s death, and that’s all that matters.”

  “Perhaps this would be a good time to approach Woodford with another settlement offer,” O’Hara suggested. “Say, you allow him to retain a ten per cent interest in the Lucky Lizard.”

  Brighton mulled it over for a few moments, then said, “All right. It won’t hurt anything to try. Maybe we can avoid any more killing, at least for now. Of course, Woodford won’t actually get ten per cent. I suspect that he’ll meet with an unfortunate accident before that ever happens.”

  A wolfish grin stretched across O’Hara’s face. “If such a tragedy were to take place, his share in the mine would go to his lovely daughter, I’m sure.”

  “That’s right.” An intriguing possibility occurred to Brighton. “In that case, Diana Woodford would need a friend and protector, wouldn’t she? I’m sure the notion would appall her right now, but under different circumstances?” A cynical chuckle came from him. “A woman will do what she has to in order to survive, my friend. Whatever that may be.”

  Luther Galloway paced back and forth in the offices of the Lucky Lizard Mining Company. His wounded arm still troubled him from time to time, but not nearly as much as this new development did.

  Tip Woodford and Diana sat there looking dispirited, and Luther wished he could think of something to tell them that might make them feel better. They had been hoping that this whole mess might be over soon, but now, with the death of Judge Grampis, everything would be pushed back that much longer.

  “Marshal Morgan is correct,” Luther finally said. “The governor will probably appoint a special judge to take Judge Grampis’s place, and under the circumstances should see to it that the replacement is sent to Buckskin as quickly as possible. Another week, perhaps, but that should be all.”