Hell Town

by William W. Johnstone

  She knew his hands wouldn’t stay on her shoulders for long. “And what’s my business?” she asked with a coy smile on her face. The words and the expression were so instinctive, she didn’t even have to think about them.

  He slid his hands down her front and parted the robe, as she had done earlier, pulling it back even more so that her shoulders were bared too. Leaning over her, he pressed his lips to one smooth, sleek shoulder as he filled his palms with the firm globes of her breasts.

  “Your business is to make your husband happy,” he said as he caressed her.

  She closed her eyes for a second. It was a job, all right—but thankfully, she was good at it.

  Outside, the shooting had stopped. Jessica hadn’t really noticed when that happened.

  * * * *

  By the time Frank reached the undertaking parlor, Claude Langley had already cleaned and bandaged the bullet graze in Professor Burton’s side. The professor had a hangdog expression on his face when Frank came in.

  “I’m a fool, an utter fool,” he announced. “Brawling over some doxie, then getting shot over her.”

  “Having woman trouble doesn’t make you a fool, Professor,” Frank assured him. “It just makes you a normal hombre.”

  “Oh? I’ll wager you never had such bad luck with females, Marshal.”

  Frank’s jaw tightened as he thought about the women in his life. His first love had been a girl back in Texas, where he’d grown up. Mercy, as beautiful as her name. But her father had forced them apart, and even though Frank had met her again years later, to this day he wasn’t sure if Mercy’s daughter Victoria was actually his child, although he liked to think that she was. And at least Mercy was still alive….

  Later, he had married Vivian, and again circumstances had kept them from being together. Without even knowing about it, he’d had a son with her, the young man known as Conrad Browning. Vivian hadn’t survived her reconciliation with Frank; outlaws had gunned her down. The circumstances that had brought him to Buckskin in the first place had been related to that tragic incident.

  Then there had been Dixie, sweet, courageous Dixie. She had married Frank only to die at the hands of lawless men, just like Vivian. That had been enough to make Frank wonder if he carried a curse with him. Maybe the vengeful spirits of all the men who had met death in front of the flaming barrel of his Colt were conspiring to insure that his every attempt at happiness ended in tragedy. In the past few years, the only woman he’d been close to who hadn’t died was Roanne Williamson, in the town of Santa Rosa down along the border between Texas and Mexico.

  Frank was enough of a pragmatist not to really believe in curses, though. Despite the settling influence of civilization, in many places the West was still wild. It was still a frontier—although that frontier was shrinking—and that meant plenty of danger for anyone brave enough to live there. Tragedy didn’t dog his trail any more than it did those of lots of other men.

  He became aware that Professor Burton was looking at him, waiting for a response to his comment. Frank shrugged and said, “You could be right, Professor.” That was the easiest way out. Frank Morgan had never been one to seek the easiest trail, but in this case, it seemed like the right thing to do.

  “You can be sure that I shall avoid that woman’s establishment in the future,” Burton said.

  “Don’t go making promises you can’t keep, Professor,” Langley said with a smile.

  “But man should be the master of his own desires, don’t you think?”

  “Hasn’t ever happened before on a consistent basis, going all the way back to the Garden of Eden,” Langley replied. “Don’t see any reason to think things are going to change now.”

  Frank said, “I’ll leave you two to discuss philosophy, if you’re of a mind to. I need to see if my deputies ran into any more trouble making the rounds.”

  Langley rubbed his hands together. “And I need to get to that corpse, I guess. Want to give me a hand, Professor?”

  Burton paled even more than normal. “I think I’ve seen enough of the results of violence for one night, thank you.”

  Frank chuckled as he left the undertaking parlor. He walked back to the marshal’s office, and by the time he got there, both Catamount Jack and Clint Farnum were there too.

  “Get the rest of the rounds made all right?” Frank asked as he hung his hat on one of the nails beside the door.

  Clint nodded. “Everything’s locked up for the night, except for the saloons, of course. They’re still going strong.” The little gunfighter was perched on the edge of the table that served as Frank’s desk. His legs were short enough that his booted feet didn’t quite reach the floor.

  “Claude’s helper brung the wagon and we loaded that fella’s body onto it,” Jack put in. “I reckon he got back all right with it. I didn’t go with him.”

  “Yeah, it got there, from the way Langley was acting when I left,” Frank said with a nod.

  Clint grinned and said, “There have been two killings since I got here. Is Buckskin always so exciting, Frank?”

  “It’s too exciting, if you ask me. But that’s the way it is when a town is booming like this one, I reckon.”

  “Businesses doing well, are they?”

  Frank nodded again. “Leo Benjamin has supplies freighted in from Virginia City at least twice a week, and he still can’t keep stock on his shelves. A couple of other mercantiles have come in to take up some of the slack. The Silver Baron and the other saloons make money hand over fist. The blacksmith shop and Hillman’s Livery are doing fine. The boardinghouse is full, and most of the abandoned houses and cabins have been claimed, at least until the rightful owners come along and reclaim them, if they ever do.”

  “Like that fella Munro did with the old hotel.”

  “Yeah. He probably doesn’t need the money, but if he wanted to, he could turn the place into a hotel again. All the rooms would be rented in a week or less, I’d say.”

  “So you’ve got money flowing in, and pretty soon silver flowing out, I reckon. The mines are producing, aren’t they?”

  “The Lucky Lizard and the Crown Royal are,” Frank said. He didn’t know for sure how much ore Garrett Claiborne’s crew was taking out of the Browning mine, but they were finding some color, Claiborne had reported. “I don’t know about the Alhambra.”

  “Any new claims paying off?” Clint asked.

  Jack said, “You’re a mighty curious little fella, ain’t you?”

  Clint didn’t appear to take offense at the blunt question or the description of him. He laughed and said, “I’ve already signed on as a deputy, but I still like to know what I’m getting myself into.”

  “You’re getting into a town that’s already busting at the seams,” Frank said, “and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Those new claims you asked about haven’t produced any significant finds yet, at least not that I know about, but somebody could stumble onto a new vein at any time. If that happens, everything that’s already going on in Buckskin will just go through the roof.”

  “In other words, there’ll be plenty of trouble for three good lawmen to handle.”

  Frank nodded. “Yeah…but we can handle it.”

  He hoped the confidence he felt in himself and Jack—and in Clint Farnum—wasn’t misplaced.

  Hell Town

  Chapter 16

  Gunther Hammersmith wasn’t expecting anything like the blonde who opened the door of the suite on the second floor of the old hotel. She said, “You must be Mr. Hammersmith,” then smiled at him. The smile hit him in the gut harder than any punch he could remember ever taking.

  He wanted this woman. He would have this woman.

  But she had to belong to Munro, which meant she was off limits to Hammersmith, no matter how beautiful she was, no matter what that smile of hers did to his insides.

  He recalled hearing something about how Munro had gotten himself a pretty wife back there in San Francisco. Hammersmith hadn’t worked fo
r Munro recently, and he hadn’t been to San Francisco either. If he had ever seen this woman before, he would have remembered her, that was for damned sure.

  He became aware that she was standing there in the doorway with an expectant look on her face. She was waiting for him to respond to what she had said, he realized. He took off the battered old derby he had crammed on his head before he rode into Buckskin and said, “Yes, ma’am. I’m Hammersmith.” His voice sounded thick and awkward to his ears.

  She stepped back, still holding the door. “Come in. Hamish has been waiting for you.”

  That wasn’t good. Munro didn’t like to be kept waiting. Hammersmith worried that they would get off on the wrong foot.

  That concern was justified. As Hammersmith walked in to the sitting room, Munro stalked out of the bedroom and glared at him. “I expected you earlier,” the mining magnate snapped.

  “We had a problem with one of the shoring timbers this morning,” Hammersmith explained. “I thought I ought to stay until it was taken care of. A cave-in would have just set us back.” With uncharacteristic humility, he added, “But I’m sorry I kept you waiting, Mr. Munro.”

  Hamish Munro was one of the few men in the world Hammersmith would have taken that tone with. Mostly, he despised other men for being weaker than he was, and he didn’t bother trying to hide that disdain. Munro was different, though. Even though Hammersmith was almost twice as big as him and could have picked Munro up and broken him in two with his bare hands, he didn’t want to cross the man. Everyone who had ever tried that had lived to regret it—but sometimes they hadn’t lived much longer than that.

  Munro waved a hand and said, “I suppose it was better that you stayed at the mine and made sure the problem was repaired properly.” His voice took on a harsher tone as he continued. “But you’re here now. What do you have to report? How soon will we be taking ore out of the Alhambra?”

  “The shaft and the main drift have been cleaned out and the timbers that needed it have been repaired or replaced,” Hammersmith said. He was on firmer footing here. No matter what else anyone said about him, no one could dispute that he was a good mining man. “We did some work on the rails for the ore carts. The stamp mill is in good working order, and we’ve installed all the new equipment for the amalgamation process. All we need now is the ore.”

  “And what about it?” Munro asked. “Have you located the vein?”

  Hammersmith hesitated, then shook his head. “Not yet, but I haven’t been able to spare as many men to look for it as I’d like. I’m going to hire some more miners, and I’m sure we’ll find color any day now.”

  “You’d better.” Munro scowled. “It’s bad enough the Lucky Lizard has a jump on us. I don’t want the Crown Royal getting too far ahead.”

  Hammersmith smiled. “They’ve had some trouble at the Crown Royal. Somebody tore up their rails. They’ll have to fix all that damage before they can really get started bringing any ore out of the ground.”

  Munro took a cigar from his vest pocket, clipped the end of it with a fancy silver cutter, and put it in his mouth. He gave Hammersmith a cold, thin smile as he struck a match and lit the cheroot.

  “That’s good to know,” he said.

  Hammersmith hated talking around a subject. He liked things blunt and simple. It would have been fine with him to just say, We sabotaged the Crown Royal like you told us to. Munro liked to maintain the fiction that he was an honest, upright businessman, though, and that meant never admitting that he would stoop to sabotage to damage a competitor.

  The mines were close enough together that the vein in the Crown Royal might well connect to the one in the Alhambra. In that case, the miners had the right to follow a vein as far as they could, as long as it didn’t run into another mine’s tunnels. That meant it was to Munro’s advantage, at least potentially, to slow down the Crown Royal’s operation. Hammersmith understood that and didn’t mind doing something about it. Munro was paying his wages, after all, and they were good wages at that.

  Hammersmith had been aware of the blonde moving around the room behind him. He could smell her perfume. He could damn near feel the warmth coming off her skin. He wanted to feel that warmth. She was enough of a distraction that he almost had trouble keeping his mind on what Munro was saying to him.

  Now, she moved around where he could see her again. In the light, summery dress, she was prettier than any picture Hammersmith had ever seen. He recalled that he had once seen a picture in a magazine of a painting called “September Morn.” The painting was of a pretty woman standing stark naked at the edge of a stream, her arms and hands covering the important parts, her head tipped up and back and a little surprised expression on her face, like she was looking at somebody who had just come along and caught her skinny-dipping. Hammersmith didn’t know a damned thing about art, but he knew he liked that picture, and as he looked at the blonde now, he could imagine her just like that, all bare creamy skin glowing in the morning light…

  “Can I offer you a drink, Mr. Hammersmith?” she asked, and the question forced that tantalizing image out of his mind.

  “For God’s sake, Jessica,” Munro said. “It’s not even noon yet.”

  “Almost,” she said.

  “Hammersmith’s got to get back to work. He can’t stand around here all day lollygagging.” Munro jabbed a finger at his mine superintendent. “Hire as many men as you need, but find that ore. Let’s keep the pressure on the Crown Royal too. I don’t care how hard it is or how many hours the men have to put in. If you can’t handle the job, I’ll find someone who can.”

  “I can handle the job, Mr. Munro,” Hammersmith said. “Don’t you worry about that. I’ll drive those bastards from can to can’t.” He glanced at the woman. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am.”

  “It’s all right,” she told him. The sound of the words made a shiver go through him. He imagined himself lying under a tree somewhere, in soft grass, with his head pillowed on her lap as she stroked cool fingers along his cheek and said, “It’s all right. It’s all right.” He thought that if he could ever have an experience like that, he could die a happy man.

  Assuming, of course, that he could throw her skirts over her head and get some sweet lovin’ from her too.

  He tried to banish that thought as he turned his derby over in his hands. Lusting after his employer’s wife wasn’t going to do him any good, especially when the boss was as rich, ruthless, and powerful as Hamish Munro. Hammersmith forced himself to say, “I’ll be goin’ now.”

  As he turned toward the door, Munro said to his back, “Remember, Hammersmith…my mine is going to come out on top. Whatever it takes.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hammersmith said over his shoulder.

  Why was it so important to Munro that the Alhambra outproduce all the other mines? If they found the vein again, the mine would make money, maybe a lot of it. And Munro already had more money than he could ever spend in the rest of his life.

  It had to be the winning, Hammersmith thought. Munro didn’t really care about anything except having more and being better than his rivals. He probably felt the same way about that wife of his.

  Hammersmith understood both of those things. He liked nothing more than to crush his enemies too.

  And now that he had seen Jessica Munro…well, he might just be willing to kill for her, if he ever got the chance.

  * * * *

  Even though Frank had been halfway expecting it, the rate at which Buckskin grew in the next few weeks surprised him. Newcomers continued to pour into the settlement, and once all the buildings were occupied, men went up to the hillsides and began to fell trees. A sawmill opened inside a big tent, and the chugging of the donkey engine and the whine of the saw could be heard from early in the morning until dusk, seven days a week. Mixed with those sounds was the racket of hammering, as the rough boards from the sawmill were slapped together into new buildings. A whole new street grew up, running parallel with the main street that was already there. Mo
re saloons and stores opened, as did an assay office. A man showed up with a printing press in the back of a wagon and started a newspaper, the Buckskin Bulletin. A couple of lawyers hung out their shingles, as did a doctor. A red-and-white-striped barber pole appeared on the boardwalk in front of one of the new buildings. A Chinese laundry began taking in washing. Two new whorehouses opened up.

  Back in the summer of ’76, when he was still a young man, Frank had spent a little time in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Buckskin wasn’t quite the hell-with-the-hide-off town that Deadwood had been, but it was as wild and woolly a place as he had been in in quite some time. He and Jack and Clint had their hands full keeping the peace. Along with all the miners who descended on Buckskin came the cardsharps, the swindlers, the soiled doves, the cutthroats, thieves, and killers whose life work it was to empty the miners’ pockets of what precious few riches they were lucky enough to obtain.

  Deadwood had averaged a little more than a killing a day at its worst. Buckskin wasn’t that bad. There were only a couple of murders a week.

  Luckily, no more would-be gunfighters showed up to challenge Frank in an attempt to build a reputation. He supposed word might have gotten around about what had happened to the kid called Conwell and Harry Clevenger and Charlie Hampton.

  But even if the men who fancied themselves fast guns were being wary right now, that wouldn’t last, Frank knew. Sooner or later, one of them would get an itch to prove himself, and then he would ride into Buckskin and force a showdown with the notorious Drifter.

  On the mining front, trouble still continued to plague the Crown Royal, and an angry Tip Woodford reported that somebody had stolen some blasting powder and other supplies from the Lucky Lizard. Frank had his suspicions about who was responsible for this mischief—the culprit was big and bald and answered to the name of Gunther Hammersmith—but he didn’t have any proof that Munro’s superintendent was to blame. Tip and Garrett Claiborne had both posted guards at their respective mines, and Frank tried to ride out and keep an eye on them when he could, but his duties in town took up most of his time.