Hell Town

by William W. Johnstone

  “Maybe that’s what it was,” Hammersmith said. He lifted the reins and heeled his horse into motion. “Stay alert.”

  “You can damn sure count on it,” the sentry promised as Hammersmith rode past, heading for the stamp mill and the office.

  When Hammersmith reached the office, he dismounted and tied his mount to a hitching post. He would unsaddle and tend to the horse later. Right now, he needed a drink.

  He went into the office and lit the lamp on his desk. A bottle and a glass were inside one of the drawers. Hammersmith opened the drawer, looked into it for a moment, and then lifted out the bottle, leaving the glass where it was. Sometimes a man didn’t want to bother with niceties, and this was one of those occasions.

  He lifted the bottle to his mouth, tilted his head back, and swallowed a long, healthy slug of the whiskey. It burned all the way down his throat, a cleansing, purifying fieriness, and then kindled a warm glow in his belly. As he lowered the bottle and sank into the chair behind the desk, that warmth began to spread through his body, counteracting the chill of the blood that ran through his veins.

  In his life, Gunther Hammersmith had killed four men with his fists, and he had done for another one with an ax handle, crushing the gent’s skull with one blow. All of those deaths had occurred during fights. Maybe not fair fights, mind you, since Hammersmith knew he was bigger and stronger than most men he would ever encounter. But at least the men he’d been battling with had had a chance to strike a blow in return. Because of that, he had never lost a minute’s sleep over what happened to those men.

  Tonight was different. That sorry son of a bitch tonight was in too bad a shape to fight back. He’d been mauled by Morgan’s wolf, or whatever it was, and the marshal had also clouted him over the head with a six-gun. Perry was hurt, and he thought that Hammersmith had come to help him.

  It hadn’t taken him long to figure out otherwise. Then he had begged and whimpered and pleaded for his life.

  Hammersmith knocked back another drink of whiskey, then set the bottle on the desk and reached for a leather sheath on his belt, just behind his right hip. He pulled out the heavy, long-bladed knife and laid it on the desk next to the whiskey bottle. The blade was clean; Hammersmith had used Perry’s shirt to wipe off all the blood. It glittered in the lamplight, cold and hard and deadly-looking.

  Tonight was the first time Hammersmith had ever killed anyone with a knife, the first time he had killed somebody in cold blood, without the heat of combat to mitigate the violence. But Perry had to die. That bastard Morgan had stuck his nose in and knew that the four men had been hired to blow up the stamp mill at the Crown Royal. But Morgan didn’t know who had hired them; Hammersmith had made certain of that before he cut Perry’s throat.

  It would have been a lot simpler if Morgan had gone ahead and killed all four of the saboteurs. The fact that he had left Perry alive told Hammersmith that Morgan intended to come back and ask the man more questions, after failing to prevent the explosion. Hammersmith couldn’t allow that.

  He had thought about bringing Perry back to the Alhambra with him. But if he had done that, some of the miners might have seen him, and as chewed up as Perry was, they would have remembered. Not only that, but Morgan had gotten a look at Perry and might go around describing him. Somebody could have recalled seeing Hammersmith helping an injured man who fit that description.

  Hammersmith had been careful not to meet with Perry and the other three hired gunmen where anybody could see them. There was nothing to connect him to the four men. With Perry dead, there was nobody to testify, no evidence that Hammersmith had anything in the world to do with the blast at the Crown Royal. Once Hammersmith had figured that out, there was no real question about what he had to do.

  Other than the fact that he had never before gotten his arm around a man’s neck, jerked his head up, and pulled a knife across his throat, cutting deep so that the blood shot out like a black fountain in the shadows.

  Hammersmith took another drink to steady his nerves. Munro wanted production slowed down at the other mines, by whatever means necessary. He didn’t care about the details, just the results.

  Well, tonight’s action would bring production at the Crown Royal to a grinding halt. Without the stamp mill, they couldn’t process the ore, and there was no telling how many men had been killed in the explosion. They could still ship out the raw ore, but that was a lot slower and less lucrative.

  Now if something could happen to cause problems for the Lucky Lizard too, Munro would be happy. Or as happy as he ever got, Hammersmith amended. The man was driven, filled with a ruthless bitterness. Hammersmith wondered how much of that came from being married to a woman like Mrs. Munro, a beautiful woman so much younger than him, who probably wasn’t satisfied by him and would therefore turn elsewhere for her pleasure….

  To a man like Gunther Hammersmith.

  A smile spread across Hammersmith’s rugged features. He took another long pull on the bottle, but the attack of nerves he had experienced earlier had been eased by thoughts of Jessica Munro. She would be enough to make a man forget anything he had done in the past….

  Even cold-blooded murder.

  All Hammersmith had to do was bide his time.

  * * * *

  As Frank had told Garrett Claiborne he would do, he rode to Virginia City the next day and sent a telegram to Conrad to let him know what had happened. He wired his own lawyers in Denver and San Francisco too, to let them know that he was throwing his considerable financial resources behind the Crown Royal Mine near Buckskin, Nevada. Some minor sabotage was one thing; this attack on the mine was an act of war as far as Frank was concerned. Hammersmith and Munro had made this personal.

  Frank stayed in Virginia City for several hours, burning up the telegraph wires. When he started back to Buckskin that afternoon, he brought with him his son’s assurances that new equipment for the stamp mill would be on its way to the Crown Royal as soon as Conrad could arrange to have it freighted out there. He would send some professional armed guards to beef up the mine’s security too.

  In the meantime, Frank would see about having the mill rebuilt, so that it would be ready when the new equipment arrived. Conrad had considered having the men who were all right continue to mine the raw ore, but in the end he had decided it would be better for them to devote their efforts to repairing and rebuilding the mill.

  Frank was torn between wanting to help out at the mine and taking care of his duties as the marshal of Buckskin. He had promised Tip Woodford and the other citizens that he would enforce the law, and he couldn’t do that if he was out at the Crown Royal all the time. He couldn’t dump all the responsibility for law and order in the settlement on Catamount Jack and Clint Farnum. He would talk to Claiborne and get his advice on which of the men might be able to handle the job of temporary superintendent.

  It was dusk when he reached Buckskin. His empty belly reminded him that he hadn’t eaten anything since the middle of the day, and he was tempted to stop at the café and let Lauren, Ginnie, and Becky feed him a good supper.

  But he wanted to check on Claiborne and the other injured miners, so he headed for Dr. Garland’s house instead.

  Frank reined in and said, “Hell,” as he recognized the wagon parked in front of the doctor’s place. It belonged to Claude Langley. As he watched, Langley and Roy, the undertaker’s assistant, emerged from the house carrying a blanket-wrapped figure. Frank had ridden Goldy to Virginia City, since Stormy had had the hard run the night before. Now he walked the horse over to the wagon and asked, “Who are you picking up, Claude?”

  “Oh, howdy, Marshal,” Langley greeted him. As they placed the body in the back of the wagon, the undertaker went on. “This is that poor fella who had the fractured skull. Lambert, his name was. Dr. Garland said he passed away a little while ago without ever regaining consciousness.”

  That was one more mark against the man or men responsible for last night’s carnage, Frank thought. One more score
to settle.

  He dismounted and tied Goldy at the hitch rail while the wagon rattled off toward Langley’s place. When Frank went inside, he found Dr. Garland at a desk in the front room, writing out some notes.

  “I talked to Claude Langley outside,” Frank said as the physician glanced up from his work.

  Garland nodded. “Yes, I didn’t hold out much hope that poor fellow would pull through, and unfortunately, I was right. He never woke up.”

  “How are the rest of your patients doing?”

  “As well as can be expected.” The doctor smiled. “In fact, they have some visitors at the moment, if you want to go in and see for yourself.”

  “Thanks,” Frank said. “I’ll do that.”

  He opened the door to the other room, and stepped in to find Diana Woodford sitting in a ladder-back chair beside Garrett Claiborne’s bed, spooning soup into his mouth from a bowl she held in her other hand. Ginnie Carlson was feeding one of the other patients, the miner with the broken leg, which by now Dr. Garland had enclosed in a plaster cast as he had done with Claiborne’s busted arm. Frank took off his hat and nodded to the two women.

  “Hello, Marshal,” Claiborne said after he swallowed the mouthful of soup. “Were you able to get in touch with Mr. Browning?”

  Frank was glad to see Diana taking care of Claiborne. That boded well. He nodded and said, “We exchanged several telegrams, and the upshot is, new equipment for the stamp mill will be on its way in a day or two.”

  “Excellent! By the time it gets here, we’ll have the building rebuilt and waiting for it. I need to get back out to the mine tomorrow to see about starting work—”

  “Dr. Garland said you weren’t going anywhere for at least a week, Garrett,” Diana put in. “Remember, he’s not sure you don’t have some internal injuries.”

  “I’m fine, confound it,” Claiborne declared. “This arm of mine hurts, but it’s nothing I can’t put up with.”

  Frank pointed his Stetson at the mining engineer and said, “You’d better do what the doctor says. It won’t do any good for you to go back out there and collapse. There’s bound to be somebody on the crew you can trust to supervise the work on the new mill.”

  Claiborne frowned and looked like he wanted to argue the matter, but then he glanced at Diana and saw the stern expression on her face. He said, “I suppose Ernest Truman could handle the job. He’s been an assistant superintendent at other mines before.”

  “There you go,” Frank said. “I’ll ride out there tomorrow and tell him what’s going on, so he can get started.”

  Diana said, “All right, now that that’s settled, no more business talk until Garrett’s finished this soup. It’s getting cold.”

  Frank smiled and pulled up a chair to sit down. “Go right ahead,” he told her.

  Diana finished feeding the soup to Claiborne, and then he and Frank talked for several minutes about what would need to be done at the Crown Royal to get the mine operating again as soon as possible. Claiborne agreed with the idea that they should get the stamp mill rebuilt right away, but once that was done, if the new equipment hadn’t arrived yet, the men could start stockpiling raw ore to be put through the pulverization and amalgamation process as soon as the mill was running.

  Diana looked at Frank and said, “By the way, Marshal, I find it a little odd that you never mentioned you own a considerable interest in the Crown Royal.”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Claiborne, who shrugged his right shoulder. The left one wouldn’t move, strapped down the way it was.

  “I’m sorry, Marshal. That fact slipped out earlier when Miss Woodford and I were talking.”

  She turned her gaze back to him. “I thought you said you were going to call me Diana.”

  “Of course…Diana. My apologies to you too.”

  Frank said, “Don’t worry about it where I’m concerned. My connection with the mine isn’t a big secret or anything like that. I just happen to have an interest in the Browning Mining Syndicate.”

  “That makes you and my father competitors.”

  “Not really. I reckon there’s enough silver in these hills to go around.”

  “Not everyone feels that way,” Claiborne said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had all that trouble at the mine. Someone’s trying to put us out of business, Frank.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Frank agreed with a nod, thinking about Hamish Munro and Gunther Hammersmith. “I’ve got an idea who it is, too.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Conrad’s sending a passel of men to serve as guards. Once they get here, whoever was responsible for that blast will have a hard time getting up to any more mischief.”

  “What about the things they’ve already done?” Claiborne asked. “What about the men who died?”

  “There’ll be a day of reckoning,” Frank said. “You can count on that.”

  Hell Town

  Chapter 20

  Claude Langley had propped up the corpses of the four saboteurs in their coffins out in front of the undertaking parlor so that the citizens of Buckskin could come by and take a look at them. That was an accepted, if grisly, practice in frontier towns. Frank had never cared much for the custom, but in this case he put the word out that if anybody recognized the dead men, he wanted to know about it. He still hoped to find something that would tie the men to Hamish Munro, Gunther Hammersmith, or both.

  But while a few people recalled seeing the men drinking in some of the saloons, nobody really knew them or had witnessed them talking to Hammersmith or Munro. No one who would admit it anyway.

  Frank went up to the hotel to see Munro. He wasn’t sure what he would say to the mining magnate, but he wanted Munro to know that he wouldn’t rest until he got to the bottom of the explosion that had destroyed the stamp mill at the Crown Royal.

  Munro’s secretary, Nathan Evers, opened the door of the suite to Frank’s knock. “Hello, Marshal,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I want to talk to your boss,” Frank replied. “Is he here?”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s not. He and Mrs. Munro have taken a drive out to the Alhambra. Mrs. Munro hadn’t seen the mine yet, and she wanted to.”

  Frank nodded. “All right. Say, you haven’t gone by Langley’s undertaking parlor and had a look at the bodies of those four men who blew up the Crown Royal’s stamp mill, have you?”

  Evers blanched and said, “Good Lord, no. Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

  “I’ve been asking people around town to see if they recognized any of those men.”

  “Well, I can tell you the answer to that without looking at them. I never saw them before. I wouldn’t associate with ruffians like that. Why would I have any reason to?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “You tell me.”

  Understanding dawned on Evers. “You think Mr. Munro had something to do with that explosion!”

  “He’s competing with the folks who own the Crown Royal,” Frank said without mentioning that he was one of those folks.

  “So is Mr. Woodford,” Evers replied. Rather than pale, his face was now flushed with anger. “I don’t hear you accusing him of engaging in criminal acts.”

  “That’s because I know Tip Woodford,” Frank pointed out. “I don’t know Munro all that well yet. But he has a reputation as a ruthless man.”

  Evers gripped the edge of the door, his fingers tightening on it. “I think this conversation is over, Marshal, unless you have some other official business with me.”

  Frank shook his head. “Nope, no official business. I was just talking, that’s all.”

  “Yes, of course,” Evers said in a cold tone that showed he didn’t believe Frank at all. He swung the door closed, shutting it with a little more force than was really necessary.

  Frank smiled to himself. He didn’t know if Evers would report the details of this conversation to Munro, but it seemed likely that he would. That would be just f
ine with Frank. He wanted Munro to know he was suspicious. If Munro was behind what had happened and viewed Frank as a threat, he might get rattled enough to do something foolish—like coming after Frank next time.

  Frank knew that by goading Munro, he was sort of painting a target on his back, but it wouldn’t be the first time he had done such a thing. Sometimes, a man had to place himself in a little bit of danger in order to smoke out some varmints.

  In fact, he decided he didn’t want to count on Evers to do the job for him. After going by the marshal’s office to let Catamount Jack know that he would be gone for a while, he went to the livery stable, saddled up Stormy, and headed for the Alhambra Mine with Dog trotting along beside him.

  * * * *

  Gunther Hammersmith was surprised to hear the clatter of wheels outside his office at the mine. He stood up and went to the door, which stood open to let in some breeze along with the sound of the donkey engine that pulled the ore carts up the shaft and out of the mine. The miners were bringing out more ore all the time, and it looked like reopening the Alhambra was going to turn out to be a lucrative proposition.

  One of the last things Hammersmith expected to see rolling up to the office was that damned blue stagecoach of Munro’s. But that’s what rocked to a halt in front of the building, with the usual driver and bodyguard on the box. The men climbed down, and the guard opened the door. Hamish Munro climbed out, followed by his wife.

  Hammersmith’s breath caught in his throat a little at the sight of Jessica Munro. She had that effect on him every time he saw her.

  Hammersmith was aware that he was wearing rough work clothes, with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up over brawny forearms. He rolled them down as Munro took his wife’s arm and brought her to the foot of the steps that led up to the office.