The Last Gunfighter: Killing Ground

by William W. Johnstone

  They met Catamount Jack on the way to the jail. “What’n blazes is goin’ on here?” the deputy asked. “Frank, it looks like you’re arrestin’ the mayor!”

  “That’s what I’m doing. Tip got into a ruckus with Brighton. He threw the first punch.”

  “It was a good one, too,” Woodford said with a smile. “Felt it all the way up to my shoulder.”

  “I sent Vern Robeson to fetch you,” Frank went on. “How come you’re just showing up now, Jack?”

  “I was, uh, indisposed. Sorry, Marshal.”

  Frank knew that Jack must have been in the out-house behind the jail when Robeson came looking for him.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “It happens to the best of us.”

  They reached the building and went inside. Frank waved toward the old sofa that sat against the front wall and told Woodford, “You might as well have a seat while we’re waiting for Diana, Tip. I don’t think there’s any need to put you in a cell.”

  Woodford shook his head. “No, I want you to lock me up just like you would anybody else. Brighton’s already got it in for you, too. I don’t want to give him any more ammunition for when Judge Grampis gets here.”

  “Suit yourself,” Frank said as he reached for a ring of keys hanging on a nail on the wall behind the desk. “The bunks in the cells are probably just about as comfortable as that sofa anyway. At least they don’t have any broken springs sticking up through them.”

  He unlocked the door to the cell block and put Woodford in one of the cells, all of which were empty at the moment. Woodford himself pulled the door shut with a clang.

  “Any coffee in the pot, Jack?” Frank asked.

  “Always coffee in the pot,” the deputy answered. “Question is, is it fit to drink?”

  “Well, is it?”

  “Only one way to find out. I’ll get cups for both of you.”

  Jack brought the coffee while Frank sat down on a stool in front of the cell where Tip Woodford had lowered his bulk onto the blanket-covered bunk.

  “I’ll go take a turn around town,” Jack said. “The fellas comin’ in from the mines need to see a badge to remind ’em that Buckskin’s a law-abidin’ place.”

  He went out, leaving Frank and Woodford sitting on opposite sides of the bars. Frank sipped the strong black brew from the tin cup in his hand and then said, “What about it, Tip? Is there any chance that Brighton is telling the truth? Is it possible he actually does own the Lucky Lizard?”

  Woodford sighed. “I don’t know, Frank. I honestly don’t. I thought the deal I made with Jeremiah Fulton all those years ago was on the up-an’-up, but I reckon it’s possible Fulton lied to me. If he really was partners with Brighton’s pa, and if they had a signed agreement like Brighton says…well, then, much as it pains me to say it, he might be right.”

  “I’ll have to see that document with my own eyes before I’ll believe it,” Frank said. “And even then, it’s going to have to convince the judge and your lawyer, too.”

  “What lawyer?” Woodford asked with a frown. “I don’t have a lawyer. Never needed one.”

  “You do now. And you’re going to have one as soon as I can get word to San Francisco. You’ll have the best lawyer that the Browning Mining Syndicate can provide for you.”

  Woodford looked doubtful. “I sure do appreciate the offer, Frank, but I ain’t sure how that boy o’ yours is gonna feel about it.”

  “You let me worry about Conrad,” Frank said.

  Chapter 5

  “Absolutely not. That’s a private dispute between Brighton and Mr. Woodford. The Browning Mining Syndicate can’t afford to become involved. If Brighton prevails in court, we would have made an enemy of him from now on.”

  “It’s a mite late to be worrying about that,” Frank said as he looked across the table at his son. “Brighton already knows we don’t like him.”

  They were in the hotel dining room with plates of roast beef and vegetables in front of them. A short time earlier, Diana Woodford had posted bail for her father, and Frank had released Tip with a warning to go right back to the big house on the edge of town where he and Diana lived and avoid Dex Brighton.

  Conrad studied his father’s face for a moment and then said, “You’ve already promised Mr. Woodford that we’ll provide legal representation for him, haven’t you?”

  Frank shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  Conrad put his fork down so hard that it rattled against his dinner plate.

  “Blast it, Frank! You seem to forget that Woodford is our competition, too. We don’t owe him any favors.”

  “Garrett Claiborne is convinced that the veins of silver being mined by the Lucky Lizard and the Crown Royal don’t come anywhere near each other,” Frank said. “So it shouldn’t matter to us one way or the other whether Tip’s mine is successful.”

  Conrad nodded. “That’s exactly the point. It shouldn’t matter to us. You offered to help him simply because he’s your friend.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” Frank asked without denying Conrad’s charge.

  “It’s not good business.”

  “There are some things more important than business.”

  Rebel had been pretty quiet up to this point, but now she laughed.

  “Don’t say that to Conrad,” she told Frank. “He considers it heresy.”

  Conrad flushed. “I do not. I just take a more practical approach to these matters than either of you do.”

  “You were quick enough to ask me for help when you had trouble with that railroad spur you were building and when Cicero McCoy stole all that money,” Frank pointed out. “Anyway, I’m not asking you or the Syndicate to pay for Tip’s lawyer. I figured to send for one of my personal lawyers. Turnbuckle and Stafford are already on retainer; I reckon they might as well earn some of that money I’ve been paying them.”

  Conrad’s eyes widened.

  “Turnbuckle and Stafford are two of the top attorneys in San Francisco! In the entire country, for that matter. You’d drag them out here to this frontier town for a simple mining dispute?”

  “You’ve got to remember that there’s a lot of money at stake here,” Frank said. “Maybe it wouldn’t be that much to hombres like Leland Stanford or J.P. Morgan or ol’ John D. Rockefeller, but it’s not like a penny-ante poker game either. Anyway, I’m only going to drag one of them out here from San Francisco. The other one can stay there and hold down the fort.”

  “Hold down the fort,” Conrad muttered. “You refer to tending to the affairs of one of the top law firms in the country as holding down the fort.”

  “Call it whatever you want. I’ve already sent a rider to Carson City with a message to wire to San Francisco. With any luck, one of those fellas will be on a train heading in this direction before the day is over tomorrow.”

  Conrad shook his head. “I should have known there was no reasoning with you. You’re as stubborn as ever.”

  “I’d say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Rebel commented.

  Conrad frowned at her. “You could at least be on my side. You’re my wife, after all.”

  “I’m always on your side, Conrad.” She smiled. “Except when you’re wrong.”

  “I give up. And I hope you two enjoy your dinner.” Conrad looked around the table at them. “This is liable to be the last peaceful evening in Buckskin for quite some time!”

  Frank couldn’t argue with that.

  Things never seemed to stay peaceful around him for very long, no matter where he was.

  The next morning, Frank rode out to the Crown Royal Mine to talk to Garrett Claiborne. Stormy, the rangy gray stallion that had carried Frank over so much of the West, was clearly glad to be reunited with his master, and he stretched his legs and capered like he was a young horse again as they followed the trail out to the mine.

  Dog, the big, shaggy, wolflike cur, had reacted in much the same fashion, rearing up to put his forepaws on Frank’s shoulders and eagerly licking his
face. To some people it might have looked like the dog was trying to tear out the man’s throat, but Frank knew better.

  Dog loped alongside, occasionally dashing off to check out some intriguing scent or give chase to a rabbit or prairie dog he didn’t really want to catch. He didn’t go very far, though, before returning to Frank’s side.

  Frank saw smoke rising before he reached the mine. He knew it came from the chimney of the cookhouse. Feeding a barracks full of hungry miners kept the two Mexican cooks busy most of the time.

  He heard the rumble of the stamp mill, too, and the sound of the donkey engines that pulled the ore cars out of the mine along the narrow-gauge steel rails. When you got right down to it, a mine of any sort was a noisy, smelly place, and sometimes Frank wasn’t sure that having them spread all over the West was a good thing.

  Whenever mines and railroads and all the other sorts of industry arrived, the frontier was never quite the same afterward, and for those who remembered it the way it used to be, as Frank Morgan did, there was a certain nostalgic melancholy associated with the march of progress. With each passing year, the places where a man could pause on a hilltop and watch an eagle wheeling through a pristine blue sky and know that he might well be the only human being within a hundred miles were becoming fewer and fewer.

  Trying to stop civilization, though, or even slow it down much, was like trying to bail out the Mississippi with a tin cup. It just couldn’t be done.

  Frank reined to a halt and swung down from the saddle in front of the log building that housed the mine superintendent’s office. He looped Stormy’s reins around a hitching post, told Dog to stay, and went up the steps to the little porch and the door. He didn’t knock but went on inside.

  Garrett Claiborne, who hailed from Georgia, was on the smallish side, but he was muscular and could handle himself in a fight. He had tousled dark hair and a close-cropped beard. He was standing in front of a big, angled drawing board that had a diagram of some sort pinned to it. Frank didn’t know much about such things, but he thought he recognized the drawing as a cutaway diagram of the Crown Royal’s network of tunnels and shafts.

  “Frank!” Claiborne exclaimed. “I mean, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Frank’s just fine.” He shook hands with the mining engineer. “How are you, Garrett?”

  “Good, good,” Claiborne said, nodding his head.

  Frank gestured toward the diagram. “Thinking about expanding?”

  “Yes, I believe the vein we’re following in this tunnel right here”—Claiborne traced it on the paper with his finger—“is assaying out at a rate that makes extending the tunnel worthwhile. I was a little concerned about the stability of the rock strata, but I believe I’ve worked out some modifications to our bracing systems that will alleviate the extra strain.”

  Frank nodded. “That’s good, I reckon…even though I barely understood what you said.”

  “Don’t worry, I know how you and Mr. Browning insist on proper safety procedures being followed. There’s always going to be a considerable amount of risk when you’re working underground, of course, but I do my best to minimize it.” Claiborne paused. “You know that most mine owners don’t give much of a damn about such things.”

  “All I know is how you run the Crown Royal, Garrett, and I’m satisfied with that.”

  Claiborne stepped away from the drawing board and over to the desk.

  “Some of the men told me you and Mr. Browning arrived in Buckskin yesterday afternoon. If you had let me know when you were getting here, I would have ridden into town and delivered a report on the mine’s operation to both of you.”

  “Time enough for that later,” Frank said with a wave of his hand. “Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if Conrad drove out here later today in his buggy to look the place over.” He frowned slightly. “You didn’t get my letter telling you that we were on our way back from Arizona?”

  Claiborne shook his head. “Not at all. This is the first time I’ve heard of any such letter.”

  That didn’t come as a surprise to Frank. He hadn’t forgotten about that attempt on his life the day before. Unless it had been a random holdup or something like that, which seemed unlikely, that bushwhacker must have been laying up in those rocks, waiting for him.

  That meant someone hadn’t wanted him to reach Buckskin alive, and the most reasonable explanation for how they had found out he was on his way was that the would-be killer—or someone he worked for—had filched that letter before Claiborne ever saw it.

  The question remained, though, who that might be. And even more important, who wanted him dead?

  Frank spent a while longer talking with Claiborne, then got back on Stormy and rode away from the Crown Royal. He wanted to take a better look around the site of the ambush.

  The day before he had been more concerned with getting Conrad and Rebel on to Buckskin safely, and then the whole troublesome business with Brighton had come up. Now he wanted to see if he could find anything that might give him a clue to the bushwhacker’s identity.

  Instead of returning to the settlement and then following the road to Carson City, Frank cut across country instead. He had ridden around this region often enough so that with his frontiersman’s instinct he wasn’t likely to get lost. His route took him near the Lucky Lizard, but he didn’t detour in order to pay a visit to the rival mine.

  Frank’s eyes were always in motion as he rode, searching the rugged countryside around him for any sign of danger. The man who had taken those shots at him had failed once, but the odds were that whoever he was, he would try again. Frank’s natural wariness, honed by years of riding perilous trails, was in full force now.

  Nothing happened, though, and he saw no sign of a trap as he approached the boulders where the rifleman had hidden. When he reached the rocks, he reined in and spent several minutes in the saddle before he dismounted, studying the area and getting the big picture set in his mind. From here he could see all the way across the expanse of meadow where he had been riding when the shooting started. The bushwhacker had come pretty close with his bullets—but not close enough.

  Frank swung down from the saddle and hunkered on his heels, taking a closer look at the ground, which was hard enough so that it didn’t take prints very well. He saw a few marks left by a horse’s hooves, but there was nothing unusual about the prints and no way of knowing whether they had been made by the bushwhacker’s mount or the mount of some other rider. When Frank was satisfied that he wasn’t going to turn up anything important, he said, “Dog, search.”

  It was time for someone with senses even more acute than The Drifter’s to take a hand—or a paw, in this case.

  The big cur started nosing through the rocks, his muzzle close to the ground. After a moment, his hackles rose and he started growling, as if he smelled something that he didn’t like. Frank had long since learned to trust Dog’s instincts, even when they seemed almost supernatural. He mounted up again and called, “Dog, trail!”

  Dog took off like a shot, bounding over the ground, darting around rocks, and leaping over deadfalls. Frank followed as best he could, although sometimes he had to call out for Dog to stop and wait while he and Stormy caught up. The trail wound back and forth, but led gradually up and over a ridge, then along a dry wash.

  After half a mile or so, the wash came to a creek that was flowing, the stream that had formed the wash when it was in flood. Dog ran back and forth along the gravelly bank, barking in frustration. Obviously, the rider he had been following had entered the creek, making it impossible for the big cur to trail him.

  “Let’s go across and see if you can pick up the scent, big fella,” Frank said to Dog. He sent Stormy splashing across the shallow stream.

  The three of them cast up and down the stream for a mile in each direction without locating the bushwhacker’s trail again. Frank was disappointed but not surprised. There was no telling how far the rifleman had followed the creek before emerging from it. Locating his trail again might
take all day, and even then it would be just a matter of luck. They might not ever find it.

  “Remember that hombre’s scent, Dog,” Frank told his canine friend. “You’re liable to run across him again one of these days, and if you do, I’ll be counting on you to let me know about it.”

  Dog seemed to grin at him. Frank knew the big cur wouldn’t let him down.

  In the meantime, he supposed they might as well start back to Buckskin. He wanted to keep an eye on the situation there and make sure no more trouble broke out between Tip Woodford and Brighton. There might be other problems that needed the marshal’s attention, too.

  And as he rode toward the settlement, he wondered if that telegram had reached the law offices of Turnbuckle and Stafford in San Francisco yet…and if it had, just what sort of reaction it had caused.

  Chapter 6

  Claudius Turnbuckle wasn’t really a fire-breathing dragon, but Luther Galloway felt as if he were about to enter the lair of such a mythological creature as he approached the door of Turnbuckle’s private office with a yellow, sealed envelope in his hand.

  A lad wearing the uniform of Western Union had delivered the envelope to the law offices a short time earlier and said that the envelope contained an urgent telegram. Luther had worked for Turnbuckle and Stafford for almost two years now and knew that almost all telegrams were urgent—or at least, the people who sent them thought they were.

  Mr. Turnbuckle might not agree, and if he didn’t, Luther would take the brunt of his roaring displeasure. The telegram wasn’t addressed to either of the partners in particular, and he would have much preferred dealing with Mr. Stafford, who, while pompous and stuffy, wasn’t nearly as frightening as Mr. Turnbuckle.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Stafford was away on business for the firm, down in Los Angeles, so Luther had no choice except to draw a deep breath and rap on the heavy oak door.

  “What is it, damn it?” Turnbuckle’s deep, powerful rumble penetrated the thick panel easily.

  Luther turned the brass knob and eased the door open a couple of inches.