The Last Gunfighter: Killing Ground

by William W. Johnstone

  But the would-be shootists and pistoleros were a different story. Those were Frank’s responsibility.

  And he had two of them waiting for him now.

  “Come along with me if you want,” he told Jack, “but leave the Greener here and stay out of the fight, if there is one.”

  “Oh, there’ll be one,” Jack said with grim certainty. But he went back to the rack and hung up the shotgun again, then fell in step beside Frank as the two of them started down the street toward the Silver Baron.

  Even after all these years, it never failed to amaze Frank how quickly word could spread of impending violence. As he and Jack approached the saloon, he saw several people gathered on the boardwalk in front of the place. More were headed in that direction.

  Vern Robeson was one of the men peering in the Silver Baron’s front window. He turned to greet Frank with an eager grin.

  “Looks like there’s gonna be two more notches on your gun pretty soon, Marshal!”

  “I don’t carve notches on my gun, Vern,” Frank snapped. “I don’t know any real gunfighters who do.”

  Vern’s grin disappeared. He shuffled his feet and looked down at the boardwalk.

  “Sorry, Marshal. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  “I’ll bet Amos is wondering where you are.”

  “I’ll go on along down there to the stable…in a few minutes.”

  Frank knew what the hostler meant. He was going to stay right here to see what was going to happen. If anybody died this morning, Vern Robeson wasn’t going to miss it. And that was his right, Frank supposed. Vern wasn’t breaking any law by standing on the boardwalk.

  Frank pushed the batwings aside and stepped into the saloon. Catamount Jack was right behind him. Every nerve in Frank’s body was alert, every muscle taut and ready for action. It was always possible in a situation like this that the men who were waiting for him might slap leather and start their guns blazing as soon as he walked into the room.

  They didn’t, though. In fact, the two young men standing at the bar didn’t even realize he was there until they saw Willie Carter, the only bartender working at this time of the morning, looking intently at the door. Even then, they leisurely finished the drinks in front of them before they turned to face The Drifter.

  Instantly, Frank saw the resemblance between them. They were brothers, probably no more than two or three years apart in age. Sleekly built, flashily dressed, handsome in a cheap way. Saloon gals probably fawned all over them. And when they grinned, the expressions reeked of arrogant confidence.

  “Well, if it ain’t the marshal,” the older one said.

  “See, Rand?” the younger one said. “I told you he wouldn’t be scared to face us…even though he oughta be.”

  “You were right, Brock. I figured Frank Morgan was so old that he would’ve lost all his guts by now.”

  “If he ever had any to start with. Maybe he backshot all those fellas he’s supposed to’ve killed. I mean, jus’ look at him. I wouldn’t put it past him, would you?”

  Rand shook his head. “Nope. I reckon he never was any more’n a puffed-up bag o’ shit.”

  Frank laughed, causing both brothers to look surprised. He couldn’t help it. They had probably rehearsed those lines before they ever rode into town.

  His reaction had thrown them off stride. They were confused and angry now.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” the one called Rand snapped. “You gone soft in the head, Morgan?”

  “Nope,” Frank said. “I’ve just heard that sort of garbage so many times, for so many years, that it just sounds foolish to me now. What do you reckon every would-be gunslick does when he decides to face me down? He tries to needle me into drawing, just like you two are doing. He tries to get under my skin, to make me mad, to make me careless.” Frank shook his head. “It’s never worked that way before, and it’s not going to work now.” He chuckled again. “But you boys go right ahead with whatever routine you’ve worked out. You might get me to laughing so hard that it might just give you a little bit of an advantage. I don’t think so, but you never know.”

  “Why…why you crazy old fart!” Rand sputtered. “Don’t you know who we are?”

  “He’s Rand Johnson, and I’m Brock Johnson,” the younger brother said. “We’re the Johnson brothers!”

  Without looking around, Frank asked, “Those names mean anything to you, Jack?”

  “Not a damned thing,” the deputy replied. “I never heard of ’em. But then, I can’t keep up with every loco kid who thinks he’s fast with a gun.”

  “I killed Sammy Carlisle!” Rand said. “And Brock gunned Wichita McHenry and Pete Cragg! We’re gonna be more famous than Frank and Jesse James or the Daltons!”

  “I think I sorta heard o’ that McHenry fella,” Jack said, “but I ain’t sure.”

  “I saw Pete Cragg in Yankton a few years back,” Frank said. “He was a two-bit owlhoot and slow as mud on the draw. Carlisle’s a new one on me. He must not have been around for very long.”

  Both of the Johnson brothers were red in the face with fury now.

  “Quit your jabberin’, damn it!” Brock said. “You’ll know who we are when you got our lead in your carcass, blast you! Now fill your hand, Morgan!”

  Frank shook his head. His joking demeanor was gone as he said, “I don’t want to kill you, son. But that’s what’s going to happen to you and your brother both if you don’t get on your horses and ride out of here right now. What you’re doing is foolishness, sheer foolishness, and I don’t want any part of it. Go find somebody else to kill you, if you’re that determined to die.”

  For a moment, he thought they were going to listen to him. He thought this might be one of the rare occasions when his words actually got through those lying dreams of fame and glory that had led many a young man to the grave.

  But then Rand and Brock Johnson both snarled and grabbed for their guns, clawing the weapons out of their holsters.

  Frank had no way of knowing which one was faster. Brock claimed two kills while Rand had mentioned only one, so Frank took him down first, smashing a slug into Brock’s chest that caused the young man to stumble back against the bar.

  Then, faster than the eye could follow, the muzzle of Frank’s Colt tracked to the right and spewed flaming death once again. Rand was moving and trying to bring his gun up as Frank fired, so the bullet hit him on the right side of the chest instead of dead center in his heart. It tore through his lung, though, and instantly filled that organ with blood. Rand gasped in shock and pain as he began drowning in it. He managed to stay on his feet and tried again to raise his gun.

  Frank fired a third shot, and this time the bullet found Rand’s heart, putting an end to his suffering as he crumpled to the floor. The sawdust that normally soaked up spilled beer caught the crimson stream that flowed from the young man’s mouth instead.

  Brock was still on his feet, leaning against the bar. He should have gone down by now, but somehow he had found the strength to stay upright. His gun slipped from nerveless fingers and thudded to the floor as he gasped, “You…you…nobody’s that…fast!”

  “That was your mistake, son,” Frank told him. “Somebody, somewhere, is always that fast.”

  Brock’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he pitched forward on his face, dead when he hit the floor.

  “Son of a gun,” Catamount Jack breathed. “Neither of ’em even got a shot off! Not that I was expectin’ ’em to,” he added hastily.

  Frank took fresh cartridges from the loops on his gunbelt and replaced the spent rounds in the Colt’s cylinder.

  “I imagine somebody’s gone to fetch Claude Langley already,” he said, “but if they haven’t…”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Jack said.

  Frank holstered his gun and looked at Carter behind the bar.

  “Sorry, Willie. I’d just as soon not kill people in here if I didn’t have to.”

  “It’s all right, Marshal. You
gave those two every chance in the world to light a shuck outta here. It’s their own dumb fault that they didn’t.”

  That was true…but it didn’t make Frank feel any better about adding two more graves to Buckskin’s Boot Hill.

  People crowded around to congratulate him as he left the saloon, of course. They always did. Frank accepted their words with polite nods, but then the sight of a rider trotting along the street caught his attention. The man on horseback was the fella he had sent to Carson City with the wire for his lawyers in San Francisco.

  “Howdy, Phil,” Frank hailed him. “You get a reply back from that telegram?”

  “Sure did, Marshal,” the man said as he reined in. He reached into the pocket of his cowhide vest and took out a folded paper. “Here you go.”

  “I’m much obliged.” Frank took the paper and handed Phil a gold eagle in turn. The man had worked as a miner until he developed a cough that kept him from spending long hours underground. He still had a family to feed, though, so Frank had him doing odd jobs and running errands such as this whenever the need arose.

  Frank opened the message, read it, and nodded in satisfaction.

  “What’s it say?” Catamount Jack asked.

  “Leaving immediately for Buckskin, stop. Will arrive Friday latest, stop. Am confident of victory, stop. Look forward to meeting you Morgan, stop. Signed, Turnbuckle.”

  “That’s one o’ those lawyer hombres, right?”

  Frank nodded. “One of the best lawyers west of the Mississippi, or at least he’s supposed to be. I reckon we’ll find out whether he is or not.” He looked around. “Claude Langley?”

  “Here he comes with that meat wagon o’ his right now.”

  More work for the undertaker, Frank thought. All because two young fools had thought more of gun glory than they did of their own lives.

  He bet his coffee was cold by now, too.

  Chapter 8

  Luther Galloway’s head was spinning from the speed with which he and Mr. Claudius Turnbuckle, Esq., had departed from San Francisco.

  He had purchased the tickets at the train station, sent a messenger to the offices of Turnbuckle and Stafford with the information that the train on which they were booked departed at 11:30, and then rushed to his rented room to pack. He didn’t even return to the office, just went straight to the train station again to wait for Mr. Turnbuckle.

  The lawyer arrived at 11:15 in a hack loaded with baggage. The driver, several porters, and Luther himself were pressed into service to get everything loaded onto the train on time while Turnbuckle supervised the operation, frowning darkly and leaning on his silver-headed walking stick. They made it—barely—and then Luther had to deal with the fact that he hadn’t been able to obtain a private compartment for them at the last minute.

  “You expect me to ride sitting up all the way to Carson City like a common person?” Turnbuckle demanded angrily as he and Luther stood in the vestibule of the car where their seats were located. Those sentiments, expressed in the lawyer’s usual loud, ringing tones, drew several resentful looks from the other passengers.

  “Please, sir,” Luther said. “You said you wanted to leave on the earliest possible train, and this is it. Unfortunately, they had no private compartments available. I would have checked with you to see whether you wanted to wait for a later train, but the ticket clerk said that if I tarried, these seats would be gone. Then you would have had no choice but to wait.”

  Turnbuckle wore a tweed overcoat and hat despite the relatively warm weather. He glowered at Luther under the pulled-down brim of the hat and growled, “All right, all right. I suppose we’ll just have to make the best of the situation. Where are our seats?”

  Luther consulted the tickets as he led the way down the aisle.

  “Right along here, sir.”

  The seats were on the left-hand side of the car, about midway along the aisle. They were nicely upholstered and appeared comfortable to Luther, but of course they were much less luxurious than Turnbuckle was accustomed to. At least, Luther supposed that was the case. In the time he had worked for Turnbuckle and Stafford, Mr. Turnbuckle hadn’t done any traveling. In fact, Luther had never even seen him outside the office until today.

  “I’m sitting beside the window,” Turnbuckle declared, and naturally, Luther didn’t argue with him. He sat down beside the attorney, being careful not to let his shoulder touch Turnbuckle’s. Neither of them would have been comfortable with that level of familiarity.

  The Central Pacific train rolled out of the station on schedule, lurching into motion with a slight jolt. It would travel first to Sacramento, then across the Sierra Nevada Mountains into the state of Nevada. Luther had determined that Carson City was the closest rail terminal to their destination. He wasn’t sure how they would get from Carson City to the settlement called Buckskin, but he assumed there was some sort of coach service.

  He hoped they wouldn’t have to rent mounts and travel by horseback. He had ridden a few times in one of San Francisco’s parks, but he was no horseman. In fact, he had lived the entire twenty-five years of his life in the city and wasn’t that comfortable with the idea of visiting a frontier settlement to start with.

  That worry nagged at him until he felt he had to say, “Sir, we’re not likely to encounter any, ah, hostiles, are we?”

  “You mean Indians?” Turnbuckle grunted a couple of times, and it took Luther a moment to realize that the lawyer was laughing. “The only hostiles still on the loose anywhere are a few renegades in Arizona and New Mexico, and maybe in West Texas. All the others have been pacified.”

  Luther tried not to sigh.

  “That’s a relief, sir. I wasn’t sure what the situation was.”

  “Now outlaws, on the other hand…There are still roving gangs of bandits, and they’ve been known to hold up trains. You can worry about them if you want to, Galloway.”

  Luther’s jaw clenched and his fingers knotted together. He knew that Turnbuckle was making fun of him, and he didn’t like it. At the same time, the idea that they might be in danger from bandits was worrisome. But it was too late now to do anything except hope for the best.

  Turnbuckle distracted him by saying, “I took a few minutes before leaving the office to skim through the Nevada statutes regarding mining claims.” There were volumes in the office’s law library detailing the statutes of almost every state in the nation. “Of course, I don’t know the specifics of the case Morgan wants me to take, but I thought it would be a good idea to get an overview of the law.”

  “That was a very good idea, sir.”

  “When we get to Buckskin and have all the details, I may have to send you back to Carson City to research the law for me.”

  “Of course, sir. I’m prepared to accomplish whatever tasks you give me.”

  Luther was really starting to hope there was a stagecoach or something similar that ran between Carson City and Buckskin. The idea of riding back and forth by himself, at the mercy of the elements, savage beasts, and even more savage humans, made his mouth go dry with terror.

  “You’ve been a good clerk, Galloway,” Turnbuckle said with what sounded like grudging respect. “Even if you weren’t able to arrange private accommodations for us on this train. When are you supposed to take your test to see if you can pass the bar?”

  Luther’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. Turnbuckle didn’t even know that he had already taken the bar examination twice and failed to pass both times?

  But why should Turnbuckle be aware of that? Luther certainly hadn’t spoken of it around the office. He was too ashamed of his failures.

  “Once you’re licensed to practice law,” Turnbuckle went on without waiting for an answer to his question, “there might be a place for you at the firm as an associate. No guarantees, you understand. Stafford would have to agree, and he can be a cantankerous old pelican.”

  As far as Luther had been able to see during his time at the firm, Mr. John J. Stafford was much
more pleasant and easier to work for than Mr. Turnbuckle. And yet here was Turnbuckle talking about how cantankerous he was. Perhaps in private, between the two partners, there might be some truth to that. Luther didn’t know.

  He thought he ought to say something. “Thank you, sir,” he replied, managing not to stammer. “I appreciate that vote of confidence.”

  “Well, let’s see how you do helping me with this case,” Turnbuckle said. “Frank Morgan is one of our more important clients, and I don’t want to let him down.”

  “No, sir. Of course not. Just let me know anything I can do to help.”

  Turnbuckle grunted again, but it wasn’t a laugh this time. “Right now you can open this window. There’s not a breath of fresh air in this car.”

  “Of course.” Luther got to his feet and reached over Turnbuckle, again being careful not to crowd him, and unlatched the window. He pushed the pane up several inches to let in some air.

  Unfortunately, that air wasn’t very fresh. It stunk of smoke from the engine, and there were even a few cinders from the locomotive’s stack floating in it. Turnbuckle began to cough and snapped, “Shut it! Shut the damned thing!”

  The outburst drew more looks from the other passengers. Luther tried not to sigh in dismay as he hurriedly reached over Turnbuckle and lowered the window. The trip to Carson City was supposed to take approximately twenty-four hours, which meant they would reach their destination around the middle of the day tomorrow.

  It was beginning to look like it was going to be a long trip.

  Luther was right. Turnbuckle became more and more irascible as the journey continued, and after a night spent trying to sleep sitting up, he was an absolute bear. If it occurred to him that his clerk was in the same uncomfortable situation, Luther saw no sign of it. The lawyer was concerned with his own problems and no one else’s.

  The train was still in the mountains when morning dawned. Luther peered past the grumbling Turnbuckle and watched the spectacular scenery rolling past. Snowcapped mountains clawed at the very heavens, climbing high into the clear blue vault of the sky. Thickly wooded slopes formed dark green curtains. Valleys plummeted to dancing streams where fast-flowing water broke whitely on jagged rocks that thrust up from the creek beds. Luther thought he could tell just by looking at the streams that the water was so cold it would take a man’s breath away. Maybe it would wash all of his problems away, too…