Hell Town

Chapter 6

The canyon was located up in the Nevada high country, way the hell and gone from anywhere. That was the way the men who were camped here liked it. Isolation was their first line of defense. The way the mountains folded in on themselves, nobody would even know the canyon was here just to look at it. You had to be aware of its existence, and even then, you’d have a hard time finding the trails in and out without a guide.

And if you did, chances are you’d be shot out of the saddle before you got within a mile of the place.

Half-a-dozen log cabins were scattered around the floor of the narrow canyon, which was watered by a tiny stream that sprang from the cliffs where they narrowed back down to a solid wall. A couple of sturdy pole corrals had been erected nearby. Plenty of game still roamed the area, so the smell of roasting venison usually filled the air.

Several members of the gang had wives—at least they called themselves that, whether the unions were strictly legal or not—and they stayed here at the hideout all the time, along with a couple of old-timers who were too stove-up to go out on jobs anymore, plus any of the other men who were recuperating from bullet wounds and needed more time to get better before they resumed their careers of outlawry.

The gang’s numbers varied. At its core was a group of six men who had ridden together for years, but other owlhoots came and went. There might be twenty or thirty men in the hidden canyon at times.

Today there were fifteen, and they were bored, so they gathered in front of one of the cabins to watch Gates Tucker and Dagnabbit Dabney try to cut each other to pieces with bowie knives.

The trouble started over a woman, but it could have just as easily been a disagreement over cards, or a spilled drink, or any other excuse to break the monotony of waiting for the next job to come along. Tucker’s woman had taken up with Dabney behind Tucker’s back, and Tucker might not have found out about it if he hadn’t passed by Dabney’s cabin and overheard him saying, “Dagnabbit! Dagnabbit!” as he had the habit of doing while he was in the throes of passion. Tucker knew that Dabney didn’t have a woman in the canyon at the moment, and curious as to who it was Dabney was screwing, he’d peeked in the window and seen his own sweet Hannah bouncing her hips on a corn-shuck mattress with Dabney on top of her.

Tucker didn’t bother going around to the door. He just climbed in the window and roared, “I’ll make you think dagnabbit, you son of a bitch!”

In the resulting fracas, he had pitched a still-stark-naked Dabney out the window, and probably would have killed him if several other members of the gang who’d been attracted by the commotion hadn’t grabbed him and held him back. In order to liven things up around the hideout, and to make the fight more fair since Tucker was a head taller and fifty pounds heavier than Dabney, they had suggested that the two men settle their dispute with cold steel. The old saying was that God created all men equal but that Sam Colt made them more equal. A bowie wasn’t quite the same as a Peacemaker, but it went quite a ways toward evening things up.

So Dabney got dressed, Hannah wrapped a sheet around her, and most of the outlaws gathered to watch the fight. It went without saying that the fight would be to the death.

Tucker had the longer reach, but Dabney was quicker. They circled each other, darted in and out, thrust and parried and cut. Blade rang against blade, and sparks flew as the steel clashed. Tucker drew first blood, but Dabney returned the favor a heartbeat later. After ten minutes, both men had several bleeding cuts.

The door of one of the other cabins opened and a tall, powerful man in a fringed buckskin shirt stepped out onto its rickety porch. A blond beard covered his jaw, and fair hair hung from under a hat with a pushed-up brim. He wore a scowl on his face as he stared toward the two men slashing at each other with knives. “What the hell?” he muttered.

He went down the steps to the ground and stalked toward the group of spectators, who were yelling encouragement to the two fighters and making bets with each other over which one would survive the fight.

“What’s goin’ on here?” the newcomer demanded of one of the outlaws.

The man looked around and said, “Oh, howdy, Jory. You ain’t heard?”

“I heard all hell breakin’ loose, sounded like,” the man called Jory snapped. “Before that I was tryin’ to get some shut-eye.”

“Well, Gates and Dagnabbit is fightin’—”

“I can see that. What started it?”

“Gates found out that Dagnabbit’s been beddin’ his woman.”

Jory frowned. “Is there anybody in camp who ain’t bedded Hannah at one time or another?”

“No, I reckon not, but Gates told ever’body to steer clear of her. He’s done gone sweet on her.”

“Lord have mercy,” Jory muttered. “Nothin’ makes a man stupider’n a woman. You’re bettin’ on which one’s gonna win?”

“That’s right. You want some of the action?”

Jory scratched at his beard and thought about it for a moment, then said, “Anybody betting that neither one of them live through it?”

The other outlaw shook his head. “Nope. Ever’body’s bettin’ on one or the other.”

“Then I’ll bet that neither one of them makes it through this fight alive,” Jory said.

“Hell, I’ll take that bet!”

Several of the other outlaws joined in and within minutes, Jory had a sizable amount of money wagered on the outcome. Meanwhile, Tucker and Dabney were bloodier than ever and were visibly tiring. It would only be a matter of minutes before one of the men made a fatal slip.

All the bets were down, so Jory shouted, “Hey! Gates! Dagnabbit!”

Both of the fighters paused, startled by the shout. As they looked around, Jory pulled his gun from its holster and shot them both, the pair of shots slamming out so close together, the reports sounded almost like one. Tucker and Dabney crashed to the ground, their brains blown out.

Jory slid his gun back into leather, smiled at the shocked outlaws, and said, “Neither one of ’em lived through the fight. Pay up, boys.”

A few jaws clenched in anger, but nobody said anything, and after a second the men began paying off on their bets.

Because this was the infamous Jory Pool they were dealing with, their leader, the fastest on the draw and the most vicious member of the bunch, and nobody wanted to cross him.

A hail from one of the lookouts posted up on the canyon wall told Pool that riders were coming in. The newcomers had to be members of the gang; otherwise they would have been gunned down out of hand if they approached the hideout. Pool collected his winnings, then walked out to meet the two riders.

He recognized Hap Mitchell and Lonnie Beeman, both of whom had ridden with the gang on several jobs in the past. They hadn’t been here to the hideout for quite a while, so as they reined in and raised their hands in greeting, Pool said, “Howdy, boys. Where you been lately?”

“Oh, here and there,” Mitchell answered, being deliberately vague about it. Pool wouldn’t have expected any less.

“You didn’t lead no posse back here, did you?” Pool asked with a scowl.

Beeman laughed and said, “You know us better’n that, Jory. No bunch of lawdogs could follow us less’n we wanted them to.”

“We came across something a few days ago we thought you might be interested in,” Mitchell said. “You heard of a place called Buckskin?”

“Ghost town, ain’t it?” Pool asked with a grunt.

“It used to be, but it’s not anymore. They found silver there again. One of the mines has opened back up, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the others did too. And there are prospectors roamin’ all over those hills looking for other veins. Buckskin’s a boomtown again, and I expect it’ll just get bigger.”

An avaricious grin spread across Pool’s bearded face. “Lots of dinero there for the takin’ in a boomtown,” he commented.

“Yeah, but that’s not all,” Beeman said. “They got themselves a marshal.”

Pool gave a contemptuous snort. “I’m not worried about some two-bit tin badge.”

In a quiet voice, Mitchell said, “The fella packing the star in Buckskin is Frank Morgan.”

Pool’s eyes widened in surprise. “Morgan? The one they call The Drifter?”

“His own self,” Mitchell confirmed.

“Never thought anybody as fiddle-footed as Morgan would ever settle down and take a marshal’s job. I’ve wanted to cross trails with him for a long time.” Pool grinned again. “You’re right, that is interestin’. Mighty interestin’.”

He started to laugh. It wasn’t a pretty sound.

Behind him, the rest of the gang had finished emptying the pockets of Gates Tucker and Dagnabbit Dabney. Now, some of them picked up the bodies and started to carry them toward the ravine, where they would be tossed in to await the scavengers.

“What’s goin’ on over there?” Mitchell asked as he looked past Pool.

“Never mind about that,” Pool said. “Tell me more about this place called Buckskin.”

Garrett Claiborne wanted to go out and have a look at the Crown Royal Mine the same afternoon he arrived in Buckskin, but Frank convinced him it was too late in the day for that. Although Frank had a good general idea of the mine’s location and was sure he could find it, he hadn’t been out there himself since coming to Buckskin, even though he knew he was a part-owner of the property.

Instead, Frank took Claiborne around town and introduced him to people, explaining that Claiborne had come to reopen the Crown Royal. That created quite a bit of interest among Buckskin’s merchants, especially Leo Benjamin. Another working mine meant more miners with money to spend.

When they went into the offices of the Lucky Lizard Mining Company, Tip Woodford wasn’t there, but Diana was. She was seated at a desk, going over columns of figures entered in a ledger. Frank knew that Diana did some of the bookkeeping work for her father, but he had never seen her actually engaged in that chore. Nor had he seen her wearing spectacles, as she was now.

To tell the truth, they didn’t look bad on her.

She seemed embarrassed, though, and reached up to remove the spectacles as soon as she saw Frank coming in to the office. She put a smile on her face and said, “Hello, Marshal. What are you doing here?”

“Thought I’d stop by and introduce Garrett Claiborne here to your father,” Frank said.

“I’m sorry, he’s still out at the mine. But I’m glad to meet you, Mr…. Claiborne, was it?”

“That’s right,” the mining engineer said. “I take it you’re Miss Woodford?” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “The pleasure is all mine, I assure you.”

Diana stood up and took his hand. “Why, Mr. Claiborne, how gallant of you. With a name like that, I assume you’re Southern?”

“From Georgia, ma’am,” Claiborne said, although to Frank’s ear he didn’t have much of a Southern accent, certainly not one like Claude Langley’s. Frank supposed that since Claiborne was a mining engineer, he had lived all over, which had a way of diminishing an accent.

“What brings you to Buckskin?” Diana asked.

“I work for the Browning Mining Syndicate. I’ve come to take charge of the Crown Royal Mine and put it back into operation.”

Diana’s eyebrows rose, and her voice was a little cooler as she said, “Really? I wasn’t aware that there were any plans to do that.”

“Yes, indeed. Once we found out about your father’s rediscovery of the Lucky Lizard vein, we decided it would be worthwhile to do some further explorations in the Crown Royal.”

“I suppose the word was bound to get out.”

“Yes, when we heard from—”

Frank broke into the conversation, saying, “I reckon most folks in Nevada have heard about the new strike by now.” No one in Buckskin knew that he had any stake in the Crown Royal, and he wanted to keep it that way. Folks had a way of treating wealthy people differently. He preferred to remain just plain old Frank Morgan. The reputation as a gunfighter that he carried with him was bad enough without people knowing he was rich too.

Evidently, Claiborne was smart enough to pick up on what Frank’s interruption meant, because he said, “Yes, the word’s spread far and wide by now. In fact, the Alhambra Mine will be opening again too. It was bought not long ago from the original owner, Milton Jernigan, by a man named Hamish Munro.”

Frank was curious about that. After Claiborne’s earlier comment about Munro, not much more had been said about the man. Now Frank asked, “Did Munro know about the strike before he bought the Alhambra?”

“My understanding is that he did not. Munro makes a habit of buying old mines and claims, on the chance that he can make something of them where the original owners failed. More often than not, he’s right.” Claiborne smiled. “But he had a real stroke of luck with the Alhambra, even more so than usual. That’s why, according to the rumors I’ve heard, he’s coming to Buckskin to supervise the mine’s operation personally.”

“You don’t know that he’s going to be lucky,” Diana pointed out. “No offense, Mr. Claiborne, but most of the prospectors who have come here looking for silver haven’t found any yet. My father is the only one who’s been really successful.”

Claiborne shrugged. “It’s possible that the Crown Royal vein really is played out. But mining methods have improved in the past decade, Miss Woodford. We can find and remove ore with greater ease and efficiency now than we could then. So there’s really only one way to find out.”

“Well, I wish you luck.” Diana laughed. “At any rate, it’s good to have such a handsome, intelligent man as yourself in Buckskin. I hope we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, even though we’re competitors.”

Claiborne’s face turned a little pink at the flattery. “Ah, yes,” he managed to say. “Indeed.”

Frank put a hand on Claiborne’s shoulder to steer him toward the door of the office. “Tell Tip we came by,” he said to Diana.

“I certainly will,” she replied, giving him a cool, challenging look. Then she gave Claiborne another smile and added, “Stop in to see me any time you like, Garrett.”

“Yes, of course,” he said as he tipped his hat to her.

Frank knew good and well what Diana was doing. She was playing up to Claiborne in an attempt to make him jealous. That was just fine with him, because it wasn’t going to work. In fact, he hoped the tactic backfired on her and she really did get interested in Claiborne. That would solve Frank’s problem of figuring out what to do about her. And even though Claiborne was considerably older than Diana, the age difference wasn’t nearly as much as it was between her and Frank.

Yeah, he thought, a romance between the two of them would suit him just fine.

He might even have to play cupid, just to nudge things along.