Hell Town

Chapter 14

Frank and his new deputy didn’t waste any time getting down to Rosie’s place. Again, Farnum had to hurry to keep up with Frank’s longer strides, but he didn’t complain.

Under normal circumstances, Frank would have either handled this problem by himself or gotten Catamount Jack to give him a hand. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake by trusting Farnum, but this would be a good test of the little gunfighter’s true intentions. If he really wanted to reform and settle down, this was his chance.

Rosie and her girls had fixed the house up fairly nice, even though the men who came here didn’t really give a damn about ambience or décor. They just wanted some warm, willing, female companionship for a spell. Rosie had traded her girls’ favors for some carpentry work and a fresh coat of whitewash on the outside of the house, and she had hung up curtains inside and rolled out rugs on the floors.

Frank heard angry shouts from inside the parlor as he and Clint Farnum reached the front door. Without knocking, Frank opened it and went in. He found two men jawing at each other in loud voices. They were arguing over one of the soiled doves, a pretty Chinese girl in a thin shift who stood there with her arms crossed over her small breasts and a bored look on her face.

One of the men was a roughly dressed prospector with a bristly red beard. The identity of the other man surprised Frank. He was the distinguished-looking Professor Howard Burton, just about the last man Frank would have expected to be getting into a ruckus over a whore. But Frank supposed that no matter how educated or intellectual a gent might be, he’d still need to get laid every once in a while.

Frank raised his voice so he could be heard over the shouting and said, “Hold it! Both of you, just settle down, blast it!”

The two men hadn’t seemed to notice until now that Frank had come in. They stopped arguing and turned to look at him. Professor Burton’s face turned red, and he said, “Good Lord, Marshal, what are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same thing of you, Professor,” Frank replied, and Burton’s face flushed even more. “I’m here on official business. Somebody said there was about to be a killing down here.”

“Nonsense,” Burton snorted. “This is just a simple disagreement.”

The prospector said, “Simple disagreement, hell! This fancy pants is tryin’ to steal my gal away from me!”

“She’s not your gal,” Burton said. “If anything, she’s mine, because I have a standing appointment with her—”

“Well, there you go! I plan on layin’ down with her, not standin’ up, so my appointment’s more important than yours!”

Burton glared and muttered, “How can you argue with a man who doesn’t understand the most fundamental rudiments of the English language?”

“Yeah? You can stick it up your fundament, mister!”

Red-faced and breathing hard, the two men squared off again, their jaws thrust out belligerently. Frank shouldered between them, being none too gentle about it, and used both thumbs to point over his shoulders.

“All right, that’s it,” he declared. “Nobody’s sticking anything anywhere. Both of you get out of here. Now!”

Rosie had been watching the confrontation from the other side of the parlor. The stout, middle-aged woman protested, “Wait a minute, Marshal. You can’t just kick those boys out like that. Neither of them have paid anything yet.”

“They can come back tomorrow night,” Frank said, “at different times. That way they won’t be arguing over…”

“Linda,” the Chinese girl supplied, in unaccented English. She had probably been born in the United States, to immigrants who had come from China to help build the Central Pacific Railroad.

“They won’t have to argue over Linda here,” Frank went on.

The prospector frowned and said, “But what about tonight? I still got me one hell of an itch.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you started threatening people.”

The man shook a finger at Burton. “That fancy pants threatened me first! Called me an uneducated lout, he did!”

Burton sniffed. “Simply stating a fact.”

“Shut up, Professor,” Frank snapped. “You’re not making things any better.” He jerked a thumb at the prospector again. “You. Out.”

The man went, but not before muttering a lot of curses on his way to the door. He slammed it behind him with more force than necessary.

Professor Burton straightened his coat and hooked his thumbs in his vest. “I greatly appreciate the assistance, Marshal,” he said to Frank. “While I regret that you had to see me in a moment of mortal weakness, tempted by the lusts of the flesh, I’m glad you came along when you did and saved me from being forced to hand that recalcitrant buffoon the thrashing of a lifetime.”

“Yeah, me too, Professor,” Frank said, his voice dry with sarcasm. “Now move along.”

Burton frowned. “Surely you don’t mean that I have to leave? The altercation is over, and I assumed your decree was for that lout’s benefit—”

“I said you were both leaving, and I meant it.”

Burton looked like he wanted to argue, but the cold stare that Frank gave him seemed to make him think better of it. He turned to Linda and said, “I’m forced to bid you good evening, my dear, but I’ll see you tomorrow evening—”

“I’ll be here,” she cut in, still speaking excellent English. She looked over at Frank and Clint and added with an inviting smile, “Either of you gents interested in a poke?”

Clint licked his lips and started to say something, then changed his mind and gave a regretful shake of his head. “I reckon I’m on duty,” he said.

“That’s right,” Frank told him. “We’ll make the evening rounds together, so you’ll know the routine.”

That caught Burton’s attention. “You have a new deputy, Marshal?” the professor asked.

“Yep. This is Clint Farnum. Clint, meet Professor Burton.”

The two men shook hands, with Burton saying, “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, sir, though I wish it was in more decorous surroundings.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Clint told him. “I’ve met some of my best friends in whorehouses.”

The three men left together, ignoring Rosie’s questions about how a lady was supposed to make any money in this town. The hour was late enough now so that not as many people were on the streets, even though the saloons were still open and doing a good business.

“What brings you to Buckskin, Mr. Farnum?” Burton asked.

“Oh, the marshal and I are old friends,” Clint answered. “I heard about him packing a badge here and thought maybe he could use a good man.”

The part about them being old friends was stretching the truth a mite, Frank thought. He and Clint had known each other for a long time, but they had never been close. As for the rest of it…well, time would tell.

“I hope you enjoy your stay here,” Burton went on.

“I’m sure I will, Professor.”

Burton said good night and angled off toward his cabin. Frank and Clint continued along the street, and Frank began checking the doors of the businesses they passed, making sure each one was locked up tight for the night.

“I get the idea,” Clint said. “Got to take care of the storekeepers. They pay your wages, after all.”

“It’s just part of the job—” Frank began.

He was interrupted by the sudden blast of gunshots from behind them.

Frank whirled around, drawing his Colt as he did so. Beside him, Clint Farnum’s gun seemed to leap into his hand with blinding speed, although actually he was a fraction of a heartbeat behind Frank on the draw. As Frank crouched, ready to return the fire, he realized that the shots weren’t directed at him and his new deputy. He spotted a dark form slumped in the street, in the area where Professor Burton had been walking.

“Professor!” Frank shouted as he broke into a run toward the sprawled shape. He heard Farnum pounding along behind him, but with his longer legs he outdistanced the smaller man in just a few strides.

The gunshots had stopped, leaving an echoing silence that filled the night. After a second, shouted questions began to come from the saloons. Everybody wanted to know what the shooting was all about.

Frank had a terrible feeling he knew the answer. That angry prospector had lain in wait for Professor Burton and then drygulched him. Frank hadn’t seen a gun on the man and had figured he was unarmed. If he had been packing an iron, Frank would have taken it away from him to prevent just such an ambush from occurring.

The prospector had either had a hidden gun, or he had fetched a weapon from his saddlebags. The how didn’t matter. What was important was that Burton was hit.

Frank dropped to a knee beside the professor. He was aware that he was making himself a target, but he wanted to know how badly Burton was hurt. The wounded man lay facedown in the street. Frank grasped his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. As he did, Burton’s coat fell open and Frank saw the dark stain on the professor’s vest. It was low on Burton’s right side.

Burton let out a groan, telling Frank that he was still alive anyway. Clint ran up, a little out of breath, and said, “I heard the fella running down that alley over there. I’ll go after him while you tend to the professor!”

Before Frank could countermand that decision, Clint dashed off again, toward the dark mouth of an alley where the bushwhacker must have been lurking, waiting for the professor to come along. Even though it annoyed Frank that Clint had acted on impulse that way, without waiting for orders, he knew that his new deputy could take care of himself. He ripped Burton’s vest and shirt open to see just how bad the wound was.

The light was uncertain, just what came from the moon and stars and the reflected glow from some lamp-lit windows down the street, but when Frank probed the wound with the fingers of his left hand, he found that it was just a shallow furrow in Burton’s side, a couple of inches above his waist. It had bled quite a bit, but was more messy than serious. The bullet hadn’t penetrated and done any real damage. Once the wound was cleaned and bandaged, it ought to heal without much trouble. Burton would be stiff and sore—he wouldn’t feel like visiting that Chinese girl Linda for a while, Frank thought—but in time he would be as good as new.

Claude Langley came hurrying along the street with a lantern in his hand. As the light washed over Frank and the professor, the undertaker asked, “More business for me, Marshal?”

“Not this time,” Frank said. “This one’s still alive. He needs to be patched up, though.”

“I can do that,” Langley offered. “I’ll take him down to my place.”

“Much obliged,” Frank said as he straightened to his feet. He looked toward the dark alley where Clint Farnum had disappeared in search of the bushwhacker. He hadn’t seen or heard anything of Clint since the deputy had run off.

As Frank stalked toward the alley, gun in hand, more shots suddenly shattered the night air, coming from somewhere behind the row of buildings. He broke into a run and dashed along the alley, stumbling a little over some of the trash that littered the ground. He heard two different guns, and figured Clint had caught up to the man who had shot the professor. As he reached the other end of the alley, he saw Colt flame bloom in the darkness to his right.

Pivoting in that direction, Frank spotted a dark shape as it darted behind some barrels stored at the rear of a building. Spurts of gunfire came from a clump of trees nearby. Bullets tore into the barrels and splintered the wood as they punched all the way through the empty containers. The man who had taken cover behind them dashed into the open again as he realized that the barrels weren’t providing any real shelter from the gunfire after all.

By the size of the running shape, Frank recognized the man as Clint Farnum. The deputy suddenly tripped and went down, right out in the open where he would be a perfect target for the gunman hidden in the trees.

Before the bushwhacker could draw a bead on the fallen deputy, Frank leveled his Colt and squeezed off four rounds as fast as he could, leaving one round in the cylinder in case he needed it. The range was fairly long for a handgun, and the light was bad, but this was far from the first time that Frank had risked his own life, or that of someone else, on his skill with a Colt.

He had aimed at the last spot he had seen muzzle flashes. Now, as Clint pushed himself up and seemed to be waiting for slugs to smash into him and drive the life from him, the bushwhacker’s gun fell silent. Frank kept his gun trained on the trees. After a moment, a figure staggered out of the shadows. He tried to lift the gun that he still clutched in his hand, but he lacked the strength to do so. He pitched forward onto his face and lay still.

Frank covered the man as he started forward. Clint came to his feet and called, “Frank? That you?”

“Yeah,” Frank replied. “Are you hit?”

“No, just shaken up a mite from that hard fall I took. But I’d be plumb full of holes right now if not for you.”

Frank went straight to the man he had shot. He toed the body over onto its back. Clint came up and snapped a match to life with his thumbnail, and as the harsh glare spread over the face of the bushwhacker, Frank recognized the angry prospector from Rosie’s place.

“He must’ve really been mad about not gettin’ any,” Clint said with a faint chuckle.

The front of the prospector’s overalls were stained with blood in three places where Frank’s bullets had struck him. His eyes were open and staring, and his chest rose and fell a couple of times before he shuddered and his final breath rattled in his throat. The staring eyes turned glassy.

Frank started reloading the gun in his hand. As the match burned down and Clint dropped it before it could scorch his fingers, he asked, “How’s the professor?”

“Not hurt too bad,” Frank replied as he thumbed fresh cartridges into the Colt’s cylinder. “It’s a good thing this hombre wasn’t a better shot, or the professor would be dead now. As it is, all he’s got is a bullet graze in his side.”

“The professor’s a lucky hombre,” Clint said. “Like me. When I tripped and fell out there in plain sight, I figured I was a goner for sure.” He paused. “Thanks, Frank. I reckon you saved my life.”

Frank grunted. “I’d do the same for any of my deputies.”

“Hey! Hey, Marshal, you back here?”

“Speaking of which…” Frank said as he turned to look toward the new voice. Catamount Jack hurried out of the alley carrying a lantern in one hand and a six-gun in the other. Frank called to him, “It’s all right, Jack. The shooting’s all over.”

Jack came up and held the lantern high so that its light washed over all of them. “Sounded like a reg’lar war bustin’ out for a minute there.” He frowned at Clint Farnum. “Who’s this?”

“My new deputy,” Frank said.

“I’m bein’ replaced?” Jack practically yelped as his bushy eyebrows shot up.

“Not at all,” Frank hastened to assure him. “Clint’s signing on as a second deputy, because the town is growing so fast…and trouble right along with it.”

Jack grunted. “You can say that again.” He nodded toward the corpse. “I reckon this fella was tryin’ to grow some trouble of his own?”

“That’s right. He had a run-in with Professor Burton earlier and then bushwhacked him.”

“Yeah, I seen Claude Langley and some other fellas carryin’ the professor down to the undertakin’ parlor. Figured for sure he was dead, but Claude said he was just wounded and he was gonna patch him up, not plant him.”

Frank slid his Colt back into the holster. “I guess I’d better go see about him. I’ll tell Claude to come back here with his wagon for this fella too.”

“I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the carcass,” Jack offered.

“And I’ll finish making those evening rounds,” Clint volunteered.

Frank thought it over and then nodded. “I’m obliged to both of you boys,” he said. “Seems like Buckskin is in good hands.”