Hell Town

Chapter 15

A shudder went through Jessica Munro as she listened to the guns going off somewhere else in town. Even though she was in no danger—at least, as far as she knew—the thought that men were out there killing each other made her question her wisdom in coming here to this wild, untamed town.

But Hamish was here, and he had insisted that she accompany him. As usual, what Hamish wanted, he got.

Wearing a dark blue dressing gown—Hamish’s favorite color—Jessica thought about stepping over to the window and looking out. Perhaps she could see what was going on. At the same time, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself, so she stayed where she was, seated in front of a dressing table with a flyspecked mirror. She ran a bone-handled brush through her long, fair hair, which she had unleashed from its elaborate arrangement of piled-up curls so that it tumbled around her shoulders and down her back.

She studied the bedroom’s reflection in the mirror. It was part of the hotel’s only suite, with a small sitting room adjacent to it where Hamish was going over some papers with his secretary, Nathan Evers. The place had been cleaned up considerably since their arrival that afternoon. Hamish had seen to it that the rooms he and Jessica would be using had been dusted and swept and mopped. Fresh linens that they had brought with them from San Francisco were on the bed. The furnishings in the room were comfortable enough, Jessica supposed. A tin bathtub sat in one corner, with the soapy water she had used to soak off the dust of their journey now cooling in it.

She set the brush on the dressing table and looked at herself more closely in the mirror. Only the faintest suggestions of lines were visible around the corners of her eyes and mouth…but faint though they might be, they were there. Another five years and she would start to look her age, she guessed. She had worked hard to delay that onslaught, but there was only so much a person could do to hold back the ravages of the years. Right now she was a stunningly beautiful woman, but in time she would be merely very attractive. Would Hamish still want her then?

She grasped the lapels of her robe and pulled them apart, revealing her breasts, turning back and forth in the chair to see if she could detect any signs of sagging. No, they were still as firm as they had been when she was a girl. She wondered how the straitlaced Nathan Evers would react if she were to step into the doorway between the bedroom and the sitting room and stand there with her robe open like this, so that he could see her breasts. She could always pretend it was an accident and claim that she thought he had left. She bet Nathan’s eyes would nearly pop out of his head at the sight. She smiled at that thought.

Hamish would be angry, of course, but it wouldn’t last long. To tell the truth, she knew that deep down he enjoyed the way other men looked at her. Jealous he might be, but proud too. What greater accomplishment could a man have than to possess a wife that every other man wanted to bed?

Well, a lot of money might be almost as good, she supposed…and Hamish Munro certainly had that. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be sitting here in this godforsaken hamlet of Buckskin, Nevada.

She pulled the robe tight around her as she heard a footstep at the door between the rooms. By the time the door opened, she had the brush in her hand again and was running it through her hair. Hamish came into the room.

Jessica met his eyes in the mirror and said, “Mr. Evers is gone?”

“That’s right,” Hamish replied. “We’ve finished our work for the evening.”

He was a compact man, only an inch or so taller than his wife. A fringe of reddish-gray hair remained around his ears and the back of his head; otherwise he was bald. At first glance, he didn’t look at all impressive, but he had a fire and a ruthless determination that made larger men do his bidding without question. He had made fortunes in both railroading and mining with the same basic tactic: If anyone presented an obstacle to what he wanted, he found a way to crush them. It was as simple as that.

Jessica set the brush down again. “How long do you think we’ll be here?”

Hamish took his coat off and draped it over the back of a chair. “That’s hard to say,” he replied as he removed his cravat and his stiff collar. “I’ll meet with Hammersmith tomorrow and get his report on the operation out at the Alhambra. I know that he’s hired some men, but I don’t think he has a full crew yet. Once the mine is producing ore at a suitable rate, I’ll leave it in his hands and we can return to San Francisco.”

“But you don’t know how long that will be?”

Hamish shrugged. “How can I? These things take time.”

“You don’t even know for certain that there’s any silver left in the mine,” she ventured, knowing that to cast any doubt on his ultimate success usually annoyed him.

“It’s there,” he snapped. “The Lucky Lizard is producing again, and the reports I’ve received indicate that the Crown Royal is too. So will the Alhambra.”

“If that’s true, why did those mines sit there abandoned for so long?”

“Our methods are better now,” Hamish said. “We can find ore in places that we couldn’t before.”

Jessica didn’t pretend to understand the mining business. She supposed Hamish knew what he was talking about.

He smiled as he came over to stand behind her. “You shouldn’t be worrying about things like that,” he said. He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Let me be concerned about the business. That’s my job.”

She knew his hands wouldn’t stay on her shoulders for long. “And what’s my business?” she asked with a coy smile on her face. The words and the expression were so instinctive, she didn’t even have to think about them.

He slid his hands down her front and parted the robe, as she had done earlier, pulling it back even more so that her shoulders were bared too. Leaning over her, he pressed his lips to one smooth, sleek shoulder as he filled his palms with the firm globes of her breasts.

“Your business is to make your husband happy,” he said as he caressed her.

She closed her eyes for a second. It was a job, all right—but thankfully, she was good at it.

Outside, the shooting had stopped. Jessica hadn’t really noticed when that happened.

By the time Frank reached the undertaking parlor, Claude Langley had already cleaned and bandaged the bullet graze in Professor Burton’s side. The professor had a hangdog expression on his face when Frank came in.

“I’m a fool, an utter fool,” he announced. “Brawling over some doxie, then getting shot over her.”

“Having woman trouble doesn’t make you a fool, Professor,” Frank assured him. “It just makes you a normal hombre.”

“Oh? I’ll wager you never had such bad luck with females, Marshal.”

Frank’s jaw tightened as he thought about the women in his life. His first love had been a girl back in Texas, where he’d grown up. Mercy, as beautiful as her name. But her father had forced them apart, and even though Frank had met her again years later, to this day he wasn’t sure if Mercy’s daughter Victoria was actually his child, although he liked to think that she was. And at least Mercy was still alive….

Later, he had married Vivian, and again circumstances had kept them from being together. Without even knowing about it, he’d had a son with her, the young man known as Conrad Browning. Vivian hadn’t survived her reconciliation with Frank; outlaws had gunned her down. The circumstances that had brought him to Buckskin in the first place had been related to that tragic incident.

Then there had been Dixie, sweet, courageous Dixie. She had married Frank only to die at the hands of lawless men, just like Vivian. That had been enough to make Frank wonder if he carried a curse with him. Maybe the vengeful spirits of all the men who had met death in front of the flaming barrel of his Colt were conspiring to insure that his every attempt at happiness ended in tragedy. In the past few years, the only woman he’d been close to who hadn’t died was Roanne Williamson, in the town of Santa Rosa down along the border between Texas and Mexico.

Frank was enough of a pragmatist not to really believe in curses, though. Despite the settling influence of civilization, in many places the West was still wild. It was still a frontier—although that frontier was shrinking—and that meant plenty of danger for anyone brave enough to live there. Tragedy didn’t dog his trail any more than it did those of lots of other men.

He became aware that Professor Burton was looking at him, waiting for a response to his comment. Frank shrugged and said, “You could be right, Professor.” That was the easiest way out. Frank Morgan had never been one to seek the easiest trail, but in this case, it seemed like the right thing to do.

“You can be sure that I shall avoid that woman’s establishment in the future,” Burton said.

“Don’t go making promises you can’t keep, Professor,” Langley said with a smile.

“But man should be the master of his own desires, don’t you think?”

“Hasn’t ever happened before on a consistent basis, going all the way back to the Garden of Eden,” Langley replied. “Don’t see any reason to think things are going to change now.”

Frank said, “I’ll leave you two to discuss philosophy, if you’re of a mind to. I need to see if my deputies ran into any more trouble making the rounds.”

Langley rubbed his hands together. “And I need to get to that corpse, I guess. Want to give me a hand, Professor?”

Burton paled even more than normal. “I think I’ve seen enough of the results of violence for one night, thank you.”

Frank chuckled as he left the undertaking parlor. He walked back to the marshal’s office, and by the time he got there, both Catamount Jack and Clint Farnum were there too.

“Get the rest of the rounds made all right?” Frank asked as he hung his hat on one of the nails beside the door.

Clint nodded. “Everything’s locked up for the night, except for the saloons, of course. They’re still going strong.” The little gunfighter was perched on the edge of the table that served as Frank’s desk. His legs were short enough that his booted feet didn’t quite reach the floor.

“Claude’s helper brung the wagon and we loaded that fella’s body onto it,” Jack put in. “I reckon he got back all right with it. I didn’t go with him.”

“Yeah, it got there, from the way Langley was acting when I left,” Frank said with a nod.

Clint grinned and said, “There have been two killings since I got here. Is Buckskin always so exciting, Frank?”

“It’s too exciting, if you ask me. But that’s the way it is when a town is booming like this one, I reckon.”

“Businesses doing well, are they?”

Frank nodded again. “Leo Benjamin has supplies freighted in from Virginia City at least twice a week, and he still can’t keep stock on his shelves. A couple of other mercantiles have come in to take up some of the slack. The Silver Baron and the other saloons make money hand over fist. The blacksmith shop and Hillman’s Livery are doing fine. The boardinghouse is full, and most of the abandoned houses and cabins have been claimed, at least until the rightful owners come along and reclaim them, if they ever do.”

“Like that fella Munro did with the old hotel.”

“Yeah. He probably doesn’t need the money, but if he wanted to, he could turn the place into a hotel again. All the rooms would be rented in a week or less, I’d say.”

“So you’ve got money flowing in, and pretty soon silver flowing out, I reckon. The mines are producing, aren’t they?”

“The Lucky Lizard and the Crown Royal are,” Frank said. He didn’t know for sure how much ore Garrett Claiborne’s crew was taking out of the Browning mine, but they were finding some color, Claiborne had reported. “I don’t know about the Alhambra.”

“Any new claims paying off?” Clint asked.

Jack said, “You’re a mighty curious little fella, ain’t you?”

Clint didn’t appear to take offense at the blunt question or the description of him. He laughed and said, “I’ve already signed on as a deputy, but I still like to know what I’m getting myself into.”

“You’re getting into a town that’s already busting at the seams,” Frank said, “and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Those new claims you asked about haven’t produced any significant finds yet, at least not that I know about, but somebody could stumble onto a new vein at any time. If that happens, everything that’s already going on in Buckskin will just go through the roof.”

“In other words, there’ll be plenty of trouble for three good lawmen to handle.”

Frank nodded. “Yeah…but we can handle it.”

He hoped the confidence he felt in himself and Jack—and in Clint Farnum—wasn’t misplaced.