Hell Town

Chapter 20

Claude Langley had propped up the corpses of the four saboteurs in their coffins out in front of the undertaking parlor so that the citizens of Buckskin could come by and take a look at them. That was an accepted, if grisly, practice in frontier towns. Frank had never cared much for the custom, but in this case he put the word out that if anybody recognized the dead men, he wanted to know about it. He still hoped to find something that would tie the men to Hamish Munro, Gunther Hammersmith, or both.

But while a few people recalled seeing the men drinking in some of the saloons, nobody really knew them or had witnessed them talking to Hammersmith or Munro. No one who would admit it anyway.

Frank went up to the hotel to see Munro. He wasn’t sure what he would say to the mining magnate, but he wanted Munro to know that he wouldn’t rest until he got to the bottom of the explosion that had destroyed the stamp mill at the Crown Royal.

Munro’s secretary, Nathan Evers, opened the door of the suite to Frank’s knock. “Hello, Marshal,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I want to talk to your boss,” Frank replied. “Is he here?”

“As a matter of fact, he’s not. He and Mrs. Munro have taken a drive out to the Alhambra. Mrs. Munro hadn’t seen the mine yet, and she wanted to.”

Frank nodded. “All right. Say, you haven’t gone by Langley’s undertaking parlor and had a look at the bodies of those four men who blew up the Crown Royal’s stamp mill, have you?”

Evers blanched and said, “Good Lord, no. Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

“I’ve been asking people around town to see if they recognized any of those men.”

“Well, I can tell you the answer to that without looking at them. I never saw them before. I wouldn’t associate with ruffians like that. Why would I have any reason to?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said. “You tell me.”

Understanding dawned on Evers. “You think Mr. Munro had something to do with that explosion!”

“He’s competing with the folks who own the Crown Royal,” Frank said without mentioning that he was one of those folks.

“So is Mr. Woodford,” Evers replied. Rather than pale, his face was now flushed with anger. “I don’t hear you accusing him of engaging in criminal acts.”

“That’s because I know Tip Woodford,” Frank pointed out. “I don’t know Munro all that well yet. But he has a reputation as a ruthless man.”

Evers gripped the edge of the door, his fingers tightening on it. “I think this conversation is over, Marshal, unless you have some other official business with me.”

Frank shook his head. “Nope, no official business. I was just talking, that’s all.”

“Yes, of course,” Evers said in a cold tone that showed he didn’t believe Frank at all. He swung the door closed, shutting it with a little more force than was really necessary.

Frank smiled to himself. He didn’t know if Evers would report the details of this conversation to Munro, but it seemed likely that he would. That would be just fine with Frank. He wanted Munro to know he was suspicious. If Munro was behind what had happened and viewed Frank as a threat, he might get rattled enough to do something foolish—like coming after Frank next time.

Frank knew that by goading Munro, he was sort of painting a target on his back, but it wouldn’t be the first time he had done such a thing. Sometimes, a man had to place himself in a little bit of danger in order to smoke out some varmints.

In fact, he decided he didn’t want to count on Evers to do the job for him. After going by the marshal’s office to let Catamount Jack know that he would be gone for a while, he went to the livery stable, saddled up Stormy, and headed for the Alhambra Mine with Dog trotting along beside him.

Gunther Hammersmith was surprised to hear the clatter of wheels outside his office at the mine. He stood up and went to the door, which stood open to let in some breeze along with the sound of the donkey engine that pulled the ore carts up the shaft and out of the mine. The miners were bringing out more ore all the time, and it looked like reopening the Alhambra was going to turn out to be a lucrative proposition.

One of the last things Hammersmith expected to see rolling up to the office was that damned blue stagecoach of Munro’s. But that’s what rocked to a halt in front of the building, with the usual driver and bodyguard on the box. The men climbed down, and the guard opened the door. Hamish Munro climbed out, followed by his wife.

Hammersmith’s breath caught in his throat a little at the sight of Jessica Munro. She had that effect on him every time he saw her.

Hammersmith was aware that he was wearing rough work clothes, with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up over brawny forearms. He rolled them down as Munro took his wife’s arm and brought her to the foot of the steps that led up to the office.

“Good morning, Gunther,” he said with an unusually pleasant expression on his face. Munro usually looked like he had just bitten into something that had gone bad.

“Uh, morning, sir.” Hammersmith nodded to Jessica. “Ma’am.”

“My wife wanted to see the mine,” Munro explained, “and I’d like to look over the assay reports. I assume they’re in the office?”

“Yes, sir, of course. And they’re up to date too.”

Munro nodded. “Fine. I’ll take a look at them while you show Mrs. Munro around. All right?”

It was unusual for Munro to ask if something was all right. Mostly, he just barked orders and expected everybody to go along with them without any hesitation.

Hammersmith looked at Jessica, saw the smile she gave him, and said, “Yes, sir, that’d be just fine. The reports are on my desk.”

“I’ll find them,” Munro said as he started up the steps. Hammersmith reached back inside the door to snag an old slouch hat from a nail driven into the wall. He put it on as he waited for Munro to go into the office. Then he went down the steps to join Mrs. Munro.

He didn’t offer to take her arm. That would have been too forward, he thought, especially out here in the open like that, with the stagecoach driver and the guard lounging near the coach as they rolled quirlies. Instead, he pointed toward the mouth of the shaft and asked, “Do you mind walking, ma’am?”

“Not at all,” Jessica replied. “It’s a beautiful day.”

Not half as beautiful as you.

He kept that thought to himself as he led her over to the shaft, pointing out the stamp mill, the barracks for the miners, and the storage buildings as he did so.

“It looks like you have everything you need here,” she commented.

“Well, we have to bring supplies out from town, of course. But other than that, we’re pretty self-sufficient.”

She wore a green traveling outfit and hat today, and Hammersmith wondered just how many different outfits she had brought with her to Buckskin. He didn’t think he had seen her in the same one twice.

When they reached the mine shaft, she hesitated, looking a little nervous as she said, “Are you sure it’s safe to go in there?”

“There are a couple of dozen men down there right now, working,” he told her. “They wouldn’t be there if they didn’t think it was safe.”

Actually, that was stretching the truth a mite. The men were down there because they wanted the wages they were being paid—and because they feared the big, iron-hard fists of Gunther Hammersmith. They knew he wouldn’t take it kindly if any of them tried to quit without a good reason. And as far as Hammersmith was concerned, there weren’t any reasons good enough.

Following the rails that the ore carts used, Hammersmith and Jessica walked down the steps that had been cut into the steeply inclined plane of the entrance shaft. That gave Hammersmith an excuse to take her arm. He had to steady her so she wouldn’t fall. It was just coincidence that his elbow nudged the warm softness of her breast as he linked his arm with hers.

Their way was lit by oil lanterns hung on the walls of the shaft at regular intervals. Many of the sturdy shoring timbers on the sides and ceiling of the shaft were new. Hammersmith pointed them out to Jessica and said, “See? Nothing to worry about.”

“Not for you, perhaps, Mr. Hammersmith, but I’ve never been underground before.”

Hammersmith couldn’t contain his surprise. “What, you’re married to Mr. Munro and you’ve never seen one of his mines before?”

“I was just never interested in them…until now.” She looked up at him and smiled as she said it.

Hammersmith felt his heart speed up. “Well, I won’t let anything happen to you, you can count on that. I’d sacrifice my own life to keep you safe, ma’am.”

“Why, Mr. Hammersmith, how gallant of you.”

And she squeezed his arm, which meant that his elbow pressed against her breast again.

They descended several hundred feet to the main drift, the tunnel that followed the vein of silver through the mountain. Hammersmith knew that it stretched for more than a mile under the earth. Several crosscut tunnels intersected it; the crosscuts provided ventilation and access to smaller drifts that paralleled the main tunnel. There were also some vertical shafts leading to lower levels.

“You mean the mine goes even lower?” Jessica asked when he pointed out the vertical shafts to her.

“That’s right. Some mines where I’ve worked go down several thousand feet.”

She looked up at the ceiling, no doubt thinking of the tons of rock and dirt perched there over her head, and Hammersmith felt a shiver go through her. “I can’t imagine such a thing,” she murmured. “We’re already so deep that it’s frightening.”

“Nothing to be scared of,” he assured her. “As long as you take the right precautions, mines like this are perfectly safe.”

“But things sometimes go wrong, don’t they? There are cave-ins and things like that?”

Hammersmith shrugged. “Most problems are caused by carelessness. I don’t allow my men to get careless. They know they’ll be in for trouble if they do.”

“From a cave-in, you mean?”

Hammersmith laughed. “From me. I reckon most of them would rather have to deal with a cave-in than face me when I’m mad at them.”

“You are a rugged man, Mr. Hammersmith.”

“You can call me Gunther if you want,” he ventured.

“All right…Gunther.”

She didn’t invite him to call her Jessica, and while he noticed that, he didn’t really care. As long as he got to walk along beside her and touch her now and then, it didn’t matter to him what he called her.

There was quite a bit of noise underground. Picks rang against the walls; steam-powered drills known as widow-makers chattered as they gouged holes in the rock so that dynamite could be planted in them; men shouted back and forth to each other. In some mines, the rock was balanced so precariously that a loud noise could set off a cave-in, meaning that the hard, dangerous work of shoring up had to be completed before the real job of taking the ore out could begin. In the Alhambra, that had already been done. An earthquake or a badly placed blast might bring the place down, but short of those things, it was safe down here, as Hammersmith had explained to Mrs. Munro.

He didn’t try to take Jessica all through the place. That would have taken too long and exhausted her. He settled for showing her the general layout and letting her watch some of the men at work for a few minutes. At this level, they still wore their grimy, dust-covered shirts. Lower down in the earth, where the temperature rose, the miners often stripped their shirts off and worked bare-chested. Hammersmith recalled doing that himself, when he was a young man and too stupid to do anything except swing a pick all day long. He had learned a great deal since then.

Even here, it was warmer than on the surface, and Jessica’s face shone in the lantern light as a fine layer of perspiration appeared on her skin. “My goodness,” she said as she fanned herself with a hand, “if you dig down far enough, do you reach Hades itself?”

Hammersmith laughed and said, “I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s probably how folks got the idea that Hell’s somewhere under the earth. Once you get past the upper level, where it’s cooler, the deeper you go, the hotter it gets. Smells a little like brimstone too.”

“I think I’m ready to go back out and get some fresh air.”

“Sure. You’ve seen all there really is to see anyway.”

They started back up, the light from the mouth of the shaft growing brighter as they climbed. Before they reached it and stepped back out into the sunshine, Jessica stopped and said, “Gunther, thank you for showing me around.”

“Oh, it was my pleasure,” he said without hesitation, meaning every word of it.

“You’re just being polite. I’m sure you couldn’t have enjoyed getting stuck with your boss’s wife like this.”

He shook his head. “You’ve got that all wrong, ma’am. I didn’t mind a bit, truly. Fact is, I, uh, really enjoyed spending the time with you.”

“Really?” She smiled up at him. “Why, that’s such a nice thing to say, Mr. Hammersmith…I mean, Gunther.”

He had never liked his name all that much. It sounded coarse and harsh to him. But when she spoke it, in that honeyed voice of hers…well, that was different. He looked down at her, realizing just how close she was standing to him. Nobody was around; all the men were down at the bottom of the shaft. And she had this look on her lovely face, like she expected him to do something….

What the hell.

He pulled her into his arms and brought his mouth down on hers in a hard, urgent kiss.