Hell Town

Chapter 4

The next morning, Frank walked down to Amos Hillman’s livery stable to take a look at Conwell’s horse. By all rights, the animal ought to belong to the kid’s relatives, if he had any, but Frank’s check of the kid’s pockets hadn’t turned up any letters or other items with a name or address on them. Even if Conwell had any family left, Frank didn’t see any way to get in touch with them. And since Conwell had had enough cash on him to pay for his burying and the damages to the saloon, there was no need to sell the horse to pay for those expenses.

So as Mayor Woodford had said, there was no reason why Frank couldn’t claim the horse as his own…other than the fact that Frank felt a mite uncomfortable about killing a man and then taking his mount. Felt a little too much like horse thievery to him.

But when Frank walked into Hillman’s stable, the lanky, one-eyed liveryman greeted him by saying, “Mornin’, Marshal. I’m damned glad you shot that son of a bitch last night. He had it comin’.”

“Why’s that?” Frank wanted to know. He thought it was reason enough that Conwell had been trying to kill him and anybody else in the saloon unlucky enough to get in the way of a bullet, but he was curious why Hillman had made that statement.

“Anybody who’d treat a hoss like that hombre did deserves to get ventilated.”

“Riding him into the saloon that way, you mean?”

Hillman shook his head. He was a tall, grizzled man in overalls, with a thatch of gray hair sticking out from under an old hat and a black patch over his left eye. He said, “I mean mistreatin’ the poor critter for months, from the looks of the scars on him.”

“The horse had a bullet graze, and some cuts from broken glass,” Frank pointed out.

“I ain’t talkin’ about those wounds. Hoss has got scars that tell me somebody beat him reg’larlike, probably with a quirt or somethin’ like that. Didn’t take care o’ the cuts, neither. Just let ’em scab up and heal over as best they could.”

A frown creased Frank’s forehead. He had no proof that Conwell was responsible for beating the animal. Conwell could have bought—or more likely stolen—the horse any time, including recently.

But having seen the cruelty and viciousness in the kid firsthand, Frank had no doubt that Conwell had been capable of whipping the horse until it bled. His gut told him that was exactly what had happened.

“Let’s take a look at him,” Frank said, his voice edged with concern.

Hillman led him along the center aisle of the barn. Dog was lying in front of Stormy’s stall, but he got up to trot over to Frank and get his ears rubbed. The big cur and the Appaloosa were pals, so Dog hung around the stable most of the time while Frank was in town.

Things had been too hectic in the saloon the night before for Frank to pay too much attention to the horse Conwell rode into the saloon. Now, as he and Hillman came up to the stall where the animal stood, he saw that it was a big, strong-looking gelding whose hide had an odd sheen to it.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a gold-colored horse like that,” Frank commented.

Hillman shook his head. “Me neither, and I been runnin’ livery stables for nigh on to forty years now. Mighty strikin’-lookin’ critter, ain’t it?”

“He certainly is,” Frank agreed. The horse came to the gate at the front of the stall and stuck his head over it. Frank reached up and scratched the horse’s nose. “Sorry about shooting you, big fella. I wasn’t aiming to.”

The horse tossed his head, then butted his nose against Frank’s shoulder as if to tell him that it was all right.

As Frank laughed, Amos Hillman said, “You just creased him a mite, Marshal. I daubed some ointment on there and on the cuts he got from the broken window, and I reckon he’ll be fine. Tip come by earlier this mornin’ and said you might want him.”

“I’ve already got a horse,” Frank said, pointing with his left thumb toward Stormy’s stall across the aisle.

“Man can’t have too many good horses.”

Frank chuckled. “Tip said the same thing. I suppose somebody’s got to claim this fella.”

“Might as well be you,” Hillman said.

“All right, we’ll see how it goes,” Frank said with a nod as he reached his decision. He took a coin out of his pocket and handed it to Hillman. “That’ll pay for his keep for a while.”

“Aw, Marshal, you know you don’t have to pay for nothin’ here in Buckskin less’n you just want to.”

“I want to,” Frank insisted. “I’m new at this law business, but I’ve seen too many star-packers turn crooked once they started taking favors from the townspeople. I intend to pay my way.”

Hillman pocketed the coin and said, “Folks sure was way off when they claimed you was nothin’ but a no-account gunslinger.” He added, “Not that anybody here in Buckskin ever thought that, ’cause we knowed better right off. I’m talkin’ about in other places I been.”

“Yes, I’ve got a reputation I never really wanted,” Frank agreed. “Unfortunately, once you get a rep like that, it tends to stick to you like glue.”

“Well, you’re sure provin’ it wrong here.” Hillman reached over the stall gate and patted the horse on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about ol’ Goldy here. I’ll take good care of him.”

“Goldy, eh?” Frank said with a smile. “The name suits him. I guess it’ll stick too.”

Later that morning, Frank and Catamount Jack were both in the marshal’s office when Claude Langley came in and said, “I suppose we’re ready to take care of the burying, Marshal, in case you want to be there.”

Frank heaved himself out of his chair and reached for his hat, which he had placed on the table earlier. “I reckon I ought to be, since I’m the one who killed the young fella. You’ll hold down the fort, Jack?”

“Sure,” the old-timer replied. “Go on and have…well, I guess have a good time ain’t somethin’ you’d say to somebody on their way to a buryin’, is it?”

“No,” Frank said as he settled his hat on his head. “It’s not. But I’m not going as a mourner either, so I’m not sure what you’d say in a situation like that.”

He and Langley left Jack there pondering on the question and walked along the street toward the edge of the settlement. The cemetery on the outskirts of Buckskin held quite a few graves from the town’s previous silver boom. Even when Buckskin was largely a ghost town, Tip Woodford had continued to care for the burial ground, keeping the weeds out and the low stone fence around it in good repair. Not long ago, Buckskin’s cemetery had been in better shape than many of the buildings in town.

Claude Langley was a small, dapper man with a goatee and a soft accent that revealed his Virginia origins. He had driven into town at the reins of an actual hearse drawn by six black horses. He also had a wagon, though, and it was the vehicle that carried Conwell’s plain pine coffin to the cemetery, pulled by a pair of mules. The wagon, with Langley’s helper at the reins, arrived at the cemetery at the same time as Frank and the undertaker.

A couple of prospectors who hadn’t had any luck yet in finding silver worked part-time as gravediggers. They had the hole ready for the coffin. Together with Frank and Langley’s helper, they unloaded the pine box from the wagon and lowered it into the grave with ropes. Buckskin didn’t have a preacher yet, so Langley usually said a few words at burials. Today, he turned to Frank and asked, “Would you like to say anything, Marshal?”

Frank took his hat off, stood beside the open grave, and said, “I didn’t know this young fella, don’t even know his full name. I wish he hadn’t made me shoot him. If he’d had any sense, he’d still be alive this morning. But I suppose things happen for a reason, and I suppose that sometime in his life he had somebody who cared for him. If that’s so, I hope that somehow they’ll rest a little easier because we gave him a decent burial.” Frank stepped back, shrugged, and put his hat back on. “That’s not much, but I reckon it’s all I’ve got to say.”

Langley nodded and gestured to the gravediggers, who picked up their shovels and started throwing dirt from the pile into the hole. Frank turned and started to walk away. The grim, hollow sound of dirt hitting the coffin lid followed him.

He had seen too much death over the years to lose any sleep over the likes of Conwell, but he wasn’t so hardened and calloused that he felt nothing at all. Frank had always been a reader, carrying a book or two in his saddlebags during all those long years of drifting, and he recalled a line written by the poet John Donne: “Any man’s death diminishes me.”

Probably not the best thing for a gunfighter to be thinking about, Frank mused, but the idea was with him anyway.

Deep in thought like that, he almost didn’t hear the hoofbeats of the approaching rider. But then he realized someone was coming and glanced up.

The man approaching on a roan stallion was dressed mostly in black. A red bandanna tied around his neck was the only splash of color about him. Gray hair fell from under the flat-crowned black hat to hang around his shoulders. The deep tan and high cheekbones of his hawklike face told Frank that he might have some Indian blood, but he couldn’t be sure if the man was a ’breed.

The stranger’s thonged-down holster told a story of its own, though, and it was one that Frank didn’t like.

The man reined in about twenty feet away and swung down from the saddle. He said in a raspy voice, “You’d be Frank Morgan?”

“I would,” Frank agreed.

“My name is Harry Clevenger.”

Frank nodded. “I thought I recognized you, but it’s been a long time.”

Clevenger frowned as he asked, “We’ve met?”

“No, but you were pointed out to me one night down in Taos, about fifteen years ago. You were in Don Robusto’s cantina.”

Clevenger’s eyes narrowed. “You were that close to me and I didn’t know you were there?”

“That’s right.”

“If I’d known, we’d have had this showdown then.”

Frank shook his head. “I didn’t have any call to want a showdown with you, mister. Still don’t, as far as I know.”

“You don’t want to know who’s faster?”

Frank sighed. “To tell you the God’s honest truth, I don’t give a damn. I stopped worrying about things like that a long time ago.”

“But you’re still here,” Clevenger insisted. “You’re still alive. You’ve outdrawn everybody who ever went up against you. You must care about that.”

“I care about staying alive. Whether or not that means I’m faster on the draw than some other fella…” Frank shook his head. “I haven’t lost a minute of sleep worrying about that for years now.”

Clevenger stared at him for a long moment in silence, then finally grunted in surprise. “Huh. That ain’t what I expected out of you, Morgan, but it don’t change anything. I heard you’d taken to toting a badge, but that don’t mean anything either. I’m still here to kill you.”

“Clevenger,” Frank said, “right back there behind me is a brand-new grave. The young fella lying in it thought he was a dangerous man, fast on the draw. He’ll be a long time dead because he felt that way. You and I have both lived longer than we had any right to expect, the sort of lives we’ve led. Why don’t you climb back on that horse and live a while longer?”

Face set in stubborn lines, Clevenger shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “Not while the famous Frank Morgan is still drawing breath. One of us has got to go down, Morgan.”

Frank sighed, knowing that Clevenger wouldn’t be talked out of this. The man had been a gunfighter almost as long as Frank had, with plenty of kills to his name. He fought fair, but he had a reputation as being a cold-blooded bastard too, who had been known to finish off a man once he was wounded and down. There was not an ounce of mercy in him.

“All right,” Frank said. “It’s your play. You want to dance, you start the ball.”

Clevenger sneered, and less than the blink of an eye later, his hand flashed with blinding speed toward the gun on his hip.

It came as no surprise to Frank that Clevenger was fast. The gunman wouldn’t have lived this long if he hadn’t been. Their guns came out of leather at the same time, but the barrel of Frank’s Colt leveled out just a hair ahead of Clevenger’s. Smoke and flame geysered from the Peacemaker’s muzzle. Clevenger fired half a heartbeat later, but that was too late for him. His gun had already dropped toward the ground as he was driven backward by the slug from Frank’s gun that smashed into his chest.

Clevenger landed on his back. He struggled to rise for a second, then sagged down into death. His hat had fallen off, and the breeze tugged at the long gray hair and moved it around in front of his face.

Frank took a fresh cartridge from one of the loops on his shell belt and replaced the spent one in the Colt’s cylinder, then pouched the iron. Behind him, he heard Claude Langley call to the gravediggers, “Better get started on another one, boys.”