A couple of the men who had been drinking in the saloon before the trouble erupted ran outside, and a moment later the swift rataplan of hoofbeats testified that they were giving chase to the runaway animal.
Frank helped a shaken Johnny Collyer to his feet and asked, “You all right, Johnny?” He knew the bartender had had health problems in the past.
Johnny nodded and said, “Yeah…yeah, I’m fine.” He gazed around the room with a dismayed expression. “But look what’s happened to the place!”
There was plenty of damage all right, and all of it could be laid at the feet of Conwell, who must have decided that he couldn’t live with backing down, even to the famous gunfighter known as The Drifter. He had gone outside, gotten his horse, given in to his anger, and charged back into the saloon, guns blazing.
The tactic might have worked. Most men would have been too shocked to see a man on horseback bursting through the batwings to react in time to save themselves.
But not Frank Morgan. His reactions were lightning-swift, and years of living a danger-filled life had honed his instincts to a razor-sharp keenness.
He came out from behind the bar and went to check on Conwell. Frank was confident that the reckless youngster was dead, but it never hurt to be sure. More than one man had been gunned down by a “corpse” that wasn’t really dead yet.
Conwell was, though. Frank looked over at Mitchell and Beeman, who had ridden into Buckskin with the kid. They had dived to the floor when the shooting started, and they were just now picking themselves up.
“Sorry I had to kill him,” Frank told the two men.
“I’m not,” Hap Mitchell said with a snort of disgust. “He was a hotheaded fool who nearly ruined lots of jobs for us—”
He stopped short, as if realizing that he might be saying too much. Frank knew good and well that the “jobs” Mitchell referred to were robberies of some sort, probably bank or train holdups. He and Beeman were known to ride the hoot owl trail. But those crimes hadn’t taken place here in Buckskin, and Frank didn’t have any wanted posters on the two men, so he didn’t have any call to arrest them.
“Anyway,” Mitchell went on after a second, “you won’t hear any complaints from us about you killin’ that idiot, Morgan.”
“He had it comin’,” Beeman added. “Hell, the way he was throwin’ lead around, some of those shots could’ve hit us!”
Still kneeling beside Conwell, Frank felt inside the dead man’s pockets. He found a roll of bills and a leather poke with several double eagles inside it. He straightened and set the money on the bar.
“Reckon this should go to repair the damage he caused here in the saloon, and anything that’s left over can go toward the cost of burying him.”
Mitchell shrugged. “Fine with us. We got no call on that money.”
Frank figured it was loot from some robbery, but he couldn’t prove that. He pointed to the money and told Johnny Collyer, “Give that to Tip when he gets back here.”
“He’s the one who fetched you, right?” Johnny asked.
Frank nodded. “Yes, I was in the jail. Tip went on down to Jack’s cabin to roust him out too, in case I needed some help. Must’ve had some trouble waking him up, because I expected them to be here before now.”
As if they had been waiting for him to say that, a couple of men hurried along the boardwalk and then turned in at the saloon, stepping through the opening where the batwings used to be. With a stricken look on his face, Thomas “Tip” Woodford gazed around at the destruction and groaned.
“Lord, it looks like a tornado hit this place!”
“That’s what happens when a fella rides his horse around inside,” Frank said.
Catamount Jack walked over to Conwell’s corpse and nudged it with a booted foot. “If this is the varmint what done it, I don’t reckon he’ll be ridin’ again any time soon. Leastways, not unless the Devil’s got some saddle mounts in hell.”
The tall, lean old-timer had a tuft of beard like a billy goat, and had sometimes been accused of smelling like a billy goat too. His buckskins were old and grease-stained. A shapeless felt hat was crammed down on his head. He had been a mountain man, prospector, buffalo hunter, scout, wagon train guide…. You name it and Jack had done it, as long as it was west of the Mississippi. Frank didn’t know what the old-timer’s real name was; he was just Catamount Jack. He had been working part-time as Buckskin’s deputy marshal since Frank had taken the job of marshal a month earlier.
Professor Howard Burton came over to Frank and said, “I owe you a debt of gratitude, Marshal. I was fully aware that that insolent young pup was trying to goad me into a fight, but I almost let him do it anyway.”
“Yeah, you looked like you were about to make a grab for that Colt when I came in,” Frank said. “I’m glad you didn’t, Professor. I’m afraid Conwell would have killed you before I was able to stop him.”
Burton hooked his thumbs in his vest. “I’m a peaceful man by nature, of course, but sometimes my temper gets the best of me anyway.”
Frank wondered if it had been an outbreak of Burton’s temper that had led him to resign from his teaching position at a university back East and come West, winding up in the nearly abandoned ghost town of Buckskin, Nevada. When Frank had gotten here, Burton was one of a mere handful of inhabitants in the town. He didn’t do anything for a living as far as Frank had been able to tell, but seemed to have plenty of money, which meant he had brought it with him. A few times, Burton had made cryptic comments that Frank took to mean the professor was writing a book, but he had no idea what the volume was about or if Burton would ever finish it. The professor could be a mite stuffy at times, but Frank liked him.
Tip Woodford, who was also the mayor of Buckskin, looked at the shattered front window and shook his head. “I’ll have to have another pane o’ glass freighted out here from Virginia City,” he said. “Won’t be cheap.”
Johnny said, “We’ve got the money here that kid had in his pockets. Marshal Morgan said we could use it to fix up the place, right, Marshal?”
Frank nodded. “That’s right, Tip. Whatever’s left over goes to Claude Langley.”
Tip nodded. Claude Langley was a newcomer to Buckskin, and a welcome one because he provided an important service.
He was an undertaker.
Before Langley’s arrival in town, whenever somebody needed buryin’, it was up to the citizens to take care of the chore. They had a small cemetery at the edge of town, and now they had somebody who specialized in putting people in it.
Although some might say that Buckskin had two people who specialized in putting people in graves, if you included the marshal.
Frank didn’t want to think about that, though. These days he was trying to live down his reputation as a killer, not expand it.
Mitchell and Beeman had finished their drinks and now declined Johnny Collyer’s offer of refills. “We’ll be ridin’ along,” Mitchell said. “Just so you know we’re leavin’ town, Morgan.”
“I don’t suppose you want to take the kid with you?” Frank asked. “I’ve been assuming we’d have to bury him here, but if you want—”
“No, thanks,” Beeman cut in. “You plugged him, you plant him.”
Frank nodded, and the two gunmen walked out of the saloon. “Tough hombres, looks like,” Catamount Jack observed when they were gone.
“Tough enough,” Frank agreed. “I guess somebody needs to go fetch Langley, so he can bring his wagon up here and collect the body. I’m surprised he didn’t hear the shots and come to see what happened.”
“No need to make Langley come all the way up here.” Jack stooped, caught hold of Conwell under the arms, and lifted him. His wiry muscles handled the deadweight as if it didn’t amount to much. Jack slung the body over his shoulder and started toward the door.