“I tell you, you can’t!” Clint cried in a ragged voice. “The militia—”
Pool’s hand shot out to grab Clint’s arm in a cruelly painful grip. “To hell with the militia, and everybody else in Buckskin! They won’t know what’s hittin’ ’em, because they’ll be too busy fightin’ each other.” With his other hand, Pool drew his Colt and jammed the barrel under Clint’s jaw. “This is even better than I hoped,” the boss outlaw went on. “From what you’re tellin’ me, that town’s like a giant keg o’ gunpowder tonight. All it needs is one spark to set it off. Are you gonna go give us that spark, Farnum…or do I pull this trigger and blow your head off?”
Clint had no choice. Through clenched teeth, he said, “I’ll do it, Jory. Just…give me a couple of minutes to get back down there. You’ll know it…when the ball starts.”
Pool let go of Clint’s arm, but kept the gun barrel pressed against his neck for a second. “You double-cross me and you’ll live to regret it,” he said in a low voice. “You just won’t live long. Long enough to wish you were dead, though.”
He lowered the gun.
Clint took a deep breath and rubbed the spot where the hard metal had bruised the flesh of his neck. Then he wheeled his horse around and rode off, vanishing in the darkness as he headed for town.
Down below in Buckskin, big fires had been kindled at both ends of the main street. By the light of those blazes, the outlaws could see the men who had gathered there. Even at a distance of several hundred yards, the tension could be felt.
As Jory Pool had said, Buckskin was ready to explode.
And when it did, these vicious outlaws would be ready to sweep in and turn the situation to their advantage.
“Murder!” Red Mike Fowler yelped. “Gib and me didn’t murder nobody!”
“This is crazy!” Munro cried, a note of panic creeping into his voice. “Colonel, I demand that you put a stop to this! Arrest the marshal so that we can settle the strike.”
“I don’t believe I have the authority to do that anymore, Mr. Munro,” Starkwell replied. “Besides, I sort of want to hear what Morgan has to say.”
Frank drew the piece of timber from his pocket and held it up where everybody could see it. “This came from the cave-in at the Lucky Lizard,” he said, raising his voice so that it could be heard by all. “If you take a close look at it, you can see that it’s been damaged. Practically burned through by sulfuric acid, in fact. Somebody doped those timbers with acid so that the wood was eaten away and the timbers gave out. That’s what caused the cave-in.”
“You can’t blame that on us!” Red Mike said. “Gib and me didn’t have nothin’ to do with that!”
“You had more reason to do it than anybody else,” Frank shot back. “You’d just come over to the Lucky Lizard from the Alhambra.”
“We got fired over there!”
“That makes a good story, especially when you were still working for Munro.”
“I don’t know anything about this,” Munro insisted. “You’re grasping at straws, Morgan. You’re just trying to stir up hard feelings toward me.”
Frank shook his head. “I’m just trying to get to the truth.” He looked at the miners from the Lucky Lizard. “Did any of you men see either of the Fowler brothers messing with those timbers before the ceiling collapsed?”
The miners muttered among themselves for a second; then one of them spoke up, saying, “Red Mike and Gib were both hangin’ around that area not long before the cave-in. I didn’t see ’em put anything on the timbers, but that don’t mean they didn’t. They sure enough could have.”
“That ain’t proof of anything,” Gib Fowler said, his voice wavering.
“Then maybe we should search your gear at the mine,” Frank suggested. “You might still have some of that acid you used stashed away.”
It was a shot in the dark, but it paid off. Red Mike leveled an accusing finger at Gunther Hammersmith and yelled, “It was all his idea. He made us do it!”
Hammersmith, pale and wide eyed with fury, looked like he wanted to lunge at Fowler and snap his neck. He wasn’t the only one who wanted to get at Red Mike and Gib. The men from the Lucky Lizard, who had lost a couple of friends in that cave-in, surged forward, their faces twisted in righteous anger.
Frank turned toward Hammersmith and palmed out his gun, covering the big mine superintendent. “Looks like you’ll hang too, Hammersmith,” he said.
“The hell I will!” Hammersmith responded. “It was all Munro’s doing! He’s the one who wanted the strike at the Lucky Lizard—”
“Shut up!” Munro screamed. “Lies, all lies!”
“Just like he told me to have the stamp mill at the Crown Royal blown up!” Hammersmith roared. Just as Frank had hoped, the rats couldn’t turn on each other fast enough. Threaten one and they would all go down.
Angry shouts filled the air now as the group of miners continued to edge forward like an inexorable tide. Munro turned to Colonel Starkwell and grabbed his uniform, shaking him. “It’s a riot!” he screeched. “They’re going to kill me! You’ve got to stop them! The governor would want you to protect me! Order your men to fire, damn you! Fire!”
Frank could tell from the stony look on Starkwell’s face that wasn’t going to happen. The colonel knew the same thing that everyone else in Buckskin did: Munro and Hammersmith were responsible for all the trouble that had plagued the area.
But then, horribly, a shot rang out. Frank wasn’t sure where it came from, but he saw Dave Rogan stagger back a step as the bullet smashed into his body. Rogan clutched his chest, and blood welled between his fingers. He fell heavily in the street.
“One of the soldiers shot Dave!” a miner howled. “Get ’em!”
The militia men jerked their rifles up. The miners surged forward.
And Hammersmith leaped at Frank, slapping the Colt aside and swinging a big fist at the marshal’s head.
Curls of smoke still drifted from the muzzle of Clint Farnum’s gun as he ducked back into the alley mouth. Lining up the shot through the crowd in the street had been tricky, but he had done it. The miner named Rogan had fallen to Clint’s slug, and now more shots rang out and men shouted curses as tight-strung nerves snapped and the two groups opened fire on each other.
Clint had done what he had to do for Jory Pool. Now the gang could sweep into Buckskin and wipe out any resistance before the citizens knew what was going on. Clint’s job was over, so he could find a hole and hide until the killing was over. All he had to do was wait it out and collect his share of the loot. It would be easy.
But if it was so easy, why were his guts clenched in a tight ball of sickness? Why did he feel like something had died inside him?
In the darkness of the alley, he pressed his back against the wall of a building and shuddered. Cold sweat beaded on his face. He lifted the gun in his hand and listened to the shots and the cries and the screams.
All that hell unleashed, and all he’d had to do was squeeze a trigger.
Frank ducked under Hammersmith’s roundhouse blow as guns began to roar. As Hammersmith stumbled forward, thrown off balance by the missed punch, Frank stepped closer. He had managed to hang on to his gun even though Hammersmith had knocked the barrel aside. Now he slapped the Colt against Hammersmith’s head, putting enough power behind the blow to knock the mine superintendent to his knees, stunned.
With Hammersmith out of the fight for the moment, Frank whirled around and shouted at the miners, “Hold your fire! Stop shooting!”
At the same time, Colonel Starkwell was bellowing, “Cease fire! Cease fire!”
But it was too late. Both sides had come here tonight ready to fight. The miners believed that one of the militia men had shot down Dave Rogan, and the soldiers were just fighting back as they were attacked. Already, the street was turning into chaos as the two sides splintered and broke up to do battle in small groups, sometimes firing at each other as they darted for cover, other times grappling hand to hand.