The old-timer was wrestling with Hargett. Both his hands were locked around the wrist of Hargett’s gun hand. Hargett slammed his other fist into Salty’s face and knocked him loose, sending the old man stumbling back a couple of steps. Hargett brought the pistol up.
“Hargett!” Frank called.
The man was fast. He whirled and actually got a shot off, sending a bullet whipping past Frank’s head. Then Frank touched off one barrel of the shotgun he held and planted a load of buckshot in the middle of Hargett’s suddenly bloody chest. The charge blew Hargett back against the bar, where he hung for a second, eyes wide with pain. Then the life went out of those eyes, and he flopped forward on his face to lie there on the plank floor in the middle of a slowly spreading pool of blood.
Finally, Frank had a chance to glance toward the table where Meg and Fiona had landed. It had collapsed under their weight. The other women had rushed down the stairs by now and were helping Meg to her feet. She appeared to be shaken but all right, so Frank turned his attention back to other matters.
He bent over and started checking the pockets of the man he had knocked out. He found a handful of shotgun shells and brought them out. “Pete, reload!” he said to Conway as he tossed a couple of the shells to the young man. He broke open the Greener in his hands and replaced the round he had used to kill Hargett.
The doors of the saloon were locked, but men were slamming against them. Probably Hargett’s men, Frank thought as he closed the shotgun, trying to get in here because of the shooting.
With a splintering crash, the doors popped open. Five men spilled into the room, holding revolvers, and Frank recognized them as some of the men who’d been in the saloon when he and the others first arrived.
“Hargett’s dead!” he shouted. “Drop your guns!”
The hardcases didn’t follow his advice. They jerked their weapons up to fire, but Frank and Conway let loose with the Greeners first. At this range, the spreading charges of buckshot cut the men down like a reaper with a scythe. Their bloody bodies clogged the doorway.
There might be more of Hargett’s men, Frank thought, so he threw a couple more shells to Conway and used the last two to reload the shotgun he held. But before they had to use the weapons, a man outside shouted, “Did you hear that? Hargett’s dead! Let’s get those bastards who work for him!”
Men yelled and cursed and shots rang out in the street. But that racket lasted only a few moments before it was replaced by screams of pain and fear, and then those grim sounds died away as well. Evidently Hargett and his men had been ruling Whitehorse with iron fists, and when that happened, the oppressed always rose up against the oppressors when they finally got the chance.
Meg came over and touched Frank’s arm. “Frank,” she said. “She wants you.”
He didn’t understand at first what Meg meant. But then he looked around and saw Fiona still lying on the floor amidst the debris from the wrecked table. Even at first glance he knew something was wrong, and as he came closer, he saw what it was. Her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. She must have broken it when she landed.
Frank handed the loaded shotgun to Salty and said, “You and Pete keep an eye on the door.” Then he went to a knee beside Fiona and looked down into her eyes.
“F-Frank,” she said in that hoarse voice that had intrigued him from the time he first met her. “Frank, I…I’m sorry…it turned out…like this…You should’ve…taken me up on it…such a…damned shame…”
“Yeah,” he said. “In a lot of ways.”
But she was beyond hearing him. She had died as those final words came out of her mouth.
From outside the broken doors, somebody called, “Hey, in there! Don’t shoot! Is it true that Hargett’s dead?”
“Durned tootin’ he is!” Salty replied.
“Thank God! Hold your fire!” A man moved into the doorway, his hands raised to show that he meant no harm as he stepped over the crumpled corpses of Hargett’s gun-wolves. He was dressed in a thick coat and floppy-brimmed hat and had the look of a prospector about him. “You don’t have to worry about the rest of his gang,” the man went on. “All the fight’s gone out of ’em. The ones who are still alive, that is.”
Frank rose from where he knelt by Fiona’s body. He said to Meg and the other women, “You ladies get back up there and get dressed.” As they hurried upstairs, he stepped over toward the bar to pick up the .38 Hargett had dropped. He asked the man, “Who are you?”
“Name’s Keenan. I’ve got a claim not far from here.”
“You came into town for the auction?” Frank asked in a hard voice.
“Hell, no!” Keenan responded. “I was over at the general store with a bunch of fellas who didn’t like Hargett and his plans any more than it looks like you did, mister.” He glanced at Hargett’s body as he spoke. “We’re the ones who went after Hargett’s men. The bunch who came for the auction scattered when the shooting started. Gold or no gold, most of ’em were no-accounts anyway.” Keenan paused. “You’re the fella we heard them talking about. The gunfighter. Frank Morgan.”
Frank nodded. “That’s right.”
“All right to put my hands down now, Mr. Morgan?”
Frank gestured with the Smith & Wesson. “I reckon so.”
Keenan lowered his hands and went on. “If you’d like a job, Mr. Morgan, we’ve sure got one for you. Marshal of Whitehorse! We haven’t had any law and order here since Hargett back-shot Constable Fleming.”
“The Mountie who was posted here?”
“That’s right. Hargett’s been riding roughshod over the whole town since then, and nobody dared to stand up to him. You changed that in a hurry.”
Frank lowered the .38 and said, “I’m not a lawman, Keenan.” He pointed at Salty. “There’s your man.”
“Wait just a gol-durned minute!” Salty protested. “There’s still bodies leakin’ blood all over the floor, and you got me wearin’ a badge already? I done told you, I’m goin’ to Mexico!”
“Not for a while yet,” Frank said as the women, fully dressed now, began to come back down the stairs from the second floor. He saw how Keenan’s eyes followed them with interest, admiration, respect, and a touch of lust. He struck Frank as a decent hombre, but that didn’t mean he didn’t like to look at a pretty girl. Frank went on. “Remember, we’re stuck here in Whitehorse until the spring.”
Salty lowered his shotgun and scratched at his beard. “Yeah, there’s that to consider, I reckon,” he admitted. “Marshal. Don’t that beat all.”
“At least until the Mounties show up again,” Frank added. “I’m sure somebody will come to find out what happened to Constable Fleming.”
Salty nodded and said, “All right, Keenan, you got yourself a badge-toter…on one condition.” He jerked a thumb at Conway. “I want this young feller as a deputy.”
“Wait a minute!” Conway exclaimed. “I came to look for gold, not wear a badge!”
“I reckon you’ll have plenty o’ time for prospectin’, too,” Salty said. “’Cause as long as I’m marshal, Whitehorse is gonna be a plumb peaceful place!”
Chapter 33
Frank stood at the railing of a ship called the Jupiter and watched the wharves at Skagway coming closer. The town had grown in the months since he had been here last, he thought. It had a ways to go yet, but it was actually starting to look respectable.
Salty Stevens flanked him to the left, Meg Goodwin to the right. Meg leaned closer to him and said, “Are you sure you want to do this, Frank?”
“It needs doing,” he said.
“And you’re too danged stubborn not to do it,” Salty said. “Might as well not argue with him, gal. He ain’t gonna change his mind.”
Meg smiled her crooked little smile. “He wouldn’t be the man I think he is if he did.”