Sandeen wasn’t ready to give up, though. He said, “Listen, Morgan, we’ve obviously gotten off on the wrong foot—”
“Two of your boys tryin’ to kill him might’ve had something to do with that,” Riley said, his voice dry with amusement.
Sandeen glared at him. “Stay out of this, Vern. This business is between Morgan and me.”
“We don’t have any business to talk about,” Frank said. He started to turn away from the table. At that moment, Jasper Culverhouse came into the saloon, looked around, and then headed toward the bloody corpses lying on the floor in front of the bar.
“Busy night,” he said to no one in particular.
Sandeen reached out and gripped Frank’s arm, stopping him. Frank stiffened and looked down meaningfully at Sandeen’s hand, but the rancher didn’t remove it.
“At least have the courtesy to listen to what I have to say, Morgan,” Sandeen grated. His pleasant façade was just about gone by now. “There’s a problem I want handled—”
“Howard Flynn?” Frank cut in.
“The man has it in for me,” Sandeen said. “He’s spreading lies and vicious rumors about me. I suspect his men have rustled some of my stock. Flynn’s trying to run me off my range, and I won’t have it! He has to be made to stop.”
“By killing him?” Frank asked coldly.
“By any means necessary,” Sandeen replied, his voice equally icy.
Frank jerked his arm loose without any great difficulty, even though Sandeen’s grip was still tight. “Don’t ever lay hands on me again,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “And don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can hire me to murder somebody. We’re done here, Sandeen.”
As Frank and Sandeen faced each other tensely, Riley poured a drink and said in a casual voice, “I’ve already told you I’ll take care of that little problem for you, Boss.”
“A job like that is more in Morgan’s line,” Sandeen snapped. “He’s less likely to foul it up.”
Riley’s eyes turned into angry slits, but he didn’t say anything, just tossed back the drink instead.
Frank turned toward the bar. Jasper Culverhouse was recruiting men to help him carry the bodies out to his cart. Frank didn’t feel like volunteering. He had already done his part by killing the two vengeance-crazed gunnies.
“I don’t like it when people tell me no, Morgan,” Sandeen said behind him. “This isn’t over yet.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Frank said without turning around. He stalked out of the saloon, every sense alert. If Sandeen or anyone else behind him tried to draw, he would hear them start to make their move.
No one tried to stop him, though, and once he was outside he paused and drew in a deep breath of air that was considerably cleaner than that inside the saloon. He never got the shakes or anything like that after a shooting, as some men did; he had been through too many of them to ever react that way again. But it still felt good to be out of that place, out where the air was a little fresher and a man could breathe a little deeper.
He was headed for the livery stable, intending to turn in, when a voice spoke from the shadows, saying, “Hello, Frank. I hear there was a shootin’ inside the Verde. Couple of Sandeen’s men got theirselves killed.”
“Damn it, Donohue,” Frank said, “don’t sneak up on a man like that.”
The old-timer chuckled. “Sorry. I just thought maybe you’d like to come down the street to the Mogollon with me and have a drink.”
Frank’s thirst reasserted itself. He had noticed the Mogollon Saloon earlier. It was a much smaller, quieter place than the Verde. When he looked at it now, he saw that there were only a couple of horses tied up at the hitch rack in front of it.
“Well, I didn’t get the beer I went in there for. . . .”
“Come on, then,” Willard Donohue said. “I think I can promise you there won’t be no trouble.”
Frank didn’t see how the old-timer could guarantee that, but he was willing to chance it.
When they walked into the Mogollon Saloon, a chorus of voices greeted Donohue. Frank saw several men at the bar and a couple more at one of the tables. Donohue gestured toward that table and said, “Let’s sit down here. I want you to meet these fellas.”
Frank suddenly realized that he was being set up again. He decided to play along, though, to see exactly what Donohue had in mind. He thought he knew, but he wanted to be sure.
“This is Simon Wilson, who owns one o’ the mercantiles,” Donohue said as he and Frank took the two empty chairs at the table. “And Ben Desmond, who owns the other one.”
“Business rivals, eh?” Frank said as he shook hands with both of the men.
“Yes, but tonight we’re on the same side,” Wilson said. He was a big man with a pugnacious jaw.
Desmond was smaller and more dapper. He said by way of explanation, “Simon means we both want what’s best for San Remo.”
“That’s right,” Donohue said. “Those fellas at the bar feel the same way. That’s Tom Williams, Jimmy McCain, and Alonzo Hightower.” The men nodded to Frank as Donohue introduced them. “’Lonzo owns the Mogollon here, and Tom and Jimmy have the other saloons in town. Next to them is Vincente Delgado, the saddle maker, and Homer McCrory, pastor o’ the Baptist church.”
Frank’s eyebrows rose. “You got a Baptist preacher to come into a saloon?” he said with a smile.
“The Lord associated with sinners for a good cause, Mr. Morgan,” Homer McCrory said. “I can do no less.”
“The other two are Roy Thurman and Jase Winslow. They own small spreads near here,” Donohue went on.
Frank nodded. “Quite a gathering. Just why have all these solid citizens gotten together here tonight?”
Before Donohue could say anything else, the door of the saloon opened and Jasper Culverhouse hurried in. “I got those Hanley brothers laid out, but I got to get back to ’em pretty soon,” he said. He looked at Frank and added, “You asked him yet?”
“Dadgummit, Jasper,” Donohue groused, “you got all the tact of a locoed bull.”
“I just don’t have a lot of time to waste,” Culverhouse said.
“Neither do I,” Frank said. “Is this about that marshal’s job again?”
“You don’t know what it means to us, Mr. Morgan,” Simon Wilson said. He waved a hand at the gathering. “The men in this room are all the business owners in San Remo except for Miss Warren, and she assured me personally that she supports our efforts. She just didn’t feel comfortable coming into a saloon. She’s a very religious woman.”
“I can attest to that,” Pastor McCrory put in.
“And Roy and I represent the other fellas who own small ranches around here,” Jase Winslow said. “We need your help, Mr. Morgan, and we need it bad.”
“Si, señor,” Vincente Delgado added. “All hell, she is about to break loose.”
“You men want me to take that marshal’s job and tamp down the feud between Howard Flynn and Ed Sandeen?” Frank asked. He knew that was what they were getting at, but he wanted someone to come out and say it.
Ben Desmond said, “Somebody’s got to. Look around, Morgan. We’re good men, but we’re not gunfighters. Nobody’s going to listen to us. We can’t go up against Sandeen’s army of hired guns. Howard Flynn’s a good man, but he’s blinded by hate and anger right now, and his crew, even though they’re not hard cases like Sandeen’s, is a mighty salty bunch. If open warfare breaks out, no one in this part of the territory will be safe.”
“You’ve seen for yourself the kind of men Sandeen has working for him,” Culverhouse said. “But they’d put a lid on their fight while they were here in town if you were the marshal, Morgan. They wouldn’t have any choice.”
Frank looked around and said slowly, “I think you’re overestimating me a mite. You can’t believe everything you read in those dime novels.”
“Enough of it is true,” Donohue said. He reached inside his old tweed coat and brought out a battered tin
star. He set it on the table and slid it toward Frank. “What do you say? Will you take the job, Frank? If you don’t, sooner or later that street out there is gonna run red with blood. The whole Mogollon range will.”
For a long moment, Frank didn’t move. Then he took a deep breath and reached out to pick up the badge.
“You’ve got yourself a marshal,” he said.
Chapter Eight
He surprised even himself with that answer. He had suspected even before they reached the saloon that Donohue was going to ask him again to take the job. When he had seen so many of San Remo’s leading citizens gathered here, he had been sure of it. And he had been equally sure that he was going to refuse again.
But now he saw that he couldn’t. These people needed help, and although Frank Morgan was a lot of things, someone who could turn his back on folks in trouble wasn’t one of them. He realized now that from the time he had ridden out of those trees and seen that burning line shack earlier in the day, he had been involved in this. Thinking that he could just ride away from it had been foolish.
Donohue looked surprised, too, as if he had expected Frank to refuse. He got over it quickly, though, and with a big grin on his bearded face, he said, “That’s fine, Frank, just fine. I can’t tell you how much we’re obliged to you for your help. I guess we’d better start callin’ you Marshal Morgan now.”
Carefully, Frank pinned the badge on his faded blue shirt. Having it there felt strange.
“Don’t you want to know how much the wages are?” Simon Wilson asked.
None of the townspeople knew that Frank was actually a wealthy man. He didn’t think about it all that much himself. Now he just shook his head in reply to Wilson’s question and said, “As long as some free meals over at the café are included, like Mayor Donohue mentioned earlier, whatever you folks can pay me will be fine.”
Donohue chuckled. “We’ll all be poolin’ our funds to come up with your wages, Marshal, and Mary Elizabeth has already agreed to feed you for her part.”
“What are you contributing?” Frank asked curiously.
Donohue hooked his thumbs in his vest and grinned. “My persuasive and diplomatic skills, o’ course. And you may not know it, but I’m also the only attorney-at-law in these parts and the magistrate o’ San Remo.”
“So you’re not just the town bum, like you claimed.”
“He didn’t say that,” Ben Desmond put in. The comment drew laughter from everyone in the saloon, including Willard Donohue.
“All right, Marshal,” Donohue said, “what’s your first order of business?”
Frank looked at the blacksmith/undertaker/liveryman and said, “Mr. Culverhouse, when you get done preparing the bodies of Jack Moses and the Hanley brothers, don’t display them. Don’t give Sandeen’s gun-throwers any more notoriety than they already have.”
Culverhouse shrugged in acceptance of the edict. “That don’t make no nevermind to me, Marshal. It ain’t like I charge folks to look at ’em or anything like that. I’d just as soon put ’em in the ground and be done with it.”
Frank nodded and said, “That’s exactly how I want folks to feel about it. There’s nothing glamorous about a gunfight.” He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Now I think I’ll take a walk back over to the Verde.”
“That’s Saber’s hangout,” Alonzo Hightower warned. “Sandeen and his bunch are used to getting their own way around here. They won’t like it that there’s law in San Remo.”
“Then the sooner they find out about it, the better,” Frank said. He glanced down at the badge on his chest. “Just out of curiosity, where’d you boys get this tin star?”
“San Remo had a marshal up until a few months ago, when Sandeen began hirin’ so many hard cases,” Donohue explained. “He never had much law work to do before that, since these parts have been pretty peaceable since Geronimo turned himself in to the Army. But one night in the Verde that fella Lannigan picked a fight with Marshal Crawford and gunned him down. Crawford drew first, so there wasn’t much anybody could do about it. Lannigan may look like a saddle tramp, but he’s pretty fast on the draw, Marshal.”
Frank nodded. “I’ll remember that. Now, you gents go on back to your businesses or your homes and go on about your life. I’ll have a talk with Sandeen and let him know that any trouble here in town won’t be tolerated.”
Donohue rubbed his bearded jaw and frowned. “That’s just what we wanted you to do, Marshal, but danged if I ain’t a little worried about it now. We maybe asked you to bite off too big a chunk for any man to handle.” Several of the other men nodded in agreement and looked nervous, as if they had started something that they now wished they hadn’t.
“Well, there’s one thing for sure.” Frank smiled thinly. “It shouldn’t take too long to find out if that’s true.”
* * *
The hitch rails in front of the Verde Saloon were still full as Frank walked toward the place, so he knew that Sandeen’s men were still inside. He stepped up onto the boardwalk and paused for a second to square his shoulders. The street was quiet behind him. The citizens of San Remo who had hired him to protect them and their settlement had taken his advice and gone home.
He put his hands on the batwings, pushed them aside, and walked into the saloon.
At first there wasn’t much reaction. But then one man at the bar noticed Frank, saw the badge on his chest, and nudged the man standing next to him. That man fell silent and nudged his neighbor, and on down the line. That spread to the men at the tables, and although the player piano kept plinking out a tinny tune, the buzz of conversation in the room gradually died away. Somebody finally reached over and threw the lever that stopped the piano’s cylinder from revolving.
In the rear corner of the room Ed Sandeen, Vern Riley, and Carl Lannigan still sat together. Riley and Lannigan looked surprised to see Frank, especially with a lawman’s tin star pinned to his shirt. Sandeen regarded him through narrow, contemplative eyes.
Frank saw a thick layer of sawdust on the floor where blood had leaked out of the Hanley brothers. That was going to leave a stain . . . but it wouldn’t be the first such stain the planks of this floor had known.
And likely it wouldn’t be the last.
“Since I seem to have everybody’s attention,” Frank said in a loud, clear voice, “I’ll go ahead and tell you that I’ve just accepted the job of marshal here in San Remo. That means there’s law in this settlement again, and I expect it to be obeyed and respected.”
From the table where he sat with Sandeen and Lannigan, Riley asked mockingly, “You’re not going to order us to give up our guns, are you, Marshal?”
“Not unless Mayor Donohue tells me to.”
Sandeen snorted. “That old windbag. You’ve made a mistake by playing along with him, Morgan. This will just cause more trouble.”
“No,” Frank said, “as of now, there won’t be any trouble in San Remo. I won’t stand for it.”
Lannigan leaned over, his cheek bulging, and rattled a spittoon with a gobbet of tobacco juice. “This is a damned joke,” he said harshly. “Imagine a gunslinger like Frank Morgan packin’ a badge. You’re no town-tamer, Morgan. You’re just like us. We’re the fellas the lawmen don’t like.”
“Don’t compare me to the likes of you, Lannigan,” Frank said coolly. “And don’t try to prod me into drawing on you like the last marshal did.”
“That was a fair fight! Crawford drew first.”
“I won’t,” Frank said. “I won’t need to.”
Lannigan’s nostrils flared angrily. “That’s mighty big talk. I didn’t know you were a braggart, Morgan.”
“It’s not bragging if you can back it up.”
The legs of Lannigan’s chair scraped on the floor as he shoved it back and stood up. He turned more toward Frank and said, “Why, you—”
Sandeen leaned forward and said sharply, “Stop it, Carl. We don’t want any trouble here tonight.”
“Maybe you don’t,�
�� Lannigan blustered, “but it seems to me that Morgan does!”
“I just want everybody in here to understand.” Frank raised his voice. “Everybody. There won’t be any gunfights or brawls in San Remo. If you run into Lazy F punchers on the street, let them go on past in peace. You’re welcome in town as long as you conduct your business quietly.”
“Has anybody said that my men conduct themselves otherwise?” Sandeen asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” Frank admitted.
“And do you intend to issue this same warning to Howard Flynn and his men?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
Sandeen shrugged. “Then I have no complaint, Marshal. As long as you treat us fairly, you won’t have any trouble from us.”
Lannigan spit again. “Speak for yourself, Sandeen.”
“I speak for Saber!” The words lashed out from Sandeen. “And the men who ride for me had damned well better listen when I speak.”
“Then maybe it’s time I draw my pay and ride on! I won’t let this bastard push me around! Morgan thinks he’s got me buffaloed, but he’s wrong.”
Frank said, “If you don’t like me, Lannigan, I’m willing to make an exception and settle it with you.”
Lannigan’s lips drew back from his teeth and his hand curled over the butt of his gun, ready to hook and draw. “Now you’re talkin’,” he breathed.
“But not with guns,” Frank went on. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take off this badge for a few minutes, and we’ll step outside and settle this, man to man.”
“You want to fight me?” Lannigan laughed. “Hell, Morgan, I got fifty pounds on you, and I’m at least ten years younger.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Lannigan’s hands went to the buckle of his gun belt. “Damn right you will!” He took off the gun belt and dropped it on the table. “Man to man, just like you said!”
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