The Last Gunfighter: Killing Ground

by William W. Johnstone

  The night passed peacefully, however, and Frank awoke the next morning refreshed and ready to go on to Carson City. He wondered briefly if there had been any trouble in Buckskin during the night. If so, Catamount Jack and Phil Noonan could handle it, Frank told himself. He was doing more good by fetching another judge, because the sooner the problem of Dex Brighton was dealt with, the sooner true peace would return to the settlement.

  Frank saddled up and rode on, still checking warily behind him from time to time. He didn’t see any sign of being trailed. By midday, he had reached Carson City. He didn’t bother stopping at a hotel, but instead rode straight to the state capitol, an impressive, two-story building of light-colored brick, topped by a white bell tower with a flagpole on its summit. Trees dotted the green lawn in front of the capitol building.

  Frank tied Stormy at one of the hitch racks and told Dog to stay with the stallion. The big cur sat down, and Frank knew he wouldn’t move. Passersby on the street cast nervous looks at the shaggy, wolflife creature, but Dog ignored them and maintained his dignity.

  A directory in the lobby of the capitol building sent Frank to the second floor in search of the governor’s office. He knew the odds were against him being able to just waltz in and see the man right away, but he didn’t see any harm in trying.

  Sure enough, a pasty-faced gent with spectacles stopped him in the outer office.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the man said in response to Frank’s request to speak to the governor. “You’ll have to schedule an appointment, and I’m afraid that Governor Sadler won’t be able to see you for at least two weeks. He’s a very busy man, you know.”

  Frank supposed that was true. Reinhold Sadler hadn’t been governor for long; elected as lieutenant governor on the Silver Party ticket, he had assumed the top office following the death of Governor John E. Jones, who was also a member of the Silver Party. Since the main thrust of the party’s platform was to free silver mining and the silver trade from excessive federal regulation, close ties existed between Silver Party politicians and the mine owners in the state. Frank was aware of all that even though business and politics had never been consuming interests of his.

  He played that card, telling the secretary, “Maybe you should ask the governor if he could make room in his schedule to talk to me for a few minutes. My name is Frank Morgan. I’m one of the owners of the Browning Mining Syndicate.”

  The secretary’s eyes widened. Clearly, he had looked at Frank, with more than a day’s worth of beard stubble and trail dust on his clothes and a marshal’s tin star pinned to his shirt, and taken him for some small-town lawman. That was true, as far as it went, but there was a lot more to Frank Morgan than that.

  For one thing, he was also a famous gunfighter. Maybe the last of the really famous gunfighters…

  “Ah, Mr. Morgan,” the secretary said as he got to his feet behind his paper-cluttered desk, “if you have some means of identification…?”

  Frank grunted. “My word’s usually good enough.” He allowed a tone of impatience to creep into his voice.

  The secretary jerked his head in a nod. “I suppose I could let the governor know that you’re here and would like to speak with him. Do you have a calling card?” Then, before Frank could answer, the man went on. “No, I suppose not.”

  For a second, Frank thought about taking a .45 cartridge from one of the loops on his shell belt and tossing it on the desk, so he could say, There. There’s my calling card.

  But he didn’t. Such a dramatic gesture wasn’t really in his nature.

  Instead, he said, “You might mention to the governor that Conrad Browning is my son, too.”

  Conrad’s name obviously meant something to the secretary. He nodded and said, “I’ll be right back, Mr. Morgan.” Then he disappeared through a door into Sadler’s private office.

  He wasn’t gone for very long, maybe a minute. When he reappeared, he had a smile on his face.

  “Governor Sadler said for me to send you right in, Mr. Morgan. I’m sorry for any, ah, misunderstanding.”

  “No need for you to be sorry, son,” Frank told him. “You were just doing your job.”

  Frank went into the office, and found Governor Sadler standing at one of the windows that looked out over the lawn and the bustling streets of the capital, as well as the snowcapped Sierras that provided a picturesque backdrop to Carson City. Sadler turned away from the window and came toward Frank with his hand extended.

  “Mr. Morgan,” he said. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

  “A little of it might even be true,” Frank said with a smile as he shook hands with the politician.

  Sadler laughed. The politician was a beefy man with thick dark hair and a graying Vandyke beard. He had a good grip, strong but not crushing. He waved Frank into a big leather chair in front of the desk.

  “Cigar? Brandy?” Sadler asked before taking his own seat behind the desk.

  Frank shook his head. “No thanks, Governor. I know you’re a busy man, so I’ll get right to the point. Despite what I told your secretary out there, I’m not really here as one of the owners of the Browning Mining Syndicate. I’m here as the marshal of Buckskin.”

  Sadler settled his bulk in the chair and frowned. “I’d heard that you had taken that job. Wasn’t sure why Buckskin even needed a marshal. Then I found out it wasn’t a ghost town anymore. There are, what, three mines producing regularly again?”

  Frank nodded. “That’s right. The Crown Royal—that’s the one my son Conrad and I own, Tip Woodford’s Lucky Lizard, and the Alhambra, owned now by a lady named Munro.”

  “Yes, I recall hearing about some trouble down there involving the lady’s late husband. You were mixed up in that, too, I believe.”

  “Only as the local law,” Frank said. “And that’s my only interest in the trouble that’s going on in Buckskin now. We’ve got a court case pending, a challenge to Tip Woodford’s rights to the Lucky Lizard Mine, and Judge Grampis was supposed to be hearing it. Today, in fact.”

  Sadler leaned forward, suddenly even more interested.

  “I heard what happened to Judge Grampis. A terrible, terrible tragedy. He was a fine, dedicated jurist for many years. It’s a shame he had to run into those stagecoach robbers.”

  “That was no accident,” Frank said.

  The governor’s bushy eyebrows rose. “What are you implying, Mr. Morgan?”

  “I’m not implying anything, sir. I’m flat-out telling you that Judge Grampis was murdered. Those owlhoots who stopped the stage were sent to get rid of him. The so-called robbery was just to make it look like the judge wasn’t killed deliberately.”

  Sadler sat back to ponder what Frank had just told him. After a moment, he said, “That’s a rather startling theory. Do you have any proof that it’s true?”

  Frank shook his head. “No, sir, not yet.”

  “Do you have any idea who would want the judge dead?”

  “A man named Dex Brighton. He’s the one who’s challenging Woodford’s ownership of the Lucky Lizard.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sadler said. “If the date for the trial was imminent, why would this man Brighton want anything to happen to Judge Grampis? That will just delay the legal disposition of the case.”

  “Exactly,” Frank said. “Brighton has been pushing Woodford to accept a settlement offer. He’s been doing that ever since he came to Buckskin, based on a document he claims that he has…a document that nobody except Brighton has ever actually seen.”

  “Ah!” Sadler said in sudden understanding. “You believe that Brighton has no real case, and if the trial actually takes place, that fact will be revealed. In other words, he’s just a cheap crook trying to bully his way into someone else’s hard work and good fortune.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Frank said.

  “But again, you have no proof.”

  “Not a bit, so far. All I have to go by is what my instincts tell
me.”

  “I’m sure the instincts of a man such as yourself are quite reliable, Mr. Morgan, but…” Sadler spread his hands. “In the absence of any real evidence, I don’t see how I can help you. This is not really a matter for the governor’s office anyway.”

  “There’s one thing you can do,” Frank said. “I reckon the truth will come out at the trial. So if you appoint another judge right away to take Judge Grampis’s place, and sent the fella back to Buckskin with me, we can bring the case to trial in a day or two, rather than the weeks or more that Brighton is probably counting on.”

  Sadler tugged at his beard and frowned again. “What you say makes sense, Mr. Morgan,” he admitted. “If Brighton is truly a fraud, he wouldn’t want the case to come to trial. But if he’s telling the truth and can prove it, then rushing another judge to Buckskin will only hasten the legal defeat of Mr. Woodford…who, I take it, is a friend of yours.”

  Frank nodded. “Yes, Tip and I are friends. I wouldn’t ever deny it. But he’ll have to take his chances in court, and he knows it. I’ll enforce whatever the judge decides, and Tip knows that, too. I just want him to get a fair shake and not be buffaloed into giving up something that’s rightfully his.”

  Sadler took a cigar from a humidor on his desk, said, “You’re sure you don’t want one?” then lit it after Frank shook his head. The governor puffed a couple of times on the cigar, then said, “This is quite an interesting situation. My instincts say that you’re probably right about Brighton, Marshal. I figure that given your history, you must be a pretty shrewd judge of character.”

  Frank didn’t say anything to that, just waited for Sadler to go on.

  “I’ll have to appoint a replacement for Judge Grampis, of course. I started thinking about that as soon as I heard what happened to him. I wasn’t really planning on doing it right away, though.”

  “The longer you wait, the more it plays into Brighton’s hands.”

  “Yes, I suspect you’re right. I can’t simply snap my fingers, though, and produce an acceptable candidate for the job. I have to sift through the possibilities and consider each one carefully—”

  “Begging your pardon, Governor,” Frank cut in, “but if you can find a fella who knows the law, can get around under his own power, and isn’t drunk by ten o’clock in the morning every day, I reckon he’ll do. One of my lawyers is representing Tip Woodford, and I reckon he’ll knock down Brighton’s case without much trouble.”

  “Confident, aren’t you, sir?”

  “I’ve never seen a reason to be any other way, sir,” Frank said.

  Sadler grunted. “As a matter of fact, I agree with you. Man’s got to believe in himself before anybody else will.” He shifted the cigar in his mouth, placed both hands flat on the desk, and concentrated for a moment. Then he plucked the cigar from his lips and said, “I have a man in mind. I’ll see if I can locate him this afternoon. If he’s agreeable to taking the job, you’ll escort him to Buckskin personally?”

  “We’ll start first thing in the morning,” Frank declared. “Make it there tomorrow evening, if we can, and hold the trial the next day.”

  “You don’t believe in wasting any time, do you, Mr. Morgan?”

  “Not when all hell keeps trying to break loose in my town,” Frank said.

  The governor saw to it that Frank had a room at the best hotel in town. After arranging for Stormy and Dog to be taken care of at a nearby livery stable, Frank took advantage of the opportunity to clean up and have a good meal.

  His impatience grew stronger as the afternoon went on, and he was about to start back to the capitol building on his own when a messenger arrived from Reinhold Sadler, summoning him to the governor’s office.

  Another man was there with Sadler when Frank strode in. This second individual was shorter than the governor and had a fringe of graying red hair around a mostly bald head. He was clean-shaven and wore a rather belligerent expression on his face. His hands were clasped together behind his back, and he kept them there as he and Sadler turned to face Frank.

  “There you are, Morgan,” the governor said. “Meet Judge Cecil Caldwell.”

  The judge didn’t offer to shake hands. He just gave Frank a curt nod instead and said, “Morgan. Gunfighter, eh? I’ve heard of you.”

  “I’m here as the marshal of Buckskin,” Frank snapped. He didn’t cotton much to this fella. Of course, he didn’t have to like the judge who took Grampis’s place. All that mattered was that the man be willing to go to Buckskin and render a fair, legal decision in the case between Tip Woodford and Dex Brighton.

  And be willing to risk a bushwhack attempt or two along the way as well, Frank thought.

  “We’ve got trouble brewing there,” he went on, “and it’s not going to settle down until a trial establishes who really owns the Lucky Lizard Mine. You see, this fella Brighton showed up and claimed—”

  Caldwell jerked a hand from behind his back and held it up, palm toward Frank.

  “Please don’t say any more. I’ll hear arguments from the attorneys in the case and testimony from any witnesses they may call, and whatever information comes out in those judicial proceedings will be the sole basis for any decision I render. As a lawman and an officer of the court, Morgan, you should know better than to try to prejudice a case before it comes to trial.”

  Frank glanced at Sadler, who chuckled.

  “He wouldn’t let me tell him anything about it either Marshal. Judge Caldwell has a very strict idea of judicial impartiality.”

  “There’s nothing strict about it,” Caldwell snapped. “A judge is either impartial or he isn’t. The law doesn’t deal in shades of gray.”

  Frank wasn’t convinced that was completely true all the time, but he didn’t argue the point with Caldwell. Instead, he said, “You’re going to be taking Judge Grampis’s place, Your Honor?”

  “That’s right. Governor Sadler told me you plan to return to Buckskin tomorrow.”

  “First thing,” Frank said with a nod. “If we don’t run into any trouble, we can make the ride in a day. Especially if you can travel by horseback, rather than in a buggy or something like that.”

  “I’m an excellent rider. I’ll be ready to depart at first light.”

  That took Frank a little by surprise. Caldwell might be an unfriendly cuss, but at least he was being cooperative.

  “I know you don’t want to hear anything about the case, Judge, but I have to tell you…there’s a chance we’ll run into some hombres who don’t want you to make it to Buckskin alive. The same fellas would be just as happy to see me dead, too.”

  Caldwell nodded. “I appreciate the warning, Morgan. But I’m not going to let the possibility of danger stand in the way of dispensing justice.”

  “Well, then, we’re in agreement, Your Honor, because I don’t plan on doing that either.”

  Caldwell turned to Sadler and said, “Thank you for this opportunity, Governor. I’ll do my best to live up to the honor.”

  “I’m sure you will, Judge,” Sadler said. He didn’t look surprised when Caldwell didn’t offer to shake hands with him either, before stalking out of the office.

  Frank watched him go, then waited until the door of the outer office had closed, too, before saying, “No offense, Governor, but that hombre’s about as cold-blooded as a snake.”

  Sadler laughed. “You said you wanted somebody who knew the law and wasn’t drunk by ten o’clock in the morning, Marshal. Cecil Caldwell qualifies on both of those counts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the man take a drink, and his record as a county judge is exemplary. He would have been appointed to the state circuit court before now except for one thing…He’s one of the most thoroughly unpleasant individuals you’ll ever meet.”

  “Yeah, I got that idea,” Frank said with a shake of his head. “But if he’s honest and doesn’t mind taking a chance, that’s all I care about right now, I reckon.”

  A look of concern came over Sadler’s beefy face. “You really think
there’s a chance Brighton’s men will try to kill both of you to keep you from reaching Buckskin?”

  “Governor,” Frank said, “I reckon you can count on it.”

  Chapter 24

  Luther wasn’t quite sure where he was when he woke up. At first he thought he was in his hotel room, but then he recalled the shots shattering the window and the flames leaping and dancing around him. The attempt on his life came back to him with crystal clarity, shocking him so much that he tried to sit up without thinking about it.

  The pain in his side and the bandages wrapped tightly around his midsection stopped him. His head fell back against the pillow. He lay there trying to piece together everything that had happened.

  The bright sun shining around the curtains over the window told him that it was morning now, instead of night. Unless, of course, he had slept the clock around and it was late afternoon instead. Without knowing where he was, he couldn’t orient himself as to east and west. All he knew for certain was that his arm ached, his side hurt, and he was lying in a reasonably comfortable bed on starched sheets.

  “Ah, you’re awake,” a voice said.

  Luther blinked his eyes and turned his head. He saw a slender, brown-haired young man coming through an open doorway. After a second Luther recalled the man’s identity—Dr. William Garland.

  “How are you feeling this morning, Mr. Turnbuckle?” Garland asked.

  For a moment, in his confusion, Luther had forgotten all about the masquerade he was carrying out. The doctor calling him Turnbuckle brought it all back to him…the train robber who shot the real Claudius Turnbuckle, Luther’s arrival in Buckskin and the spur-of-the-moment deception he had carried out, Dex Brighton’s claim on the Lucky Lizard Mine, Diana Woodford—especially Diana Woodford!—and the previous attempt on his life and the life of Frank Morgan…All of that and more crowded into Luther’s brain and threatened to push his sanity out.