The Last Gunfighter

“Can I do somethin’ for you, Mr. Bosworth, sir?” the porter asked.

“Do you know a man named Jack Grimshaw?”

“Seen him around, yes, sir.”

“Find him,” Bosworth snapped. “Tell him I need to talk to him as soon as possible.” He took a silver dollar from his pocket and flipped it to the old man. “There’ll be another one of those for you if you don’t say a word to anyone about this ever. You understand?”

The coin disappeared smoothly into a pocket of the red jacket. “Yes, sir.”

“And if you do go shooting off your mouth, I’ll make you sorry that Abe Lincoln ever set you free.”

“No, sir. That won’t happen.”

Bosworth nodded curtly and shut the door. He took a cigar from his vest pocket, clipped off the end of it, lit it, and then paced back and forth and smoked for the next fifteen minutes while he waited for Grimshaw.

When a knock sounded on the door again, Bosworth stalked over to it and jerked it open. Grimshaw stood there, a puzzled look on his rugged face.

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Bosworth?” the gunman asked.

Bosworth jerked his head and said, “Come inside.” He closed the door behind Grimshaw and didn’t offer him a drink this time. “Have you ever heard of a man named Frank Morgan?”

Grimshaw’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Morgan? You mean The Drifter? Yeah, sure, I’ve heard of him. Just about everybody west of the Mississippi has.”

“I thought you might know who he was, since you’re in the same line of work. Are you actually acquainted with him?”

“We’ve crossed trails a time or two over the years,” Grimshaw replied, his voice wary.

“Is he the sort of man who can be paid off?”

“Paid off to do what?”

“To go away and mind his own business.”

Grimshaw looked at Bosworth in silence for a moment, then burst out with a harsh laugh. “Frank Morgan? Paid to give up a job he’s agreed to do?” Grimshaw shook his head. “Not hardly.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I’d stake my life on it,” Grimshaw said flatly.

Bosworth sighed. He stuck the cigar back in his mouth and bit down hard on the end. “Very well then,” he said around the cylinder of tobacco. “I have a new job for you and your men, Grimshaw.”

“Thought you said you wouldn’t be needin’ us for a while,” Grimshaw said with a frown.

“That was before other matters came up. You’ll have to leave this afternoon.”

“Where are we goin’? What’s the job?”

Bosworth puffed on the cigar for a second, then took it out of his mouth and said, “You’re going to follow Frank Morgan into the woods…and kill him.”

Chapter 18

Jack Grimshaw had been worried that was what Bosworth was going to say. The timber baron wouldn’t have started asking about Morgan if he wasn’t concerned about The Drifter for some reason.

But Grimshaw wasn’t going to just accept this new job without finding out what it was all about either.

“Why do you want Morgan dead?” he asked.

Bosworth flushed with anger at the blunt question. “I’m not in the habit of having my orders questioned, Grimshaw, or of explaining myself.”

Grimshaw didn’t back down. He said, “Yeah, well, you never sent me after a man like Morgan either. You know, sometimes folks have another name for him besides The Drifter. They call him The Last Gunfighter.”

Bosworth gave a contemptuous snort. “That’s preposterous. There are scores of gunfighters left in the West. Hundreds perhaps. You’re one yourself, and so are the men who ride with you.”

“Not the same thing,” Grimshaw replied with a shake of his head. “Yeah, I’m pretty slick on the draw, and I hit what I shoot at. Those other boys, they’re the same way. But Frank Morgan…well, he’s in a class by himself. Ben Thompson and Wes Hardin are dead. Smoke Jensen, Falcon McAllister, Matt Bodine…they’ve all hung up their guns, and they’re makin’ it stick somehow. That old-timer called Preacher…well, hell, he’s got to be dead by now, even though I never heard anybody who knew for sure say that he is. But Morgan, he’s still in the game, and still as good as he ever was, from what I’ve heard.”

Bosworth had listened to Grimshaw’s words with growing impatience on his face. He took the cigar out of his mouth, waved it in the air, and with his lip curled in a sneer, said, “So what you’re telling me is that you’re afraid of this man?”

Grimshaw suppressed the impulse to knock that sneer off of Bosworth’s face. That wouldn’t solve anything in the long run. Instead, he said, “I’m tellin’ you that Frank Morgan is a mighty dangerous man, and I respect that. I’d be a damn fool not to, and my mama back in Texas didn’t raise any fools.”

“More dangerous than fifteen men who are supposed to be good with their guns?”

“Fourteen,” Grimshaw reminded him. “We lost Nichols this morning.”