enough to convince Frank that the fight now going on had its origins in a poker game gone bad.
A burly hombre wearing work boots, overalls, and a flannel shirt was trading punches with a slightly smaller man whose suit and fancy cravat marked him as a gambler. The professional cardplayer was no effete fop, though. He was standing toe to toe with the miner and slugging it out. Both men had bruises on their faces already.
A bartender with a turkey neck and no chin stood behind the hardwood, watching the battle with a worried, pop-eyed expression. Three other men, all dressed like prospectors, stood back on the other side of the room, also intent spectators to the fisticuffs.
Frank thought about drawing his gun and firing a shot into the ceiling. That would probably put a stop to the fracas, but it would also needlessly damage the roof. Rain leaked through bullet holes just as easily as through any other opening.
Instead, he bellowed at the top of his lungs, “Hey! Break it up, you two!”
The battlers ignored him and continued to swing wild, looping punches. Most of the blows missed, which was a good thing. If they had all connected, the men might have done some serious damage to themselves by now.
With a disgusted sigh, Frank moved toward the two men. As the tides of battle made them sway closer to him, he reached out and caught hold of the miner’s collar. He hauled back hard and flung the surprised man toward the bar. The gambler had just thrown a punch that missed because Frank pulled the miner out of its path. He stumbled forward, off balance because of the missed punch, and Frank caught hold of his arm to keep him from falling.
The gambler glared at Frank, his bruised and battered face twisting with anger. “What the hell do you think—” he started to demand, but then he looked over Frank’s shoulder and his eyes widened with surprise. “Look out!”
Frank let go of the gambler and twisted around to see the miner lunging at him and swinging a bottle of whiskey he had snatched up off the bar. In his blind rage, he was now attacking the man who had interfered in his fight with the gambler.
Frank jerked his head to the side, knowing the bottle might crush his skull if it connected. It slammed into his left shoulder instead and sent pain shooting through Frank’s body. Not the left arm, though. It went numb.
Hunching over a little against the pain, Frank hooked a hard right into the miner’s belly. It was almost like punching a slab of wood. The blow had enough power behind it to knock the man back a step, though. Still using his right fist because his left arm was useless for the moment, Frank clubbed the miner on the left side of the head, just above the ear.
That staggered the man but didn’t put him down. He dropped the bottle, caught himself, and roared in furious defiance as he lunged forward, tackling Frank around the waist.
The miner was heavier than Frank and bore him backward. Frank tripped on some of the debris from the broken table and fell backward. He crashed to the floor, and the miner’s weight came down on him with stunning force. The breath was knocked out of his lungs, and the room flashed red and black around him as his head bounced off the rough floor.
Hamlike hands fastened around his neck, the fingers digging in with cruel force as they cut off his air. Since the hard landing had already knocked the breath out of him, Frank didn’t have any air in reserve. He knew he would pass out in a matter of seconds, so he had to do something fast. He clawed at his holster, intending to draw the Colt and slam it against his attacker’s head.
But the holster was empty. The gun had fallen out sometime during the struggle, probably when Frank was knocked off his feet.
He tried to heave himself up off the floor, but the miner weighed too much. Consciousness began to slip away from him. He heard his own blood pounding in his head like the frantic beat of a drum.
Even over that racket, he heard the loud thud that sounded somewhere close by, followed by a second one. The terrible pressure on Frank’s throat eased and then went away entirely as the miner’s fingers loosened. He slumped to the side, falling off Frank. With the weight gone, Frank’s chest heaved as he dragged life-giving breaths of air into his lungs again.
He looked over and saw the miner sprawled on the floor beside him, out cold. Blood trickled from a cut in the man’s thick brown hair and ran down the side of his face. Somebody had clouted him a couple of good ones—it had taken two blows to knock him out—and when Frank glanced up he wasn’t surprised to see the gambler standing there with a broken table leg clutched in his hand.
The man reached down with his other hand and said, “Let me help you up, Marshal.”
Frank and the gambler clasped wrists, and the man lifted Frank with seemingly little effort. When he was back on his feet, Frank gave a shake of his head to clear the lingering cobwebs out of his brain. He nodded toward the unconscious miner and said, “You could have killed him, you know, hitting him with a table leg like that.”
The gambler laughed. “Not very damned likely. Bastard’s got a skull made out of iron, and it’s thick too. Anyway, if somebody had to die, I figured he was a better choice than Buckskin’s marshal.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Frank said. He flexed the fingers of his left hand. Feeling had begun to return to that hand and arm. “I’m obliged to you.”
The gambler shrugged. “Hell, the only reason you got mixed up in this fracas was because you tried to keep him from busting up me and my place any worse than he already had.” He held out his hand again. “I’m Ed Kelley, with two
Frank shook hands with him. He had seen Kelley around town but hadn’t met the man yet. Kelley was about thirty-five, with broad shoulders, thick dark hair, and a narrow mustache. He was disheveled from fighting at the moment, but he had the look of a man who would usually be pretty dapper.
Frank’s hat had come off during the fight. He picked it up, slapped it against his leg to get the sawdust from the floor off it, then settled it on his head.
“What started this ruckus?”
Kelley shrugged. “The usual misunderstanding. Rogan thought I was cheating because I won a big pot from him.”
“Were you?”
