population, but it hadn’t.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he promised.
A groan from the small cell block prompted him to step over to the door and look through it. Rogan stirred on the bunk where he had been placed, but he wasn’t fully conscious yet. Frank wondered if he ought to have Professor Burton take a look at Rogan, since the professor was the closest thing Buckskin had to a doctor. Frank hoped that Ed Kelley hadn’t cracked Rogan’s skull with that table leg.
A couple of minutes later, though, Rogan sat up, swung his legs off the bunk, and began cursing in a low, monotonous voice. Frank decided he was all right after all, probably just had one hell of a headache. Maybe a night in jail would help cure Rogan of that.
Frank lifted a hand in farewell as he left the office. “See you later,” he said to Jack.
He went over to the cafe, which wasn’t busy at the moment because the midday rush was over and it wasn’t time for supper yet. In fact, Lauren Stillman was the only person there. Older than Becky and Ginnie, she was in her early thirties. Rather than being classically beautiful, she was what some people called a handsome woman. The thick brown hair that fell around her shoulders softened her looks somewhat. She smiled at Frank and said, “Hello, Marshal. What can I do for you?”
He explained about wanting a couple of meals for Catamount Jack and the prisoner, and Lauren promised to take care of it, even down to agreeing to have Ginnie deliver the food to the jail.
“I heard about that fight you had with Dave Rogan,” she said.
“Word’s gotten around already?”
“Buckskin is a small town. Everybody knows everybody else’s business.” Lauren paused. “For example, I know that you’re having dinner with Diana Woodford tonight.”
“Well, not just with Diana,” Frank said. “Her pa will be there too, as well as that new mining engineer, Garrett Claiborne.”
“Yes, but the only one Diana is really interested in is you.”
Frank started to get uncomfortable. Lauren must have seen that, because she laughed.
“Surely I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, Frank,” she said with a hint of familiarity in her voice. The two of them had taken an easy, instinctive liking to each other as soon as the women arrived in Buckskin a few weeks earlier. “Like I said, in a small town everybody knows everybody else’s business.”
“There’s no business involving me and Diana Woodford,” Frank insisted.
“But that’s not because she wouldn’t like for there to be.”
Frank just shrugged. “Diana’s wasting her time. A young woman like her needs to find herself a more suitable fella. Somebody a whole lot younger than me.”
“With people like us, it’s not the years so much as it is the miles.”
“That’s the truth,” Frank said.
Lauren waited, as if halfway expecting him to say something else, but after a minute he just went on. “If you’ll see that those meals get sent over to the jail…”
“Of course,” she replied, her tone brisk and businesslike now. “Don’t worry about it, Marshal.”
“I’ll pay you for them—”
“No need. I’ll bill the mayor. It’s the town’s responsibility to feed prisoners, not yours.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“All right then.” Frank gave the brim of his hat a tug. “Be seeing you.”
As he turned and left the cafe, he thought he heard a sigh escape from Lauren Stillman. But he couldn’t be sure, so he just closed the door and kept walking.
Jack had been stuck in the office most of the day, so Frank relieved him for a while, giving the old-timer a chance to go back to his cabin and check on Eldorado, the rangy mule that had accompanied Jack on numerous prospecting trips. Eldorado was semiretired now, as was Jack himself. A man never really got the lure of gold and silver out of his veins, but some of them learned to live with it. Jack had, and he didn’t want to go prospecting anymore. At least, that was what he claimed.
When Jack got back to the office, Frank walked over to the small cabin the town was providing for his residence. Claiborne was inside, shaving and cleaning up. “Just thought I should make myself presentable,” he said.
“Good idea,” Frank agreed. Since Claiborne had a fire going in the stove, he heated some water for himself and got his razor out.
As dusk settled down over the rugged Nevada countryside, the two men walked toward the Woodford house, both of them freshly shaven and smelling of bay rum. Tip and Diana lived in the largest house in town, built with the proceeds from the first strike at the Lucky Lizard Mine more than a decade earlier. During the years Tip had lived there alone, after his wife left him and moved back East, taking Diana with her, he had allowed the house to deteriorate quite a bit. When Diana returned, she had taken one look at the place, rolled up her sleeves, and started in on the task of cleaning it up and fixing it up.
She had done a good job. The Woodford place was once again the nicest home in town. The picket fence in front had a fresh coat of whitewash on it, as did the walls of the two-story house itself. The flower beds had all the weeds pulled out of them, and flagstones had been carefully placed to make a walk leading to the front porch steps. The windows were all clean and glowed with warm yellow light from the lamps inside filtering through the curtains Diana had hung over them.
“What a lovely home,” Claiborne said as he and Frank went up the walk to the porch.
