The Last Gunfighter Hell Town

couple of other men take the wagon and head for Buckskin. Make sure you’re armed, just in case you run into trouble along the way. Everybody else needs to stay here and keep that fire under control.”

The miner nodded. “What are you gonna do, Marshal?”

Frank’s eyes narrowed in anger. “I’m going to find out who’s responsible for this.”

As Frank, Stormy, and Dog hurried back toward the scene of the gunfight at the creek, Frank wished he had asked the man he’d knocked out who had hired him and the other three to plant that dynamite, before walloping the son of a bitch. But at the time, he had figured it was more important to find out where the bomb had been hidden so he could still try to stop it from going off.

That hadn’t worked out, but Frank was willing to bet that he could still get the prisoner to talk. All he’d have to do was threaten to turn Dog loose on him.

As he approached the spot, letting his instincts guide him back to it, it occurred to him that the man might have regained consciousness and fled, in which case Frank probably would have to wait until morning to try tracking him.

The fella might be waiting to ambush him too, Frank thought, so he said in a low voice, “Dog. Find!”

Dog took off into the darkness. Frank knew that if the saboteur was hidden somewhere, waiting to bushwhack him, Dog would find him and spoil that plan. Frank reined in and waited for Dog to return.

He didn’t have to wait long. Dog came loping out of the shadows a few minutes later. He let out a whine, then turned, ran off a few feet, and stopped, looking back over his shoulder at his trail partners.

“Want me to follow you, eh?” Frank nudged Stormy’s flanks with his boot heels and sent the Appaloosa forward at a walk.

Frank followed Dog a couple of hundred yards to the creek. He hadn’t followed the stream all the way from the mine because of the way it twisted and looped around. Faster to cut across country. As Frank reached the creek, he saw the dark shape still leaning against the bank.

“Must’ve hit the fella harder than I thought for him to still be out cold,” he muttered to himself as he dismounted. Drawing his gun, he approached the saboteur with care.

Frank’s nerves prickled, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. His gut told him that something was wrong. Keeping the gun trained on the man, he stepped out into the shallow stream and kicked his foot.

“Wake up, mister.”

The man didn’t budge. His head hung forward on his chest, motionless.

Frank reached into his pocket and found the little tin box where he kept matches. One-handed, he shook one loose from the box and put the wooden shaft between his teeth while he tucked the box away again. Then he took the match in his left hand again and used his thumbnail to snap it into life.

“Son of a bitch,” Frank said as the glare from the match revealed a huge crimson stain on the front of the man’s shirt. Blood appeared to have flooded down from his throat. That could mean only one thing.

Frank pouched his iron and reached forward with his right hand to grasp the man’s hair. He jerked the man’s head back. In the light from the match, Frank saw the gaping wound in the saboteur’s throat. It looked like someone had taken a bowie knife or a similar weapon to him and nearly sliced his head clean off.

Remembering what the man had said about the guards at the Crown Royal having their throats cut, Frank thought this hombre’s death was pretty appropriate. He still wished it hadn’t happened, though.

The match burned down to Frank’s fingers. He shook it out and dropped it in the creek, then lowered the dead man’s head. The saboteur wouldn’t be answering any questions, and Frank was sure that was exactly why he had been killed. Whoever had hired the men to blow up the stamp mill had come along to check on them and found all of them dead except for this one.

Frank straightened. There was no point in brooding over missed opportunities. He would come out here again in the morning and have a good look around, see if he could find anything that might lead him to the man who had hired the saboteurs.

Gunther Hammersmith. That was the name uppermost in Frank’s mind. At the moment, though, he had nothing even faintly resembling proof that would tie Hammersmith to what had happened tonight.

In the meantime, now that he was a lawman, it went against the grain for Frank to leave a bunch of corpses littering the countryside. He mounted up and went looking for the dead men’s horses, hoping that they hadn’t wandered off too far.

He would take the bodies into Buckskin, he thought. Maybe someone there would recognize them.

Frank never did find one of the mounts he was looking for, so one of the other horses had to carry double in the grim procession back to the settlement. It was almost midnight by the time Frank rode into Buckskin, leading the three horses with the dead men lashed facedown over their backs.

The saloons were still lit up and doing some business. So were the doctor’s office and Claude Langley’s undertaking parlor. Frank wanted to check on Garrett Claiborne and the other injured men, but he figured it would be best to drop off the corpses with Langley first.

He rode around back, where a lantern was burning. Langley was hammering coffins together in the work area behind the building. He looked up as Frank came around the corner leading the three horses with their grisly burdens.

“More work, eh?” the little Virginian said.

“That’s right. You’re going to wind up the richest man in town, Claude.”

“Who are these?”

“The men who blew up the stamp mill at the Crown Royal,” Frank answered.

Langley nodded. “I heard about it, of course. That fellow Claiborne and several of the other men are over at the