So maybe Farnum deserved a chance, but Frank would need some more convincing first.
“Why do you want to be a deputy?” he asked.
Farnum shrugged. “I’m not as young as I used to be. Hell, none of us are. I’ve spent too many nights on the cold, hard ground. I’ve got a hankering for a job where I can go home at night and climb into a real bed.” He leaned back and toyed with his glass, turning it in circles. “And it wouldn’t be so bad to have a job where people look at you with a little respect, like you’re something better than a no-good owlhoot.”
Frank knew that feeling. He had seen the fear in people’s eyes when he was around. In other places, he had seen mothers grab their children and hustle them to the other side of the street when he came along, as if they thought a gunfight was going to break out any second. And there was some truth to that too. He never knew when somebody was going to force a showdown with him.
It was a little different in Buckskin. The townspeople knew of his reputation, of course, and they had seen for themselves that he attracted would-be killers like honey drew flies. But as Farnum had pointed out, they knew him and liked him, and they wanted him to be their marshal despite the baggage he brought with him. Hell, the town had fallen into disrepair and disrepute for a long time, and now it was taking on a new identity. By accepting the job as marshal, maybe he had been trying to do the same thing. Maybe Clint Farnum deserved that same chance.
Frank looked across the table at him and asked in a harsh voice, “Are you on the dodge?”
“You know damn well there’s paper out on me in some places,” Farnum replied without hesitation. “But I’m not wanted anywhere in Nevada, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“So nobody’s after you? You don’t have trouble dogging your trail? You’re not looking for a place to hide out for a while?”
“No to all those questions. I’m shooting straight with you, Frank. Maybe I’m a mite old for it, but what I really want is to settle down and make something of myself.”
Frank didn’t hear anything in Farnum’s voice or see anything on his face except sincerity. He thought about it for a long moment, then said, “I don’t know that the town could pay you much of a wage. We could probably come up with a place for you to stay, though, and maybe you could eat at the boardinghouse or the café.”
“That’d be enough for now,” Farnum said with an eager bob of his head.
“I suppose I could talk to the mayor about it and see what he says.” Frank took a sip of his coffee, which had cooled off while he and Farnum were talking. “The way the town’s growing, another deputy was going to be needed sooner or later.”
Farnum grinned. “Might as well get me started while you’ve got the chance then.”
“Yeah, I reckon. You’d better not be lying to me about this, though, Clint.”
Farnum held up his hand like he was taking a pledge and said, “You’ve got my word on it—”
At that moment, a man slapped the batwings aside and hurried into the saloon, almost running. He went to the bar and asked Johnny Collyer if the marshal was there. Frank heard the question and looked around to see Johnny pointing him out. The man who had just come in was one of the prospectors who had flocked to Buckskin to search for silver. Frank had seen him around the settlement quite a few times, but didn’t know his name.
The man came over to the table now and said, “Marshal, you’d better get down to Rosie’s place. I think there’s about to be a killin’ there.”
Frank glanced at Farnum and asked, “You ready to start earning your keep, such as it is?”
The little gunfighter pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s go to work, Marshal,” he said.
Chapter 14
Frank and his new deputy didn’t waste any time getting down to Rosie’s place. Again, Farnum had to hurry to keep up with Frank’s longer strides, but he didn’t complain.
Under normal circumstances, Frank would have either handled this problem by himself or gotten Catamount Jack to give him a hand. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake by trusting Farnum, but this would be a good test of the little gunfighter’s true intentions. If he really wanted to reform and settle down, this was his chance.
Rosie and her girls had fixed the house up fairly nice, even though the men who came here didn’t really give a damn about ambience or décor. They just wanted some warm, willing, female companionship for a spell. Rosie had traded her girls’ favors for some carpentry work and a fresh coat of whitewash on the outside of the house, and she had hung up curtains inside and rolled out rugs on the floors.
Frank heard angry shouts from inside the parlor as he and Clint Farnum reached the front door. Without knocking, Frank opened it and went in. He found two men jawing at each other in loud voices. They were arguing over one of the soiled doves, a pretty Chinese girl in a thin shift who stood there with her arms crossed over her small breasts and a bored look on her face.
One of the men was a roughly dressed prospector with a bristly red beard. The identity of the other man surprised Frank. He was the distinguished-looking Professor Howard Burton, just about the last man Frank would have expected to be getting into a ruckus over a whore. But Frank supposed that no matter how educated or intellectual a gent might be, he’d still need to get laid every once in a while.
Frank raised his voice so he could be heard over the shouting and said, “Hold it! Both of you, just settle down, blast it!”
The two men hadn’t seemed to notice until now that Frank had come in. They stopped arguing and turned to look at him. Professor Burton’s face turned red, and he said, “Good Lord, Marshal, what are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same thing of you, Professor,” Frank replied, and Burton’s face flushed even more. “I’m here on official business. Somebody said there was about to be a killing down here.”
“Nonsense,” Burton snorted. “This is just a simple disagreement.”
The prospector said, “Simple disagreement, hell! This fancy pants is tryin’ to steal my gal away from me!”
“She’s not your gal,” Burton said. “If anything, she’s mine, because I have a standing appointment with her—”
“Well, there you go! I plan on layin’ down with her, not standin’ up, so my appointment’s more important than yours!”
Burton glared and muttered, “How can you argue with a man who doesn’t understand the most fundamental rudiments of the English language?”
“Yeah? You can stick it up your fundament, mister!”
Red-faced and breathing hard, the two men squared off again, their jaws thrust out belligerently. Frank shouldered between them, being none too gentle about it, and used both thumbs to point over his shoulders.
“All right, that’s it,” he declared. “Nobody’s sticking anything anywhere. Both of you get out of here. Now!”
Rosie had been watching the confrontation from the other side of the parlor. The stout, middle-aged woman protested, “Wait a minute, Marshal. You can’t just kick those boys out like that. Neither of them have paid anything yet.”
“They can come back tomorrow night,” Frank said, “at different times. That way they won’t be arguing over…”
“Linda,” the Chinese girl supplied, in unaccented English. She had probably been born in the United States, to immigrants who had come from China to help build the Central Pacific Railroad.
“They won’t have to argue over Linda here,” Frank went on.
The prospector frowned and said, “But what about tonight? I still got me one hell of an itch.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you started threatening people.”
The man shook a finger at Burton. “That fancy pants threatened me first! Called me an uneducated lout, he did!”