Assuming, of course, that he could throw her skirts over her head and get some sweet lovin’ from her too.
He tried to banish that thought as he turned his derby over in his hands. Lusting after his employer’s wife wasn’t going to do him any good, especially when the boss was as rich, ruthless, and powerful as Hamish Munro. Hammersmith forced himself to say, “I’ll be goin’ now.”
As he turned toward the door, Munro said to his back, “Remember, Hammersmith…my mine is going to come out on top. Whatever it takes.”
“Yes, sir,” Hammersmith said over his shoulder.
Why was it so important to Munro that the Alhambra outproduce all the other mines? If they found the vein again, the mine would make money, maybe a lot of it. And Munro already had more money than he could ever spend in the rest of his life.
It had to be the winning, Hammersmith thought. Munro didn’t really care about anything except having more and being better than his rivals. He probably felt the same way about that wife of his.
Hammersmith understood both of those things. He liked nothing more than to crush his enemies too.
And now that he had seen Jessica Munro…well, he might just be willing to kill for her, if he ever got the chance.
Even though Frank had been halfway expecting it, the rate at which Buckskin grew in the next few weeks surprised him. Newcomers continued to pour into the settlement, and once all the buildings were occupied, men went up to the hillsides and began to fell trees. A sawmill opened inside a big tent, and the chugging of the donkey engine and the whine of the saw could be heard from early in the morning until dusk, seven days a week. Mixed with those sounds was the racket of hammering, as the rough boards from the sawmill were slapped together into new buildings. A whole new street grew up, running parallel with the main street that was already there. More saloons and stores opened, as did an assay office. A man showed up with a printing press in the back of a wagon and started a newspaper, the Buckskin Bulletin. A couple of lawyers hung out their shingles, as did a doctor. A red-and-white-striped barber pole appeared on the boardwalk in front of one of the new buildings. A Chinese laundry began taking in washing. Two new whorehouses opened up.
Back in the summer of ’76, when he was still a young man, Frank had spent a little time in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Buckskin wasn’t quite the hell-with-the-hide-off town that Deadwood had been, but it was as wild and woolly a place as he had been in in quite some time. He and Jack and Clint had their hands full keeping the peace. Along with all the miners who descended on Buckskin came the cardsharps, the swindlers, the soiled doves, the cutthroats, thieves, and killers whose life work it was to empty the miners’ pockets of what precious few riches they were lucky enough to obtain.
Deadwood had averaged a little more than a killing a day at its worst. Buckskin wasn’t that bad. There were only a couple of murders a week.
Luckily, no more would-be gunfighters showed up to challenge Frank in an attempt to build a reputation. He supposed word might have gotten around about what had happened to the kid called Conwell and Harry Clevenger and Charlie Hampton.
But even if the men who fancied themselves fast guns were being wary right now, that wouldn’t last, Frank knew. Sooner or later, one of them would get an itch to prove himself, and then he would ride into Buckskin and force a showdown with the notorious Drifter.
On the mining front, trouble still continued to plague the Crown Royal, and an angry Tip Woodford reported that somebody had stolen some blasting powder and other supplies from the Lucky Lizard. Frank had his suspicions about who was responsible for this mischief—the culprit was big and bald and answered to the name of Gunther Hammersmith—but he didn’t have any proof that Munro’s superintendent was to blame. Tip and Garrett Claiborne had both posted guards at their respective mines, and Frank tried to ride out and keep an eye on them when he could, but his duties in town took up most of his time.
He wondered if Hamish Munro had ordered the sabotage, or if Hammersmith was carrying it out on his own. Assuming, of course, that Hammersmith was responsible. Munro seldom budged from the old hotel that he had turned into his headquarters.
That wife of his came out from time to time, though, and she always drew plenty of attention when she did. Many of the men in Buckskin hadn’t seen a woman in quite a while, and it had been even longer since they had seen one as breathtakingly lovely as Jessica Munro.
That caused some trouble of its own one day. Frank was in Leo Benjamin’s store, talking to the proprietor, when he heard angry voices in the street outside. With a frown on his face, Frank muttered, “What the hell’s going on now?” and strode toward the front door.
There was a high porch in front of the store that served as a loading dock. Wagons could be backed up to it and supplies placed inside them without much trouble. A set of steps at each end of the porch led back down to the regular boardwalk that ran along both sides of the street.
From that porch, Frank had a good vantage point on the fracas taking place in the street. A miner was sprawled on his back, obviously having just been knocked down by Gunther Hammersmith, who loomed over him with clenched fists. Hammersmith reached down, grabbed the miner’s shirt, and hauled him to his feet, only to draw back and wallop him again. Hammersmith’s big fist landed on the man’s jaw with a meaty thud, and the miner flew through the air to come crashing down on his back again.
“I’ll teach you to be disrespectful to a lady, damn you!” Hammersmith bellowed.
Frank glanced to his right. Jessica Munro stood on the boardwalk just past the porch in front of Leo’s store. She was dressed up in a fancy gown and carried a parasol to keep the sun off her face, which at the moment was set in an agitated expression.
“Please, Mr. Hammersmith!” she called. “This isn’t necessary—”
“Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but it is,” Hammersmith insisted as he grabbed the hapless miner again, jerked him to his feet, and poised a malletlike fist to strike another devastating blow.
Frank palmed his Colt from its holster, eared back the hammer so that the metallic ratcheting of the action sounded loud in the street, and said, “Hold it right there, Hammersmith.”
Chapter 17
Hammersmith froze with the punch undelivered. He looked over his shoulder and found himself staring down the muzzle of Frank’s gun. Eyes narrowing in anger, he said, “This is none o’ your damn business, Marshal.”
Remembering what Garrett Claiborne had told him about some of the things Hammersmith had done in the past, Frank said, “It’s my business if you’re about to try to beat a man to death in my town, mister.”
Hammersmith’s lip curled. He gave the miner a hard shove that sent the man off his feet again. “If I was to beat this bastard to death, it wouldn’t be any more than he had comin’ to him.”
“What did he do to deserve that?”
“He was tryin’ to get a peek under Mrs. Munro’s dress while she walked along that high porch!”
Frank glanced at Jessica Munro. Her face was flushed with embarrassment now as she looked down at the ground. “Is that true, ma’am?” he asked her.
“I…I don’t really know. I was just out walking…I like to take a daily constitutional, you know…and that man…that man came up in the street alongside the porch. He was talking to me…paying his respects, he said—”
“Disrespects is more like it!” Hammersmith broke in. “I was coming the other way along the boardwalk and saw what he was doin’. Sneakin’ peeks at the lady’s calves!”