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 doctor’s office. The men who brought them in stopped by and told me that they would be returning later with the bodies of the miners who were killed in the explosion.”
Frank jerked a thumb at the dead saboteurs. “Need a hand with these?”
Langley reached for the reins and said, “No, I can handle them. Roy’s inside. I’ll call him to help me get them off their horses.”
Frank handed over the reins and turned Stormy around. He rode at an angle across the street toward the doctor’s office. All the windows in the building glowed yellow with lamplight.
“Stay,” Frank said to Dog as he dismounted and looped Stormy’s reins around the hitch rail. He stepped to the door and didn’t bother knocking, just opened it and went inside.
He had met Dr. William Garland briefly when the man came to Buckskin and hung out his shingle, but hadn’t spent any great amount of time with the medico. Garland was young, probably no more than thirty, and slightly built with a shock of brown hair, a thin face, and intense brown eyes. When Frank came in, he was winding a bandage around the arm of a shirtless miner. The miner also had bandages around his torso.
Several other men sat around the doctor’s front room, all of them sporting bandages and taped-on plasters in various places. Frank didn’t see Garrett Claiborne among them.
“Hello, Doctor,” he said.
Garland glanced up from his work. “Marshal Morgan,” he said. “I understand you were there when these men were injured.”
“That’s right.”
“The way they described that explosion, I’m surprised there weren’t more serious injuries…and more fatalities.”
“Where’s Garrett Claiborne? How’s he doing?”
Garland leaned his head toward the door into another room. “He’s in bed in there. I’ve given him medication to ease his pain and help him rest.”
“How bad is he hurt?”
“Well, if you saw him, you know his left arm is broken.”
Frank nodded. “Yeah, that was pretty obvious.”
“He has burns on the back of his neck from the explosion itself and in other places on his back because his clothes were set on fire. None of those are too bad, though. He has at least one cracked rib. I can’t be certain yet if there are any other internal injuries. I’m hopeful that there’s not.”
“What about the others who were hurt bad?”
“I have four beds for patients,” Garland said, “and they’re all full. I’m pretty sure that one of the men has a fractured skull. I don’t know if he’ll pull through. He hasn’t regained consciousness, and he may not. He’s the worst of the lot, though. One of the other men has a broken leg, the other one a dislocated shoulder and a possible broken ankle. They’ll be laid up for a while.”
“I sure appreciate what you’re doing for them.”
Garland gave Frank a thin smile. “That’s why I came to Buckskin, to help the sick and injured.”
“Can I see Claiborne?”
“Yes, but I don’t know if he’ll be awake enough to talk to you.”
Frank went into the other room and stood beside the bed where Garrett Claiborne lay. A single lamp burned in here, and it was turned low. But there was enough light for Frank to see how pale and drawn the engineer’s face was.
“Claiborne,” he said. “Garrett, can you hear me?”
After a second, Claiborne’s eyes flickered open. He seemed to have trouble focusing on Frank, who remembered what Dr. Garland had said about giving him something for the pain. Laudanum, more than likely, which meant Claiborne’s brain would be pretty foggy.
“F-Frank…” Claiborne whispered.
“You’re at the doctor’s in Buckskin,” Frank said. “You’ll be well taken care of. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“The…mine. The stamp mill…”
“It’s gone,” Frank said, “but we’ll rebuild it, better than before.”
“Mister…Browning…will be…upset…disappointed in…me…”
“Not hardly. This wasn’t your fault, Garrett. If anybody’s to blame, it’s me for not taking the threat seriously enough.”
But that wasn’t really true either, Frank thought. The only people really to blame for such evil destruction were the ones who had carried it out—and the one who had paid to have it done.
Hammersmith. The name rang in Frank’s head again.
“Mister…Browning…” Claiborne began.
“Let me worry about him,” Frank said. “I’ll ride to Virginia City and wire Conrad to let him know what happened.”
Even in his drugged state, Claiborne frowned. “C-Conrad…?” he said.
“Yeah. He’s my son. You didn’t know it, Garrett, but you’ve been working for me, too.”