Killing Ground. William W. Johnstone
heard the rumble of the stamp mill, too, and the sound of the donkey engines that pulled the ore cars out of the mine along the narrow-gauge steel rails. When you got right down to it, a mine of any sort was a noisy, smelly place, and sometimes Frank wasn’t sure that having them spread all over the West was a good thing.
Whenever mines and railroads and all the other sorts of industry arrived, the frontier was never quite the same afterward, and for those who remembered it the way it used to be, as Frank Morgan did, there was a certain nostalgic melancholy associated with the march of progress. With each passing year, the places where a man could pause on a hilltop and watch an eagle wheeling through a pristine blue sky and know that he might well be the only human being within a hundred miles were becoming fewer and fewer.
Trying to stop civilization, though, or even slow it down much, was like trying to bail out the Mississippi with a tin cup. It just couldn’t be done.
Frank reined to a halt and swung down from the saddle in front of the log building that housed the mine superintendent’s office. He looped Stormy’s reins around a hitching post, told Dog to stay, and went up the steps to the little porch and the door. He didn’t knock but went on inside.
Garrett Claiborne, who hailed from Georgia, was on the smallish side, but he was muscular and could handle himself in a fight. He had tousled dark hair and a close-cropped beard. He was standing in front of a big, angled drawing board that had a diagram of some sort pinned to it. Frank didn’t know much about such things, but he thought he recognized the drawing as a cutaway diagram of the Crown Royal’s network of tunnels and shafts.
“Frank!” Claiborne exclaimed. “I mean, Mr. Morgan.”
“Frank’s just fine.” He shook hands with the mining engineer. “How are you, Garrett?”
“Good, good,” Claiborne said, nodding his head.
Frank gestured toward the diagram. “Thinking about expanding?”
“Yes, I believe the vein we’re following in this tunnel right here”—Claiborne traced it on the paper with his finger—“is assaying out at a rate that makes extending the tunnel worthwhile. I was a little concerned about the stability of the rock strata, but I believe I’ve worked out some modifications to our bracing systems that will alleviate the extra strain.”
Frank nodded. “That’s good, I reckon…even though I barely understood what you said.”
“Don’t worry, I know how you and Mr. Browning insist on proper safety procedures being followed. There’s always going to be a considerable amount of risk when you’re working underground, of course, but I do my best to minimize it.” Claiborne paused. “You know that most mine owners don’t give much of a damn about such things.”
“All I know is how you run the Crown Royal, Garrett, and I’m satisfied with that.”
Claiborne stepped away from the drawing board and over to the desk.
“Some of the men told me you and Mr. Browning arrived in Buckskin yesterday afternoon. If you had let me know when you were getting here, I would have ridden into town and delivered a report on the mine’s operation to both of you.”
“Time enough for that later,” Frank said with a wave of his hand. “Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if Conrad drove out here later today in his buggy to look the place over.” He frowned slightly. “You didn’t get my letter telling you that we were on our way back from Arizona?”
Claiborne shook his head. “Not at all. This is the first time I’ve heard of any such letter.”
That didn’t come as a surprise to Frank. He hadn’t forgotten about that attempt on his life the day before. Unless it had been a random holdup or something like that, which seemed unlikely, that bushwhacker must have been laying up in those rocks, waiting for him.
That meant someone hadn’t wanted him to reach Buckskin alive, and the most reasonable explanation for how they had found out he was on his way was that the would-be killer—or someone he worked for—had filched that letter before Claiborne ever saw it.
The question remained, though, who that might be. And even more important, who wanted him dead?
Frank spent a while longer talking with Claiborne, then got back on Stormy and rode away from the Crown Royal. He wanted to take a better look around the site of the ambush.
The day before he had been more concerned with getting Conrad and Rebel on to Buckskin safely, and then the whole troublesome business with Brighton had come up. Now he wanted to see if he could find anything that might give him a clue to the bushwhacker’s identity.
Instead of returning to the settlement and then following the road to Carson City, Frank cut across country instead. He had ridden around this region often enough so that with his frontiersman’s instinct he wasn’t likely to get lost. His route took him near the Lucky Lizard, but he didn’t detour in order to pay a visit to the rival mine.
Frank’s eyes were always in motion as he rode, searching the rugged countryside around him for any sign of danger. The man who had taken those shots at him had failed once, but the odds were that whoever he was, he would try again. Frank’s natural wariness, honed by years of riding perilous trails, was in full force now.
Nothing happened, though, and he saw no sign of a trap as he approached the boulders where the rifleman had hidden. When he reached the rocks, he reined in and spent several minutes in the saddle before he dismounted, studying the area and getting the big picture set in his mind. From here he could see all the way across the expanse of meadow where he had been riding when the shooting started. The bushwhacker had come pretty close with his bullets—but not close enough.
Frank swung down from the saddle and hunkered on his heels, taking a closer look at the ground, which was hard enough so that it didn’t take prints very well. He saw a few marks left by a horse’s hooves, but there was nothing unusual about the prints and no way of knowing whether they had been made by the bushwhacker’s mount or the mount of some other rider. When Frank was satisfied that he wasn’t going to turn up anything important, he said, “Dog, search.”
It was time for someone with senses even more acute than The Drifter’s to take a hand—or a paw, in this case.
The big cur started nosing through the rocks, his muzzle close to the ground. After a moment, his hackles rose and he started growling, as if he smelled something that he didn’t like. Frank had long since learned to trust Dog’s instincts, even when they seemed almost supernatural. He mounted up again and called, “Dog, trail!”
Dog took off like a shot, bounding over the ground, darting around rocks, and leaping over deadfalls. Frank followed as best he could, although sometimes he had to call out for Dog to stop and wait while he and Stormy caught up. The trail wound back and forth, but led gradually up and over a ridge, then along a dry wash.
After half a mile or so, the wash came to a creek that was flowing, the stream that had formed the wash when it was in flood. Dog ran back and forth along the gravelly bank, barking in frustration. Obviously, the rider he had been following had entered the creek, making it impossible for the big cur to trail him.
“Let’s go across and see if you can pick up the scent, big fella,” Frank said to Dog. He sent Stormy splashing across the shallow stream.
The three of them cast up and down the stream for a mile in each direction without locating the bushwhacker’s trail again. Frank was disappointed but not surprised. There was no telling how far the rifleman had followed the creek before emerging from it. Locating his trail again might take all day, and even then it would be just a matter of luck. They might not ever find it.
“Remember that hombre’s scent, Dog,” Frank told his canine friend. “You’re liable to run across him again one of these days, and if you do, I’ll be counting on you to let me know about it.”
Dog seemed to grin at him. Frank knew the big cur wouldn’t let him down.
In the meantime,