Hell Town. William W. Johnstone

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      Later that morning, Frank and Catamount Jack were both in the marshal’s office when Claude Langley came in and said, “I suppose we’re ready to take care of the burying, Marshal, in case you want to be there.”

      Frank heaved himself out of his chair and reached for his hat, which he had placed on the table earlier. “I reckon I ought to be, since I’m the one who killed the young fella. You’ll hold down the fort, Jack?”

      “Sure,” the old-timer replied. “Go on and have…well, I guess have a good time ain’t somethin’ you’d say to somebody on their way to a buryin’, is it?”

      “No,” Frank said as he settled his hat on his head. “It’s not. But I’m not going as a mourner either, so I’m not sure what you’d say in a situation like that.”

      He and Langley left Jack there pondering on the question and walked along the street toward the edge of the settlement. The cemetery on the outskirts of Buckskin held quite a few graves from the town’s previous silver boom. Even when Buckskin was largely a ghost town, Tip Woodford had continued to care for the burial ground, keeping the weeds out and the low stone fence around it in good repair. Not long ago, Buckskin’s cemetery had been in better shape than many of the buildings in town.

      Claude Langley was a small, dapper man with a goatee and a soft accent that revealed his Virginia origins. He had driven into town at the reins of an actual hearse drawn by six black horses. He also had a wagon, though, and it was the vehicle that carried Conwell’s plain pine coffin to the cemetery, pulled by a pair of mules. The wagon, with Langley’s helper at the reins, arrived at the cemetery at the same time as Frank and the undertaker.

      A couple of prospectors who hadn’t had any luck yet in finding silver worked part-time as gravediggers. They had the hole ready for the coffin. Together with Frank and Langley’s helper, they unloaded the pine box from the wagon and lowered it into the grave with ropes. Buckskin didn’t have a preacher yet, so Langley usually said a few words at burials. Today, he turned to Frank and asked, “Would you like to say anything, Marshal?”

      Frank took his hat off, stood beside the open grave, and said, “I didn’t know this young fella, don’t even know his full name. I wish he hadn’t made me shoot him. If he’d had any sense, he’d still be alive this morning. But I suppose things happen for a reason, and I suppose that sometime in his life he had somebody who cared for him. If that’s so, I hope that somehow they’ll rest a little easier because we gave him a decent burial.” Frank stepped back, shrugged, and put his hat back on. “That’s not much, but I reckon it’s all I’ve got to say.”

      Langley nodded and gestured to the gravediggers, who picked up their shovels and started throwing dirt from the pile into the hole. Frank turned and started to walk away. The grim, hollow sound of dirt hitting the coffin lid followed him.

      He had seen too much death over the years to lose any sleep over the likes of Conwell, but he wasn’t so hardened and calloused that he felt nothing at all. Frank had always been a reader, carrying a book or two in his saddlebags during all those long years of drifting, and he recalled a line written by the poet John Donne: “Any man’s death diminishes me.”

      Probably not the best thing for a gunfighter to be thinking about, Frank mused, but the idea was with him anyway.

      Deep in thought like that, he almost didn’t hear the hoofbeats of the approaching rider. But then he realized someone was coming and glanced up.

      The man approaching on a roan stallion was dressed mostly in black. A red bandanna tied around his neck was the only splash of color about him. Gray hair fell from under the flat-crowned black hat to hang around his shoulders. The deep tan and high cheekbones of his hawklike face told Frank that he might have some Indian blood, but he couldn’t be sure if the man was a ’breed.

      The stranger’s thonged-down holster told a story of its own, though, and it was one that Frank didn’t like.

      The man reined in about twenty feet away and swung down from the saddle. He said in a raspy voice, “You’d be Frank Morgan?”

      “I would,” Frank agreed.

      “My name is Harry Clevenger.”

      Frank nodded. “I thought I recognized you, but it’s been a long time.”

      Clevenger frowned as he asked, “We’ve met?”

      “No, but you were pointed out to me one night down in Taos, about fifteen years ago. You were in Don Robusto’s cantina.”

      Clevenger’s eyes narrowed. “You were that close to me and I didn’t know you were there?”

      “That’s right.”

      “If I’d known, we’d have had this showdown then.”

      Frank shook his head. “I didn’t have any call to want a showdown with you, mister. Still don’t, as far as I know.”

      “You don’t want to know who’s faster?”

      Frank sighed. “To tell you the СКАЧАТЬ