A Good Day for a Massacre by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2020-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

“You okay, darlin’?” Slash asked Hattie.

She was staring back over her shoulder at the dead man on the boardwalk.

Slowly, she turned toward where Slash was lowering his smoking Colt, the blood starting to return to her cheeks, but her eyes still wide and glassy with shock. “Yes,” she said, drawing a breath. “Yes . . . I think so.”

Slash walked over and extended his hand to her. “You’d best sit down for a spell.”

“Yes,” Hattie said, placing her hand in Slash’s. “Yes, I think I’d better.”

When Slash had helped the girl into a nearby chair, Jupiter Dodge said from his station behind the bar, “Say, that was one helluva shot.” He frowned again, curiously. “Who in the hell are you two, anyway? I’m beginnin’ to wonder if you two might be Slash Braddock an’ the Pecos River Kid!”

“Us?” said Slash, feigning bemused incredulity. He looked at Pecos, and they both laughed.

The two former cutthroats stepped out onto the boardwalk and stared down at the dead man, who stared up at them through his one remaining eye, which remained wide open in death as though he were perusing the cloudless sky for the angel that would take him to heaven.

“Nice shootin’, Slash,” Pecos said. “But you should’ve left him alive so’s we coulda found out where the rest of his new gang headed with the gold.”

“What’d you want me to do? Nick his ear so he could still drill a hole through Hattie’s head?”

“That girl’s trouble,” Pecos said, staring down at the dead Otis Pettypiece.

He’d said it quietly enough that he’d thought only Slash had heard. He was wrong. Hattie had stepped quietly up behind him and Slash, and now she said, crisply and with no little air of offense, “Excuse me. I’m going to go and pick out that horse now.”

“Ah, hell,” Pecos said. “Why don’t you stay inside and rest up? I’ll saddle a hoss for you.”

Hattie strode quickly and stiffly across the yard toward the corral straight out from the cabin, swinging her arms, her hair winging out behind her. She turned her head and said in the same crisply offended tone as before, “I wouldn’t want to be any more trouble!”

She turned her head forward, continued toward the corral, and plucked a rope off a gate post.

Pecos turned toward Slash. “I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings.”

“She almost got more than her feelings hurt in there.” Slash jerked his head toward the saloon behind him. “She came damn close to saddling a cloud instead one of those gold-robbers’ horses.”

“She’s just young,” Pecos said, staring toward where the girl was moving around the corral, inspecting the horses that sidled apprehensively away from her. As she moved, she swung the loop at the rope’s end, gradually enlarging it.

“She’s green. She shouldn’t be out here. I’m surprised Pinkerton sent her. Or one of his field lieutenants. She may not have gotten herself killed today . . . or someone else killed today . . . but the day ain’t over.

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