Adam Steele 11 Lynch Town by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman [Gilman, George G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

There had been pain in the brutal war fought for a cause; and much more during the violent peace when survival was the sole reason for existing. On battlefields in the east; in Mexico; in Texas; in the territories of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah; in the state of Nevada ; on battle-scarred, once-green fields ; in burning deserts ; high on bitterly cold mountains.

All of it as much an experience to be learned from as everything else which had happened to Adam Steele.

When he awoke now, the most recent assault against him concentrated its pain at the point of impact and under his skull. It was bad, like a powerful hand was inside his head, rapidly clenching and unclenching, its effect harder to bear when the imaginary fist was uncurled.

He snapped his eyes open and blinked away sweat and tears. He remembered the circumstances an instant before he was hit and, as his vision cleared, he saw that little had changed. He was still in the stable with its pungent odors of horse-wet and droppings and rotted hay. The place shaded, except where a wedge of strong sunlight pierced through the half-open door.

Marvin Boyd was still with him, but the bartender was no longer nervous; no longer anything except dead. He lay like the cross-stroke of a letter T at the point where the finger of sunlight ended. On his back, legs together and arms at his side. Flies were feeding on the still-moist blood which had torrented from his slashed-open throat.

Although the Virginian's flesh was soaked with sweat as he fought against giving vocal outlet to his pain, his entrails felt ice-cold with mixed anger and fear. His hat was on the straw-littered floor at his side. As he struggled into a sitting posture and lifted it to put it on his punished head, he saw it had covered his knife. The whole length of the blade was crusted with drying blood. It was a reflex action—with no conscious intention to destroy evidence against himself—that caused him to sink the blade into the dirt floor and remove the blood before he thrust the knife back into his boot sheath.

From outside came the familiar sounds of the steam-driven machinery at the distant sawmill. There were no other noises.

The Colt Hartford lay on the littered floor a couple of feet away, alongside a pitchfork with the shaft newly snapped in two. He reclaimed the rifle and used it as a prop to get unsteadily to his feet. Then glanced up into the hayloft where Boyd had seen the attacker poised to deliver the blow. There was no way up to the loft from inside the stable but Steele had seen the outside stairway canting up an end wall that faced the spur trail into the timber.

"Hey, anybody know where Marv's got to?" a familiar voice yelled from across the street. "I'm in sore need of a beer!"

It was Noah Wallace and the big man sounded in good humor, despite the absence of a bartender to supply what was needed to slake his thirst.

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