Come A-Smokin’ by Nelson Nye

Author:Nelson Nye [Nye, Nelson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-4887-1
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 1981-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Naome was watching him when Marratt passed out. He’d retrieved the pistol lost at the outset and, crossing to the door letting into the hall, had been stooping to pick up the one the man had struck her with when the hinges of his knees let go and dropped him, limp, across the boards of the floor.

She did not cry out. She did none of the things a lady would have done, though the memory of Tularosa firing at him point-blank was the most vivid recollection in her mind at that moment. She stepped around Marratt and picked up Tularosa’s gun, glad to find when she broke it open its chambered cylinder still held two unfired cartridges.

She went onto the back stoop with the heavy pistol in her hand and looked around for Tularosa without seeing him. Her narrowed glance raked the tamarisks and went ahead of her into the barn without finding any sign of movement. She went on around the house and still could not find him. The borrowed horses were browsing, proof he hadn’t gone near them.

Returning, she saw Marratt’s boots on the stoop and took them inside. She rolled him carefully over. Tularosa had missed. There was torn cloth edged with blood high up on his left shoulder but examination revealed this to be little more than the track of a powder blast. His collapse had been the result of exhaustion.

She found needle and thread and repaired her appearance as best she was able. She fetched some rags from a cupboard and the half-full bottle of turpentine she’d found while hunting the needle and thread. Unbuttoning Marratt’s torn shirt she did what she could for the powder burn and, soaking two of the rags with turpentine, bound them over his chest and stomach just tightly enough to keep them in place.

She righted his overturned table, put the groceries away that were still fit to put away and swept up the rest, including twelve broken eggs it made her sick just to think of. Then she sat down with Tularosa’s gun in her lap and waited for the man on the floor to come round.

So this was Luke Usher.

With the chance now to really study his features she tried to find in their lines some indication of the character local repute had ascribed to him. It wasn’t the kind of face she would expect to have found on the man who had done what he had fifteen years ago; nor could she make his performance in the Red Horse Bar gee at all with the one she’d just witnessed.

It was all so confusing, so mixed up in her mind. Especially the way her rebellious emotions continually disregarded what her thinking considered irrefutable logic. This man had threatened her father — she had heard him herself this very morning in town. How could she — how could any decent girl — feel so drawn toward such a man after remembering the way he had looked on that store porch?

He groaned and she got up and went over to him.

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