Day of the Gun by William R. Cox

Author:William R. Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: western novels, piccadilly publishing, the american frontier, best western novels, historical thriller ebook, william r cox westerns
Publisher: Piccadilly

Down the hall from Logan’s room Anne Morgan was trying to drink herself to sleep and failing, as she always had failed. Liquor was her weakness and she well knew how it affected her but could not prevent herself from soaking in it. She had gone through most of the phases. She had been scared, then boastful, then she had dragged herself to her hotel room and another bottle and now she was wallowing in maudlin self pity.

It was not her fault, she sobbed into her pillow, that she had been born ... well, plain. Her sister was lovely and her brother the handsomest young man in Philadelphia when she was growing up. Her father, widowed, the tobacconist and cigar maker, drank too much and delighted in poking fun at her, comparing her unfavorably to the others. And when Tom was killed in the last year of the war, the old man had turned bitter. Sister Mabel had been driven from home and into a whorehouse. Anne had meekly suffered the insults and beatings and had learned to make cigars. And to smoke them.

Her money gone, she had fallen in with a salesman for tobacco. When she got the idea of traveling for the tobacco company she deliberately got the salesman fired for stealing samples, crept away from their meager lodgings in the night and took the train to St. Louis.

Barty had picked her up in El Paso on one of her escapades. He had paid off her losses, bailed her out of a bad spot. He had learned of her disinterest in bed, then had conceived the notion of making a messenger of her. He had the sample case built, with its secret compartment and had taught her the tricks of the trade. She had smuggled diamonds, dope, anything he trafficked in, and he had paid off, so that money no longer was a problem, even considering her excesses. Then this bully boy Simon Maxton had destroyed her. Just when she had reached a safe place he had interfered with threats. He was a crook and double crosser of the first water, she repeated to herself.

Despite the hour, she could not remain quiet in her room. She jammed a felt hat on her head, draped a cloak about her broad shoulders and got out of the door, forgetting to lock it. Her shoulder brushed the door of the room down the hall where Logan slept, but she managed not to stumble on the stairs.

There was no one on the streets. Everything was closed down, even Maxton’s Palace Bar, but there was a light upstairs and she knew Rose had a room at the back on the second floor. Rose might have a bottle, too; she usually did have one.

Anne Morgan trudged through the dust, crossing over toward Maxton’s and never saw Buffalo. The Apache had been waiting in the shadow of the restaurant, hunkered down, patient as the rocks of his native mountain country, not watching anyone in particular,

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