Dead River Killer by Leslie Frank

Author:Leslie, Frank
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Snow blasting him, Yakima ran across the main street and down the side street where the marshal’s office and McMasters’s livery stable sat amongst several boarded-up businesses. He couldn’t see much except the snow blowing from a gray sky.

Ahead were a couple of flickering lights. He could see the gauzy outlines of the buildings to his right and left, and when he was about fifty yards away, he saw the marshal’s office.

That’s where the lights were flickering.

On the office porch steps, a figure lay sprawled.

The half-breed slowed his pace, looked around carefully. He continued to the figure, dropped to a knee, took his Yellowboy in his right hand, and rolled the man over with his left.

“The bank money,” Marshal Burkholder rasped, his long body convulsing, legs stiffening. “They . . . got the bank money!”

“Who?”

The light left the man’s eyes. His head fell to one side. His body relaxed. His gloved hands fell away from the gaping wound in his belly. His chest rose, fell, and did not rise again.

Yakima rose and stumbled up the snowy steps to look through the gaping office door. The flickering lantern on the marshal’s desk was the only light, so he couldn’t see anything clearly. As he walked inside the office, he saw that the door of the cell that had been housing the stolen Douglas bank money was standing wide.

Inside, there was only the vacant cot.

The saddlebags were gone.

Yakima cursed, wheeled, and went back outside. At the bottom of the porch steps, he looked around. The snow was scuffed all around the building, but two distinct sets of tracks that were filling in fast with fresh snow led off across the street, angling gradually toward the town’s center.

Yakima levered a round into the Winchester’s chamber, lowered the hammer, and jogged across the street, following the tracks across a vacant lot on the other side. The two men were running hard. Yakima saw a broad scuffed and packed mark where one had tripped over a snow-buried rock and fallen. The two had continued between two stables. Yakima followed. Judging by the freshness of the tracks, he wasn’t far behind them.

His heart thudded. He raked cold breaths in and out of his lungs. He leaped snowy sage and small cedars and occasional piles of trash or boards. Ahead, the rear of several Pine Street business buildings loomed.

A light flashed in the gauzy darkness. A crack sounded on the heels of another flash. Yakima felt a burn across his left cheek. As he threw himself forward, another bullet ripped like a knife across his upper right arm, tearing his coat.

Warm blood oozed under his shirt.

He cursed loudly, rose to a knee, and began firing at a rear corner of a building thirty yards ahead and on his right, from where the gun had flashed. He heard the muffled thuds of his slugs chewing into the building’s rear wall. Bounding off his heels, he ran forward.

In his haste, he tripped over several chunks of scattered firewood.

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