Draw Straight by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2019-11-14T18:48:00+00:00

Mistakes Can Kill You

Ma Redlin looked up from the stove. “Where’s Sam? He still out yonder?”

Johnny rubbed his palms on his chaps. “He ain’t comin’ to supper, Ma. He done rode off.”

Pa and Elsa were watching him, and Johnny saw the hard lines of temper around Pa’s mouth and eyes. Ma glanced at him apprehensively, but when Pa did not speak, she looked to her cooking. Johnny walked around the table and sat down across from Elsa.

When Pa reached for the coffeepot, he looked over at Johnny. “Was he alone, boy? Or did he ride off with that no-account Albie Bower?”

It was in Johnny neither to lie nor to carry tales. Reluctantly, he replied: “He was with somebody. I reckon I couldn’t be sure who it was.”

Joe Redlin snorted and put down his cup. It was a sore point with Redlin that his son and only child, Sam, should take up with the likes of Albie Bower. Back in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Redlins had been good, God-fearing folk, while Bower was no good and came from a no-good outfit. Lately he had been flashing money around, but he claimed to have won it gambling at Degner’s Four Star Saloon.

“Once more I’ll tell him,” Redlin said harshly. “I’ll have no son of mine traipsin’ with that Four Star outfit. Pack of thieves, that’s what they are.”

Ma looked up worriedly. She was a buxom woman with a round apple-cheeked face. Good humor was her normal manner. “Don’t you be sayin’ that away from home, Joe Redlin. That Loss Degner is a gunslinger, and he’d like nothin’ so much as to shoot you after you takin’ Elsa from him.”

“I ain’t afeerd of him.” Redlin’s voice was flat. Johnny knew that what he said was true. Joe Redlin was not afraid of Degner, but he avoided him, for Redlin was a small rancher, a one-time farmer, and not a fighting man. Loss Degner was bad all through and made no secret of it. His Four Star was the hangout for all the tough element, and Degner had killed two men since Johnny had been in the country, as well as pistol-whipping a half dozen more.

It was not Johnny’s place to comment, but secretly he knew Joe Redlin was right. Once he had even gone so far as to warn Sam, but it only made Sam angry.

Sam was almost twenty-one and Johnny but seventeen, but Sam’s family had protected him, and he had lived always close to the competence of Pa Redlin. Johnny had been doing a man’s work since he was thirteen, fighting a man’s battles, and making his own way in a hard world.

Johnny also knew what only Elsa seemed to guess, that it was Hazel, Degner’s red-haired singer, who drew Sam Redlin to the Four Star. It was rumored that she was Degner’s woman, and Johnny had said as much to Sam. Sam had flown into a rage and, whirling on Johnny, had drawn back his fist. Something in Johnny’s eyes stopped him, and, although Sam would never have admitted it, he was suddenly afraid.

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