Hart the Regulator 7 by John B. Harvey

Author:John B. Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: bounty hunter, old west, pulp western, john harvey, hart the regulator, western frontier fiction, wes hart, wild west fiction
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing

Chapter Eight

The thicket lay between two ranges of hills pushing up north of Ozark towards the Mulberry River. The posse had been shaken off with ease, none of the riders apart from the sheriff over keen on charging in upon an ambush, not one of them who didn’t prefer to spend that night back at home in front of his own fire, eating his own food. So, hampered as they were by two badly wounded men, Tap Loughlin’s bunch had been able to ride fast enough and far enough to shake off any fear of immediate pursuit. Even to light a fire.

The smoke drifted lazily upwards through the surrounding dogwood and green ash, smelling sweet and dry. A pan of boiling water simmered next to a smaller pan of warmed-over coffee grounds. Loughlin and Scott Levy were doing their best to clean up the pair of wounded men. Little Kinney’s back was grooved through pretty deeply and the flesh on either side of the bullet’s path had swollen up and was a passing imitation of deep purple. Baptiste’s scabs had broken open during the ride and now the pieces of hard, brittle surface were interwoven with bright yellow puss and congealing blood.

“What the hell is it about your men that they only get shot in the back?” asked Majors, standing at the opposite side of the fire to Loughlin.

Tap caught his breath, caught his temper, let the remark ride. There wasn’t a whole lot he could do about Majors working off his mouth and there were a whole lot of things more important right then. He was conscious enough of the mess they were in; knew that the second attempt to take a place for its money had gone badly wrong. The sack had contained a little over two hundred dollars and that was already shared out between the seven of them. It wasn’t near as much as he planned for, not enough to get them very far. He knew only too well that the bank raid had been a disaster and that if it hadn’t been for Little Kinney coming in like hell itself to pull him out; he would have been dead on that street within minutes. Dead and not a dollar in his pockets to show for it.

But Majors wasn’t about to let it slide so easy. He pushed the toe of his boot into the edge of the fire, dislodging a batch of twigs and making the flames blaze up bright enough to show the anger in his eyes.

“I guess it couldn’t be somethin’ to do with bein’ yeller, could it?” taunted Majors.

Tap’s hand squeezed down on the piece of bloodied cloth with which he’d been swabbing Little Kinney’s back and watery red trickled down into his palm and along his wrist, down through his fingers.

Scott Levy thought about reaching for the pistol at his belt, but then a fresh glance at Majors told him it wouldn’t be the wisest thing to do. Better to wait and see the way things broke – after all, Tap hadn’t been running things so well lately.

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