King of the Gunmen by L. Ron Hubbard

Author:L. Ron Hubbard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Galaxy Press
Published: 2013-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

The miners and punchers and townspeople looked up at her through the hot dust and stared. She was white with rage and her eyes flamed at them. Another hand tried to take her rein and she struck at the blurred face with her quirt.

“What about the trial?” demanded Sally Donnelly.

The miners and the punchers took it up. The old man in the red shirt waved his Sharps and yelled, “Hell, we forgot the trial. We got to have this regular. Where’s Judge Larsen?”

Teed made his braying voice heard above them. “There isn’t any use tryin’ the murderer. We all know he did it. We all saw him shoot down Hastings in cold blood. Stretch that rope, cowboy!”

“No!” yelled the crowd, suddenly placing themselves with a girl whose beauty was a strange thing to find in such a wild country. “Where’s Judge Larsen?”

“He won’t be back until morning!” cried Teed. “We ain’t got anyplace to keep a prisoner. String him up.”

The old man in the red shirt yelled, “What’s the matter with your vault? That’s the place! We got to have a trial!”

Teed tried again to make himself heard, but Miss Sally Donnelly had turned the trick against him. He glared at her like a rattler about to strike and even rested his hand upon the butt of his shoulder gun which, though he certainly did not intend to use it on her, indicated his feelings.

After several minutes of argument, Rainy and Mungo, seeing that their boss was talked down, led Pete away toward the granite-walled bank.

Pete, dazed by all this, and more dazed because of the girl’s sudden appearance than because he had escaped being hanged, looked back at Sally Donnelly. He expected her to smile at him, but in that he was wrong.

She was eyeing him with a glare of which a cougar might have been proud. Sheer hate was in her eyes. Pete gulped and faced the bank again.

If she had rescued him, then why did she hate him? And if … So that was it. She was in cahoots with a murderer and she was somehow in the Tornado’s power. But why, if that were the case, had she bothered about it at all?

It was a sorry puzzle and Pete was too engrossed in it to notice that they had thrust him into the vault and had closed the brass grate upon him.

“Sit still and silent,” said Mungo, his narrow face set and menacing. “If you try anything at all, I’ll let air and sunlight into you.”

Pete seated himself on a Wells Fargo box and somberly began to figure things out.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.