Lassiter 4 by Peter McCurtin

Author:Peter McCurtin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gunfighters, the wild west, lassiter, peter mccurtin, us frontier life, gunslingsers, the us old west
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing

Chapter Seven

In the morning Lassiter learned how to remove the Maxim from the tripod. That was about the only thing that happened while they rode through the long pass, down from the high country, down through the foothills and half a day later to the flat country that rose and finally climbed over the valley wall, past all the guards along the way, until Fort Liberté could be seen in the distance.

Lassiter halted his men while he, next Colmar, swept the old fort with the glasses. It looked all right to him and the Indian agreed and they rode down to the flatland, coming in all together, no matter how they felt about the money and Lassiter and the Maxim gun, tough and jaunty in their saddles, knowing they were harder and had done more than the other men in the fort.

They were still three hundred yards from the fort when Lassiter felt the small hairs prickle on the back of his neck. Something had gone wrong in Fort Liberté, and he didn’t know what it was. He felt it in the sudden tightening of his gut, as though expecting a blow, an attack from something he couldn’t see. He looked at the Indian and knew Colmar had sensed it before he did.

“What do you think?’’ he asked.

“Something,” the Indian said. “Something’s happened.”

What Lassiter noticed was how quiet Fort Liberté was. Through the field glasses he recognized some of the men on the walls, so it didn’t look like a trap. Cameron and his men hadn’t moved on the fort and taken it while they were away. It was still early afternoon and usually at this time of day the fort was humming with activity, infantry squads drilling, carpenters trying to nail the old fort back in shape. There was movement inside the fort, but it was slow and heavy, without noise.

“Something bad,” the Indian said.

They rode through the gate. Lassiter waved at the men in the twin gate towers, and they didn’t wave back. The other men in Lassiter’s column were slow to get the feeling. They had it now.

The farmers and half-breed trappers who should have been drilling stood in scattered groups all over the parade ground along the inside of the walls. They weren’t drilling, but they had their rifles and they held them stiffly, like men who wanted to start shooting. Lassiter didn’t think it would take much to start the citizen soldiers shooting at him and his men.

There was no sign of McCain. Lassiter went looking for him in his quarters, and he wasn’t there. He told the Indian to keep the men together, to have them dismount, to set up the Maxim gun just in case. He was walking toward the commandant’s office when the Irishman opened the door and came out followed by the half-breed Baptiste. McCain’s pale eyes jumped from Lassiter to the Maxim gun with the Indian behind it, the German farmer beside it holding the feed-belt ready, the muzzle turned away from the muttering groups of infantrymen.

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.