Lit A Shuck For Texas by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour [L'Amour, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Amazon.com, Usenet, C429, Kat, Exratorrents
Amazon: B000FA65ZY
Publisher: PageTurner
Published: 2003-02-15T08:00:00+00:00

THE BLOOD OF RYAN

The stage was two hours late into Bluff Creek and the station hostler had recovered his pain-wracked consciousness three times. After two futile attempts to move himself, he had given up and lay sprawled on the rough boards of the floor with a broken back and an ugly hole in his side.

He was a man of middle years, his jaws unshaven and his hair rumpled and streaked with gray. His soiled shirt and homespun jeans were dark with blood, and there was one unlaced boot on his left foot. The other sprawled comfortably near the huge fireplace, gray with ancient ashes.

Aside from the fireplace there were two benches and a litter of tools, harness, gear and weapons that defied description. Near his right hand lay a Spencer rifle and beyond it, a double-barreled shotgun. Close beside them ranged rows of shells, and near the windows were empty cartridge cases, mute mementoes of his four hour battle with the Indians.

For slightly more than two hours, they had given him a respite, but he knew they would return to await the stage, and it was for this he lived, to fire a warning shot before the stage rolled up before the station. It was the last shot fired, from a Sharps .50, that had wrecked his spine. The bloody wound in his side had come earlier in the battle.

Outside, gray clouds hung low with threatening rain and tiny gusts of wind rattled the dried leaves on the trees, or stirred them along the hard ground. The stage station squatted in dwarfish discomfort at the foot of the towering cliff, and was constructed haphazardly of sandstone blocks stuck together with mud and roofed with split cedar logs. Two small windows stared with mute wonderment at the empty gray road before it and at the ragged brush and trees fifty yards away, where the Indians had taken shelter.

Three Indians had died in the battle, and at least that many had been wounded, but the bodies had been carefully snaked away to leave no warning for the stage. The hostler lay on the floor, his breath hoarse, his blank eyes staring up into the darkness under the roof.

He had no family and he was glad of that now. Ruby had run off with a tinhorn from Alta four years ago, and he had never heard a word from her, nor wanted it. Occasionally he thought of her, and without animosity. He was not, he told himself, much of a person. Just a simple, hard working man, inclined to drink too much.

He had no illusions now. He knew that he was finished. He knew the heavy lead slug that smashed the base of his spine had killed him. Only his will kept life in his body, and he doubted his ability to keep it there much longer. His legs were already dead and there was a coldness in his fingers that frightened him. He would need his hands to fire the warning shot.

With

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