McAllister 3 by Matt Chisholm

Author:Matt Chisholm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cattle barons, peter watts, piccadilly publishing, matt chisholm, gunfighters of the old west, outlaws and gunfighters, open range wars, rem mcallister western
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing

Twelve

McAllister was ready to go. The doctor had redressed his wound and checked it. It was, he said, doing fine, but riding a horse and helling around generally would not do it much good. Bertha said that he was a stubborn fool.

By the time he was dressed, he was inclined to agree with her, but he was not about to change his mind. He was worried about his horses and he knew that, as time passed, his claim to the land he had preempted would weaken in the eyes of the surrounding people. When he had a cabin and barn there for all to see, it gave him some right to demand protection from the law. The longer he drifted around without any roots, so the law would regard him as little more than a saddle bum. That might not be what the law itself said, but that was the fact of the matter. He wondered just how strong a man Sheriff Donaldson was. Dare any sheriff buck a man as powerful as Larned in a country where the big cattlemen were kings?

He asked his host and hostess if they would go and sit in the parlor. He needed no more than a half-hour.

Bertha came and kissed him. An unusual display of affection for her. Robertson seemed to pretend that he was just going out for a stroll. He patted him on the shoulder and said casually: “See you soon.”

They left the bedroom and went downstairs. In the parlor, Bertha sat down and picked up her sewing.

“I have a terrible feeling, George, that is the last we shall see of him,” she said. “I have the most awful premonition of death.”

Donaldson snorted —“Some of Larned’s men most likely,” he replied.

Up in the bedroom, McAllister turned the lamp low and placed it on the floor on the far side of the bed from the window. It gave him just enough light to see what he was doing. He placed a chair under the window and did the best he could to build a dummy in the chair out of bedclothes. On top of this, he placed his hat. It would help persuade any watcher outside that he had a visitor in the room or somebody sitting with him while he lay unconscious. Nobody watches beside an empty bed.

He checked his gun for the last time and the extra chambers in his jacket pocket. Bertha had washed his jacket and darned it as best she could. He wore one of Robertson’s shirts. His shoulder felt stiff and sore, but he reckoned that, if he favored it and was careful, he would get by. He came of that generation and breed of men who had been reared to live with and ignore pain. He left his boots under the bed and wore instead his Cheyenne moccasins which Robertson had brought him from his warbag in Mose Copley’s barn.

He put the lamp on the bureau and turned up the wick. There was enough of the dummy’s silhouette showing on the curtain in shadow to be convincing.

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