Snake's Fury by Bernard Schaffer & Ralph Compton

Author:Bernard Schaffer & Ralph Compton [Schaffer, Bernard & Compton, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

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* * *

Fox rode beside Roger Albright on the way into town. It was quiet and cool along the road. The sun had only just crested over the loess in the distance. Crowsfall had its share of farms, Fox saw. There were large fields of corn and plenty of pens holding cows and sheep along the outskirts. Along the road leading into town, he took stock of the types of homes the townsfolk lived in. They were no sod houses; that was for certain. They were good homes of solid construction, built by people who intended to live there, he thought. They had gardens that grew vegetables and wells to pump water and sheds in their backyards that looked freshly painted.

“These folk will stay if we give them reason to,” Fox said.

Albright took his hand away from his face and looked up in surprise that Fox had spoken. “Say what?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Fox said. “Will you quit playing with that thing? Leave it alone. It looks fine.”

“It looks like a damn caterpillar crawled across my lip and died,” Albright said.

“Here, look at me,” Fox said. “Let me see it. It was too dark before.”

Albright turned toward him and tilted his head back. The upper half of Albright’s lip was bare and raw from where he’d shaved it that morning. Across the bottom half was the lower portion of what had been a decent-sized mustache before Albright had trimmed it.

Fox turned back to look at the road. “It looks fine,” he said.

“No, it don’t. It’s all Wendy’s fault. All her talk about city lawmen and their cute little mustaches.”

“I’m sure she likes it.”

“You know what she said when I showed it to her? She said, ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘What do you mean by oh?’ She said she meant ‘Oh, how handsome.’ But she didn’t say it like that. She said it more like ‘Oh, why is there a caterpillar crawling across your lip, Roger?’ I should have just shaved the whole thing off and gone barefaced.”

“Nobody’s going to care about your mustache,” Fox said.

“First impressions are everything, William. You know what Wendy told me last night after I snuck into her room? She told me that first thing I should do is save up a dollar twenty-five and buy me and her our own land here and that me and her could be married.”

“You snuck into Wendy’s room?”

“Well,” Albright said. Then it was his turn to look away and keep his eyes on the road. “Just for a minute. To talk.”

“Mother Marie catches you in there and I’ll be handling a murder in my own home before the shine is even off my sheriff’s badge.”

“I know. But at least you won’t have to look far for the suspect. Good luck hanging Mother Marie, though. I bet she could just look at the rope real mean and make it catch on fire.”

“I wouldn’t hang her for killing you if she caught you in Miss Jenkins’ room,” Fox said. “That’s just plain old suicide.

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