The Battle For Skillern Tract by Matt Laidlaw

Author:Matt Laidlaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719823893
Publisher: Robert Hale

TWELVE

Frank Leland took most of his meals in the town’s café, and lived alone above his gunsmith’s shop on Main Street. Since the death of his wife he rarely went to bed early, and after a day that had seen Nacogdoches torn by the bloody battle in the bank that ended in the death of a respected marshal, his mind refused to give up its relentless churning – churning, moreover, that he knew was getting him nowhere.

So he remained in his comfortable living room, stripped to his pants and undershirt, looking down over Nacogdoches as the hustle and bustle of a busy small town died away and everywhere the oil lamps were lowered or extinguished.

Except, that was, for those in Cobb’s saloon.

It was with considerable interest that Leland noticed the lamps still glowing, for they had been drawn to his attention when the man called Yantze rode into town, tied his lathered horse at the rail and pushed his way into the saloon. One horse was already hitched there, a roan whose vaguely familiar image kept poking at Leland’s memory without much effect.

Yantze remained inside for some time. Leland kept a careful watch, darting Frequently to the window while brewing coffee, standing in the cover of the faded curtains as he drank the hot black java.

Eventually, after half an hour or so, he had watched Yantze emerge, haloed by the lamplight flooding the street, and ride across to the livery barn to stable his horse. From there he’d walked to the rooming-house where he spent his nights.

Kept at his post by a nagging suspicion that there was more to come, Leland narrowed his eyes in thought when a short while later Morgan Jarrow stormed out of the saloon. The leader of the town council untied his horse, flung himself into the saddle and rode off down the street in a cloud of dust.

All right, Leland thought, so that’s why I recognized the roan. But what the hell were those two talking about? Yantze rode into town, his horse looking the worse for wear. Jarrow was already in Cobb’s place. So, they met, shared a drink, chewed the fat – nothing unusual in that, no cause for alarm.

But these were no ordinary men, Leland mused. Yantze was a hired gunman. Jarrow was the man paying his wages. Yet even those two facts did not lend a sinister import to their late-night drink in Cobb’s saloon were it not for a third fact that Leland knew he could not ignore.

On his way to the meeting in Cobb’s back room, Leland had seen Yantze riding out of town in an easterly direction. And as he crossed the street to the saloon, Leland had watched with interest as Marshal Zac Hunter cantered up the street before the dust of the gunman’s passing had settled.

Yantze was back in town. Hunter – as far as Leland knew – was not.

It was with a worried frown creasing his brow that the gunsmith at last left his post at the window, blew out the lamp and climbed into bed.

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