The Gun is my Brother by Matt Chisholm

Author:Matt Chisholm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: pulp fiction, wild west, cowboys, old west, western fiction, peter watts, frontier fiction, matt chisholm, sam spur, spur
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing

CHAPTER TWELVE

After Spur had made his leap from the bluff on the black, the men gathered on the edge of the timber. Some of the hardier souls had winkled the woman off the top of the bluff, even though she had fired at them a couple of times with the rifle the outlaw had left behind.

They’d been mad. And Smelling had been madder than them all. His voice was the one to announce the bitch ought to be hung. But nobody, however mad they might be, liked the sound of that. Some even spoke of their admiration. Said they’d never knowed a spunkier female. No, sir.

But they were pretty mad, just the same and she’d have had harm done to her, if her sister hadn’t come out from the house and led her away. Sarie had been alternately weeping and shouting, then, and a few of the men had been a bit ashamed and embarrassed though they couldn’t have said why.

‘Nothing more we can do tonight,’ Sheriff Carlson declared. ‘Get some shut-eye.’

‘Shut-eye, my ass,’ Smelling said. ‘The man’s hurt—he can’t git far.’

A sane spirit said, ‘You chase that son of a gun on a night like this if you want, Mr. Smelling.’

‘Nothing more we can do till daylight,’ the sheriff repeated.

Henry Wragg limped up and caught the words.

‘No?’ he said witheringly. ‘How about those two women? They know where he’s headed. He can’t go far. He’s hurt bad. You watch the women and you’ll come up with him.’

They could all hear and see the anger in the little man, sense the venom in him.

‘We don’t have to do a thing like that,’ Carlson said. ‘We’ll pick up his trail come morning.’

‘You do what you like,’ Wragg bit off, ‘an’ I’ll do what I like.’

Carlson told him curtly, ‘You want to miss your sleep, that’s your affair.’

Men began to drift away.

One said, ‘God knows how many good men cut down. I don’t give up so easy. I’ll see the sonovabitch hung if it’s the last thing I do.’

Murmurs of assent.

Wragg found the sheriff at his elbow.

There was a sudden and unexplainable animosity between them.

‘I sent the telegraph,’ Carlson informed him.

The little man’s face was eager.

‘Yeah?’

The sheriff seemed to take some delight in telling him, ‘I got a reply.’

‘What it say?’

‘It said there wasn’t a reward out for Spur. Nothing. He’s not wanted.’

The little man was flabbergasted.

‘Not wanted?’

‘You heard me.’

Wragg stabbed a white forefinger at Carlson’s chest.

‘How about Texas? I’ll bet you ain’t heard from Texas. The Rangers wanted him bad. Shot a man in the back in Fort Griffin. I heard that from a man that saw it.’

The sheriff batted down the offensive finger and snapped, ‘That man was a God-damned liar. Spur never shot a man that way in his life. Never had to. I’m tellin’ you he’s not wanted in Texas. Governor’s pardon for services rendered to the State.’

The little man turned and walked away a couple of paces. He swung back abruptly and said, ‘So there ain’t a reward.

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