The Outlaws of Mesquite by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780553899559
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

MY MOUTH TASTED funny, when I awoke, and I had trouble getting my eyes open. When I got them open I rolled and caught myself just in time. It wasn’t my bed I was in. I was on a jail cot.

My head felt like it weighed a ton, but I lifted it and looked around. I was in a cell. Larik Feist’s cell.

That brought me to my feet with a lurch. I charged the door.

Locked.

Taking that door in my two hands I shook it until the whole door rattled and banged. I shouted, but there was no sound from outside. I swore. Then I looked around. There was a note on the floor.

I picked it up and read:

You wouldn’t listen to us. I hated to do this, but you’d no right to keep the whole town from getting rich just because of your pigheaded jealousy.

It didn’t need any signature, for by that time I was remembering that the last thing I had done was drink some coffee Marla had brought me.

The door rattled and I yelled, but nobody answered. I went to the window and looked out. Nobody was stirring, but I knew all those who lived in town weren’t gone. They probably had orders to ignore me.

Then I remembered something else. This jail was old and of adobe. I’d been trying for months to get the council to vote the money to make repairs. These bars—As I’ve said, I weigh two hundred and thirty pounds and none of it anything but bone and muscle. I grabbed those bars and bowed my back, but they wouldn’t stir. Yet I knew they weren’t well seated. Then I picked up the cot and smashed it, and taking one of the short iron pieces, I used it as a lever between the bars. That did the trick.

In five minutes I was on the street, then back inside after my guns. This time I belted on two of them, grabbed my Winchester, and ran for the livery stable.

Abel was there, but no Wright. I grabbed Abel. “Which way did they go?” I yelled at him.

“Lou!” he protested, pulling back. “You let go of me. I ain’t done nothing! And you leave those folks alone. We all going to be rich.”

I dropped him, because I remembered something very suddenly. Larik Feist had changed his clothes after he came to town. Had he taken the old ones with him after he got a complete outfit? I made a run for Powers’ store, but it was closed. I put one foot against the door jamb and took the knob in my hands—It came loose, splintering the jamb.

The clothes were there. A worn, dirty shirt, jeans, boots, and a coat. Right there I sat down and looked them over.

Not that I didn’t know where they were going now. The Sierra Madres were far south of the border, and nobody except a few Indians and Mexicans who live there knew them better than I. What I wanted to know was where Feist had come from, because one thing I knew.

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