The Sisters (A Crow Western Book 6) by James W. Marvin

Author:James W. Marvin [Marvin, James W.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing
Published: 2014-03-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

“I suppose that it must be about lookin’ like the end, Mr. Crow,” said the house-keeper, tucking the blankets in around his legs.

“No, Ma’am,” replied the shootist. “I see it as being the beginning.”

And yet there was something in what the old woman said.

For one thing, the worn-down teeth of winter seemed at last to have relaxed their grip on the land. The sun shone brilliantly from a clear heaven and the earth dried up, the main street of Howell’s Leap turning in a day from mud to spiraling dust.

And the Reverend Gabriel was now gone, buried with little ceremony, his tortured corpse laid to rest in the shaded cemetery. A partly good man whose bluff exterior had, perhaps, masked a cankered soul. But now he was dead and he was buried and there is no more positive an ending than that.

And the girls had gone.

Leaving behind a shootist who had woken in bed in the front room of the manse. In what had once been the sleeping chamber of the Reverend Gabriel. He was wearing a cotton night-shirt, embroidered around the leek with small blue flowers.

Crow was a mass of bruises and minor injuries.

There were rope burns around both wrists, and his fingers still hadn’t recovered their customary flexibility from the tightness of the bindings. There was another deep red score around his throat, where Olga Walton had nearly succeeded in choking him to death. The local doctor had examined the broken nose while he was still recovering from the near-strangulation.

“Not the first time, Mr. Crow.” he said. “Nor the last, if ... No reason to try and set the … Probably heal well enough as long as … Slight bump at its center but that’s …”

The shootist never found out why the little medical man had the peculiar habit of rarely completing his sentences.

The most amazing escape had been from the scattergun.

What had happened was only pieced together during the next twenty-four hours by Crow, from Bridget Smith and the acting lawman, Amos Earnley. They’d come into the house together after getting no answer from the front door. Ironically, the house-keeper had been following the priest’s last request to her by going round the settlement trying to collect money for a memorial to the dead girl.

“We was next door, at the Widow Tanner’s. Her who dyes her hair blacker than jet. Thrice wed and thrice widowed. Too much of a good things, says I. Her first was Mr. Powell and he just up and ...” Crow had felt too ill to stop her endless babbling, contenting himself with picking the bones from her jellied chatter.

The other man with them had been killed by the first shot from Marianna Walton. Her second shot had hit the basket carried by the Irish-woman, tearing it from her hands. The shootist pressed her hard, to find out how many shots had been fired in all by the younger o the sisters. Three was the answer. Most definitely three.

As the girl had

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