Adam Steele 34 by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: american west, louis lamour, the old west, shootists, terry harknett, jt edson, ebooks westerns, edge the loner, ralph compton, johnny legg
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Nine

THE MEXICAN’S NAME was Gregario Garrido and his dead partner had been Miguel Lozano. This much Adam Steele was able to elicit for himself from the opening burst of fast spoken Spanish. But then he picked out just the occasional word and had to trust Rosa Canales was giving him an honest account of what the older of the two knife men told her in response to the translated questions she asked of him.

The interrogation took place in the cramped dining room of Flora Waldorf’s boarding house. While Steele and Rosa ate a late supper of cold cuts and sweet potatoes and the fat woman bathed then dressed the bullet-shattered hand of Garrido.

The wounded man who was too despondent about his own situation to grieve over the death of his partner and the tight lipped woman who tended his injury sat on a sofa in one comer of the cramped room. The Virginian and the Mexican woman were both seated on one side of the table. A fifth occupant of the room was the tall and flabby, late fifties in age Melvin Ivers. Who had been insulted that Steele turned down his invitation to talk, and drink, in the saloon, resented that it was left to him to go rouse the gold grubber who acted as town undertaker and who had gotten drunk in the Post House, to come take care of the corpse, sulked for a while when Flora Waldorf started to tend the Mexican’s wound instead of seeing to his own bruises, then got angry and began to suck from the bottle he had brought with him after nobody wanted to listen to what had happened to him when Adam Steele and Rosa Canales were seen entering Fort Curry. Ivers sat at the end of the long and narrow table.

‘This man is Gregario Garrido and the one who you killed was Miguel Lozano,’ Rosa explained after an exchange of Spanish in the wake of the Virginian’s opening question. ‘They have worked for my father in past years. When it has been necessary for him to hire on extra men at the time of the rodeo … this means something else in your language, I think. The …?’

‘Round up?’ Steele suggested.

‘Sí.’ At the times of the round ups and the driving of the cattle to the market. This man I cannot recall, but I think I remember the other one.’

‘More your age and better looking, I reckon. Ask him if he knows how many other knife throwing vaqueros your pa hired on to round up this extra special maverick?’

‘You liken me to a cow, gringo!’

Steele swallowed a mouthful of food, sighed and answered: ‘Did I say cow, Rosa? Just ask him, uh?’

The woman’s query was short, but the answer was long: Garrido looking anxiously at Rosa Canales several times while his wound was dried and dressed – as if he felt that much he was saying reflected badly upon her. But whenever he seemed on the point of faltering she nodded for him to continue.

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