GUN TROUBLE AT DIAMONDBACK (Bear Haskell, U.S. Marshal Book 1) by Brandvold Peter

Author:Brandvold, Peter [Brandvold, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Mean Pete Press
Published: 2016-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Zach Bennett had a big, round head with the bulging forehead and dark, demented eyes of a dimwitted brute. His hair was coarse and dark-brown, lightly sprinkled with gray. He didn’t have much of it left—just a light dusting atop his head. The rest of it hadn’t been trimmed in a while. He wore a long green apron over a blue flannel shirt and denim trousers.

He grabbed his daughter’s arm and pulled her back behind him, turning her around as he did. “You git back to work in the storeroom. I want every one of them feed sacks counted and stacked proper before the riders from the Drumstick get here. You count ‘em accurate, too, or I’ll tan your bottom!”

“You just think you will!” Bernadine retorted, scrunching up her face.

Bennett drew his arm back as if to smack her with the back of his hand. She gave a clipped yowl and bolted through the curtained doorway and was gone.

“You rule with an iron hand,” Haskell said when Bennett had turned back to him.

“You gonna tell me how to raise my kids?”

Haskell glanced at the man’s sons all standing just outside the open door, glaring in at him, narrow-eyed, thumbs in their pockets or arms crossed on their chests. Haskell turned back to Bennett, chuckling. “You’re obviously doin’ such a fine job—why would I want to intrude? Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed passel you have there. Cream of the crop!”

“You bein’ smart with me, Mister?”

“Pull your horns in, Bennett. You might teach your sons to do likewise before someone snaps ‘em like pickup sticks. Just the smokes and the forty-four shells.”

“Fresh out of both.”

“Really? That’s funny.” Haskell leaned over the bar and grabbed two boxes of .44 shells off a shelf in the back wall. Then he plucked a cigar box off another shelf a little lower down, grabbed a handful of the Indian Kids, and set the box back on the shelf. “Your inventory must be off.”

Haskell laid the cigars on the bar beside the shells, stuck one in his mouth, bit off the end, and spit it on the floor. “Talley ‘er up. I got me a drink waitin’ somewhere.”

“A dollar and six bits for the shells, fifty cents for the cigars.”

Haskell reached into his pants pocket. A shadow moved across the counter from behind him. He’d heard the floorboards squeak but he’d waited to react until, out of the corner of his right eye, he saw a long, slender shadow flick toward him.

Wheeling, he raised his left arm in time to keep the garden rake from cracking his skull. He sent his right fist into Shane Bennett’s face, smashing the kid’s nose sideways. Blood splashed across the kid’s face and into both eyes, making him howl.

Ferrell Bennett ran at Haskell from the door, bellowing and lowering his head, intending to bull Bear over backward. Haskell stepped to his own left, grabbed Ferrell by his shirt collar, twirled him around, and threw him through the plate glass window and onto the loading dock in a shrill screech of breaking glass.

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