Heller with a Gun (1955) by L'amour Louis

Author:L'amour, Louis [L'amour, Louis]
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-12-12T06:26:20.234000+00:00

Chapter Eleven.

JANICE AWAKENED suddenly with Dodie's hand upon her shoulder. Outside she could hear a confused sound of voices, and the air was cool inside the wagon. They were, she remembered, almost out of fuel.

"We've stopped," Docile whispered.

Janice lay still, staring up into the half-light inside the wagon, facing the fact that they were still trapped.

There was no longer any food in the wagon, and their only water had been from snow scraped off the roof by opening the window and reaching an arm through to the top. As the small window was close under the eaves, it was simple enough. Yet it was little water for three women.

From the sound of the hoarse breathing from the opposite bunk, Janice knew that Maggie was no better. If anything, she sounded worse.

The decision to move had been Barker's. Once he had assurance that Mabry was dead, they had begun the backbreaking job of getting the wagons out of the Hole.

It had been a brutal job, digging out around the wagons, then cutting through the snowdrift and packing down snow to get the wagons out. And they had to use both teams on each wagon to get them out of the hollow. Once they were on open ground, the move had gone well, until those startling and unexplained shots from nowhere.

Yet no attack followed . . . only silence.

"If that was Healy," Boyle said, "he'll starve out there. Or he'll get careless and come too close."

"Mabry wouldn't have wasted his lead," Barker said thoughtfully. "He'd shoot to kill."

"Mabry's dead," Griffin repeated patiently.

Boyle looked up, sneering.

Griffin's feet moved apart, his eyes widened a little, and with his left hand he slowly unbuttoned his coat. Boyle's eyes held on Griffin's. The sly egotism of the man had been jolted. His face turned a sickly gray and his fear was almost tangible.

Suddenly alert, Barker turned on Griffin. "Grif," he said quickly, "did you see any Indian tracks?"

Griffin let his eyes hold Boyle's. "Couple of times. Six in a bunch once. All bucks."

Art Boyle sat very quiet. The slightest wrong move or word could force him to grab for his gun . . . and it was obvious that he could not beat Griffin.

Sullenly Barker sat his saddle and reviewed the situation, liking none of it. Tom Healy had, somewhere in these wagons, fifteen thousand in gold, the money he was carrying to Maguire, or so his informant in the bank had told him. To get that money had seemed very simple.

Barker had wanted to go back to that little group of towns, Bannock, Alder Gulch, and Virginia City. Some years had passed and most of the old vigilante crowd had gone away. If anybody remained who knew he had been one of the Plummer crowd, nobody could prove it. Moreover, old passions had died, and the vigilante crowd would not be so eager to move against a man for old crimes.

It had seemed a simple thing to take the Healy party out, kill the men,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.