Hot Lead, Cold Justice by Spillane Mickey; Collins Max

Author:Spillane, Mickey; Collins, Max [Spillane, Mickey; Collins, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Twenty minutes before his dead body was discovered by Sheriff Caleb York, Bliss Maxwell was playing gracious host to his four guests.

Luke Burnham and his boys—Jake Warlow, Moody Fender, and Ned Sivley—were seated at the kitchen table in Maxwell’s well-furnished quarters above the saddle shop. They were eating the fare Maxwell had prepared for them—flapjacks and bacon and, again, whiskey-laced coffee.

Maxwell didn’t join them in the fare. He’d had a bad night, entirely sleepless, and if his guests had been at all observant they would have noticed their host’s red eyes and dark circles.

This scheme Luke Burnham had outlined the evening before, and pulled him into, had denied Maxwell of slumber. After thinking it through, turning it over and over in his mind, he finally came to a decision—he must find a way to hit the brake on this runaway wagon.

But former general store proprietor Bliss Maxwell was, if anything, a salesman. And today he would have to make the sale of his lifetime.

The room was heavy with the aroma of melting fat, as more bacon sizzled and fried. He tended it and said, “Gentlemen, I beg you to reconsider. What you propose to do today is ill-advised. It’s not the presence of Caleb York in this town that prompts me to say this, although that presents a danger in and of itself. No, it’s the position you have put me in.”

Burnham bit the end off a piece of crisp bacon, and chewed as he said, “What position is that, Silas?”

Maxwell had given up on getting his old comrade to stop calling him by his real first name.

The merchant swiveled from the stove to them. “Luke, if you take down this bank, the Trinidad bank, it will undoubtedly come back on me. We were seen together—Jake, Moody, Ned, and me—at the Victory.”

Calling the gang members by their first names was an attempt to make him seem more an ally.

“And,” Maxwell continued, “the four of us were at the cantina together.” His chin came up. “I didn’t mention this before, but York came around here, the day after his deputy was shot, sniffing around.”

“No,” Burnham said with a frown, pouring rye into his coffee. “You didn’t mention that.”

“Which makes it a certainty,” Maxwell said, pressing on, “in the wake of a bank robbery, that the sheriff will make a return visit to check up on me. He may well suspect that I’m billeting you.”

“Silas, old friend,” Burnham said, after a sip of coffee and rye, “hasn’t it got through to you yet that I would like nothing better than to have Caleb York knock on that door?”

Maxwell came over and stood next to the seated outlaw leader. “York is no fool. If he thinks there’s the slightest chance four desperados, one of whom is out to get him, are holed up here? He won’t come alone. He’ll come the way you entered Lawrence, Kansas—in force. After raising a posse. Might even burn us out—he’s as ruthless as you, Luke, in his way.

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