Snake Dreams by James D. Doss

Author:James D. Doss
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781429922302
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thirty-One

Mr. Harper Finds Himself in a Spot of Difficulty

Whatever his shortcomings, and the list was a lengthy one, Jake Harper was not a coward. Far from it. He had been in a dozen hard-knuckle bar brawls, and he generally came out on top. But the tough guy had a strong instinct for survival, which at this instant was shouting inside his head, Make a false move, you’re dead!

His girlfriend had a six-gun in her hands. And not of a small caliber. This was what is known in the trade as a Great Big Number. He rightly deduced that she had produced the heavy-duty shooting iron from somewhere in the bulky raincoat.

“Uh, Nance—”

“Don’t ‘Nance’ me, you two-bit . . .” Searching for just the right word, she furrowed her brow. It came to her. “You two-bit gigolo!”

“What?”

It was not that he required clarification. What Mr. Harper wanted more than all the gold in Fort Knox was to get out of the pickup without a perforation in his hide, and extending the conversation seemed to be the best means of accomplishing that objective.

It was not.

Click! This was Mr. Six-Shooter’s way of saying howdy.

Nancy Yazzi had just cocked the thing, which, because it was a double-action machine, was not absolutely necessary. But it was absolutely terrifying.

Jake did not wish to be present to hear the next (very loud) word uttered by the .44, which would be the Big Goodbye. He made a desperate grab for the door, heard the thunder roar, and hit the ground to scuttle away on all fours. In the cover of the phone-company van, the fleeing man got onto his hind legs and made a remarkable sprint for a heavyset fellow.

Going now for the one-handed shot, Nancy stuck her left arm out the driver-side door and pointed the barrel more or less in Jake’s direction. She pulled the trigger five more times to empty the cylinder. The first shot went into the sky; the second punctured a rear tire in the VW bus; the third went into Hamlet’s rooftop sign (neatly drilling a bull’s-eye in the second o of COWBOY); the fourth went through a window screen, across the saloon and over the bar, passed close to Ham’s right ear, and smashed a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s, which exploded just as the object of the shooter’s fury banged through the swinging front doors to flail his way across the barroom floor, knocking chairs, tables, filthy spittoons, and startled patrons aside as if he were the Father of All Bowling Balls and they were balsa-wood tenpins.

The fifth slug? Where that one ended up is anyone’s guess.

Nancy had additional armament behind the seat in the pickup. When the young woman toting a double-barrel shotgun came dashing in after her terrified boyfriend, things began to get downright interesting.

Big-hatted cowboys, sooty coal miners, sweaty oil-field roughnecks, a painted lady of questionable character, and a nice young couple from Hot Springs, Arkansas, who had stopped to soak up some “local color” scattered for the nearest exits and hiding places.

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