The Burt Arthur Western Megapack by Burt Arthur

Author:Burt Arthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: western, gunslinger, cowboy, indian, Texas
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

SILVER CITY RANGERS

Copyright ©1948 by Phoenix Press.

CHAPTER I

A STRANGER IN TOWN

Marshall awoke to find the early morning sunlight streaming into the room, bathing its drab and monotonous simplicity with unfamiliar cheer and warmth. He twisted around toward the window. There was a half-curtain on a draw string over the raised lower pane, and the faded green blind that covered the upper half of the window was threadbare and tattered. There was a six-inch gap between the roller and the top of the jutting window frame, and the sun’s rays poured through it like flood waters surging through a breached dike. He squinted in the strong light, turnned his head away and buried his face in the pillow, but after a futile minute he raised his head again, turned over and sank down on his broad back. His eyes ranged over the room; he’d been too tired to take much notice of things when he’d arrived late the night before.

There was a battered bureau midway along the far wall, and a small mirror with a dusty and curiously yellowish surface hung above it; a washstand with a basin and a pitcher on top of it occupied the opposite corner. There were long, ragged cracks in the low ceiling, which had long since lost its original whiteness and which was now a very definite light brown. There were half a dozen ugly gaps in the walls where the plaster had chipped off, exposing the thin slats of wallboard.

“Five bucks a day fer this,” Marshall muttered, and shook his head.

His eyes followed the swift, darting rays of sunlight, watched them scamper breathlessly over the walls and the ceiling. Finally, reluctantly, he kicked off the covers and swung his long legs over the side of the bed. He yawned, stretched, then checked himself abruptly. He touched his right arm and shoulder gingerly, and made a wry face.

“Huh,” he muttered, and glared at the bed. “Shore got a gall callin’ this rock pile a bed. I’ve slept on open ground that had this thing beat forty diff’rent ways from the ace when it comes to comfort. What’s more, it didn’t cost me a red cent, either. Five bucks! Hell, the feller that owns this place must be plumb loco. He must think this town’s a boom town in the middle of a gold rush!”

He reached for the chair that stood just beyond the bed, swung it around, disregarding his protesting shoulder muscles and the soreness in his arm, jerked his pants off the back of the chair and climbed into them. His saddle-bags—they bulged to the very limit of their capacity—lay on the floor next to his boots. He drew the bags closer, threw back the flaps, and fumbled around inside the bags until he located what he sought—a rolled-up pair of socks that had become wedged in between a frying pan, a battered and discolored coffee pot and a bag of coffee grounds. After a minute’s tugging that threatened for a brief time to

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