Three~Ten to Yuma and Other Stories by Elmore Leonard

Author:Elmore Leonard [Leonard, Elmore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Frontier and pioneer life, Leonard, Western stories, Westerns, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction, Outlaws, Fantasy, Fiction - Western, Westerns - General, General, short stories, Elmore - Prose & Criticism
ISBN: 0061336793
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-11-09T06:00:00+00:00

“But a bet like that—how could you fall into it? You know he’d have a pony to outstrip yours.”

“Well, that was the chance I had to take.”

They rode along in silence for a few minutes before Brennan asked, “Where they coming from?”

Rintoon grinned at him. “Their honeymoon. Willard made the agent put on a special run just for the two of them. Made a big fuss while Doretta tried to hide her head.”

“Then”—Brennan grinned—“I’m obliged to Mr. Mims, else I’d still be waiting back there with my saddle and my Henry.”

Later on, topping a rise that was thick with jack pine, they were suddenly in view of the Sasabe station and the creek beyond it, as they came out of the trees and started down the mesquite-dotted sweep of the hillside.

Rintoon checked his timepiece. The regular run was due here at five o’clock. He was surprised to see that it was only ten minutes after four. He remembered then, his mind picturing Willard Mims as he chartered the special coach.

Brennan said, “I’m getting off here at Sasabe.”

“How’ll you get over to your place?”

“Hank’ll lend me a horse.”

As they drew nearer, Rintoon was squinting, studying the three adobe houses and the corral in back. “I don’t see anybody,” he said. “Hank’s usually out in the yard. Him or his boy.”

Brennan said, “They don’t expect you for an hour. That’s it.”

“Man, we make enough noise for somebody to come out.”

Rintoon swung the teams toward the adobes, slowing them as Brennan pushed his boot against the brake lever, and they came to a stop exactly even with the front of the main adobe.

“Hank!”

Rintoon looked from the door of the adobe out over the yard. He called the name again, but there was no answer. He frowned. “The damn place sounds deserted,” he said.

Brennan saw the driver’s eyes drop to the sawed-off shotgun and Brennan’s Henry on the floor of the boot, and then he was looking over the yard again.

“Where in hell would Hank’ve gone to?”

A sound came from the adobe. A boot scraping—that or something like it—and the next moment a man was standing in the open doorway. He was bearded, a dark beard faintly streaked with gray and in need of a trim. He was watching them calmly, almost indifferently, and leveling a Colt at them at the same time.

He moved out into the yard and now another man, armed with a shotgun, came out of the adobe. The bearded one held his gun on the door of the coach. The shotgun was leveled at Brennan and Rintoon.

“You-all drop your guns and come on down.” He wore range clothes, soiled and sun bleached, and he held the shotgun calmly as if doing this was not something new. He was younger than the bearded one by at least ten years.

Brennan raised his revolver from its holster and the one with the shotgun said, “Gently, now,” and grinned as Brennan dropped it over the wheel.

Rintoon, not wearing a handgun, had not moved.

“If you got something down in that boot,” the one with the shotgun said to him, “haul it out.

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