Authors: Luke; Short

Play a Lone Hand (21 page)

It was toward Sebree's table that Giff roughly elbowed his way. He saw Deyo and Kearie standing at the table looking down at the floor where three men were kneeling. Giff circled so that at his approach he would face Kearie and Deyo. and then he knelt beside the other three. He had his brief look at Sebree sprawled on his back on the floor, eyes open and unseeing, blood pooling under him and spreading slowly on his white shirt front.

Roughly Giff reached into Sebree's inside coat pocket and felt only a wallet. His glance lifted to Deyo and only now did Deyo identify him. Protruding from under the lapel of Deyo's coat was an edge of the telltale paper. Giff rose as Deyo was turning. Giff lunged over Sebree's body, grabbed Deyo's arm and roughly spun him around. He rammed his gun into Deyo's soft midriff with a violence that drove the breath from the older man. With his free hand, he reached into Deyo's coat pocket and hauled forth the papers, wheeling away so that Kearie and the others came within the arc of his leveled gun.

“Better run now, Deyo,” he said softly. Then he backed up a step, lowered his gun, and moved toward the rear door, not turning his back.

He could hear shouts on the street and in the alley; he stepped quickly through the alley door and put his back to the wall of the saloon. Traff was in the alley mouth bawling directions across the street. From down the other alley came a scattering of gunfire.

As Giff moved, his foot touched an empty bottle, sending it rolling into the wall of Henty's saloon. At its soft, almost secretive tinkle, Traff wheeled. In the half-light of the alley he identified Giff.

In a blind unthinking rage, Traff raised his gun and running toward Giff brought it down club-like and fired. On the heel of his shot, Giff raised his gun and when Traff's bulk blacked out his sights, he pulled the trigger. Traff sat down as if some unseen hand had pulled him to the ground, wrapped both arms about his midriff and toppled over.

Giff moved past him into the road and crossed it quickly. There were men milling in the street before Henty's, talking and watching the door. Holstering his gun, Giff skirted them and turned at the land office corner.

A couple of men at a dead run almost ran into him and as he stepped aside, he saw others in the street heading toward Henty's. In front of the Plains Bar a handful of men stood before the door looking down street as if undecided whether the ruckus were worth watching.

“What's the shooting?” one man, his deal of cards still in his hand, asked Giff. Giff shrugged and shouldered past him. Welling, he was certain, would be inside and he moved into the saloon and halted. Some of the gaming tables were deserted. At the corner table Giff saw Welling and Fiske and he moved toward them.

Fiske, a cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth, was looking bored and irritable. Welling's sullen face, slack and heavy with his nightly ration of whiskey, was staring without interest at the men lining the bar.

Fiske saw Giff first and came half out of his chair; his movement attracted Welling's attention and then Welling saw him. Giff halted before the table and put down the two newspapers. He said to Fiske, “There they are, Bill. You'd better get them to a safe place.”

A curious transformation took place in Fiske's face. The irritability gave place to a stunned amazement as he reached for the newspapers; when he read the dates, saw both copies were here, an expression of almost bitter reverence came into his Scot's face.

Welling swept them roughly from Fiske's hand and looked at the dates too. A look of alcoholic elation leaped into Welling's face. He smiled, and then tapped them, looking up at Giff. “They're the ones stolen from Albers?”

Giff nodded.

“Who had them?”

“Mary Kincheon.”

A faint, crooked smile touched Welling's face. He was remembering Mary's treatment of him. He said softly, then, “We'll see what the district attorney can charge her with. It's got to be something.”

For a brief moment, Giff stared at him. Then he reached for the papers, drew them gently from Welling's hand, and laid them before Fiske.

Then, without a word, he reached across the table, balled up Welling's shirt and hauled him roughly out of his chair. Still without a word, he hit Welling in the face with all his might. Welling was torn from his grasp. He sat down in the chair and then somersaulted completely out of it, slammed against the wall and sprawled on his face.

Giff, rubbing his knuckles, looked at Fiske. The old man rose, sighed, said simply, “It's great to be young,” picked up the papers, tucked them in his pocket and started for the door without so much as a backward glance at Welling.

A crowd began to collect now around the table, and Giff turned and without answering their questions went outside. He turned upstreet, then, headed for Mrs. Wiatt's. Memory of his rough words to Mary again brought a small shame to him now as he thought of them.

The crowd around Henry's was swelling. He heard one man on the fringe of it say to his companion in answer to a question Giff hadn't heard, “Sure. He made it to the livery in the alley, and then I guess Murray's horses spooked his pony. It throwed him, and he fought it out with Torreon.”

“Who was it?”

“Stranger.”

So Archer had lost his gamble, just as Sebree had lost his. Again, Giff felt a stirring of guilt; it was not regret for the deaths of Sebree and Archer, but for the way he had been forced to bring them about. He skirted the milling crowd and went on up the lonely street. He felt drained of all anger, but his feeling of guilt at memory of Mary nagged at him, touching him again with remorse. He winced inwardly as he remembered his words to herâself-righteous and accusing words. Remembering how she had looked at him, he knew she would have preferred that he cursed her.

Lamps were still alight in the house as he turned in, mounted the steps and knocked on the door. Mrs. Wiatt answered it.

She peered closely at him in the dim light reflected from the parlor lamp, and then recognized him.

“Are you responsible for the crying that's going on in there?” she demanded. Her head nodded in the direction of Mary's room.

“I likely am,” Giff admitted.

Mrs. Wiatt swung the door open. “Do something about it,” she ordered tartly.

Giff moved past her through the parlor and into the hall. Pausing before Mary's closed door, he knocked. Presently he heard her bid him enter and he opened the door. She was emptying a bureau drawer of her clothes which she was placing on the bed. At sight of him, she straightened up, looking slim and sad and fiercely alone.

He could see she had been crying and, she did not try to hide it from him. Closing the door behind him, he came across the room and rested both hands on the footboard of the big walnut bed. “It's a little late to say I was too rough, isn't it?”

Mary nodded assent and Giff, again touched with shame, looked down at his hands.

“Are you going to apologize for speaking your kind of truth?” Mary asked quietly.

Giff glanced up, puzzled at her words.

“I know,” Mary continued, “you don't admire blackmail. You don't have to say it again.”

Giff shook his head slowly. “I never meant to say it at all.”

“You had a right to. I'm not a good person. You know that now.”

Giff looked searchingly at her, then came around the end of the bed and halted before her.

“You think I am? Have you ever wondered how I caught the buckshot Doc Miller pried out of me?”

When Mary didn't answer, he said, “Three of us trail hands decided one day we'd been without money long enough. There was a bank in one of these little trail towns that the government used to pay off drovers. It was full of money, and we wanted it.”

He paused, watching the interest stirring in Mary's eyes.

“Two of us wanted it, that is; the third one decided he could make more money by warning the bank. They were ready for us when we got off our horses at the bank corner. That's where I picked up the buckshotâjust as I stepped around my horse.” He waited a moment. “How does blackmail stack up beside that?”

“Not very tall,” Mary said softly.

Giff regarded her soberly. “Maybe that's why I wanted so badly to play out my hand here. I got kicked and beat into doing something straight, and I wanted to finish it straight. I could see it all when you handed those papers to Sebree. If I talked rough, I felt rough.”

“I'm glad it's no apology,” Mary said quietly.

Giff smiled and shook his head. He reached out and took one of her hands in his and looked down at it. It was a small, strong hand, and the inerasable grime of printer's ink stained it faintly. The sight of it reminded him again that this was no soft and pampered girl, but a woman who had known work and poverty, and even fear. She was his kind of woman, where the other kind could never be. She understood without having to put it into words the small dishonesties, the angers, the wrong judgments and the longings for something better that he had found in himself. All that was nothing without the gentleness, and the gentleness he had seen for himself.

He nodded to the clothes on her bed. “On the move again?”

She nodded soberly.

“Can you afford two train tickets? Neither one of us owns a horse.”

“Tickets to where?” Mary asked softly.

“A place in Wyoming way back against the peaks. I've passed it a dozen times. It's so far away from a town it's lost. We'll have to build a school for our kids.”

“I can afford the money,” Mary said gently. “Can you afford the timeâthe rest of your life?”

About the Author

Luke Short is the pen name of Frederick Dilley Glidden (1908â1975), the bestselling, award-winning author of over fifty classic western novels and hundreds of short stories. Renowned for their action-packed story lines, multidimensional characters, and vibrant dialogue, Glidden's novels sold over thirty million copies. Ten of his novels, including
Blood on the Moon
,
Coroner Creek
, and
Ramrod
, were adapted for the screen. Glidden was the winner of a special Western Heritage Trustees Award and the Levi Strauss Golden Saddleman Award from the Western Writers of America.

Born in Kewanee, Illinois, Glidden graduated in 1930 from the University of Missouri where he studied journalism. After working for several newspapers, he became a trapper in Canada and, later, an archaeologist's assistant in New Mexico. His first story, “Six-Gun Lawyer,” was published in
Cowboy Stories
magazine in 1935 under the name F. D. Glidden. At the suggestion of his publisher, he used the pseudonym Luke Short, not realizing it was the name of a real gunman and gambler who was a friend of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. In addition to his prolific writing career, Glidden worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He moved to Aspen, Colorado, in 1946, and became an active member of the Aspen Town Council, where he initiated the zoning laws that helped preserve the town.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Andy Ross

ISBN: 978-1-5040-4088-4

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10038

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