.45-Caliber Deathtrap by Peter Brandvold Read Free Book Online

hombre!”
    Gemmell stared up at Cannady, who stopped before his table. Gemmell’s chest rose and fell sharply, and his fingers curled down over his upraised palms. “Now, let’s talk this out, Clayton. No reason why two civilized human beings can’t iron out a wrinkle in their friendship.”
    â€œYeah, they is,” said Cannady. He drew his gun in a single, short blur, and pulled the trigger.
    Gemmell rocketed straight back in his chair, hit the floor with a resounding boom.
    Cannady grabbed another prospector by his collar, flung him out of his chair, kicked the chair out of his way, and walked over to where Gemmell lay writhing.
    â€œâ€™Cause one of us is dead !”
    Cannady’s revolver spoke three more times—three angry shots delivered one second apart. The chandeliers rattled and the floor vibrated.
    In the ensuing silence, one of the prospectors standing to Gemmell’s right, holding a frothy beer mug in his ham-sized right fist, muttered, “Shit.”
    Kong Zhao had stood frozen beside the square-hewn center post. Now he backed slowly toward his daughter.

5
    KONG ZHAO WAS backing toward Li Mei when the gang leader turned his milky left eye on him and jutted his finger. “You, Chinaman, got some trash for you to haul out to the trash heap. Hop-hop. Sing-sing. Pronto!”
    The others laughed, breaking the silence following the gunfire.
    Cannady turned to the other prospectors sitting at Lowry Gemmell’s table. “You boys don’t mind, do ya? I mean, this son of a bitch certainly wasn’t no friend of yours , was he?”
    The hard case’s voice so teemed with accusation that the other three men stared at him in hang-jawed silence.
    â€œDidn’t think so.” Cannady turned to Kong. “What’d I tell you, Chinaman? Hop to it! Them trash heap rats and coyotes is hungry!”
    Kong glanced at his daughter. He wanted to tell her to go into the back room or upstairs till these men had left, but he’d only draw attention to her. Maybe, seeing that she was merely Chinese, they’d leave her alone.
    Kong nodded and shuffled over to the dead man, whose chest was thickly bibbed with dark red blood and whose eyes seemed to gaze down at something on the floor over his right shoulder. The Chinaman shoved several chairs out of his way and, breathing heavily but moving lightly on his slippered feet, grabbed the dead man under the shoulders and pulled him through the tables toward the building’s back door.
    When he’d gotten the man outside, a voice from within said, “Tell your China doll to get her ass over here with them beers, barman. My throat’s damn dusty and”—the man pinched his voice with mock horror—“my nerves are shot from the sight of all that blood!”
    â€œThere, there, Paxton,” came another voice. “You’re gonna be just fine.”
    Laughter.
    Mumbling English curses, Kong Zhao dragged the dead man out past the woodpile toward the creek, and stopped. He straightened, wincing at the pain in his lower back, and sleeved sweat from his forehead.
    What to do with the man? He couldn’t really throw him in the trash heap. His body would attract dangerous predators, and after a couple of days in the hot sun, the smell would permeate the town.
    He looked around. There was no time to bury the man now. Kong couldn’t leave his daughter alone in the saloon for that long. He’d leave the man here, and bury him later on the other side of the creek.
    That resolved, Kong had begun shuffling back toward the saloon when the sound of galloping hooves from the road on the other side of the building hauled him up short. Angry voices rose. The hooves fell silent. Tack squawked and buckles clanked as men swung down from saddles.
    Kong had paused, canting his head to listen. Now he moved forward, opened the saloon’s back door, and stepped inside at the same time three big men