Blood Valley by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online

time.
    Other than a cemetery.
    And neither of them thoughts was real comfortin’, to my way of thinkin’.
    I nodded at the gunfighters that I knew personal well. They returned the unsmilin’ nod and that was the extent of our happy fellowship.
    I’ll admit, I was some relieved to be out of that place and walkin’ up toward the schoolhouse.
    Rusty must have read my mind. “You got anyone in mind for additional deputies, Sheriff?”
    â€œI don’t know no one to even mull over. You got any ideas?”
    â€œMatter of fact, I do. ’Member I tole you about them two punchers I rode with, Burtell and De Graff?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThey’re livin’ in an old line shack north of town. They’re good boys, both of ’em.”
    â€œTell me why they got fired.”
    â€œThey didn’t. They quit. They didn’t like what was happenin’. Big Mike said he was gonna run ’em both out of the county. That was tried a couple of times, but they’re still here.”
    â€œGunhands?”
    â€œNo. Just punchers. They pro’bly better than average with a short gun, but they ain’t real fast. They will make their first shot count, though.”
    â€œHell, that’s half the fight. Some of the fastest guns I ever seen usually put their first shot in the dirt. You ride out in the mornin’, fetch them boys into town. Lemme talk to them.”
    At the schoolyard, it was all lantern-lit, the lanterns hung from ropes, with fancy streamers a-danglin’ ever’ which-a-way. The adults were sippin’ punch and the kids was playin’ and runnin’ around and havin’ fun. The boys was pullin’ the girls’ pigtails and the girls was pretendin’ they was all upset about it.
    And it made me kinda sad. This type of gatherin’ sometimes does that to me. Here I was, twenty-eight years old, I think, give or take a year, and I’d never had nothin’ much to speak of. I’d been driftin’ for a good many years. Oh, I’d seen the country, all of it west of the Big Muddy, but the feelin’ of belongin’ to someone . . . that was something I’d never known. Don’t get me wrong; I love the high lonesome. I like the smell of a wood fire and the cool mornings and the feelin’ that there ain’t another human person within a hundred miles of you.
    But . . . well, you can’t think about that too much or too often. Tends to get a body down.
    These folks now, all happy and gay, they had that feelin’ of belongin’. And it showed. Oh, many of them didn’t have all that much, cash-wise, but they had somebody.
    Well, hell! You know what I mean.
    And then I seen Pepper. That brightened me up real quick . . . in one way. And yet, in another, it produced a feelin’ that I never recollected havin’ before. Kind of a warm, gooey sort of feelin’.
    I shuddered like a big shaggy buffalo and walked around the yard. Rich gal like Pepper Baker wasn’t gonna have nothin’ to do with a two-bit cowboy turned sheriff like me.
    But she did send me that note.
    There was three guys with a fiddle and guitar and squeeze box, and they cranked it up for dancin’ . That left me out in the hog-waller, ’cause when it comes to fancy footwork with a female, I got two left feet. So I just stood around lookin’ like a lonesome hound dog while Pepper danced every dance. And I couldn’t help but wonder how Big Mike felt about that . . . him havin’ her all staked out, at least in his mind.
    Pepper took a break from her dancin’, leavin’ a lot of disappointed men standin’ around lookin’ glum. Damned if she didn’t walk straight up to me. I took off my hat when she come up.
    â€œPut your hat back on, Sheriff. You might catch a chill out here.”
    She stood lookin’ at me with them blue eyes, and that syrupy feelin’ sort of oozed over me again.