Death Rides Alone by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page A

office a short time later. He had said a bittersweet good-bye to Mary, who told him her last name was Baxter and confirmed that she was, indeed, a widow, her husband having passed on five years earlier.
    â€œYou have to promise me, Mr. Jensen, that if you ever ride through Bent Creek again, you’ll stop and have another meal with me,” she had said to him before he left the café.
    â€œYou have my solemn word on that, Mrs. Baxter,” he had told her. “But you may not be here by then. Surely some man will have come along by then who’s smart enough to marry a woman like you.”
    â€œSome may want to,” she had said with a faint smile, “but none of the eligible bachelors around here interest me in the least, and I’m not going to marry just any saddle tramp who comes drifting through.”
    â€œThat’s their loss,” Luke had said, lifting his coffee cup to her and then drinking the last of the strong, black brew.
    He wasn’t the sort of man who wallowed in regrets, but he was sorry to leave the Keystone Café.
    He forgot about that when he heard an ugly murmur of voices up ahead and looked toward the marshal’s office. He walked faster as he spotted a group of men gathered in front of the stone building. That was hardly ever a good thing.
    The office door was closed. One man stepped up, hammered a fist on it, and called, “You might as well open up, Chet. We heard you’ve got a woman-killer in there, and we intend to see that justice is done!”
    No response came from inside. Luke hoped that Marshal Donovan was still in there and hadn’t slipped out the back. His instincts told him the lawman wouldn’t abandon a prisoner to a mob, even a prisoner that he didn’t particularly want, but Luke didn’t know the man well enough to be certain.
    The man who had knocked on the door pounded on it again, and the other men began to shout for Donovan to open up. They were so caught up in what they were doing that they didn’t notice Luke approaching them from behind.
    Enough light spilled through the windows of the marshal’s office for him to see that several members of the mob were armed with rifles and shotguns. He didn’t spot any handguns, but some of the men might be wearing them under their coats. There were ten men in the group, which meant the odds against him would be pretty high if it came down to a fight to protect Judd Tyler.
    Just thinking about that put a bitter, sour taste on his tongue. Luke didn’t want to risk his life on behalf of such a vile human being . . . but he might not have any choice.
    He had his right hand on the butt of one of the Remingtons when someone inside the office jerked the door open. Chet Donovan’s bulky figure appeared in the doorway, the twin barrels of his Greener jutting out in front of him. The townsmen flinched back from the shotgun, as anybody in his right mind would do when threatened by a weapon like that.
    â€œYou men back off!” Donovan ordered. “Have you all gone loco? How long have I been the marshal here in Bent Creek? Well, how long?”
    â€œNigh on to seven years, Chet,” one of the men answered in a surly voice.
    â€œThat’s right, and in those seven years, have you ever known me to allow a lynchin’?”
    â€œYou never had a varmint like that fella Tyler in your jail before!” another man said. “The talk’s all over town about him. He killed a girl up in Montana!”
    â€œA preacher’s daughter!” a third man added.
    Donovan said, “That’s what he’s accused of, and that’s what he’ll answer for . . . up in Montana where he done the crime! He hasn’t done anything in Bent Creek but stable his horse and sleep in the hotel.”
    â€œThey’re liable to let him go up there.”
    â€œWhat in the hell makes you think that?” Donovan asked with a frown.
    â€œIt’s a long way