Death Rides the Night by Brett Halliday Read Free Book Online Page A

was glad Sally had gone to bed without waiting up for him. He hoped she would be asleep. It was an indication of the new feeling of security that had come to all of them in the Valley. It was only in the last few years that Sally had been able to force herself to turn in while her husband was still out.
    He thought back over those earlier days as he stopped his horse well away from the house to avoid waking Sally. He had never returned so late that a lighted window hadn’t told him Sally was sitting up. He felt a queer tightness in his belly as he remembered the look he’d seen in Sally’s eyes on some of those occasions when she had waited at home without knowing whether he would come back to her or not.
    It was tough on a woman, he reflected soberly as he ground-tied his horse and started toward the house, walking with exaggerated care to make as little noise as possible. Lots harder on the woman who sat at home and wondered and worried and imagined things than on the man who went out into danger trusting his guns to carry him through.
    Lately, since he had been sheriff, Sally hadn’t worried so much. She seemed to think the silver star of lawdom was a sort of magical symbol that protected a man from harm.
    Now, things were going to be different again. The old dangers were back, and the old fears would inevitably return with them. Once more Sally would take to sitting in the living room with a light in the window while she prayed for his safety.
    All because of one man. All because of Eustis Harlow’s inordinate ambitions to control the whole of Powder Valley. A cold rage burned inside Pat Stevens as he thought about it. It would be the same all over the Valley after tonight. The feeling of security would be shattered by tonight’s events. Neighbor would be taking sides against neighbor and a fierce mistrust would drive wedges between the strongest friendships. It had already started, he recalled. His mouth was dry with anger and with a hopeless feeling of loss as he remembered the looks on the faces of Mr. Winters and John Boyd when they refused to drink with him and Harlow in the Gold Eagle.
    He wasn’t angry at Winters and Boyd. He did think they might have trusted him further, might have searched their hearts and found the realization that Pat acted for the best when he turned Ezra over to the new sheriff, but he didn’t blame them too much. They were honest and straightforward men who believed in meeting any challenge straight on, who couldn’t understand compromise with right for the sake of expediency. His anger was directed at Eustis Harlow who had brought about the situation that drove Pat to seemingly turn against his friends.
    He reached the front door and opened the screen door cautiously. He turned the knob and pressed down on the wooden door to keep the hinges from creaking as he went in. He moved across the living room cautiously, striking a match and shielding it between his palms, found a lamp and lighted it, turned the wick low so it cast a faint yellow light across the room.
    He set the light on the center table and left it there, trusting it to throw a faint illumination through the hallway and into the door of the back bedroom where Sally was asleep on the big double bed.
    He hated to go into the bedroom because Sally was a light sleeper and likely to wake up at the slightest noise, but his guns were in there, hanging from two nails above the head of the bed.
    He had tried several times to leave his guns in another room where he could get at them at a time like this without the risk of disturbing Sally, but she always found them and carried them back into the bedroom. She admitted that she did it because she couldn’t bear the thought of him slipping in and getting them without her knowing about it. It was one of the perversities of Sally’s nature that didn’t make sense, but which she stubbornly clung to. Pat had tried to convince her she would worry less