Death Waits at Sundown by L. Ron Hubbard Read Free Book Online Page B

was
so still that hoofbeats were very loud.
    Long Tom turned over in the mud. Vicky pushed herself to
a sitting position and wiped a daub from her right eye.
    Long Tom did not even feel his bruises. He went toward
her on his hands and knees. “Are you all right?” he said hoarsely.
    â€œI . . . I was sc-c-c-cared you’d be killed!” wailed
Vicky unexpectedly.
    â€œI’m all right,” said Long Tom. “Gosh, I was scared
stiff myself.”
    And then a very strange thing happened. Vicky, sitting
in the mud beside him, looked intently into his face. He had lost. They both
had lost. And he had thought so much of her that he had risked being brained. .
. .
    Suddenly she grabbed his arms and buried her face in his
shoulder. “Please,” she wept. “Please forgive me, Long Tom. I . . . I’ve acted
like a fool! I won’t fight with you any more!”
    He wrapped his arms about her and implanted a muddy kiss
upon her brow.
    Suddenly he began to grin. “The hell you won’t. But what
the devil? I’d rather fight with you across the breakfast table than across a
chute gate.”
    â€œOh, Long Tom.”
    And neither one of them heard the cheers which came from
twenty-five thousand throats.

    Vicky and Long Tom

Boss of the Lazy B

Chapter
One
    S OMETIME before dawn the posse
had surrounded the shack and now with the horizon streaking with gray they lay
on their stomachs in the tall grass, chilled by the desert wind but hot for
battle.
    Big Bill Bailey was
hunched down on the sheriff’s right, taking the most advantageous position
because he owned the biggest spread in the Rio Carlos country. Big Bill lived
up to his name. He rode a veritable mammoth of a roan and his hats were
gigantic—they had to be. He stood six feet six and his weight matched his size.
    With a John B. for a
crown and a quirt for a scepter, Big Bill ruled the Lazy B, which covered more
territory than the Kingdom of Jfradersweganstan.
    But of late his ten
thousand beefy subjects had been mysteriously missing their mothers and
brothers and had developed a unique habit of giving birth to strangely branded
calves. Fighting sheep was bad enough without fighting rustlers as well, but
Big Bill never got ruffled about such things. He had little to say and usually
what he did say was delivered after prolonged thought. In this case he had
mentioned that it might be a good idea to track down a stolen band, so Con
Mathews of the Flying M and the rest of the nearby ranchers had collected the
sheriff and had taken the trail.
    And now they knew that
the probable owner of that trail, one Spick Murphy, was in this mountain shack
peacefully dreaming of his plunder.
    Or maybe he was
watching with a cocked rifle.
    It was all the same to
the posse. Spick Murphy was already as good as hanged for the murdering half-breed he was.
    He was of very
unsavory reputation, Spick Murphy. His father was an Irishman and his mother an
Apache squaw and between the two they had bequeathed upon him both a
countenance angelic and a soul diabolic. He oscillated between the two
extremes, given to voluntary acts of kindness one moment and shooting a man in
the back the next. Uncertain, unpredictable, hated and liked at one and the
same time, he had often styled himself the Robin Hood of Rio Carlos, but it is
doubtful if Robin Hood had killed sixteen men at the age of twenty.
    The sun started on its
climb to the zenith and the posse still waited patiently. Sooner or later Spick
would have to come out and get some water at the spring which bubbled a hundred
yards from the door, and when he did, things would begin to happen.
    One of Big Bill’s
chief talents was the ability to wait. For three years he had patiently waited
for Susan Price to say the word which would make her Mrs. Bailey. He did not
push the matter because Susan was not that kind of a girl. She was not
interested in his money as her father, Sam Price, the ultra-famous