Devil's Manhunt (Stories from the Golden Age) by L. Ron Hubbard Read Free Book Online

Matson had faced. He had received payment for two thousand longhorns, had distributed spending money to his men and shortly afterward awakened in the road, slug-happy and flat broke. The Double G had had to creep mighty easy through the past winter without that cash. Greg recalled being invited into a game in a back room and no more; somebody in Thorpeville owed Sudden Johnny fifteen thousand dollars and that somebody was probably George Bart.
    “Your outfit comin’?” said Bart.
    “Yuh. The river’s up. Don’t you ever get spring up here?”
    “It’ll go back in a few days,” said Bart. “Come ahead to order cars?”
    “Yeh. Where’s the agent?”
    “Over in that shack. When you get through come back and have a drink, you must be pretty thirsty.”
    “I’m thirsty all right,” said Sudden Johnny. “Hungry, too.” He went down the steps and across the street to the indicated shack.
    W hen he came out he found that they had stabled his horse for him; he went into the New York Bar and found Bart.
    “Give him the best,” Bart told the bartender.
    Johnny poured a careful glass. He was known somewhat as a drinking man down Matagordas. It was said he could hold more liquor than anybody in that end of Texas, but this of course was a considerable exaggeration for Johnny almost never got drunk.
    He had three to start his circulation going and then insisted on paying for them. “No, no. Hell, no,” said Bart. “Glad to have you come here, don’t worry none.”
    Johnny took out a poke . “Well, maybe you wouldn’t accept gold dust anyway. It’s all the hard money I got.”
    “Gold dust?” said Bart, looking at the long poke. “Where’d that come from? I ain’t never seen any from yore part of the country.”
    “Ain’t,” said Johnny. “It’s from Mexico. We shipped down a lot of stuff by boat and they paid us in this stuff. Yucatán , most likely. People generally will take it, though, it’s worth about seventeen dollars a ounce.”
    Bart looked at the bright flakes and his eyes heated a trifle. “Let’s see some closer.”
    Johnny put a dab of the stuff in the outstretched palm and Bart picked it over, glancing now and then at the tall poke of it. “You must have plenty in that sack. How much, you think?”
    “Five, six thousand, that’s all,” said Johnny.
    Bart shivered and put the subject aside for the moment with some effort. It was an obvious strain.
    “Wouldn’t have been able to have made my drive if the Mexes hadn’t paid out,” said Johnny. “Come through just in time. Well, here’s mud in your eye.” He drank again with a quick jerk of his wrist and put the poke back, evidently forgetting the tiny amount he had given Bart.
    “Here, cowboy,” said Bart. “I shore don’t want to be considered dishonest. I invited you to drink up and I meant it, this here is your gold.”
    “Oh, so it is,” said Johnny, taking it back into the poke which he again put away.
    Johnny was looking the place over. When you are getting ready to tear things apart, board by board, it’s a good thing to get a careful idea of how they go together.
    This was one big room with a bar and tables in it with windows on the opposite wall from the bar. A big double door at the back was open to daylight and beyond it lay what seemed to be Bart’s warehouse. Two slanted doors went down a flight of steps. This was a sod house below-ground level, cool and comfortable, probably the original Thorpeville complete. A cook was struggling up the steps with a box of sardines under one arm and a keg of wine under the other. When he reached the top he shut the doors and snapped a padlock in place.
    Johnny saw that the left rear of this barroom gave into a couple of small anterooms. A door opened here into the lobby of the New York House. He nodded to himself, shifted his gun belt and felt of his stubbly jaw. “Reckon,” he said, “I’ll shave me up a trifle. I ain’t ridin’ back, too blamed comfortable