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

here.”
    “Sure. We’ll have her fixed right up for you,” said Bart. “Ain’t a bedbug in the place. Joe! Show Mr.— You didn’t say yore name.”
    “They call me Johnny.”
    “Joe, show Mr. Johnny at a room and let the Chinese lug him a bath.” He smiled upon Johnny. “When you come down, mebbe we can have a little excitement like a game of cards. It shore is dull hereabouts.”
    “Suits me,” said Johnny, “but all I got is gold dust.”
    “Reckon I won’t quibble none about that, seein’ you probably got two–three thousand cattle in a trail herd down here as well. Pete already took in your war sack when he cared for your hoss .”
    “Much obliged,” said Johnny.
    It was afternoon when he came down. He had had a sleep and grub and he felt up to his game. He was burnished from the labors of the Chinese and bright in a calico shirt. Johnny had his campaign pretty well mapped, he’d spent a long time mapping it. The only time he’d ever go sudden was when action began, which befitted a grandnephew of Beauregard.
    George Bart had fixed up a back room very tastefully with a large array of bottles on a sideboard, a quantity of edibles and a table on which lay a new deck of cards and around which sat, waiting very patiently, men who would have stayed there day and night for a week if Bart had told them to.
    Johnny walked in and found a very smiling and hospitable George. “Well, we was hoping you’d be down, Mr. Johnny. A few boys like yourself drifted in and we was about to have a game. Have something to drink first?”
    They drank, then George pulled back a chair. Johnny was expected to get into that chair but it had its back to the door and was flanked too closely. Johnny took another which suited him better and Bart less.
    Johnny picked up the cards, broke their seal and shuffled them. He gave a quick look around the table and saw nothing but hard, gaunt faces about as full of expression as a sidewinder ’s. Johnny grinned at them companionably.
    The door of the outer saloon opened and a man came in, a big man even as Texans go. He wore mainly buckskin, about three or four deer’s worth of it, stained with mud and grease. He had a beard, a black beard, thick enough to be bulletproof. If, from where he sat, Sudden Johnny shot this newcomer any glance, none noticed, so intent were they on getting their first cards.
    Johnny had delayed. Spanish Mike McCarty was something more than Johnny’s top rider, he was also Johnny’s friend. Johnny’s height had slenderness and his movements had grace, but Mike’s chief attribute was a mountainous strength which sometimes fell on men and cured them of things, including living.
    Spanish Mike combed some of the mud out of his beard, ordered a beer mug of whiskey, scooped up one handful of pretzels—one pound—from the free lunch and composed himself at the bar. He too had paused on the edge of town but not to clean his gun. He had halted to separate his arrival from Johnny’s by several unsuspicious hours and had profited by a nice relaxing snooze in the mud. Mike looked over the premises, looked out through the back door, sighed in pure delight and relaxed to watch the game.
    Sudden Johnny dealt to a somewhat dumbfounded crowd. He had been clumsy enough when he shuffled the cards but somehow these cards weren’t the cards which had been carefully rewrapped and placed in the center of the table. They were honest cards and there were glowers of wonder at George Bart at this supposed oversight. When the bartender served from the sideboard he caught a terrible pain in his shins—not serious, for his grimace vanished instantly as he moved away from Bart.
    “I plumb forgot about money,” said Johnny. “This poke is all I brought and this kind of makes it look like I’m playin’ on credit.” He hitched at the poke in his back pocket.
    “Now don’t you fret about money,” said George Bart. “I’m shore you can cover if you lose. Besides, there’s yore