Here by the Bloods by Brandon Boyce Read Free Book Online

it. It is not until I step out of the cell, clang the heavy door shut, and deposit the key into my pocket that their vigor—in the form of an exultant, full-bodied cheer—returns.
    I turn to face them and the first man I see, standing before me like Moses, is Mayor Boone. A wide smile reddens his cheeks. His thin fingers find my hand and press into my palm. “Well done, son. I never had a doubt.”
    Outstretched hands descend on me, eager to shake mine. Ruddy, cheerful faces fill my vision. “Three cheers for Harlan Two-Trees!” cries a voice from somewhere in the packed station house, and three cheers from a grateful town obediently rattle the rafters. I shake every hand offered me. More questions come my way than have ever been asked me in my life, and I am too numb to answer any of them. No one seems to mind.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    A fiddler’s lively tune filters through the open window, accompanied by the long shadows of the waning day. “Tonight, very busy,” she says with a touch of trepidation. Drunken voices pass one another in merriment as I hear the saloon door bang for the hundredth time in an hour. Men piss in the alley below us into what, by the sound of it, must be a deepening puddle.
    â€œI suspect so, with all the work the door of the Jewel is getting.”
    Maria rolls over toward me, smiling, the undercurve of her breast landing gentle on my forearm. “You want to go again before you go?”
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    She glides the comb through her hair, watching me in the mirror as I work my way into my boots. Her thin white gown drapes open to her waist. I pull a ten-dollar gold piece from my pocket and set it on the edge of the vanity.
    â€œI said you no pay. You catch the bandito.”
    â€œYou keep it. The next fella might not think you are worth it.” My finger graces her neck as I kiss the top of her head. “He would be wrong.” A little smile returns to her face, easing, for a moment, her worries of the night ahead.
    â€œYou ever scared?” she asks.
    â€œIf I were not, I would fear I was already dead.” I put on my hat and give a nod. The bathtub sits in the middle of her little room. An oily film clings to the surface of the cooling water, thickly browned by the sweat and filth of my previous ordeal. “Thanks for the bath,” I add.
    â€œThanks for washing,” she says.

CHAPTER NINE
    â€œSorry to bring up such business after what you have done for the town, Harlan, but circumstances being what they are . . .” Mayor Boone draws a sheaf of papers from his case and slides the lantern over a little closer.
    â€œSheriff did right by you, son,” Bennett Whitlock interjects from across the kitchen table. “This house, the acreage, all the livestock. He left it in your name.”
    â€œPlus there was a small savings at Union Bank in Santa Fe,” continues Boone. “A few hundred dollars only, but that too will go to you.”
    â€œSheriff was my oldest friend,” says the rancher. “I know he wanted you provided for, but folks have been hit hard by this and . . .” Here Whitlock’s eyes drift to the floor then back up to me. “With our money still out there, and with the safe company dragging their feet in Chicago—”
    â€œThe reward,” I say. “That why you come?”
    â€œIt is ten thousand dollars,” Whitlock says, almost embarrassed by the number.
    â€œI need it not. That money should go to them what lost theirs at the bank. When it come in, that is what I want.”
    â€œSounds as if you had already decided this,” Boone suggests.
    â€œWay I see it, one man prospering while the rest of the town starves is in nobody’s gain. Them with kids should get their fair shake or close to it, the rest parceled out accordingly.” They both sit stunned for a moment, as if a hill whose ascent they were dreading turned out to be a patch of flat