It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own (Code of the West) by Stephen Bly Read Free Book Online Page A

around. I mean, I always hoped there was . . . I always pretended that someday I’d quit driftin’ and buy me a spread like this. But sometimes, I got to thinkin’ a place like this didn’t exist anymore.”
    He stopped and tied off both horses to a post in the midst of a packed-dirt yard.
    “Boys, you wait out here, and I’ll check the place. I’m not sure Hatcher had time to fix it up for company. I’m not even sure he’s been here. That old boy down at McCurley’s store and hotel sure didn’t bat an eye when I told him I was Zach Hatcher.”
    As he walked across the wooden porch, he heard the ra ttle of pans inside the house.
    Someone’s home. Maybe this isn’t Hatcher’s place. I could have got it all wrong .  . . or maybe he has a cook . . . or hired hands.
    Staying on the left side of the doorway so that he would be hidden from anyone swin ging the door open, he pounded on the heavy oak and shouted, “Ho! In the house, anyone home?”
    There was no answer.
    He banged and shouted again, “ ¡Hola! En la casa! ¿Quién es usted? ”
    There was still no answer.
    Tap drew his Colt out of the holster, but he changed his mind about cocking it.
    “Look, I heard you in there .  . . Now I’ve got to talk to you. Does the name Zachariah Hatcher mean anything to you?”
    Pans crashed.
    “Look, I’m comin’ in now, and I have my gun drawn. All I want to do is talk, comprende ?”
    With a .44 Colt in his right hand, Tap lifted the latch on the door and slowly swung it open. The hinges squealed. The stil lness of the house seemed to amplify the sound. The air smelled musty and tinged with old smoke. A big room had few furnishings.
    “Hello? Anyone home?” Still ca rrying his drawn Colt, Tap stepped toward a back room. A rough pine four-poster bed hunkered against a window, with a long dresser built right into the wall.
    “Hello,” he announced again. Tap slapped the bed co vers. Dust fogged the room. Gently he walked back out into the big room and then around to the kitchen. Cupboards stretched from floor to ceiling.
    He found a newer cookstove on the far wall, a six-foot-square butcher’s block in the very center of the room, and a pantry without a door on the left side. A couple of pans li ttered the floor. A back door propped open several inches with an old boot led outside.
    “What in the world?” Andrews mumbled. “Why would Hatcher leave the door open?”
    Sensing movement to the right, he whirled and pointed his .44. He stared into the slitted eyes of a huge gray and white cat lounged on the counter. Its front paws tucked under its shoulders.
    “What are you doin’ here?”
    The cat calmly peered back at him.
    “So, Hatcher has a cat? Perhaps he left the back door ajar so you could go and come as you please.”
    He scooped up the cat, which seemed content to cuddle in his rough, callused hands.
    “What’s your name? I mean, what will I call you? I su ppose I should know your name. If Hatcher told Miss Cedar . . . I’ll wait until she mentions it. But why a cat way out here?”
    A dark shadow raced across the kitchen floor. The cat sprang out of his arms, claws pr otracted. The feline returned from behind the butcher block, a mouse clutched in its teeth. It scurried out the back door and into the yard.
    “A little dinner outside? You proved your point. We can use a mouser. But no eatin’ in the kitchen, you understand?”
    He turned back to the big front room. “It surely doesn’t look like anyone’s been here, not even that Cedar woman.”
    He opened all the shutters and windows that weren’t stuck and propped both the front and back doors open.
    “That ought to air it out . . . Come on, ponies, let’s see what your house looks like.”
    Tap led the animals to the huge barn next to some stout co rrals. The tall gable-roofed structure smelled of dried manure and old hay but it was clean, neat, and seemed as if it had been used more recently than the house.
    “Would you look