Novel 1959 - The First Fast Draw (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online

had a chance.
    The rider who rode the horse over which they’d thrown me had kicked me in the head when mounting, and the boot in the stirrup was beside my skull, and I could hear the slight tinkle of the spur. When they made the turn along the swamp it was my chance and it had to come now. Grabbing the boot I jammed the spur into the horse’s ribs as hard as I could shove.
    It was unexpected, the man’s foot was easy in the stirrup, and the startled horse lunged in pain, plunging off the trail into the brush and grass, and when the horse plunged I went off the saddle into the edge of the swamp.
    There was a mad moment while the rider fought his horse before he was aware of what had happened, and in that moment I reached my feet and made three fast strides, and then dove head-first into the brush, squirming forward. Behind me there were shouts, screams of fury, and then shots cut the brush past my head. The earth turned to mud and then water and I splashed through the reeds and rank water-grass and lowered myself into the dark water.
    There was an instant when my hand slid along a mossy log and I shuddered, thinking it an alligator, and then I half-waded, half-swam over to a mud bank and crawling out, lay gasping with pain.
    My skull pounded like a huge drum, every throb was one of pure agony, and my body was wracked with pain, bruised from the kicking, and bloody as well. And that blood would mean added danger in the swamp.
    Yet I knew my position would be secure only for minutes, and after that, I had to move.
    Behind me there were shouts and the splashing and cursing of the searchers.
    This was my first night at home, and already I was a hunted man. Deep within me there was a pounding hatred of those who had done this to me. They had mobbed me, beaten me, and for no reason. Yet
they
had declared war,
I
had not. Be it on their own heads, I told myself. Whatever comes now, they have asked for it.

Chapter 2
    A FTER A TIME my breath came easier, and I lay very still, trying to plan. I had come no more than sixty feet from that swampy shore, and I knew this bank upon which I lay sprawled for I had fished from it many a time. It was only a narrow, projecting tongue of swampy ground that reached out like a pointing finger into the dark waters.
    It was this vicinity that was favored by the huge old ’gator locally known as Ol’ Joe, and reputed to have eaten more than three men, yet it was this water I must swim, and there was no other way out. It could be no more than a minute or two before either Chance Thorne or Joel Reese remembered the mud bar.
    To walk back to the mainland was to invite capture, for already the search along the shore was nearing the connecting point. Getting to my feet I hobbled across the mud bar to the far side.
    There was a knifing pain in my side, and one leg was badly bruised and probably torn. Ol’ Joe was a chance I had to accept, wherever he was he would be sure to catch the scent of blood in the water. On the other hand it would make the pursuers no more eager to investigate until daylight.
    Walking into the dark water until it was chest-high, I struck out. Swimming was something at which I’d always been handy, and I moved off into the water making almost no sound. Despite the throbbing in my skull and the stiff, bruised muscles I must swim about two hundred yards into the swamp before there would be a place to land.
    Taking each stroke by itself, neither thinking nor trying to plan beyond the other side, I swam steadily, keeping my mind away from Ol’ Joe.
    Behind me there was a shout of triumph and I knew they had found some tracks. Glancing back I saw lanterns bobbing along the swamp shore.
    Somewhere out here, and my swimming should have put me in a direct line with them, were a few old cypresses standing in the water. They were heavy with Spanish moss and a tangle of old boughs and might offer a hide-out. A few minutes later my hand struck an underwater root, then feeling around,