Novel 1971 - Tucker (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online Page B

restaurant and crossed the lobby. She was a few years older than me, and blonde, maybe a little hard around the mouth and eyes, but a fine figure of a girl.
    The man with the newspaper stood up suddenly and said, “Ruby Shaw! How nice to see you here! Why, the last time I saw you was in Fort Worth.”
    They stood talking for a minute, and then she went out.
    Ruby Shaw…
    I wasn’t more than a moment getting to the door. She was down the street, almost to the corner. It looked as if she’d stopped to glance at a sign, because just then she started moving again, and I followed.
    She never looked back even once, but when I glanced around I saw the man she had spoken to standing in the door looking after us.
    For three blocks I followed her, moving carefully from door to door, and when she turned another corner I was only a few steps behind her. At the corner I stopped, close against the buildings, and looked after her.
    She paused in front of a building, looking up and down the street, and then she turned and entered a doorway.
    For a moment I stood there, studying the street and the building. It was two stories high, with a balcony along the front, and several windows as well as two doors on the ground floor. One of the doors, the one she had entered, I thought probably led to the upstairs.
    Nobody else seemed to be on the street. It was still muddy from the rain but I could see a few dry spots where a man might cross without getting his boots too muddy. I did not want them caked with mud, for mud crunches underfoot and makes one’s movements too loud.
    No light showed upstairs, though maybe there was one in back. I walked down the block to get a look at the back of the building. There was a dim light in one room on the upper floor.
    Who was up there? Ruby Shaw was Heseltine’s girl, and Reese as well as Sites might be somewhere else. But Heseltine would have a part of my money.
    My mouth was pretty dry as I walked toward the front again. I did not want to open that dark door, climb the stairs inside, and go along a dark hall to that lighted room. Every foot of it would be a danger, and then I’d have to knock on the door. I couldn’t just open it, there being a woman in there—she might be undressing. The thought of it almost stopped me. I didn’t want to run into any shameful things, or embarrass an undressing woman…or myself.
    Yet I had to go ahead.
    Slipping the thong off my gun-hammer, I went softly along the boardwalk and opened the door with my left hand. It opened out slowly…all was dark inside.
    This was something new for me, and I did not want to get myself killed, and as pa always warned me, “If you go among the Indians you have to think like them.” Stepping through the door, I found myself in a narrow hall. On my left was a door that might lead to a storeroom or cellar. A stairway went up to the rooms on the second floor.
    Walking along the hall toward the back, I found myself facing a door, invisible except for the white porcelain knob. On my left was the newel post at the foot of the stairway. Putting my left hand on the post, I went around it to the first step.
    Something was on my foot…mud dropped by the girl, no doubt. Pausing, I scraped my instep off against the edge of the stair, then started up.
    I’d taken two steps when that door behind me opened. I turned, my left hand going to the wall as I sank to a crouch on the steps, my right hand coming up with my gun even as a shotgun belched a twin bore of flame. The thundering roar in the narrow hall drowned the two shots from my pistol.
    There was a moment when I crouched in stunned silence. Scraping my foot had saved my life, for he had been counting my steps and believed I was one step higher. He had aimed for my waistline and had missed me by a foot or more.
    It was only a split second that I was still, then I went up the steps two at a time. A door was opening a crack; it was not quite dark inside.
    My shoulder hit the door and smashed it