the Sky-Liners (1967) by Louis - Sackett's 13 L'amour Read Free Book Online Page B

was beef and beans. Both of us were wearing store-bought clothes and our guns were almost out of sight There was a rule about packing guns in town unless you were riding out right off, but the law in Dodge was lenient except when the herds were coming up the trail, and this was an off season for that. Evan Hawkes had been almost the only one up the trail right at that time.
    Nowhere was there any sign of the Fetchen crowd, nor of Judith.
    "You don't suppose they pulled out?" Galloway asked.
    " 'Tisn't likely."
    Several people glanced over at us, for there were no secrets in Dodge, and by now everybody in town would know who we were and why we were in town; and they would also know the Fetchen crowd.
    It was likely that Earp had figured out the shooting by this time, but as had been said, Tory was armed and it was a fair shooting, except that he laid for me like that. He'd tried to ambush me, and he got what was coming to him. Dodge understood things like that.
    We ate but our minds were not on our food, hungry as we were, for every moment we were expecting the Fetchens to show up. They did not come, though. The rain eased off, although the clouds remained heavy and it was easy enough to see that the storm was not over. Water dripped from the eaves and from the signboards extending across the boardwalk in some places.
    We watched through the windows, and presently a man came in, pausing at the outside door to beat the rain from his hat and to shake it off his raincoat. He came on in, and I heard him, without looking at us, tell Ben Springer, "They had their buryin'. There were nineteen men out there. Looked to be a tough lot."
    "Nineteen?" Galloway whispered. "They've found some friends, seems like."
    We saw them coming then, a tight riding bunch of men in black slickers and mostly black hats coming down the street through the mud. They drew up across the street and got down from their horses and went to stand under the overhang of the building across the street.
    Two turned and drifted down the street to the right, and two more to the left, the rest of them stayed there. It looked as if they were waiting for us.
    "Right flatterin', I call it," Galloway said, picking up his coffee cup. "They got themselves an army yonder."
    "Be enough to go around," I commented. Then after a minute I said, "I wonder what happened to Judith?"
    "You go see. I'll set right here and see if they want to come a-hunting. If they don't, we'll go out to 'em after a bit."
    Pushing back my chair, I got up and went into the hotel and up the stairs. When I got to her door, I rapped ... and rapped again.
    There was no answer.
    I tried rapping again, somewhat louder, and when no answer came I just reached down and opened the door.
    The room was empty. The bed was still unmade after she'd slept in it, but she was gone, and her clothes were gone.
    When I came back down the stairs I came down moving mighty easy. Nothing like walking wary when a body is facing up to trouble, and I could fairly smell trouble all around.
    Nobody was in the lobby, so I walked over to where I could see through the arch into the dining room.
    Galloway was sitting right where I'd left him, only there were two Fetchens across the table from him and another at the street door, and all of them had guns.
    The tables were nigh to empty. Chalk Beeson was sitting across the room at a table with Bob Wright; and Doc Halliday, up early for him, was alone at another table, drinking his breakfast, but keeping an eye on what was happening around.
    Black Fetchen was there, along with Burr and a strange rider I didn't know, a man with a shock of hair the color of dead prairie grass, and a scar on his jaw. His heels were run down, but the way he wore his gun sized him up to be a slick one with a shootin' iron, or one who fancied himself so. A lot of the boys who could really handle guns wore them every which way, not slung down low like some of the would-be fast ones.
    "It was your doing," Black was