TW12 The Six-Gun Solution NEW by Simon Hawke Read Free Book Online Page A

her.
    "Call me Jenny. What do your friends call you—Montana?"
    He grinned. "No, not really. My friends call me Scott. Scott Neilson.”
    “It's nice to meet you, Scott” She watched him as he sat back down. "I see you're not wearing your gun."
    "No, Virgil Earp took it from me. Said there was an ordinance against carrying guns in Tombstone."
    "That doesn't seem to stop a lot of people." she said.
    "No, it doesn't, does it?"
    "Aren't you afraid? To be without your gun, I mean. Those cowboys that you shot have some pretty nasty friends."
    "Like Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo?"
    "And Ike Clanton and the McLaury brothers,” she said. “I see you've already heard of them.”
    "Yes. Bat Masterson warned me about them."
    "And you're not worried?"
    "Well, yes, I confess I am, a little. But the law's the law, isn't it? And I've only just arrived in town. I don't want to get on the wrong side of a man like Virgil Earp. His brother, Wyatt, already seems to have taken a dislike to me."
    "Oh, that sounds like Wyatt, all right," she said. "Wyatt's very protective of his brothers. And to him, any man who wears a gun and uses it the way you do means trouble. And wait till you meet Morgan."
    "Oh? What's he like? He a lawman, too?"
    "He's a shotgun guard on the Wells Fargo stage. You'll know him when you see him. Those three Earp brothers look as alike as peas in a pod, but they're all really very different. Virgil is the steady one. He's calm-tempered and looks to avoid trouble if he can. Wyatt's steady, too, I guess, only in a different way. If there's trouble, he doesn't waste too many words. He'll buffalo you with his six-shooter just as soon as look at you “
    To "buffalo" someone, Neilson remembered, meant to get the better of him in some way, usually by force. What Jenny was referring to was Wyatt Earp's penchant for braining miscreants with the barrel of his gun and knocking them unconscious. In a Wild frontier town like Tombstone, it was nothing more than sensible law enforcement. Why give a man a chance to draw his gun if you can crack his skull first and avoid all the unpleasantness?
    "And as for Morgan," Jenny continued, "he's real hot tempered and can be quite a handful when he's been drinking. He hangs around with that Doc Holliday a lot. Wyatt and Doc are close friends too, which seems a little strange, I guess, seeing as they're so different. Wyatt doesn't drink at all and Doc drinks quite excessively. When him and Morgan have had a few too many, watch out!"
    "I'll try to remember that," said Scott. "May I offer you some wine?"
    "Oh, thank you, no." She hesitated. "Well, maybe just a smidgen? It goes to my head so."
    Scott smiled and signaled the waiter for another glass.
    "Anyway," Jenny went on. "Morgan? He only gets riled when he's had a few too many, but that Doc Holliday, he's got a real short fuse. You wouldn't think it to look at him, him so frail and sickly and coughing all the time--he's got consumption, you know—but he's a real killer. They say he's one of the deadliest men with a six-shooter in the whole Southwest."
    "Really? You seem to know a lot about the people in this town."
    She blushed and looked down. "You must think I'm an awful gossip."
    "No, I don't. Just that I'm new in town and it's useful to hear such things. Might help me stay out of trouble."
    "Seems to me like you've already found some. With Slim and Jack, I mean. Not that anybody's going to miss them overmuch. They were rustlers, you know. Real troublemakers."
    "I gather there's a lot of rustling going on around here," Neilson said.
    “ Oh, yes. And there's a lot who don't mind it. They can get their cattle and their horses cheaper when they're rustled up from Mexico. Or from one of the bigger spreads around here. People don't ask a lot of questions when they're getting a bargain. Course, the big ranchers, they don't like it one bit, but they don't have all that much to say about it. The rustlers don't bother the smaller ranches and they