Webb's Posse by Ralph Cotton Read Free Book Online Page B

something. You’re using it to bargain for half the reward money. So I’ve got a right to know. Have you ever killed anybody?” He folded his arms across his chest and waited for an answer.
    â€œIn Waco, three years ago,” said Summers, “I faced a man in the street. It was just him and me, and when he reached for his gun, all I could do—”
    â€œTwenty percent of the reward,” Abner Webb said, cutting him off again.
    â€œTwenty percent?
One-fifth!
Now
you’re
talking loco,” said Summers.
    â€œI see you’re not going to give me a straight-out yes-or-no answer,” Webb said.
    â€œI’m trying to answer you in a roundabout way,” said Summers, “only you’re too hardheaded to hear what I’m telling you.”
    â€œI don’t listen to
roundabout
answers,” said Webb. “All they do is confuse things. I figure you never killed a man either, else you would have said so by now.”
    â€œI don’t know how this killing part got so all-fired important all of a sudden,” said Summers. “But whether I have or not, I ain’t going into the desert and risking six of my horses for twenty percent of what might turn out to be nothing but a lot of cold nights sleeping on hard ground. No, sir.”
    â€œThen let’s forget it,” said Webb. “I can’t sell this town on the idea of fifty percent. I won’t even try. They’re mad enough at me already.”
    Summers cocked a shrewd eye. “Can you sell them on forty percent, providing ten percent goes to you? I’m talking about under the table from me, of course.”
    Webb seemed to consider it. “I just might be able to…but strictly to get back what this town has lost. That’s my only reason for going along with it.”
    â€œI understand,” said Summers. “Now get out there and pitch it to them, Deputy. We need to start making some time.”
    â€œLet me ask you something first, Will.” Now Abner Webb cocked an eye. “Out there today, Moses Peltry said that if those horses belonged to you, it was just as well they didn’t take them. Said if they did, they’d have to fool with you for the next month or else blow your head off. What did he mean by that?”
    â€œI would try to tell you, Deputy,” said Summers, “but I ain’t about to offer another
roundabout
answer, knowing how picky you are.”
    â€œJust how well do you and the Peltrys know one another, Will?” Webb asked.
    â€œI best take these along to keep score.” Ignoring the question, Summers reached down, swept up the wanted posters, folded them and stuffed them inside his shirt. “While you convince the good townsfolk, I’ll just slip out the back door, go on over to the livery barn and see if there’s any grain to take with us for the horses.”
    Abner Webb didn’t reveal Will Summers’ proposition to the townsmen all at once. Instead, he told them a little at a time and checked on their reaction as he went. First he told them the part about the reward money, which Summers had assured him would be well over ten thousand dollars for the entire Peltry Gang. When he’d finished telling them, the townsmen spoke in a hushed whisper among themselves as Webb stood on the boardwalk and looked back and forth across their faces. After a moment of staring toward the pile of charred rubble that used to be his mercantile store, Ned Trent took a wet rag from his broken nose and said, “Never thought I’d be saying this about Will Summers…but God bless him after all!”
    A murmur of agreement came up from the crowd. But then Sherman Dahl asked, “Are you saying that Summers is going to let us use his horses and provide us with firearms, then we deduct the cost of everything from the reward money once we collect it?”
    Abner Webb cleared his throat. “Well, not exactly, although that was